Africa

Children and adults receive treatment at a cholera treatment centre in Tawila, North Darfur. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammed Jamal

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

In Tawila, North Darfur State in Sudan, more than 1,180 cholera cases, including 300 cases in children, and at least 20 deaths have been reported since the first case was detected on June 21. Tawila has absorbed 500,000 internally displaced people who are escaping violence, many of them fleeing about seventy kilometers from the state capital of Al Fasher, making this rapid surge in cases a major health concern amidst worsening hygiene, medical, and food supply chain deteriorations.

Across all five of the Darfur States, the total cases have reached 2,140, with at least eighty deaths, as UNICEF reports as of July 30th. This, coupled with the intensifying conflict, now puts 640,000 children under age five at a heightened risk of violence, disease, and hunger. With largely exhausted food, clean water, medicine, and hygienic supplies, a deadly combination of lacking essential resources and lethal disease now create the perfect climate for an all-out epidemic. UNICEF now requires an additional 30.6 million USD to fund emergency cholera response operations to strengthen health, water, hygiene, and sanitation services.

Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative for Sudan said: “Despite being preventable and easily treatable, cholera is ripping through Tawila and elsewhere in Darfur, threatening children’s lives, especially the youngest and most vulnerable.” He added: “We are working tirelessly with our partners on the ground to do everything we can to curb the spread and save lives – but the relentless violence is increasing the needs faster than we can meet them. We have and we continue to appeal for safe unimpeded access to urgently turn the tide and reach these children in need. They cannot wait a day longer.”

Logistical Difficulties

UNICEF has been using Port Sudan as a central logistics hub, where procurement and prepositioning are being conducted. Stocks of oral rehydration salts, IV fluid, water purification products, and hygiene kits are carefully monitored and released as soon as access allows. Access has been cut off by physical terrain, poor infrastructure, damaged or destroyed roads and bridges, disrupted communication networks, lack of power and fuel infrastructure, and even obtaining the necessary permits for delivery of supplies.

In North Darfur, hospitals are being bombed and health facilities have had to close due to proximity of fighting, which has severely limited access to healthcare. Lifesaving supplies such as vaccines and ready-to-use therapeutic food have also been depleted, and efforts to replenish supplies are becoming increasingly difficult as humanitarian aid access has been almost completely cut off. Aid convoys which do come are being looted or attacked.

Continued bureaucratic impediments have also deteriorated supply lines and services, which is compounding the already dangerous situation. Despite this, UNICEF is working on all fronts to address the outbreak, delivering life-saving equipment across sanitation, hygiene, water, health, and are increasing community engagement for better cooperation and communication.

UNICEF continues to call on the government and all other concerned parties to ensure safe, sustained and unimpeded accesses to reach children in Tawila and across the Darfur State in their mission to prevent the further loss of young lives. “These bureaucratic delays do not allow us to deliver at the scale and urgency required.”

30,000 people now have access to safe, clean, and chlorinated water daily, through UNICEF-supported water trucking, repaired water yards, and new water storage systems. Hygiene supplies have also helped 150,000 people in Daba Naira, in addition to chlorine tablets which are helping families treat their water.

To stop the cholera outbreak before it worsens, UNICEF is now preparing to deliver over 1.4 million oral cholera vaccine doses. They are working alongside the World Health Organization (WHO) and their other partners through the International Coordinating Group (ICG), to strengthen Cholera Treatment Centers and operations. Through these partnerships, UNICEF is managing vaccine procurement, cold chain logistics, and mobilization of local communities, while WHO and other partners are supporting technical guidance, surveillance, and campaign coordination, ensuring the most rapid and effective level of protection to the most vulnerable people. UNICEF has reported that these supplies would include cholera kits, soap, plastic sheeting and latrine slabs.

To support the large quantity of vaccines and medicine, UNICEF has supported the rehabilitation and the expansion of cold chain storage capacities. Such support includes the delivery of units of walk-in cold rooms, backup generators, and maintenance work on some of the cold chain structures. UNICEF has assured that this support has been provided on a national and state level, reaching the five Darfur states, in addition to the Kassala, Northern, Red Sea, and River Nile States.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Sudiksha Battineni
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Chad is one of the most extreme examples of energy poverty, with just 10% of the population connected to electricity, a rural electrification rate below 2%, and a global per capita electricity consumption rate that’s just 18% of the global average. This hinders its economic development.

So does its rapid population growth. Chad has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations; its 21 million people are expected to more than triple by the end of the century. Chad’s low educational attainment, with 38% of girls completed primary school, coupled with high rates of child marriage and fertility also pose problems for its development.

The World Bank is working on some of these fronts, including announcing a new agreement that will strengthen Chad’s education system, and launching Mission 300 in partnership with the African Development Bank to connect 300 million more people in Africa to electricity by 2030.

But these issues are all linked and can only be solved when they aren’t siloed. Affordable, clean energy for all is Sustainable Development Goal 7, which also relates to SDG 5, gender equity and women’s empowerment, which is preerequisite for lowering fertility and slowing population growth. Energy access is also interwoven with education (SDG 4), ending poverty (SDG 1), promoting health (SDG 3), fighting climate change (SDG 13), and the entire SDG agenda.

For example, energy poverty keeps hospitals from storing vaccines, people from starting businesses, and children from studying after sunset. It exacerbates the very inequalities that education seeks to combat, particularly gender inequality.

As a holistic way to redress it, women activists in energy-poor countries are promoting “feminist electrification” — explicitly designing energy investments to empower women as economic actors and consumers. This could include integrating family planning into energy rollouts, investing in women’s education, training, and leadership development, and including them in energy planning.

This perspective is currently lacking in Mission 300’s “energy compacts” — voluntary commitments outlining how countries, companies, and organizations affordable and clean energy for all. Chad’s National Energy Compact calls for adding connections for over 14 million more people, raising electricity access from 11% to 90% by 2030, achieving 46% access to clean cooking solutions by 2030, boosting renewables to 30% of total electricity generation, adding 866 MW of new capacity, and mobilizing $650.3 million in total investments, about one-third from the private sector.

The Compact addresses infrastructure, private sector engagement, and regulatory reform, but overlooks critical human dimensions of energy, including its intersection with gender equality and population growth.

For example, Chad’s high fertility rates result in large household sizes and increased energy demand for cooking, lighting, and other activities. Women manage most of the domestic energy needs, yet they generally aren’t part of energy decision-making.

Nearly all Chad’s rural households rely on wood for cooking, which devastates forests and exposes families to indoor air pollution that contributes to respiratory diseases. Clean cooking solutions, like LPG stoves or electric induction cookers, could transform these risks. But only if women can access, afford, and trust them.

Unmet family planning needs are accelerating Chad’s rapid population growth, which threatens to swamp any gains in energy access. With little education and few economic options, 61% of girls get married by age 18, part of the reason for Chad’s sky-high total fertility rate of 5.14 births per woman.

Fast population growth accelerates urban sprawl, drives deforestation for charcoal production, and makes it harder to extend grid infrastructure to meet energy demands.

For all these reasons, family planning and energy planning are connected. Chad can’t meet its Energy Compact targets without also setting and meeting goals for family planning and empowering women.

Feminist electrification would provide women with vocational training in solar installation, electric stove sales and maintenance, ensuring that clean energy solutions reach households while creating jobs for women and opportunity for self-determination, which universally tends to lower fertility rates. It would further the Compact’s goals of expanding decentralized renewable energy and fostering private investment by extending them to women.

Chad should revise its National Energy Compact to include a specific gender and demographics integration plan. It should require gender impact assessments for all new energy projects, track energy access outcomes by gender and income, and link electrification operations directly with family planning, health, and women’s economic empowerment initiatives.

Energy access is not just about how many kilowatts get generated; it’s about the human realities behind the numbers, and who shares the benefits of electricity. True access means that a woman in rural Chad can flip a switch, cook cleanly, breathe safely, and choose the size of her family.

That’s the kind of power Africa needs.

Sudiksha Battineni is a rising sophomore at Duke University and a Stanback Fellow at the Population Institute

IPS UN Bureau

 

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