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
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AfricaFocus Bulletin
February 18, 2015 (150218)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in
2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private
capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into
the programme, African governments are required to make important
changes to their land and seed policies. … [for example] Despite
the fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced
and disseminated through ‘informal’ seed systems (on-farm seed
saving and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no
recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of
farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling
seeds.” – Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and GRAIN, January
2015

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Countless reports by global and African agencies highlight the
critical role for agriculture in African development. Almost all
agree that small farmers are key to addressing poverty and food
insecurity. But many policies, such as those described in this new
report from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and GRAIN,
lead in practice to empowerment of agribusiness giants rather than
small farmers. By imposing legal frameworks based on Western
industrial agriculture, powerful interests make a mockery of
international pledges to help small farmers.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the report “Land
and Seed Laws under Attack: Who is pushing changes in Africa?” (full
report available at http://tinyurl.com/m5g8zje)

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

There are a host of reports on specific cases of land grabs and
sometimes on successful challenges to them. The sources cited below
are only a sampling.

For a report by Nigerian and international groups on a recent
contested case of land grabbing in Taraba state in eastern Nigeria
(a rice plantation under the control of U.S.-based agribusiness firm
Dominion Farms), see http://tinyurl.com/pr463qr

For a recent case in Senegal, researched by ActionAid, visit
http://tinyurl.com/mrhhuy4 For more information on ActionAid work on
land rights, visit http://tinyurl.com/pdt7kny

For a case in Ghana, where Herakles Farms abandoned its investments
after community protests, see the report by the Africa Faith and
Justice Network (http://afjn.org; direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/mfftstg).

In addition to the organizations cited in this report, and the cases
just cited, AfricaFocus particularly recommends, for case studies
and current information on the status of land grabbing in Africa,
the website of the Oakland Institute at
http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/land-rights-issue The Oakland
Institute and other groups are active in a campaign to have the
World Bank stop promoting land grabs through its “doing business”
ratings. Visit http://ourlandourbusiness.org/ for more details.

For extensive research on seeds and food sovereignty in Africa, see
also the website of the African Centre for Biosafely (
http://www.acbio.org.za/)

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

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:

Jina Moore, Buzzfeed, February 12 http://tinyurl.com/mjagccr – map
showing Liberia “very close” to end of Ebola. Total number of days
since last case over 21 in all counties except Montserrado
(Monrovia)

WHO, Situation Report, February 11 http://tinyurl.com/lygs4b5
Not quite as optimistic. “Total weekly case incidence increased for
the second consecutive week, with 144 new confirmed cases reported
in the week to 8 February.” Cases up in Guinea and Sierra Leone,
although still low in Liberia.

Shawn Radcliffe, Healthline, “Ebola Crisis Eases in Africa. Now
What?” February 12 http://tinyurl.com/n8p7csf
Need for vigilance, plus long-term planning for recovery of
economies & building sustainable health systems

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

Land and Seed Laws under Attack: Who is pushing changes in Africa?

Report

Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA; http://afsafrica.org)
and GRAIN ( http://www.grain.org)

[Full text of report at http://tinyurl.com/m5g8zje and
http://www.grain.org /e/5121]

January 2015

Who is pushing changes in Africa?

…

A battle is raging for control of resources in Africa — land,
water, seeds, minerals, ores, forests, oil, renewable energy
sources. Agriculture is one of the most important theatres of this
battle. Governments, corporations, foundations and development
agencies are pushing hard to commercialise and industrialise African
farming.

Many of the key players are well known. They are committed to
helping agribusiness become the continent’s primary food commodity
producer. To do this, they are not only pouring money into projects
to transform farming operations on the ground — they are also
changing African laws to accommodate the agribusiness agenda.

Privatising both land and seeds is essential for the corporate model
to flourish in Africa. With regard to agricultural land, this means
pushing for the official demarcation, registration and titling of
farms. It also means making it possible for foreign investors to
lease or own farmland on a long-term basis. With regard to seeds, it
means having governments require that seeds be registered in an
official catalogue in order to be traded. It also means introducing
intellectual property rights over plant varieties and criminalising
farmers who ignore them. In all cases, the goal is to turn what has
long been a commons into something that corporates can control and
profit from.

This survey aims to provide an overview of just who is pushing for
which specific changes in these areas — looking not at the plans
and projects, but at the actual texts that will define the new
rules. It was not easy to get information about this … We did
learn a few things, though:

* While there is a lot of civil society attention focused on the
G8’s New Alliance for Food and Nutrition, there are many more actors
doing many similar things across Africa. Our limited review makes it
clear that the greatest pressure to change land and seed laws comes
from Washington DC — home to the World Bank, USAID and the MCC
[Millennium Challenge Corporation].

* Land certificates — which should be seen as a stepping stone to
formal land titles — are being promoted as an appropriate way to
“securitise” poor peoples’ rights to land. But how do we define the
term “land securitisation”? As the objective claimed by most of the
initiatives dealt with in this report, it could be understood as
strengthening land rights. Many small food producers might conclude
that their historic cultural rights to land — however they may be
expressed — will be better recognised, thus protecting them from
expropriation. But for many governments and corporations, it means
the creation of Western-type land markets based on formal
instruments like titles and leases that can be traded. … So in a
world of grossly unequal players, “security” is shorthand for
market, private property and the power of the highest bidder.

* Most of today’s initiatives to address land laws, including those
emanating from Africa, are overtly designed to accommodate, support
and strengthen investments in land and large-scale land deals,
rather than achieve equity or to recognise longstanding or
historical community rights over land at a time of rising conflicts
over land and land resources.

* Most of the initiatives to change current land laws come from
outside Africa. Yes, African structures like the African Union and
the Pan-African Parliament are deeply engaged in facilitating
changes to legislation in African states, but many people question
how “indigenous” these processes really are. It is clear that
strings are being pulled, by Washington and Europe in particular, to
alter land governance in Africa.

* When it comes to seed laws, the picture is reversed. Subregional
African bodies — SADC, COMESA, OAPI and the like — are working to
create new rules for the exchange and trade of seeds. But the
recipes they are applying — seed marketing restrictions and plant
variety protection schemes — are borrowed directly from the US and
Europe.

* The changes to seed policy being promoted by the G8 New Alliance,
the World Bank and others refer to neither farmer-based seed systems
nor farmers’ rights. They make no effort to strengthen farming
systems that are already functioning. Rather, the proposed solutions
are simplified, but unworkable solutions to complex situations that
will not work — though an elite category of farmers may enjoy some
small short term benefits.

…

* With seeds, which represent a rich cultural heritage of Africa’s
local communities, the push to transform them into income-generating
private property, and marginalise traditional varieties, is still
making more headway on paper than in practice. This is due to many
complexities, one of which is the growing awareness of and popular
resistance to the seed industry agenda. But the resolve of those who
intend to turn Africa into a new market for global agroinput
suppliers is not to be underestimated. The path chosen will have
profound implications for the capacity of African farmers to adapt
to climate change.

This report was drawn up jointly by the Alliance for Food
Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and GRAIN. AFSA is a pan-African
platform comprising networks and farmer organisations championing
small African family farming based on agro-ecological and indigenous
approaches that sustain food sovereignty and the livelihoods of
communities. GRAIN is a small international organisation that aims
to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for
community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

The report was researched and initially drafted by Mohamed
Coulibaly, an independent legal expert in Mali, with support from
AFSA members and GRAIN staff. …

Initiatives targeting both land and seed laws

G8 New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition – Initiated by the G8
countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US

– Timeframe: 2012-2022

РImplemented in 10 African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, C̫te
d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and
Tanzania

The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in
2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private
capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into
the programme, African governments are required to make important
changes to their land and seed policies. The New Alliance
prioritises granting national and transnational corporations (TNCs)
new forms of access and control to the participating countries’
resources, and gives them a seat at the same table as aid donors and
recipient governments. As of July 2014, ten African countries had
signed Cooperative Framework Agreements (CFAs) to implement the New
Alliance programme. Under these agreements, these governments
committed to 213 policy changes. Some 43 of these changes target
land laws, with the overall stated objective of establishing “clear,
secure and negotiable rights to land” — tradeable property titles.

The New Alliance also aims to implement both the Voluntary
Guidelines (VGs) on Responsible Land Tenure adopted by the Committee
on World Food Security in 2012, and the Principles for Responsible
Agriculture Investment drawn up by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD and UN
Conference on Trade and Development. This is considered especially
important since the New Alliance directly facilitates access to
farmland in Africa for investors. To achieve this, the New Alliance
Leadership Council, a self-appointed body composed of public and
private sector representatives, in September 2014 decided to come up
with a single set of guidelines to ensure that the land investments
made through the Alliance are “responsible” and not land grabs. As
to seeds, all of the participating states, with the exception of
Benin, agreed to adopt plant variety protection laws and rules for
marketing seeds that better support the private sector. Despite the
fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced and
disseminated through ‘informal’ seed systems (on-farm seed saving
and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no
recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of
farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling
seeds.

African governments are being co-opted into reviewing their seed
trade laws and supporting the implementation of Plant Variety
Protection (PVP) laws. The strategy is to first harmonise seed trade
laws such as border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety
release systems and certification standards at the regional level,
and then move on to harmonising PVP laws. The effect is to create
larger unified seed markets, in which the types of seeds on offer
are restricted to commercially protected varieties. The age old
rights of farmers to replant saved seed is curtailed and the
marketing of traditional varieties of seed is strictly prohibited.

Concerns have been raised about how this agenda privatises seeds and
the potential impacts this could have on small-scale farmers.
Farmers will lose control of seeds regulated by a commercial system.
There are also serious concerns about the loss of biodiversity
resulting from a focus on commercial varieties.

…

The World Bank

The World Bank is a significant player in catalysing the growth and
expansion of agribusiness in Africa. It does this by financing
policy changes and projects on the ground. In both cases, the Bank
targets land and seed laws as key tools for advancing and protecting
the interests of the corporate sector.

The Bank’s work on policy aims at increasing agricultural production
and productivity through programmes called “Agriculture Development
Policy Operations” (AgDPOs).

Besides financing AgDPOs, the World Bank directly supports
agriculture development projects. Some major World Bank projects
with land tenure components are presented in Annex 2, with a focus
on the legal arrangements developed to make land available for
corporate investors. These projects are much more visible than the
AgDPOs and their names are well known in each country: PDIDAS in
Senegal, GCAP in Ghana, Bagrépole in Burkina. …

Initiatives targeting land laws

African Union Land Policy Initiative

…

The African Union (AU), together with the African Development Bank
(AfDB) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), has been
spearheading a Land Policy Initiative (LPI) since 2006. Mainly a
response to land grabbing on the continent, the LPI is meant to
strengthen and change national policies and laws on land. It is
funded by the EU, IFAD, UN Habitat, World Bank, France and
Switzerland. LPI is expected to become an African Centre on Land
Policies after 2016.

The LPI is designed to implement the African Declaration on Land
Issues and Challenges, adopted by the AU Summit of Heads of State in
July 2009. …

One important undertaking of the LPI is the development of a set of
Guiding Principles on Large-Scale Land-Based Investments (LSLBI)
meant to ensure that land acquisitions in Africa “promote inclusive
and sustainable development”. The Guiding Principles were adopted by
the Council of agriculture ministers in June 2014, and are awaiting
endorsement by the AU Summit of Heads of States and government.

The Guiding Principles have several objectives, including guiding
decision making on land deals (recognising that large scale land
acquisitions may not be the most appropriate form of investment);
providing a basis for a monitoring and evaluation framework to track
land deals in Africa; and providing a basis for reviewing existing
large scale land contracts. The Guiding Principles draw lessons from
global instruments and initiatives to regulate land deals including
the Voluntary Guidelines and the Principles for Responsible
Agricultural Investments in the Context of Food Security and
Nutrition. They also take into account relevant human rights
instruments. But because the Guiding Principles are not a binding
instrument and lack an enforcement mechanism, it is far from certain
that they will prove any more effective than other voluntary
frameworks on land. They are, however, widely accepted and supported
on the continent as the first “African response” to the issue of
land grabbing.

[For more on other similar initiatives see full report]

Initiatives introducing seed laws

Under the rubric “seeds laws” there are various types of legal and
policy initiatives that directly affect what kind of seeds small
scale farmers can use. We focus on two: intellectual property laws,
which grant state-sanctioned monopolies to plant breeders (at the
expense of farmers’ rights), and seed marketing laws, which regulate
trade in seeds (often making it illegal to exchange or market
farmers’ seeds).

Plant Variety Protection

Plant variety protection (PVP) laws are specialised intellectual
property rules designed to establish and protect monopoly rights for
plant breeders over the plants types (varieties) they have
developed. PVP is an offshoot of the patent system. All members of
the World Trade Organization (WTO) are obliged to adopt some form of
PVP law, according to the WTO’s Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). But how they do so is up to
national governments.

African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) draft
PVP Protocol

– Draft PVP Protocol to be implemented in the 19 ARIPO member
states: Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique,
Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe,
Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

ARIPO is the regional counterpart of the UN’s World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) for Anglophone Africa. It was
established under the Lusaka Agreement signed in 1976. In November
2009, ARIPO’s Council of Ministers approved a proposal for ARIPO to
develop a policy and legal framework which would form the basis for
the development of the ARIPO Protocol on the Protection of New
Varieties of Plants (the PVP Protocol). Adopted in November 2013,
the legal framework was formulated into a Draft PVP Protocol in 2014
during a diplomatic conference.

The Draft PVP Protocol establishes unified procedures and
obligations for the protection of plant breeder’s rights in all
ARIPO member states. These rights will be granted by a single
authority established by ARIPO to administer the whole system on
behalf of its member states.

The Protocol is based on the rules contained in the 1991 Act of the
UPOV Convention. It therefore establishes legal monopolies
(“protection”) on new plant varieties for 20-25 years, depending on
the crop. Farmers will not be able to save and re-use seed from
these varieties on their own farms except for specifically
designated crops, within reasonable limits, and upon annual payment
of royalties. Under no circumstances will they be able to exchange
or sell seeds harvested from such varieties. …

The Protocol is hotly contested by civil society. AFSA, for
instance, is on record for vehemently opposing the ARIPO PV Protocol
on the grounds that it, inter alia, severely erodes farmers’ rights
and the right to food. On the other hand, industry associations have
been consulted extensively in the process of drafting the ARIPO PVP
Protocol. …

[For more on other similar initiatives, see full report.]

Seed marketing rules

The second category of seed laws consists of rules governing seeds
marketing in and among countries. A number of current initiatives
aim to harmonise these rules among African states belonging to the
same Regional Economic Community. But through harmonisation, states
are actually being encouraged to “liberalise” the seed market. This
means limiting the role of the public sector in seed production and
marketing, and creating new space and new rights for the private
sector instead. In this process, farmers lose their freedom to
exchange and/or sell their own seeds. This legal shift is
deliberately meant to lead to the displacement and loss of peasant
seeds, because they are considered inferior and unproductive
compared to corporate seeds.

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was established
in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller
Foundation. It is currently funded by several development
ministries, foundations and programmes, including DFID, IFAD and the
Government of Kenya. AGRA’s objective is to “catalyse a uniquely
African Green Revolution based on small- holder farmers so that
Africa would be food self-sufficient and food secure.” AGRA focuses
on five areas: seeds, soil health, market access, policy and
advocacy and support to farmers’ organisations.

On seeds, AGRA’s activities are implemented through the Programme
for Africa’s Seed Systems (PASS). PASS focuses on the breeding,
production and distribution of so-called “improved” seeds. AGRA’s
action on seeds policies and laws, however, is carried out through
its Policy Programme, whose goal is to establish an “enabling
environment”, including seed and land policy reforms, to boost
private investment in agriculture and encourage farmers to change
practices. This specifically includes getting the public sector out
of seed production and distribution.

AGRA’s seed policy work aims to strengthen internal seed laws and
regulations, reduce delays in the release of new varieties,
facilitate easy access to public germplasm, support the
implementation of regionally harmonised seed laws and regulations,
eliminate trade restrictions and establish an African Seed
Investment Fund to support seed businesses.

In Ghana, for example, AGRA helped the government review its seed
policies with the goal of identifying barriers to the private sector
getting more involved. With technical and financial support from
AGRA, the country’s seed legislation was revised and a new pro-
business seed law was passed in mid-2010. Among other things it
established a register of varieties that can be marketed. In
Tanzania, discussions between AGRA and government representatives
facilitated a major policy change to privatise seed production. In
Malawi, AGRA supported the government in revising its maize pricing
and trade policies. AGRA is also funding a $300,000 seeds project
for the East African Community that started in July 2014 and will be
implemented over the next two years. Its objective is to get EAC
farmers to switch to so-called improved seeds and to harmonise the
seed and fertilizer policies of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and
Uganda.

[For more on other similar initiatives, see full report]

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

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
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http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 21, 2015 (150121)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Media coverage of the Ebola epidemic, which took a sharp downward
turn after a handful of patients in the United States recovered, has
faded even further into the background as the battle against the
epidemic has begun to succeed in the most-affected countries. But
those on the front lines warn that complacency could easily allow
the still-present virus to hold out and even expand. And although
there are clear lessons to be learned, there are also unanswered
questions, most notably about international will to implement the
imperative of sustainable health systems for the future.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/who1501.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/who1501.php

A 14-part report from the World Health Organization provides a rich
analysis of lessons learned and of measures needed for ending the
epidemic this year. But it also leaves many questions unanswered,
and some unasked. In particular, it does not address the fundamental
question of the failure of international agencies as well as
national governments to invest in sustainable health systems, a
factor that everyone agrees was a fundamental cause of vulnerability
(see “Sierra Leone: Losing Out” at
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/sl1501.php).
And, while the UN and the United States have joined in calls for the
IMF to cancel debts of the most-affected countries, to assist in
their recovery, this proposal has not yet been acted on.

Among many valuable lessons covered in the WHO report is the
essential role of community involvement in changing behaviors to
block transmission channels for the virus (such as safe as well as
culturally appropriate burial practices). Another is the success of
several West African countries (Nigeria, Senegal, and Mali) in
implementing rapid response to the threat, with isolation,
treatment, and case tracking.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the last chapter of
the report, focused on what needs to be done in 2015. The full
report (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/) is essential
reading for anyone seeking a deeper analysis than in the sparse
ongoing news coverage. It includes chapters analyzing the evolution
of the epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, as well as the
contrasting case of successful containment in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.

Among the key questions posed but left unanswered by the WHO report
is the sharp differential in survival rates with treatment in
developed countries versus treatment in the most-affected countries.
As the report notes, this is a practical as well as an ethical
question, since people will not go to treatment centers unless they
have some hope of survival.

The ethics of this is clear, as stressed by Paul Farmer in a recent
op-ed in the Washington Post. Everyone deserves the same standard
care known to be effective in developed countries. Evidence from
several treatment centers in the affected countries shows this must
include intravenous as well as oral rehydration, as well as other
elements of “supportive care.” The unanswered question is whether
the implicit double standard will be abandoned, and adequate
resources allocated by the international community to implement
standard care both in the response in 2015 and in future epidemics.

Paul Farmer, “The secret to curing West Africa from Ebola is no
secret at all,” Washington Post, Jan 16, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/m4j6tk2
Survival rates from Ebola are high when people receive supportive
care that has been standard for cases of Ebola in rich countries and
foreign medical workers airlifted out. “What we need — what we’ve
always needed — to improve survival in West Africa is the capacity
to safely deliver excellent supportive care.”

Peter Piot in BBC article, Jan 21 “My concern is that when [the
Ebola outbreak] is over we will just forget about it. We need to be
better prepared and we need to invest in vaccines and treatment.
It’s like a fire brigade – you don’t start to set up a fire brigade
when some house is on fire.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30907630

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

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

Ebola response: What needs to happen in 2015

[Excerpts: full text available at
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/]

…

The four biggest lessons from 2014

First, countries with weak health systems and few basic public
health infrastructures in place cannot withstand sudden shocks,
whether these come from a changing climate or a runaway virus. Under
the weight of Ebola, health systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone collapsed. People stopped receiving — or stopped seeking —
health care for other diseases, like malaria, that cause more deaths
yearly than Ebola.

In turn, the severity of the disease, compounded by fear within and
beyond the affected countries, caused schools, markets, businesses,
airline and shipping routes, and borders to close. Tourism shut
down, further deepening the blow to struggling economies. What began
as a health crisis snowballed into a humanitarian, social, economic
and security crisis. In a world of radically increased
interdependence, the consequences were felt globally.

The evolution of the crisis underscored a point often made by WHO:
fair and inclusive health systems are a bedrock of social stability,
resilience and economic health. Failure to invest in these
fundamental infrastructures leaves countries with no backbone to
stand up under the weight of the shocks that this century is
delivering with unprecedented frequency.

Second, preparedness, including a high level of vigilance for
imported cases and a readiness to treat the first confirmed case as
a national emergency, made a night-and-day difference. Countries
like Nigeria, Senegal and Mali that had good surveillance and
laboratory support in place and took swift action were able to
defeat the virus before it gained a foothold.

Third, no single control intervention is, all by itself,
sufficiently powerful to bring an Ebola epidemic of this size and
complexity under control. All control measures must work together
seamlessly and in unison. If one measure is weak, others will
suffer.

Aggressive contact tracing will not stop transmission if contacts
are left in the community for several days while test results are
awaited. Good treatment may encourage more patients to seek medical
care, but will not stop community-wide transmission in the absence
of rapid case detection and safe burials. In turn, the powers of
rapid case detection and rapid diagnostic confirmation are
diminished in the absence of facilities for prompt isolation. As
long as transmission occurs in the community, medical staff
following strict protocols for infection prevention and control in
clinics will be only partially protected.

Finally, community engagement is the one factor that underlies the
success of all other control measures. It is the linchpin for
successful control. Contact tracing, early reporting of symptoms,
adherence to recommended protective measures, and safe burials are
critically dependent on a cooperative community. Having sufficient
facilities and staff in place is not enough. In several areas,
communities continued to hide patients in homes and bury bodies
secretly even when sufficient treatment beds and burial teams were
available. Experience also showed that quarantines will be violated
or dissolve into violence if affected communities are given no
incentives to comply.

An epidemic with two causes

The persistence of infections throughout 2014 had two causes. The
first was a lethal, tenacious and unforgiving virus. The second was
the fear and misunderstanding that fuelled high-risk behaviours. As
long as these high-risk beliefs and behaviours continue, the virus
will have an endless source of opportunities to exploit, blunting
the power of control measures and deepening its grip. Like the
populations in the three countries, the virus will remain constantly
on the move.

Getting to zero means fencing the virus into a shrinking number of
places where all transmission chains are known and aggressively
attacked until they break. It also means working within the existing
context of cultural beliefs and practices and not against them. As
culture always wins, it needs to be embraced, not aggravated, as WHO
aimed to do with its protocol on safe and dignified burials.

A more strategic emergency response

As the new year began, a revised response that builds on accumulated
experiences was mapped out by WHO. This new response plan adopts
what has been shown to work but also sets out new strategies
designed to seize all opportunities for getting the number of cases
down to zero.

Community resistance must be tackled by all outbreak responders with
the greatest urgency. Concrete guidance on ways of doing this is
likely to emerge from an analysis of Sierra Leone’s Western Area
Surge, which included several strategies for engaging communities
and responding to their concerns. As was learned during 2014,
community leaders, including religious leaders as well as tribal
chiefs, can play an especially persuasive role in reducing high-risk
behaviours.

Apart from low levels of community understanding and cooperation,
contact tracing is considered the weakest of all control measures.
Its poor performance likewise needs to be addressed with the
greatest urgency. For example, in Guinea, which has the most
reliable data, only around 30% of newly identified cases appear on
contact lists. In all three countries, the number of registered
contacts for confirmed cases is too low. In Sierra Leone, some lists
of contacts include family members only, and no one from the wider
community.

As the year evolved, outbreak responders learned the importance of
tailoring response strategies to match distinct needs at district
and sub-district levels. An understanding of transmission dynamics
at the local level usually reveals which control measures are
working effectively and which ones need improvement. Doing so
requires better district-level data and, above all, better
coordination. The outbreaks will not be contained by a host of
vertical programmes operating independently. Again, all control
measures must work seamlessly and in unison.

At year end, as cases flared up in new areas or moved from urban to
rural settings, a clear need emerged for rapid response teams and
for agile and flexible strategies that can change direction — and
location — quickly. In WHO’s assessment, all three countries now
have sufficient numbers of treatment beds and burial teams, but
these are not always located where they are most needed. As was also
learned during 2014, transporting patients over long distances for
treatment does not work, either for families and communities or in
terms of its impact on transmission.

As long as logistical problems persist, community confidence in the
response will remain low. People cannot be expected to do as they
are told if the effort leaves them visibly worse off — quarantined
without food, sleeping in the same room with a corpse for days —
instead of better off. These problems are compounded by poor road
systems and weak telecommunications in all three countries. In
Liberia, for example, health officials in rural areas are lucky if
they have an hour or two of internet connectivity per week. This
weakness defeats rapid communication of suspected cases, test
results and calls for help, thus ensuring that response efforts
continue to run behind a virus that seizes every opportunity to
infect more people.

A decentralized strategy — and an ethical imperative

As the response decentralizes to the subnational level, fully
functional emergency operations centres, with local government
health teams integrated and playing a leadership role, must be
established in each county, district and prefecture in the three
countries. These centres will drive the step-change in field
epidemiology capacity needed to achieve high-quality surveillance,
rapid and complete case-finding, and comprehensive contact tracing
— the fundamental requirements for getting to zero.

A decentralized response also demands urgent attention to well-known
gaps and failures in collecting, collating, managing and rapidly
sharing information on cases, laboratory results and contacts.
Understanding and tackling the drivers of transmission in each area
call for enhanced case investigation and analytical epidemiology.
Tools for collecting and sharing this information need to be
standardized and put into routine use by governments and their
partners.

Another major problem is the unacceptably large difference in case
fatality rates between people who receive care in affected countries
(71%) and foreign medical staff (26%) who were evacuated for
specialized treatment in well-resourced countries. Getting case
fatality down in affected countries is an ethical imperative.

Innovation needs to be encouraged, publicized, tested and funnelled
into control strategies whenever appropriate. Mali used medical
students with training in epidemiology to rapidly increase the
number of contact tracers. Guinea drew on its corps of young and
talented doctors to strengthen its outbreak response, with training
provided by WHO epidemiologists. These staff know the country and
its culture best. They will still be there long after foreign
medical teams leave.

In Sierra Leone, the government-run Hastings Ebola Treatment Centre,
a 123-bed facility entirely operated by local staff, has defied
statistics elsewhere in the country with its survival rates. Six out
of every 10 patients treated there make a full recovery. As noted by
an infection control specialist working on the wards, the only
patients that cannot be saved are those who wait too long to seek
care. After noting that Ebola virus disease has some similarities
with cholera, staff at the facility made intravenous administration
of replacement fluids a mainstay of the routine treatment protocol.

The pattern of transmission seen throughout 2014 makes a final
conclusion obvious: cross-border coordination is essential. Given
West Africa’s exceptionally mobile populations, no country can get
cases down to zero as long as transmission is ongoing in its
neighbours.

Prevent outbreaks in unaffected countries

With the increasing number of cases and infected prefectures in
Guinea, the risk of new importations to neighbouring countries is
also growing. In terms of preparedness, the most urgent need is for
active surveillance in the areas bordering Mali, Senegal, Guinea-
Bissau and Cote d’Ivoire, through the deployment of additional human
and material resources, and the introduction of standard performance
monitoring and reporting on a weekly basis.

Improvements in contact tracing and monitoring in the second phase
of the response provide an opportunity to substantially enhance the
efficacy of exit screening. Doing so further reduces the risk of new
Ebola exportations from affected areas. As contact tracing improves,
lists of active contacts could be systematically shared with border
and airport authorities to link this information with exit
screening.

Get health systems functioning again — on a more resilient footing

Much debate has focused on the importance of strengthening health
systems, which were weak before the outbreaks started and then
collapsed under their weight. In large parts of all three countries,
health services have disintegrated to the point that essential care
is either unavailable or not sought because of fear of Ebola
contagion.

As some have argued, cases will decrease fastest when a well-
functioning health system is in place. That argument also points to
the need to restore public confidence — which was never high — in
the public health system. Targeted drug-delivery campaigns that
aimed to treat and prevent malaria were well-received by the public
and are a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be
done.

Although virtually no good systems for civil registration and vital
statistics are still functioning in the three countries, indirect
evidence suggests that childhood deaths from malaria have eclipsed
Ebola deaths. Liberia, for example, had around 3500 malaria cases
each month prior to the outbreak, with around half of these cases,
mainly young children, dying. An immediate strengthening of health
systems could reduce these and many other deaths, while also
restoring confidence that health facilities can protect health and
heal disease.

Others argue that efforts must stay sharply focused on outbreak
containment. As this argument goes, response capacity is limited and
must not be distracted. This argument favours a step-wise approach
that initially concentrates on strengthening those health system
capacities, like surveillance and laboratory services, that can have
a direct impact on outbreak containment.

For its part, WHO sees a need to change past thinking about the way
health systems are structured. As the Ebola epidemic has shown,
capacities to detect emerging and epidemic-prone diseases early and
mount an adequate response need to be an integral part of a well-
functioning health system. Outbreak-related capacities should not be
regarded as a luxury or added as an afterthought. Otherwise, the
security of all health services is placed in jeopardy.

Step up research

Research aimed at introducing new medical products needs to continue
at its current accelerated pace. Executives in the R&D-based
pharmaceutical industry have expressed their view that all candidate
vaccines must be pursued “until they fail”. They have further agreed
that the world must never again be taken by surprise, left to
confront a lethal disease with no modern control tools in hand.

New tools will likely be needed to get to zero. For example,
vaccines to protect health care workers may make it easier to
increase the numbers of foreign and national medical staff. Better
therapies — and improved prospects of survival — may encourage
more patients to promptly seek medical care, greatly increasing
their prospects of survival.

…

Mine every success story

Operational research is needed to understand why some areas have
stopped or dramatically reduced transmission while others, including
some in the same vicinity and with similar population profiles,
remain hotspots of intense transmission.

Did the striking and robust declines in Lofa County, Liberia, and
Kailahun and Kenema districts in Sierra Leone occur because
devastated populations learned first-hand which behaviours carried a
high risk and changed them? Or can the declines be attributed to
simultaneous and seamless implementation of the full package of
control measures, as happened in Lofa country? Answers to these
questions will help refine control strategies.

Research is also needed to determine how areas that have achieved
zero transmission can be protected from re-reinfection. Some success
stories look real and robust, but these are only pockets of low or
zero transmission in a broad cloak of contamination.

At every opportunity, strategies devised for the emergency response
should be made to work to build basic health capacities as well.
Some success stories can serve as models.

Liberia demonstrated how quickly the quality of data and reporting
can improve, thus strongly supporting the strategic targeting of
control measures at district and sub-district levels.

Sierra Leone showed how laboratory services can be strengthened and
expanded, reducing waiting times for test results close to what is
seen in countries with advanced health systems while also supporting
the better clinical management of cases.

Each and every survivor is also a success story. In an effort to
fight the stigma that so often haunts these people, many treatment
centres hold celebratory ceremonies when survivors are released from
treatment. Each is given a certificate as proof that they pose no
risk to families or communities.

Get the incentives — and support — right

Both foreign and domestic medical staff have worked in the shadows
of death, placing their lives at risk to save the lives of others.
In many places, these staff also risked losing their standing in
communities, given the fear and stigma attached to anything or
anyone associated with Ebola.

These people deserve to be honoured and respected. They also deserve
to be paid on time and given safe places to work. Timely and
appropriate payment to national staff remains problematic. More
studies are currently under way to identify the circumstances under
which health care workers continue to get infected.

Special efforts are also needed to improve safety at private health
facilities, in pharmacies, and among traditional healers, as
evidence suggests the risk of transmission is highest in these
settings. The number of hospitals that remain closed or virtually
empty supports the conclusion that doctors and nurses are most
likely getting infected while treating patients in community
settings.

Incentives also need to be in place to ensure that foreign medical
teams stay in countries long enough to understand conditions,
including political and social as well as operational issues, and
pass on this knowledge to replacement staff. Towards the end of the
year, WHO ensured that its field coordinators stayed in countries
for several months.

The “post-Ebola syndrome”

Given the fear and stigma associated with Ebola, people who survive
the disease, especially women and orphaned children, need
psychosocial support and counselling services as well as material
support. They may need medical support as well. A number of symptoms
have been documented in what is increasingly recognized as a “post-
Ebola syndrome”.

Efforts are now under way to understand why these symptoms persist,
how they can best be managed, whether they are caused by the
disease, and whether they might be linked to treatment or the heavy
use of disinfectants. WHO staff have developed an assessment tool
that is being used to investigate these issues further.

Maintain unwavering commitment at national and international levels

Media coverage of the Ebola crisis peaked in August, when two
American missionaries and a British nurse became infected in West
Africa and were medically evacuated for treatment in their home
countries. Coverage increased dramatically in October, when the USA
and Spain confirmed their first locally transmitted cases.

…

Although the situation in Liberia at year end, especially in
Monrovia, looked promising, optimism must remain cautious. As
experiences in Guinea made clear, this is a virus that can go into
hiding for some weeks, only to return again with a vengeance. In
Liberia, as caseloads declined, evidence of complacency and “Ebola
fatigue” rapidly appeared in some populations even though
transmission continued.

The three countries will continue to need international support for
some time to come, whether in the form of direct support for
response measures or assistance in rebuilding their health services.
Countries and the international community must brace themselves for
the long-haul.

One overarching question hangs in the air. The virus has
demonstrated its tenacity time and time again. Will national and
international control efforts show an equally tenacious staying
power?

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

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

Statement from the Ministry of Public Health

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 15 (acn) Cuban doctor Felix Baez, who overcame the Ebola virus, which he got in Sierra Leone, returned to that Western African nation to continue fighting the disease along his comrades with the Henry Reeve international medical brigade.

Cubadebate website published a series of photos of the doctor along his comrades in Sierra Leone announcing his return.

An internal medicine specialist, Baez announced in December 2014 that he would return to the African nation to finish the job he started, once he fully recovered from the disease.

The 43-year-old doctor returned to Cuba after having been released from the Geneva-based Cantonal University Hospital, where he received treatment against Ebola.

In response to the World Health Organization call to fight Ebola in Africa, Cuba sent three brigades to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to fight the virus.

According to the World Health Organization over 8 thousand 800 people have died from the Ebola virus in Africa.

================================================
LAST MEMBERS OF CUBAN FIVE RETURNING TO CUBA:

Nigeria: Elections/Security Disconnect

AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 13, 2015 (150113)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“These images from Northern Nigeria should be searing the conscience
of the world. Some two thousand innocent children, women and elderly
reportedly massacred in Baga. A young girl sent to her death with a
bomb strapped to her chest in Maiduguri. And lest we forget, more
than two hundred girls stolen from their families, still lost. Words
alone can neither express our outrage nor ease the agony of all
those suffering from the constant violence in northern Nigeria. But
these images of recent days and all they imply for the future of
Nigeria should galvanize effective action.  For this cannot go on.”
– UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, January 11, 2015

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/nig1501.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/nig1501.php

Despite exceptions such as the statement above, the disparity
between the global reaction to the terrorist killings in Paris and
those in northeastern Nigeria has been a horrific if predictable
reminder of the differential value placed on human lives by race and
location (for roundups of commentaries making this point, see
articles in The Guardian and The Daily Maverick below).

Less easily explicable, but equally consequential, is the muted
reaction at the top levels of the Nigerian government itself.
According to a January 12 CNN report on the Baga massacre “Last
week, [President] Jonathan launched his re-election bid in a raucous
rally in Lagos. He did not say a word about the massacres.” (
http://tinyurl.com/of33dmm)

This reality, as Nigeria approaches national elections next month,
is critical to understanding the obstacles that Nigeria faces in
responding to Boko Haram. Despite widespread opposition to that
extremist movement in all sections of the country, notes Nigerian
analyst Zainab Usman, there is no common national narrative on how
to deal with it, with many supporters of the incumbent government as
well as of the opposition party actually accusing their opponents of
covertly sponsoring Boko Haram for political reasons.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a short article by Usman making
this point. A more extensive and very clear analysis is in her 21-
minute video presentation from October, available on her website at
http://zainabusman.wordpress.com/ – direct URL to video:
http://tinyurl.com/n2yva7s If you can, watch the video!

In the video Usman refers to the car bombings by Boko Haram in July
2014 targeting opposition presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari as
well as a prominent Muslim scholar, which
left 82 bystanders dead. This is a clear reminder that the movement
has targeted both Christians and Muslims, and that simplistic
portrayals of either security or the elections based on region and
religion alone are highly misleading. The complex political party
scene, at both federal and state levels, brings together politicians
of all backgrounds on both sides. The presidential ticket of the
incumbent Goodluck Jonathan includes Muslim Namadi Sambo as vice-
president, while opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari’s vice-
presidential candidate is Yemi Osinbajo, a lawyer and a Christian
pastor.

Also included in this issue is a general background article on the
elections by Idayat Hassan, Director of the Centre for Democracy and
Development, Abuja, and a brief roundup from the latest report by
Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the UN Secretary-General’s special
representative for West Africa, on the multiple atrocities committed
by Boko Haram in 2014.

Few if any observers would venture to predict the results of the
election (Gallup notes widespread distrust among Nigerians at the
likelihood of a fair election: http://tinyurl.com/nmmuw5x). And
skepticism towards all political figures is profound. But
President Jonathan’s record, onfacing Boko Haram as well as more
generally, is extremely weak. And opposition candidate Muhammadu
Buhari, a former military head of state, does have a reputation for
personal integrity as well as a clear commitment to strengthening
the security response to Boko Haram.

Of related interest:

* Good roundup of coverage and opinion on “Why did the world ignore
Boko Haram’s Baga attacks?” in The Guardian, Jan. 12, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/om7y8jl

* “I am Charlie, but I am Baga too: On Nigeria’s forgotten
massacre,” Simon Allison, The Daily Maverick, Jan. 12, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/l8pja9a

* Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
http://www.inecnigeria.org/

* Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, December 2014
Detailed overview of internal displacement, including but not
limited to that by Boko Haram
http://tinyurl.com/n57loz4

* “The Tragedy of Borno State: Local Dimensions of Boko Haram’s
Insurgency,” by Michael Baca, African Arguments, December 19, 2014
http://africanarguments.org/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/lxg98np

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Nigeria, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/nigeria.php

For ongoing news coverage of Nigeria from Nigerian sources, visit
http://saharareporters.com and http://allafrica.com/nigeria

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

Ebola Perspectives

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

Informative roundup on prospects for fight against Ebola in 2015.
Notable differences between affected countries as of end of 2014.
http://lauriegarrett.com/blog/ahead-in-2015-part-one

Short video tribute to local health workers in Liberia, by U.S.
photographer who survived Ebola – a “must watch”
“Making Sure We Give Credit Where It’s Due in the Ebola Outbreak,”
by Ashoka Mukpo, Jan 8, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/mnna7yg

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

Boko Haram and the Competing Narratives

July 11, 2014

Zainab Usman

http://zainabusman.wordpress.com/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/q9esued

This is an article I recently wrote for the Opinion section of
AlJazeera English. It was originally published on the AJE website.

Nigeria has recently been brought to global media attention both as
the largest economy in Africa and as the home country of the Boko
Haram insurgency. The growing security threat has been accompanied
by a failure to develop a comprehensive narrative about Boko Haram’s
origins, its motivations and its implications for the country’s
future. The absence of such a cohesive narrative by the Nigerian
government, its citizens and the communities affected is indicative
of the need for a domestic solution to tackle this security
challenge.

The recent abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from the remote
community of Chibok in Nigeria’s northeast focused the world’s
attention on the country’s five-year battle with violent extremism.
Within this period, the goals of Boko Haram have evolved – from
leading a hermetic life away from a society they deemed corrupt and
decadent, to a vengeful war against all symbols of modernity,
democratic governance and Western education.

Upsurge in violence

Unfortunately, Nigerians haven’t been as quick to come to terms with
the upsurge in violence. The now-daily suicide bombings, mass
murders, mysterious assassinations of political, traditional and
religious leaders, mass abductions and other incidents of mindless
violence are still hard to grasp.

In the first five months of 2014, over 5,000 lives were lost to such
violence, according to the think tank, the Council on Foreign
Relations. In the wake of the glaring inability of the government to
contain this violent extremism, several competing narratives have
emerged.

On the part of the Nigerian government, the narrative has been
mostly incoherent and highly politicised. With the Chibok girls’
abduction for instance, both the federal government and the states
in the northeast – Boko Haram’s stronghold – have been preoccupied
with trading blame. Constitutionally, the responsibility for
security lies with the central government.

Since May 2013, three of these northeastern states have been under a
state of emergency, which gives greater powers to the central
government over their security.

These states accuse the federal government of negligence,
incompetence and corruption affecting the capacity of themilitary.
In turn, the federal government blames the states for exaggerating
the insecurity in their domains to embarrass it.

The key to understanding this lack of cohesion between the federal
and the northeastern states lies in understanding the nature of the
heated political environment.

The next round of general elections in 2015 may be the country’s
most contentious. President Goodluck Jonathan, it is widely
believed, will run for a second term, against a groundswell of
opposition under the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Jonathan’s emergence as presidential candidate in 2011 breached the
ruling People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) power-sharing rule in which
presidential power alternated every eight years between the mostly
Christian southern elites and their mostly Muslim northern
counterparts. In the typical rhetoric of political brinkmanship that
characterises electoral politics in Nigeria, a few aggrieved
northern PDP politicians who felt short-changed of their turn at the
presidency, threatened to make the country “ungovernable” for
Jonathan, a southerner.

Where these empty threats should have ordinarily dissipated into
thin air, they coincided with the escalation of the Boko Haram
insurgency. The Islamist group which emerged in the early 2000s
became increasingly violent after confrontations with security
agencies, as an International Crisis Group report documents. The
extra-judicial murder of Muhammad Yusuf, the group’s leader by the
police in 2009, captured on camera, forced the remaining members
into hiding. They reassembled a few years later, embarking on a
viciously vengeful killing spree.

South-north divide?

In 2011, Jonathan became president in regionally polarising
elections, on the platform of a fractured ruling party, and with a
simmering insurgency about to explode in its full wrath. The
interaction of all these meant that as Boko Haram waged its campaign
of violence, including its historic bombing of the UN building in
Abuja, the president and his inner circle wrestled to consolidate
their power in the PDP.

Consequently, a narrative slowly emerged from the president’s mostly
southern support base that the insurgency was being sponsored by
“disgruntled northern politicians” to undermine his administration.
This view has been articulated by known associates of the president
such as Chief Edwin Clark and ex-militant Mujahid Dokubo Asari.

It is now a widely-shared belief by many southerners that the
worsening insecurity is evidence of the northern elite making real
their erstwhile threat, as opposed to the governance challenges
bedevilling every aspect of Nigerian society. The northern elite are
funding the insurgency, destroying their infrastructure and killing
their own people just to make Jonathan look weak, it is said.

In the north where most of Boko Haram’s attacks and victims have
been concentrated, a widespread sense of fear, alienation and deep
distrust pervades. This stems from the federal government’s
inability to contain Boko Haram despite the increase in defence
spending to $5.8bn (or 20 percent of the budget) and militarisation
of the northeast.

Rather, brutal human rights abuses by the security forces and
allegations by combat soldiers of deliberate sabotage by their
commanders reinforce the deep distrust in the federal government.
The president’s slow response and perceived indifference to attacks
in the north has further alienated him from many northerners – he
only publicly acknowledged the Chibok girls’ abduction two weeks
after.

Consequently, the predominant narrative among many northerners is
that Jonathan’s federal government at best has little interest in
ending the insurgency in the north; and at worst, his associates may
be indirectly fuelling it, to weaken the region and its elites’
national political leverage. This is a view recently articulated by
Murtala Nyako, the governor of Adamawa, one of the states under
emergency rule. Coincidentally, the governors of all three
northeastern states under the state of emergency are in the
opposition party, the APC.

As the country’s elites and citizens blame one another, Boko Haram
appears more determined. As the country’s social fabric unravels
after each bomb blast, and the narratives become more disparate,
Boko Haram remains consistent with its vision against Western
education, modern governance structures and inter-religious harmony.
The strong national cohesion needed among Nigeria’s leaders and
citizens to collectively tackle this terrorist threat is lacking due
to contentious local politics. References to a civil war and a
disintegration of the country are now constant features online, in
print media and other fora of public discourse.

It is commendable that at this time of need, governments of the
United States, United Kingdom and other global powers have pledged
military support to help Nigeria to contain this terrorist threat.
Yet it is up to Nigerians to decide whether to unite and tackle the
insurgency, or continue blaming each other while the country
gradually unravels at the seams.

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

Nigeria Forum:  Why are the stakes so high for the 2015 elections?

by Idayat Hassan

African Arguments, December 16, 2014

http://africanarguments.org/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/mt49ld4

[Idayat Hassan is Director of the Centre for Democracy and
Development, Abuja.]

The 2015 general elections in Nigeria will define the country.
Speculation about a crisis that may ensue in the post-election
period is rife. Irrespective of which political party emerges
victorious to form the national government, the south-north divide,
zoning, religion and other factors could have a significant effect
in the aftermath of the polls.

Identity has always played a prominent role in Nigerian elections.
This situation has been further exacerbated in the prelude to 2015
as ethnic and religious entrepreneurs capitalize by whipping up such
sentiments. At the heart of this is the power sharing and rotation
equation between different groups divided along regional, ethnic and
religious. This, however, takes different dimensions at different
levels of government.

At the national level the bifurcation is along the North – South
divide. This is fueled by the power-sharing agreement within the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) called ‘zoning’. Under this
agreement, power is expected to alternate between the North and
South, however the death of former President Umaru Yar’Adua’s put
the agreement in disarray, not only did his then vice president
Goodluck Jonathan utilize his unexpired tenure, but also contested
and won the election in 2011 (with an alleged agreement that he
would not seek re-election in 2015.)

The issue of identity also plays out at the state level. The
politics of attrition – “our turn, we are the largest group, we
produce the most resources” – is easily observable. This syndrome,
coupled with the marginalization card, is strongly played by ethnic
zones and religious groups. But identity is quite fluid within the
Nigeria context and ethnicity, religion or geo- political identity
can fade away when necessary.

The upcoming 2015 general elections differ from the 2011 polls in
part due to the emergence of the All Progressive Congress (APC). The
country can now be said to be a two party state. In the 2011 general
elections, four major parties, including PDP, ACN, CPC and ANPP,
contested the elections with the opposition groups polling (in
total) less than 42 percent of the votes cast. However, General
Buhari of the CPC, registered just a few months prior to the
elections, polled over 12 million votes, with 96.9 percent of the
vote from Northern Nigeria.

With the merger of major opposition parties, the APC is more
formidable, having membership and support beyond the North. Now that
General Buhari is on its presidential ticket, it is unlikely that
PDP stalwarts will sit back patiently without devising means to win
the election at all costs. If Buhari could poll 12,214,853 as the
presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC)
as the APC candidate he is a genuinely credible challenger to PDP
dominance.

The defection of the five PDP governors to the APC also raised the
stakes higher. Political structures previously under the control of
the PDP are now controlled by APC. The PDP will however, want to
regain these states at all costs which further raises the stakes.

This acrimonious atmosphere has led to an explosion of hate speech.
In the last weeks there have been accusations by Northern leaders
and even the opposition party that Jonathan-led Federal Government
is fueling the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East. Reminiscent
of the Rwanda genocide, the state governor of Katsina was caught on
tape referring to opponents as “cockroaches” and encouraging his
supporters to crush them while they chanted “kill them”. The PDP
National Publicity Secretary described the APC as a terrorist party,
linking it to Al-Qaeda.

The use of social media has further led to the explosion of hate
speech with a geopolitical dimension attached. There is also a need
to watch out for the impact opinion polls may have in the elections.
In the last  months, several polls have been conducted placing some
candidates ahead of others, the likelihood of conflict entrepreneurs
latching on to figures from such polls to incite violence when a
particular candidate loses out is a reality that must be proactively
countered.

This election is being conducted as impunity and partisanship are
exhibited at all levels. The security agencies are viewed as
partisan at the national and state level. There are allegations of
police patrol vehicles carrying political parties/candidates
stickers in certain states.  The Inspector General of police is
being accused of partisanship with his recent handling of the House
of Representatives’ impasse and failure to recognize the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, Hon Aminu Tambuwal, as the speaker.

In addition, the spokesperson of the Department of State Service
(DSS), Ms. Marilyn Ogar, has been accused of partisanship following
several unsubstantiated allegations against the APC, which includes
claiming the party tried to bribe the DSS during the governorship
election of August 9th. Similarly, she alleged that APC was a
sponsor of the Boko Haram insurgency.

The preconceived notion of the security agencies’ partisanship has
implications on the election, with the likelihood that opposition
parties will resort to self-help or arming ethnic militias. This is
worrying, particularly in the context of an election where the
acceptance of results and the electoral outcome is a key challenge.
Already the opposition parties are threatening to create a parallel
government.

Speaking at the grand finale of Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s bid for
re-election in Osogbo, Osun State, APC National Chairman, Chief John
Oyegun, warned that any attempt by PDP to rig the 2015 elections
would lead to the formation of a parallel government. This was
reiterated by the Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, during
an APC protest rally held in Abuja on 19th November 2014.

In the 2011 general election, INEC enjoyed the goodwill of most
Nigerians, but this trend is changing for a number of reasons. Top
of the list is the handling of the Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC)
distribution and the Continuous Voters’ Registration (CVR) exercise.
These exercises experienced varying challenges, ranging from
logistics and capacity to the disappearance of over a million names
off the register in Lagos State, to the extension of the exercise
from the initially planned 3 to 4 + phases.

The PVC distribution in Lagos and Kano generated so much bad blood
with rallies against the commission held across Lagos and political
parties joining the fray with press conferences and statements
issued, not only questioning INEC but also fostering the impression
that the commission is acting out a script. In the same vein, the
commission has been accused of planning to disenfranchise Christians
by the Chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor
Ayo Oritsejafor.

The perceived politicization of the creation of additional polling
units (now suspended) also impacted the credibility of the
commission as it was accused of favouring a particular part of the
country. The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) created by the Boko
Haram insurgency constitute another challenge for INEC. There have
been many calls for these people to be included in the elections
without regard to the provisions of the law, which states that
voters can only vote at the polling units where they registered.
Without a review of electoral law, the practicality of this is in
doubt, and even if an amendment to this effect is passed, how it
would be achieved comes into question as these IDPs are scattered in
homesteads (not just living in camps).

We also cannot gloss over international best practice as espoused in
instruments such as the African Charter on Democracy, elections and
governance, which prescribes six months before elections for the
amendment of any electoral laws.

This analysis is not complete without emphasizing the increased role
of religion in the upcoming elections. While much emphasis has been
on political Islam in the Nigerian context, rising Pentecostalism
and political power wielded by the Pentecostal pastors with huge
followings must be emphasized. Particularly worrisome is the
increased vituperation of the chairman of the Christian Association
of Nigeria (CAN) and outright partisan role played in the prelude to
the elections.

As insecurity continues to pervade the country, much emphasis is
being laid on the Boko Haram Insurgency. But a conflict risk
assessment shows an average of eighteen states as being at ‘high
risk’. For the purpose of this analysis, I shall concentrate on
Nassarawa state.

Nassarawa state has been enmeshed in violence for the last 2 years,
leaving aside the attempt to impeach the governor which led to loss
of lives and property. The quest for power change and an unorthodox
agreement between the incumbent governor and the Eggons (who
constitute the highest percentage of citizens in the state) that the
incumbent Governor will serve only a term in office in exchange for
their support in the 2011 general election, is said to be one of the
reasons for the emergence of the religious cult group, ‘Ombatse’, in
2013.

The sect is alleged to have murdered over 70 security agents,
including men of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) and DSS in cold
blood in May 2013. The security agents were said to have stormed the
shrine over alleged forceful conscription of people into the cult,
none of the alleged killers of the security men have been brought to
book while the white paper that emanated from the panel of inquiry
set up by the state government is being challenged in court by the
group.

The Fulani/Eggon crises, conflict between farmers and pastoralists
and the rivalry between the PDP and APC pervade the Nassarawa state.
There is hardly a week without a report of violent conflict, but the
state is not being prioritized in terms of election programming.

As Boko Haram continues to acquire more territory, the likelihood of
elections in the north east seems dim. From its concentration in the
three states of Bornu, Yobe and Adamawa, in the last weeks, the
insurgents have shifted attacks to Bauchi and Gombe in the North
East, while at the same time making forays into Kano, Niger and
Plateau in North West and North Central Nigeria respectively. Boko
Haram has established its hegemony in some local government areas in
the North East following the incapacity of the military to regain
the areas. The question therefore is whether elections be held in
the occupied territories.

The legitimacy of the elections and the incoming administration will
hinge on the resolution of some of the highlighted issues and above
all the quality of elections delivered by INEC.

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

Excerpts from

Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the
United Nations Office for West Africa, 24 December 2014
S /2014/945

Available at http://tinyurl.com/ps455le

20. Nigeria also witnessed an escalation in attacks and bombings,
particularly in   the north-eastern States of Borno, Yobe and
Adamawa. During the reporting period, Boko Haram carried out several
attacks on military and security installations, as well as over 40
deadly raids on civilian settlements, which included torching of
churches and mosques. On 1 July, a vehicle-borne explosive device
detonated and  killed at least 56 civilians in a crowded arketplace
in Maiduguri, Borno State. On 23 July in Kaduna, Kaduna State, two
successive bombings targeted the convoys of Sheik Dahiru Bauchi, a
prominent Islamic scholar, and Muhammadu Buhari, a presidential
contender for APC, leaving 82  people dead. On 7 November, a bomb
killed 10 people in Azare, Bauchi State. On 10 November, a suicide
bomber in Potiskum, Yobe State, killed at least 46 students and
wounded 79 others at the  Public Science Technical College. The
Yobe State government subsequently closed all schools until further
notice. On 12 November, another suicide bombing took place at a
school in Kontagora, Niger State, injuring scores of people. On 25
November, two teenage female suicide bombers killed over 45 people
in the marketplace of Maiduguri. On 27 November, a bomb explosion
in the Maraba -Mubi area in Adamawa State killed at least 40
people. The  Kano Central Mosque was attacked on 28 November,
killing at least 120 people and injuring over 270 others.
On 11 December, twin bombs killed at least 40 people at a market in
Jos. On the  same day, in Kano, a 13-year-old girl was arrested for
allegedly wearing a suicide vest.

21. The territorial expansion of the Boko Haram insurgency was quite
rapid. The group took over the towns of Buni Yadi, Yobe State, on 20
August; Gambaru -Ngala, Borno State, on 26 August; Dikwa, Borno
State on 28 August, and Bama, the second-largest city in Borno
State, on 2 October. On 5 and 11 November, Boko Haram captured the
town of Malam Fatori in Borno State and the city of Maiha in Adamawa
State, respectively. The group is now believed to be in control of
significant swaths of land in Borno and Adamawa States, raising
questions about the Government’s ability to conduct elections in
these areas. Boko Haram has also reportedly established governance
architecture and imposed Sharia law in the areas
under its control.

22. Despite national and international reaction to the kidnapping of
schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, in April 2014, Boko Haram has
continued its spate of kidnappings of adults and children. On 10
August, Boko Haram militants overran local militias in a remote
fishing village near Lake Chad and  kidnapped 97 persons. On 14
September, over 50 women were reported to have been abducted in
Gulak, Adamawa State; on 30 September an unknown number of persons
were abducted in Gwoza, Borno State; and  on 18 October, 40 women
were reportedly abducted in Wagga, Adamawa State.

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

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

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