Forest loss slows as Asian nations plant
By Richard Black , Environment correspondent, BBC News
Forest loss across the world has slowed, largely due to a switch from felling to planting in Asia.
China, Vietnam, the Philippines and India have all seen their forested areas increase in size.
There are also gains in Europe and North America, but forests are being lost in Africa and Latin America driven by rising demand for food and firewood.
The findings come in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) State of the World’s Forests report.
Environmental groups are warning that priority needs to be given to old forests and the biodiversity they maintain in the face of climate change and growing demand for resources.
Rise of Asia
The FAO report’s formal launch at UN headquarters in New York co-incides with the start of the UN’s International Year of Forests.
The initiative aims to raise awareness of conservation among governments and other stakeholders.
The FAO is urging governments to explore ways of generating income from forests that do not depend on chopping trees down.
Forests now cover about 40 million sq km – just less than one-third of the Earth’s land surface.
Although 52,000 sq km were lost per year between 2000 and 2010, that was a marked improvement on the 83,000 sq km annual figure seen during the previous decade.
Europe traditionally has been the region with the biggest increase; but now, Asia has overtaken it.
A net loss of forest in Asia during the period 1990-2000 has been transformed into a net gain in the decade since.
“China has increased its forest by three million hectares (30,000 sq km) per year – no country has ever done anything like this before, it’s an enormous contribution,” said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, assistant director-general of the FAO’s forestry department.
Madagascar’s forests have been hit hard by illegal logging following political unrest“But we can also highlight the case of Vietnam, a small and densely populated country that’s implemented very smart and comprehensive forest reform – or India, which has not controlled its population as China has and where standards of living are even lower.
“Nevertheless India has achieved a modest growth of its forest area, and the Philippines has turned things around as well – so we’re seeing improvement across Asia except in the weakest states,” he told BBC News.
Dr Rojas-Briales suggested Latin American countries where forest loss continues could learn from East Asian policies, in particular the adoption of land use planning.
The report cites agriculture as the leading cause of deforestation in South and Central America and the Caribbean.
In Africa, the need for firewood is the key factor.
Conservation call
In Asia, South America and Africa, the area covered by deliberately planted forests is increasing, which could mean that old-growth forests continue to disappear while plantations spread.
The report does not distinguish between the two kinds; but Dr Rojas-Briales said plantations overall were not expanding at the expense of old-growth forests, at least not in Asia.
This is supported by the report’s conclusion that in the Asia-Pacific region, the area of forest designated for production has fallen since 2000, with an increase in lands set aside for conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
However, as old-growth forest continues to disappear in some parts of the world, Conservation International is one of several environment groups pressing for increased attention on these areas and their special importance for nature.
“Forests must be seen as more than just a group of trees,” said Olivier Langrand, the organisation’s head of international policy.
“Forests already play an enormous economic role in the development of many countries as a source of timber, food, shelter and recreation, and have an even greater potential that needs to be realised in terms of water provision, erosion prevention and carbon sequestration.”
Conservation International is highlighting 10 places in the world where forests of iconic importance are under threat, including the banks of the Mekong River and the wildlife it supports, the lemur-rich jungles of Madagascarm and the Californian Floristic Province, home of the giant sequoia.
All currently cover less than 10% of their original range.
There are concerns in some quarters that the UN scheme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (Redd) may lead to forests being conserved simply because they store carbon, without taking account of their immediate benefits to wildlife and local people.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12336689
Courtesy : BBC News
Italian wine a life-saver in fight against HIV/Aids
By Duncan Kennedy
BBC News, Tuscany
The natural treasures of Italy are being harnessed to help pay for anti-retroviral drugs for people with HIV/Aids in Africa
“Your very good health” is a popular toast often exchanged between people pinging two glasses of wine together.
Usually it is a gesture that is meant to be more friendly than literal.
But now in Italy, its meaning may, indeed, be taken at face value.
That is not because of the contents of the glass, but because of the bottle.
Italy’s quality wine producers are selling some of their finest vintages with special labels on the bottle to help in the fight against HIV/Aids in Africa.
On the grapevine
The tiny red labels have been put on around two million bottles so far, each bearing the words ‘Wine For Life’.
For every bottle sold, 50 cents (42p) goes to buy anti-retroviral drugs for people in Africa.
“This is about life, it is not about business”, says Luca Sanjust, the owner of the Petrolo winery in Tuscany and one of the producers signed up to the scheme.
Luca led me through the idyllic rolling hills of his vineyards to his production line.
There, workers were putting the red labels on bottles of his delicious Galatrona.
“Wine to us is sacred. Life is sacred, ” Luca says.
“It’s about taking the love that we receive from nature, in the form of wine, and giving it back to the earth, in the form of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Africa.”
This almost spiritual reasoning for supporting the project is shared by many of the 120 wine producers who are now a part of the ‘Wine For Life’ programme.
Luca happens to be a good friend of Jamie Oliver, the British chef who regularly visits Luca’s villa to try out new recipes and buy his olive oil there.
120 wine producers are now part of the scheme in ItalyHis is a medium-sized winery, with the vineyards producing about 70,000 bottles of wine a year.
So, with each bottle making 50 cents, Luca is able to contribute around 35,000 euros (£29,500) a year to the scheme.
African dream
The ‘Wine for Life’ idea did not come from the wine makers, but from the Sant’Egidio Community in Rome.
Founded by students in 1968, Sant’Egidio has grown into a unique mix of Christian charity, social communicator and diplomatic facilitator.
In its long history, it has done everything from providing Christmas lunches for the homeless, to acting as mediator in the Mozambique civil war, leading to the Rome Peace Accord of 1992.
Mario Marrazitti, its ebullient leader, was part of that peace process and is also behind ‘Wine For Life’.
“We were doing work in ten African countries in what we call our ‘Dream’ project and we needed to sustain it, financially”, he tells me amid the tropical plants of Sant’Egidio’s glorious garden in Rome.
“We thought that wine producers were a natural partner in this private/ public arrangement, as they represent a connection with nature, whilst also having the ability to raise money.
I ask Mario if the project has worked.
“It’s been incredible,” he says.
“We believe that about 20,000 children and 2,000 adults have been saved by getting access to the drugs paid for by the wine scheme”.
Natural treasures
The charity behind the wine project believes 20,000 children have been saved as a resultMario now wants to expand it, by getting supermarket chains like Tesco and Carrefour to set up special corners in their stores, where customers can buy a wider range of products with the red labels on.
“Everyone wins,” says Mario.
“The supermarkets will attract a select, socially-conscious, clientele, the producers costs are all covered and the people of Africa get access to the drugs they need, but which governments and other non-governmental organisations can’t always provide,” he says.
In Tuscany and other areas of Italy, soil, weather and care blend to produce some of the world’s finest wines.
Now, those natural treasures are being harnessed for people in a continent hundreds of miles away.
For Luca Sanjust, the link between his land and their life has become sacrosanct, a mission that goes beyond commercialism.
He knows that customers all over Italy are now helping uncork a different kind of revenue stream to fight HIV/Aids and where one of the pleasures of life is now helping to save it.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12130780
Courtesy : BBC News
Nigeria's iron lady takes on fraudsters
Ms Oteh faces a legal action questioning her qualifications
Arunma Oteh, the woman tasked with the unenviable job of policing Nigeria’s financial world, has a warm smile and a piercing stare.
“Wash sales; market rigging; pumping and dumping shares,” she says listing the inventive and multi-layered abuses rampant in Nigeria’s capital market.
“Any infraction will be punished,” she told the BBC.
Ms Oteh, Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission boss, took up the post in January, bringing with her a tough surveillance and enforcement regime.
“We expect to charge the 200 entities and individuals involved,” the financial regulator says quietly.
“We will file civil charges, and criminal charges, where necessary.”
Name and shame
Last year, as major banks veered close to collapse, the government was forced into a $4bn (£2.67bn) bailout of nine lenders.
The central bank governor carried out a forensic cull – the so-called “Friday massacre” – sacking management teams at eight banks.
As the stock market fell, it became apparent some stockbrokers were involved in the scandal – collaborating in abuses ranging from insider share dealing to market manipulation and share price fixing.
Now Ms Oteh wants illegally gained profits made on the stock market to be “disgorged”.
“We will restitute [restore lost money to] investors,” she says.
“Local and international investors need to understand that things have changed.”
A confidential US report details malpractice at the Nigerian Stock Exchange
Working closely with the US financial authorities, Ms Oteh plans to name and shame the individuals and finance companies that contributed to a $50bn crash.
Many people have lost their life savings.
“They [investment companies] spoke to me eloquently, but now I realise there were sharp practices,” says Aruna Bawa, an accountant who lost nearly three quarters of his retirement plan.
“I should have been slowing down at my age. Now I am forced back to work,” he says.
“I struggle long hours to try to rebuild my savings.”
Insolvent stockbrokers
In April, a team from the US Securities and Exchange Commission compiled a confidential report detailing lax oversight at the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the financial regulators.
It details cases of bribery inside the Stock Exchange.
The report describes “dysfunctional” enforcement, “complicated and entrenched governance problems”, “clear instances of insider trading and market manipulation that resulted in no action”, and “woefully inadequate” surveillance.
And it says between 60% and 75% of Nigeria’s stockbrokers are technically insolvent.
Ms Oteh agrees that regulation has not been tight enough in the past.
But a spokesman for the Nigerian Stock Exchange declined to comment on the report.
“It is very likely there are huge losses still to come,” says economist Bismarck Rewane, of Financial Derivatives, a finance research and analysis firm.
“The day that ordinary investors try to retrieve their assets, and find them contaminated, will be an unpleasant day.”
‘Laughable’
And repairing the damage is not easy.
Insiders in the financial world describe an ugly fight-back aimed at Ms Oteh and her plans for tougher oversight and more transparency.
“Oteh faces severe resistance,” said one economist, asking not to be named.
“It’s coming from very influential, powerful individuals. It is a patronage-intensive society, and their influence extends well into government.”
Just months into the job, Ms Oteh faces a legal action, questioning her qualifications.
“It’s laughable,” says Ms Oteh, a former vice-president of the African Development Bank with a Harvard MBA.
“It shows they’re really desperate to try and undermine reform.
“It can only be people who are desperate, who are looking for ways to scuttle reform.”
But she says she will not give up.
“What gives me comfort is that the President, Goodluck Jonathan, is behind us. It’s what he believes in.
“That makes me even more determined.”
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/africa/10464725.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Rapper K'Naan's Wavin' Flag in World Cup triumph
An anthem by Somali-born rapper K’Naan has become the signature tune of this year’s World Cup after being used in Coca Cola commercials and going to number one in 14 countries.
But Wavin’ Flag was not written as a football song – beneath its celebratory tone is the story of its creator’s narrow escape from a life of war and his subsequent rise as a hip-hop star and global role model.
K’Naan was luckier than most Somalis when his country fell into civil war in 1991.
He was just 13 when his mother persuaded a US embassy official to let them leave on the last scheduled Somali Airlines flight, and the family moved to New York before settling in Toronto.
“I have pretty good examples of what has happened to those who hadn’t made the plane,” he says.
“It’s not good. Either they become militia boys, fighting all that time ’til now, or they’ve died.”
K’Naan’s cousins, who he was close to as a child, are among those who stayed. The rapper says he attracted more trouble than they did when he was growing up.
“So I think a lot about that. If they had to be in that world, imagine what it would be for me. I was the kid that they used to follow into danger zones. I was the one always in the front line of things.
“I would say I’m very lucky to be here.”
He performed with Will.i.am at the World Cup Kick-Off Concert
When Wavin’ Flag was originally released last year, it told K’Naan’s story, including the optimistic chorus, sung from his younger self’s point of view: “When I get older, I will be stronger, they’ll call me freedom, just like a waving flag.”
The song, originally an album track, is “about facing the odds and coming out of darkness – despair to hope, that kind of transition and transformation”, K’Naan says.
After it was selected by Coca Cola to be their theme for the tournament in South Africa, lyrics about “so many wars, settling scores” were replaced by lines about champions taking the field, and others about rejoicing in the beautiful game.
But the message and spirit of the song still shine through, the artist believes.
“The happier version contains some kind of melodic power that still pulls people into feeling something other than just a regular, mundane pop song,” he says.
“I think it’s a curtain opener, it takes you back to the original, and maybe because of the original you might find other songs.”
Painful experience
The memorable chorus is still there and the song is on the A list of both BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, meaning it has heavy airplay in the UK.
“Before that, what do you hear?” K’Naan asks. “You don’t hear songs that have any message at all on popular radio. I think it’s still miles more of a message-based song than what it’s playing alongside right now.”
Much of the rapper’s music, he says, reflects the violence and anarchy of his home country. “That experience is what defined me. It made me the person I am today.”
While some American rappers glamorise the gangsta life, K’Naan writes with the painful experience of having seen friends shot dead.
“Some of my songs are more violent than a 50 Cent song, but it’s just a different perspective of looking at violence,” he says. “We look at it from two different lenses.”
If life as a teenager in North America was a new start, it was far from easy.
“I fell into the traps of immigrant life and economic disempowerment, living in metro housing projects and dealing with all the trouble that come along with that,” he explains.
“My friends there in my teenage years started either going to prison or getting killed. That was the real wake-up, when I had lost quite a few of my friends in North America.”
His musical career began to take off at the age of 20 after he delivered a spoken word piece to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees criticising the UN’s Somali aid missions.
In the audience was Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, who was impressed enough to take K’Naan under his wing.
Fans killed
Despite being a cause for celebration in Africa, the World Cup gives further cause for concern in Somalia, where Islamist militants have put a ban on watching matches because such sports, along with pop music, are deemed un-Islamic.
Two people were killed in a house where people were watching a game last weekend, and militants have warned other football fans that they will be publicly flogged, or worse.
“That’s a pretty sore spot for me,” says K’Naan, who waved his country’s flag at the star-studded pre-tournament concert in Johannesburg.
“I’d heard that some people were executed for watching it. It really hurt me because so many Somalis around the world were tuned in to that thing because of my performance, as well as their love for the game.
“It was such a proud moment because I brought out the Somali flag onto the stage in front of millions of people. That’s the thing that so many of them are talking about.
“I just don’t want to have been responsible for people being hurt because they wanted to see their Somali singer get on stage or something. That’s been a real tough thing for me to even think about. It might not be true at all but it’s a thought.”
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10342791.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Youth League Fights AIDS With Soccer
Patrick Barth for The New York Times
MAWEWE, South Africa — Far from the World Cup, in this poor, rural village where there are no paved roads, no nets on the goals and no shoes for many of the players, Clement Nkala, 17, sat in a chair in his soccer uniform and held out his finger to be pricked for an H.I.V. test.
In a country where 5.7 million people are infected with the virus that causes AIDS — the most in the world — the problem is particularly acute here in the Nkomazi district of Mpumalanga Province, near South Africa’s eastern border with Swaziland and Mozambique.
Medical workers estimate that 65 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 in this area, slightly smaller in size than Rhode Island, carry H.I.V. and that 5,000 to 8,000 children under the age of 5 have been orphaned.
“I am thinking of my future,” Nkala said Saturday afternoon. “It is important to know your status.”
Sarah Kate Noftsinger seemed pleased and startled. A player volunteering to be tested in the open, with his friends playing nearby, would not have happened in this remote district 15 months ago, when she started a youth soccer league that has expanded to five villages and 2,500 boys on 160 teams in under-14 and under-17 divisions.
In this culture, parents seldom talk to their children about sex, medical workers said. Many are afraid to be tested for H.I.V., fearing that they might get their fingers pricked one day and die the next. Denial can be more comforting than the stress of knowing. Admission carries the risk of being shunned by a family, by an entire community. Nkala was a breakthrough.
“This is a big step,” said Noftsinger, 29, of Richmond, Va., who is director of sports and leadership for Triad Trust, a Boston-based charity that seeks to reduce AIDS-related deaths.
Subduing H.I.V. in this region of 500,000 people will not happen soon, it is universally agreed. But this is another fledgling attempt, by creating a sports league and educating players, to show that H.I.V. is preventable, that medicine is available for those who are infected and that there can be a big difference between living with H.I.V. and dying from AIDS.
“It’s a way to address something that nobody wants to talk about through a game that everybody loves,” Noftsinger said.
She is a small woman with the ebullient energy of a midfielder, which she was until the Women’s United Soccer Association folded in the United States in 2003.
She first came to this area to give a two-week clinic in December 2008. Five local advocates, in their mid-20s, pleaded with Noftsinger to help them start a sustainable league that could combine soccer and H.I.V. awareness and might prevent another generation from being lost.
Too often, said Zola Ndlovu, the league’s executive liaison, well-meaning Americans put on clinics then leave without training the locals to carry on in their absence.
“When they are gone, we are still dying,” Ndlovu said.
Flying home from that first trip, Noftsinger scribbled a business plan on a napkin. She felt the empathy of a survivor, having twice recovered from colon cancer and from a broken vertebra, sustained while heading a soccer ball.
Surgery was required in 2006 to repair the vertebra and a ruptured disk. A year and a half of lethargy followed, she said, as she healed. She quit taking classes at business school and left her job as an assistant coach for Stanford’s women’s soccer team. The idea of a league in South Africa shifted a stalled Noftsinger back into overdrive. She buzzes about now, carrying three cellphones, writing notes on her hand. Even her name has been compressed from Sarah Kate to Skate.
“Fast forward always, in Charlie Chaplin mode,” said Themba Mahakane, the league’s financial director.
For six weeks at a time, Noftsinger travels here as executive director of the league’s umbrella organization, Triad Nkomazi Rush. She believes the league will survive only if it can be maintained by local leaders. Scheduling, finances, marketing and medical education are administered by a local seven-member executive committee. Her approach is to offer advice but not to take control.
In three years, Noftsinger hopes to make herself obsolete. She envisions the league continuing with full-time jobs for local administrators, coaches and medical workers in an area with an unemployment rate estimated at 60 to 90 percent.
Once a week, players receive instruction about topics like H.I.V., domestic violence and self-confidence. Instruction is provided by medical workers and by an improvisational drama troupe that uses plays, songs, dance and poetry to address social situations encountered in daily life.
Teams with perfect attendance receive uniforms provided by Rush, an American youth soccer organization. To keep the uniforms, players must continue attending the classes. A few girls from a nearby village called Block B have begun taking health lessons and have asked to join a team.
The ultimate goal is to have each player tested for H.I.V. every 90 days, using a fingerprint-based system that keeps the results confidential.
“Triad Nkomazi Rush is trying to make people see that a person with H.I.V. is not the enemy,” said Paul Makofane, the deputy director for sports advancement in Mpumalanga Province. “And they are transferring skills, so we won’t have to rely on the mother programs from the United States. We can run our own.”
Almost everyone in this area has a relative or friend infected with the virus. The mother, father and brother of Nomsa Shabangu, the league’s director of medical education, have all tested positive, she said. Among migrant farm workers, who frequently change sexual partners, she said, the infection rate may be 80 or 90 percent.
Ignorance about sex and disease is rampant. From village to village, myths persist that men can be cured of H.I.V. by having sex with an infant less than 2 years old, or with a virgin, or even with a goat or a dog, Shabangu said. She had her own misunderstandings, giving birth at 16.
“I was not aware that I could get pregnant and have a baby from sexual activity,” Shabangu, 26, said. “Our parents taught us that you go and buy a baby from the hospital or they fall from airplanes. It’s important that we start telling the truth about these things.”
Some H.I.V. transmission results from desperate poverty in Nkomazi villages, where the most thriving business can be the local mortuary, Noftsinger said.
A woman might trade sexual favors to buy a few extra minutes for her cellphone, so she can keep in contact with her relatives, or for help paying the grocery bill so she can feed an extended family decimated by AIDS.
“What do you do when you have to put food on the table for your brothers and sisters because your parents have died?” Noftsinger said.
The nascent league has faced inevitable advances and retreats. On Sunday, in the nearby village of Kamhlushwa, a championship tournament was completed before a monthlong break for winter and the World Cup. Trophies and medals were awarded. But the under-14 title game was suspended for more than an hour as opposing coaches tried to resolve a dispute over a red-card ejection.
By the time the match concluded, the sun had set. Noftsinger piled one of the teams in her pickup so the children would not have to walk more than a mile home in the dark.
“I think I got five more gray hairs today,” she said.
Some days are more heartening, like Saturday, when 14 players in Mawewe agreed to be tested for H.I.V. Nkala stuck out his finger and a drop of blood was placed in a cartridge that resembled a home pregnancy kit.
A few minutes later, the test came back negative. Nkala said he wanted to become sexually active. Through the soccer league, he said, “I know how to protect myself.”
It was important that the players took the test voluntarily instead of being pushed, said Clifford Ndlovu, the league’s marketing director.
“It shows they trust us,” he said.
Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/sports/soccer/11aids.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
Smile, forgive and forget and be a little more Zambian
Zambians have a remarkable ability to set aside grievances and move on – people actually seem to find it hard to bear a grudge.
The Zambian way: Smile, shake hands and act like it never happened
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I had a run-in with the police not long ago.
I had been ordered to pull off the road by an officer who said his camera had clocked me speeding. But I had been pootling along well under the limit and was sceptical about the policeman’s motivation. After all, checkpoints are a well-known source of extra income in Zambia.
So I kicked up a fuss, tried to inspect the speed camera and questioned other, more docile motorists about the speed they had been doing when stopped.
The police officers were furious.
One threatened to lock me up, but settled for scolding me with the most scathing insult she could muster: “You have problems. Take them to hell, not to the police.”
I was still feeling irritated when driving out of town the next day, a mood not improved by being done for speeding – again – by the same police team. A fair cop this time.
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 As the Zambian proverb has it, ‘Two thighs will always rub together’  |
I steeled myself for a humiliating dose of sarcasm, or smugness at least. Instead, a cheery face appeared at the window.
“Hello again,” said the policeman, with no trace of animosity. “How are you today?”
I paid the fine, he waved me off, and I spent the next 100km of my journey marvelling at the remarkable ability of so many Zambians to let bygones be bygones.
But there is an expectation of forgiveness in Zambia.
One Zambia, One Nation
A friend of mine was visited by a former employee who he had sacked for stealing.
The guy wanted his job back. “Surely you didn’t say yes?” I asked my friend.
“I did,” he replied, seemingly as surprised as I was, adding: “It was like he thought yesterday shouldn’t have any bearing on today.”
Certainly Zambians have had a lot of practice at putting the past behind them.
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The decades of British colonialism, for instance, which at its worst, institutionalised the second class status of local people.
A small example – Europeans were allowed into the butchery to select the choice meat. The less appetising cuts were sold to Zambians through a hatch.
Yet these days, race relations are very good.
Or how about the bombing raids by the Rhodesian air force in the years before Zimbabwe fought its way into existence?
Now large numbers of “Rhodies”, as they are known, have been welcomed into Zambia since being hounded off their farms by Mugabe.
Then there is the woeful mismanagement of the country by political leaders.
Mr Kaunda came to power in 1964 after Zambia gained independence
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First among them was Kenneth Kaunda, founding father of the nation, and now at 86, elevated to demi-god status.
I went to a talk where he was guest of honour.
The audience was made up of 40-something professionals, sharp-suited and hard-nosed.
As Kenneth Kaunda reached the podium and danced his trademark jig, the crowd swooned.
“One Zambia,” he called to them. “One Nation,” they chorused happily.
This catechism may be Kenneth Kaunda’s greatest legacy.
He managed to forge a shared identity for a country made up of more than 70 tribes. But he also presided over economic collapse.
By the time he permitted genuine elections in 1991, after 27 years in power, the shops were empty, the nationalised mining industry was ruined and state spies were everywhere.
‘A good man’
A charismatic trade unionist called Frederick Chiluba was agitating for democracy and capitalism. The voters could not wait to dump Kaunda, among them presumably many of these businessmen now gazing at him adoringly.
It is hard to find anyone with an acrimonious word for Kenneth Kaunda, even Taki, a naturalised Zambian and property magnate, who I met propping up his own bar.
He recounted how the first president had confiscated his businesses without compensation.
“How do you feel about him?” I enquired. “Ah he’s a good man,” he said, draining his glass.
President Chiluba recently provided another opportunity for Zambians to display their capacity for forgiveness.
Frederick Chiluba had a reputation for buying designer clothes and shoes
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In 10 years in power, his grand promises delivered wealth only to a select few.
The London High Court ruled that he and his associates had stolen more than $40m (£27m) of public money, but he was acquitted of corruption at Lusaka’s magistrates court.
Ahead of the verdict, one of Zambia’s foremost anti-corruption campaigners told me he wanted a conviction. But then the current president should immediately issue a pardon, he said.
“It would send a message that we are a very forgiving people,” he argued.
Now back in the UK, I am re-adjusting to life in a country where small slights are not so easily overlooked.
Next time someone rubs me up the wrong way, I am going to try to be a little more Zambian about it.
Smile, shake hands and act like it never happened. After all, as the Zambian proverb has it: Two thighs will always rub together.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8718808.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Text messages save pregnant Rwandan women
A man scrolls through his mobile phone to carry out a money transaction in Nairobi May 12, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Noor Khamis
(Reuters) – At midnight Valentine Uwingabire’s back began to hurt. Her husband ran to tell Germaine Uwera, a community health worker in their village in the fertile foothills of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park.
Equipped with a mobile phone from the local health center, Uwera sent an urgent SMS text message and within a quarter of an hour, an ambulance had whisked Valentine to hospital. Minutes later Uwingabire’s third child was born.
“We called our child Manirakoze, which means ‘Thank God’,” she told reporters, sitting outside her mud and bamboo house pitched in the shadow of Karisimbi volcano, home to some of the world’s few remaining highland mountain gorillas.
Had it not been for Rwanda’s new Rapid SMS service, Valentine would have been carried in agony, down the hill to the nearest town on an improvised stretcher.
As is the case in much of Africa, fixed-line telephone networks are virtually non-existent outside of the capital and major cities.
The Rapid SMS scheme — a joint initiative between three U.N. organizations — is being tested in the Musanze District where 432 health workers have received mobile phones.
Health workers register pregnant women in their village via free SMS text messages and send regular updates to a central server in the capital, Kigali. They are monitored during the pregnancy, and those at high risk brought in for check-ups.
Rwanda, Africa’s most densely populated nation, is ranked among the world’s worst for maternal mortality, according to U.N. data, and it is an important target for the global body’s goal to reduce maternal deaths by 75 percent globally by 2015.
“NO MATERNAL DEATHS”
John Kalach, director of the nearest hospital in Ruhengeri, says since Rapid SMS launched in August 2009, his hospital has had no maternal deaths, compared to 10 the previous year.
“We used to get ladies coming here with serious complications just because they delayed the decision because the journey was very long,” he says.
Kalach says authorities can use the data to work out which diseases affect women during pregnancy, the causes of death for children below five years, the volume and type of drugs required, and to monitor population growth rates.
Friday Nwaigwe, UNICEF’s country head of child health and nutrition, says the next step is to give mobile phones to 17,500 maternal health workers across the country and eventually to all 50,000 community health workers.
“In Rwanda we have 750 out of every 100,000 pregnant women die every year. It’s a very big problem,” Nwaigwe says.
Still, in a nation where only six percent of its 10 million-strong population has access to electricity, a country-wide expansion of the scheme may run into problems.
Germaine says to charge her phone she has to walk 20 minutes to the nearest charging booth, and Kalach says some remote areas of the hilly country do not yet have network coverage.
But surrounded by trees heaving with chandeliers of green bananas and fields bursting with beans, Uwera and Uwingabire agree a simple text message has had a big impact on their lives.
“We used to use a traditional ambulance made of mats, like a stretcher made of papyrus and sticks. It takes one hour by walking — or five minutes in a car,” Germaine says, cradling baby Manirakoze and proudly brandishing her mobile telephone.
Reference Link
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64R2CL20100528?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth1100
Courtesy
Thomson Reuters
Mobile banking closes poverty gap
Mobile banking has transformed the way people in the developing world transfer money and now it is poised to offer more sophisticated banking services which could make a real difference to people’s lives.
Currently 2.7bn people living in the developing world do not have access to any sort of financial service. At the same time 1bn people throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia own a mobile phone.
As a result, mobile money services are springing up all over the developing world. According to mobile industry group the GSMA there are now 65 mobile money systems operating around the globe, with a further 82 about to be launched.
Most offer basic services such as money transfers, which are incredibly important for migrant workers who need to send cash back to their families.
M-Pesa in Kenya is perhaps the most famous of these and it has attracted 9.4 million Kenyans in just under three years.
Now it is ready to move to the next stage. M-Pesa, has recently partnered with Kenya’s Equity Bank to offer subscribers a savings account, called M-Kesho.
Money Matters
It means their M-Pesa accounts will no longer be just about money transfer. Instead, they will become virtual bank accounts, allowing customers to open saving accounts, earn interest on their money and access credit and insurance products.
It is an extension to an earlier agreement with Equity Bank to allow M-Pesa customers to access their funds at ATMs around the country.
CGAP, a financial think tank based at the World Bank, was at the launch of M-Kesho.
“Kenya is sending a message to the world: poor people want savings accounts. Mobile banking is a powerful way to deliver savings services to the billion people worldwide who have a cell phone but not a bank account,” said CGAP chief executive Alexia Latortue.
Meanwhile in Uganda, MTN, a mobile firm that runs a similar mobile money service has ratcheted up 890,000 users in its first year of operation. This is double what it forecast.
Richard Mwami, head of mobile money at MTN predicts the service will have 2m users by the end of the year, and 3.5m by 2012.
He admits that one of the biggest challenges of setting up the system was regulating the agents that provide the cash.
“We have had liquidity problems where customers walk into the shop and there is no money,” he said.
And fraud is also a problem, running to one or two cases every couple of weeks.
Some 60% of users live in rural areas, where literacy rates are low and agents are often local shopkeepers, authorised to take deposits and issue cash.
“There is ignorance about how the service works,” he said.
MTN has now begun an education programme, promoting and explaining the service on national radio.
Only 38% of Ugandan citizens have a bank account. Micro-economy
Gavin Krugel, head of mobile money at the GSM Association (GSMA) believes agents are more trusted than traditional banks.
“Banks have revolving doors and armed security guards. Consumers believe they are for the rich only,” he said.
By contrast, agents tend to be trusted retailers who have been selling airtime to the same customers for the past ten years.
“Every one of the agents are trained and those that misbehave are taken out of the system,” he said.
Aletha Ling, executive director of Fundamo, the platform behind MTN Uganda’s mobile system, said the challenges are worth it because it is easy to see how it is benefitting customers.
“Money gets sent from the cities to the rural areas where it is required. Less cash passes hands so it is much more secure. Previously people were travelling with huge amounts of money,” she said.
“In one fishing village I visited it had created its own micro-economy,” she said.
In Uganda the banking population is low with only 38% having a bank account and only 7% using more than one banking product.
Mobile banking can also provide a route out of poverty, according to the newly-appointed UK International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell.
Speaking at the GSMA’s mobile money summit in Rio de Janeiro this week he said:
“Access to basic financial services – the ability to save, transfer and invest even small amounts of money – can make a huge difference to people around the world. It can help a farmer to survive a bad harvest, or provide a slum-dweller with the vital capital needed to start a small business,”
This is a view echoed by Mr Mwami.
“The mobile phone is demystified. People are confident about using it and the market is there for the taking,” he said.
Disruptive technology
Last year Bill Gates pledged $5m to help the world’s poor access banking accounts. The Mobile Money for the Unbanked Fund is being administered by the GSMA Foundation.
It has announced the projects which will benefit from the money.
It includes Bangladesh’s Grameenphone which hopes to enhance its mobile money service with services such as a mobile ticketing service for Bangladesh Railways.
Money will also go to Orange Money to introduce more advanced financial services in Western Africa, where less than 4% of the population have banking.
Safaricom, the mobile firm behind M-Pesa, will get a grant to help non-government organisations and the Kenyan government get much-needed money to vulnerable households in informal settlements in Nairobi.
In Cambodia, the majority of payroll is given in cash and Cellcard is hoping to set up money transfer, bill payment and airtime top-up to urban migrants desperate to send money home to famiies in rural areas.
Similar projects in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Fiji will also also benefit from the fund.
Mobile banking is a slow burn, said Mr Krugel, but a potentially revolutionary one as long as it is born from what consumers ask for.
“In many of these markets offering a fully-fleged bank account would be a waste of time. Consumers need to understand the basics first,” he said.
“At first they don’t trust the system. Then they can see that it works and eventually they start to leave some money in their account. This is how they start lifting themselves out of poverty,” he said.
The next stage is more sophisticated services such as funeral or hospital insurance.
“In African culture, for example, they believe strongly in respect and funeral insurance is extremely important,” he said.
Traditional banks are now beginning to wake up to the threat posed by mobile services and are increasingly partnering with the mobile firms to tap the potential of a whole new market.
“M-Pesa was sufficiently disruptive that it forced the banks to respond. If the banks do see these services as a threat they will realise there is opportunity at the base of the economic pyramid and that is a job well done by the mobile industry,” said Mr Krugel.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10156667.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Vocational training in Uganda
UBC’s Bart Kakooza visits a vocational training center for orphans and ex-combatants in Uganda.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Reference Link
http://us.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/05/31/wv.training.uganda.bk.b.cnn
Courtesy
Cable News Network
Text messages save pregnant Rwandan women
// // // // // // //
A man scrolls through his mobile phone to carry out a money transaction in Nairobi May 12, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Noor Khamis
(Reuters) – At midnight Valentine Uwingabire’s back began to hurt. Her husband ran to tell Germaine Uwera, a community health worker in their village in the fertile foothills of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park.
Equipped with a mobile phone from the local health center, Uwera sent an urgent SMS text message and within a quarter of an hour, an ambulance had whisked Valentine to hospital. Minutes later Uwingabire’s third child was born.
“We called our child Manirakoze, which means ‘Thank God’,” she told reporters, sitting outside her mud and bamboo house pitched in the shadow of Karisimbi volcano, home to some of the world’s few remaining highland mountain gorillas.
Had it not been for Rwanda’s new Rapid SMS service, Valentine would have been carried in agony, down the hill to the nearest town on an improvised stretcher.
As is the case in much of Africa, fixed-line telephone networks are virtually non-existent outside of the capital and major cities.
The Rapid SMS scheme — a joint initiative between three U.N. organizations — is being tested in the Musanze District where 432 health workers have received mobile phones.
Health workers register pregnant women in their village via free SMS text messages and send regular updates to a central server in the capital, Kigali. They are monitored during the pregnancy, and those at high risk brought in for check-ups.
Rwanda, Africa’s most densely populated nation, is ranked among the world’s worst for maternal mortality, according to U.N. data, and it is an important target for the global body’s goal to reduce maternal deaths by 75 percent globally by 2015.
“NO MATERNAL DEATHS”
John Kalach, director of the nearest hospital in Ruhengeri, says since Rapid SMS launched in August 2009, his hospital has had no maternal deaths, compared to 10 the previous year.
“We used to get ladies coming here with serious complications just because they delayed the decision because the journey was very long,” he says.
Kalach says authorities can use the data to work out which diseases affect women during pregnancy, the causes of death for children below five years, the volume and type of drugs required, and to monitor population growth rates.
Friday Nwaigwe, UNICEF’s country head of child health and nutrition, says the next step is to give mobile phones to 17,500 maternal health workers across the country and eventually to all 50,000 community health workers.
“In Rwanda we have 750 out of every 100,000 pregnant women die every year. It’s a very big problem,” Nwaigwe says.
Still, in a nation where only six percent of its 10 million-strong population has access to electricity, a country-wide expansion of the scheme may run into problems.
Germaine says to charge her phone she has to walk 20 minutes to the nearest charging booth, and Kalach says some remote areas of the hilly country do not yet have network coverage.
But surrounded by trees heaving with chandeliers of green bananas and fields bursting with beans, Uwera and Uwingabire agree a simple text message has had a big impact on their lives.
“We used to use a traditional ambulance made of mats, like a stretcher made of papyrus and sticks. It takes one hour by walking — or five minutes in a car,” Germaine says, cradling baby Manirakoze and proudly brandishing her mobile telephone.
(Editing by Jeremy Clarke and Michael Roddy)
Reference Link
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64R2CL20100528?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth1100
Courtesy
Thomson Reuters
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