No Green Power for Mozambique

The UK government could face a legal battle after offering more than $1bn in financial support to help build a gas project in Mozambique despite its commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

Under the deal, UK funds will be used to help develop and export Mozambique’s gas reserves, in one of the largest single financing packages ever offered by a UK credit agency to a foreign fossil fuel project.

The government’s foreign credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), will offer loans worth $300m to British companies working on the gas project, and will also guarantee loans from commercial banks worth up to $850m.

The decision taken by UKEF, which has been accused of “rank hypocrisy” over its record on fossil fuel financing, has emerged just over a year after MPs on the environmental audit committee called for an end to government support for polluting projects overseas, saying it “undermines the UK’s climate commitments”.

Mozambique LNG is classed as a category-A project under OECD guidelines, which means it risks significant adverse environmental or social impacts that are irreversible or unprecedented, and requires prospective backers to undertake an impact assessment review.

 Friends of the Earth have accused the government of failing to take into account the project’s impact on efforts to tackle the climate crisis, and warned that they may call for a judicial review of the decision.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/20/uk-could-face-lawsuit-over-1bn-aid-to-mozambique-gas-project

To Be Like Singapore

Nearly 25 years ago, Jerry Rawlings, the president of Ghana at the time, presented a document to parliament. In it, he outlined an aggressive long-term plan that would improve his country's human and economic growth, rural and urban development, as well as overhaul its infrastructure. The aim was to follow Singapore's example. The document was called Vision 2020.

According to Rawling's vision, Singapore had transformed itself from a third-world country in the 1960s to a middle-income country in a short time.  However, whereas the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lists Singapore as the third-richest country per capita on the planet, Ghana is languishing down at number 126. The vision appears to have badly stalled.

"We are in 2020, the time that we wanted to achieve a level of growth that is comparable to Singapore, but we have worse figures," Ziblim Alhassan, a Ghanaian policy analyst, told DW.

While the west African nation has managed to reduce its poverty rate in the past decades, the increased standard of living is not evenly distributed. Ziblim Alhassan said the number of Ghanaians living in extreme poverty has increased. 

The 2017 Ibrahim Index of African Governance shows that although Ghana remains among the 10 top-scoring countries on the continent in terms of democracy and good governance, it is also among the 10 countries that have deteriorated the most economically over the last decade.

Rwanda is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that has come close to emulating Singapore's rags-to-riches story, albeit not in the same spectacular style.

The small landlocked central African nation boasts years of strong economic growth, pristine streets in the capital Kigali and donor praise for fighting corruption. "Beating the odds is a challenge we Rwandans and Singaporeans share," Rwanda's President Paul Kagame told Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong, the son of Lee Kuan Yew, on a visit to the Asian state in 2008.  Kagame referred to Singapore as "an inspiration for us in Rwanda," Reuters reported then.  

Critics of Kagame's government argue that economic gains have come at the cost of political freedoms like a clampdown on dissenting views and media rights. Kagame has been president of Rwanda since 2000. By contrast, Ghana has peacefully exchanged power in four presidencies.

https://www.dw.com/en/rwanda-singapore-ghana/a-54213958

Testing Kit Shortages in Africa

Central African Republic’s health minister has blasted a "big inequality crisis" in coronavirus testing as he sees rich countries conduct hundreds of thousands of tests daily while his own struggles to obtain supplies for a couple of hundred at most.

Pierre Somse told a World Health Organization (WHO) briefing on Thursday that "we are in a scarcity, a misery of tests" - a blunt assessment of the scrambling by African nations and rising fears as the pandemic’s first wave hits the continent of 1.3 billion people.  The head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong ,warned that as Africa's cases continue to climb sharply "we are in for a long, long journey".

Somse said his country of more than four million people is still waiting for testing supplies ordered via the WHO.

"I believe this is due to global competition, this is well known," he said. "It’s hiding a major health problem because we cannot have the real situation,” the health minister said. Without donations of testing materials from the Chinese, “we could not have done nothing, nothing at all".

He called for more than just talk about global solidarity in the pandemic, especially for "small and fragile" states, saying his own is being "completely overlooked" in the global race for testing and medical supplies.

There is no doubt about the lack of testing materials, especially for low-income countries that rely on international support for procurement, said the WHO Africa chief, Matshidiso Moeti.

Even South Africa, the continent's most developed country, has pointed out shortages of testing materials as the backlog of tests at one point reached nearly 100,000 and the average wait for some results reached 12 days.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/car-minister-blasts-inequality-crisis-coronavirus-testing-200716133605969.html

The "things the West likes to hear."

It almost sounds like another revolution in Sudan: The crime of apostasy scrapped, female genital mutilation banned, alcohol allowed.  In addition, traveling with children will now require the authorization of both sets of parents, and no longer only the father's. The ongoing reversal of four decades of hard-line Islamist policies and Sharia law — one year after a popular uprising toppled autocrat leader Omar al-Bashir — is being hailed across the world as much-needed progress.

Analyst and academic Magdi el-Gizouli cautions that they should be taken with a grain of salt: "I think it requires a bit of qualification," he told DW, highlighting his fears that the government's measures could further divide and polarize Sudanese society. The fellow of the Rift Valley Institute is skeptical about the practical effects of the announced changes. He thinks the new government is paying lip-service to those who want see change on paper.

The decision to scrap the crime of apostasy can be seen as an example: The death penalty for reasons of belief was applied only once to an elderly man, before al-Bashir came to power in 1989.

"There was the case of this young woman in 2014 [Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag], who converted to Christianity and was put before a court. However, international pressure and local pressure averted any judgment and she eventually left the country," el-Gizouli said.

The law criminalizing apostasy was an instrument the state wielded against political opponents. "Striking it off the books would mean that the government will not prosecute you for changing your religion. That is sort of a marginal event anyway. It doesn't happen very often that people switch religions," el-Gizouli told DW. 

He does believe that banning FGM is an important step by the government, but he doubts that using the law is the right way to fight this kind of violence against women and girls. It's an issue that remains controversial: "It's not the first time that a government has issued a law to criminalize FGM. It's somehow a sign of progressive governments or self-defined progressive governments."

Both previous attempts at banning FGM, first during colonial times and later in the 1970s, produced no tangible results and were met with fierce resistance by the population. According to a 2014 report by UNICEF, Sudan's FGM prevalence rate is still 86.6%. 

"This third attempt carries the risk of criminalizing the poor, in the sense that it is not clear yet from the letter of the law who will fall under its jurisdiction. Is it the mother, the midwife who practices FGM, the doctor in the hospital?" el-Gizouli said. According to el-Gazouli, the ban interferes with deep-rooted sociocultural norms in Sudan: "I'm not sure legal means are the best way to fight something that happens in homes and is considered a cultural practice," he said.

 Others, such as Sudanese activist Rua Osman, see a certain danger in the potential for this amendment to be used for political ends by conservative forces.

"They [conservative opponents] will try to say that the present government are not Muslim and that they are acting against Islam," she told DW. She believes it won't be easy for society to accept the changes: "We need laws to protect us from that that society," she said. Osman welcomed another measure taken by the ruling council: In future, both the mother and father of a child or children will have to authorize travel if only one of them is traveling with the child or children. To date, only the father has been allowed to give a mother authorization, but not the other way around. This made life particularly difficult for divorced women. "It is a good start in protecting mothers' rights and giving mothers their rights over their children," Osman said.

 El-Gizouli is more skeptical about the move: "We're talking about traveling by crossing through an airport. It is a step forward, there is no doubt about it. However, most of the women who are affected by these problems don't travel through airports," he explained.

 Another change in the criminal code is an amendment to a law that punishes prostitution. Sexual intercourse for money will now only be punishable if it takes place in a location that is dedicated to the sale of sexual favors, such as a brothel.

 "If you're a well-off client, who drives a big car and has a nice apartment, the law will not apply to you," el-Gizouli said. He added that impoverished women forced into prostitution are not protected by the legal amendment — even in their own homes.

In short, "For the lifestyle of a certain segment of the population in Khartoum, these are welcome changes," el-Gizouli said. Yet he also sees a certain lack of scrutiny of the measures among those applauding them. "For the audience that welcomes these changes, the details are a bit inconvenient," he said, referring to Western donors, who have long pushed for more progressive laws in Sudan. El-Gizouli has no doubts the transitional government is serious about the changes, but he also says they echo "things the West likes to hear."

Decapitating Cecil Rhodes

Activists in Cape Town, South Africa,  have beheaded a statue of the 19th-century British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, a diamond magnate who became wealthy through the labour of black miners and then limited the amount of land they could own.

Activists in South Africa have long targeted sites affiliated with Rhodes because of his role in implementing racist policies in the late 19th century. While serving as the prime minister of Cape Colony – now South Africa – he introduced legislation in 1894 that limited the amount of land black residents could own. The policy ultimately shaped racial inequities in land ownership for generations. The British South Africa Company he founded imposed white-minority rule over what are now the independent countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

"People just pretend everything's fine."

Health services and hospitals in South Africa are near to collapse. Key staff on strike or sick with coronavirus in the Eastern Cape province, nurses are forced to act as cleaners, surgeons are washing their own hospital laundry and there are alarming reports of unborn babies dying in overcrowded and understaffed maternity wards. At Livingstone Hospital - designated as the main Covid-19 hospital in the district - doctors and nurses described scenes "like a war situation" with blood and waste on the floors, a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), oxygen shortages, a severe shortage of ambulances, no ventilation and patients sleeping "under newspaper". Rats have also been spotted feeding on hospital waste pouring into an open drain.

As doctors, unions and management fight over scarce resources, one senior doctor described the situation as "an epic failure of a deeply corrupt system", while another spoke of "institutional burn-out… a sense of chronic exploitation, the department of health essentially bankrupt, and a system on its knees with no strategic management".

"There's a huge amount of fear, and of mental and emotional fatigue. We were working with a skeleton staff even before Covid-19 and now we're down another 30%," said Dr John Black. "Services are starting to crumble under the strain. Covid has opened up all the chronic cracks in the system. It's creating a lot of conflict," he said, confirming reports that patients had been "fighting for oxygen" supplies in a ward at Livingstone Hospital in Port Elizabeth. Dr Black - one of only two infectious disease specialists in a province with a population of about seven million - was the only doctor in Port Elizabeth who agreed to talk to us on the record, but a dozen nurses and doctors spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing they would lose their jobs if they were identified.

"Doctors scrabbled to do the most urgent of surgeries, portering, scrubbing the floors, working with one or two remaining nursing staff. Matrons were washing linen," one doctor wrote by email.

"Every day I come to work in fear," said a senior nurse who had just finished her shift.

"The infection numbers are going up. Every day we've got chaos. There are a lot of pregnant women all over the wards," said another nurse.

Several doctors said staff had been left deeply traumatised by a recent episode where a maternity ward at Port Elizabeth's Dora Nginza Hospital became so overwhelmed that several mothers and infants died. 

"I was personally involved in the delivery of two dead infants and know there were more. This is very unusual. To have several mummies and babies dying in one week in one hospital is totally unheard of and unacceptable," said one medic.

They were convinced the deaths were almost certainly the result of severe understaffing, which left many pregnant women waiting for days, sometimes lying in corridors, for urgent surgery. Three other medical officials with knowledge of the relevant wards confirmed the reports of an unusual number of stillborn infants in recent weeks.

he sense of a deepening crisis has been compounded by a lack of proper management, which has seen departments turning on each other, and using Covid-19 as an "opportunity to air every grievance that ever happened", according to one official.

Livingstone Hospital has been without a permanent chief executive officer or management team for a year and a half, after the last team was sacked for alleged corruption.

"We've been rudderless for some time now," said Dr Black bemoaning the lack of "strong leadership" to stabilise escalating conflicts between different departments at the hospital, and, in particular, with local unions.

"It's not true at all that we're exploiting the situation," said Khaya Sodidi, provincial secretary of the nurses' union, the Democratic Nurses Organisation of South Africa. "Our nurses are overwhelmed, having to clean floors or cook because kitchen staff are not working. We cannot risk the lives or nurses. They're human beings."

Several doctors defended the strike action, saying that frontline staff had been pushed to the limit, not just by Covid-19, but by years of exploitation.

"I'm grateful to the unions right now. Sometimes they focus on the wrong issues but at least they're highlighting the problems," said one senior doctor.

Another criticised the repeated closure of community clinics because of "one or two infections" as an "over-reaction," but said the situation needed to be put in context.

"Staff have been chronically exploited, abused and neglected for years and now they're being asked to do something that could potentially kill them. There's an institutional burn-out," said the doctor.

There is general agreement among unions and medical staff that the current crisis is the direct result of many years of systematic underfunding, mismanagement and corruption in one of South Africa's most notoriously badly-run provinces. Estimates vary, but Livingstone Hospital is currently fighting the pandemic with about a third of what's considered appropriate staffing numbers.

"We have historic issues of staff-shortages, labour problems, lack of leadership and, sadly, corruption, cronyism, and fiscal mismanagement. Health services were circling the drain for 10 years. Now they've collapsed," said Cole Cameron of the Igazi Foundation, a local health non-governmental organisation.

Two people with knowledge of the situation confirmed that the provincial health department was generally seen as so inept and dysfunctional that private donors, businesses and charitable funds anxious to help in the fight against Covid-19 were refusing to deal directly with it.

"You can't administer anything through them because it'll go missing. It all boils down to the fact that the department is dysfunctional beyond belief and has no money," said one source.

One doctor cited a "culture of not wanting to discomfort your superiors which means people don't often tell it like it really is. People just pretend everything's fine."

It appears that staff at Livingstone hospital, for instance, have split into three distinct groups:

• There are a small number of the "willing," who still turn up for work, despite the risks, out of a profound sense of duty. "I can't say I will give up. They are our families, our children, our mothers," said one nurse of her patients.
• There is a second group of people whose fear and frustration has overwhelmed them and who are not prepared to return to work. "They're not necessarily unwilling, they're just afraid," said a doctor.
• And then there is a third group. "The plain obstructive - a huge element, passive or overtly aggressive," said another source. For them, any sense "of altruism, or duty, has gone. It went a long time ago".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53396057

Vaccination Vacuum

Nearly 14 million children globally were not immunised against preventable illnesses last year, according to a joint report by two UN agencies: WHO and Unicef.

More than half of these children are in Africa with those living in countries in conflict being the most affected, Dr Robin Nandy, chief of immunisation at Unicef, told the BBC.

“Some of the missed vaccines are against [diseases like]: polio; measles; meningitis; diphtheria; tetanus and whooping cough. Of greater concern to us are children who have not been immunised against measles,” Dr Nandy said.

Children living in remote rural areas and urban slums are also said to be vulnerable.

Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Chad, Central African Republic and South Sudan are some of the African countries with high numbers of children who have not been vaccinated.

The report also warns that the number of children likely to miss vaccinations this year could double as a result of disruption to immunisation services due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In March, the WHO advised countries to temporarily suspend mass vaccination campaigns, until effective measures for reducing Covid-19 transmission were established.

So far, Angola, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso are among the few countries that have resumed mass vaccinations following strict guidelines.

Vanity Project

It’s in the Dictator Handbook that you must leave behind an extravagantly unaffordable and unnecessary vanity project. Ivory Coast President Félix Houphouët-Boigny has fulfilled that requirement.

In the village-turned-capital of Yamoussoukro, the world’s largest church stands towering above a lush sprawl of grazing cattle and ramshackle buildings. A copper cross gleams atop a massive dome, while underneath, a marble and granite plaza stretches over seven acres and could fit a crowd of 300,000. But despite its $300 million price tag and 18,000-person indoor capacity, the out-of-place classical Greco-Roman structure has remained mostly empty for the past 25 years.

Liberia and the Rice Shortage

Liberians are being asked to call a government hotline if they spot any unfair increases in the price of rice over and above the approved rate of about $13 (£10) per 25kg.

Trade officials have also been out on the streets to ensure there are no artificial shortages, following complaints from consumers who say they've struggled to buy enough rice.

Officials believe importers and retailers could be hoarding the commodity to hike prices.

While consumers appreciate the decision to control prices, the current government, just like previous administrations, is under criticism for doing very little to prioritise local food production.

Liberia relies on foreign businesses to import rice. The food is not just a staple in Liberia but regarded as an essential in the daily diet, and the price and its supply has brought down a government in the past.

Corruption in Zimbabwe

In May, the finance minister wrote to the International Monetary Fund, warning that Zimbabwe faced a health and economic catastrophe. The government of Zimbabwe has spent millions of dollars on luxury cars for senior officials despite a deepening economic collapse that has plunged its people into profound hardship. 

The new cars, including dozens of Range Rovers and Toyota pick-up trucks worth more than $40,000, were distributed to ambassadors and senior civil servants. Dozens of luxury models are also believed to have been distributed to senior army officers, while junior ranks have received more modest vehicles. Analysts say the move constitutes a new effort to shore up support for the government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took power after the military coup that ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017.

New vehicles had been delivered to all Zimbabwe’s 50 diplomatic envoys and some other staff. the head of Zimbabwe’s health services board confirmed that commissioners recently took delivery of Range Rover Discoveries worth around $50,000 each. Paulinus Sikosana said the distribution was standard practice for senior bureaucrats. Currently, thousands of nurses and doctors are on strike in protest at working conditions, a lack of protective equipment and low salaries. Zimbabwe’s largest nurses’ union said inflation – now running at 785% year on year – means its members can no longer afford basic items.

Rising transport costs have forced many nurses to walk to work.

“The reality … is that we are incapacitated from attending work even if we wanted to,” the Zimbabwe Nurses’ Association (ZINA), which represents around 15,000 state nurses, said.

Enock Dongo, a nurse in Harare and president of ZINA, said he could not afford to feed his family.

“If you look at how things have gone up in the shops, the basic commodities and rentals, surely you can not expect US$30 a month to cater for all that … We don’t have anything. I have subsidised the government for a long time but now I cannot do that anymore.” 

What’s unusual about the expenditure [on luxury cars] is that it comes when the government is under siege financially. It looks like a desperate effort to scaffold their support. The real challenge for Mnangagwa is that the policy of patronage and plunder means significant reform is impossible,” said Piers Pigou, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

 An estimated 4.3 million rural Zimbabweans are currently in need of urgent assistance. Many in towns and cities are also threatened with malnutrition.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/07/zimbabwe-spends-millions-on-officials-luxury-cars-as-country-goes-hungry

Uganda and its Refugees

Uganda has lived up to its reputation as Africa's most hospitable nation by opening its border to 1,500 people fleeing militias. 

"Uganda is an exemplary country. Other countries in the world can learn a lot of Uganda's generous and open door refugee policy," said Duniya Aslam Khan, Uganda's UNHCR spokeswoman.

But the coronavirus lockdown means many more fleeing conflict have been locked out.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) oversaw the transfer of the asylum seekers from the DR Congo via the Guladjo and Mount Zeu crossings in Uganda's Zombo district. Most of the 1,500 people seeking asylum are women, children and the elderly. They are among the first of the estimated 10,000 people who fled in the direction of Uganda but became stranded at the border in May.

In mid-June, President Yoweri Museveni directed his ministers to reopen the border crossings and take them all in. The East African country had suspended the intake of refugees in March as a measure to curb the spread of the coronavirus.  The pandemic and the restrictions on the movement of people in recent months has collided with other crises around Africa — drought, floods, locust plagues, poverty and other diseases, such as malaria and measles.

Uganda has redirected some of its resources to fight COVID-19, but there's not much more this country can do for refugees due to its limited means. The country already hosts 1.4 million refugees, mostly from the DRC, South Sudan and Burundi. The UNHCR funding requirement for 2020 was 357 million Euros, however only 18% of that amount has been raised.

"Now that we are faced with the global COVID-19 crisis, which has forced us to redirect our resources to respond to the health needs of not only refugees, but their local hosts. We are really running short of money."

In Uganda, COVID-19 has put a lot of strain on the available resources — which had already been dwindling, according to UNHCR spokeswoman Kahn.

"I think for Uganda, a country with 40 million of its own people and poverty levels pretty high, aid should not be taken for granted. And if the world community wants to see Uganda continue this responsibility, more global solidarity in terms of financial support is required."

 If we look at East Africa and the Horn and the Great Lakes, in total we now have 4.6 million refugees and 8.1 million internally displaced people.

https://www.dw.com/en/uganda-remains-steadfast-on-refugees-despite-covid-19/a-54041165

The Stress of being South Sudanese

Rebecca uprooted from South Sudan to a north Ugandan refugee settlement, tried to take her own life. “By then I didn’t care about anything – not myself, not even my kids. The pain was too extreme.” 

Her experiences fit into a wider trend of a mental health crisis across these vast displacement sites, where people from South Sudan who fled the trauma and violence of civil war now live in a drawn-out exile of frustration and diminishing support.

“People face a lot of structural adversities,” says Dr Wietse Tol, formerly of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who last year led a psychological study of South Sudanese refugee women in Uganda. “If the situation continues to wear you down, at some point it just breaks you.”

Overwhelming hardships inevitably push the most vulnerable to the edge. Rebecca arrived in Bidibidi in 2017 after fleeing rebel assaults and famine. Abandoned by her husband along the way, she arrived in this crowded, chaotic and unfamiliar settlement with her children.

“I was happy for the first time in a long while,” says Rebecca, “There was no shooting and no soldiers.” But the initial sense of relief faded as the war back home dragged on. She struggled for money and endured stigma for being a single mother. “I felt completely alone,” she says. 

Nationwide, around a fifth of refugee households have at least one relative suffering psychological distress, while fewer than half have access to therapy, according to UNHCR

Since conflict erupted in 2013, hundreds of thousands have crossed into north-east Uganda to escape. The largest refugee settlement, Bidibidi, houses more than 232,000 people across arid scrubland, which the rainy season churns into thick mud. Globally, it is second only in size to the Kutupalong camp for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.  These makeshift camps have transformed into semi-permanent refugee towns. Many doubt that South Sudan’s new power-sharing government will end a conflict that has killed around 400,000 people.

As poverty and protracted violence have prevented their return, data from the UN’s refugee agency indicates that the rates of attempted and actual suicide have increased significantly here over the past three years. This is an indication of a wider mental health emergency that also manifests itself in addiction, depression and trauma-related disorders. The psychological toll of war can provoke a downward spiral of anxiety and trauma, compounded by social dislocation as cultural and family networks fragment. Some face domestic violence; others fear for relatives left behind.

“They have lost the past and don’t have hope for the future,” says Geoffrey Dramani, a protection associate with the UNHCR. “They find themselves in a state of desperation.”

In northern Uganda, dwindling funds have slashed basic services and job opportunities. In April, a shortfall of £109m meant the World Food Programme cut refugees’ rations by 30%.  Just 40% of the almost $927 million (£751 million) needed to help refugees in Uganda was reached last year. The funding prospects for 2020 are dire, with only 21% of the total requirements received so far. Coronavirus brings added pressures. Restrictions impede the refugees’ ability to earn money and put children at risk of abuse as schools shut.

For refugees, despair often comes years after the most turbulent periods of displacement. “We find that people commit more suicides after things have stabilised,” says Keneth Shaka, Bidibidi’s assistant settlement commandant. “It’s in this time that we need more psychosocial support for refugees than during the emergency time.”

During exile, weddings and other festivities that bind communities together “are put on hold”, says Joyce Wahome, a protection officer with UNHCR. “These avenues of happiness are not there.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/02/i-saw-so-much-killing-the-mental-health-crisis-of-south-sudan-refugees