At least 50 million children are on the move in the world today and millions more are affected by migration. Now more than ever, a rescue package is needed for these refugee children. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 10 2020 (IPS)

Forced to flee wars and disasters, sometimes without family, and struggling to survive in the worst of circumstances, children on the move have long led very precarious lives. Be they refugees, internally displaced or asylum seekers, vulnerable and marginalised, they lose years of childhood. They are exposed to the worst forms of abuse, such as commercial exploitation and violence. Today, their situation is dire as they remain at the very bottom of the list to receive emergency measures to protect them from the impacts of COVID-19. 

Still, there is a deafening silence on the nature of a rescue package for the ultra-vulnerable child population.

Speaking on the second and final day of the Fair Share of Children Summit held virtually, Nobel laureates, leading international figures, heads of states and governments as well as heads of United Nations agencies, who include the Dalai Lama, 2014 Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee,  and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven have dispelled all doubt that without this package, the fallout of COVID-19 will be borne by the world’s most marginalised children.

Seme Ludanga Faustino has lived experiences of being a refugee. The co-founder of I CAN South Sudan, a registered refugee-led organisation, stated that the closure of schools and many other child-friendly spaces would be most devastating for displaced children as this is where they learn to cope and heal from traumatic experiences.

“These are children who need structured engagement the most. Even worse, many of them are now separated from their caregivers, who are often fellow refugees. One way to help these children is to support their caregivers to support this child population,” he advised.                                                  

With U.N Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates indicating that 50 million children are on the move in the world today and millions more affected by migration, now more than ever, a rescue package is needed for the world’s most marginalised and impoverished children.

Similarly, a newly launched report by the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation titled “A Fair Share For Children: Preventing the loss of a generation to COVID-19” paints a disturbing picture of the harms and vulnerabilities facing children on the move. The number of children on the move has increased every year for at least a decade, and it is more likely now that the numbers will only grow during and post COVID-19.

The report further indicates that as of the end of March this year, the G20 countries alone had already committed over $5 trillion towards protecting the global economy. Since additional commitments from high-income countries have brought the figure to $8 trillion – a large chunk of this money will be used to protect businesses.

Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate, stated that real change would begin when resources are directed where they are most needed.

Notably, there is still minimal movement at the national and international levels to address the non-health impacts of COVID-19 on the most marginalised citizens. The report further states that to date, “little is being actively spent on targeted interventions to support the almost 20 percent of children living on two dollars or less per day.”

Against this backdrop, a session, dubbed “Increased Vulnerability of Children on the Move”, examined the increased challenges and risks faced by children on the move due to COVID-19 such as the impact of new legislation imposed due to the pandemic, and explore ways to protect this deeply marginalised child population.

Session moderator Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, emphasised on the need to explore solutions.

Josie Naughton, CEO, Help Refugees, spoke of the need for political will as it is a sure way to the change that is needed for vulnerable child population.

Abraham Keita, a youth activist and 2015 International Children’s Peace Prize Winner, was born during Liberia’s brutal civil war and his father, a driver for a humanitarian organisation was killed in an ambush when he was only five years old.

He grew up in the densely populated informal settlements of West Point, Liberia in extreme poverty and great difficulties. But as those closest to the numbers are often the ones closest to the solutions, he said that beyond statistics are real lives. Keita emphasised that appealing for political will is not enough and that people must appeal to the moral conscience.

The “A Fair Share for Children” report reveals that by mid-April, 167 countries had closed their borders, and at least 57 states made no exception for people seeking asylum.

This is despite ongoing “168 armed conflicts, 15 wars and 23 limited wars. One in 10 children are living in zones of conflict,” said Philip Jennings, co-president, International Peace Bureau, 1910 Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation.

“We have this peace deficit which COVID-19 only makes worse the conditions of children on the move. I want world leaders and laureates to talk about peace. We need a global ceasefire. Sustainable peace has to be the message from us to the children,” he said.

The U.N. Refugee Agency’s most recent Global Trends report indicates that as of the of 2019, the number of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and asylum-seekers was at an all-time high with an estimated 79.5 million people, of which 13 million children were refugees.

Equally alarming, 400,000 asylum applications were made by children unaccompanied by any family member. Overall, at least 18 million children were internally displaced by conflicts or disasters.

The “A Fair Share for Children” report warns that as refugee camps are neither designed nor equipped for pandemics such as COVID-19, simple protective measures such as hand washing and social distancing are next to impossible to achieve. The report states that the maximum standards for a typical camp “call for a maximum of 120 people to one water tap and 3.5 square meters of living space per person. Most, if not all, refugee camps are operating beyond this capacity.”

Child rights experts now say that the world is sitting on a catastrophe, as these children will experience even deeper exclusion from any kind of social protection measures or safety nets.

Speakers at the summit, including Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, decried the fact that even before the pandemic, fundamental public services including education, healthcare, hygiene and sanitation, nutrition and child protection not to mention resettlement and asylum services, were already lacking for this extremely vulnerable child population.

He said that poverty had gotten even worse, there is a decline in migrant remittances and that many refugees who had temporary jobs, lost them.

“Extreme poverty is considered an act of violence, so right now, there is violence and injustice committed against children on the move in particular. More government support is needed and direct financial support not just for NGOs but for small businesses, including those owned by refugees. Countries must stop separating families and turning down asylum seekers,” he said today.

Marianna Vardinoyannis, U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Goodwill Ambassador and 2020 U.N. Nelson Mandela Prize Laureate urged participants and governments to open their eyes to the suffering of children on the move.

“There is so much that we do not see that defines the traumatic lives of these children. As we built better post COVID, education must be a priority for displaced children. Without an education, the children will lack the tools they need to rebuild their lives,” she cautioned.

Governments have been urged to take urgent action to prevent devastating nutrition and health outcomes for the 370 million children missing out on school meals amid COVID-19 school closures. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 9 2020 (IPS)

While COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire world, Nobel Laureates and world leaders have today expressed concern that ongoing crisis is far from being an equaliser. The pandemic has revealed that the most vulnerable and marginalised populations, including and especially children, remain largely unprotected against the virus and its impacts.

Kailash Satyarthi, 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate, opened the plenary of the Fair Share of Children Summit, an extraordinary virtual gathering of Nobel Laureates and world leaders, with a sobering statistic. Currently, he said only 0.013 percent of the COVID-19 response had been allocated to the most vulnerable. “How can we justify this?” he asked.

The global virtual conference, hosted by Laureates and Leaders for Children, which was founded by Satyarthi, takes place from Sept. 9-10, and has brought together Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, Tawakkol Karman, Professor Jody Williams, and leading international figures and heads of United Nations agencies.

The summit seeks to galvanise global action to ensure that the world’s children are not left behind and that in the absence of targeting children in international responses to the pandemic, existing responses will have failed.

Speaking today, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson stated the most marginalised children and their families must receive their fair share of COVID-19 responses, which translates to 20 percent for the poorest 20 percent of humanity.

Kinsu Kumar, a Child Rights Activist who also works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan:Save The Childhood Movement and is based in India. Courtesy: Laureates and Leaders for Children

A former child labourer and child rights activist who also works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan:Save The Childhood Movement, Kinsu Kumar, brought home the reality of the millions of children exploited or at risk of being exploited as COVID-19 wreaks havoc to existing socio-economic structures.

Kumar, who lives in Jaipur, India, worked at the age of six at a car wash to provide for his family.

“It saddens me that instead of children being a priority during this pandemic, they (children) have instead been side-lined. My morale is crushed by the slow response to the needs of millions of children across the world. How many more children have to be abused, exploited or lost for government to take action?” he asked, admitting he was angry about the situation.

Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama, said that unfortunately, the poor and needy are so side-lined that they have turned to seek divine intervention as the only means of assistance.

Gordon Brown, U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, explained just how important it is for the world to come together to fight for the world’s children.

This is especially considering emerging data indicating that as many as 30 million children will not return to school post-COVID and emphasised that education is still the best cover for children from all forms of abuse and exploitation.

Speaking about standing with children as they face COVID-19, he said that all efforts must be made to ensure that children stay in school.

“Hope dies when young people cannot prepare, plan or dream of future because they cannot get an education,” said Brown.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, spoke of the need to address the most pressing problems facing children during the pandemic. For instance, he indicated that child mortality is now on the rise as the pandemic has curtailed access to health services, and further added that up to 10,000 children across the world could die every month due to increased hunger.

Henrietta Fore, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, says the COVID pandemic has exposed the fault lines of the pandemic in every country but has resulted in finding solutions to these problems, with children resorting to online learning during the lockdowns. Courtesy: Laureates and Leaders for Children

Henrietta Fore, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), warned that a lot of work lies ahead as “even before the pandemic hit, the world was already off track in meetings SDGs. The pandemic has exposed the fault lines of the pandemic in every country.”

“But the pandemic is also showing us solutions which includes providing online infrastructure to ensure that children learn online and working with vital partners such as the private sector to develop innovative solutions,” she explained.

Speakers at the summit further indicated that as COVID-19 escalates, numerous pre-existing inequalities faced by the vulnerable and marginalised populations and especially children in the poorest parts of the world, will be worsened by disparities of the world’s responses.

Nobel laureates have particularly raised the alarm that despite trillions being announced for the wealthiest parts of the world, only a fraction has been allocated to those whose lives are most at stake from the multidimensional impacts of the pandemic.

A most pressing problem emerging due to the ongoing crisis is food insecurity and fears are rife that additional millions of children will be plunged into hunger.

According to UNICEF, undernutrition accounts for almost half of all deaths of children under the age of five. This context underscores the need for governments to take urgent action to prevent devastating nutrition and health outcomes for the 370 million children missing out on school meals amid school closure.

Through a session dubbed “Food Insecurity During COVID-19: Ending Child Hunger and Stopping the Virus for Good” more world leaders and Nobel Laureates, including Ayoade Oluwafemi Fadoju and Prof. Muhammad Yunus, highlighted how strained health and social protection systems, and fractured responses by countries are escalating child hunger.

As the pandemic unfolds, the impact of the virus on global agricultural and food markets is becoming increasingly evident.

Session moderator Lorena Castillo Garcia, the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS special ambassador and global spokesperson for Zero Discrimination, emphasised the need to tailor responses to the crisis.

Garcia explained that current food insecurities are not necessarily driven by pre-existing food security threats such as erratic weather patterns, conflict, natural disasters and the locust invasion across East Africa but by COVID-19 driven disruptions to food production and supply.

Overall, people’s ability to purchase food has also been affected by current economic recession, and millions of children and their families could be plunged into poverty and extreme poverty.

Disruptions to the supply of agricultural inputs like fertilisers, seeds and a shortage of labour due to restricted movements as a responsive measure to curb the spread of the virus are likely to further reduce production incoming crop seasons. This, child rights experts say, spells doom for world children and more so, the vulnerable and marginalised.

“Nigeria has the second-highest number of child malnutrition in the world. More than 2.5 million children in Nigeria suffer from severe malnutrition. Undernutrition prevails among children in Africa. This is a disaster. We have to make every effort that hunger does not become deadlier than COVID-19 itself,” said Oluwafemi Fadoju.

Graca Machel, a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders, agrees.

“We are facing the horror of rising hunger. Globally, a child dies every three seconds due to hunger. In Africa, no country is untouched by hunger. These statistics shed light on the magnitude of child hunger. This is the sin of the collective failure of our times. Today, about 67,000 children are at risk of dying of hunger in sub-Saharan Africa alone before the end of this year,” she said today.

“Let us bring proven solutions to scale so that no child is left behind. It is in our power to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry. No child should die of hunger when there is enough food to feed us all. We have an opportunity now to fix a system that was already broken for millions of children. This pandemic is an opportunity to re-evaluate how we treat our children,” she advised.

As it is, pre-COVID-19 estimates by the World Bank show that more than 690 million people were affected by hunger and that these figures are up by 10 million people from the previous year. 

Children will be most affected as other statistics by the World Bank show that nearly one in every five children worldwide lives on less than two dollars a day. As a result of COVID-19, an estimated 6.5 million children under five worldwide are at risk of suffering stunted growth.

Summit speakers emphasised that post-COVID reconstruction efforts must build better by addressing inequalities facing the world’s most vulnerable children today. In the short term, it will involve identifying where the new hotspots of food insecurity are. This will help expand social protection programs to ensure that children and young people are adequately targeted.

Overall, summit speakers have emphasised that a failure to unite, innovate and develop new, transformative and sustainable solutions could lead to the loss of an entire generation of children.

The Laureates and Leaders for Children, founded in 2016 by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative. According to the international Labour Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, one in five children in Africa are involved in child labour. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Regina Njagi’s four children, aged between 11 and 17, have not benefitted from online learning since the COVID-19 led to the closure of all schools in Kenya, earlier in March. With the closure, Njagi lost her job as a teacher at a local private school.

“As a widow, these are desperate times for me. I exhausted my savings by paying school fees for my two children in high school, just three weeks before the closure. How many times can I borrow food from relatives and neighbours? Everyone I know is struggling so the children must work. Otherwise, they will starve,” Njagi tells IPS.

Nobel laureates galvanise action for world’s vulnerable children

Njagi is not alone in having to send her children to work for the families’ survival. The impact of the pandemic on children will be a focus of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit on Sept. 9 and 10. Several Nobel laureates and heads states and directors of United Nations agencies are listed as speakers, including Nobel laureates the Dalai Lama, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

To globalise compassion and galvanise action for the world’s most vulnerable children, the Laureates and Leaders for Children founded in 2016 by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

The Nobel laureates fear that despite pledges of unprecedented sums of money to support world economies, this may not reach children.

“As a result, COVID-19 could turn the clock back a decade or more on progress made on child labour, education, and health for hundreds of millions of children,” the Laureates say in a joint statement.

Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has personally rescued tens of thousands of children from slavery and will be one of the speakers at the Fair Share for Children Summit.  

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and concerns escalate that even more children have been placed in harm’s way, the Laureates and Leaders for Children is calling upon the world’s heads of government to demonstrate wise leadership and urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised with a special focus on children.

“One trillion dollars would fund all outstanding United Nations and charity COVID-19 appeals, cancel two years of all debt repayments from low-income countries, and fund two years of  the global gap to meet the SDGs on health, water and sanitation, and education,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

Education is a particularly vital step as quality education is the most powerful way to “end exclusion and change the future for marginalised children. There would still be enough left to fund social protection safety nets which are crucial in the fight against child labour. More than 10 million lives would be saved, a positive response by humanity to the tragedy of COVID-19,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

No school but work during the pandemic

But from May to July this year, all four of Njagi’s children were unable to attend school as they were employed on a daily wage to pick coffee at plantations in the Mbo-i-Kamiti area, Kiambu County, Central Kenya.

The children are currently engaged in this year’s second coffee picking season which has just begun and will last through October. Njagi says her children will then participate in the final and major coffee picking season from October through December.

Picking coffee is a difficult job, and her children must leave for the plantation, some two kilometres away from their home in Kagongo village, by six o’clock in the morning.

After harvesting the coffee, each worker, child or adult, is expected to load their harvest onto waiting trucks which transport the day’s pickings to the local coffee factory.

All workers must do everything possible to get onto the truck with their coffee or else they will walk to the factory, at least a kilometre away. 

“At the factory, each person places their coffee on a weighing scale, and each worker is paid their daily wage based on the weight. I advised my children to combine their harvest because if the weight is too low, they might not get paid,” she adds.

Children across the world at risk

The World Bank estimates that globally the pandemic will push 40 to 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with UNICEF, warns that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries. 

Child rights experts, such as Nairobi-based Juliah Omondi, are increasingly concerned that Njagi’s household is far from the exception. For millions of households across Africa, child labour is now a lifeline, and vulnerable children must adapt or starve.

Omondi is a member of the G10 (groups of 10 civil society organisations) local movement that agitates for the rights of women and children. She tells IPS that in “many African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Eritrea and Nigeria, international labour standards on the minimum age protection are ignored in the informal sector”.

In Nigeria, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics show that as of 2019, 50.8 percent of Nigeria’s children were working full time. Omondi adds that the situation is dire in Africa’s poorest countries, including Mali, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan.

COVID-19 likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children

Danson Mwangangi, a regional socio-economic expert and independent consultant based in Kigali, Rwanda, says that the pandemic has provoked economic severe and labour market shocks and that children are bearing the brunt.

While the number of working children has fallen by 94 million since the 2000s, the plight of Njagi’s children confirms fears by the ILO that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children and roll back progress towards the eradication of child labour.  

“Ongoing crisis will make it exceptionally difficult for the United Nations to realise its commitment to end child labour in the next five years. For the first time in 20 years, we are going to see a spike in the number of child labourers,” Mwangangi warns.

The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable children clearly visible

ILO pre-pandemic statistics indicate that approximately 152 million children between the ages of five and 17, or one in 10 children, worldwide work. Of these, 73 million are in hazardous work. Nearly half of all children in labour are from the African continent and are aged between five and 11 years. 

According to ILO, 85 percent of child labourers in Africa are in the agriculture sector; another 11 percent are in the services sector, with the remaining four percent in industry.

“We are beginning to see the fallout. More child marriages, more girls being employed as domestic workers and, unfortunately, domestic work for children in Africa has been normalised,” Omondi says.

Mwangangi agrees. He says that while statistics by child agencies, like the U.N. Children’s Fund, show that one in five children in Africa is in child labour, there is a general understanding that this does not include underage domestic workers such as house girls and farm boys.

Unfortunately, child labour is not the only problem facing marginalised and vulnerable children in Africa.  When Save the Children released a report in July entitled “Little Invisible Slaves”, it became apparent that COVID-19 has created more children vulnerable to trafficking and revealed that the world lacks much-needed child protection infrastructure.  

The report says that COVID-19 “changed the pattern of sexual exploitation, which is now operating less on the streets and more indoors or online”.

Omondi speaks of fears that millions of children are trapped in houses with their abusers and that it has becoming that much more difficult to reach them.

Save the Children estimates that of the 108,000 cases of human trafficking reported in 164 countries in 2019, at least 23 percent involved children.

Worse still, one in 20 child victims of sexual exploitation worldwide is under eight years old. Overall, Africa accounts for eight percent of child sex trafficking in the world.

According to the United States Department of State, 19 percent of world’s enslaved population is trafficked in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same breath, nearly half of all countries in Africa including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Lesotho, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana have been flagged as notable sources, transit points and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. 

In Kenya, for instance, one of six such victims are children, this is according to the Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking. 

Meanwhile, Laureates and Leaders for Children caution that the inequalities the world’s children face, combined with the “impact of COVID-19 will reverberate for years to come”. But, they say,  “none will feel it as painfully as the world’s most marginalised children”.

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 15 2020 (IPS)

While men are more likely to die from COVID-19, women are facing the full blow of the socio-economic fallout from the ongoing pandemic as well as seeing a reversal in equality gains made over the last two decades, says an all-women panel of international thought leaders, who met virtually during a discussion convened by IPS.

“The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women and Girls” took place on Tuesday, Jul. 14, with the aim to bring to the fore the dangers of neglecting gender dimensions in COVID-19 response and recovery plans.

The panel included gender and development experts with a wide range of expertise:

• Catherine Bertini, a distinguished fellow of global food and agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, professor emeritus at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP);
• Yasmine Sherif, the director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crisis established by the World Humanitarian Summit. Sherif, a lawyer specialising in in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, has 30 years of experience with the U.N. and international NGOs;
• Saima Wazed Hossain, advisor to the director-general of World Health Organisation on mental health and autism, the chairperson of the Bangladesh National Advisory Committee for Autism and Neurodevelopment Disorders as well as the chairperson for the Shuchona Foundation;
• Josefina Stubbs, senior manager multilateral relations in Enel Green Power, Italy and former assistant secretary-general and vice president strategy and knowledge at U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); and
• Susan Papp, the managing director of policy and advocacy at Women Deliver and an award-winning advocate and policy expert.
• Doaa Abdel-Motaal, advisor at the Guarini Institute of Public Affairs in Rome, Italy, former executive director of the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health, the former chief of staff of IFAD, and former deputy chief of staff of the World Trade Organisation.

Abdel-Motaal moderated the webinar and kicked off the session by saying that while the topic was crucial, it was “all too often neglected”.

“Studies have shown the men are more likely to die of the coronavirus than women. But studies are also showing that women are bearing the brunt of the social and economic fallout of this pandemic,” she said, explaining that there were multiple reasons for this, including the fact that women comprise 70 percent of the global healthcare workforce.

Women eat last

“In COVID-19, the disproportionate impact to women and girls is magnified many times over because of their roles as caregivers, as mothers, as cooks. And ultimately as the people who are holding families together,” Bertini said during the discussion.

She noted that in 1995 she had given a speech titled “Women eat last”, saying that she was told by WFP deputy executive director Amir Abudalla that a recent report on the Rohingya and food assistance had the same conclusion; “Women eat last.”

“What have we been doing for 25 years if this is still a tagline for what is happening in the world, especially for women in crisis?” she asked.

• The State of Food Security And Nutrition in the World 2020 report jointly launched by United Nations agencies this week stated at least 83 million to 132 million more people may go hungry this year because of COVID-19.
• While experts are still gathering data on the current crisis, recent past studies show that women are more affected by food insecurity than men, often allocating food to others before themselves, just as Bertini had noted back in 1995. 

Increased gender-based violence and income inequality

Papp, from Women Deliver, said the pandemic was compounding inequalities across the board.

“It is revealing fractures in our systems that are becoming too big to ignore,” Papp told IPS after the webinar.

“The pandemic is showing us how women are facing heightened levels of gender-based violence (GBV). It is also showing us how insufficient our social protection systems are with respect to sick leave, parental leave, child care, health care, and unemployment subsides,” Papp said.

Sherif, of Education Cannot Wait, said that the closure of schools and other educational settings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has deprived young girls of a protective environment.

“The risks of all forms of violence that girls and young women face outside of emergencies are multiplied in humanitarian contexts. The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly becoming a protection crisis with surging levels of violence against women and girls, including child marriages,” Sherif told IPS before the webinar.

“Social isolation measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have increased the risk of intimate partner violence and other forms of GBV as girls and young women are confined with abusers,” she added.

During the panel discussion, Stubbs said that not only will COVID-19 roll back progress made for women and girls in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) over the last two decades in areas such as health, education, employment, micro-, small and medium enterprises, social protection and social cohesion, but that it will be harder to regain those losses. 

“But we are seeing in the case of Latin America is that indeed the pandemic is exacerbating [the existing] economic inequality. It has made care work at home much more burdensome for women, 45 percent who live as single-headed households, and of course the issue of gender violence,” she said, explaining that more than 35 percent of Latin Americans live in and under poverty.

• In May, the International Labour Organisation noted “of the 740 million women working in the informal economy, 42 percent are found in high-risk sectors”, noting that despite global lockdowns women continued to work, “putting their health in peril as hand washing, self-isolation and wearing masks or other personal protective equipment are not realistic options”. 

As women experience a greater caregiving burden compared to men, they are at even greater risk of getting infected with the contagious disease. Further, women now have to contend with additional responsibilities of being homemakers and teachers, and the pressure could impact negatively on their mental health.

Sherif decried the impact of COVID-19 on education as the most vulnerable, poor children are less likely to return to school after a crisis. She said that many girls, especially adolescents, may never return to school.

• A U.N. Population Fund report released this month stated an additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the pandemic. It also stated, that delays in female genital mutilation (FGM) programmes could result in an increase of two million FGM cases over the next decade that would otherwise have been averted.
• A Kenya government health survey has revealed that an estimated 4,000 school-going adolescents have fallen pregnant during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Access to sexual and reproductive health has been significantly curtailed by the pandemic, with experts calling for a prioritisation of maternal and child health for women in crisis.

Papp said that as stresses to health and economic systems were compounded due to COVID-19 response and recovery, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) cannot take a back seat and that conservative voices should not be allowed to diminish women’s rights.

Women now have to contend with additional responsibilities of being homemakers and teachers. In the absence of gender sensitive, gender responsive measures to the ongoing global crisis women and girls will emerge from the pandemic even further behind than they were pre-COVID-19. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Education is key

But in looking for solutions, Sherif said education should never be under-prioritised in a crisis and financial contributions were needed to provide for continuing education.

“And when you look at countries affected by conflict and crisis, with half of the population being women, the only way to arise out of that crisis once and for all, and the only way, if you really want to empower women or any human being, is a good education,” she told panelists, making note that it needed to be quality education that went beyond primary school.

“That is the only way to liberate a woman from the yoke of oppression,” Sherif said.

Hashtags to curb GBV

Stubbs said that even though GBV is exacerbated during a crisis, a number of civil society organisations in Latin America were working very hard and using innovative models to protect women during the lockdowns. Hashtags have also had an impact.

“The use of technology has been absolutely essential. There is wide connectivity around Latin America and some hashtags in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia have made an enormous difference. Because women cannot go out, or because their cases cannot be followed, because the judiciary system is closed, … but social media has played a very important role,” she explained to panelists and viewers.

Referring to the phrase, ‘Building Back Better,’ Stubbs said this needed to include women, “making sure that women where not left even further behind than where we were before the crisis hit”.

“Bringing women into the economic reconstruction of their countries in a model that is more inclusive is going to be absolutely essential for sustainable development,” she said, adding that women’s small and medium enterprises needed to get more access to credit, technical assistance, than they had previously and that the working rights of women in the informal industry needed to be respected.

The former IFAD assistant secretary-general also said that women will play a fundamental role in producing food that is distributed in countries.

“Yet, women again do no have enough access to land, they do not have access to technological packages, the do not have access to credit. In the new “Building Back Better” we need to make sure that some have access to those [instruments], because their contribution to food security at home, and for the whole country will be absolutely fundamental,” she said.

Policies and practices for protection

Wazed Hossain, who is also the daughter of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told IPS that women’s contribution to the economy cannot be under-estimated and that their protection during this crisis must be a priority.

She made reference to the ready-made garments industry in Bangladesh and emphasised that women’s participation pushed the country to become a leading producer in the world.

“To reduce their vulnerabilities, there needs to be policies and practices in place that help to protect their physical, financial, and mental well-being. As with many other sectors, COVID-19 has highlighted the shortcomings in our policies and practices, but it is also an opportunity to look at the measures that need to be in place to ensure the various rights and protections workers deserve,” she told IPS before the webinar.

Wazed Hossain explained to viewers and panelists  that Bangladesh had seen a truly significant impact in keeping women at the centre of the country’s economic and social activities.

“In the last two decades the system that has been in place, the priorities that has been given to girls’ education, girls’ healthcare, all of that has come in tremendous use during this crisis,” she explained. 

She said when it came to health care, community-based health centres were kept active during the lockdown.

“That was one of the first decisions. Again, it is a woman making that decision,” she said referring to the prime minister. Other priorities for the country during the lockdown also included, “food security for the women, food security for the children, ensuring that relief funds went directly to women”.

Schools also play a role in the emergency food response. When asked by Abdel-Motaal how to apply a gender lens to this, Bertini said that in the context of ‘Building Back Better’ for women, responses needed to be more inclusive and more women were needed in leadership, “If schools aren’t back in place, one of the things we have to absolutely be sure we do, is feed children…one thing the community can do is be sure there is an opportunity to feed children.”

She said when schools reopened, the existence of feeding schemes could bring girls back to school.

Experts have further emphasised that a gender lens will guarantee that the needs and realities of everyone confronted by the virus are reflected in established responses.

Sherif cautioned, “Without a gender lens, 50 percent of the world population affected by the pandemic could be left behind.”

In opening the webinar, IPS senior vice president Farhana Haque Rahman acknowledged the “enormous wealth of experience and knowledge” of panel participants, stating that viewers wanted to hear about “concrete actions that will accelerate positive change for women and children”.

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

Asha Abdi, a former member of Nairobi County assembly, says progress for the increased participation of women in politics in Kenya has been painfully slow. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 6 2020 (IPS)

In 2013, Alice Wahome ran in her third attempt to win the hotly-contested Kandara constituency parliamentary seat in Murang’a County, Central Kenya. As is typical of rural politics, the field was male-dominated, with the stakes being high for all candidates but more especially so for Wahome — no woman had ever occupied the Kandara constituency parliamentary seat.

“It was a very brutal campaign. I was harassed, verbally abused, threatened with physical violence and many unprintable things were [said to me] even in public,” Wahome tells IPS.

She says that attributes that are considered admirable and desirable in male politicians were weaponised against her and other women in politics.

“When we vocalised our opinions they said we talk too much and the underlying message is that decent women do not talk too much. When you have a stand, and are firm in your political beliefs and values, they say you are combative, intolerant and aggressive. The same qualities in men are acceptable,” Wahome says.

So vicious was the contest for the hearts of Kandara’s voters that on the morning of the 2013 general elections, the community woke to find packets of condoms branded with Wahome’s name. On the packets were messages, purportedly from Wahome, encouraging voters to embrace family planning.

“This was a smear campaign to show my people that I was not fit to be their leader. There are many things that politicians give to voters, such as food items. Distributing condoms in a rural, conservative society on the day of the elections is political suicide,” Wahome, a lawyer, says.

Fortunately, she had spent years interacting with the community, promoting health initiatives, education and the empowerment of women and girls. So despite the smear campaign, Wahome became the first woman to win the Kandara seat and is currently serving her second term in the national assembly after her 2017 re-election.

Propaganda, threats of violence and especially sexual and physical violence, public humiliation and unrelenting vicious social media smear campaigns are a few of the challenges that women in politics, like Wahome, have to overcome to win and sustain political leadership.

This is in addition to overall campaign challenges such as limited financial and human resources and vicious internal politics. But even at the political party level, the system is still skewed in favour of men who own and finance these parties.

“The political arena is very hostile towards women. The campaign trail is littered with lived experiences of women who have been brutalised for seeking leadership,” Wangechi Wachira, the executive director of the Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness (CREAW), tells IPS.

CREAW is a local partner for Deliver For Good global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals and is powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver. The Deliver For Good campaign partners advocate to drive action in 12 critical investment areas, including strengthening women’s political participation and decision-making power.

Wangechi has been at the forefront of holding the government accountable for gender equality and equity, as provided for by Kenya’s 2010 gender-progressive constitution, which demands that all appointed and elected bodies constitute one-third women.

Article 27 (8) of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights says: “The State shall take legislative and other measures to implement the principle that no more than two thirds of the members of elective or appointive bodies shall be of the same gender.” 

The national assembly is obligated to enact the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill 2018, also known as the Gender Bill, to realise this provision. But more than 10 years down the line, this obligation remains unfulfilled. In 2019, parliament did not even have the required two thirds of members present in the house — the requisite quorum for a constitutional amendment — to vote on the bill.

“The national assembly has failed the women of Kenya. We have gone to court to push for the national assembly to enact legislation to correct blatant gender inequalities. There is too much resistance and push back from a patriarchal system,” Wangechi says.

It is this resistance that women in politics find themselves up against in their quest for leadership. Women account for just 9.2 percent of the 1,835 elected individuals in 2017, a marginal increase from 7.7 percent in 2013, according to a report by National Democratic Institute and the Federation of Women Lawyers-Kenya, the latter being another Deliver For Good local partner. 

This report shows that in the 2017 elections, 29 percent more women ran for office than in the 2013 general elections and there are now more women in elected positions across all levels of government. But Asha Abdi, a former member of the Nairobi County Assembly, tells IPS that progress has been painfully slow.

Overall, there are now 172 women in elective positions — up from 145 in 2013. In the 2017 general elections, 23 women were elected to the national assembly compared to 16 in 2013, and another 96 were elected to the county assemblies compared to the 82 women in 2013.

As such, women account for 23 percent of the national assembly and senate, with this figure including the 47 seats reserved exclusively for county women representatives. 

Human rights campaigners say that the momentum to hold the national assembly accountable had picked but as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, concerns are rife that the gender agenda is no longer a priority.

“COVID-19 has not slowed down political activities in this country. In fact, leaders are behaving as if we are going into elections tomorrow and not 2022. We have serious political re-alignments and nobody is speaking for women,” Grace Gakii, a Nairobi-based gender and political activist, tells IPS.

“Ordinary Kenyans are more concerned with staying safe from the virus and feeding their families. So some of the small gains we have made could be lost during this pandemic because there is no one to hold political parties and powers that be accountable,” she says.

Recognised as East Africa’s economic powerhouse by the World Bank, this economic giant lags behind its neighbours in as far as women representation across government bodies is concerned.

In South Sudan, the figures for women in politics are higher, with 28.9 percent in elected positions. Uganda has 34 percent, Tanzania and Burundi 36 percent, and Rwanda 61 percent.

“Political campaigns and the intense lobbying that goes with it are very difficult for women. There are many meetings at night and exclusive meetings in ‘boys’ clubs’. Society is warming up to women but too slowly. When you vie against men, all the male opponents gang up against you, because it is considered a big insult to be defeated by a woman,” Abdi says.

While the 2017 general elections showed a small shift in the political landscape, resulting in the election of the first three female governors and the first three female senators, Wahome says that the road ahead remains long and winding.

She says that women in politics should and can successfully rise to the challenge.

Wahome encourages women to draw strength from others who have tried and succeeded, saying that with time, patriarchal attitudes and customs will shift. She particularly encourages women to engage in grassroots transformative projects with their communities.

“There are many areas to choose from including education and community health. Let the people see what you can do and later, they will back you all the way to the top.”

Irene Omari says that the most pressing problems women in business face includes a lack of credit. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

Pauline Akwacha’s popular chain of eateries, famously known as Kakwacha Hangover Hotels and situated at the heart of Kisumu City’s lakeside in Kenya, is facing its most daunting challenge yet. Akwacha and other women in business across this East African nation are bracing themselves for the post-COVID-19 economy. 

Strategically located at the heart of Kisumu’s bustling central business district, business at Kakwacha had always been very good. One could hardly find a seat at the eateries.

“We are known for our fresh, traditional foods, including meat and especially fish. This is the lakeside and fish is a big part of our lives. The meals are very affordable and the portions filling,” she tells IPS.

The first COVID-19 case in this East African nation was confirmed on Mar. 13. Within days the Kakwacha chain, other restaurants and the hospital industry closed as the government issued strict social distancing protocols to curb the spread of the virus.

“Now my doors are closed and am losing a lot of money because I still have to pay rent and do whatever is necessary to cushion my staff,” Akwacha says.

To reopen, Kakwacha will have to follow the strict guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health. Restaurant owners are required to pay from $20 to $40 for each staff member to undergo mandatory COVID-19 testing before reopening.

Still, without cash flow, Akwacha will find it difficult to re-open.

Across the street, Irene Omari, the sole proprietor of one of the biggest branding companies in Kisumu City and its surroundings, has similar concerns about the market post-lockdown. As a woman, she struggled to access loans to start her business.

“It is very difficult to run a business as a woman. In the beginning I could not even access credit because financial institutions did not take me seriously. I had to learn to spend 15 percent of every coin I made, and save 85 percent to plough back into the business. Women do not access loans easily because of strict collateral requirements,” Omari tells IPS.

Omari says that the most pressing problems women in business face, include a lack of credit, patriarchal stereotypes and naysayers who tell women that they cannot succeed — because they are not men.

But she succeeded despite this. Up until the lockdown, her printing and branding business occupied two large floors in a building in the lakeside city. There, she pays $1,500 in rent per month, a considerable sum that shows just how big and strategically-located her business is.

“I brand for hotels, schools, companies, non-governmental organisations and walk-in individual clients. We have something for everyone. Our printing department caters mostly to schools. I have invested heavily in mass production by purchasing machines worth millions [of Kenyan shillings],” Omari tells IPS.

But COVID-19 has also hit the very heart of her business. With schools, hotels and restaurants closed, and as companies face a most uncertain future, business is at an all-time low. 

Omari has diverse business interests and also invested in a trucking business to transport construction materials across the larger Western region. But this industry has also been impacted by the lockdown.

Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to decelerate significantly due to COVID-19. The most recent World Bank Kenya Economic Update predicts economic growth of 1.5 to 1.0 percent in 2020. Growth focus for 2020 was estimated at 5.9 percent pre-COVID. 

While COVID-19 may be the latest addition in a long list of challenges that women in business have had to endure, there are concerns that the pandemic will only widen existing economic gender inequalities.

In 2018, only a paltry 76,804 or 2.8 percent of the country’s formal sector employees earned a monthly salary in excess of 1,000 dollars. Of these employees, 36.5 percent were women, accounting for only one percent of the total formal sector employees, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.  

There are no real-time statistics available yet on the impact COVID-19 has had on women in business.

But dated statistics paint a picture of the difficulties women had have to overcome.

Overall, Kenya has significantly expanded financial access and reduced financial exclusion. The number of people without access to any financial services and products reduced from 17.4 percent in 2016 to 11 percent in 2019. But while financial access gaps between men and women are narrowing, women are still lagging behind, according to the Central Bank of Kenya financial access survey of 2019.

For instance, in 2016, 80.9 percent of women-to-women business partnerships were denied loans by micro-finance institutions, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

As such, more women in business are turning to the informal sector such as table banking or merry-go-round savings and lending groups.

“This is why investing in women and providing much-needed affirmative action support remains necessary and urgent,” Fridah Githuku, the executive director of GROOTS Kenya, tells IPS. GROOTS is a national grassroots movement led by women, which invests in women-led groups for sustainable community transformation. 

So far, this Deliver For Good local partner has invested in nearly 3,500 women-led groups. Deliver For Good is a global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals and is powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver.

In the agricultural sector where, according to World Bank statistics, women run three-quarters of Kenya’s farms, the government says that women’s investments in farming does not match the amount of money they receive in loans.

Currently, women still only account for 25 percent of the total loans issued by the government’s Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC). This, experts say, is an improvement from 11 percent in 2017.  

Githuku points out that previously land title deeds were a non-negotiable requirement for loans with the AFC and prevented women-led enterprises in the agricultural sector from accessing credit.

Today, women do not have to rely on land title deeds and can support their loan applications to the AFC with motor vehicle log books and cash flow statements.

But experts are concerned that these loans might come to naught as COVID-19 continues to disrupt the entire farming chain; from the acquisition of farm inputs as farmers struggle to access seeds and fertiliser, to productivity on farms, and the transportation of produce to the markets.

For now, it is a wait-and-see situation for women in business, including Akwacha and Omari, as Kenyans continue to speculate on whether the economy will fully open up anytime soon. 

Kenya's Matrimonial Property Act, which is discriminatory towards women and inconsistent with the country's constitution, means few married women own land. Less than five percent of all land title deeds in Kenya are held jointly by women and only one percent of land titles are held by women alone. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jun 1 2020 (IPS)

Ida Njeri was a civil servant with access to a Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCO) through her employer, and her husband a private consultant in the information and communication sector, when she began taking low-interest loans from the cooperative so they could buy up land in Ruiru, Central Kenya. She’d willing done it. Part of their long-term plan together for having a family was that they would acquire land and eventually build their dream home. But little did Njeri realise that 12 years and three children later the law would stand against her right to owning the matrimonial property.

“As a private consultant, it was difficult for my husband to join a SACCO. People generally join SACCOs through their employer. This makes it easy to save and take loans because you need three people within your SACCO to guarantee the loan,” Njeri tells IPS.

“My husband had a savings bank account so we would combine my loans with his savings. By 2016, I had 45,000 dollars in loans. My husband would tell me the amount of money needed to purchase land and I would take out a loan,” she adds, explaining that her husband handled all the purchases.

By 2016 the couple had purchased 14 different pieces of land, each measuring an eighth of an acre. But last year, when the marriage fell apart, Njeri discovered that all their joint land was in her husband’s name.

“All along I just assumed that the land was in both our names. I never really thought about it because we were jointly building our family. Even worse, all land payment receipts and sale agreements are also in his name alone,” she says.

Worse still, there was little she can do about it within the current framework of the country’s laws.

Despite Article 45 (3) of the 2010 Constitution providing for equality during marriage and upon divorce, and despite the fact that  Njeri’s marriage was registered (effectively granting her a legal basis for land ownership under the Marriage Act 2014) there is another law in the country — the Matrimonial Property Act 2013 — which stands against her. 

More specifically, it is Section 7 of the act that states ownership of matrimonial property is dependent on the contributions of each spouse toward its acquisition.

• “Ownership of matrimonial property rests in the spouses according to the contribution of either spouses towards its acquisition, and shall be divided between the spouses if they divorce or their marriage is otherwise dissolved,” Section 7 states.  

Because Njeri had no proof of jointly purchasing the land, upon her divorce she is not entitled to it.

Hers is not an isolated case of married women struggling to ensure their land rights.

In 2018, the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA), an advocacy network dedicated to the realisation of constitutional provisions of women’s land rights as a means to eradicate poverty and hunger, and promote gender equality, in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), released an audit of land ownership after the disaggregation and analysis of approximately one third of the 3.2 million title deeds issued by the government between 2013 and 2017 — the highest number of title deeds issued in any regime.

Odenda Lumumba is a land rights activist and founder of KLA, which is a local partner for Deliver For Good, a global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and powered by global advocacy organisation Women Deliver. She explains that the data on land ownership is a pointer to the reality that gender disparities remain a concern, especially because of the intricate relationship between land tenure systems, livelihoods and poverty.

“There is very little progress towards women owning land. There are so many obstacles for them to overcome,” Lumumba tells IPS. 

• The KLA audit of land ownership found that only 103,043 titles or 10.3 percent of title deeds were issued to women compared to the 865,095 or 86.5 percent that went to men.

• Even greater gender disparities were found in terms of the actual land size. While men own 9,903,304 hectares in titled land, representing 97.76 percent of land, women own 1.67 percent or 10,129,704 hectares of land during this five year period.
• Further, this audit found that men own 75 percent of land title deeds of all allocated land settlement schemes.

In 2018, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) in Kenya petitioned Kenya’s High Court, arguing that Section 7 of the Matrimonial Property Act was discriminatory towards women and inconsistent and in contravention of Article 45 (3) of the Constitution.

The court dismissed the petition, ruling out a blanket equal sharing of marital property as it would “open the door for a party to get into marriage and walk out of it in the event of divorce with more than they deserve”.

Within this context, less than five percent of all land title deeds in Kenya are held jointly by women and only one percent of land titles are held by women alone who are in turn disadvantaged in the manner in which they use, own, manage and dispose land, says FIDA-Kenya.

But as gender experts are becoming alarmed by the rising numbers of female headed households — 32 percent out of 11 million households based on government estimates — securing women’s land rights is becoming more urgent.

“The Matrimonial Property Act gives women the capacity to register their property but a majority of women do not realise just how important this is. Later, they struggle to access their property because they did not ensure that they were registered as owners,” Janet Anyango, legal counsel at FIDA-Kenya’s Access to Justice Programme, tells IPS. FIDA-Kenya is a premier women rights organisation that, for 34 years, has offered free legal aid to at least three million women and children. It is also another Deliver For Good/Women Deliver partner organisation in Kenya.

Anyango says that in law “the meaning of ‘contribution’ was expanded to include non-monetary contributions but it is difficult to quantify contribution in the absence of tangible proof. In the 2016 lawsuit, we took issue with the fact that the law attributes marital liabilities equally but not assets”.

• In 2016 FIDA-Kenya sued the office of the Attorney General with regards to act, stating the same issues of discrimination against women. 

In addition to the Matrimonial Property Act, laws such as the Law of Succession Act seek to cushion both surviving male and female spouses but are still skewed in favour of men as widows lose their “lifetime interest” in property if the remarry. And where there is no surviving spouse or children, the deceased’s father is given priority over the mother. 

Women Deliver recognises that globally women and girls have unequal access to land tenure and land rights, creating a negative ripple effect on development and economic progress for all.

“When women have secure land rights, their earnings can increase significantly, improving their abilities to open bank accounts, save money, build credit, and make investments in themselves, their families and communities,” Susan Papp, Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy at Women Deliver, tells IPS.

She says that applying a gender lens to access “to resources is crucial to powering progress for and with all during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as the world continues to work towards the SDGs”.

And even though marriage services at the Attorney General’s office have been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as have all services at the land registries, women like Njeri will continue to fight for what they rightfully own.

Excerpt:

At least 54 percent of sexually active adolescent women in Kenya who would like to postpone pregnancy have an unmet need for modern contraception. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, May 25 2020 (IPS)

It was only when 17-year-old Eva Muigai was in her final trimester that her family discovered she was pregnant. Muigai, a form three student who lives with her family in Gachie, Central Kenya, had spent her pregnancy wearing tight bodysuits and loose-fitting clothes that hid her growing baby bump.

“The plan was to have an abortion but I was too scared. My classmate had an abortion last year and she almost died, so I kept postponing the abortion.

“I gathered courage at five months and my cousin took me to a man who does abortions at the shopping centre. He refused to do the abortion because he preferred pregnancies that were not older than three months,” Muigai tells IPS.

Muigai says that one day, while seven months pregnant, she “just fainted and my mother tried to loosen my clothes so that I could get more air”.

“It then became clear that I was pregnant,” she recalls.

Last month, two weeks shy of her due date, Muigai was rushed to hospital with severe abdominal cramps. The attending doctor rushed Muigai into theatre for an emergency caesarian section.

Her newborn baby did not survive.

Last week, Muigai was re-admitted to hospital with further complications after first experiencing swelling in her stomach and then her entire body.

“Complications of pregnancy and child birth are a leading cause of preventable deaths and ill health among adolescent women, aged 15 to 19 years, in Kenya,” Angela Nguku, executive director of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, Kenya, tells IPS.

The alliance has been at the forefront of advocating for adolescent health and universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and is a Deliver For Good partner organisation in Kenya.

• Deliver For Good is a “global campaign that applies a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and promotes 12 critical investments in girls and women to power progress for all”. Powered by Women Deliver, a global advocacy organisation that champions gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, more than 400 organisations have joined the Deliver for Good Campaign.

Tamara Windau-Melmer, a senior manager for Youth Engagement at Women Deliver, says that adolescent girls are often left behind because the policies, programmes, and investments meant to serve them are not designed in an inclusive, gender-responsive way.

“Adolescent girls must be meaningfully and authentically engaged in decision-making about their own lives, especially as it pertains to information about and access to contraception,” she tells IPS.

• According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), adolescent mothers face higher risks of eclampsia, uterine infection and systemic infections than women aged 20 to 24 years.
• Babies of adolescent mothers face higher risks of low birth weight, preterm delivery and severe neonatal conditions.

“Additionally, comprehensive sexuality education is critical as it offers the opportunity to reach adolescent girls with important information and skills to take control of their lives and pursue a brighter future for themselves, their families, and their communities,” Windau-Melmer says.

But the provision of comprehensive sex education in Kenya remains a hotly-contested issue by religious leaders, who hold great sway on such matters, and it is yet to be rolled out in line with National Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health policy.

Nguku says that despite a 2012 government commitment to provide affordable and accessible high quality reproductive health services to adolescents, this promise remains on paper in the form of the National Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health policy.

“The policy was updated in 2015 so that adolescents can have accurate, timely information and quality services but adolescent women still have many unmet needs,” she says.

• Adolescent women in Kenya account for an estimated one-fifth of the female population of over 26 million, and account for approximately 14 percent of all births, according to the most recent Kenya Demographic and Health Survey. 
• Statistics by the Guttmacher Institute, a leading global research organisation, show that 63 percent of pregnancies among adolescents in Kenya are unintended, as was the case with Muigai. 35 percent of these unintended pregnancies are aborted. 

But research by the Guttmacher Institute shows that at least 54 percent of sexually active adolescent women in this East African nation who would like to postpone pregnancy have an unmet need for modern contraception.

• The institute’s research further shows that satisfying the unmet need for modern contraceptives among adolescent women in Kenya would result in a 73 percent drop in unintended pregnancies. Currently, adolescent women account for an estimated 86 percent of all unintended pregnancies in the country. 
• Further, the Guttmacher Institute shows that a combination of modern contraceptives for all adolescents who need it, and adequate care for all pregnant adolescents and their newborns, would reduce adolescent maternal deaths by 76 percent. Currently maternal deaths stand at 450 per year.

Georgina Nyambura, the founder of Umoja Women Mobile Health Care, a registered, community-based organisation with over 6,000 members across the country, says that stigma and discrimination remain barriers to adolescent women seeking SRHR services. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

These grim statistics pale in comparison to the country’s impressive progress toward the increased uptake of modern contraceptives.

At the end of the 2012 Family Planning Summit in London, where governments and donors committed to ensure more women and girls could access modern family planning by 2020, Kenya committed to increasing the uptake of modern contraceptives by married women to 58 percent. 

By 2017, Kenya surpassed the set target, increasing the uptake of modern contraceptives for all women by a third. Statistics by the Ministry of Health show that contraceptive usage for all women now stands at 61 percent. But for adolescent women this usage stands at 40 percent.

As a result, nearly one in every five teenage girls has either had a live birth or is pregnant with their first child, according to the Ministry of Health.

“Our society is very religious and even where policies allow young girls to access all the sexual and reproductive health services all women are entitled to, the situation is very different on the ground,” says Georgina Nyambura, the founder of Umoja Women Mobile Health Care, a registered, community-based organisation with over 6,000 members across the country.

“It is a common saying that girls are more afraid of pregnancy and, therefore, evidence that they are having sex, than of HIV.”

• In Kenya, nearly half of new HIV infections occur among the country’s youth aged 15 to 24 years.

To address fears of stigma and discrimination towards adolescent women, Nyambura urges the government and actors in the health sector to re-evaluate the manner in which this cohort access services, including information on sexuality.

However, the current coronavirus pandemic is expected to reverse any gains that have already been made. Kenya has reported some 1,214 COVID-19 cases. The country has been in a nationwide lockdown since April, with a nighttime curfew still in place and schools and religious centres closed.

“A health pandemic such as COVID-19 will only widen the existing gap between adolescent women and all the SRHR services that they need. Human and financial resources have now been directed into fighting this health crisis.

“On the other hand, people themselves will only come to the hospital now if it is a matter of life and death. Pandemics affect our health service seeking behaviours and patterns,” Grace Kanini, a nurse at one of the country’s referral hospitals, tells IPS.

However, adolescent health challenges informed the government’s family planning commitments made in 2017 during the second Family Planning Summit in London.

Two of the three revised government commitments on family planning target adolescent women. 

• The first commitment is to scale up contraceptive uptake from 61 percent to 66 percent for all women by 2030.
• The second commitment is to increase contraceptive prevalence rate among adolescent women from 40 to 50 percent by 2020, and to 55 percent by 2025.
• And a further commitment to reduce teenage pregnancy among adolescent women from 18 to 12 percent by 2020, and to 10 percent by 2025.

For the first seven months of her pregnancy, while she was hiding it from her family, Muigai did not have a single antenatal care checkup. And she is not an anomaly.

According to the Ministry of Health, 51 percent of pregnant adolescents have fewer than the four essential antenatal care visits recommended by the WHO, and 33 percent do not give birth in a health facility. 

Nguku says that the government will need to invest more into family planning programmes that target this cohort.

Fully meeting contraception, maternal and newborn health care needs for adolescents across the country would cost an estimated 89 million dollars each year.

But not meeting these needs will cost an estimated 114 million dollars annually, of which 63 million dollars would go to care related to unintended pregnancies, says the Guttmacher Institute.

The scenario speaks true to Muigai’s situation.

An ‘A’ student with dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon, she now lays in a referral hospital receiving medical treatment. 

Excerpt:

As a Pokot girl in Kenya undergoes Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), her father stands guard with spear at hand to ensure that the ritual goes as planned. FGM was outlawed in Kenya in 2011 but is still practiced among pastoralist communities. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

Pokot girls are expected to face the knife stark naked and with courage. To inspire confidence, their fathers sit a few metres away from them with a spear in hand.

“If a girl screams or shows even the slightest resistance, the father is allowed to throw the spear at her for bringing shame to the family. The men can also throw the spear at me if I do not circumcise fast enough,” Chepocheu Lotiamak, a circumciser, tells IPS.

It defies belief that young girls between the ages of nine and 15 could sit side by side, legs spread apart as one after the other their external genitalia is chopped off by an elderly female circumciser.

Lotiamak says that when it comes to payment of a bride price, a Pokot girl who has undergone FGM receives 60 to 100 cows, or on the lower side, 25 to 40 cows. Those not ‘cut’, even if university graduates, receive four to eight cows. But then again, very few make it to university.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) was outlawed in Kenya in 2011.

But the situation of women and girls in Kenya’s expansive West Pokot County, approximately 380 kilometres from the capital, Nairobi, is characterised by FGM, child marriages, and high maternal and child mortality rates.

Apakamoi Psinon Reson, a conflict mitigation expert based in West Pokot, says that FGM is closely linked to conflict and pastoralist communities, as those communities that enjoy relative peace have all but abandoned FGM.

Even as the world marks International Women’s Day on Mar. 8 under the theme I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights, it is a long road ahead for Pokot girls and women.

“Whether in West Pokot, Baringo, Kerio Valley in the Rift Valley region or the northern parts of Kenya experiencing conflict over natural resources, livestock and poor leadership, women have no rights and are living very difficult lives,” Mary Kuket, the chairperson of the Baringo County chapter of Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Development of Women), a national women’s movement, tells IPS.

Northern Kenya has a long history of ethnic conflict and marginalisation, and now terrorism spilling over from neighbouring Somalia has intensified conflict in this region.

Reason argues that it is difficult to protect women and girls, and to enforce the law in these conflict situations.

“We have many pockets of heavily armed bandits in pastoralist communities who are happy to maintain a situation of lawlessness in these regions,” he tells IPS, adding that even after years of disarmament missions communities have not been fully disarmed.

Kenya, recognised as East Africa’s largest economy by the World Bank, is not among the top 10 Sub-Saharan African countries lauded for promoting gender equality, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020. 

It ranks 109 out of 153 countries by the World Economic Forum based on progress made towards gender parity.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) cites a lack of accountability for serious human rights violations, including rape perpetrated largely by security forces in the 2017 elections.

Kenya is outperformed by much smaller economies such as Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia, Zambia and Madagascar, all of which made it on the list of top 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for their notable steps towards gender equality.

But with the current pace of transformation, gender gaps in sub-Saharan Africa can only be closed in 95 years, according to the World Economic Forum.

South Sudan remains on the radar of human rights organisations since December 2013 when a fresh round of conflict began. The World Report 2019 released by HRW estimates that more than four million people have fled their homes.

Gender champion and executive director of the non-governmental Coalition of State Women’s and Youth Organisation in South Sudan, Dina Disan Olweny, explains the harmful and retrogressive traditions that prevail, particularly in some of the country’s more fragile states.

Olweny tells IPS that South Sudan’s Eastern Equatorial state is particularly notorious for the abhorrent practice of blood money.

Regional clashes between the government and rebel forces resulted in crimes committed against civilians, including sexual violence.

“There is frequent conflict here over livestock and grazing fields. When a family loses a loved one, they expect to be compensated with livestock by the family that killed their loved one,” says Olweny.

“This compensation is called blood money because the affected family receives something for life lost. Those too poor to afford livestock usually give away one of their young girls,” she says. She says that at least five of the 12 tribes in this state continue to give away young girls as blood money.

• Other frail states across Africa, including Chad, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Central African Republic, Somalia, Niger, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have the worst gender indexes, according to a 2019 global report by Equal Measures 2030, a civil society and private-led partnership that connects data and evidence with advocacy and action.
• Throughout 2018, HRW reported that DRC’s government officials and security forces carried out widespread repression and serious human rights violations.
• The World Report 2019  further documents that “government officials and security forces carried out widespread repression and serious human rights violations. In central and eastern DRC for instance, the situation reached alarming levels as an estimated 4.5 million were displaced from their homes, and that more than 130,000 refugees fled to neighbouring countries”.

The Central African Republic (CAR) remains a particularly fragile state as armed groups, which have expanded control to at least 70 percent of the country, continue to perpetrate serious human rights abuses — killing civilians, raping and sexually assaulting women and girls.

• The African Union has entered into a political dialogue with the armed groups towards ending the fighting in the country.

Similarly, Somalia is now defined by fighting and lack of state protection. Currently, at least 2.7 million people are internally displaced, many of them at risk of abuse such as sexual violence.

Women in Mauritania are not sufficiently protected by the law. According to the World Report 2019 “a variety of state policies and laws that criminalise adultery and morality offences renders women vulnerable to gender-based violence, making it difficult and risky for them to report sexual assault to the police”.

HRW has raised concerns that Mauritanian law does not adequately define the crime of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Nonetheless, a more comprehensive draft law exists.

Despite ongoing conflict, across Africa, women have made significant effort to participate in the labour force nearly on par with men. However, gender experts such as Olweny raise concerns over the wide gap between male and female professionals and technical workers.

She says that women remain marginalised and excluded from the economy because they are confined to unskilled work, and are working out of necessity to put food on the table.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 concludes that this is an indication that a vast majority of women are in poorly paying jobs within the informal sector.

• For instance, in the DRC about 62 percent of women and 67 percent of men participate in the labour force. However, only about 25 percent of women are employed in professional and technical work.
• Similarly, only 23 percent of women in Cote d’Ivor’s labour force are professionals. The numbers are similar in Mali and Togo, coming in at 21 percent and 20 percent respectively. 

“Across Africa, although in varying degrees, we are experiencing prevailing levels of discriminatory gender norms and practices. We still have alarming levels of violence towards women, and institutions that are too weak to address the plight of women,” Fihima Mohamed, the founder of the Women Initiative, a local social movement for the empowerment of women and girls in the republic of Djibouti, tells IPS.

She says that while more girls are enrolled in school, they are not staying long enough to acquire technical skills to engage in professional work.

“Our women therefore remain excluded from political and economic decision making. It is very unfortunate that, as a collective society, we are yet to realise that more gender-equal countries such as Norway, Finland and Sweden are also global economic powerhouses,” says Mohamed.

• A Foresight Africa 2020 report shows that Africa will not overcome many of the economic challenges facing it, until it narrows existing wide gender gaps in its labour force.
• According to the report, if African countries with lower relative female-to-male participation rates in 2018 had the same rates as advanced countries, “the continent would have gained an additional 44 million women actively participating in its labour markets”.
• Further, the report emphasises that “by increasing gender equality in the labour market, the gain in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ranges from 1 percent in Senegal to 50 percent in Niger”.
• Meanwhile, the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 shows that Nigeria, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini and South Africa are among the very few African countries where women outpace men as professionals or technical workers.
• Other countries where the percentage of women professionals has not outpaced men but impressively ranges from 40 to 46 percent are Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

To realise gender equality in this generation, Mohamed called for a total outlawing of retrogressive traditions such as FGM, a renewal of efforts to keep girls attending school to the highest level, and incentives — such as tax exemptions — to support women in business.

Excerpt:

Soi Cate Chelang, a self-taught palette seat designer and carpenter, hard at work. She says that even after a decade of running her business she is unable to get bank credit to expand. Her situation is not a unique one in Africa. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jan 22 2020 (IPS)

What stands between Soi Cate Chelang and her dream of turning her small pallet-making business into a major enterprise is capital.

In Kenya, Chelang may well be a pioneer in making seats out of wooden pallets — the flat pieces of wood used to support goods or containers during shipping.

While she has no formal training in carpentry, Chelang tells IPS that she comes from a long line of carpenters, having trained under her grandfather and uncle. And what she doesn’t know, she learns from online lessons on carpentry.

She started the business more than a decade ago — before anyone else was doing it — and her products have been popular with consumers.

“My designs stand out because I combine many different elements. It is not just about turning wood into a seat. I use colourful fabrics and female clients enjoy fabrics that brighten their homes. I also make kids furniture from pallets and use fabric that have popular cartoons on them,” she expounds. Chelang sells her three-seater household pallet sofa for 100 to 300 dollars, depending on the design and material used.

Clients seek her services through her social media pages where she markets her products under the name Soi Pallet Designs.

Not enough credit to grow

But the 35-year-old is worried that the opportunity to cash in on her unique designs is passing her by.

“I do not have the money to set up a proper workshop and showroom. I cannot apply for contracts to make pallet seats for major entertainment clubs in the city because I do not have capital to finance such big orders,” she says, explaining that such clubs are interested in her designs.

“I managed to take one order of 5,000 dollars in 2018 because one of my mentors provided me with the capital to finance the order,” she says.

But that was a once-off. Because without collateral, she says, the banks will grant her a business loan. So for now she has to make seats to order. Even in this instance her clients must first pay 30 to 50 percent of the total cost to enable her to purchase materials and pay for some of her labour costs.

“I work with three carpenters who I pay on a daily basis. We only take one order at a time because I do not have a proper workshop and I cannot afford to hire more carpenters,” Chelang expounds.

The circumstances have served to confine her business to her home in Kisumu City some 350 kilometres away from Kenya’s capital Nairobi.

Traditional credit not available for African women 

But Chelang’s inability to expand her business is not a new story. According to the MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2017, a lack of capital is one of the major challenges facing women doing business in Africa today, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.  

This is despite data by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report of 2017-18 showing that sub-Saharan Africa has taken the lead as the only region where women form the majority of self-employed individuals. 

• According to the report, globally, Africa has the most positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship as 76 percent of working age adults consider entrepreneurship a good career choice, while another 75 percent believe that entrepreneurs are admired in their societies.
• Over the last decade, the number of women joining entrepreneurship is on a steady rise, the GEM report states. Women are high-technology developers in Kenya or, like Chelang, are making waves in the informal sector.
• Female entrepreneurs are also in the steel manufacturing business in South Africa, and in the cocoa agro-processing businesses in Ivory Coast and the larger West African region.
• Even more impressive, the MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2017 indicates that Uganda and Botswana have the highest percentage of women entrepreneurs globally. Other countries in this league include Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia.

Women in entrepreneurship stand to gain from the African Development Bank’s affirmative action financing. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Setting up lasting financial structures to benefit Africa’s women

Aware of the financial constraints facing women in business, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is making concerted efforts to address the widening financing gap between male and female entrepreneurs in Africa.

The pan-African bank has placed the financing gap between male and female entrepreneurs across Africa, at a whopping 42 billion dollars.

To address this gap, the African Heads of State launched the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) programme back in 2016. 

• As a joint pan-African initiative between AfDB and the African Guarantee Fund, AFAWA is a risk-sharing facility that will de-risk lending to women-owned and women-led businesses.
• During the most recent Global Gender Summit held in Kigali in 2019, AFAWA was officially launched in Rwanda. The affirmative action programme received a one-million-dollar commitment from the Rwandese government. Still in 2019, G7 leaders approved a package totalling 251 million dollars in support of AFAWA.
• Additionally, Attijariwafa Bank, a Moroccan multinational commercial bank, and the African Guarantee Fund have signed a 50 million dollar Memorandum of Understanding towards risk lending to women through partial guarantees.

By using a holistic approach, this affirmative action programme will address the major factors preventing women in Africa, including the access of financial products and services such as loans. Consequently these financial services will also be accessible and affordable as well.

AFAWA finance will unlock three billion dollars in credit for women in businesses and enterprises in Africa. Towards this goal, this programme will work with existing commercial banks and microfinance institutions to engineer lasting structural changes, to the benefit of women across the continent.

Further, there will be a rating system to evaluate financial institutions based on the extent to which they lend to women, and the consequent socio-economic impact. Top institutions will receive preferential terms from the pan-African bank.

Sustainable, women-owned businesses will contribute to the economy

Financial experts such as Irene Omari say the AFAWA is important for women’s financial inclusion. A banker and leading entrepreneur in the Lakeside City of Kisumu, Omari tells IPS that “banks do not take female entrepreneurs seriously. Banks are still a long way from embracing women doing business. We are still considered very high risk by financial institutions because we lack collateral”.

As the sole proprietor of Top Strategy Achievers Limited, a multi-million-shilling branding and printing company, she is all too familiar with the financial challenges facing women in business today.

“I started working at 23 years old in the hospitality industry. I would also act as a middle person between branding companies and clients. In Kisumu City this services were hard to find. I saved every coin that I made and used it as capital,” she says.

Omari registered her company in 2013. She began operations in the same year while still employed at a local bank. “My salary paid the two staff that I had in the beginning, office rent, and all other overheads until the company could stand on its feet,” she says.

She says that because women, like Chelang, are not considered bankable they are significantly constrained in setting up solid, physical infrastructures to drive the growth and sustainability of their businesses.

“This is the reason why women are in self-employment where they basically work for themselves and not in entrepreneurship where they bring as many employees on board as possible,” Omari expounds.

• In Omari’s case she is an entrepreneur, and need not be at the place of work at all times because the business can thrive and be sustainable even in their absence. In self-employment, the presence of the business owner must be felt at all times.

Francis Kibe Kiragu, a lecturer in gender and development studies at the University of Nairobi, tells IPS that while women have sufficiently demonstrated a desire to run their own enterprises, they suffer crippling financial exclusion.

“Women in self-employment or entrepreneurship are therefore driven by necessity and not innovation. They just want to meet their basic needs and as a result, they are perceived as contributing very little to the economy,” he observes.

Because of these challenges, he says that women are more likely than men to discontinue running a business. The GEM 2017 report confirms Kiragu’s assertions as it indicates that, while Africa may have the highest number of women running start-ups, the number of women running established businesses is lower.

In fact, in the sub-Saharan Africa region alone, there are two women starting a new business venture for every one woman running an established business, the report indicates.

“I started designing, making and marketing my pallet seats at 25 years old. Ten years later I am still facing the same financial challenges I faced when I started. Many times I have come close to abandoning this dream and finding employment,” says Chelang.

Through the AFAWA it is hoped that women like Chelang will soon be able to leverage financial instruments to their and their businesses’ benefit.

When she was 20 Mary Njambi was trafficked to Saudi Arabia where she thought she would obtain work as a well-paid domestic worker. Instead, she was treated as a slave and was sexually abused. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Oct 3 2019 (IPS)

Six years ago Mary Njambi* received news of a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity far away from her poverty-stricken village situated in the heart of Kiambu County, Central Kenya. She was 20 years old, a single mother and out of work.

“My best friend told me that rich families in Saudia (Saudi Arabia) were in need of house maids. My salary would be 1,000 dollars per month and overtime,” Njambi tells IPS.

Her friend took her to a recruiting agency in downtown Nairobi where all travel arrangements were made at no cost to her.

Three months later, Njambi and 15 other girls made that fateful journey to Saudi Arabia.

“We all separated at the airport and I was taken to my employer’s home. The moment I walked in, a woman started barking orders at me in Arabic even though I did not speak the language,” she says. At this point, Njambi had no way of knowing that she had been trafficked.

Kenya a transit point for trafficking

The 2019 Global Report Trafficking in Persons report released in June by the United States Department of State profiles Kenya as a source, transit point and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour.

Released every year, the report classifies countries into four tiers based on their government’s demonstrated commitment to eliminate human trafficking.

• Tier 1 ranking is the highest and indicates that a government meets the minimum standards of the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000.
• A country such as Kenya, with a Tier 2 rating, has not met these standards but has made significant efforts to do so.
• The Tier 2 Watch List, on which Kenya was placed until 2015, is similar to Tier 2 with the exception that the number of human trafficking victims is significantly high or significantly increasing.
• Tier 3, which is the worst ranking, indicates that a country such as Saudi Arabia has not met minimum standards to eliminate human trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so.

“These efforts include criminalising human trafficking and providing care for survivors,” Victor Amugo, a prosecutor at Kilifi Law Courts, Coastal region which is a hub for human trafficking to Somalia, tells IPS.

According to Wilkister Vera, Kakamega’s County Police Commander in Western Kenya, law enforcers are diligently fighting human trafficking.

“We are targeting the entire network of recruiters, places where victims are held before they are moved, transportation and following the paper trail including work permits and passports,” she tells IPS.

“Systems are also in place to take care of victims through the National Referral Mechanism,” she adds.

Young women and girls the most vulnerable

The Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking, affirms that like Njambi, children and youth are more vulnerable to human trafficking for primarily sexual exploitation and forced labour.

• One in every six victims trafficked is a child,
• Two-thirds are aged 18 through 29,
• 17 percent are aged between 30 and 47, and
• Less than one percent are over 47 years.

“Poverty and gender inequalities are some of the factors that make women and girls vulnerable to human trafficking,” Zuleikha Hassan, Kwale County Member of Parliament, and founder of Tawfiq Muslim Association, tells IPS. “We have to aggressively educate communities to identify human trafficking situations that come disguised as the job of a lifetime.”

Njambi says that back-breaking house work, working for at least 18 hours a day and sleeping on the floor characterised the first few days of employment. It quickly escalated to physical and sexual violence.

Days spiralled into months without a single day off and with no pay. “One day I went to the rooftop and threatened to jump off if they did not take me back home and it worked,” she narrates.

This was in 2013, at that time, news that hundreds of Kenyan girls were distressed and stranded in the Middle East was spreading across the country.

“The lucky ones made it home bruised and battered. Others came back in coffins. In 2014, the government banned Kenyans from travelling to the Middle East for work,” says Dinah Mbula*, who runs a recruiting agency in downtown Nairobi.

“There was a crackdown by the government targeting recruiting agencies but horror stories did not scare desperate unemployed people from going to the Middle East,” Mbula tells IPS.

Victims of trafficking treated like criminals 

In 2000, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the Palermo Protocol), marked an important transition into the modern movement against human trafficking.

Kenya is signatory to the Palermo Protocol, which led to the domestication of the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2010, which came into effect in 2012.

“Section 1 of the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act criminalises sex and labour trafficking,” says Amugo.

Although the Trafficking in Persons report affirms that there are now more prosecutions and convictions of traffickers in Kenya, Amugo says that the numbers could rise if all prosecutions were made under the anti-trafficking laws rather than the more lenient immigration or labour violations laws.

Those convicted under anti-trafficking laws serve 15 years to life imprisonment, a fine of not less than 50,000 dollars, or both.

“Victims of human trafficking are treated like criminals. That is why recruiters continue doing their job because they know chances that a victim will report to the police are next to zero,” Mbula expounds.

Kenya bans and then lifts ban on citizens working the Middle East

Also, this East African nation has lifted the ban on its citizens travelling to the Gulf for work.

The Kenyan government signed bi-lateral agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates and lifted the ban in 2017.

The government insisted on re-vetting recruitment agencies after lifting the ban. But Mbula says that more than 1,000 agencies were vetted and only 100 were cleared but because of corruption “we are still in business with or without a license.”

From early 2019, Kenya allowed Saudi Arabia to recruit domestic workers again.  

According to the Ministry of Labour, at least 130,000 Kenyans work as domestic workers in the Arabian Gulf.

Njambi confirms that it is easier to just disappear in the village than speak out because “people tell you to be grateful you came back alive. There is no support of any kind or counselling.”

She now runs a grocery store at her local shopping centre. 

She says that victims are often compared to others who went to the Middle East and succeeded: “People say your experience was just bad luck and advise you to try other countries like Lebanon. My story is repeating itself everyday because people are desperate.”

*Names changed to protect identity of source

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Coastal communities across the globe are increasingly at risk to being “exposed to multiple climate-related hazards, including tropical cyclones, extreme sea levels and flooding, marine heatwaves, sea ice loss, and permafrost thaw”. Pictured here in this picture dated 2012 fishermen work in teams and use only basic wooden canoes to set nets off the coast of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 26 2019 (IPS)

Warnings of strong winds, high waves and reduced visibility along the East African coastline are increasingly common.

But local fisher folk like Ali Sombo from Kwale County, situated along Kenya’s Indian Ocean Coastline, don’t always heed the warnings by the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) to stay clear of the open sea during rough waters.

“We believe that when the waters are rough and waves roaring, the belly of the ocean is hunting for a specific soul. Even if you stay away from the ocean, it will find you so there is no need to be afraid,” Sombo told IPS. “Our only problem is that most of our boats are not strong enough for the strong waves so they capsize and sometimes fishermen die,” he added.

In July, KMD warned, through local radio, of five days of unprecedented rough waters characterised by strong winds of 25 miles per hour and high waves of more than three metres. But Sombo and his group of fishermen said that it was still business as usual for them.

But coastal communities here in Africa and across the globe are increasingly at risk to being “exposed to multiple climate-related hazards, including tropical cyclones, extreme sea levels and flooding, marine heatwaves, sea ice loss, and permafrost thaw”.

These are some of the findings in the newly released Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Sept. 25, in Monaco.

The oceans are being rapidly transformed by climate change. Millions, and by 2050 over a billion people, living along the coast are most at risk, with additional “negative consequences for health and well-being” for all populations and “for Indigenous peoples and local communities dependent on fisheries”.

In Africa some 25 percent of the population lives within 100km of the coast — with the figure as high as 66 percent in Senegal, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

And according to the report:

• Around 4 million people live in the Arctic region, of whom 10 percent are Indigenous.
• The low-lying coastal zone is currently home to around 680 million people (nearly 10 percent of the 2010 global population), projected to reach more than one billion by 2050.
• Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are home to 65 million people.

For this report, more than 100 authors from 36 countries assessed the most recent scientific literature related to the oceans and cryosphere (frozen parts of the planet such as the ice caps, glaciers and snow) in a changing climate. Oceans are critical to “regulating the planet’s climate and weather patterns through the cycling of critical greenhouse gases such as CO₂”.

The oceans and cryosphere are interconnected, with evaporation from the oceans resulting in snow that “builds and sustains the ice sheets and glaciers that store large amounts of frozen water on land”, the report explains.

Making reference to an estimated 7,000 scientific publications, the outcome is the most detailed insight yet into how global warming will impact the future.

U.N. scientists now warn that consequences of inaction will become increasingly rapid and painful over this century and that immediate emission cuts could greatly reduce these risks.

The report reveals that to date, the oceans, which cover more than 71 percent of the earth, has taken up more than 90 percent of the excess heat in the climate system. It also notes that glaciers and ice sheets in polar and mountain regions are losing mass, contributing to an increasing rate of sea level rise.

It further predicts that by the end of this century the oceans will absorb up to two to four times more heat than between 1970 and the present if global warming is limited to 2°C, and up to five to seven times more at higher carbon emissions.

Last October the IPCC released a significant report on global warming, called Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, known as SR15, which projected that extreme weather events will only get worse if warming is not limited to below 1.5°C compared to 2°C as agreed by the international community in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The agreement is a landmark set goals for reducing carbon emissions and with countries committing to climate change adaption but the IPCC report showed that the agreed target of limiting global warming to 2°C and even the target of1.5°C was too high to avoid catastrophic weather events.

In the absence of a significant reduction in emissions, sea-levels will rise more than 10 times faster in this century than it did in the previous 20^th Century.

Populations in coastal cities and SIDS will be exposed to escalating flood risks, the report shows, noting that some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable due to climate-related oceans and cryosphere change.

Against this backdrop, the report emphasises an urgent need to prioritise timely, ambitious and coordinated action to efficiently and effectively address unprecedented and lasting changes in the oceans and cryosphere.

“We will only be able to keep global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels if we effect unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society, including energy, land and ecosystems, urban and infrastructure as well as industry,” said Debra Roberts, a South African scientist and co-chair of the IPCC working group II.

U.N. scientists have further detailed the benefits of ambitious and effective mitigation efforts for current and future generations.

The report particularly finds that communities along the East African coastline will be significantly impacted if carbon emissions are not reduced drastically as marine life is already being hit by oceans warming. CO₂ absorption has led to increasing acidity of the oceans, which threatens the survival of marine life. 

In the absence of significant emission cuts, maximum catch potential of fisheries could fall up to 24 percent by the end of the century. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

“When local fisher folk complain of a continued decline in the amounts of fish caught, they are only confirming that greenhouse gas emissions are adversely affecting ecosystems and livelihoods that depend on them,” Dr Kiragu Kibe, a lecturer in natural resources at the University of Nairobi, told IPS.

While fisher folk like Sombo attribute decline in fish catch to a lack of proper fishing equipment and boats that can withstand deeper waters, Kiragu says that it is really because “oceans that are warmer and marine life shifting in search of more conducive habitats”.

Statistics by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicate that income from fishing and aquaculture dropped from 385 million dollars in 2015 to 347 million dollars in 2017. Fish production contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined from 0.7 percent in 2014 to 0.4 percent in 2017.

“This is an alarming trend because of the country’s significant maritime economy potential based on its 600 kilometres long Indian Ocean Coastline,” said Hamisa Zaja who runs Green World Foundation, a non-governmental organisation based in Kenya’s  coastal region and dedicated to environmental conservation.

U.N. scientists now say that the worst is yet to come. Changes to the oceans are set to continue throughout the century and they include an increase in ocean acidity of about 150 percent.

Up to 80 percent of the upper oceans will lose oxygen by 2050 accompanied by significant changes in nutrient supplies for marine life.

The report further reveals that without emission cuts, the total mass of animals in the world’s oceans could decrease “15 percent and the maximum catch potential of fisheries could fall up to 24 percent by the end of the century – but by much less with lower emissions”.

Tropical oceans such as the central Pacific Ocean and most of the Indian Ocean are expected to continue losing grip on their fish catch potential.

“Coastal communities are going to experience a food crisis. Now more than ever, we need to work with communities to develop local solutions to fight climate change. Our best chance lies in scientists working hand in hand with local communities,” Zaja told IPS.

Indeed the report highlights the benefits of combining scientific with local and indigenous knowledge to develop “suitable options to manage climate change risks and enhance resilience”.

“The more decisively and the earlier we act, the more able we will be to address unavoidable changes, manage risks, improve our lives and achieve sustainability for ecosystems and people around the world – today and in the future,” Roberts said.

Until that time comes, local fisher folk like Sombo will continue to grapple with challenges that are unprecedented, beyond their capacity to overcome and if status quo continues, enduring. 

Communities living on the foothills of Mount Kenya believe that burning forests will result in rain. A new United Nations report states that deforestation is one of the major drivers of climate change. Credit: CC By 2.0/Regina Hart

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

The villagers living on the foothills of Mount Kenya have a belief: If they burn the forest, the rains will come.

“Generally, we believe that the sky is covered by a thick layer of ice and only a forest fire can rise high enough to melt this ice and give us rainfall,” Njoroge Mungai, a resident from Kiamungo village, Kirinyaga County, which is located on the foothills of Mount Kenya, tells IPS.

It is little wonder then that Kirinyaga is one of the counties most affected by wild fires, according to the Kenya Forest Services (KFS).

During the first two months of this year, at least 114 forest fires were recorded across Kenya with at least five major forests being adversely affected, according to KFS. In just a matter of days in February, a wild fire ravaged an estimated 80,000 acres of Mount Kenya’s forest moorlands. Forest and wildlife experts are adamant that communities living around these forested areas are responsible for the fires.

Such significant loss of forest cover is not a unique occurrence across Africa. And yet deforestation is one of the major drivers of climate change, according to a new report.

Scientists on the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have noted that the world is staring at a climate catastrophe.

These warnings are contained in a new IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) released yesterday, Aug. 8, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Co-authored by 107 scientists, almost half of whom are from developing nations and 40 percent of whom are female, the report resoundingly places land management at the very centre of the raging war to combat climate change, stating that effective strategies to address global warming must place sustainable land use systems at their core.

The Mijikenda community in southern Kenya carefully tends to the outskirts of kaya forests, which also serve as the ancient burial grounds of their ancestors, nurturing a diverse ecosystem that is home to rare plant and bird species. A new United Nations report states that effective strategies to address global warming must place sustainable land use systems at their core. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

“IPCC’s newly released report focuses on the link between global warming and land use. At the core of this report is the nexus between climate change and unsustainable land use, including unsustainable global food systems,” Richard Munang, the sub-programme coordinator on climate change at U.N. Environment’s Africa Office, tells IPS.

Munang says that this nexus “is already coming to the fore in Africa especially now that the continent is losing forest cover at a rate that is much higher than the global average.”

He further explains that globally, Africa bears the second-highest cost of land degradation—estimated at 65 billion dollars per year—and that this has put a strain on economic growth.

“While average losses resulting from land degradation in most countries are estimated at nine percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), some of the worst afflicted countries are in Africa and lose a staggering 40 percent of their GDP,” he says.

The IPCC report emphasises that while climate change itself can increase land degradation through increases in rainfall intensity, flooding, drought intensity, heat stress and dry spells, it is land management practices that has tipped the balance of increased land degradation. The report noted that agriculture, food production, and deforestation are the major drivers of climate change.

According to the report, land is a critical resource and also part of the solution to climate change. However, as more land becomes degraded, it becomes less productive and at the same time reducing the soil’s ability to absorb carbon. This in turn exacerbates climate change.

As a result of significant land use changes, grazing pressures and substantial reduction in soil fertility, U.N. researchers now say that one-third of total carbon emissions come from land.

Dr. Wilfred Subbo, a lecturer in natural resources at the University of Nairobi, notes the findings with concerns: “Land is under a huge amount of pressure and we are increasingly witnessing how human-induced environmental changes contribute to catastrophic carbon emissions.”

“We are indeed heading straight into a climate disaster and this report has highlighted how damaged land is no longer serving as that large sink that absorbs harmful carbon dioxide emissions,” he tells IPS.

Coordinated action to address climate change can simultaneously improve land, food security and nutrition, and help to end hunger, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a statement. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

The report also noted “global warming and urbanisation can enhance warming in cities and their surroundings, especially during heat related events, including heat waves”.

“Last year the United Nations Development Programme indicated that Africa’s urban transition is unprecedented in terms of scale and speed and that the continent is 40 percent urban today,” Subbo says.

Coordinated action to address climate change can simultaneously improve land, food security and nutrition, and help to end hunger, the IPCC said in a statement. The report highlights that climate change is affecting all four pillars of food security: availability (yield and production), access (prices and ability to obtain food), utilisation (nutrition and cooking), and stability (disruptions to availability).

“Food security will be increasingly affected by future climate change through yield declines – especially in the tropics – increased prices, reduced nutrient quality, and supply chain disruptions,” said Priyadarshi Shukla, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, in the statement.

“We will see different effects in different countries, but there will be more drastic impacts on low-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.

Munang nonetheless points out that all is not lost: “Over 90 percent of countries in Africa have ratified their commitments to accelerate climate action towards achieving the 2015 Paris agreement.”

This agreement seeks to achieve a sustainable low carbon future. Munang emphasises that such climate goals calls for countries to embrace ambitious eco-friendly practices such as agro-forestry, the use of organic fertiliser and clean energy, among others.

He says that a number of African countries are on track. “Ethiopia has done very well and set a new unofficial world record of planting over 350 million trees in just 12 hours.”

Kenya aims to run entirely on green energy by 2020 and is on record as having the largest wind farm in Africa, as is Morocco with the largest solar farm in the world.

“The key going forward is to change perspective and to look at these actions within the broader goal of building globally competitive enterprises with climate action co-benefits,” Munang says.

Meanwhile, back on the foothills of Mount Kenya, Mungai says that there are efforts to educate the community about forest fires and the effect it has on both the land and climate.

“This belief will take time to change because it was passed down from our grandfathers. But the County government is focused on addressing these problems so future generations will learn to do things directly.”

Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old Sudanese student became the symbol of the peaceful ouster of dictator Omar al-Bashir. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Street Art/ Shoreditch

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 16 2019 (IPS)

It is an image of resistance that went viral across the world. Alaa Salah, a young Sudanese student, dressed in a traditional white thobe standing atop a car with an enthralled crowd surrounding her as she and they boldly chanted Al-Thawra—Arabic for revolution.

It is what many remember of the peaceful ouster of Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir and one of Africa’s most towering dictatorial regimes.
Sudan had finally broken away from an era characterised by media censorship and harassment, or so the story goes.

“At that very moment, we all believed that this was the beginning of Sudan’s best of times. In 30 years, very few could testify to anyone so boldly challenging the system and living to tell the story,” Ali Taban, an independent Sudanese journalist, tells IPS.

“For many days afterwards, we were in this magical moment and journalists were there to chronicle every step of it. Not anymore. We are now more afraid of being silenced with violence than ever before,” says Taban.

As the Transitional Military Council (TMC) slowly tightens its grip on Sudan, eerily filling the gap left behind by al-Bashir, hope is quickly turning into a nightmare. In June, as troops violently broke up a week-long peaceful sit-in killing at least 100 protestors, the world remained silent in horror.

Even worse, to isolate Sudan and put a lid on a plethora of ongoing human rights violations, the TMC cut internet services for over a month. The Council’s spokesman General Shams al Din Kabashi went on record to justify the internet shutdown as a matter of safeguarding national security.

However, the internet was restored earlier this month through a court order, but the TMC is reportedly appealing the decision.

During the blackout, Sudanese pleaded with the world to be its voice as the country slid into an information black hole. They were not disappointed. The Twitter hashtag ‘IAmTheSudanRevolution’ became the most trending topic in Kenya, Canada and the United Kingdom.

July 14th:
🇸🇩The next round of negotiation between TMC and FFC has been postponed to July 16
🇸🇩The TMC is trying to legally contest the restoration of internet services
🇸🇩the SPA has released the details of the agreement so far#IAmTheSudanRevolution#SudanUprising#SudanProtests pic.twitter.com/6jN07OrkoF

— IAmTheSudanRevolution (@SudanRise) July 14, 2019

Marwa Abdelrahim, a lecturer at Ahfad University for Women in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman is still reeling from this turn of events. “[The] internet shut down should have never happened. It all reminds us of a past that we would like to forget as we build a new Sudan,” she tells IPS.

Sudan is ranked 175th out of 180 countries in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index conducted by Reporters Without Borders, an international media watchdog.

Unfortunately Sudan is in good company as press freedom and access to social media is under siege in an increasing number of African countries.

Neighbouring East Africa has, for instance, shown an alarming aversion towards independent media.
“The situation is most alarming in Tanzania. We have watched in shock as Tanzania joins countries such as Central Africa Republic, Zimbabwe, Mauritania, Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia as the countries with significant deterioration in press freedom,” Mathias Chiza, a regional media expert based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, tells IPS.

Tanzania passed the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) Regulations Act, commonly known as the internet law, in 2018. Media experts like Chiza say it is the most punitive press and information sharing related law yet.

The Act requires payment of 900 dollars to register a blog or news website. It is no wonder that Tanzania dropped down 25 positions in just one year to rank 118th out of 180 countries in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

Similarly, punitive laws exist in Kenya and Nigeria in the form of cyber crimes acts. Kenya has the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act and Nigeria the Cybercrime Act 2015. Both laws stipulate hefty fines and lengthy prison terms that are viewed as veiled threats to professional and citizen journalists.

“Cyber crimes acts generally give governments powers to arbitrary ban and sanction dissemination of newspaper articles or social media posts that are not pleasing to the leadership of the day,” Chiza tells IPS.

“Africa has a predominant youthful generation. Young people have proved capable of mobilising through social media. Social media is the new battlefield in the fight for freedom across Africa,” he expounds.

In 2018, the bloggers Association of Kenya sued the Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecution because of punitive provisions in the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act.
This resulted in the suspension of certain provisions that seemed to infringe and threaten freedom of expression, media and person’s rights.

Just three months after Uganda’s social media tax took effect in July 2018, at least three million Ugandans abandoned the internet, according to the Uganda Communications Commission.
The daily levy affects at least 60 online platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter.

In northwest Africa, Mauritania now ranks 94th out of 180 countries after falling down 22 places in just one year. Since 2018, the death sentence for apostasy-related crimes such as blasphemous speech and sacrilegious acts has become compulsory in Mauritania even after the offender has repented.
This has all but guaranteed that journalists and bloggers stay clear of certain hot topics such as corruption, the military, Islam or slavery, which is still practiced there.

Ranked 178th, Eriteria has the highest number of jailed journalists in Africa. Research by Reporters Without Borders also shows that it is among countries with the highest imprisoned journalists worldwide.

Overall, press freedom in 22 of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries is classified as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’. But it is not darkness and despair everywhere.

Ethiopia used to be near the bottom of press freedom index but reforms by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has pushed the country up 40 places since 2017, to rank 110th in the world.

Similarly, a change in leadership is steadily pulling Gambia and more modestly Angola from an information black hole. An admirable press revolution has Gambia jumping 30 places to rank 92nd.

Even more impressive, Namibia at position 23, Ghana at 27 and South Africa at 31 currently rank better in press freedom than Britain at 33 and the United States at 48th position out of 180 countries.

Though Taban hopes that the recent power-sharing agreement between Sudan’s military and civilian leaders until the country’s elections in three years bodes well for the media environment.

“It is still too early to say what the media environment will look like but there are two things that are very promising. That court orders can be respected because it was a court judgment that restored the internet, and that we have key parties together willing to share power,” Taban says.

“Once the three-year power sharing agreement is signed and the country becomes more stable and predictable, information will flow more easily.”

Ready for a day's work at sea, a small fleet of boats hugs the shoreline of a fishing village in the district of Kilifi. Fishing is important to the local economy. Experts experts insist that there is still a lot more to be done towards developing a strong blue economy action plan for Kenya. Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

By Miriam Gathigah and Robert Kibet
NAIROBI, Nov 22 2018 (IPS)

In a matter of days the world’s blue economy actors and experts will converge in Nairobi, Kenya for the first ever global conference on sustainable blue economy.

From Nov. 26 to 28, participants from around the globe will meet in Kenya’s capital to discuss how to develop a sustainable blue economy that is inclusive of all.

Professor Micheni Ntiba, the Principal Secretary for Kenya’s Department of Fisheries, Aquaculture and the Blue Economy, says partnership linkages with development agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme are key to progress, but synergies need to be directed towards integrating policy and strategy for implementation.

“This will be a conference like no other, with a research and scientific symposium. It requires knowledge and hence there is the need to integrate policy and strategy for implementation as well,” Ntiba told IPS in an interview.

Wilfred Subbo, an expert in natural resources and an associate professor at the University of Nairobi, told IPS that the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference will significantly jumpstart the country’s blue economy by setting the agenda on the need to prioritise the exploitation of water-based natural resources.

He said that the stage is set for governments and private sector actors to transform the country into a robust commercially-oriented blue economy.

Just this week, on Nov. 19, President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the country’s newly-formed Kenya Coast Guard Service in Mombasa, Coastal region.

With the Kenya Coast Guard Act 2018 already in place, the mandate of the new coast guard includes controlling illegal and unregulated fishing, border disputes, and piracy as well as the degradation of the marine ecosystem.

Also on the same day, Kenyatta launched the ‘Eat More Fish’ campaign, which has Ali Ahmed is elated. Ahmed is a Malindi-based fisherman whose main target markets are in Malindi, Mombasa and Nairobi.

Government statistics shows that the current per capita fish consumption is at 4.6 kilograms, and that the president’s campaign will drive consumption to rival Africa’s average of 10 kilograms, and later attain the global average of 20 kilograms. This is part of an agenda to encourage ordinary Kenyans to both invest and reap from the blue economy based on the untapped potential in fisheries.

“Kenyans have turned to other foods like traditional vegetables and ignored fish. They say it is too expensive but this is not true. Most of the fishermen are in the business to put food on the table and nothing else,” he tells IPS.

Nonetheless, experts insist that there is still a lot more to be done towards developing a strong blue economy action plan, just as countries in the Western Indian Ocean such as Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar and the Union of Comoros have done.

Professor Peter Anyang Nyong’o, the Governor for Kisumu County where Lake Victoria is located, told IPS in a telephone conversation that despite huge funding towards solving environmental problems in Lake Victoria, the impact has been negligent.

The Lake Region Block is planning to host a conference early next year that seeks to discuss pollution in Lake Victoria, mainly caused by the hyacinth, the invasive plant that has paralysed commercial fishing and marine transport.

“Hyacinth has heavily affected fish life in the lake as it impedes oxygen level. We are going to discuss scientific research that seeks to bring a better solution to the hyacinth in the lake,” says Nyong’o.

And as counties from the Lake Region plan to attend the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference, Nyong’o says his county is currently working on a plan to revive the fibreglass boat-making project to curb accidents and deaths caused by the use of soft wood in making boats, which he says causes roughly 5400 deaths a year.

Experts such as Nairobi-based economist Jason Rosario Braganza told IPS that the conference offers the public and private sector an opportunity “to reinforce the narrative on the importance of a holistic approach to sustainable development through the diversification of the economy.”

Braganza says that the high-level meeting will draw attention to the responsibility that citizens have in the ethical consumption and responsible use of natural resources.

According to the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra), the estimated annual economic value of goods and services in the marine and coastal ecosystem in the Blue Economy in the Western Indian Ocean is currently slightly over 22 billion dollars. Kenya’s share is approximately 4.4 billion dollars, with the tourism sector accounting for about 4.1 billion dollars.

Dickson Khainga, from the Productive Sector Division, says that Kenya’s blue world is more than just tourism and includes “the extraction of non-living resources such as seabed mining, marine biotechnology and the generation of new resources such as energy and fresh water.”

The research and policy analyst says that despite the country having a maritime territory of 230,000 square kilometres and a distance of 200 nautical miles offshore, equivalent to 31 of the 47 counties, Kenya has only explored tourism and fisheries.

According to Kippra, fisheries are by far not its most productive sector, accounting for a paltry 0.5 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Against this backdrop, Braganza emphasises that in pursuit of the blue economy the country will need to seal its policy loopholes.

He says that the “exploitative nature of big corporations of natural resources is a threat to sustainable development.” Braganza cautions that governments “will need to be more robust and decisive in the development of institutions, and legislation to police the exploitation of natural resources.”

With shipping said to be responsible for about 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, an agreement reached to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping when nations met at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in April this year marked a big milestone.

Feeding the globe’s projected 9.6 billion people by 2050, invigorating aquaculture estimated to supply 58 percent of fish to the global market has the potential to contribute to food security as well socioeconomic inclusion of some of the world’s poorest.

Ntoba says Africa is still blind to the rich diversity of water body resources, and that its nations should now seize the opportunity by using the upcoming global conference as a wake-up call to foment greater African partnership.

Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, who chairs the Lake Region Economic Block, told IPS the region will seek to push for a focus to have more funding directed towards improving commercial fish farming in the counties.

So far, the government has already set aside some Ksh 10 billion to improve marine fishing in the coastal region and another Ksh 14 billion to harness commercial aquaculture in 14 counties.

“Water has been mainly used in conventional irrigation agriculture which has contributed to greenhouse gas emissions but there has to be a shift. Sustainable water use will help spur the economy and at the same time curb greenhouse gas emissions,” Oparanya told IPS.

Mary Auma feeding one of the cows she bought with credit from her table banking group. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Oct 12 2018 (IPS)

It was less than eight months ago that Mary Auma and her three children, from Ahero in Kenya’s Nyanza region, were living in a one-room house in an informal settlement. Ahero is largely agricultural and each day Auma would go and purchase large quantities of milk and resell it – earning only a 10 percent profit.

But in February life for the single mother and her children changed for the better when she raised the USD 1,500 required to purchase an acre of land and two cows. The money did not just buy her assets, but financial security and a sustainable income. And she has moved her kids to a nicer neighbourhood. “Eight years ago, none of us had land to call their own. Today, all 24 of us have been able to acquire land through loans received from the group’s savings." --Irene Tuwei, a member of the Chamgaa table banking group.

This is all because two years ago Ahero joined a table banking group. Table banking is a group saving strategy in which members place their savings, loan repayments and other contributions. They can also borrow funds immediately. Table banking groups are growing in popularity across Africa, and can be found in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. In some places they are called  table banks and in others they are known as village banks.

Auma always wanted to own land so she could become self-sufficient.
“With a piece of land, I could live on it, keep cows, chicken and grow vegetables behind my kitchen. This is what I have always wanted but I had no money to start these projects,” she tells IPS.

When you can’t bank on land, bank on the table

While women can freely own and buy land in Kenya, less than seven percent of them have title deeds, according to the non-governmental organisation Kenya Land Alliance.

“You need collateral to secure a loan from a commercial bank and women generally do not have property. They are therefore unable to access credit to buy land. The concept of table banking is highly attractive to women because they loan each other the capital needed to acquire property,” Francis Kiragu, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, tells IPS.

Auma says that the loans from her table banking group are attractive since the only collateral women need to provide are household assets. “It is rare for members to default on loans as members are mainly neighbours and fellow church [goers] who come together in good faith,” she explains.

As more women take over control of their farmlands, this will not only become their source of food but also income. Having an income is important as it increases their purchasing power. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Increased access to loans means increased access to land

Farming on lands they do not own has made it difficult for women to make transformative decisions and to contribute to sustainable food security. But as informal banking takes on a new form among rural women in Africa, there is a chance that women will start having increased access to land.

“Women are no longer hoarding pennies to share amongst themselves. We meet once a week and in just one sitting, 24 of us can now contribute up to 5,000 dollars,” Irene Tuwei, a member of the Chamgaa table banking group in Turbo, Rift Valley region, tells IPS.

Tuwei says that unlike in the past, women do not have to wait months to receive their savings. Table banking is an improved version of traditional merry-go-rounds where women would save a little from their household budgets and the lump sum would be handed over to one person at a time. This would sometimes mean that if there were 15 members in a merry-go-round it could take 15 months for each member to have their turn in accessing the funds.

Things have, however, evolved from this to a revolving fund.

“In table banks, not a single coin is banked, which gives us instant loans without providing the kind of security banks ask for,” Tuwei says.

Table banking still guided by rules

One of the most visible table banking movements in Kenya is the Joyful Women Table Banking movement that has 200,000 members in all 47 counties, and which claims to have a revolving fund estimated at 27 million dollars. This is said to be currently in the hands and pockets of women across the country in form of loans.

Tuwei’s Chamgaa group is one of 12,000 under this movement.

“These groups are so successful that we now have banks reaching out to us offering special accounts where we can borrow money at very friendly terms. Before, these banks would never accept our loan applications because we did not have assets to attach while applying for them,” Tuwei tells IPS.

Table banking is guided by rules and regulations designed and agreed upon by members. They include how often to meet, with some groups meeting weekly and others monthly.

The rules also include loan repayment periods and also touch on how members should conduct themselves during meetings. Tuwei says that across table banking groups, small misdemeanours such as being late for a meeting can attract a fine of between USD 2 to USD 5. Loans given to members are also charged interest.

Land and independence to call their own 

“Eight years ago, none of us had land to call their own. Today, all 24 of us have been able to acquire land through loans received from the group’s savings,” Tuwei says of her group.

Tuwei was struck by polio at an early age which affected her legs. So she could not move around freely and required assistance to plough her fields.
Since joining the group, she owns three motorbike taxis, some cows, chickens, pigs and an ox plough. She also has plans to open a petrol station near a busy highway soon.

She now also harvests approximately 80 bags of maize cobs, which translate to about 40 bags of grains once shelled. From this, she makes approximately USD 2,300 every harvest season and puts some of this money into her table banking group to boost her savings.

“At the end of the year we share all the money that has been revolving among us for 12 months based on what each member has contributed, additional money gathered from penalties and interest from loans is shared equally,” says Tuwei.

Women need land to combat world hunger

This year’s World Food Day comes on the heels of alarming reports that after a period of decline, world hunger is now on the rise, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

According to FAO, while rural women are the mainstay of small-scale agriculture and contribute significantly to the farm labour force and to day-to-day family subsistence, they have great difficulty in accessing land and credit.

Kiragu is emphatic that while the face of farming is still very much female, it will take more women accessing loans, land and information on better farming practices to end hunger, achieve food security as well as improved nutrition.

“To begin with, the agricultural sector is not receiving sufficient financial support. In Kenya, only four percent of private sector credit is going to the agricultural sector,” Allan Moshi, a land policy expert on sub-Saharan Africa, tells IPS.

Women in Kasungu, a farming district in Central Malawi, select dried tobacco leaves to sell at the market. According to FAO, rural women are the mainstay of small-scale agriculture and contribute significantly to the farm labour force. Credit: Mabvuto Banda/IPS

Women understand land better

According to FAO, women in forestry, fishing and agriculture receive a paltry seven percent of the total agricultural investment.
Even more worrisome is that while women in Africa contribute 60 to 80 percent of food, only an estimated five percent of women have access to agricultural extension services.

“Women understand land even better than men because they interact with the soil much more closely. We are now seeing more women taking charge of the land and not just as laborers, but also as land owners,” says Charles Kiprop, an agricultural extension officer in Turbo. He says that the number of women who own land as well as those who hire acres of land during the planting season is slowly on the rise.

Kiprop tells IPS that women have also become more proactive in accessing key information on better farming practices. “I have been invited by women’s groups to speak to them on farming practices on many occasions. Women no longer wait and hope that we will pass by their farms, they are now coming to us either as land owners or those who have hired land,” he explains.

The worst is yet to come

Participation of women in harnessing food production cannot be overemphasised, particularly in light of the Global Report on Food Crises 2018, which says that the worst is yet to come. The report was co-sponsored by FAO, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

It predicted that dry weather conditions would aggravate food insecurity in a number of countries, including those in the horn of Africa’s pastoral areas in Somalia, parts of Ethiopia and Kenya.

“The March-May rainy season in Kenya was below average, this has affected food production and spiked food prices,” Kiprop adds.

According to the food security report, in the absence of conflict and displacement, climate change shocks were the main drivers of acute food insecurity in 23 out of the 65 countries and territories analysed in the previous 2017 on food crises. African countries were particularly affected.

The report indicates that at least 10 percent of the population in Ethiopia, 25 percent in Kenya, 27 percent in Malawi and 42 percent in Zimbabwe are food insecure. Other affected African countries include Madagascar, Senegal, Lesotho, Swaziland and Djibouti.

According to the report, “the global prevalence of childhood wasting (low weight for height) is around eight percent, higher than the internationally agreed nutrition target to reduce and maintain childhood wasting to below five percent by 2025.”

Women with an income and purchasing power

Moshi tells IPS that as more women take ownership of farmlands, “this will not only become their source of food but also income. Having an income is important as it increases their purchasing power.”

“Rural women will then be able to buy foods that they do not have therefore ensuring that their households are food secure,” he adds.

He notes that the women will also be able to purchase farm inputs.

Tuwei confirms that having an income has had a direct impact on her capacity to adhere to better farming practices.

“Five years ago, I could not afford to hire an Ox plough and would rely on the goodwill of neighbours who would first plough their lands and then come to my rescue. Many times they would come when it was too late to plough and plant in time,” she explains.

Tuwei further says that she and others in her group can now afford to use quality seeds, unlike before when they relied on seeds saved from previous harvests and those borrowed from neighbours.

“With the right tools, women can overhaul the agricultural sector because they have always been the ones involved in the day to day farm activities,” says Kiragu.

And thanks to the success of her milk business, Auma is ultimately glad that not only can she feed her children, but she can provide for their education and thereby their future also.

“Our table banking group is slightly different because we also contribute 20 dollars each week towards the welfare of our children. If a child needs school fees the mother is given a loan specifically from this part of our saving and at the same time she can take the usual loans from the general contribution so that she can keep her other projects going.”

Excerpt:

Mary Wanja, a farmer at Ngangarithi, Kenya, using water from a stream to water her produce. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicates that the face of farming is still very much female comprising at least 45 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. In parts of Africa and Asia, women’s representation is much higher contributing at least 60 percent of the labour force. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 21 2018 (IPS)

The world’s most important meeting is underway in New York, providing yet another opportunity for world leaders to discuss a wide array of issues such as peace, security and sustainable development. And experts stress that the role women have to play in addressing these issues cannot be over-emphasised.

“Of the six United Nations organs, it is only at the General Assembly where member states have equal representation with each nation having one vote, so issues discussed at the forum tend to be very critical and central to global development,” explains Grace Gakii, an independent consultant on gender issues in East Africa.

The 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) is being held in New York, United States, starting on Sept. 18th and running through to October.

“There are expectations that the high level meeting will also provide a platform to address issues of gender equality and women empowerment,”Gakii tells IPS.

The meeting comes amidst heighten efforts by the U.N. towards gender parity among its staff across all levels of its employment structure as well as through its work. A number of U.N. entities are already showing impressive progress towards a more gender balanced workforce in the period spanning 2007 to 2017.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) has particularly been lauded for progress made towards gender parity within its workforce.

“We have no doubt that gender equality can have a transformative as well as multiplier effect on sustainable development, climate resilience, peace building, and drive economic growth,” Maria Helena Semedo, FAO deputy director general, Climate and Natural Resources, tells IPS.

Since the organisation’s director general Jose Graziano da Silva took office in 2011, it has not been business as usual as gender issues are taking centre stage.

“FAO works to support women as agents of change to help harness this untapped potential. We have been striving to recruit the best possible talent to help meet our gender parity objectives,” Semedo affirms.

A U.N. system wide action plan on gender parity within this organisation indicates that: “As of the close of 2017, 41 percent of all international posts were held by women, the organisation’s highest representation of women in 10 years.” Moreover, when it comes to junior positions within the organisation, FAO has achieved gender parity.

“These trends point to an organisation that is keen on pushing for gender equality, equity and essentially women empowerment in its structures. Such robust efforts to engender its workforce will without a doubt impact greatly on the work that FAO does with rural communities,” Gakii explains.

Against this backdrop, according to the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (U.N. Women), the entire U.N. system is not far behind.

One year into secretary-general António Guterres’ strategy to improve gender parity within its system, for the first time in the history of the U.N. there is now gender parity in top leadership.

“We will continue working to translate our success at having more women in senior staff positions. We also strive to have a friendly work environment for both male and female staff, with zero tolerance to sexual and power harassment in line with the secretary-general’s direction,” Semedo says.

Gender expert Wilfred Subbo says that in achieving gender parity, equality and equity within its own system, the U.N. is also able to set the standards for “rural communities and economies whose lives are impacted on a daily basis by policies and strategies set by the global humanitarian body.”

Subbo is an associate professor at the Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, University of Nairobi.

Nonetheless, there are concerns that overall progress towards gender parity within FAO has been fairly slow. In the last decade, the representation of women has increased by only 12 percentage points.

That notwithstanding, experts are optimistic that as FAO continues its robust push for a more equitable society, this will have a more significant impact on food security, agriculture and rural development—particularly as climate change continues to impact on the world’s ability to feed its people.

FAO’s State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2018 report states that national agricultural and trade policies will need readjusting for the global market place to become a “pillar of food security and a tool for climate change adaptation.”

The report further details the extent to which climate change will impact on the ability of many world regions to produce food as well as influencing trends in international agricultural trade.

“Today, agriculture and food systems face an unprecedented array of challenges and our most recent numbers show that hunger is on the rise with the greatest vulnerability being amongst rural women and girls,” says Semedo.

Associate Professor Subbo is emphatic that without readjusting labour market structures for better representation of women, it will be impossible to comprehensively address the most pressing global needs.

He says that labour market structures are inherently skewed in favour of men, making it difficult for women to influence policy and decision-making processes.

“There is a need for a global momentum to speak to gender issues and especially the role, place and representation of women in the labour force because women are important pillars of the economy,” Subbo tells IPS.

He says that the fact there are now more women working in many sectors of the economy has served to mask an uncomfortable truth. “You will find these women at the bottom of the career ladder, they are the labourers in farms but absent in the boardroom,” he says.

Take for instance the agricultural sector, FAO indicates that the face of farming is still very much female comprising at least 45 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries.

In parts of Africa and Asia, women’s representation is much higher contributing at least 60 percent of the labour force.

The numbers are even higher in countries such as India where 79 percent of the female rural workforce is in agriculture.

“Even though a significant majority of the labour force in the agricultural sector is largely female constituted, women hold only 14 percent of the managerial positions,” Gakii expounds.

She says that as the world grapples with food insecurity, it is worrisome that women are also at the periphery of services that are crucial to the productivity and sustainability of rural economies. According to FAO, only an estimated five percent of women have access to agricultural extension services.

This is despite the significant role that the agricultural extension officers play in bringing advances in technology and better farming practices closer to farmers.

With fewer women in managerial and other such influential positions, compared to men, women receive fewer and smaller loans.

According to FAO, women in forestry, fishing and agriculture receive a paltry seven percent of the total agricultural investment.

Alice Wahome is an elected member of parliament in Kandara Constituency, Murang’a County, Kenya. She is the first woman to be elected to parliament in the county, and tells IPS that there is an urgent need to engender leadership across institutions and in key pillars of the economy.

“Promoting leadership that understands gender issues, the intricacies of gender and development does improve the participation of women at all levels of the workforce,” she observes. More importantly, “their participation accelerates development at all levels,” Wahome says.

A coastal city, Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, is an area where people have relied on the ocean for food and employment for as long as they have lived there. An increasing number of African countries are now embracing the blue economy for its potential to deliver solutions to their most pressing development needs. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 16 2018 (IPS)

An increasing number of African countries are now embracing the blue economy for its potential to deliver solutions to their most pressing development needs–particularly extreme poverty and hunger.

Countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mauritius, Comoros, Madagascar and the Seychelles–which has already established the Ministry of Finance, Trade and the Blue Economy–are recognising the need to diversify their economies.

“The African Union has also adopted the blue economy, which is about exploiting resources such as oceans, lakes and rivers, into its 2063 development agenda for socio-economic transformation,” Danson Mwangangi, an independent economic researcher and analyst, tells IPS.

He says that for agrarian economies like Kenya, “agriculture alone will not be sufficient to drive the economy since the sector is facing many challenges, including shrinking farmlands, pest infestations and unpredictable weather changes.”The blue world will only be a win for Africa if there are strategies in place to exploit and protect it. -- Caesar Bita, head of underwater archaeology at the National Museums of Kenya

In Kenya, for instance, World Bank statistics show that in 2017 alone maize production dropped 20 to 30 percent due to insufficient rains and army worm infestation. The country has an annual maize shortfall of eight million bags per year.
Against this backdrop, experts are urging African countries to diversify and look beyond land-based resources by exploring the blue economy as it presents immense untapped potential.

The World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in their 2018 policy brief make a strong case in favour of the blue economy.
Mwangangi says that it can significantly enable Africa to improve its volumes of global trade, achieve food security and meet its energy demands.

Ocean renewable energy has the potential to meet up to 400 percent of the current global energy demand, according to the International Energy Agency.

“Seventy percent of African countries are either coastal or islands, we need to harness such valuable coastlines,” says Caesar Bita, head of underwater archaeology at the National Museums of Kenya.
He tells IPS that the blue world can significantly transform the lives of communities that live closest to those bodies of water since they lead very precarious lives.

According to John Omingo, head of commercial shipping at the Kenya Maritime Authority, very little has been done in the way of harnessing these vast water-based resources for economic gain.
“Africa’s coastline is about 31,000 kilometres long and yet trade among African countries accounts for 11 percent of the total trade volume, which is the lowest compared to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Europe and America,” he expounds.

Bita tells IPS that while Africa is the largest island on earth as it has the Atlantic Ocean on the west; the Indian Ocean on the east; the Antarctic ocean on the south, and the Mediterranean and Red Sea on the north, “there is very little shipping that is going on in Africa. African-owned ships account for less than 1.2 percent of the world’s shipping.”

Ahead of the upcoming Sustainable Blue Economy Conference, that will be co-host by Kenya and Canada this November, in Nairobi, economic experts are optimistic that the blue economy movement is gaining traction.
The high-level conference is expected to advance a global agenda on sustainable exploitation of oceans, seas, rivers and lakes.

One of Freetown’s larger fishing harbours is Goderich Beach, less than 30 minute’s drive from the city’s downtown core. There, a single motorised boat can bring in as much as 300 dollars worth of fish in a single day. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

“Holding the conference in Africa with Canada as a co-host is also very strategic and shows that the continent is coming into this agenda as an important partner. Some of the most important gateways for international trade are actually in Africa,” says Bita.
Mwangangi says that African countries will need to assess their own individual capacities and interpret the blue economy in the manner that makes most economic sense to them.

“The concept is not a one-size-fits-all. Each country will need to evaluate what water-based natural resources are at their disposal,” he says. “On the Indian Ocean side of the continent where we have South Africa and Mauritius, countries tend to embrace an industrial approach,” he adds.

Research shows that South Africa’s Operation Phakisa, a national development plan, also places a focus on the blue economy as it is expected to create one million new jobs by 2030 and add approximately USD13 billion into the country’s economy.

Experts also point to Mauritius which is among the smallest countries in the world but has territorial waters the size of South Africa, making the small nation one the strongest blue economies in Africa. It ranked as Africa’s wealthiest nation based on its per capita income in 2015. Bita adds that Mozambique, which lies alongside the Indian Ocean, is characterised by the highest species of diverse and abundant natural resources.

Kenya is among African countries that are developing strategies to mainstream the blue economy within its national economic blueprint. Bita says that this East African nation’s blue economy includes maritime transport and logistics services, fisheries and aquaculture, tourism as well as the extractive industries such as the offshore mining of gas and oil, titanium and niobium.

Nonetheless, environment experts, including Bita, have expressed concerns that ongoing talks on the blue economy have largely revolved around full exploitation, in order for countries to develop rapidly in the next 10 years, and little on sustainability.

“This is a problem since there is evidence to show that oceans resources are limited. For instance, explorers have presented evidence to show that at least 90 percent of the largest predatory fishes have disappeared from the world’s oceans,” he cautions.

The blue world will only be a win for Africa if there are strategies in place to exploit and protect it, he adds.

Ibrahim Ndegwa at his farm in Ngangarithi, Wetlands in Nyeri County, Central Kenya. Experts are are concerned that local farmers remain at the periphery of efforts to address the impact of desertification. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 6 2018 (IPS)

Joshua Kiragu reminisces of years gone by when just one of his two hectares of land produced at least 40 bags of maize. But that was 10 years ago. Today, Kiragu can barely scrape up 20 bags from the little piece of land that he has left – it measures just under a hectare.

Kiragu, who is from Kenya’s Rift Valley region, tells IPS that years of extreme and drastic weather patterns continue to take their toll on his once-thriving maize business. His business, he says, has all but collapsed.

But Kiragu’s situation is not unique. Effects of land degradation and desertification are some of the major challenges facing smallholder farmers today.

“Population pressures have led to extreme subdivision of land, farms are shrinking and this affects proper land management – smaller pieces of land mean that farmers are overusing their farms by planting every year,” says Allan Moshi, a land policy expert on sub-Saharan Africa.

Statistics from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) show that a majority of Africa’s farmers now farm on less than one hectare of land. “This is the case for Zambia where nearly half of the farms comprise less than one hectare of land, with at least 75 percent of smallholder farmers farming on less than two hectares,” Moshi tells IPS.

Although smallholder farmers contribute to land degradation through poor land management, experts like Moshi are concerned that local farmers remain at the periphery of efforts to address the impact of desertification.

“Their exclusion will continue to limit how much success we can achieve with ongoing interventions,” he adds.

Moshi says that the situation is dire as small-scale farmers across Africa account for at least 75 percent of agricultural outputs, according to FAO. In Zambia, for instance, over 600,000 farms with an average land size of less than a hectare produce about 300,000 metric tonnes of maize. While this production meets the food needs of the country’s 17 million people, they lack modernised irrigation systems, making their crops vulnerable to drastic weather changes when they occur.

He adds that in order to address the challenges of declining soil fertility and to heal the land, farmers have to “adopt a more resilient seed system, better farming practices and technologies.”

Reckson Matengarufu, an agro-forestry and food security expert in Zimbabwe, says that in the last decade Zambia has joined a growing list of countries characterised by a rainfall deficit, a shortage of water, unusually high temperatures and shrinking farmlands.

Other countries include Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Zimbabwe

“These are also countries that have signed and ratified the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) that aims to fight desertification and address the effects of drought and particularly threats to food security from unusually high temperatures,” Moshi explains.

But Matengarufu emphasises the need for countries to build the capacity and understanding of small-scale farmers about transformative efforts.

“There is a need to introduce agro-forestry, whereby farmers integrate trees, crops and livestock on the same plot of land, into discussions on food and nutrition security,” he says.

According to a UNCCD report ‘Investing in Land Degradation Neutrality: Making the Case’, in Zimbabwe alone more than half of all agricultural land is affected by soil degradation. And in Burkina Faso, approximately 470,000 of a total 12 million hectares of agricultural land are under the looming cloud of severe land degradation.

Experts like Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, a professor of horticulture at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya, are raising the alarm that desertification is rapidly reducing the amount of land available for agriculture.

Agro-forestry experts are increasingly encouraging farmers to incorporate integration efforts “so that they can benefit from the harvest of many crops and not just from planting maize on the same plot each year,” says Matengarufu.

Abukutsa-Onyango adds that the poor seed system in Africa has made it difficult for farmers to cushion their land from further degradation.

Research shows that for sub-Saharan Africa to improve production there is a need to overhaul the seed system and for the average age of commonly-grown seeds to drop from the current 15 to 20 years to below 10 years.

“Farms are rapidly losing their capacity to produce because they save seeds from previous harvests, borrow from their neighbours or buy uncertified seeds from their local markets. These seeds cannot withstand the serious challenges facing the agricultural sector,” Abukutsa-Onyango says.

In countries like Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe farmers receive at least 90 percent of their seeds from the informal sector. Research from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) shows that on average only 20 percent of farmers in Africa use improved variety seeds.

“For African countries to achieve food and nutrition security, farmers must have access to high-yielding varieties that are designed to adapt and flourish despite the high temperatures and erratic weather we are experiencing,” Abukutsa-Onyango says.

Within this context, AGRA decries the fact that there are still very few local private seed-producing companies across Africa.

AGRA continues to push for more of these companies. The alliance has contributed to the rise in local seed companies across sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, from a paltry 10 in 2007 to at least 10 times that by 2018.

Experts emphasise that on average the use of improved seeds and proper farming practices will enable farmers to produce more than double what they are currently producing.

Moshi nonetheless says that the battle to combat the effects of drought and desertification is far from won.

He decries the exclusion of local communities and the general lack of awareness, particularly among farmers, on the connection between poor land management and land degradation.

“We also have divided opinions among stakeholders and experts on effective strategies to combat desertification, financial constraints and in many countries, a lack of political goodwill,” he concludes.

Laboratory Technician Herbert Mtopa collects biological samples at a clinic in Zimbabwe's Shamva District under a CultiAF project to assess exposure of women and children to aflatoxins. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 22 2018 (IPS)

In the absence of concerted efforts to raise awareness on the dangers of aflatoxin to humans and domestic animals, advances in technology for early detection of aflatoxin in cereals and seeds such as maize will come to naught, experts warn.

The first rapid aflatoxin testing kit is in the market for less than two dollars, even as some farmers unwittingly employ life-threatening tricks to earn a bit more from their harvests.

John Cheruiyot, a maize farmer in Uasin Gishu County, Rift Valley region revealed to IPS that farmers pour water on maize post-harvest to manipulate its weight in order to dupe buyers into paying more than the grains are worth.

“Maize is sold based on kilograms and so by pouring water on the maize after harvesting and drying it later, when taken to the weighing scale, the maize will weigh more,” he explains.

It is not the loss of a few thousands shillings in manipulated weight that has stakeholders in the ministry of health, ministry of agriculture as well as food security experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerned, but the real threat of deadly aflatoxin poisoning from such high moisture levels.

According to FAO, aflatoxin contamination can occur when there are high moisture levels during storage and transportation of grain, particularly if not dried to the right moisture levels of about 13 percent.

Collins Omondi, a researcher at the Egerton University Department of Biochemistry, explains that aflatoxins are highly toxic carcinogens that derive from certain molds, and may cause immune-system suppression, retarded growth, liver disease and even death.

“In maize, for instance, which is a staple food, aflatoxins occur on the farm through fungus containing high toxins in the soil, when there is insect damage, poor harvesting practices as well poor storage,” he told IPS.

He added that in the first three months of grain storage, rural households lose 10 to 20 percent of grains, and the losses can go up to 50 percent after six months.

It is within this context that experts such as Omondi are encouraging farmers to embrace the first kit to detect aflatoxin on location before the grains enter the market.

The kit can detect contamination in less than 15 minutes and is easy to use as it is based on the strip test such as those used to detect the HIV virus or glucose in human blood.

Cheruiyot, who has been trained on how to use the device, says that “if aflatoxin is present in the sample being tested, one pink line appears on the strip. But if the sample does not have aflatoxin then two pink lines will appear.”

Domestic animals that feed on grain contaminated by aflatoxin can carry the deadly toxin in their milk or meat. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

While this technology has been lauded as a step in the right direction towards combating the aflatoxin menace in this East African country – with the most severe aflatoxin poisoning outbreak recorded in 2004, when 317 cases were reported by July of that year with a fatality rate of about 39 percent – very low levels of awareness persist on aflatoxin and its prevention.

FAO recently held training workshops in collaboration with the national and county governments of Nandi, Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia Counties on prevention of aflatoxins. This was done through the ministry of health as well as the ministry of agriculture with the three counties chosen because they are the country’s grain basket.

FAO cautions that the deficit in agricultural extension officers continues to frustrate efforts to empower farmers with information on how to embrace better harvesting and storage practices to effectively address the real threat of aflatoxin poisoning.

While FAO has recommended one extension officer for every 400 farmers, figures from the ministry of agriculture show that one extension officer caters for at least 1,500 farmers.

According to the ministry of agriculture, approximately 70 percent of local maize is informally traded at the village level by subsistence farmers.

This poses a significant threat since maize is grown by at least 90 percent of the rural farm households.

FAO estimates that 25 percent of all crops in the world are affected by aflatoxin, placing millions of people and domestic animals at risk of significant health problems and even death.

Experts such as veterinary epidemiologist Johanna Lindahl say that domestic animals that feed on grains contaminated by aflatoxins produce products such as milk and meat that are also contaminated with aflatoxin.

“Kenya is a hotspot for aflatoxin contamination, especially in maize, and farmers, traders and the general public need to be educated on the danger of aflatoxins. This will increase the use of the testing kit which does not require technical skills in testing and interpreting outcomes,” explains Lindahl.

The most recent major incident of aflatoxin contamination was in 2014 when 155 metric tonnes of maize were destroyed.

She emphasizes that the rapid aflatoxin test kit coupled with education on the dangers of aflatoxin will significantly contribute to the management and reduction of the entry of aflatoxins in the food value chain by critically improving diagnosis for local and export trade.

Consequently, experts say that the food processing industry will maintain low exposure levels in food products for local markets, and continue to open regional as well as international markets that have largely remained hostile to countries such as Kenya, which is a hotspot for aflatoxins.

Reduced and insufficient rainfall as well as crop-damaging pests threaten to cripple the very backbone of African economies. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Oct 12 2017 (IPS)

A growing number of African countries are increasingly becoming food insecure as delayed and insufficient rainfall, as well as crop damaging pests such as the ongoing outbreak of the fall armyworm, cause the most severe maize crisis in the last decade.

Experts have warned that as weather patterns become even more erratic and important crops such as maize are unable to resist the fall armyworm infestation, there will not be enough food on the table."Even as we push for biotechnology, there is a need for regulations that guarantee the protection and safety of people and the environment." --Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and conservationist in Kenya

Confirming that indeed a severe food crisis looms while at the same time calling for immediate and sufficient responses, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) 2017 World Food Day theme is “Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development.”

Over 17 million people in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda have reached emergency food insecurity levels, according to the UN agency.

“Maize is an important food crop in many African countries and the inability of local varieties to withstand the growing threats from the fall armyworm which can destroy an entire crop in a matter of weeks raises significant concerns,” Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and conservationist in Kenya, told IPS.

“Due to its migratory nature, the pest can move across borders as is the case in Kenya where the fall armyworm migrated from Uganda and has so far been spotted in Kenya’s nine counties in Western, Rift Valley and parts of the Coastal agricultural areas,” she said.

FAO continues to issue warnings over the fall armyworm, expressing concerns that most countries are ill-prepared to handle the threat.

David Phiri, FAO Sub-regional Coordinator for Southern Africa, says that this is “a new threat in Southern Africa and we are very concerned with the emergence, intensity and spread of the pest. It is only a matter of time before most of the region will be affected.”

The UN agency has confirmed that the pest has destroyed at least 17,000 hectares of maize fields in Malawi, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Across Africa, an estimated 330,000 hectares have been destroyed.

“To understand the magnitude of this destruction, the average maize yield for small scale farmers in many African countries is between 1.2 and 1.5 tons per hectare,” Dr George Keya, the national coordinator of the of the Arid and Semi-arid lands Agricultural Productivity Research Project, told IPS.

FAO statistics show that Africa’s largest producers of maize, including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa, are all grappling with the fall armyworm outbreak.

Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture notes that the maize stalk borer or the African armyworm – which is different from the fall armyworm – cost farmers at least 25 million dollars annually in missed produce and is concerned that additional threats from the vicious Fall Armyworms will cripple maize production.

FAO and the government of Nigeria in September 2017 signed a Technical Cooperation Project (TCP) agreement as part of a concerted joint effort to manage the spread of the fall armyworm across the country.

According to experts, sectors such as the poultry industry that relies heavily on maize to produce poultry feed have also been affected.

Within this context, scientists are now pushing African governments to embrace biotechnology to address the many threats that are currently facing the agricultural sector and leading to the alarming food insecurity.

According to the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, a genetically modified variety of maize has shown significant resistance to the fall armyworm.

Based on results from the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) maize trials in Uganda, scientists are convinced that there is an immediate and sufficient solution to the fall armyworm.

Although chemical sprays can control the pest, scientists are adamant that the Bt maize is the most effective solution to the armyworm menace.

Experts say that the Bt maize has been genetically modified to produce Bt protein, an insecticide that kills certain pests.

Consequently, a growing list of African countries have approved field testing of genetically modified crops as a way to achieve food security using scientific innovations.

The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) which is a public-private crop breeding initiative to assist farmers in managing the risk of drought and stem borers across Africa, is currently undertaking Bt maize trials in Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and recently concluded trials in South Africa to find a solution to the fall armyworm invasion.

The African Agricultural Technology Foundation confirms that on a scale of one to nine, based on the Bt maize trials in Uganda, the damage from the armyworm was three for the Bt genetically modified variety and six on the local checks or the popularly grown varieties.

Similarly, Bt maize trials in Mozambique have shown that on a scale of one to nine, the damage was on 1.5 on Bt maize and seven on popularly grown varieties.

“These results are very promising and it is important that African countries review their biosafety rules and regulations so that science can rescue farmers from the many threats facing the agricultural sector,” Mukui explains.

In Africa, there are strict restrictions that bar scientists from exploring biotechnology solutions to boost crop yields.

According to Mukui, only four countries – South Africa, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Egypt – have commercialized genetically modified crops, while 19 countries have established biosafety regulatory systems, four countries are developing regulatory systems, 21 countries are a work in progress, and 10 have no National Biosafety Frameworks.

Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi and more recently Kenya are among the countries that have approved GM crop trials after the Kenya Biosafety Authority granted approval for limited release of insect resistant Bt maize for trials.

As Africa’s small-scale farmers face uncertain times as extreme climate conditions, crop failure, an influx of pests and diseases threaten to cripple the agricultural sector, experts say that there is sufficient capacity, technology and science to build resilience and cushion farmers against such threats.

“But even as we push for biotechnology, there is a need for regulations that guarantee the protection and safety of people and the environment,” Mukui cautions.

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s World Food Day on October 16.

Olubunmi Olusanya of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nigeria is keen on phasing out mercury-added products. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, May 30 2017 (IPS)

With a new international treaty, an increasing number of African countries are committing to phasing out mercury, a significant health and environmental hazard.

Research has shown that maternal exposure to mercury from contaminated fish can cause learning disabilities in developing babies. When inhaled, mercury vapor can also affect the central nervous system, impair mental capacity and, depending on levels of exposure, even lead to death."The ripple effect of using mercury is very costly in both human health and harm to the environment.” --Olubunmi Olusanya

“Despite the danger that mercury poses, it is still widely used, especially in Africa, and this is of great concern,” says Olubunmi Olusanya of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nigeria.

He told IPS that “While Africa does not manufacture mercury added products, the continent is a leading importer of mercury. The ripple effect of using mercury is very costly in both human health and harm to the environment.”

It is within this context that the Zero Mercury Working Group recently held a series of meetings in Nairobi, Kenya to address phasing out of mercury.

The Zero Mercury Working Group is an international coalition of over 95 public interest environmental and health non-governmental organizations from more than 50 countries around the world, with several NGO members coming from African countries.

“Phasing out mercury will mean replacing mercury added products such as thermometers, thermostats and batteries with alternatives, but it also means reducing and ultimately eliminating the use of mercury in artisanal and small-scale gold mining,” explains Elena Lymberidi-Settimo, International Co-coordinator of the Zero Mercury Working Group.

According to the Zero Mercury Working Group, artisanal and small scale gold mining (ASGM)  is a complex global development issue. It uses and releases substantial amounts of mercury in mineral processing, usually in highly unsafe and environmentally hazardous conditions.

Haji Rehani, a Senior Programme Officer at the Agenda for Environment and Response Development in Tanzania, who works closely with artisanal and small scale gold mining communities, says, “This kind of mining is the largest demand sector for mercury globally.”

He says that mercury is used to bind the gold to form an amalgam, which helps separate it from the rock, sand and other materials. The amalgam is then heated to vaporize the mercury, exposing miners and contaminating the environment while leaving the gold behind.

“There is a need to engage as many stakeholders as possible from the miners all the way to governments,” he advises.

He told IPS that African governments have shown the greatest worldwide commitment to addressing mercury as a health hazard and to ultimately phase it out.

Rehani says that this commitment has been demonstrated through Africa’s active involvement in the adoption of the Minamata Convention on mercury in October 2013, when 128 countries signed on.

“This legally binding agreement was developed and adopted to protect human life and environment from mercury emissions. It has clear time-bound targets for phasing out the manufacture, export or import of a number of mercury added products specified in the Convention,” he expounds.

At the moment, 52 countries have ratified the Convention, marking a significant milestone since the Convention requires at least 50 countries to ratify in order for the treaty to enter into force.

The Convention will therefore come into effect in the next 90 days. This further reinforces the significance of the zero mercury conference, which provided a platform for cross-country knowledge sharing towards reducing and eventually eliminating the use of mercury in all sectors.

Desiree Narvaez of the UN Environment Chemicals and Health Branch explained the need for stakeholders to have a platform to address mercury as a global health and environment issue, noting that such platforms are essential for governments to understand the devastating impact of mercury use.

Of the 52 countries, Africa is ahead of every other continent with 19 countries ratifying the Convention.

Anne Lillian Nakafeero from Uganda’s National Environment Management Authority. Credt: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

The Zero Mercury Working Group has major ongoing intervention projects in, for instance, Nigeria and Mauritius, focusing on phasing out mercury added products by 2020 as stipulated in the Minamata Convention.

Other Zero Mercury projects are also in countries such as Ghana and Tanzania where the main focus has been reducing and eventually eliminating the use of mercury in artisanal and small scale gold mining.

These projects are also keen on protecting vulnerable populations, and specifically women and children.

Experts at the conference reiterated the fact that the use of mercury in artisanal and small scale gold mining continues to rise, especially in developing countries, mainly because it is considered simple and inexpensive – producing 20 to 30 percent of the world’s gold.

The Zero Mercury Working Group estimates that 15 million people in approximately 70 countries are employed in artisanal and small scale gold mining, with many exposed to mercury. Four to five million of them are vulnerable women and children.

As a result, there is a need for concerted efforts to protect such disadvantaged populations and for countries to ensure that their respective National Action Plans emphasize the protection of such vulnerable groups when implementing the Convention.

There was significant emphasis during the Nairobi conference on the need for governments to develop and implement the Convention, which contains mandatory obligations to eliminate where feasible, and otherwise minimize, the global supply and trade of mercury.

A key stakeholder during the conference and indeed in global efforts to phase out mercury is the United Nations Environment Global Mercury Partnership (UN Environment).

Within the context of the Minamata Convention the focus of the UN Environment Global Mercury Partnership has shifted to support crucial areas of the treaty.

This includes banning  a number of listed mercury added products by 2020, with the exception of a Party registering an exemption.

Reducing and ultimately eliminating the use of mercury in small scale gold mining is expected to be done progressively, with the objective achieved in about 15 years.

The meeting brought together many government officials and stakeholders in a one-day forum held on the heels of the Zero Mercury conference to develop their own road maps for phasing out mercury under the Minamata Convention by 2020.

This included 35 delegates from 31 countries, representatives of seven United Nations and intergovernmental agencies, 15 NGOs and five other delegates from academics, private sector and consultants.

It emerged from the meetings and experience sharing that there is a great need for country-specific laws to explicitly outlaw the use of mercury in products and taking voluntary steps to significantly reduce mercury in artisanal and small scale gold mining, since the treaty doesn’t specifically ban it.

For example, Uganda has signed the Minamata Convention and is in the process of developing a National Action Plan for reducing mercury in artisanal and small scale gold mining. While this will take this East African nation a step closer towards phasing out mercury, there is no legislation in place outlawing the use of mercury.

“In this regard, stakeholders must embrace as many partnerships as possible. Mercury is a cross-cutting issue and one single entity cannot address this agenda. We need the government, Civil Society Organizations, miners and others as was demonstrated during the Zero Mercury conference,” said Anne Lillian Nakafeero from the National Environment Management Authority in Uganda.

Drought still accounts for at least 26 percent of all people affected by climate-related disasters. Millions in Kenya are currently relying on wild fruits and vegetables. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Apr 7 2017 (IPS)

Kenya’s lack of capacity to cope with wide-scale disaster has seen thousands of households continue to live precarious lives, especially in light of erratic and drastically changing weather patterns.

If millions are not staring death in the face due to the raging drought, they are fighting to remain afloat as their homes are swept away by surging waters.For every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, a country is likely to save four to seven dollars in humanitarian response.

“Drought accounts for an estimated 26 percent of all disasters and floods for 20 percent,” warns the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

UNISDR serves as the focal point in the United Nations system for the coordination of disaster risk reduction and has been running various interventions to make the country more disaster-resilient.

Government statistics confirm that drought still accounts for at least a quarter of all people affected by climate-related disasters. The country is at the threshold of the 12^th drought since 1975.

Against this backdrop, for seven months now Ruth Ettyang and her household of seven have continued to rely on wild fruits and vegetables to survive the deepening drought in the expansive Turkana County, Northern Kenya.

Temperatures are unusually high even for the arid area and the situation is becoming even more dire since people have to compete with thousands of livestock in this pastoral community for the scarce wild vegetation and dirty water in rivers that have all but run dry.

“When rains fail it is too dry. When they come it is another problem as houses are destroyed and people drown,” Ettyang explains.

Turkana is not a unique scenario and is reflective of the two main types of disasters that this East African country faces.

Additionally, Turkana is among two other counties – Nakuru and Nairobi – which account for at least a quarter of all people killed by various disasters, according to UNISDR.

There is no doubt that Kenya is a disaster-prone country and in the absence of a disaster risk management policy or legislation, the situation is dire.

“The pending enactment of Kenya’s Disaster Risk Management Bill and Policy, which has remained in a draft stage for over a decade, is a critical step in enhancing the disaster risk reduction progress in Kenya,” Amjad Abbashar, Head of Office, UNISDR Regional Office for Africa, told IPS.

Government’s recent call on the international community and humanitarian agencies to provide much needed aid to save the starving millions is reflective of the critical role that humanitarian agencies play in disaster response but even more importantly, in disaster risk reduction.

“Disaster risk reduction aims to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk, while strengthening preparedness for response and recovery, thus contributing to strengthening resilience,” Abbashar said.

UNISDR supports the implementation, follow-up and review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, and endorsed by the UN General Assembly.

“The Sendai Framework is a 15-year voluntary, non-binding agreement that maps out a broad, people-centered approach to disaster risk reduction. The Sendai Framework succeeded the Hyogo Framework for Action that was in force from 2005 to 2015,” Animesh Kumar, Deputy Head of Office, UNISDR Regional Office for Africa, told IPS.

“This global agreement seeks to substantially reduce disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries,” Kumar added.

According to UNISDR, the disaster risk reduction institutional mechanism in the country is structured around the National Disaster Operations Centre, the National Drought Management Authority, and the National Disaster Management Unit. The UN agency works with these institutions.

Within this context, UNISDR has supported the establishment of a robust National Disaster Loss Database housed at the National Disaster Operation Centre.

“This database creates an understanding of the impacts and costs of disasters, its risks as far as disasters are concerned and to steer Kenya to invest in resilient infrastructure,” Abbashar said.

“Systematic disaster data collection and analysis is also useful in informing policy decisions to help reduce disaster risks and build resilience,” he added.

UNISDR is also assisting Kenyan legislators through capacity building and support in development of relevant Disaster Risk Management laws and policies.

Though the country is still a long way from being disaster resilient, UNISDR says that there have been some key milestones.

“We have collaborated towards ensuring that a National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction has also been instituted to monitor national disaster risk reduction progress,” Kumar observes.

A National Action Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2018) has been developed to implement the Sendai Framework in Kenya.

At the county level, County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) have been undertaken, which have integrated some elements of disaster risk reduction and peace and security.

Due to UNISDR work in the Counties, Kisumu city in Nyanza region, is one of five African cities that are pioneering local-level implementation of the Sendai Framework in Africa.

“The establishment of the Parliamentary Caucus on Disaster Risk Reduction that was formed in 2015 with a membership of over 35 Kenyan parliamentarians with support from UNISDR is a key policy milestone,” Abbashar explains.

The Kenyan Women’s Parliamentary Association (KEWOPA) is also advocating for the enactment of a Disaster Risk Management Bill and its establishment was the result of joint efforts between UNISDR and parliament.

UNISDR remains steadfast that the role of women as agents of change in disaster risk reduction must be emphasized.

But the work that this UN agency does in Kenya would receive a significant boost if just like women, children too were involved as agents of change.

“Incorporation of disaster risk reduction in school curricula can lead to a growing population that is aware of disaster risk reduction as well as a generation that acts as disaster risk champions in future,” Abbashar said.

Setting aside a sizeable amount for disaster risk reduction in the national budget is extremely important.

For every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, “a country is likely to save four to seven dollars in humanitarian response and multiple times more for future costs of development,” he stressed.

At least one million children in Kenya are in dire need of food aid due to drought. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Feb 13 2017 (IPS)

Experts warn that Kenya is in the grip of the worst drought in recent history as government estimates show the number of people who are acutely food insecure has risen to 2.7 million, up from two million in January.

This has necessitated the government to declare the crisis a national disaster as large parts of the country continue to succumb to the ravaging drought.The drought is putting 11 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in urgent need of aid.

At least 11,000 livestock across the country are facing imminent death due to lack of water and pasture, this is according to the National Drought Management Authority.

The drought management authority issued further warnings to the effect that pastoral communities could lose up to 90 percent of their livestock by April.

But children are still the most affected, with official government reports showing that an estimated one million children in 23 of the country’s 47 counties are in dire need of food aid.

“The prevalence of acute malnutrition in Baringo, Mandera, Marsabit and Turkana counties in Northern Kenya where the drought is most severe is estimated at 25 percent,” Mary Naliaka, a pediatrics nurse with the Ministry of Health, told IPS.

“This is alarming because at least 45 percent of deaths among children under five years of age is caused by nutrition related issues.”

Too hungry to play, hundreds of starving children in Tiaty Constituency of Baringo County instead sit by the fire, watching the pot boil, in the hope that it is only a matter of minutes before their next meal.

Unbeknownst to them, the food cooking inside the pot is no ordinary supper. It is actually a toxic combination of wild fruits and tubers mixed with dirty water, as surrounding rivers have all run dry.

Tiaty sits some 297 kilometers from the capital Nairobi and the ongoing dry spell is not a unique scenario.

Neighbouring Elgeyo Marakwet and Turkana County are among the counties spread across this East African nation where food security reports show that thousands are feeling the impact of desertification, climate change and rainfall shortage.

“In most of these counties, mothers are feeding their children wild fruits and tubers. They boil them for at least 12 hours, believing that this will remove the poison they carry,” Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and soil conservationist, told IPS.

Teresa Lokwee, a mother of eight children, all of them under the age of 12, who lives in Tiaty, explains that the boiling pot is a symbol of hope. “When our children see that there is something cooking, the hope that they will soon enjoy a meal keeps them going.”

Mukui, who was head of agriculture within the Ministry of Agriculture and worked in most of the affected counties for more than two decades, says that rainfall deficit, shortage of water and unusually high temperatures is the scenario that characterizes 23 out of the 47 counties in Kenya.

The situation is so dire that in Baringo County alone, 10 schools and 19 Early Childhood Development Schools are empty as children join other family members in search of water.

“Sometimes once you leave in the morning to search for water, you return home in the evening,” Lokwee told IPS.

In other affected counties, especially in Western Kenya, communities have resorted to eating insects such as termites which were previously taboo.

Though these unconventional eating habits are a respite for starving households, experts warn that this is a ticking time bomb since the country lacks an insect-inclusive legislation and key regulatory instruments.

In the Kenya Bureau of Standards, which assesses quality and safety of goods and services, insects are labeled as impure and to be avoided.

But if predictions by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation are anything to go by, the worst is yet to come as the country watches the onset of what experts like Mukui call a crisis after the failure of both the long and short rains.

“We are now facing severe effects of desertification because we are cutting down more trees than we can plant,” she explains.

She added that Vision 2030 – the country’s development blueprint – calls for the planting of at least one billion trees before 2030 to combat the effects of climate change, but the campaign has been a non-starter.

Mukui told IPS it is no wonder that at least 10 million people are food insecure, with two million of them facing starvation.

The drought is region-wide. On Feb. 10, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the drought is putting 11 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in urgent need of aid.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which works in countries such as Kenya buckling under the weight of desertification, land degradation and severe drought, the number of people living on degraded agricultural land is on the rise.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with at least 45 percent of government revenue being derived from this sector.

Mukui says it is consequently alarming that at least 10 million of the estimated 44 million Kenyans live in degraded agricultural areas, accounting for an estimated 40 percent of the country’s rural community.

Other statistics by UNCCD show that though arid and semi-arid lands constitute about 80 percent of the country’s total land mass and are home to at least 35 percent of the country’s population, areas that were once fertile for agriculture are slowly becoming dry and unproductive.

A survey by the Kenya Forest Service has revealed that not only is the country’s forest cover at seven percent, which is less than the ten percent global standard, an estimated 25 percent of the Mau Forest Complex – Kenya’s largest water catchment area – has been lost due to human activity.

Within this context, UNCCD is working with various stakeholders in Kenya to ensure that at least five million hectares of degraded land is restored. According to Executive Secretary Monique Barbut, there is a need to ensure that “in the next decade, the country is not losing more land than what it is restoring.”

“Land issues must become a central focus since land is a resource with the largest untapped opportunities,” she said.

Research has shown that the state of land impacts heavily on the effectiveness of policies to address poverty and hunger.

Restoring forest cover in Kenya is key. Since 1975, official government statistics show that the country has suffered 11 droughts – and the 12th is currently looming.

The cost implications that the country continues to suffer can no longer be ignored. UNCCD estimates that the annual cost of land degradation in Kenya is at least five percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. And addressing land degradation can earn the country four dollars for every one dollar spent in land restoration efforts.

Barbut has, however, commended the country’s efforts to address desertification caused by both human activity and the adverse effects of climate change, particularly through practical and sustainable legislation.

Mukui says that UNCCD works through a country-specific National Action Programme which Kenya already has in place. “What we need is better coordination and concerted efforts among the many stakeholders involved, government, communities, donors and the civil society, just to name a few,” she said.

Efforts to enhance the country’s capacity to combat desertification by the UNCCD include providing financial and technical resources to promote management of local natural resources, improving food security and partnering with local communities to build sustainable land use plans.

Excerpt:

Once fertile agricultural land in Kenya is being degraded by encroachment and the effects of climate change. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jan 31 2017 (IPS)

Too hungry to play, hundreds of starving children in Tiaty Constituency of Baringo County instead sit by the fire, watching the pot boil, in the hope that it is only a matter of minutes before their next meal.

Unbeknownst to them, the food cooking inside the pot is no ordinary supper. It is actually a toxic combination of wild fruits and tubers mixed with dirty water, as surrounding rivers have all run dry.“We are now facing severe effects of desertification because we are cutting down more trees than we can plant." --Hilda Mukui

Tiaty sits some 297 kilometers from the capital Nairobi and the ongoing dry spell is not a unique scenario.

Neighbouring Elgeyo Marakwet and Turkana County are among the counties spread across this East African nation where food security reports show that thousands are feeling the impact of desertification, climate change and rainfall shortage.

“In most of these counties, mothers are feeding their children wild fruits and tubers. They boil them for at least 12 hours, believing that this will remove the poison they carry,” Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and soil conservationist, told IPS.

Teresa Lokwee, a mother of eight children, all of them under the age of 12, who lives in Tiaty, explains that the boiling pot is a symbol of hope. “When our children see that there is something cooking, the hope that they will soon enjoy a meal keeps them going.”

Mukui, who was head of agriculture within the Ministry of Agriculture and worked in most of the affected counties for more than two decades, says that rainfall deficit, shortage of water and unusually high temperatures is the scenario that characterizes 23 out of the 47 counties in Kenya.

The situation is so dire that in Baringo County alone, 10 schools and 19 Early Childhood Development Schools are empty as children join other family members in search of water.

“Sometimes once you leave in the morning to search for water, you return home in the evening,” Lokwee told IPS.

In other affected counties, especially in Western Kenya, communities have resorted to eating insects such as termites which were previously taboo.

Though these unconventional eating habits are a respite for starving households, experts warn that this is a ticking time bomb since the country lacks an insect-inclusive legislation and key regulatory instruments.

In the Kenya Bureau of Standards, which assesses quality and safety of goods and services, insects are labeled as impure and to be avoided.

But if predictions by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation are anything to go by, the worst is yet to come as the country watches the onset of what experts like Mukui call a crisis after the failure of both the long and short rains.

“We are now facing severe effects of desertification because we are cutting down more trees than we can plant,” she explains.

She added that Vision 2030 – the country’s development blueprint – calls for the planting of at least one billion trees before 2030 to combat the effects of climate change, but the campaign has been a non-starter.

Mukui told IPS it is no wonder that at least 10 million people are food insecure, with two million of them facing starvation.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which works in countries such as Kenya buckling under the weight of desertification, land degradation and severe drought, the number of people living on degraded agricultural land is on the rise.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with at least 45 percent of government revenue being derived from this sector.

Mukui says it is consequently alarming that at least 10 million of the estimated 44 million Kenyans live in degraded agricultural areas, accounting for an estimated 40 percent of the country’s rural community.

Other statistics by UNCCD show that though arid and semi-arid lands constitute about 80 percent of the country’s total land mass and are home to at least 35 percent of the country’s population, areas that were once fertile for agriculture are slowly becoming dry and unproductive.

A survey by the Kenya Forest Service has revealed that not only is the country’s forest cover at seven percent, which is less than the ten percent global standard, an estimated 25 percent of the Mau Forest Complex – Kenya’s largest water catchment area – has been lost due to human activity.

Within this context, UNCCD is working with various stakeholders in Kenya to ensure that at least five million hectares of degraded land is restored. According to Executive Secretary Monique Barbut, there is a need to ensure that “in the next decade, the country is not losing more land than what it is restoring.”

“Land issues must become a central focus since land is a resource with the largest untapped opportunities,” she said.

Research has shown that the state of land impacts heavily on the effectiveness of policies to address poverty and hunger.

Restoring forest cover in Kenya is key. Since 1975, official government statistics show that the country has suffered 11 droughts – and the 12th is currently looming.

The cost implications that the country continues to suffer can no longer be ignored. UNCCD estimates that the annual cost of land degradation in Kenya is at least five percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. And addressing land degradation can earn the country four dollars for every one dollar spent in land restoration efforts.

Barbut has, however, commended the country’s efforts to address desertification caused by both human activity and the adverse effects of climate change, particularly through practical and sustainable legislation.

Mukui says that UNCCD works through a country-specific National Action Programme which Kenya already has in place. “What we need is better coordination and concerted efforts among the many stakeholders involved, government, communities, donors and the civil society, just to name a few,” she said.

Efforts to enhance the country’s capacity to combat desertification by the UNCCD include providing financial and technical resources to promote management of local natural resources, improving food security and partnering with local communities to build sustainable land use plans.

As a result of farmers embracing Climate Smart Agriculture, some fields are still green and alive even as drought rages in the south of Madagascar. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
AMBOASARY, Madagascar, Aug 4 2016 (IPS)

Mirantsoa Faniry Rakotomalala is different from most farmers in the Greater South of Madagascar, who are devastated after losing an estimated 80 percent of their crops during the recent May/June harvesting season to the ongoing drought here, said to be the most severe in 35 years.

She lives in Tsarampioke village in Berenty, Amboasary district in the Anosy region, which is one of the three most affected regions, the other two being Androy and Atsimo Andrefana.FAO estimates that a quarter of the population - five million people - live in high risk disaster areas exposed to natural hazards and shocks such as droughts, floods and locust invasion.

“Most farms are dry, but ours has remained green and alive because we dug boreholes which are providing us with water to irrigate,” she told IPS.

Timely interventions have changed her story from that of despair to expectation as she continues harvesting a variety of crops that she is currently growing at her father’s farms.

Some of her sweet potatoes are already on the market.

Rakotomalala was approached by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as one of the most vulnerable people in highly affected districts in the South where at least 80 percent of the villagers are farmers. They were then taken through training and encouraged to diversify their crops since most farmers here tend to favour maize.

“We are 16 in my group, all of us relatives because we all jointly own the land. It is a big land, more than two acres,” she told IPS.

Although their form of irrigation is not sophisticated and involves drip irrigation using containers that hold five to 10 liters of water, it works – and her carrots, onions and cornflowers are flourishing.

“We were focusing on the challenges that have made it difficult for the farmers to withstand the ongoing drought and through simple but effective strategies, the farmers will have enough to eat and sell,” says Patrice Talla, the FAO representative for the four Indian Ocean Islands: Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles and Mauritius.

Experts such as Philippison Lee, an agronomist monitor working in Androy and Anosy regions, told IPS that the South faces three main challenges – “drought, insecurity as livestock raids grow increasingly common, and locusts.”

FAO estimates that a quarter of the population – five million people – live in high-risk disaster areas exposed to natural hazards and shocks such as droughts, floods and locust invasion.

As an agronomist, Lee studies the numerous ways plants can be cultivated, genetically altered, and utilized even in the face of drastic and devastating weather patterns.

Talla explains that the end goal is for farmers to embrace climate-smart agriculture by diversifying their crops, planting more drought-resistant crops, including cassava and sweet potatoes, and looking for alternative livelihoods such as fishing.

“Madagascar is an island but Malagasy people do not have a fish-eating culture. We are working with other humanitarian agencies who are training villagers on fishing methods as well as supplying them with fishing equipment,” Talla told IPS.

“Madagascar is facing great calamity and in order to boost the agricultural sector, farming must be approached as a broader development agenda,” he added.

He said that the national budgetary allocation – which is less than five percent, way below the recommended 15 percent – needs to be reviewed. The South of Madagascar isalso  characterized by poor infrastructure and market accessibility remains a problem.

According to Talla, the inability of framers to adapt to the changing weather patterns is more of a development issue “because there is a lack of a national vision to drive the agriculture agenda in the South.”

Lee says that farmers lack cooperative structures, “and this denies the farmers bargaining power and they are unable to access credit or subsidies inputs. This has largely been left to humanitarian agencies and it is not sustainable.”

Though FAO is currently working with farmers to form cooperatives and there are pockets of them in various districts in the South including Rakotomalala and her relatives, he says that distance remains an issue.

“You would have to cover so many kilometers before you can encounter a village. Most of the population is scattered across the vast lands and when you find a group, it is often relatives,” he says.

Lee noted that farmers across Africa have grown through cooperatives and this is an issue that needs to be embraced by Malagasy farmers.

Talla says that some strides are being made in the right direction since FAO is working with the government to draft the County Programming Framework which is a five-year programme from 2014 to 2019.

The framework focuses on three components, which are to intensify, diversify and to make the agricultural sector more resilient.

“Only 10 percent of the agricultural potential in the South is being exploited so the target is to diversify by bringing in more crops because most people in the North eat rice and those in the South eat maize,” Talla explained.

The framework will also push for good governance of natural resources through practical laws and policies since most of the existing ones have been overtaken by events.

Talla says that the third and overriding component is resilience, which focuses on building the capacity of communities – not just to climate change but other natural hazards such as the cyclone season common in the South.

“FAO is currently working with the government in formulating a resilience strategy but we are also reaching out to other stakeholders,” he says.

Since irrigation-fed agriculture is almost non-existent and maize requires a lot of water to grow, various stakeholders continue to call for the building of wells to meet the water deficit, although others have dismissed the exercise as expensive and unfeasible.

“We require 25,000 dollars to build one well and chances of finding water are often 50 percent because one in every two wells are not useful,” says Lee.

Nearly half the children in drought-stricken South Madagascar are malnourished. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
AMBOVOMBE, Madagascar, Jul 8 2016 (IPS)

Voahevetse Fotetse can easily pass for a three-year-old even though he is six and a pupil at Ankilimafaitsy Primary School in Ambovombe district, Androy region, one of the most severely affected by the ongoing drought in the South of Madagascar.

“Fotetse is just like many of the pupils here who, due to chronic malnutrition, are much too small for their age, they are too short and too thin,” explains Seraphine Sasara, the school’s director.

The school has a total population of 348 – 72 boys and 276 girls – and they range from three to 15 years. Fewer boys stay in school as they spend most of their time helping on the farm or grazing the family livestock.

The tide, however, turns when the girls reach 15 years, at which point most are withdrawn from school and married off.

But in school or out of school, nearly half of the children in Southern Madagascar have not escaped malnutrition. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says that stunting –  where children are too short for their age – affects at least 47 percent of children under five.“I feed my eight children on rice for breakfast and supper but for lunch, they have to eat cactus fruits." -- Mamy Perline

Compared to acute malnutrition, which can develop over a short period and is reversible, stunting has more far-reaching consequences.

“Stunting is a gradual and cumulative process during the 1,000 days from conception through the first two years of a child’s life,” Sasara told IPS.

It develops as a result of sustained poor dietary intake or repeated infections, or a combination of both.

“It is not just about a child being too short for their age, it has severe and irreversible consequences including risk of death, limited physical and cognitive capacities,” Sasara said.

Statistics show that two million children in this Southern African country are stunted, placing Madagascar fourth in the “Global Chronic Malnutrition” table.

In February this year, though the global acute malnutrition level reached an average of eight percent, it is much higher in many regions in Southern Madagascar where most districts have surpassed the critical threshold of 10 percent.

Rainfall deficit and recurrent drought in Southern Madagascar has led to the deterioration of household food security, which has had a significant impact on the nutritional status of children under five.

Sasara says that the situation has been worsened by the rice eating culture across Madagascar “where children eat rice for breakfast, lunch and supper.”

But Mamy Perline told IPS that even rice is not always available. “I feed my eight children on rice for breakfast and supper but for lunch, they have to eat cactus fruits,” she said.

According to the WFP, which runs a school feeding programme in affected districts, Tsihombe district in Androy region is the most affected, with an average of 14 percent of children under five presenting signs of acute malnutrition.

WFP estimates show that nearly 50 percent of the Malagasy children under five suffer from iron deficiency which causes anemia.

Consequently, of every 1,000 live births, 62 result in children dying before they reach five years.

The lack of clean water and proper sanitation has compounded the situation facing the South.

The education sector continues to bear the brunt of the severe drought, with statistics by various humanitarian agencies including WFP showing that the net primary education enrolment rate in Madagascar is on a downward spiral.

Though an estimated 96.2 percent of children were enrolled in 2006, the number had dwindled to 69.4 percent in 2012, with Sasara saying that the current enrolment is likely to be much lower as children are too hungry to stay in school.

This is the case in Tanandava village, Amboasary district, Anosy region, where hundreds of out of school children gather each day to receive a meal from the village canteen offered by Catholic Relief Services, a humanitarian agency working in the area.

WFP statistics further show that the number of out of school children between six and 12 years is estimated at 1.5 million, with regions such as Anosy, Androy and Atsimo Andrefana in the South of Madagascar which have high rates of food insecurity posting alarmingly low levels of school performance.

Since 2005 WFP has implemented a school feeding programme, providing daily fortified meals to nearly 300,000 children in 1,300 primary schools in the south of the country but also in the urban slums of Antananarivo, Tulear and Tamatave.

“The meals are fortified with micronutrients and are crucial in breaking the malnutrition cycle in this country,” Sasara said.

The school feeding programme is a joint community effort where parents are involved in the preparation of the food, therefore providing a platform for the implementation of other interventions geared towards improving the health and nutrition of vulnerable children.

These interventions access to water and sanitation, which are twin problems in this region.

“When it rains and water collects in potholes on the road, this is the water we collect in containers for drinking, cooking and washing. It does not matter how many cars or people have stepped into the water, it is the only source we have,” says Perline.

Given the increase in acute malnutrition, a contributing factor to child mortality, WFP supports the National Office for Nutrition through its Regional Office for Nutrition, which continues to provide supplementary feeding programs for the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition across villages in the South.

“Treating children affected by moderate acute malnutrition can reduce drastically the number of those affected by severe acute malnutrition and to restore an adequate nutritional status,” says Yves Christian, Head of Regional Office for Nutrition.

WFP is further providing technical assistance to the government at various levels that is expected to result in a nationally owned school feeding programme.

New modalities of school feeding will also be piloted at the start of the next school year later in September 2016.

Farmers are in despair at the drought crisis in Southern Madagascar, where at least 1.14 million people are food insecure. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
BEKILY, Madagascar, Jun 14 2016 (IPS)

Havasoa Philomene did not have any maize when the harvesting season kicked off at the end of May since like many in the Greater South of Madagascar, she had already boiled and eaten all her seeds due to the ongoing drought.

Here, thousands of children are living on wild cactus fruits in spite of the severe constipation that they cause, but in the face of the most severe drought witnessed yet, Malagasy people have resorted to desperate measures just to survive.

“We received maize seeds in January in preparation for the planting season but most of us had eaten all the seeds within three weeks because there is nothing else to eat,” says the 53-year-old mother of seven.

She lives in Besakoa Commune in the district of Bekily, Androy region, one of the most affected in the South of Madagascar.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that an estimated 45,000 people in Bekily alone are affected, which is nearly half of the population here.

Humanitarian agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) estimate that 1.14 million people lack enough food in the seven districts of Southern Madagascar, accounting for at least 80 percent of the rural population.

The United Nations World Food Programme now says that besides Androy, other regions, including Amboassary, are experiencing a drought crisis and many poor households have resulted to selling small animals and their own clothes, as well as kitchenware, in desperate attempts to cope.

After the USAID’s Office of U.S Foreign Disaster Assistance through The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) organised an emergency response in January to provide at least 4,000 households in eight communes in the districts of Bekily and Betroka with maize seeds, many families had devoured them in less than three weeks.

Philomene told IPS that “the seeds should have been planted in February but people are very hungry.”

Due to disastrous crop production in the last harvesting season, many farmers did not produce enough seeds for the February planting season, hence the need for humanitarian agencies to meet the seed deficit.

Farmers like Rasoanandeasana Emillienne say that this is the driest rainy season in 35 years.

“I have never experienced this kind of hunger. We are taking one day at a time because who knows what will happen if the rains do not return,” says the mother of four.

Although the drought situation has been ongoing since 2013, experts such as Shalom Laison, programme director at ADRA Madagascar, says that at least 80 percent of crops from the May-June harvest are expected to fail.

The Southern part of Madagascar is the poorest, with USAID estimates showing that 90 percent of the population earns less than two dollars a day.

According to Willem Van Milink, a food security expert with the World Food Programme, “Of the one million people affected across the Southern region, 665,000 people are severely food insecure and in need of emergency food support.”

Against this backdrop, the U.S. ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome (FAO, IFAD and WFP), David Lane, has urged the government to declare the drought an emergency as an appeal to draw attention to the ongoing crisis.

Ambassador Lane says that though the larger Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member states are making plans to declare an emergency situation in 13 countries in the southern region, including Madagascar, “the government of Madagascar needs to make an appeal for help.”

“Climate change is getting more and more volatile but the world does not know what is happening in Southern Madagascar and this region is indicative of what is happening in a growing number of countries in Southern Africa,” he told IPS during his May 16-21 visit to Madagascar.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), these adverse weather conditions have reduced crop production in other Southern African nations where an estimated 14 million people face hunger in countries including Southern Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi and South Africa.

Thousands of households are living precarious lives in the regions of Androy, Anosy and Atsimo Andrefana in Southern Madagascar  because they are unable to meet their basic food and non-food needs through September due to the current El Niño event, which has translated into a pronounced dry spell.

“An appeal is very important to show that the drought is longer than usual, hence the need for urgent but also more sustainable solutions,” says USAID’s Dina Esposito.

The ongoing situation is different from chronic malnutrition, she stressed. “This is about a lack of food and not just about micronutrients and people are therefore much too thin for their age.”

She says that the problem with a slow onset disaster like a drought as compared to a fast onset disaster like a cyclone – also common in the South – is to determine when to draw the line and declare the situation critical.

Esposito warns that the worst is yet to come since food insecurity is expected to escalate in terms of severity and magnitude in the next lean season from December 2016 to February 2017.

Irene Tuwei holding a certificate of recognition for being a top saver, she is a role of model of what simple and well-thought out economic interventions can do. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
GAZA, Mozambique, Apr 1 2016 (IPS)

Angelina Chiziane starts her day by getting her husband ready for work in a small village in the southern province of Gaza, Mozambique, some 216 kilometers away from the capital, Maputo.

She then makes the three kilometer journey to a nearby stream to fetch water and firewood and by the time she gets back home, her two children will be up and ready to be fed.

Chiziane then straps the youngest on her back and leaves with them to the farm where she will spend most of her day. At only 17 years old, this is her life and she will know no better.

Statistics show that nearly 50 per cent of Mozambican women between the ages of 20 and 24 years old get married before the age of 18, with 14 per cent of them, just like Chiziane, getting married before their 15th birthday.

These damning statistics by the Mozambican women’s organisation Forum Mulher [Women’s Forum] paint an accurate picture of the plight of a significant number of women and girls in this southern African nation.

Consequently, the Forum aggressively pushes for a female empowerment agenda, which has included calls for protection of women, promoting gender parity in education, encouraging society to embrace women in government while also raising awareness on women’s rights.

Nzira Deus who works at Forum Mulher says that “training on leadership and political participation of women is the key. Women in power can significantly improve the situation of women in Mozambique.”

In March this year, Forum Mulher presented the results of a study on the situation of women in Mozambique for the period 2005-2015 which confirmed that though Mozambique is a fast-growing economy, the same cannot be said of gender equality.

While the number of women in political leadership has steadily increased, the same cannot be said of the representation of women in other sectors of the economy.

Mozambican female ministers have increased from 15 per cent in 2003 to 28.5 per cent in 2014. The number of parliamentary seats held by women has also increased from 29 per cent in 1997 to 39 per cent in 2014.

Though gender experts such as Forum Mulher’s Karina Loferte Dulobo emphasise that women are twice as likely to invest in health and education, they are still largely peasant farmers and also — as is the case across Africa — account for 60 to 80 per cent of agricultural labourers.

As a result, women are affected more disproportionally by the extreme poverty which is still severe and widespread where a majority of Mozambican rural population live on less than US$1.25 a day.

Deus particularly decries the high prevalence of child marriages despite the “negative impact it has at a personal, social and economic level. Fighting this practice is a priority for us. If girls drop out of school to get married, they will remain poor and their children will have no better lives than their parents.”

Socio-economic experts such as Kenya’s Dan Mwangangi emphasise that tackling extreme poverty in Mozambique and in Africa indeed must go hand in hand with addressing the glaring gender inequality.

“Such studies on gender inequality are vital because they clearly show the magnitude of the problem and can be used as basis to establish various sustainable interventions to improve the situation of women,” Mwangangi explains.

“We have a huge number of women in Mozambique who have been denied an education, as a result, women remain underrepresented in main decision-making processes, be they political, economic or social and the majority of women [60 percent] are still illiterate,” he expounds.

He however told IPS that just because they are not educated does not mean that they are a lost cause.

Mwangangi gives the example of Kenya where simple economic empowerment ventures targeting rural poor women such as the Joyful Women Organisation (JOYWO) have completely transformed the lives of thousands of households across this East African nation.

JOYW0, which has so far directly benefitted over 200,000, is a Kenyan registered non-governmental organisation formed to empower Kenyan women economically and enhance house-hold food security among them through supporting their involvement in livelihood projects.

Operation in about 33 of the country’s 47 counties, JOYWO has mobilised over 150,000 women to participate in economic activities in excess of US$10 million under their revolutionary table banking concept which is now in its sixth year.

Members form small groups of between 15 and 35 members contributing money based on the group’s constitution, the money is then literally placed on the table and is immediately available to be borrowed as loan.

“The money is never banked revolving amongst the members, we all record the transactions in each meeting,” says Irene Tuwei, a member of the Chamgaa [which means the one who loves home in her Kalenjin native language] table banking group.

Members are free to pursue projects of their choice and most of them are involved in agriculture and livestock “we use what we have. Being in rural areas means that our money comes from our land,” she says.

Tuwei is a reformed alcoholic and a polio survivor who, like many, have found success in simple economic ventures.

“Women can achieve great things with very little money, what they need is direction and support. My initial contribution was US$2 only in an entire month. I have about US$1,000 in savings after only four years,” she says.

Her primary aim in JOYWO was to buy a plot and a cow “I wanted a place I could call home,” she says.

Tuwei is now the proud owner of a car which helps her move around, three motorbikes, cows, chicken and pigs.

Mwangangi says that Tuwei’s is only one of the many success stories that can be witnesses through simple but well thought out interventions.

Even as women continue to push for more seats at various decision-making processes, there is a great need for Africa to focus on both the rural and urban poor women and design simple but effective strategies to help alleviate the challenges they face, he says.

(End)

High HIV rates among teens call for interventions on a war-footing. Credit: Miriam Gathigah and Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah and Jeffrey Moyo
NAIROBI, Kenya / HARARE, Zimbabwe, Feb 1 2016 (IPS)

Keziah Juma is coming to terms with her shattered life at the shanty she shares with her family in Kenya’s sprawling Kibera slum where friends and relatives are gathered for her son’s funeral arrangements. While attending an antenatal clinic, Juma who is only 16 years discovered that she had been infected with HIV. “I went into shock and stopped going to the clinic, that is why they could not save my baby and I have been bed-ridden since giving birth two months ago,” she told IPS.

Juma’s struggle to come to terms with her HIV status and to remain healthy mirrors that of many teens in this East African nation. Kenya is one of the six countries accounting for nearly half of the world’s young people aged 15 to 19 years living with HIV. Other than India, the rest are in Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria and Mozambique, according to a 2015 UNICEF report Statistical Update on Children, Adolescents and AIDS.

Yet in the face of this glaring epidemic, Africa’s response has been discouraging with statistics leaving no doubt that the continent is losing the fight against HIV among its teens. Julius Mwangi, an HIV/AIDS activist in Nairobi told IPS that some countries such as Kenya seem to have chosen “to bury their heads in the sand in hopes that the problem will go away.”Despite government statistics indicating that the average age for the first sexual experience has increased from 14 to 16 years among Kenyan teens, this has done little for the country’s fight to combat HIV among its young people.

The Ministry of Health’s fast track plan to end HIV and AIDS shows that only an estimated 24 per cent of teens aged 15 to 19 years know their HIV status. Still in this age group, only about half have ever tested for HIV. Mwangi attributes the country’s high HIV rates among its teens to lack of practical interventions to address the scourge. He referred to the controversy over the Reproductive Health Bill 2014 which provided a significant loophole for young people less than 18 years to access condoms and other family planning services, but was rejected.

Judith Sijeny, a nominated Member of the Senate who sponsored the Bill, says that the proposed piece of legislation was rejected in its original form on grounds that it was encouraging sexual immorality among young people. Sijeny said in addition to providing information on HIV prevention and treatment including advocating for sexual abstinence, the Bill was also “providing a solution by encouraging safe sex.” “Statistics are providing a very clear picture that teenagers, including those living with HIV, are engaging in sexual activities,” she said.

Government statistics show that one in every five youths aged 15 to 24 had sex before the age of 16 years. A revised version of the Bill, which will constitute Kenya’s primary health law for now, states clearly that condoms and family planning pills are not to be given to those under 18 years of age.

While other African nations like Kenya have chosen to be in denial, leaving their young populations vulnerable to early deaths due to HIV, others such as Zimbabwe have vowed to take the bull by its horns. Last year, the Zimbabwean government in conjunction with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched the Condomise Campaign where they distributed small-sized condoms to fit 15-year olds in a bid to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. This is despite this country’s age of consent to sex pegged at the age of 16!

The Condomise Campaign may, however, have come too late for several Zimbabwean teenagers like 16-year old Yeukai Mhofu who is already living with HIV after she was raped by her late stepfather. Regrettably, Mhofu said she may already have infected her boyfriend.“I had unprotected sex with my boyfriend at school and I am afraid I might have infected him. Although I was aware of my HIV status after my rape ordeal by my late stepfather, I succumbed to pressure from my school lover after he kept pestering me for sex and I feared to disclose my status to him because I thought he would hate me,” Mhofu told IPS.

For many Zimbabwean teenagers like 15-year old Loveness Chiroto still in school, the government move to launch condoms for teenagers has left her relieved at the fresh prospect of young people like her to survive the AIDS storm. “Now with government and UNFPA taking a position that we should use condoms, I’m personally happy that as young people we have been given the alternative on how to soldier on amidst the HIV/AIDS scourge,” Chiroto told IPS.

But irked by the Condomise initiative gathering momentum, many adults have vehemently castigated the idea. “Our children need strict grooming in which they are strongly taught the hazards of engaging in premature sexual intercourse; condoms won’t help our young people because even grown-up people are contracting HIV with condoms in their pockets,” Mavis Mbiza, a Zimbabwean mother of two teenage girls
in High school, told IPS.

Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T) legislator and parliamentary portfolio committee on health chairperson, Ruth Labode, is however at variance with many parents like Mbiza. “Is there a difference when an adult is having sex and when a teenager is having sex? If teens are sexually active, condom use for them may be a necessity, I agree because there is also need for such young persons to be protected from STIs as well,” Labode said.

The UNFPA senior technical advisor, Bidia Deperthes went on record saying this Southern African nation’s teenagers from 15 years of age needed to be catered for in the condom distribution as some of them had become sexually active.

Statistics show that 24.5 per cent of Zimbabwean women between the ages 15 to 19 are married and is proof of teenagers being sexually active, which justifies the distribution of condoms to Zimbabwe’s teenagers according to UNFPA. An official from Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Care speaking on condition of anonymity for professional reasons, agreed with UNFPA. “We are highly burdened with HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) even amongst teens, so condoms are very important in reducing new infections of HIV and STIs,” the health official told IPS. In 2007, South Africa’s new Children’s Act came into effect, expanding the scope of several existing children’s rights and explicitly granting new ones.

The Act gave to children 12 years and older a host of rights relating to reproductive health, including access to condoms, this at a time SA’s persons aged 15–24 account for 34 per cent of all new HIV infections. In 2014, at Botswana’s Condomise Campaign launch in conjunction with UNFPA, the organisation’s representative there, Aisha Camara-Drammeh emphasised that condoms were equally crucial for the African nation’s teenagers. “This is an exciting and yet a very crucial moment for us as UNFPA and our stakeholders – including the Ministry of Health, UNAIDS and indeed the young people themselves – to be witnessing the inauguration of this campaign in Botswana. Ensuring access to condoms is a prerequisite for the Sexual and Reproductive Health of young persons,” Drammeh had said then.

According to the UNFPA then, Botswana’s young people were faced with numerous challenges which included high-risk sexual behaviour leading to high teenage unwanted pregnancies, high incidences of HIV infections, low comprehensive knowledge on SRH and HIV and limited access to SRH services and commodities. With condoms use rife amongst Botswana’s young people, the country is witnessing declines on new HIV infections, with the 15–24 year olds’ HIV incidence declining by 25 per cent, according to UNFPA. Even further up in Malawi, in 2013, government there moved in to launch the first-ever national HIV/AIDS prevention drive through a Condomise Campaign seeking to promote and increase condom use among teenagers there.

(End)