AfricaFocus Bulletin
June 30, 2015 (150630)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Almost three years after the killings by police of 44 striking
miners at Marikana platinum mine, the official Commission of Inquiry
last week released a bland 646-page report, faulting primarily
police commanders and apportioning some blame as well among the
striking miners themselves, the mining company Lonmin, and two rival
unions. However, the Commission said there was not adequate evidence
for the responsibility of higher officials. And its recommendations
for action on the police responsible were for further
investigations.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/mar1506a.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

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Although the report met with widespread criticism inside the country
from the families of victims and their supporters, as well as other
commentators, it gained little attention outside South Africa. For
many, the police violence in August 2012, and the close
collaboration between the mining company and state officials in
repressing a strike by the lowest-paid workers, has made Marikana an
emblematic symbol for an era of post-apartheid plutocracy, as did
Sharpeville for the apartheid era in the decades following 1960. But
neither the South African political and economic establishment nor
world public opinion seems to regard accountability or reform in
policing or in the mining industry as calling for more than pro-
forma banalities.

For those who want to dig deeper, the 2014 documentary film “Miners
Shot Down” (http://www.minersshotdown.co.za/)is by far the best and
most powerful introduction. Fortunately, it is now available on
YouTube, including interviews, police footage, and evidence made
available to the Commission. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssPrxvgePsc (note, there are other
versions available on-line, but this one has captions and the best
technical quality).

This AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out by email, and another released
today and available on the web but not sent out by email, contain
selected excerpts and summaries of related commentaries and reports.

Below are text excerpts from a Mail & Guardian report featuring
photos and narrative on two key points: the killings at “scene 2,”
where miners were hunted down and shot by police away from the media
cameras which recorded “scene 1,” and on the housing promised by
Lonmin to workers as part of a social responsibility plan that was
never implemented.

The additional AfricaFocus released today, available at
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/mar1506b.php, includes a
“takeaways” summary by AfricaFocus of a report by Dick Forslund of
the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town
http://aidc.org.za/), documenting how profit shifting within the
British company Lonmin and subsidiaries in South Africa and Bermuda
hid the fact that the company could have easily paid the demands of
the strikers for a living wage, and that neither the South African
tax authorities nor the South African Department of Labour carried
out their duties to monitor and regulate company actions.

It also includes a detailed commentary by Greg Marinovich, the
photographer and writer who covered in depth the strike and the
killings at the time.

Other recent commentaries include:

“Commission Makes ‘Devastating’ Findings Against Police”
AllAfrica.com, June 26, 2015
http://allafrica.com/stories/201506261379.html

“Marikana Report: The continuing injustice for the people of a
lesser God”, Ranjeni Munusamy, Daily Maverick, 26 Jun 2015
http://tinyurl.com/pnt9mjv

The full Commission of Inquiry report is available at:
http://tinyurl.com/pdkkoow

A concise summary is available at: http://tinyurl.com/nbgut3e

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Marikana, including links to
multiple other sources, see
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/saf1209a.php,
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/saf1209b.php, and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/mar1308.php

For additional news reports, visit
http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00037469.html

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Marikana: The blame game

Mail & Guardian, June 25, 2015 http://mg.co.za

A special report by Niren Tolsi and Paul Botes

[Excerpts only: full text and photographs at
https://laura-7.atavist.com/mgmarikanablamegame]

Introduction

On August 16 2012 the South African police shot and killed 34
striking miners at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana. Nearly
three years later, on the afternoon of June 25 2015, with no warning
to the families of those killed, President Jacob Zuma announced that
he would be releasing the report by retired judge Ian Farlam’s
commission of inquiry into the deaths during the strike — 44 people
in total were killed: 10 people before August 16 — on national
television at 7pm.

At Marikana, the surprise announcement caught the families of the
deceased miners and those shot by police on August 16 unawares —
returning home to the news they scurried around to find television
sets and radios to hear the president’s reading of the report.

Farlam’s report absolved the executive, in particular then police
minister Nathi Mthetwa and Susan Shabangu, the mineral resources
minister at the time, of any responsibility for the deaths.

The Commission did find that Lonmin’s failure to fulfil its social
and labour plans — legally binding obligations on which its new
order mining rights are dependent — should be investigated. It also
found that police should have stopped their tactical operation after
the killing of 17 miners at “scene one”. Instead, police continued
to another koppie, “scene two”, where a further 17 miners were
killed.

Mail & Guardian chief photographer Paul Botes and freelance
journalist Niren Tolsi have been investigating Marikana’s aftermath
since 2012. In this special report, they explore evidence before the
commission that strongly suggests 17 miners, who posed no threat to
the police, were executed by police away from television cameras at
“scene two” on August 16 2012.

They also explore housing shortages in Marikana, which was one of
the motivating factors behind the 2012 strike and test the current
temperature in the North West town which both government and Lonmin
appear to have failed.

Marikana Scene 2: No refuge

On August 16, and in the weeks that followed, the world reacted with
horror to televised images of South African police firing an eight-
second fusillade at striking miners at Marikana, in the North West
province, killing 17 of them.

Away from media cameras, at a koppie about 500 metres away from the
large rock where miners had gathered daily during their wage strike,
the police then appear to have gone on a “free for-all” killing
spree.

About 15 minutes after the shooting at the cattle kraal, described
as “scene one” at the subsequent commission of inquiry, police
members fired 295 rounds of live ammunition at hundreds of miners
hiding on the koppie, where they had run for refuge after witnessing
the earlier slaughter.

Evidence before the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, which investigated
the 44 deaths during the week-long strike, suggested police had
fired with intent and purpose at the koppie. Much of the killing was
carried out with execution-style precision: of the 17 miners shot
dead at what became known as “scene two”, four had bullet wounds in
the head or neck; 11 had been shot in the back.

Police evidence presented to the Farlam Commission shows the scene
of the killings at Marikana. The Big Koppie is where the miners met
daily during the strike; Marikana Scene 1 is the cattle kraal where
the first 17 miners were killed by police; and Marikana Scene 2 is
the koppie where miners ran to for refuge, but were also shot at by
police.

…

Most were shot dead while hiding in the undergrowth, forensic
investigations confirmed. The lifeless body of Nkosiyabo Xalabile,
for example, lay wedged behind a boulder, his arms behind him, still
crossed – as if they had been restrained in some way. His eyes were
still open, suggesting the death had been a painful one.

Xalabile had been shot from above, an R5 bullet tearing through the
bottom of the left side of his neck and exiting through his ribs.
The shells of the bullets that killed him were found 2.8 metres
away, above his body on some rocks. He was huddled at the foot of a
tree, among bushes near the rock when he was killed.

He had not, as police later alleged, been attacking them. Nor did he
appear to be armed: in early police pictures, there was no evidence
of weapons associated with Xalabile. Those taken later showed two
metal rods nearby.

Independent pathologists found Xalabile’s posture “with hands and
wrists crossed at his lower back … (which was) exceedingly strange
for a live person with these injuries to adopt”. They concluded that
the nature of his wounds and his body positioning “opens the
possibility that the deceased was handcuffed shortly after the
injuries. It suggests that the handcuffs were removed prior to the
[police] photography.”

Immediate or early medical attention could perhaps have saved
Xalabile’s life, the pathologists concluded. This may have allowed
him to recover and return to his wife of 19 days, Lilitha. “Some
mineworkers put their hands [in the] air to show they weren’t
fighting/attacking the police officers but they were shot.”

In their closing arguments, the commission’s evidence leaders
described the actions of the police as a “free for all”. This
appeared to have been perpetrated with impunity, and with scant
regard for standing orders that require warnings before the use of
live ammunition and for the lower body to be targeted. Miners were
shot at while hiding and even attempting to surrender. They appear
to have been fired on while presenting no immediate threat to the
police officers.

In a statement to the commission, miner Nkosikhona Mjuba, who
survived scene two, said: “The police officers started shooting the
mineworkers with long and short firearms. Some mineworkers put their
hands [in the] air to show they weren’t fighting/attacking the
police officers but they were shot.”

Three survivors: Siphete Phatsha cut off his own injured toe trying
to escape from the police’s bullets. Mzoxolo Mgidiwana was shot down
by police, then interrogated and then shot again, this time in the
groin. Bathini Nova was shot eight times while trying to surrender.

Recalling how he hid on the koppie almost three years ago, Siphete
Phatsha (51) said police seemed to be hunting them down: “I could
see police coming into the bushes and shooting at people hiding
there. Where I was hiding, they couldn’t shoot at me, but I was
waiting to die. I thought about my children and I thought about only
one thing: that I am leaving my children, and that I am going to
die,” he said. The father of five from Nqeleni in the Eastern Cape
had been at scene one when the Tactical Response Team line opened
fire on the miners. He had walked off the koppie alongside strike
leader Mgcineni Noki, whose face was then half blown away by high-
velocity bullets, and Mzoxolo Magidiwana, who said that police had
shot him down, and interrogated him before pumping further shots
into his body, including two to the groin that mutilated his penis
and scrotum.

Phatsha was shot in the foot but managed to clamber into the cattle
kraal at “scene one” to seek refuge with several other miners.
There, he lay prostrate, pretending to be dead.

…

Shadrack Mtshamba, a rock-drill operator at Marikana’s Four Belt
Shaft, huddled between two rocks quite close to Nova. He also
witnessed another miner being mown down while surrendering: “One
protester suggested that we should come out of the hiding place with
our hands up,” Mtshamba said in a statement to the commission.

“[The miner] said ‘Guys, let’s surrender’,” Mashamba stated. “He
then went out of the group with his hands raised. He was shot on his
hands or arms. He kneeled down and as he tried to stand up, still
with his hands up, he was shot in the stomach and he fell down. He
then tried to stand up but he was shot at again and he fell down. He
tried to crawl but could not do so.”

None of the police leaders on the ground provided justifiable
reasons for not halting the tactical operation after SAPS shot dead
17 people at “Scene 1”.

…

The police killings at “scene two” also extended to the planting of
weapons on at least six dead miners, the Farlam Commission heard.

“This was a totally unacceptable process,” the evidence leaders
argued. They noted that in the case of one dead miner, Makosandile
Mkhonjwa, this “involved adorning his body with four different
weapons, none of which were anywhere in the vicinity of his body in
the many earlier photographs that we have of his body.”

Fifty-six-year-old Thabiso Thelejane was shot twice in the back of
the head, leaving a gaping wound 2cm behind his right ear. A second
high-velocity bullet struck him on the left side of the head, about
10cm above and 3cm behind his left ear. A third bullet entered his
right buttock and lodged in the left side of his pelvis. There were
also several abrasions on his knees and forehead.

Thelejane’s body was found about 20 metres to the east of Mdizeni,
also face down on the ground. There were no weapons around him. The
independent pathologists found that he was facing a north-westerly
direction and running away from the NIU/K9 line when he was shot in
the back of the head. Policing experts at the commission testified
that after the killings at scene one, the police operation on August
16 should have been stopped immediately, or at least during the 15
minutes between the two sets of killings.

…

Major General William Mpembe, the overall commander on the day, told
the commission that he was travelling to board a Lonmin helicopter
to fly over the area when the shooting happened and had been unaware
of it. North West police commissioner Lieutenant General Zukiswa
Mbombo testified that she was in the toilet at the time and was,
likewise, unaware of the “scene one” killings. Despite being in the
Joint Operations Centre when Botes heard the fusillade over the
radio, Major General Charl Annandale, the Joint Operations Centre
chairperson, testified that he only knew about the killings about 45
minutes after the incident because of radio problems. Yet, less than
eight minutes after the fusillade, Brigadier Suzette Pretorius, who
was sitting with Ananndale in the Joint Operations Centre, sent a
text message to an Independent Police Investigations Directorate
official. It read: “Having operation at Wonderkop. Bad. Bodies.
Please prepare your members as going to be bad.”

The commission’s evidence leaders argued that Mbombo, Mpembe,
Annandale and Calitz should all be held responsible for the 17
deaths at scene two.

Showhouses and shacks: Life in a ‘living hell’

…

The lack of proper housing for workers who, in the main, lived in
shack settlements surrounding its mining operation — and still do
— was one of the driving factors behind the August 2012 strike at
Lonmin that left 44 people dead.

The squalor and deprivation of informal settlements like Nkaneng and
Big House is highlighted by the imaginary games children play using
heaps of plastic rubbish piled up along informal roads.

Homes are rudimentary shacks made from corrugated scrap metal, wood
and cardboard.

Despite a massive power station near Nkaneng, which serves Lonmin’s
operation, there is no electricity in this settlement where
thousands live. Wires for guerrilla electricity connections criss-
cross underfoot.

Water is sourced from one of the public taps placed sporadically
around the community. Many of the standpipes have been dry since
2013 and locals murmur that a R900 payment to the right person will
ensure a reconnection.

“This is a living hell,” says miner Siphete Phatsha, standing
outside the rusted one-room shack he shares with his adult son and
nephew, both unemployed job-seekers from the Eastern Cape. Phatsha
walks “a long way” with his wheelbarrow to a communal tank to fill
25-litre drums with water for their daily use, and to quench the
thirst of his tenderly cared for spinach garden. The garden helps
supplement their Spartan meals that centre on stomach-filling pap.

Employed by Lonmin since 2007, Patsha hankers after the dignity that
a flush toilet and an electricity switch affords. A formal home with
walls to discourage the winter cold would ease his joints and
injuries sustained after police shot him during the 2012 strike.

,,,

At the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, Lonmin maintained that it had
failed to build the 5 500 units because of the 2008 platinum price
drop. Any plans to finally add to the three show-houses at Marikana
Extension Two have been abandoned, however.

In 2013, the company announced that it had donated the land, about
50 hectares with some serviced stands, to the government.

…

Lonmin’s 2010 annual report estimated that 50% of the population
living within a 15km radius of its Marikana operation lived in
informal housing and lacked access to basic services such as running
water and electricity.

The company provided formal housing, including hostels, for less
than 10% of its directly employed staff, which numbered about 24 000
in 2012.

At the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, former Lonmin chief operating
officer Mohamed Seedat conceded under cross-examination that housing
conditions at Marikana were “truly appalling”. He also conceded that
the Lonmin’s board and executive had, post facto, recognised the
link between the critical shortage of affordable housing and the
2012 strike.

Seedat maintained, however, that Lonmin’s social and labour plan
(SLP) promises did not require the building of houses but were,
rather, an obligation to broker an interaction between the company’s
workers and private financial institutions so that the former could
access mortgage bonds.

The evidence leaders at the commission argued that Lonmin’s
interpretation of their SLP obligations was “not credible” and
inconsistent with the terms of the SLPs; the annual SLP reports
Lonmin furnished to the department of mineral resources; the
company’s sustainable development reports and its close-out report
to the ministry after five years.

“This attempt by Lonmin to wash its hands of [a legally-binding]
obligation that it repudiated must be rejected,” the evidence
leaders stated in their closing heads of argument.

Even on Lonmin’s “implausible” reading of their SLP obligations, the
company appears to have failed. In October 2006 it announced to much
fanfare and in the presence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that it had
struck a R318-million housing deal with Rand Merchant Bank.

The bank would put up the financing for housing for 3 000 workers,
with Lonmin providing surety in the form of shares if workers were
retrenched. The deal was never followed through.

Lonmin ignored its SLP obligations, which were meant to compel
mining companies to address structural problems within the mining
sector, including the dehumanising migrant labour system, which
breaks up nuclear families and contributes to social divisions.

Its transformation committee chairperson, then Lonmin non-executive
director and current deputy president of the country, Cyril
Ramaphosa, exercised oversight of Lonmin’s SLP obligations.
Ramaphosa professed to not reading the SLP reports and being unaware
of its failures at the commission.

The department of mineral resources, meanwhile, appears incapable of
exercising oversight to ensure that Lonmin, alongside many other
mining companies, take a more human rights-based approach to
transforming their workers’ lives.

The Human Rights Commission proposed that Judge Farlam recommend
President Jacob Zuma “convene a task team/working group to undertake
a full investigation of the underlying causes of the dire living
conditions evident in mine-affected communities”

The South African Human Rights Commission, in its closing heads of
argument submitted to the Farlam Commission, noted the “failure of
the state, the department of mineral resources primarily, to monitor
and enforce compliance with SLP obligations, as well as ensuring the
necessary government co-operation and co-ordination required to
successfully implement projects identified as part of an SLP”.

Noting the “frequent failure by mining companies to comply with
their SLP obligations” the Human Rights Commission bemoaned an
amendment to Farlam’s terms of reference which divided its work into
“phase one” (an investigation of the events of August 2012) and
“phase two” (a broader investigation into the socio-economic context
of the mining sector as a whole).

The division, coupled with Lonmin’s refusal to hand over crucial
company documents until very late in the Farlam hearings, or not at
all, hamstrung the commission’s ability to make wide-ranging,
transformative and human rights-based recommendations, the Human
Rights Commission argued.

Lonmin was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s 2012 socially
responsible index, gaining “best performer” status for its social
and environmental work.

The Benchmarks Foundation’s Police Gap Seven report released in 2013
noted that between 2003-2007 most of the company’s “social capital”
went into the Lonmin Community Trust Fund, “which was then rapidly
closed down”.

While crying post-2008 poverty, the mining house also appeared to be
involved in some solipsistic bookkeeping. A report titled “The
Bermuda Connection: Profit Shifting and Unaffordability at Lonmin
1999-2012”, compiled for the commission by the Alternative
Information Centre’s Dirk Forslund, alleged large-scale tax
avoidance through the movement of profits to a subsidiary in an off-
shore tax haven, Western Metal Sales.

Despite having two major buyers for its platinum, the company’s
South African subsidiary, Western Platinum Limited, which produces
the majority of the company’s platinum group metals was, until 2007,
paying 2% of its turnover to Western Metal Sales, registered in
Bermuda, as sales commission for marketing services. From 2008 to
2012 this commission totalled R1.2-billion.

The evidence leaders calculated that in 2006-2011, when Lonmin could
have built the 5 500 houses for its employees at a cost of R665-
million, it had spent R1.3-billion on “marketing” commissions to a
subsidiary.

The Human Rights Commission proposed that retired judge Ian Farlam
recommend a full investigation into Lonmin’s SLP compliance.

It further proposed that Farlam recommend President Jacob Zuma
“convene a task team/ working group to undertake a full
investigation of the underlying causes of the dire living conditions
evident in mine-affected communities” and the department of mineral
resources “undertake a strategic and detailed review of the
deficiencies and failures of the SLP system identified in the
commission’s work, and to propose amendments, revisions or new
initiatives to improve compliance with the legal and regulatory
framework that establishes the SLP system.”

Lonmin were unable to respond to questions about their housing and
hostel conversion projects initiated after being granted their new
order mining rights in time for publication. Nor did the company
respond to questions relating to their transfer pricing activity
during the period 2006-2012.

In October 2014, in response to questions from amaBhungane — the
M&G’s investigative unit — pertaining to the 2% of annual turnover
payments to the Bermuda-based subsidiary Western Metal Sales, Lonmin
spokesperson Sue Vey said: “This company [Western Metal Sales] has
long been dormant and is no longer in use.”

A time of retrenchments: Marikana in 2015

[For this section see full report at
https://laura-7.atavist.com/mgmarikanablamegame]

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
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AfricaFocus Bulletin
June 22, 2015 (150622)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“Both globally and in Africa, there is good news. Our collective
efforts to end the AIDS epidemic are paying off. Now more people
living with HIV than ever before are accessing treatment, more
people know their status, and AIDS-related deaths are declining. …
This progress, however, belies a dangerous reality: young African
women and adolescent girls are especially vulnerable to HIV.” –
UNAIDS, June 2015

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
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Progress in scientific research and in treatment for HIV/AIDS
continues, with the most notable recent advance being the START
(Strategic Timing of Antiretroviral Treatment) results released in
May (http://tinyurl.com/on9gsm4). This international study funded by
the U.S. National Institute of Health showed that introducing
treatment at the time of diagnosis instead of waiting until further
damage to the immune system increases rates of survival by over 50%.
Yet this news also highlights the gap between what is now possible
and the results achieved (see latest data at
http://tinyurl.com/nrexvjc).

A new UNAIDS report released this month, and excerpted below in this
AfricaFocus Bulletin, makes it clear that those most vulnerable to
the decades-long pandemic continue to be young women and adolescent
girls in Africa. The response, the report stresses, must include not
only providing additional resources for all aspects of the fight
against HIV/AIDS but also addressing fundamental issues of gender
inequality.

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on health
issues, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-health.php

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ebola Perspectives – Update

“The Other Ebola Battle: Fair Pay for Local Health Workers,” June 2,
2105
http://tinyurl.com/o2yvf2j

“Ebola Cases Rise Again in West Africa,” June 10, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/qcjfedr

“Turn on the taps to defeat the next Ebola,” June 15, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/nhonhk2

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Empower Young Women and Adolescent Girls: Fast-Tracking the end Of
the Aids Epidemic in Africa

UNAIDS

June 2015

[Excerpts only. Full formatted report, with references and graphs,
available at
http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2015/JC2746]

Foreword

Four decades into the HIV epidemic and response, we have made
encouraging progress. More people living with HIV than ever before
are accessing life-saving treatment; the number of deaths from AIDS-
related causes has declined; fewer babies are becoming infected with
HIV; and new HIV infections have fallen. Africa’s leadership
commitments, the tireless efforts of civil society–including the
women’s movement and networks of women living with HIV–combined
with scientific innovation and global solidarity have helped to
achieve these great strides. The response will be strengthened
further by the commitment from Africa’s leadership to end the AIDS
epidemic by 2030, while promoting shared responsibility and unity.

Yet, despite this progress, adolescent girls and young women are
still being left behind and denied their full rights. They are often
unable to enjoy the benefits of secondary education and formal paid
employment under decent conditions, which would allow them to build
skills, assets and resilience. The threat of violence is pervasive
— and not only in conflict and post-conflict situations. Many girls
are married as children and assume adult roles of motherhood.
Adolescent girls and young women are often prevented from seeking
services and making decisions about their own health. This
combination of factors drives both their risk of acquiring HIV and
their vulnerability to HIV. The impact of HIV on young women and
adolescent girls is acute: they account for one in five new HIV
infections in Africa and are almost three times as likely as their
male peers to be living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

The variables and risks associated with sexual and reproductive
health and HIV among adolescent girls and young women are tied to
gender inequalities that are intricately woven into the
sociocultural, economic and political fabric of society. Unleashing
the potential of half the population of this region and tapping into
the power of the largest youth populace in history will promote both
sustainable progress in the HIV response and wider development
outcomes.

In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If we are to see any real
development in the world, then our best investment is women.” This
holds true for the AIDS response, which needs greater attention,
reaffirmed commitment and resourced action to ensure the health,
rights and well-being of adolescent girls and young women throughout
their life-cycle. The solutions engage all sectors of society and
must embrace innovation.

The key message of advancing women’s rights and gender equality in
order to fast-track the end of the AIDS epidemic among adolescent
girls and young women outlined in this report is an important
contribution to the 2015 African Union theme “Year of women’s
empowerment and development towards Africa’s agenda 2063”. This will
guide our blueprint for future action.

As the African community and the global community stand at the dawn
of a new era of sustainable development, let us reaffirm our
commitment to empowering girls and young women. A firm foundation of
social justice, human rights and gender equality will make the AIDS
response formidable and the end of the AIDS epidemic possible.

Michel Sidibé, Executive Director, UNAIDS

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chair, African Union Commission

**************************************************************

Introduction

With the platform provided by the post-2015 sustainable development
goals, and leveraging the successes of the AIDS response so far,
Africa has a historic opportunity to end the AIDS epidemic as a
public health threat by 2030.

This requires adapting to the dynamism and opportunities of the
continent and reaching people most vulnerable to HIV including young
women and adolescent girls. It also requires taking action to target
the root causes of vulnerability. The magnitude of young women’s and
adolescent girls’ vulnerability to HIV cannot be explained by
biology alone but lies in pervasive conditions of gender inequality
and power imbalances as well as high levels of intimate partner
violence.

Since the 1995 adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for
Action, the reality for most women and girls worldwide, including in
Africa, is that the pace of change has been unacceptably slow. Women
and girls are subject to multiple and intersecting forms of
discrimination. These inequalities are even more acute for
marginalized women, such as women with disabilities, migrant women,
female sex workers and transgender women, who are also at heightened
risk of discrimination and violence (1). There also remain other
large disparities, such as fewer than one in three girls in sub-
Saharan Africa being enrolled in secondary school, women having
unequal access to economic opportunities, and women lacking
decision-making power in the home and wider society (2, 3).

Within the context of HIV, this manifests in different ways. Young
women and adolescent girls acquire HIV five to seven years earlier
than young men, and in some countries HIV prevalence among young
women and adolescent girls is as much as seven times that of their
male counterparts(11, 54). Despite the availability of
antiretroviral medicines, AIDS-related illnesses remain the leading
cause of death among girls and women of reproductive age in Africa
(4).

Many of these young women and girls are born and raised in
communities where they are not treated as equal. Many cannot reduce
their vulnerability to HIV because they are not permitted to make
decisions on their own health care. They cannot reduce their
vulnerability because they cannot choose at what age or who to
marry, when to have sex, how to protect themselves or how many
children to have.

The impacts of gender inequality are far-reaching. Gender equality
matters intrinsically because the ability to make choices that
affect a person’s own life is a basic human right and should be
equal for everyone, independent of whether person is male or female.
But gender equality also matters instrumentally because it
contributes to economies and key development outcomes (3).

To be effective, any health and development agenda needs to focus on
the root causes of the gender gap, and the AIDS response is no
different. But there is also good news on which to build. In the
past 20 years the gender gap has closed in many areas with the most
noticeable progress made in primary school enrolment and completion,
in almost all countries. In addition, life expectancy of women in
low-income countries is now 20 years longer on average than in 1960,
and over the past 30 years women’s participation in paid work has
risen in most parts of the developing world (3).

There is also significant political commitment from Africa to gender
equality and women’s empowerment, with specific goals and targets
for the response to HIV and sexual and reproductive health and
rights. African leaders have enshrined the priorities of gender
equality and rights in (among others) the African Union Agenda 2063;
the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on
the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Declaration 2003); the Solemn
Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004); the Sexual and
Reproductive Health Strategy for the Southern African Development
Community Region (2006-2015); the 2013 Ministerial Commitment on
Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Sexual and Reproductive Health
and Rights in Eastern and Southern Africa; the Arab Strategic
Framework on HIV and AIDS (2013-2015): and the Arab AIDS Initiative
2012; the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in
Africa Beyond 2014; and the 2013 Declaration of the Special Summit
of the African Union on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The depth and breadth of this political platform and the potential
for action to transform the lives of young women and adolescent
girls in Africa cannot be underestimated.

…

The Aids Response in Africa: Young Women and Adolescent Girls Left
Behind

Both globally and in Africa, there is good news. Our collective
efforts to end the AIDS epidemic are paying off. Now more people
living with HIV than ever before are accessing treatment, more
people know their status, and AIDS-related deaths are declining. New
HIV infections among young people aged 15-24 years are also
declining (460 000 new infections in 2013 compared with almost 715
000 new infections a decade earlier) (55). This progress, however,
belies a dangerous reality: young African women and adolescent girls
are especially vulnerable to HIV.

Globally in 2013, 15% of the approximately 16 million women aged 15
years and older living with HIV were young women; of these over 80%
live in sub-Saharan Africa (55).

Despite declining HIV infection rates, in 2013 globally, there were
approximately 250 000 new HIV infections among adolescent boys and
girls, 64% of which are among adolescent girls (Figs 2 and 3). In
Africa, 74% of new infections among adolescents were among
adolescent girls (55). In addition, AIDS-related illnesses are the
leading cause of death among adolescent girls and women of
reproductive age in Africa, despite the availability of treatment
(4).

…

Furthermore, young women and adolescent girls are missing out on the
scale-up of antiretroviral treatment access for people living with
HIV. Only 15% of young women and adolescent girls aged 15-24 years
in sub-Saharan Africa know their HIV status (6). In the Middle East
and North Africa, only one in five people living with HIV has access
to treatment (55).

Young women and adolescent girls from socially marginalized groups
are at increased risk of HIV because they face multiple challenges.
Stigma, discrimination, punitive laws and a lack of social
protection increase the risk of HIV, notably for young female sex
workers, young transgender women, young migrants and young women who
use drugs (7). In Kenya, HIV prevalence among female sex workers in
Nairobi is 29% — approximately three times the HIV prevalence among
other women in Nairobi (8).

Eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and keeping mothers
alive

Progress to eliminate new HIV infections among children and keeping
their mothers alive has been one of the most impressive achievements
of the AIDS response to date. In 2013, for the first time since the
1990s, the number of new HIV infections among children in the 21
Global Plan 1 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa dropped to
under 200 000. This represents a 43% decline in the number of new
HIV infections among children in these countries since 2009 (58).

Despite successes, progress among young women and adolescent mothers
has been slow with many challenges. The average adolescent birth
rate in Africa is 115 per 1000 girls, more than double the global
average of 49 per 1000 girls (6). In western and central Africa, 28%
of women aged 20-24 years have reported a birth before the age of 18
years, the highest percentage among developing regions. In Chad,
Guinea, Mali, Mozambique and Niger, 1 in 10 girls has a child before
the age of 15 years (9). In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 36 000
women and girls die each year from unsafe abortions, and millions
more suffer long-term illness or disability (9).

Many young women who marry or enter into partnerships early do not
have the knowledge or the personal agency that enables them to
protect themselves from HIV — for example, they cannot negotiate
when to have sex or to use condoms.

A core strategy to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV is
to prevent pregnancy in young women and adolescent girls who do not
want to have a child at that time. According to the United Nations
Population Fund, 33 million women aged 15-24 years worldwide have an
unmet need for contraception, with substantial regional variations.
For married girls aged 15-19 years, the figures for an unmet need
for contraception range from 8.6% in the Middle East and North
Africa to 30.5% (one in three married girls) in western and central
Africa (10). Among unmarried sexually active adolescent girls, the
unmet need for contraception in sub-Saharan Africa is 46-49%; there
are no data for North Africa (10).

According to 2013 data, in sub-Saharan Africa, only eight male
condoms were available per year for each sexually active individual.
Among young people, and particularly among young women, condom
access and use remain low, despite offering dual protection against
HIV and unwanted pregnancy (11). Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 44%
of all unsafe abortions among adolescent girls aged 15-19 years in
low- and middle- income countries (excluding east Asia) (9).

Governments in Africa have already made important commitments in
this area that can be leveraged. Among the strongest is the 2013
Ministerial Commitment for Comprehensive Sexuality Education and
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Eastern and Southern
Africa. This commitment includes action to “reduce early and
unintended pregnancies among young people by 75%”(12).

Providing access to comprehensive sexuality education, keeping girls
in school and implementing social protection programmes such as cash
transfer programmes have all proven effective in reducing new
infections among young women and adolescent girls.

Stopping child marriage and early pregnancy is also central to
success. Across Africa, 41% of girls in western and central Africa,
34% of girls in eastern and southern Africa and 12% of girls in the
Arab states are married as children (13). Child marriage has been
associated with higher exposure to intimate partner violence and
commercial sexual exploitation (13). Child marriage is a form of
violence.

Intimate partner violence and the association with HIV

Over the past decade strong evidence has emerged on the relationship
between intimate partner violence and HIV. There is equally strong
evidence for and recognition of successful community strategies to
prevent intimate partner violence and vulnerability to HIV (16, 29,
30, 57).

In high HIV prevalence settings, women who are exposed to intimate
partner violence are 50% more likely to acquire HIV than those who
are not exposed (16). Adolescent girls and young women also have the
highest incidence of intimate partner violence (11). In Zimbabwe,
for example, the prevalence of intimate partner violence among women
aged 15-24 years is 35%, compared with 24% for women aged 25-49
years; and in Gabon, prevalence of intimate partner violence among
young women is 42% compared with 28% for older women. In some
settings, 45% of adolescent girls report that their first experience
of sex was forced, another known risk factor for HIV (Fig. 4) (17).
In addition, girls who marry before age 18 are more likely to
experience violence within marriage than girls who marry later (14).
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), globally
120 million girls — 1 in 10 — are raped or sexually attacked by
the age of 20 years (15).

…

Women and girls also continue to experience unique risks and
vulnerabilities to HIV during conflicts, emergencies and post-
conflict periods. In conflict situations, rape can be used as a
weapon of war, increasing the risk of HIV transmission because rates
of HIV among military personnel typically exceed those of the
general population (18). Adolescent girls are particularly
vulnerable and, in some cases, are abducted and used for sexual
purposes by armed groups (15). The 2011 United Nations (UN) Security
Council Resolution 1983 recognizes that the impact of HIV is felt
most acutely by women and girls in conflict and post-conflict
settings due to both sexual violence and reduced or no access to
services (19). As highlighted by the resolution, however, there is
also potential for peacekeeping operations to protect civilian
populations through prevention of conflict-related sexual violence.

Core reasons why young women and adolescent girls are vulnerable to
HIV

Every hour, around 34 young African women are newly infected with
HIV. The reasons for relatively high rates of infection and low
scale-up of services for young women in Africa are complex and
interwoven. Changing the course of the epidemic requires addressing
the root causes and understanding the core conditions that
exacerbate vulnerability. Seven core conditions stand out:

* inadequate access to good-quality sexual and reproductive health
information, commodities and services, in some measure due to age of
consent to access services;

* low personal agency, meaning women are unable to make choices and
take action on matters of their own health and well-being;

* harmful gender norms, including child, early and forced marriage,
resulting in early pregnancy;

* transactional and unprotected age-disparate sex, often as a result
of poverty, lack of opportunity or lack of material goods;

* lack of access to secondary education and comprehensive age-
appropriate sexuality education;

* intimate partner violence, which impacts on risk and health-
seeking behaviour;

* violence in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Individually or in combination, these factors severely inhibit the
ability of young women and adolescent girls to protect themselves
from HIV, violence and unintended or unwanted pregnancy. Gender
inequality and lack of women’s empowerment or agency are key themes
that cut across these drivers.

Women’s agency or empowerment is the ability to make choices and to
transform them into desired actions and outcomes. Across all
countries and cultures there are differences between men’s and
women’s ability to make these choices. Women’s empowerment
influences their ability to build their human capital. Greater
control over household resources by women leads to more investment
in children’s human capital, shaping the opportunities for the next
generation (3). In sub-Saharan African countries, more than half of
married adolescent girls and young women do not have the final say
regarding their own health care and play a low decision-making role
in the household (20).

Poverty is another overarching factor. Poverty can push girls into
age-disparate relationships, a driver of HIV risk for young women
and adolescent girls. For example, in South Africa, 34% of sexually
active adolescent girls report being in a relationship with a man at
least five years their senior. Such relationships expose young woman
and girls to unsafe sexual behaviours, low condom use and increased
risk of sexually transmitted infections (57). The risk of
trafficking and sexual exploitation is also higher for young women
and adolescent girls living in poverty (21).

Poverty also increases the risk of child marriage, and girls in the
poorest economic quintile are 2.5 times more likely to be married as
children compared with girls in the richest quintile (21). In 2010,
67 million women aged 20-24 years had been married as girls, of
which one-fifth were in Africa (14).

In May 2014, after numerous national and regional commitments to
address child marriage (including the 2005 Maputo Protocol, Article
6c), the African Union Commission initiated a 2-year campaign,
starting in 10 African countries 2 , to accelerate the end of child
marriage on the continent by increasing awareness, influencing
policy, advocating for the implementation of laws and ensuring
accountability. Eliminating child marriage will decrease African
girls’ greater risk of experiencing domestic violence, premature
pregnancies and related complications, and sexually transmitted
diseases, including HIV.

There are promising solutions, but the solutions today are not the
solutions of yesterday. Fast-tracking the response is about being
flexible and taking account of the rapid transition taking place in
Africa today, looking at the new risks but also at the new
opportunities.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 25, 2015 (150525)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of today’s
unequal world order remains a striking weakness of radical as well
as conventional analyses of that order. Current global and national
socioeconomic hierarchies are not mere residues of a bygone era of
primitive accumulation. Just as it should be inconceivable to
address the past, present, and future of American society without
giving central attention to the role of African American struggles,
so analyzing and addressing 21st-century structures of global
inequality requires giving central attention to Africa.”

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/afr1505.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/afr1505.php

As readers are aware, AfricaFocus features reposted material
published recently, with the editor’s own comments limited to a
short introduction. This week is an exception, in that the article
reposted (and quoted in the paragraph above) is one that I wrote
more than a decade ago. I was led to
reread it while trying to reflect on the many recent events
reminding all of us of the unequal values given to human lives in
today’s world order, both between and within countries and
continents. These inequalities are shaped by race, place, class,
gender, and multiple other factors. But they are also molded by a
long history that systematically makes the African continent, those
who live there, and those who come from there particularly
vulnerable.

In my view, the connection between global and African realities is
most directly apparent in the realm of issues such as climate
change, migration, and the unequal flows of economic resources,
which are regularly featured in AfricaFocus. But how these
structural stresses affect the highly visible terrain of political
conflict, violence, and human rights varies enormously in its
particularities by country. General narratives, including that
sketched in this essay, are always inadequate, and in many respects
subjective. But today’s date  (May 25, Africa Day) is also an
appropriate one to turn to more general reflections. I am convinced
that the basic points made in this essay still hold true and hope it
may be of interest to many AfricaFocus readers.

For two publications in which I have attempted to address the
global/African connections with respect to the issue of migration,
see the background paper “African Migration, Global Inequalities,
and Human Rights: Connecting the Dots,” 2011
(http://www.africafocus.org/editor/nai-migration.php), written for
the Nordic Africa Institute, and the short pamphlet “Migration and
Global Justice: From Africa to the United States” 2008
(http://www.africafocus.org/editor/afsc0804.pdf), written for the
American Friends Service Committee.

An earlier related essay on “Global Apartheid,” by Salih Booker and
William Minter, appeared in The Nation in 2001
(http://www.thenation.com/article/global-apartheid).

Links to additional publications available on-line can be found at
http://www.africafocus.org/editor.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Invisible Hierarchies: Africa, Race, and Continuities in the World
Order

Science & Society, Vol. 69, No. 3, July 2005, 449-457

William Minter

Abstract:

The failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of today’s
unequal world order remains a striking weakness of radical as well
as conventional analyses of that order. Current global and national
socioeconomic hierarchies are not mere residues of a bygone era of
primitive accumulation. Just as it should be inconceivable to
address the past, present, and future of American society without
giving central attention to the role of African American struggles,
so analyzing and addressing 21st-century structures of global
inequality requires giving central attention to Africa.

“We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade, including the
transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history
of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also
in terms of their magnitude, organized nature and especially their
negation of the essence of the victims, and further acknowledge that
slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should
always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade, and
are among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that
Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian
descent and indigenous peoples were victims of these acts and
continue to be victims of their consequences. — Declaration of the
World Conference Against Racism, Durban, South Africa, September 8,
2001

Coming only days before September 11, this acknowledgment by world
governments of the legal premise of the reparations movement gained
little media attention. The 62-page declaration and program of
action, already undermined by a last-minute U. S. withdrawal from
the conference, faded into obscurity even more rapidly than the
conclusions of other global conferences that have proliferated in
recent decades. In any case, the commitments made in Durban to
repair the consequences of racism were even vaguer than most such
conference commitments, such as new pledges to finance development
adopted by consensus at the Monterrey poverty summit in March 2002.

Yet the failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of
today’s unequal world order is not confined to Bush administration
unilateralists or international diplomats crafting new compromise
language for promises destined to be betrayed. With some notable
exceptions, such as Winant, 2001 and Marable, 2004, authors of the
vast array of commentaries on globalization and even of the more
recent crop of writings about empire treat race only in passing —
if they mention it at all. Such reticence about race applies not
only to advocates of the Washington Consensus of free-market
fundamentalism and to cheerleaders for U. S. empire, but also to
more critical analysts of a variety of persuasions from center to
left.

The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994 marked the
demise of racial discrimination as explicit state policy, just as
the mid-1960s victories of the civil rights movement in the United
States had marked the end of the Jim Crow system of segregation in
the U. S. south. But the persistence of de facto racial inequality
into the 21st century is pervasive in both nations, as well as
globally. Its relative invisibility in public commentary and
analysis must be considered a fundamental feature of the current
moment requiring explanation.

21st Century Color Lines

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) and other analysts, focusing on the
current U. S. racial order, have posited an ideology of “color-blind
racism,” which allows for continuation of racial inequality while
firmly rejecting overt racial distinctions or discrimination. One of
the key components of this ideology is to deny the link between past
and present, so that people regardless of their background are seen
as starting on a level playing field. This assumption fits well with
the companion ideology stressing the virtues of the neutral market,
which all are presumed to approach with similar possibilities of
success. Such an ideology gains credibility from the visible success
of individuals from the subordinate group, which does in the case of
race mark a break with earlier ideologies of rigid discrimination.
With successful individuals in the foreground, and even celebrated
as illustrating diversity, it becomes easier to view continuing
structural inequality as relatively unimportant, or even to dismiss
it altogether. Persistent poverty or other disadvantages can
conveniently be attributed entirely to individual defects, and seen
as unrelated to past or present discrimination.

The dominant ideology thus diverts attention from the structural
bases of persistent and rising inequality. Contrary views are
portrayed as divisive promotion of class warfare or racial
hostility. Meanwhile, progressive forces have failed to forge a
persuasive counter-perspective integrating both race and class that
similarly facilitates united opposition to the dominant order.
Recently Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres have argued that race is
like a miner’s canary, with damage to minority communities signaling
the damaging structural hierarchies permeating the society (Guinier
and Torres, 2002). They further argue that racial mobilization,
combined with openness to wider coalition-building, must be a
fundamental component of progressive action in the United States.
Many others have made similar arguments, while documenting the
persistence of racial inequality, in unemployment, incarceration,
denial of voting rights, and other arenas. Yet it is no secret that
progressive forces have had little success in implementing such
strategies on more than a fragmentary local basis.

Building a progressive U. S. internationalism that acknowledges the
impact of race, both internally and globally, is an even more
intimidating challenge than that on the domestic front. The growing
impact of immigration also makes such issues unavoidable in other
industrialized countries as well. The much-celebrated demonstrations
in Seattle and similar anti-corporate globalization events have been
notable for their failure to make such connections, despite efforts
to do so by many of the activist groups involved (Martinez, 2000).
Despite trans-Atlantic contacts made at the World Conference against
Racism, even for most supporters the U. S. reparations movement
retains an almost exclusive domestic focus, rather than a campaign
situated within the context of damages done to the African continent
as well. Despite overwhelming opposition among Black Americans to
Bush’s war in Iraq, and efforts by groups such as Black Voices for
Peace, the anti-war movement has generally been unable to make
connections with broader opposition to domestic and global
inequality.

Neither the conceptual nor practical solutions to this impasse are
easy to discern. But surely one prerequisite is for progressive
analysts to acknowledge that W. E. B. Du Bois’s prediction that the
problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line
applies to the new century as well. Such continuity must surely
count among the deep structures still characterizing the world
today.

This is not to deny the significance of recent changes, whether the
shift from a bipolar to a unipolar geostrategic order, the
accelerating velocity of global communication, the triumph
symbolized by Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994, or the
globalization of threats of terrorism and counter-terrorism.
Nevertheless, both the visible and real global hierarchies, whether
measured in terms of economic power and privilege, human security,
or access to effective political rights, show a close correlation
with the order established by the centuries of slavery, conquest,
and colonial rule.

To the extent that the gatherings of the World Social Forum in
Brazil and India do prefigure another possible world vision, it is
still a world in which one continent — Africa — is strikingly
underrepresented. [as of writing of this article in 2005]
Speculation about the rise of new forces to global prominence to
challenge U. S. hegemony center on the advance of Asia, including
China and India as well as Japan. The potential weight of the Asian
continent, with more than half of the estimated world population of
some 6.4 billion, is clearly linked to sheer numbers as well as to
the structure of the world system. But the profound gap between
Africa (some 870 million people) and less populous continents such
as Europe (729 million), North America (509 million) and South
America (367 million) is easily visible in any compilation of
comparative statistics of development, from life expectancy to gross
national product to vulnerability to the AIDS pandemic.

The point here is neither to rehearse such familiar statistics nor
to call for continent-based quotas in reflections about the current
state of the world. Rather, it is to suggest that the Guinier-Torres
analogy of the miner’s canary applies globally as well as in the
United States. Just as it should be inconceivable to address the
past, present, and future of American society without giving central
attention to the role of African American struggles, so analyzing
and addressing the structures of global inequality requires giving
central attention to Africa.

The mechanisms responsible for creating and maintaining such
inequality are not unique to Africa, but their effects are most
starkly visible there. That is why Africa figures prominently on the
agenda of international institutions, from the World Bank to the
panoply of specialized UN agencies. The fact that Africa
nevertheless remains marginal to public debate across the political
spectrum outside the continent is an indicator of the absence of a
global social contract and of the current weakness of movements to
establish a world order based on principles other than market
values.

Within the United States, as Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro
convincingly showed in their landmark book Black Wealth, White
Wealth (1995), inheritance remains a central mechanism in
perpetuating racial inequality, even when there is significant
upward mobility in jobs and income for some. On a global scale, the
common-sense case for the lasting effect on the current global
hierarchy of centuries of primitive accumulation of wealth by
violence is so obvious that it seems incredible that it is not
generally acknowledged, whether or not one argues that there should
be a statute of limitations on responsibility for repairing the
damage. Yet in fact such causal links are commonly dismissed as
irrelevant “ancient history” or simply ignored by policy- makers and
scholars alike. The debate opened up by such classic works as Eric
Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery (1944) and Walter Rodney’s How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) has yet to be integrated into
current reflections about globalization and empire.

Global Apartheid

Certainly there is much that is new about the current moment in
Africa, as elsewhere in the world. The end of the Cold War removed
the primary strategic imperative for outside subsidies to African
re- gimes. The AIDS pandemic, which in the 1980s was largely
confined to central Africa, has swept through much of the continent,
revers- ing previous advances in raising life expectancy. It now
threatens almost every sector of economy and society. Few African
cities now lack multiple internet cafes, and the growth of mobile
phone use is the most rapid anywhere. Although the trend is less
well studied than in the Caribbean or Latin America, the dispersion
of new African immigrants throughout the world has made remittances
a central feature of survival for many African communities and a
major com- ponent of many national economies. Each of these trends,
it could be argued, is a sign of deep structural change as well as a
feature of the current moment.

Nevertheless, continuities with previous periods and reinforcement
of long-established structures are equally striking. As recently
summarized in an article analyzing the causes of increasing world
inequality (Wade, 2004), the statistics on recent inequality trends
are much disputed. Results vary widely with the measures and data
used. But what evidence there is for structural advance in the
global South comes almost entirely from trends in China and India.
At a structural level, despite such blips as a modest increase in U.
S. textile imports from several African countries as a result of
tariff concessions in the U.S.-Africa Growth and Opportunity Act,
the role of African countries in the world economy is still
overwhelmingly that of suppliers of primary commodities, as has been
the case since colonial conquest over a century ago. The dynamics of
world markets are of course different for different commodities
ranging from coffee and cotton to oil and gold. But not even South
Africa has managed to find a sustainable strategy to emulate the
East Asian competitive challenges to the established G-7 economic
powers.

Despite multiple shifts in terminology and emphasis, moreover,
neither reformist African governments nor stronger critics of the
Washington Consensus among African activists and scholars have
succeeded in altering the course of the international financial
institutions that have insisted on putting macroeconomic adjustment
and trade liberalization above all else. The World Bank and the IMF
have indeed forfeited any credibility with both African and
international civil society. But alternative agendas for
“sustainable development” and “human development,” despite
endorsement by multilateral agencies, global conferences, and even
dissenting voices within the World Bank, have lost ground to market
fundamentalism in practice.

While the first decades of African independence saw significant
advances in health and education, subsequent decades have instead
seen an overall pattern of decline. Disparities such as these were
and are reinforced not only by economic structures such as commodity
markets and the accumulation of capital controlled by the capitalist
classes of rich countries, but also by continuities of political
influence. The victories of greater autonomy won by anti-colonial
struggles were eroded first by the Cold War and the continued
influence of ex-colonial powers. Regardless of the political
ideology of post-colonial leaders, the model of the colonial state
remained the dominant guide to the exercise of power. And in
response to the economic crises of the 1980s and the 1990s, African
states lost more and more influence to the directing hand of the
World Bank and clubs of creditors/donors.

While contemporary critics of globalization lament the loss of
autonomy of national states, in Africa the empirical evidence for
such an earlier golden age is weak indeed. Whether for the first
wave of independent states in the 1960s, or for those winning power
in the 1970s and 1980s after armed struggles, the period of hope and
popular mobilization was quickly cut short. The entry of a free
South Africa onto the African scene in the last decade has
significantly changed the context for continental cooperation, and
many see the African Union as an arena for both wider public debate
and action on some of the continent’s crises. But whether one
attributes Pretoria’s compromises to pragmatism or to class
interests, it would be difficult to argue that the vision of African
renaissance has won much leverage for Africa in institutions
deciding global policies affecting the continent.

Debates on the causes of this reality, and on how to find a path
ahead that avoids both Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism, are
complex. But surely it is necessary to go beyond national arenas or
the failure of particular leaders and to include analysis of the
lack of democracy in global institutions that have relatively more
weight in Africa than almost anywhere else in the world. To counter
growing global inequality requires state action on a scale
equivalent to the global mechanisms that reinforce that inequality.

Multilateral institutions dealing with almost every conceivable
issue have in fact proliferated in parallel with economic
globalization. There has also been significant involvement by a
burgeoning “international civil society,” ranging from non-
governmental organizations in the global North to activist groups in
both North and South. The impact at the level of ideas has been
significant. But it is also the case that the more influential the
institution, the more likely its effective governance is effectively
controlled by representatives of rich, predominantly white,
countries.

Whether or not one uses the term “global apartheid” (Booker and
Minter, 2001), any short-hand description of the global order at the
dawn of the 21st century must somehow acknowledge the double
standards implicit in an international system of global minority
rule, based on the entrenched assumption that some human lives are
more valuable than others based on the accident of place and race of
birth. The tragedy of 9/11 and the war on Iraq is not only the
direct damage inflicted by those events, but also the
reinforcement given to diversion of attention from the global
holocaust of the AIDS pandemic and parallel threats to human
security.

It would be a mistake to see this tacit acceptance of the differ-
ential value of human life as simply a cultural or ideological
epiphenomenon less worthy of analysis than the “hard” structures of
global political economy, geostrategic competition, or preemptive
militarism. Long-term rationality, even from the point of view of
the more farsighted guardians of global capitalism, may dictate
attention to the range of global crises that have their most severe
impact in Africa (see, for example, the report of the World
Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, at
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/wcsdg). Seemingly race-neutral
goals such as poverty alleviation and other noble objectives may win
approval in conference after conference.

But just as national divisions are not only conceptual but embedded
in laws distinguishing citizens and non-citizens, so the assumptions
of racial and cultural hierarchy are embedded in the political
discourse and practices that reinforce global apartheid.

Making “another world possible” requires analyses and strategies for
political mobilization that do not evade this stubborn legacy from
the past.

References

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind
Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United
States. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Booker, Salih, and William Minter. 2001. “Global Apartheid.” The
Nation, July 9.

Guinier, Lani, and Gerald Torres. 2002. The Miner’s Canary:
Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Marable, Manning. 2004 “Globalization and Racialization.” Znet,
August 13.

Martinez, Elizabeth (Betita). 2000. “Where Was the Color in
Seattle?: Looking for Reasons Why the Great Battle was so White.”
Colorlines, 3:1 (Spring).

Oliver, Melvin L., and Thomas M. Shapiro. 1995. Black Wealth, White
Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge.

Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London/Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania: Bogle L’Ouverture Publications and Tanzania
Publishing House.

Wade, Robert Hunter. 2004. “On the Causes of Increasing World
Inequality, or Why the Matthew Effect Prevails.” New Political
Economy, 8:2 (June).

Williams, Eric. 1944. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill, North
Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.

Winant, Howard. 2001. The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy
Since World War II. New York: Basic Books.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 11, 2015 (150511)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The [Ebola] epidemic is at its lowest but not over yet. The recent
weeks have seen an important decrease in new confirmed Ebola cases
across West Africa. Liberia is now close to being declared Ebola-
free on 9 May, while Sierra Leone and Guinea are finally getting
close to zero. However, the outbreak is not over until it’s over at
the regional level.” – Doctors without Borders, May 6 update

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The welcome announcement that Liberia is now “Ebola-free,” having
passed 42 days without a case of Ebola, came with many caveats. The
full picture includes the continuation of new cases in neighboring
Guinea and Sierra Leone. It also includes the massive damage done to
the preexisting inadequate health systems, jobs lost and education
postponed, and, recently, the discovery that even Ebola survivors
are likely to have ongoing after-effects.

Internationally, while there is much attention given to “lessons
learned” and the need for ongoing improvement in health systems and
preparedness for health emergencies still to come, the resources to
implement the lessons learned are still largely missing from the
budgets of international agencies. The burden still falls primarily
on health workers in the countries themselves, who have already made
heroic sacrifices.

For a short video (9 minutes) featuring Sierra Leoneans responsible
for the difficult task of “getting to zero,” see the latest Ebola on
the Ground episode from OkayAfrica and Ebola Deeply, at
http://tinyurl.com/lzmh47l

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a brief excerpt from the latest
Ebola update from Doctors without Borders and longer excerpts from a
feature article from Ebola Deeply on the difficulties of “getting to
zero” in Sierra Leone.

Also recent and of related interest

Long-term impact of Ebola in Sierra Leone Guardian, May 8, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/m79heoh

Interview with Dan Edge, director of PBS documentary Outbreak,
tracing path of Ebola & mistakes made in the response
http://tinyurl.com/ngsx9mc The 54-minute video is available at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/outbreak/

Perseverance in Life and Art: African Voices on Ebola
http://usanafricanvoicesebola.weebly.com/

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Ebola and other health issues,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/healthexp.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Ebola crisis update – 6 May 2015

[Excerpt. Original at
http://www.msf.org/article/ebola-crisis-update-6-may-2015]

Liberia: Zero cases since 20 March 2015 Guinea: 9 confirmed cases in
the country on 4 May. Sierra Leone: 21 confirmed cases in the
country on 27 April: 6 new cases (3 in Kambia, 3 in Western Area)
from 22-29 April

MSF Staff on ground (as of 21 April)

Total: 185 international and about 1,150 national Guinea: 83
international, around 500 national Sierra Leone: 61 international,
around 310 national Liberia: 39 international, around 350 national

Overview

The epidemic is at its lowest but not over yet

The recent weeks have seen an important decrease in new confirmed
Ebola cases across West Africa. Liberia is now close to being
declared Ebola-free on 9 May, while Sierra Leone and Guinea are
finally getting close to zero. However, the outbreak is not over
until it’s over at the regional level. No country can really be
thought to be Ebola-free until all three countries in the outbreak
have no recorded cases for 42 days.

Even after the end of this outbreak, West Africa will have to remain
vigilant against a re-emergence of Ebola; there must be strengthened
epidemiological surveillance and a rapid response alert system for
when – rather than if, a new Ebola case occurs.

Key ‘pillars’ of the response are still missing

Regional cooperation: Given the high mobility of the population
across the three most-affected countries, surveillance must be
ensured across borders and coordinated on the regional level to
avoid new cases to be ‘imported’ in Ebola-free zones.

Community awareness remains low in some areas, raising the risk of
local people panicking, which can lead to violence against medical
and aid workers. Community mobilization and sensitization efforts
supported by national and local leaders must be reinforced rapidly.

Non-Ebola needs are a persisting concern

Already weak public health systems have been seriously damaged by
the epidemic. The long period of interrupted health services has
caused significant gaps in preventive activities, such as routine
immunization of children, and in retention in care for people on
long-term treatments such as HIV and other chronic diseases. There
is a need to catch up and mitigate the consequences of the treatment
interruption.

…

***********************************************************

Why Sierra Leone Can’t Get Rid of Ebola

April 23rd, 2015 by Mark Honigsbaum

http://www.eboladeeply.org

[Excerpts: for full report visit http://tinyurl.com/occ3vxs]

Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, the president of the Republic of Sierra
Leone, was having trouble “getting to zero,” and his underlings were
getting antsy. “We need one more push,” said Major Palo Conteh, the
commander of Sierra Leone’s National Ebola Response Centre (NERC)
and a former Olympic quarter miler. “It’s like in the 400 meters
when you’re 20 meters from the finish line, that’s the time to kick
hard.”

Brigadier General David Taluva, a jovial officer with the physique
of a shot putter, had other ideas. “Perhaps we should quarantine
Port Loko,” he mused to a group of officers gathered outside a
Portakabin by the Special Court building in Freetown, now
transformed into an Ebola situation room. “No, wait, then we would
have to quarantine the whole country.”

The officers shuffled their feet awkwardly, then parted to make way
for an official who was late for that evening’s briefing.

Taluva was joking, but of course Ebola is no laughing matter. Port
Loko is one of the most populous districts in Sierra Leone and the
site of Lungi International Airport. Quarantine Port Loko and you
effectively cut the flow of international health workers and aid to
President Koroma’s beleaguered administration. The problem is that
Port Loko, or to be more precise, Lokomasama – the district to the
north of Freetown – is scored with shallow swamps and twisting
rivers perfect for evading the Ebola control measures. And, since
February, that is exactly what fishermen and recalcitrant villagers
in Lokomasama have been doing. The result has been new clusters of
infection up and down the country, frustrating the effort to “get to
zero,” as the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the elimination
of Ebola transmissions (getting to zero requires no new cases to be
reported in a country for 42 days, double the maximum incubation
period of the virus).

“I fear that people have grown complacent,” sighed Professor Monty
Jones, the president’s special adviser, when I caught up with him in
early March at the State House, an imposing stone building with
uninterrupted views over Freetown to Susan’s Bay and Destruction
Bay. “The epidemic has been going on too long. They just want life
to return to normal.”

***

It was a refrain I was to hear again and again during an 11-day tour
of the country that took me from the sun-kissed beaches of Aberdeen
– where during daylight hours fishermen reel in glistening
barracudas and pots stuffed with outsized lobsters – to a surreal
meeting of tribal chiefs and frustrated British officials at Port
Loko, to an overgrown graveyard in Kenema, the district in the far
east of the country where Ebola first erupted in Sierra Leone in May
2014. On the way I met traumatized survivors, inspiring community
activists, and stressed-out scientists doing their best to launch
trials of experimental vaccines and drugs in difficult conditions.

…

Zero transmission of Ebola is theoretically achievable. Indeed, it
is argued nothing less will do, and that unless and until the last
case is found and safely isolated, there will always be a threat of
Ebola rebounding. That is surely right. The question is, at what
cost will containment be achieved?

***

A major exporter of diamonds and iron ore, Sierra Leone is rich in
natural resources and, until Ebola, had one of the fastest growing
economies in the world. Now mechanical diggers lie idle beside the
red, African earth, and investment from China and other foreign
sources has stalled. … Sierra Leone was once a popular tourist
destination: the airport is just meters from a gorgeous sandy beach
…

That image was all but erased by the country’s brutal 11-year civil
war, which only ended in 2002 when British troops helped expel rebel
forces from the outskirts of Freetown. Then came a second blow:
Ebola.

One of the tragedies of the outbreak in Sierra Leone is that it
might have been avoided had WHO acted more decisively at the
beginning of the epidemic. The first official acknowledgment of
Ebola came on March 23, 2014 when WHO was notified of 49 cases and
29 deaths in Guéckédou, a small village bordering a forested area of
southern Guinea inhabited by wild bats, the presumed reservoir of
the virus. Within a week Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was
reporting an epidemic of “unprecedented” magnitude and the spread of
infections to Liberia. Kailahun, Sierra Leone’s most easterly
province, which shares a border with both Guinea and Liberia, was
the obvious next port of call for the virus. Indeed, in April, Dr.
Sheik Humarr Khan, the chief physician on the Lassa fever ward at
Kenema Hospital, who at the time had the only laboratory in the
country capable of testing for Ebola, began warning nurses that
Ebola was ‘coming’ and they had better be ready. But by the time Dr.
Khan confirmed the first positive blood sample on May 24, from a
nurse who had attended the funeral of a traditional healer in Koindu
in northern Kailahun, it was too late: staff had already admitted a
pregnant woman infected with Ebola to the maternity ward. Within
days the ward was overrun with Ebola cases, the majority of them
other funeral goers or their contacts. In all, ten staff would die
battling the virus between May and August, including Dr. Khan and
the hospital’s chief nurse, Mbalu Fonnie.

Kailahun was Sierra Leone’s “shark in the water” moment. Knowing
that a deadly predator had strayed into its territory, the Ministry
of Health should have closed the road between Koindu and Kenema and
flooded Kailahun with health workers and contact tracers –
epidemiological teams equipped to rapidly trace and isolate
infectious patients and their contacts. But at the time Sierra Leone
had just 1,000 nurses and midwives for the whole country. Besides,
at this stage few of the so-called experts, including WHO, seemed to
think there was a danger of Ebola reaching a major town or city –
and those WHO officials in Geneva who did see the danger thought an
international health alert would be counterproductive, stoking
needless fear and hysteria at a time …

But, of course, everything was not fine. To date there have been
12,265 Ebola cases in Sierra Leone – more than any other country in
West Africa – and though Liberia has suffered more fatalities (4,486
to Sierra Leone’s 3,877), in Liberia the epidemic peaked in mid-
September, whereas in Sierra Leone infections climbed steadily
throughout the autumn before peaking at a much higher level in early
December. As new Ebola treatment centers came online and burial
squads – backed by an army of international contact tracers and
outreach workers – descended on rural communities to promote safe
hygiene messages, cases declined – but at the end of January that
decline stalled. Since then the Ebola reduction effort has
plateaued, with the weekly case totals stuck in the mid-70s for most
of February and the mid-50s in March.

…

To get a measure of the challenges facing President Koroma on what
many officials are calling the “bumpy road to zero,” I headed to
Port Loko, where the coordinator of the local District Ebola
Response Center, Raymond Kabia, had called a meeting of the
district’s 12 political leaders, known as paramount chiefs, in order
to address the continued flouting of quarantine measures and
restrictions on ‘unsafe’ burials. The idea was to get the chiefs to
take ownership of Ebola control, but as we sped through unattended
checkpoints and past banners scrawled with fading Krio messages
(“Ebola nor touch am” – “Ebola don’t touch”), the auguries were not
good. A few weeks earlier, a fisherman from Lokomasama infected with
the virus had ignored the official requirement to report to an Ebola
assessment unit, and instead had persuaded three friends to ferry
him to a remote island in the Rhombe swamps. There he consulted a
traditional healer before continuing along Port Loko’s mosquito-
infested coast to Freetown, where he alighted at a wharf in
Aberdeen, a stone’s throw from the Radisson Blu Mammy Yoko, the
city’s premier hotel, then host to more than 50 staff from the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

By now the fisherman was a walking virus bomb, and on disembarking
made straight for an Oxfam-built toilet block, where he vomited
hemorrhagic fluids. As a result, 20 villagers in the Tamba Kula
district of Aberdeen were also infected with Ebola, prompting the
quarantining of the community for 21 days. In theory that should
have been the end of the transmission chain, but despite the best
efforts of contact tracers, one of the contacts got away – hitching
a ride on the back of a motorcycle to Makeni, three hours from
Freetown, where he infected three more people, including a
traditional healer. All four were now being ‘offered’ life-saving
treatment at an Ebola treatment center in Makeni operated by the
International Rescue Committee (IRC), the relief agency headed by
David Miliband. I say offered because, according to the nurse from
Public Health England I spoke to, several patients were refusing
treatment, fearing IRC medical staff were trying to murder them with
what the healer, who has been keeping up a running commentary on the
ward, calls their ‘Ebola guns’ – the hand-held electronic
thermometers that nurses use to record patients’ temperatures.

…

The further you go from Freetown, the fewer Ebola patients you
encounter. On the outskirts of Bo we passed a huge MSF Ebola
management center, deserted save for a few orderlies and a skeleton
medical staff, and in Kenema it was the same. Except for the triage
tents at the entrance to the hospital, you would never know Ebola
had once cut a swathe through the maternity ward here, bringing
misery to a place of life. But while Ebola has now returned to the
forest, Dr. Khan’s Lassa fever unit remains open for business.
Kenema’s diamond mines are a breeding ground for rats, the carriers
of Lassa, and technicians have been processing and storing Lassa
blood samples here for several years. Those stores are proving to be
a serological goldmine: retrospective studies by Tulane University
researchers using Ebola reagents have revealed antibodies in the
blood of several “Lassa” patients. The first of these seropositive
Ebola samples dates back to 2006. In other words, Ebola may have
visited Kenema before but no one noticed. “The scientific question
for us now is why that didn’t turn into an outbreak,” said Dr.
Joseph Fair, a Lassa expert and US Army researcher from USAMRIID who
helped set up Kenema’s diagnostics platform.

Answering that question will require not only a better understanding
of the ecology and the biology of the virus and its interaction with
the immune system, but also what Dubos would have called “social and
environmental factors.” As Dr. Fair recalled: “When I first came to
Kenema in 2006 there was no Chinese highway, just a dirt road, and
the journey from Freetown took eight hours. Now, it takes three, and
instead of jungle all you see are cassava fields. That’s got to have
had an effect.”

One of the reasons Ebola has proved so difficult to eradicate in
Sierra Leone is the attachment to traditional burial customs. These
dictate that the families of the deceased should be able to kiss and
wash the bodies of their loved ones before laying them to the rest.
But, of course, such customs also risk spreading the virus further,
and in an effort to get to zero the NERC has mandated that the
bodies of victims be disposed of within 24 hours – an edict that, in
the case of the Western Area, usually means interment in a hastily
dug grave in Freetown’s King Tom cemetery. At Kenema’s Dama Road
cemetery, however, perhaps because it is further from the center,
the rules were not applied so strictly, and people had time to place
markers on the last resting place of the nurses and technicians who
were among Ebola’s first victims. On a broiling hot afternoon in
March I asked Mohamed Sow, a driver with the Tulane Lassa fever
program, to take me there. Sow did not need to ask directions: when
Ebola struck it was all hands to the pumps, and instead of ferrying
Lassa patients to the hospital he found himself transporting victims
of Ebola, many of them former colleagues, to the cemetery.

Unlike at King Tom, there was no one guarding the gates at Dama Road
and no one insisting we submit to a temperature check. We simply
parked by the entrance and walked in. Although it had been scarcely
nine months since Ebola swept through Kenema, the graves were
already overgrown with tropical vegetation. As we picked our way
gingerly between the plots, at first it was hard to distinguish one
from another. Then we came across a marker commemorating the death
of a local pastor. According to Sow, the pastor had contracted Ebola
after visiting Kenema’s maternity ward to read the last rites to a
patient. He was just 34. “He was a Christian, a man of God, so it
was his duty,” Sow told me matter-of-factly. “He could not refuse.”

Soon, we realized, we were standing in a thicket of Ebola graves.
The majority had crosses like the pastor’s, but in some cases the
names were Muslim and the epitaphs were in Arabic. All seem to have
died in a three-month period between July and September 2014. Sow
wanted to show us other graves, but by now both my driver and I had
seen enough. The earth may have been dry and cracked, but the fear
was still palpable: it was the closest we had come to the virus in
11 days.

On the drive back to Freetown neither of us said very much for the
first half hour. The highway was empty and, even though we were now
speeding toward the epicenter of the epidemic rather than away from
it, we were both relieved to be leaving Kenema. Eventually, however,
we reached a checkpoint and had to stop to show our credentials and
submit to the obligatory temperature check.

“People are sick and tired of Ebola,” said my driver as we pulled
away. “Do you think these vaccines will really make a difference?” I
replied that I didn’t know, but that scientists had a duty to try,
if not for now then for the next time. He paused, considering my
words. Then, smiling, he pointed to a phrase painted on the bumper
of the bus in front of us. It read: “No condition is permanent.”

…

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
March 10, 2015 (150310)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Africa, the continent with warming deviating most rapidly from
“normal” conditions, could see climate change adaptation costs rise
to US$50 billion per year by 2050, even assuming international
efforts keep global warming below 2 degrees C this century,
according to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
report.

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This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the press release and excerpts
from the Executive Summary of the new UNEP report Africa’s
Adaptation Gap 2: Bridging the Gap – mobilizing sources.

The report contains updated data on the expected cost of adapting to
climate change under different scenarios for global warming, for the
time horizons of 2020, 2050, and 2100. Key messages include the fact
that Africa is already the continent where climate is already
deviating from normal more rapidly than any other continent.

Projections for impact rise enormously even if global warming is
held to less than 2 degrees C, and even more so if efforts to slow
global warming are insufficient to make that goal. This means that
the most important action to be taken is to limit the damage by
“deep global emission reductions.” Even if this is done, the costs
of adaptation will rise rapidly, requiring action to find new
sources of funding at national, continental, and global levels.

The report suggests a continent-wide levy (transaction tax) on four
sectors: extractive industries, financial and banking transactions,
international trade, and tourism. It also highlights the imperative
for national tax systems to be made more effective, including
minimizing reductions in the tax base from illicit financial flows.

For additional background on the current gap in international
climate finance, see the Feb. 26 article by Brookings Instution
analysts Martin Stadelmann and Timmons Roberts. They note that the
UN has issued a “clarification note” admitting that their estimate
of current levels of annual total North-South climate financing of
$40-175 billion is almost certainly closer to the lower than the
upper end of that range. See http://tinyurl.com/m9zo2pz

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate
change and the environment, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/envexp.php

Of related interest:
March 9 Guardian article by Bill McKibben
http://tinyurl.com/p2qg3we

“Pressure is growing. A relentless climate movement is starting to
win big, unprecedented victories around the world, victories which
are quickly reshaping the consensus view.”

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Costs of Climate Change Adaptation Expected to Rise Far Beyond
Africa’s Coping Capacity Even if Warming Kept Below 2 degrees C

Climate adaptation costs for Africa could soar to reach US $50
billion annually by mid-century.

United Nations Environment Programme

http://tinyurl.com/kb3llqg

Cairo, 4 March 2015 – Africa, the continent with warming deviating
most rapidly from “normal” conditions, could see climate change
adaptation costs rise to US$50 billion per year by 2050, even
assuming international efforts keep global warming below 2 degrees C
this century, according to a new United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) report.

Released at the 15th African Ministerial Conference on the
Environment (AMCEN), Africa’s Adaptation Gap builds on UNEP’s
Emissions Gap Report 2014, which showed that the world is not
currently headed in the right direction for holding global warming
below 2 degrees C. This latest Africa Adaptation Gap report also
builds on UNEP’s Global Adaptation Gap Report 2014, which found that
adaptation costs in all developing countries together could climb as
high as US$250-500 billion per year by 2050.

Produced in collaboration with Climate Analytics and the African
Climate Finance Hub, the report says deep global emissions
reductions are the best way to head off Africa’s crippling
adaptation costs. It also finds that the continent’s domestic
resources are insufficient to respond to projected impacts, but
would be important to complement international funding for African
countries – including meeting the Cancun climate finance commitments
by 2020.

“The accelerating rate of climate change poses great adaptation
challenges, of which we have been well forewarned,” said UN Under-
Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. “The
best insurance against the many potential negative impacts of
climate change is ambitious global mitigation action in the long-
run, combined with large-scale and rapidly increasing funding for
adaptation. Investing in resilience and adaptation as an integral
part of national development planning can develop resilience to
future climate change impacts.”

Africa’s looming climate crisis

Africa is the continent where a rapidly changing climate is expected
to deviate earlier than across any other continent from “normal”
changes, making adaptation a matter of urgency, the report says.

Warming projections under medium scenarios indicate that extensive
areas of Africa will exceed 2 degrees C by the last two decades of
this century relative to the late 20th century mean annual
temperature. Under a high warming pathway, temperatures could exceed
2 degrees C by mid-century across much of Africa and reach between 3
degrees C and 6 degrees C by the end of the century. This would have
a severe impact on agricultural production, food security, human
health and water availability.

In a 4 degrees C world, projections for Africa suggest sea levels
could rise faster than the global average and reach 80cm above
current levels by 2100 along the Indian and Atlantic Ocean
coastlines, with particularly high numbers of people at risk to
flooding in the coastal cities of Mozambique, Tanzania, Cameroon,
Egypt, Senegal and Morocco.

“This is not just a question of money; millions of people and their
livelihoods are at stake,” said Binilith Mahenge, President of AMCEN
and Tanzania’s Minister of State for Environment. “Africa’s
population will be at an increasing risk of undernourishment due to
increasing food demand and the detrimental effects of climate change
on agriculture on the continent. Global warming of 2 degrees C would
put over 50 per cent of the African continent’s population at risk
of undernourishment. Yet, the IPCC showed that without additional
mitigation we are heading to 4 degrees C of warming.”

“Rising to the challenge and addressing the systemic harm that
climate change may cause in Africa, thus undermining the post-2015
sustainable development agenda, warrants leaving no stone unturned
in exploring opportunities for supporting adaptation actions and
measures in Africa,” he added.

Closing the funding gap

The report explores the extent to which African nations can
contribute to closing the adaptation gap – especially in the area of
identifying the resources that will be needed.

The evidence suggests that African countries – such as Ghana,
Ethiopia and South Africa – are already committing some resources of
their own to adaptation efforts. Country-case studies in the report
suggest that by 2029/2030, under moderately optimistic growth
scenarios, Ghana could for example – based on hypothetical scenarios
– commit US$233 million to adaptation financing, Ethiopia US$248
million, South Africa US$961 million and Togo US$18.2 million.
However, international funding will be required to bridge the
growing adaptation gap even if African nations commit to ways to
increase domestic sources. Current levels of international finance,
through bilateral and multilateral sources, are not sufficient.

“Because of the magnitude of the challenge, further examination of
the potential and the feasibility of mobilizing untapped
international, regional and domestic sources should be explored
further,” said Mr Steiner.

Scaling up international climate finance under the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may lead to sufficient funding
for adaptation, but even in that case, implementation can only reach
its full potential if complemented by comprehensive and effective
national and regional policy planning, capacity-building and
governance.

The promotion of an effective enabling framework for private sector
participation in adaptation activities would also be a key
contributor to closing the funding gap, the report finds.

For more information please contact: Michael Logan, News and Media
Officer, UNEP, michael.logan@unep.org, +254 725 939 620

**********************************************

Africa’s Adaptation Gap 2

Technical Report: Bridging the Gap – Mobilising Sources

Executive Summary

Climate change represents a clear and present danger to the
development prospects of Africa. African countries are going to have
to adapt to protect their peoples from the harsh impacts of climate
change and to ensure that they are not derailed from their current
development pathways.

Developed country Parties to the Climate Convention committed to
“assist the developing country Parties that are particularly
vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs
of adaptation to those adverse effects.” (UNFCCC Articles 4.3 and
4.4)

The first edition of Africa’s Adaptation Gap Technical report
(AAGr1) in 2013 provided an overview of the most relevant impacts of
climate change in different sectors across Africa, as well as cost
estimates for adaptation.

This report (2015 AAGr2) is directed towards exploring the extent to
which African countries can contribute to closing the adaptation
gap, in order to better understand the gap in the resources that
will be needed and, thereby, the likely extent to which
international climate finance must be urgently raised, leveraged and
deployed in service of Africa’s pressing adaptation needs.

Given the increasing severity of the adaptation challenge posed by
climate change to Africa, no stone should be left unturned in
looking for solutions for closing the adaptation gap, for two major
reasons: firstly, the case for international solutions is even
stronger if national and regional options are considered and
evaluated; secondly, it is in the interest of African nations and
their stakeholders at all levels to hedge against the possibility
that the funding provided through the Green Climate Fund and other
channels is insufficient or ineffective.

Building on the report’s findings, and relating to the current
negotiations towards the post-2015 agreement context under the
UNFCCC, African policymakers may consider the three following
findings:

1.  The best insurance against potentially catastrophic impacts of
climate change and unmanageable adaptation and (residual) damage
costs in Africa is effective and ambitious mitigation action that
leads to deep global emission reductions;

2.  Cancun climate finance commitments need to be met by 2020, the
historical imbalance between adaptation and mitigation in the
allocation of resources needs to be corrected, and ease of access
(‘modalities’) for African countries needs to be improved. Adequate
(large-scale, rapidly increasing) and predictable funding must be
mobilised for the subsequent periods;

3.  The potential for – and the feasibility of – mobilising untapped
international, regional and domestic sources should be explored
further.

An update on climate impacts shows increased urgency

*  Africa is beginning to experience annual-mean temperatures higher
than any locally experienced in history. This is already happening
in Central Africa and is projected to cover the entire continent in
the next two to three decades; earlier across Africa than any other
continent.

*  Warming projections under medium scenarios indicate that, by the
last two decades of this century, extensive areas of Africa will
exceed 2 degrees C relative to the late 20th century mean annual
temperature. Under a high warming pathway (“over 4 degrees C
world”), that exceedance could occur by mid-century across much of
Africa and reach between 3 degrees C and 6 degrees C by the end of
the century.

*  Combined with changes in water availability, for example, this
will likely have a severe impact on agriculture. 97% of sub- Saharan
agricultural systems are rain-fed, and 60% of the labour force
relies on agriculture.

*  Sea level rise is generally higher along Africa’s coastlines than
the global average, particularly along the Indian and Atlantic
Oceans. Sea levels are projected to rise at least 40cm above 2000 by
2100 in a below-2 degrees C scenario (close to 1.5 degrees C), and
to 80cm in an over 4-degrees C scenario (compared to roughly 70cm
globally). There are chances it could be much worse, with a 15%
chance of 100cm sea-level rise above 2000 by 2100 and a considerable
5% chance of a rise exceeding 130 cm by 2100.

*  Particularly high numbers of people are at risk of flooding in
the coastal cities of Mozambique, Tanzania, Cameroon, Egypt, Senegal
and Morocco.

Estimated adaptation costs point to a very rapid divergence between
globally low and high warming scenarios

*  The first Africa’s adaptation gap report (2013) stressed already
that past (global) emissions commit Africa to adaptation costs of
USD 7-15 billion/year by 2020.

*  This second report estimates that adaptation costs could rise to
about USD50bn/year 2 by 2050 for a scenario holding warming below 2
degrees C.

*  The estimated costs double to about USD100bn/year by 2050 for a
scenario reaching over 4 degrees C by 2100.

*  In the longer term, and relative to Africa’s (growing) GDP,
adaptation costs could rise to as much as 6% of African GDP by 2100
in an over 4 °C world, but in a below 2 °C world, these would be
less than 1% of GDP.

Adaptation cannot prevent all damages: residual damages will always
remain and are large

*  In a more general sense, the IPCC’s recent Fifth Assessment
Report (AR5) noted that even after implementation of potential
adaptation options, residual risks remain for many sectors in
Africa.

*  This, second Africa Adaptation Gap report confirms this in a more
specific sense: even if all cost-effective adaptation is realised,
Africa will still suffer large “residual” damages, which are
estimated to be double the adaptation costs in the period 2030-2050.

*  Africa and the international community will need to find ways to
cope with these residual damages, under any scenario of global
mitigation and local adaptation efforts. Current international
funding falls short and must be scaled up rapidly

*  The climate change challenge exceeds the capacity of the African
continent to respond to projected damages and impacts through
domestic resources, even if the base to raise additional funding is
broadened. Scaled-up international support for African countries is
therefore critical.

*  Current levels of international funding are not sufficient. So
far, while difficult to estimate, roughly USD$1-2bn a year is
flowing to Africa for adaptation, through a variety of sources.

*  A steep increase in adaptation funding from developed to
developing countries would contribute significantly to closing the
adaptation-funding gap. Therefore, increased adaptation funding
disbursements – in line with the USD100-billion target as agreed by
the Parties at the UNFCCC conferences in Copenhagen in 2009 and
Cancun in 2010 – could result in bridging the deepening adaptation
gap by 2020.

*  Such disbursements subsequently need to continue to grow rapidly
to keep pace with warming, and most rapidly if global mitigation
fails to put the world on a pathway to hold warming below 1.5 and 2
degrees C by 2100.

*  Recent positive developments in the operationalisation of the
Green Climate Fund are of critical importance for adaptation
financing in Africa. The GCF initial capitalisation was completed in
December 2014, with pledges amounting to around USD10.2bn. The GCF
Board has decided that 50% of its portfolio should be allocated to
adaptation and, in turn, that 50% should go to particularly
vulnerable developing countries including Least Developed Countries
(LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Africa.

The report’s approach: African case studies on adaptation

This report has taken the approach of exploring the additional
options and opportunities that may exist in Africa through four
country case studies – representing a reasonably diverse sample of
the great variety of countries and economies to be found within
Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa and Togo).

*  Each of these case studies explores aspects of the adaptation
response and, in particular, the scope for domestic adaptation
financing, in terms of the increased domestic adaptation resources
that could be generated through economic growth and tax reform,
through adaptation-specific taxes and fees, and through regulation
and market-making aimed at eliciting greater private investment.

*  The conceptually-simple calculations this report presents are
primarily intended to be illustrative of the limits and potential
for adaptation financing from domestic sources in a context where
strong growth is assumed and tax reforms are successfully achieved.

*  The evidence suggests that African countries are already
committing some resources of their own to adaptation efforts and
that there are opportunities for doing more that can be considered
and debated across the continent, with lessons to learn and share.

Options for sources of adaptation funds – international, national,
continental

As the report shows, there are a lot of adaptation options, measures
and sources that countries can mobilise and implement from the
national level to the international level to limit the deepening of
the adaptation gap under any level of global mitigation. The report
assesses:

*  Options at the international level – scaling up countries’
commitments and channelling through the Green Climate Fund and other
channels

*  Options at the national level – resources from national budget

*  Options at the continental level – levies

…

To address the multiple challenges of adaptation in Africa, there
will be no single solution that solves all the funding and
implementation issues African countries face. Addressing these
challenges will require the deployment of measures at the
international, continental and national levels.

A levy on transactions to pay for adaptation?

This report assesses, amongst other complementary options, the
potential effects of a levy applied on transactions.

Building upon similar international experiences in both developed
and developing countries, and political as well as economic
analyses, a levy on transactions in Africa is explored in four
sectors: extractive industries, financial and banking transactions
(including remittances), international trade and transportation
(including exports) and tourism. The estimated revenue shows that
even if such regional revenues were generated by the application of
these levies, however, adaptation costs would exceed the
revenue generation capacity as early as 2020.

Current and projected adaptation costs for Africa far exceed average
climate finance over the 2010-2012 period. Addressing this urgent
lack of funding will require the deployment of complementary
measures at the international, continental and national levels. Even
if for example a levy were regionally applied on transactions to
raise revenue for adaptation costs which would already exceed the
revenue generation capacity by 2020. Only a steep increase in
adaptation funding from developed to developing countries will
contribute to closing the adaptation-funding gap in Africa.

…

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
March 3, 2015 (150303)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Lake Turkana, in the far northwest of Kenya and extending over the
border into Ethiopia, is the world’s largest desert lake, in a
region that is central to archaeological investigation into the
origin of humanity. It is now also central to two different projects
for expanding renewable energy due to come on-line in the next three
years, one based on hydropower and the other on wind. While both
will significantly expand the input to the East African power grid,
critics charge that expansion of hydropower on Ethiopia’s Omo River
also poses serious threats to the livelihood of local people both
around Lake Turkana and upstream along the Omo River.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/turk1503.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/turk1503.php

The hydropower project, the Gilgel Gibe III dam, is expected to
generate its first power in June 2015 and grow to a capacity of
1,870 MW. It would also serve Kenya as well as Ethiopia through a
transmission line to be completed in 2018. The Lake Turkana Wind
Power project, which completed a complex financing package in late
2014, is expected to begin production of power in a little more than
two years, with an eventual capacity of 300 MW, increasing Kenya’s
electricity capacity by about 20% from current levels.

While the Turkana wind project has minimal environmental impact, the
Gibe III, like other such large hydropower projects, has a much
larger environmental footprint, raising multiple questions about the
impact on downstream populations of the dam and of large-scale
irrigated agricultural projects displacing local populations. The
Ethiopian government has rejected such criticism as uninformed. But
both the World Bank and the African Development Bank declined to
support the Gibe III project, which subsequently gained significant
Chinese backing. In contrast, the African Development Bank is the
lead financing partner for the Turkana wind project.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release and project
profile from the Lake Turkana Wind Power consortium responsible for
the project, and excerpts from two critical documents on the
potential impact of the Gilgel Gibe III dam on Lake Turkana, from
International Rivers and from Dr. Sean Avery, a consultant who
prepared impact reports for the African Development Bank and for the
University of Oxford African Studies Center.

Other relevant sources of interest include:

On Lake Turkana Wind Power:

Carlos Van Wageningen (Chairman of Lake Turkana Wind Power, talks
about Lake Turkana, the largest wind power plant in Africa. 10-
minute video interview, November 15, 2013,
http://tinyurl.com/kbkgagp

On the Gilgel Gibe III dam and its impact:

Official site for project, including page responding to issues
raised by critics
http://www.gibe3.com.et/issues.html

World Bank, “The Eastern Electricity Highway Project under the First
Phase of the Eastern Africa Power Integration Program,”
http://tinyurl.com/88bw6vq (on the Ethiopia-Kenya transmission line
to be constructed)

Human Rights Watch, “Ethiopia: Land, Water Grabs Devastate
Communities,” Feb. 18, 2014
http://tinyurl.com/q6q4oue

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on the environment and climate
change, visit http://www.africafocus.org/envexp.php

Ebola Perspectives

[AfricaFocus is regularly monitoring and posting links on
Ebola on social media. For
additional links, see http://www.facebook.com/AfricaFocus]

New and of particular interest:

“Renewed spread in Freetown, Sierra Leone – how easily virus can
take off again”
New York Times, March 1, 2015  http://tinyurl.com/ntojzqb

“Overview of economic impact & enormous difficulties of recovery,
particularly in Sierra Leone & Liberia”
Reuters, Feb. 27, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/l39qz9x

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Africa’s Largest Wind Power Project Achieves Full Financial Close

Lake Turkana Wind Power receives first disbursements of funds

Nairobi, Kenya, 19 December 2014

Following the financial close of Lake Turkana Wind Power Project
(LTWP) on 11 December 2014, LTWP has received the first disbursement
of funds pursuant to financing agreements signed in March 2014.

“Reaching this important milestone today caps a year of major
achievements by LTWP,” said Mugo Kibati, LTWP’s Chairman of the
Board. “This includes signing the financing agreements in March,
issuing notice to proceed by KETRACO to the transmission line
construction contractor in August, financial close of the LTWP
equity partners in September, as well as notices to proceed to
LTWP’s contractors in October.”

The LTWP project, Kenya Shillings 70 billion (623 million Euros), is
the largest single wind power project to be constructed in Africa
and is, to date, the largest private investment in the history of
Kenya and arguably one of the most complex and challenging project
financing undertaken in the renewable energy space in sub-Saharan
Africa. The project is a key deliverable under the Government’s
commitment to scaling up electricity generation to 5,000MW and is a
flagship project within the Vision 2030 program. The LTWP project
will provide cost effective renewable power to the Kenyan consumer
and will comprise approximately 20% of Kenya’s currently installed
generating capacity.

The LTWP consortium is comprised of KP&P Africa B.V. and Aldwych
International as co-developers and investors, and Finnish Fund for
Industrial Cooperation Ltd (Finn Fund), Industrial Fund for
Developing Countries (IFU), KLP Norfund Investments, Vestas Eastern
Africa (VEAL) and Sandpiper as investors. Aldwych Turkana Ltd, an
affiliate of Aldwych International, will oversee construction and
operations of the project on behalf of LTWP.

The support, interaction and uplifting of local communities is a
high priority for LTWP. As such, LTWP adopted a Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) Program which will be implemented by the Winds
of Change Foundation (a wholly owned subsidiary of LTWP). This
foundation aims to uplift local communities through programs such as
the CHAT HIV awareness campaign, water, sanitation, electrification,
sustainable development of agriculture as well as the education of
boys and girls.

Initially, activities will be concentrated around the wind farm
communities (Loyangalani, Korr and Laisamis divisions, with South
Horr). CSR activities will gradually expand to the wider project
area.

The financing agreements were signed in March 2014 with the African
Development Bank (AfDB), European Investment Bank (EIB), Nederlandse
Financierings Maatschappij Voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V. (FMO),
Société De Promotion Et De Participation Pour La Coopération
Economique (Proparco), Eastern And Southern African Trade And
Development Bank (PTA Bank), Nedbank Capital, The Standard Bank of
South Africa, Eksport Kredit Fonden (EKF), Deg — Deutsche
Investitions – Und Entwicklungsgesellschaft Mbh, East African
Development Bank and Triodos.

After eight years of development with the full support of the
Government of Kenya, Kenya Power, the Energy Regulation Committee
(ERC) and Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO),
utilization of the funds signifies the completion of the project’s
financing stage, which will allow the project to move towards
implementation and to commence producing electricity in 2017.

– Ends –

For further press information please contact: Mary E O’Reilly, Phone
: + 254 733 751 799 or +254 711 667 670, Email: media@ltwp.co.ke

Please also visit http://www.ltwp.co.ke for further information.

Notes to Editor:

The wind farm site, covering 40,000 acres (162km2), is located in
Loyangalani District, Marsabit West County, in north-eastern Kenya,
approximately 50km north of South Horr Township. The project will
comprise 365 wind turbines (each with a capacity of 850 kW), the
associated overhead electric grid collection system and a high
voltage substation. The project also includes upgrading of the
existing road from Laisamis to the wind farm site, which is partly
financed by the Dutch Government and is a distance of approximately
204km. In addition, the project will build an access road network in
and around the site for construction, operations and maintenance.
The Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (Ketraco), with
concessional funding from the Spanish Government, is constructing a
double circuit 400kV, 428km transmission line to deliver the LTWP
electricity along with power from other future plants to the
national grid.

*************************************************************

Lake Turkana Wind Power

Project Profile, August 2014

http://ltwp.co.ke/the-project/project-profile

[Excerpts]

1. The Project Profile

The Lake Turkana Wind Power Project (LTWP) aims to provide 300MW of
reliable, low cost wind power to the Kenya national grid, equivalent
to approximately 20% of the current installed electricity generating
capacity. The Project is of significant strategic benefit to Kenya,
and at Ksh76 billion (Euro 623 million) will be the largest single
private investment in Kenya’s history. The wind farm site, covering
40,000 acres (162km2), is located in Loyangalani District, Marsabit
West County approximately 50km north of South HorrTownship.

Transmission line and access roads in relation to the wind farm

The Project will comprise 365 wind turbines (each with a capacity of
850 kW), the associated overhead electric grid collection system and
a high voltage substation. The Project also includes upgrading of
the existing road from Laisamis to the wind farm site, a distance of
approximately 204km, as well as an access road network in and around
the site for construction, operations and maintenance. The Kenya
Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (Ketraco), with concessional
funding from the Spanish Government, is constructing a double
circuit 400kv, 428km transmission line to deliver the LTWP
electricity along with power from other future plants to the
national grid.

The Project proponent is the LTWP consortium comprising KP&P Africa
B.V. and Aldwych International as co-developers, Industrial Fund for
Developing Countries (IFU), Wind Power A.S. (Vestas), Finnish Fund
for Industrial Cooperation Ltd (Finnfund),and Norwegian Investment
Fund for Developing Countries (Norfund). LTWP is solely responsible
for the financing, construction and operation of the wind farm.
Aldwych, an experienced power company focused on Africa, will
oversee the construction and operations of the power plant on behalf
of LTWP. Vestas will provide the maintenance of the plant in
contract with LTWP. The power produced will be bought at a fixed
price by Kenya Power (KPLC) over a 20-year period in accordance with
the signed Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).

2. Background

Several sites in Marsabit County were explored for suitability of
wind power generation. The proposed site was selected following an
extensive survey of the region focusing on environmental, social and
sustainability, technology and commercial considerations, including
the remoteness of the area, the strength and stability of the winds,
proven technology, benign environmental setting, low population
density, security of the area, fresh water availability and road
accessibility. In addition, in order to avoid possible bird contact
with the turbines, the proposed wind farm is sited at least 9 km
from the shore of Lake Turkana. A 12 month ornithological study has
been concluded and annual environmental audits will be done for the
entire wind farm during the 20 year operations period.

…

3. Who is LTWP?

Joint Development Parties

1. KP&P BV Africa
2. Aldwych International Limited
3. Wind Power A.S. (Vestas)
4. Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries (Norfund)
5. Danish Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU)
6. Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation Ltd (Finnfund)

Lenders

The lead arranger of the debt financing is the African Development
Bank with Standard Bank of South Africa and Nedbank Capital of South
Africa as co-arrangers.

4.Project Benefits

4.1 Reliable Power

* Largest single wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa

* Optimal site location: According to the National Wind Resource
Atlas, as compiled by the Ministry of Energy, MarsabitWestCounty is
generally gifted with exceptional wind resources.

* Reliable wind: The site lies between 450m at the shore of Lake
Turkana and 2,300m above sea level at the top of Mt.Kulal. The area
around the site has a unique geographical phenomenon whereby daily
temperature fluctuations generate strong predictable wind streams
between Lake Turkana (with relatively constant temperature) and the
desert hinterland (with steep temperature fluctuations) and as the
wind streams pass through the valley between the Mt. Kulal and Mt.
Nyiru ranges (2,750m above sea level) which effectively act as a
funnel causing the wind streams to accelerate (known as the Turkana
Corridor low level jet stream). The Turkana wind phenomenon stems
from the East African jet stream which stretches from the ocean
through the Ethiopian highlands and valleys to the deserts in Sudan
in a south-east direction all year round.

* Data collected and analysed since 2007 indicate that site has some
of the best wind resources in Africa, with consistent wind speeds
averaging 11 meters/second and from the same direction year round.

4.2 Renewable Energy

* LTWP has registered with the UNFCCC and approved at the Gold
Standard rating; the income from the carbon credits will be given to
with the government and invested in the community (see below).

* The Project reduces the need to depend on unreliable hydro and on
expensive, unpredictably priced fossil fuel based power generation
and insulates Kenya’s power tariff by providing a low and consistent
power price.

* If the wind is less than predicted then only LTWP suffers as Kenya
Power only pays for the power produced at a fixed price per kWh.

4.3 Low Cost Power

* The Government of Kenya’s Least Cost Development Power Plan shows
that LTWP wind power will be the least cost power generation option
available in the country along with geothermal power and at even
less cost than the feed in tariff for other wind projects set at
US$11 cents/kWh.

* The LTWP tariff will be approximately 60% cheaper than thermal
power plants

4.4 Community Development and Environmental Impact

* MarsabitWestCounty is among the poorest counties in Kenya;
Loyangalani is one of the poorest districts in Marsabit.

* LTWP has all the required environmental and social approvals in
line with the IFC Performance Standards

* A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme is being
finalised based on extensive input from the communities in order to
ensure that livelihoods are improved; LTWP will use a combination of
revenue from carbon credits and profit to form and fund a trust,
which will ensure a well targeted plan over the 20 years of the
investment.

4.5 Macroeconomic Impact

* Largest single private investment in Kenya

* Will replace need for Kenya to spend approximately Ksh13.7 billion
(Euro 120 million) per year on importing fuel

* The LTWP tax contribution to Kenya will be approximately Ksh2.7
billion (Euro 22.7 million) per year and Ksh58.6 billion (Euro 450
million) over the life of the investment

* Jobs

…

*************************************************************

Turkana’s “Forgotten People” Call for Halt to Ethiopia’s Imminent
Water Grabs

International Rivers, Press Release, January 8, 2015

http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/8489

Berkeley, US: International Rivers is today publishing a report and
video with voices from Lake Turkana, which tell an emotional story
of a people facing a major crisis.

Media contacts: Peter Bosshard, Policy Director, +1 (510) 848-1155
ext. 320, peter@internationalrivers.org, @PeterBosshard

The world’s largest desert lake — Lake Turkana in Kenya — is at
imminent risk from upstream water grabs that will dramatically
reduce the lake’s main water supply, shrink the lake, and kill off
ecosystems and productive fisheries. Some 300,000 of the world’s
poorest people depend on the lake for their survival. The imminent
filling of Ethiopia’s Gibe III Dam and other water grabs on the Omo
River will mean the difference between marginal livelihoods and
famine for most. International Rivers calls on the Ethiopian
government and its donors to ensure sufficient downstream water
flows before closing the Gibe III Dam gates.

Ethiopia is building huge dams and plantations in the Omo River
Valley, displacing its own people in addition to causing lost
livelihoods in Kenya. Gibe III Dam (now nearing completion) is one
of Africa’s largest hydropower projects. The filling of its
reservoir will take an estimated three years and reduce water flows
by up to 70% in the Omo River.

The associated expansion of water-intensive sugar and cotton
plantations poses an even greater threat: if current plans described
by the Ethiopian government move forward, hydrologists estimate the
lake level could drop between 16 and 22 meters. The average depth of
the lake is just 31 meters. “These water grabs will disrupt
fisheries and destroy other ecosystems upon which local people
depend,” comments Lori Pottinger, International Rivers’ Africa
Campaigner. “Local people have not been consulted about the project
nor informed about its impacts on their lives.”

The new International Rivers report — called Come and Count Our
Bones: Community Voices from Lake Turkana on the Impacts of Gibe III
Dam — is based on interviews with more than 100 people in
communities around Lake Turkana. “Once the dam is operating,
everything people feed on will disappear. Starvation will take
over,” said pastorialist Rebecca Arot.

Kenya is planning to purchase electricity from Gibe III, and the
World Bank is supporting the transmission line from the dam to
Kenya. In spite of losing livelihoods and food security, the
downstream victims of the Omo River water grabs are unlikely to
receive any benefits from the power production. “We cannot eat
electricity. What we require is food and income for the Turkana
community,” said Christopher Eporon Ekuwom of the Turkana County
Government’s Ministry of Pastoral Economy & Fisheries.

“The lake is like our farm,” one pastoralist told International
Rivers. “The life of this place is fish . . . if this lake was not
there, the fish would not be there, and life in this place would
almost be impossible,” said a local businessman.

The Ethiopian government has thus far failed to acknowledge the
impacts of its Omo developments on Lake Turkana. The Kenyan
government has not publicly requested protection for the lake from
water diversions. Turkana residents who were interviewed had many
messages for these two governments.

The Ethiopian government and its infrastructure development plans
are highly dependent on aid from Western governments, China, the
World Bank, and other international institutions. International
Rivers calls on Ethiopia and its donors to avert this human-made
humanitarian disaster, stop water grabs from the Omo River and make
sure the Gibe III Dam is only operated with sufficient downstream
flows to sustain ecosystems and livelihoods in the Lower Omo Valley
and around Lake Turkana.

[Additional sources, including reports and video, available at link
above]

*************************************************************

Lake Turkana and the Lower Omo: hydrological impacts of major dam
and irrigation developments

University of Oxford, Africa Studies Centre, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/nzb26xu

This study, by the Nairobi-based consultant hydrologist and civil
engineer, Dr Sean Avery, is one of the outcomes of the AHRC (Arts &
Humanities Research Council) funded project, ‘Landscape people and
parks: environmental change in the Lower Omo Valley, southwestern
Ethiopia’, run by Professor David Anderson and Dr David Turton
between 2007 and 2010. As work on this project proceeded, it became
clear that the landscape of the lower Omo would soon undergo one of
the biggest transformations in its history, thanks to the Gibe III
hydropower dam which had just begun construction in the middle basin
of the Omo, about 600 kilometres upstream from Lake Turkana. Due for
completion in 2014, Gibe III will regulate the flow of the Omo and
permanently modify the annual flood regime upon which the agro-
pastoralists of the lower Omo depend for their livelihoods.
Furthermore, by uplifting the natural low flows in the river, the
dam will make possible reliable large-scale irrigation development
in the lower basin.

Since the Omo supplies 90 per cent of the water entering Kenya’s
Lake Turkana, the regulation of the Omo flows and the abstraction of
Omo water for large-scale irrigation will alter the hydrological
inflow patterns to Lake Turkana. This will directly impact the
ecology of the lake, which is Kenya’s largest, and the world’s
largest desert lake. The consequences of large irrigation
abstractions were not mentioned in any of the environmental impact
assessments commissioned by the Gibe III dam builders. An assessment
was made, however, by Dr Avery in a report commissioned by the
African Development Bank (AFDB) and submitted in 2010. This was
before any official announcement had been made of the extent of
planned irrigation in the lower Omo. Nevertheless, by using
irrigation water demand forecasts from the Omo Basin Master Plan and
a future hypothetical scenario, it was shown that the lake could
drop by 20 metres or more, causing, amongst other things, a
significant reduction in the productivity of its fisheries. The AFDB
report also warned of the cumulative impacts of other associated
developments and recommended that these be evaluated.

A few months after the AFDB report was submitted, the full extent of
planned irrigation development in the lower Omo became clearer, with
the announcement that the state-run Ethiopian Sugar Corporation
would soon begin developing 150,000 hectares of irrigated sugar
plantations. This was on land largely taken from existing protected
areas and was additional to other land in the lower Omo that had
already been allocated to, or earmarked for development by, private
investors. It appeared that the lower Omo was set to become by far
the largest irrigation complex in Ethiopia. We therefore asked Dr
Avery to undertake a second study, on behalf of the ‘Landscape,
people and parks’ project, updating and consolidating his earlier
findings on the hydrological impacts on the lower Omo and Lake
Turkana. This report, which can be downloaded below, constitutes the
most complete, detailed and authoritative assessment yet made of the
impact of river basin development in the Omo Valley on the Lake
Turkana Basin.

[full report available at link above]

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