Africa

President Kenyatta is shown an artistic view of the layout of the multibillion food security project in Galana and Kulalu ranch. Credit: Alphonce Gari

By Moody Awori and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 28 2018 (IPS)

Africa is rising. But at the same time, Africa is the continent with the largest number of people, (390 million) living in extreme poverty.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture organization states in a new report that 124 million people in 51 countries experienced high levels of food insecurity. “Hunger and food insecurity plague the lives of millions worldwide” said EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Mr. Christos Stylianides.

At the core of Kenya’s new and ambitious Big Four Agenda (Food Security, Universal Health Coverage, Affordable Housing and increase to 15% the contribution of Manufacturing to GDP), is a reduction in the number of people living in poverty.

Data from a recent World Bank survey indicates that about 36 % of Kenyans live below the poverty line.

The Big Four Agenda correctly identifies food security as a major pathway for improving the conditions of a majority, of Kenyans.

Moody Awori

As is the case across virtually the entire continent, Kenya is one of the countries where economic prosperity has been accompanied by a rise in the absolute number of poor people. This emerging trend means that the majority of the 1 million youth who enter the job market every year end up in jobs that cannot lift them out of poverty.

A World Bank report indicates about 1% reduction in poverty over the last ten years. The key point is not that the absolute numbers have increased but rather that the pace of poverty reduction is too slow to achieve the 2030 SDG goal on poverty reduction

As the country rolls out the Big Four Agenda, we must reflect on those sectors that offer the best pathways for quick wins and determine how the anticipated prosperity can be shared equitably.

Global surveys have unequivocally shown that the agriculture sector provides the best opportunities to create employment and lift people out of poverty.

In Kenya the agriculture sector accounted for the largest share of poverty reduction.

With a growing population and continued land degradation due to overgrazing, poor farming practices, deforestation and climate change, Africa must look to new ways to make farming more productive and profitable.

Akinwunmi Adesina, the President, African Development Bank (AfDB) says agriculture will be a one trillion dollar business in Africa by 2030.

Siddharth Chatterjee

However, a disturbing characteristic of recent growth in African economies is that the rate at which poverty is reducing is lower than the rate at which the population is rising.

Even as Kenya seeks to implement poverty reduction strategies, it should fix a keen eye on the rapid population growth.

Consider this. In 1956, Kenya’s population was the same as Sweden – 7 million. Today Sweden is around 10 million people and Kenya is around 46 million people. By 2030 Kenya’s population is expected to reach 65 million and by 2050 around 90 million. Kenya’s total fertility rate stands at around 4.

The Asian Tigers were able to bring down their total fertility rates, and this allowed them to reap a demographic dividend. Gross domestic product increased sevenfold, an economic boom described as the “Asian economic miracle” followed.

Every girl and woman must be supported and allowed to achieve her full human potential, and be educated and empowered and able to join the work force as well as to plan her family. They are the engines of economic growth.

President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the UNDP’s Africa Human Development Report in August 2016. The report shows that Sub-Saharan Africa loses US$ 95 billion annually due to gender inequality and lack of women’s empowerment.

The place to start is with the youth, with the twin goal of getting young people into agriculture-related jobs as well as providing them with reproductive health services and information.

Lack of information and services – and the often-perilous consequences –leads to mistakes that impact the education and employment opportunities for many.

Kenya must create one million new jobs every year for the next 10 years to cater for the rapidly expanding youth bulge.

With agriculture as the country’s economic base, this is the one sector that can absorb most of the unemployed young people in Kenya, both as semi-skilled and highly skilled labour.

The country’s leadership has clearly put in place the right growth momentum with reduction of poverty as the centre of focus. We must all come together to make that growth inclusive, and to leave no one behind.

The post Hunger and Food Insecurity Plague the Lives of Millions in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Honourable Mr. Moody Awori, is the former Vice President of the Republic of Kenya. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

The post Hunger and Food Insecurity Plague the Lives of Millions in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Mamoudou Gassama is among thousands of Malians arriving in Europe, despite efforts to curb migration.

The head of a government youth agency is among those held over a scheme allegedly involving fake sales.

Nigeria international winger Moses Simon is ruled out of the World Cup with a thigh injury that will sideline him for up to a month.

The 'Ultras White Knights', staunch fans of Egyptian giants Zamalek, disband their group, bringing the Ultras era in Egypt to an end after 11 years.

Flanker Siya Kolisi will become South Africa's first black Test captain in the three-match series against England next month.

By WAM
ABU DHABI, May 28 2018 (WAM)

The UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science, UAEREP, has met one of its second cycle awardees, Dr. Paul Lawson, to prepare for an intensive series of research flights to gather data and take measurements during the third quarter of 2018.

Commenting on the visit, Dr. Abdullah Al Mandous, Director of the National Centre for Meteorology, NCM, said, “Dr. Lawson’s research flights mark a major milestone in his highly innovative research project. Through our awardees’ projects, the NCM and the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science are continuing to develop global research networks and leading international scientific and technological innovation in rain enhancement.”

As the founder of SPEC Incorporated and a participant in over 50 international research projects related to weather modification, Dr. Lawson’s research project, entitled “Microphysics of Convective Clouds and the Effects of Hygroscopic Seeding,” is developing a new approach to rain enhancement that leverages ice production processes in cumulus clouds, through seeding in the updrafts at cloud bases, to coalesce frozen water that ultimately could fall as rain.

Set to take place from Al Ain Airport, Dr. Lawson’s flights will involve a custom-designed Learjet research aircraft equipped with sophisticated sensors to gather data and take measurements.

Commenting on the programme, Alya Al Mazroui, Director of the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science, said, “Regular meetings and reports enable us to provide support and pool our joint expertise to ensure that our awardees’ ground-breaking projects will have the maximum impact. The excellent progress already made by Dr. Lawson and his team confirms that the programme is already having a significant impact, in terms of supporting and enabling advanced research in the field.”

Dr. Lawson’s team will plan their flights based on the NCM radar data identifying optimal locations and times of day for missions. The researchers have already completed extensive preparatory work in the US investigating cumulus clouds with a large range of cloud-base temperatures and drop size distributions. Dr. Lawson’s project in the UAE will be followed by intensive analysis of the data gathered during the flights.

In addition to his discussions with the NCM and the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement team members, Dr. Lawson also met officials from the Gulf Civil Aviation Authority, GCAA, to discuss his aircraft’s projected flight paths, as well as other operational issues.

 

WAM/Rola Alghoul/Rasha Abubaker

The post UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science welcomes leading scientists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geetika Dang and Raghav Gaiha
NEW DELHI, May 28 2018 (IPS)

A disquieting finding of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017, Building resilience for peace and food security, or (SFSN2017), Rome,is that, in 2016, the number of chronicallyundernourished people in the world increased to 815 million, up from777 million in 2015 although still lower than about 900 million in 2000.Similarly,while the prevalence of undernourishment rose to 11 percent in 2016, this is still well below thelevel attaineda decade ago.Whether this recent rise inhunger and food-insecurity levels signals thebeginning of an upward trend, or whether itreflects an acute transient situation calls for a close scrutiny.

Undernourishment is associated with lower productivity. More importantly, in an agrarian economy with surplus labour and efficiency wages, a weather or market shock could result in rationing out of those lacking adequate physical stamina and dexterity from the labour market. This could perpetuate the poverty of the undernourished, often referred to as nutrition –poverty trap.

By contrast, other indicators of food security have registered improvement. Stunting refers to children who are too shortfor their age. It is a reflection of achronic state of undernutrition.When children are stunted before the age of two, they are athigher risk of illness and more likely thanadequately nourished children to lackcognitive skills and learning abilities in later childhood and adolescence.Globally, the prevalence of stunting of children under five years fell from29.5 percent to 22.9 percent between 2005and 2016. The global average of the prevalence of anaemiain women of reproductive age increased slightlybetween 2005 and 2016. When anaemia occurs duringpregnancy, it causes fatigue, loweredproductivity, increased risk of maternal andperinatal mortality, and low birth weight babies.

Has Asia’s experience been different? It is argued below on the basis of Table 1 that it has been more mixed.

Table 1
Food Security Indicators in Asia


Source: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017, Building resilience for peace and food security (SFSN2017).

Although proportion of undernourished in different sub-regions of Asia varied within a narrow range in 2004-06, it became narrower in 2014-16. In all sub-regions, the proportion of undernourished fell during this period but slowly, as in Asia as a whole. Under-five stunting is a key indicator of child malnutrition. The range was large in 2005, with a high of 44.6 % in Southern Asia and a low of 9.4 % in Central Asia. The range became narrower in 2016 but Southern Asia continued to have the highest prevalence of over 34 % (but lower than in 2005) and Eastern Asia the lowest of 5.5 % (substantially lower than in 2005). So except for Central Asia which witnessed a slight rise, all other sub-regions recorded reductions in stunting. Prevalence of anaemia among women of reproductive age was widespread with a high of 50 % in Southern Asia and a low of about 19 % in Eastern Asia in 2005. While the prevalence of anaemic women fell in Southern Asia from 50 % to 43.7 % in 2016, this sub-region still had the highest prevalence.

Geetika Dang

Eastern Asia saw a more than moderate rise, South Eastern Asia experienced a negligible reduction, and Central Asia a small reduction. As a result, there was a bunching of high prevalence rate in Central Asia, Eastern Asia and South Eastern Asia, and a consequent rise in prevalence of anaemic women from a high of 33.3 % to 36.6 per cent.

SFSN (2017) attributes much of the worsening in food security-especially in Sub-Saharan Africa- to frequency of conflicts, droughts, and fragility of governance, but the analysis is largely conjectural.

As Asia was not so prone to conflicts, we sought to unravel the relationship between these indicators of food security and income growth, allowing for unobservable country –level heterogeneity and residual time effect. Whether the political regime of a country is more inclined to protect the poor and vulnerable -especially children and women in the reproductive age-group- against the risks of undernourishment from weather and market shocks is unobservable but crucial for isolating the effect of income.

Our analysis shows that there are robust relationships between these indicators and per capita income (PPP2011) and the residual time effect. Assessing the effect of income in terms of elasticities, proportionate change in say prevalence of undernourishment/proportionate change in income, we find that the elasticity of undernourishment to income is –0.28, implying that a 1 % higher income will lower prevalence of undernourishment by 0.28 %. A related finding is that the elasticity (in absolute value) rose substantially during 2005-16, implying that a 1% higher income will be far more effective in curbing undernourishment. Moreover, there was a substantial negative residual time effect, implying that controlling for income, other time related factors led to reduction in prevalence of undernourishment.

Raghav Gaiha

The elasticity of under-five stunting with respect to income was also robust, with an elasticity of -0.045, implying that a 1 % higher income will translate into a reduction of stunting by -0.045 %. Compared to the elasticity of undernourishment with respect to income, this is considerably lower. This is not surprising given that stunting is the result of persistent undernourishment over time. In addition, there was a significant negative residual time effect, implying presumably better hygiene and sanitary conditions. The elasticity (in absolute value) rose more than moderately between 2005 and 2016, implying greater sensitivity of under-five stunting to income.Finally, the elasticity of prevalence of anaemia among women in reproductive phase with respect to income was negative but also low (-0.075). So a 1 % higher income is likely to be associated with a reduction in prevalence of anaemia of 0.075 %. The (absolute) elasticity rose slightly between 2005 and 2016. The residual time effect was negative, implying better access to medical services, hygiene and sanitary conditions for women in reproductive phase over time.

Although limited in scope, our analysis confirms that income growth is key to food security in Asia. This is not to suggest that other factors (e.g. social safety nets, greater nutritional awareness-especially among women-and education) do not matter. They matter too but call for a broader investigation.

  

Geetika Dang is an independent researcher; and Raghav Gaiha is currently (Hon.) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England, and Visiting Scientist, Department of Global Health, Harvard School of Public Health (2015 and 2016).

The views expressed are personal.

The post Food Security and Growth in Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The US has imposed tariffs on Rwanda over an obscure import: Second-hand clothes.

The US has imposed tariffs on Rwanda over an obscure import: Second-hand clothes.

President Macron is to thank a Malian man who saved a child dangling from a fourth-floor Paris balcony.

Mohamed Salah says he is "confident" of playing in the World Cup after suffering a shoulder injury in the Champions League final.

Real Madrid's Achraf Hakimi heads to the World Cup in confident mood after becoming the first Moroccan to win the Uefa Champions League.

Egyptian fans vent their anger on social media after the Liverpool star Mo Salah's injury in the Champions League final.

By WAM
DUBAI, May 27 2018 (WAM)

Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority; DEWA, has received a delegation from the Finnish company, Valmet in the renewable energy sector.

The delegation included Jukka Hahlantera, Commercial Counsellor of the Finnish Embassy in the UAE; Ari Kokko, Director Technology and R&D at Valmet, and Pasi Lestelin, Energy Sales and Services Operations Southern Europe, Middle East & Africa (SEMEA) at Valmet.

The meeting supports DEWA’s commitment to establish cooperation and joint efforts, and exchange expertise and insights with international organisations.

Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer welcomed the Finnish delegation and discussed enhancing cooperation and exchanging best international experiences and expertise between DEWA and Finnish companies in renewable, clean energy and environmental sustainability.

Al Tayer highlighted DEWA’s key developmental projects and strategic initiatives that support the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which was launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to diversify the energy mix, to ensure that clean energy will generate 75 per cent of Dubai’s total power output by 2050.

“To achieve these goals, DEWA has launched several green programmes and initiatives, including the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Power Park, which is the largest single-site solar park in the world, with a planned capacity of 5,000MW by 2030, and a total investment of AED 50 billion,” explained Al Tayer.

The Finnish delegation expressed interest in participating in DEWA’s clean and renewable energy projects, to promote sustainable development in Dubai and reduce the UAE carbon footprint to achieve a better future for generations to come.

WAM/Hazem Hussein/Tariq alfaham

The post DEWA discusses cooperation in renewable energy with Finnish company Valmet appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Mohamed Salah's injury is "serious" according to Jurgen Klopp, but Egypt remain confident he will be fit for the World Cup.

Commercial Habitat, a high-end home appliance store located in the upscale municipality of Vitacura, in the east of the Chilean capital, supplies part of its electricity consumption with energy generated from solar panels installed on its roof. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, May 27 2018 (IPS)

Chile has become a model country for its advances in non-conventional energy, and is now debating whether citizens who individually or as a group generate electricity can profit from the sale of the surplus from their self-consumption – a factor that will be decisive when it comes to encouraging their contribution to the energy supply.

A Senate committee has analysed whether to eliminate the payments to citizens for their surplus energy established in a law in force since 2012, in response to an indication to that effect from the government of socialist former president Michelle Bachelet (2014-March 2018), which her successor, the right-wing Sebastián Piñera, is keeping in place.

Now it is being studied by the Chamber of Deputies, which has been warned by leaders of environmental organisations that the proposal to eliminate payments to citizens who inject the surplus energy they generate into the grid will sentence these initiatives to death.

Gabriel Prudencio, head of the Ministry of Energy’s Renewable Energy Division, told IPS that the current government aims to make “distributed generation a major element in citizen power generation.”

“We will continue to encourage end users to be able to generate their energy because of the resultant benefits, but we must identify and avoid any inconvenience in terms of economy, especially for those who cannot install these systems, and for the sake of the security of the system,” he said.

Manuel Baquedano, president of the non-governmental Institute for Political Ecology (IEP), said “We hope that this proposal will not succeed and that we can continue with citizen-generated energy. Without the contribution of this sector, the goal of 80 percent non-conventional energy by 2050 will not be achieved.”

The expert believes that the authorities fear that citizen power generation, mainly solar, will become a business in itself and will not be used only for self-consumption and to cut the electricity bills of individuals or small businesses.

“They are legislating against a ghost,” he told IPS. “Energy should be born from thousands of connected points and by a system that allows buying and selling.”

The current installed electricity generation capacity in Chile, a country of 17.9 million inhabitants, is 22,369 MW. Of this total, 46 percent comes from renewable sources (30 percent hydropower), and 54 percent is thermal (21 percent coal).

All electricity generation is in private hands, most of it based on foreign capital. Consumption, which is constantly growing, reached 68,866 GW-h in 2013.

Revolution towards non-conventional sources

Chile’s solar and wind energy potential is 1,800 GW, according to a study by the Ministry of Energy and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GIZ).

If only five percent of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile were used to generate solar energy, 30 percent of South America’s electricity demand could be met, according to the Solar Energy Research Centre (SERC).

During Bachelet’s four-year term, Chile made an unprecedented leap in non-conventional renewable energies (NCRE), which went from contributing five percent of generation in 2013 to 20 percent in 2017.

“Solar energy showed the greatest growth, from 11 MW in early 2014 to 2,080 in late 2017, followed by wind energy, which grew from 333 to 1,426 MW,” said environmental engineer Paula Estévez in the book Energy Revolution in Chile, published by former Chilean Minister of Energy Máximo Pacheco on May 10.

According to Baquedano, “In the country’s energy revolution, the main thing is indeed the change towards renewable energy that took place. Chile’s energy mix is going to be 100 percent renewable at some point.”

Baquedano warned, however, that “the benefits of this energy revolution from the productive point of view have been only for the private sector and have not been passed on to the public sector.”

Prudencio said that “to date, there are approximately 16 MW of installed capacity of systems under Law 20,571 (payments to residential generators), which is equivalent to more than 2,600 operating projects throughout the country.”

A few cases in point

Ragnar Branth, general manager of Commercial Habitat, a high-end furniture and home design store in the municipality of Vitacura in eastern Santiago, installed solar panels on the roof to power a five-kW photovoltaic plant whose generation saves 13.5 percent in annual electricity bills.

“There is a benefit in the monthly fee, but the initial investment is quite significant. We’re talking about more than 20 million pesos (about 32,200 dollars) in the purchase of panels and their installation alone, and that is not compensated in savings until at least the fifth or sixth year of consumption,” he told IPS.

The Canela Wind Farm, with 112-m-high wind turbines and an installed capacity of 18.15 megawatts (MW), generates electricity with the force of the winds coming from the sea in the Coquimbo region of northern Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“The government took a good first step with the cogeneration law. However, some adjustments are needed, including the recognition of 100 percent of the energy generated and some kind of benefit in the investment project,” he said.

“If the government wants this to spread and wants there to be significant cogeneration, there has to be a benefit in the investment or some form of tax reduction or benefit,” he added.

In the agricultural county of Buin, south of the city of Santiago, 99 citizen shareholders convened by the IEP financed the community project Solar Buin Uno that built a 10 kW photovoltaic solar plant connected to the grid.

Much of the energy is delivered to the Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), and the rest is injected into the grid. But the local distribution company pays only up to 60 percent of the value of the kWh billed to the CST. That is, it pays for the surplus only a portion of what it charges its users.

The generation by individuals received a special boost with the Distributed (decentralized) Generation Law, in force since 2017, also known locally as citizen generation.

Andrés Rebolledo, the last energy minister in the Bachelet administration, explained to IPS that this law “aims to encourage and give signals for the generation by citizens and show that homes and small businesses can generate their own energy based on NCRE.”

The former minister said there has been “exponential growth” of citizen generators and stressed that the modification being debated by parliament raises the possibility that they could increase their potential from 100 to 300 kW, favouring small and medium enterprises.

“The objective and vision is that the progress that Chile has made in terms of NCRE generation at the level of large plants can also be taken advantage of at the citizen level and that in this way households can generate their own electricity, save on their electricity bills and at the same time contribute to a more sustainable model,” he said.

“This implies an effort to strengthen the distribution networks, to have another form of measurement so that households can manage their own consumption and generation and, ultimately, so that they can become prosumers, that is, for a household to be both a producer and a consumer of energy at the same time,” he said.

The former minister explained that the request for a debate in parliament “was intended to try to send out signals and offer incentives so that more people could make an investment and this could become accessible to all, always taking care that households do not turn this into a business but rather for their own consumption.”

But non-governmental organisations say it will be a setback if the payment received for the injection of energy into the grid generated by citizens is eliminated.

According to Sara Larraín, executive director of Chile Sustentable, the proposed modification “eliminates the payment for the energy surplus injected by the residential generator over its own consumption.”

That, she told IPS, “discourages households from investing in self-generation and recovering their investment in less time thanks to the retribution for the electricity fed into the grid.”

Speaking to members of parliament, Larraín said that the reform “is a monopolistic distortion in favour of distribution companies that already constitute a monopoly as concessionaires of the distribution service.”

The president of IEP, Baquedano, said that the installation of a second citizens’ plant in the north of the country was suspended pending the legislative decision, “because the model will not work if this legislation is approved.”

“There’s a question mark over what’s going to happen to the energy generated by citizens. The government will have to understand that if citizen energy runs out, the environmental movement will not keep quiet. The conflicts will return, that’s my thesis, and not just my thesis because we are also preparing the scenarios,” he concluded.

Related Articles

• Clean Energy Sources Manage to Cut Electricity Bill in Chile
• Ordinary Citizens Help Drive Spread of Solar Power in Chile

The post Chile Debates Whether Citizens Should Profit from Generating Energy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Zimbabwe's Axcil Jefferies hopes to be the first African racing driver on the F1 grid for 25 years.

Zimbabwean Axcil Jefferies hopes to be the first African racing driver on the F1 grid for 25 years.

South African disability rights campaigner Eddie Ndopu says he is "a living manifestation of possibility".