Africa Archives - Humanosphere

Africa

China’s Colonizing Africa? Not so Much |

When people take a break from debating whether Africa is or is not rising, they like to talk about China. The emerging economic powerhouse is making its mark on Sub Saharan Africa by support port projects in Kenya, mines in Zambia and standing behind the Sudanese government.

The activities mean China is slowly becoming a development player and does have an impact on the other big donors. A project from AidData and William & Mary University estimated that China has committed $75 billion for aid and development projects in Africa. That is less than the $90 billion committed by the US during the same period. However, some fear that China is using its money to not only wield influence over the continent, but impose a sort of neo-colonial rule over some countries. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Africa, Banda, China, Economist, Guardian, Malawi

May 20, 2013 | 12:00 PM | By Tom Murphy |

The promise and pitfalls in efforts to reform US foreign food aid |

: Haitians Receive Boxes of USAID Food Aid; USAID

Food aid reforms came under the spotlight last month when the Obama Administration announced its Fiscal Year 2014 budget.

The changes are important to humanitarian response. Oxfam America estimates that reforms to food aid procurement laws could speed up crisis response by 14 weeks and reach an additional 17.1 million people. For a crisis like the 2010 drought in the Horn of Africa, that improved response time could have saved thousands of lives.

“The current approach to food aid can become, at times, an impediment to its very own mission,” said USAID Administrator Raj Shah.

Humanitarian groups were mostly supportive in response and contractors were unhappy that changes would affect their business. What looked like positive momentum for reform is starting to slow down as both houses of Congress take a look at the Farm Bill and food aid reform both in and out of the United States.

“The agriculture industry in the Midwest sees this as a threat to exports, which is ridiculous,” said former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios to Businessweek, a supporter of food aid reform during his tenure with the Bush Administration. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Africa, agriculture, drought, Feed the Future, food aid, food for peace, Horn of Africa, Oxfam, Raj Shah, reform

May 10, 2013 | 1:00 PM | By Ansel Herz |

At the intersection of health and peace, a genocide survivor returns to Burundi |

Burundi has some of the world’s worst health indicators, including high rates of child malnutrition and mortality. It suffered from the same genocidal catastrophe that Rwanda did in the mid-1990s.

But you don’t hear much about Burundi in aid and development circles. In this week’s podcast, we explore this enigma with Deogratias Niyizonkiza – Deo for short – a survivor of the genocide who is trying to rebuild his country through his non-profit, community based health organization Village Health Works.

Deo’s extraordinary life is the subject of Tracy Kidder’s best-selling book The Strength In What Remains. He’s without question one of the most inspiring people I’ve met this year. Tune into hear Deo discuss his escape from genocide, what it was like to arrive here penniless from a country most have never heard of (there’s a funny story there) and Village Heatlth Works’ truly grassroots community-building work.

Listen or download the mp3 below.

Deo on Burundi, Village Health Works, and more Download

FILED UNDER: Podcasts, Africa, Burundi, Deo, health, poverty, Tracy Kidder, Village Health Works

March 26, 2013 | 11:20 AM | By Tom Murphy |

African agriculture threatened by funding drought & bad trade policies |

: Morgana Wingard

African countries are making promising agricultural gains, but the progress remains in the balance due to a $4.4 billion funding shortfall, warns a new report by the ONE Campaign. That is in addition to $11 billion in agriculture funding pledged by G8 nations that has yet to be disbursed.

The ONE report cites 2013 as an important year for agriculture in Africa because it is a time when international and domestic funding agreements come to an end.

“African leaders have the opportunity to deliver on their goals of lifting millions from extreme poverty and hunger and preventing chronic malnutrition by meeting these commitments,” write the report’s authors.

Edward Carr of the University of South Carolina was generally supportive of the report, but noted that the problem of agriculture may be one that is about markets rather than production.

“There is no discussion on the massive rate of loss between farm gate and market in this region,” said Carr. “The report raises further questions. Is there really a production shortfall or a marketable crop shortfall?” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Africa, agriculture, AU, Ethiopia, food, Nutrition, ONE

March 12, 2013 | 8:52 AM | By Tom Murphy |

The Problems with Western Journalists in Africa |

Western journalists were rightly criticized for the overall level of coverage surrounding the Kenyan elections. However, it is a case that is a part of what seems to be the rule rather than the exception when it comes to how Western reporters will tell stories from the African continent.

The image of a western journalist interviewing a traditional African may seem like a trope of the past, but look no further than the below image from a PBS MediaShift report.

Cornell University English professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi makes the case in Africa Is a Country that Western journalists continue to fail to “tell the whole story of humanity at work.” He says that American reporting on tragedies that took place in the US show dignity of the victims and tell stories of heroism and triumph during tragedy.

A three paragraph article in Reuters offered the choice terms “tribal blood-letting” to reference the 2007 post-electoral violence, and “loyalists from rival tribes” to talk about the hard-earned right to cast a vote. Virtually all the longer pieces from Reuters on the elections used the concept of tribal blood-letting. CNN also ran a story in February of this year that showed five or so men somewhere in a Kenyan jungle playing war games with homemade guns, a handful of bullets and rusty machetes – war paint and all.

Such stories do not make it into the coverage of tragedy from Africa. However, he neglects to recognize the constraints on foreign correspondents or journalists who report on Africa. Page space for stories about Africa is few and far between these days.

Not to excuse poor reporting, rather I point it out to say that it is far more challenging than domestic news. Major tragedies in the United States feel like they are over covered as the press corps descends upon the location of the event and tries to pump out every story possible. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Africa, Africa Is a Country, journalism, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Reporting, sierra leone

January 18, 2013 | 12:09 PM | By Tom Murphy |

Tony Blair’s odd poster child for advancing good African governance |

: Tony Blair and Paul Kagame

Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair wants to end aid dependence by fostering better governance, especially in Africa.

Since moving off the geopolitical center stage, Blair has inserted himself into several new supporting roles that could generally be lumped together as world betterment consultant.

For one such role, there is Blair’s African Governance Initiative. One of his shining examples of good African governance is Rwandan President Paul Kagame — a leader widely credited with reviving Rwanda’s economy over the past 15-plus years and building up strong domestic institutions. Unfortunately, Kagame is also increasingly becoming widely ‘celebrated’ for fueling warfare in neighboring DR Congo, acting like a dictator at home and committing various human rights violations.

“At the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), we believe that the developed world has been quick to act against bad leaders, but slow to support good ones,” writes AGI head Kate Gross in the Stanford Social Innovation Review recently. She then proceeds to talk about the work that the AGI has done with Kagame, describing how it has “fundamentally shaped our model.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Africa, development, foreign aid, governance, Paul Kagame, Tony Blair

January 7, 2013 | 10:21 AM | By Tom Murphy |

The latest trend in the fight against poverty and inequity: Good news! |

By Tom Murphy, Humanosphere correspondent east

Telling good news, success stories, is the latest trend for many in the aid and development community.

Good stories especially need to be told about Africa, says Oxfam Great Britain, to document the progress being made amid all the problems

“In order for people to understand what’s happening in Africa, we’ve also got to tell the good stories, and there has been good news in Africa,” said Oxfam GB head Dame Barbara Stocking in an interview about the campaign for SkyNews.

Stocking contends the media and many charities tend to mostly focus on negative stories of conflict and suffering, neglecting the good news stories and creating a distorted view. Oxfam GB is the latest to change its marketing angle towards telling good stories based on the belief that people need to see evidence of progress.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation operates along similar lines, funding media to do success stories and recently launching a grant program specifically supporting communications projects aimed at showing that humanitarian aid is working.

But is a focus on good news any less likely to distort the picture than a focus on bad news? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Africa, media, Oxfam

October 1, 2012 | 11:30 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Q&A with an architect of the Gates-funded ‘green revolution’ for Africa |

Flickr, agrforum

Kofi Annan and Melinda Gates at 2012 African Green Revolution Forum, Tanzania

While Bill Gates was in New York City to stump for polio eradication at last week’s ‘high-level’ side meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, Melinda Gates was attending another fairly high-level meeting in Arusha, Tanzania – the African Green Revolution Forum.

One of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s top priorities is to improve agricultural productivity and the lives of smallholder farmers in Africa, where crop yields have historically been much lower than elsewhere in the world contributing to much of the continent’s poverty. Most Africans are smallholder farmers, most farmers are women and most are poor.

With former United Nations Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan as its leading spokesman, the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation in 2006 launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

It hasn’t been without controversy.

To begin with, the term “Green Revolution” comes with baggage. The first Green Revolution was an agricultural reform initiative led half a century ago by an amazing agricultural scientist named Norman Borlaug and pushed by the Rockefeller Foundation aimed at improving crop yields in poor countries.

That first Green Revolution in the 1950s and ’60s did improve yields dramatically in many regions of the world, saving lives and ending hunger. But it also promoted a Western-style, industrialized approach to agriculture that favored large-scale monoculture crops and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This had the adverse effect of knocking many smallholder farmers off their land in favor of corporate farming, caused environmental problems and actually sometimes increased costs for farmers. The lesson: Improving crop yield isn’t everything.

Also, Africa got skipped over in the first Green Revolution.

So when the Gates Foundation announced a few years back that it was sponsoring a second Green Revolution for Africa, many took them as fighting words. Organizations like Seattle-based AGRA Watch is a leading critic of the Gates approach and has organized protests focused on the philanthropy’s partnerships with big agri-businesses like Monsanto.

Gates Foundation

Roy Steiner

Roy Steiner is deputy director for agriculture in the development program at the Gates Foundation. Roy, who as been there since before the philanthropy dug into the dirt, has degrees in all sort of things from all sorts of major universities. He has lived in Africa and worked on a number of projects, both agricultural and technological, and went to the meeting last week in Tanzania as well.

I asked Roy to explain where they are with this ‘green revolution’ for Africa, what it is the world’s biggest philanthropy is trying to do for poor farmers and why it remains controversial.

Q Why is the idea of launching a ‘green revolution’ for Africa so controversial?

RS: I think it’s more problematic in the north than in Africa. Many African leaders want a green revolution. They want to be able to feed their people and move away from food aid. The first green revolution did cause some significant social, economic and environmental problems and we don’t want to repeat those problems.

Continue reading →