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The exact cause of the mass fish die-off in the Oder River has still not been identified, although laboratory analysis of the water and fish carcasses are in full swing in Poland and Germany. Europe's press sees the natural disaster's toll on Polish-German relations and the border river's ecosystem.

Former US President Donald Trump's strongest intra-party critic, Representative Liz Cheney, has lost the Wyoming Republican primary election. Trump supporter Harriet Hageman prevailed by a large margin and will now run as a candidate in the midterm elections. Europe's press is very concerned about this outcome.

According to official statistics Bucharest's 1.8 million inhabitants own 1.4 million cars. People often park their cars without any regard for the rules, turning the city into an obstacle course for people with prams or wheelchair users. Now measures are being taken to end the chaos: on Monday, parking fees of up to the equivalent of two euros per hour came into force in the city centre and illegal parkers will face fines of around 41 euros. The national press is divided in its assessment of the new rules.

Az ország egyes helyein szerdáról (augusztus 17.) csütörtökre virradó éjjel trópusi éjszaka volt, azaz a levegő hőmérséklete nem csökkent 20 fok alá. Erről a Szlovák Hidrometeorológiai Intézet (SHMÚ) tájékoztatott a közösségi oldalán.

Die Schweiz kann das Netto-Null-Ziel bis 2050 erreichen. Doch dafür brauche es Anstrengungen in allen Bereichen, von der Verringerung der Nachfrage über eine höhere Effizienz der Geräte bis zum Ersatz der fossilen Energie, schreiben die Akademien der Wissenschaften.

An einem Strand im US-Bundesstaat Alabama herrscht Hai-Alarm! Videos zeigen, wie sich ein Hammerhai ins flache Wasser verirrt – direkt vor eine Gruppe Badenden. Wie wild zappelt der Hai umher, während seine Flosse wie in einem Horrorfilm aus dem Wasser ragt.

Les recherches d’Agroscope permettront bientôt de trouver des points faibles pour lutter contre cet agent pathogène, jusqu’ici pratiquement impossible à combattre.

African leaders must recognise the enormous potentials of the continent’s informal workers and begin to integrate them better into their city-building visions and strategies. Credit: Suleiman Mbatiah/IPS

By External Source
Aug 18 2022 (IPS)

African leaders are increasingly aspiring to “modernise” their cities. That is to make them “globally competitive” and “smart”. The hope is to strategically position cities in Africa to drive the continent’s much-needed socio-economic transformation.

But these aspirations tend to marginalise and antagonise the informal sector. The sector encompasses the suite of economic activities by workers and economic units that are – in law or in practice – not covered (or insufficiently covered) by formal arrangements.

We are a team of international scholars researching sustainable cities in Africa. In our latest paper, we explore the dual role played by the informal sector in Africa’s urban economy. On the one hand, it plays a positive role. It provides employment, securing household income and savings, provides household basic needs and boosts civic engagement.

Clearly, the informal sector oils Africa’s urban economy in many important ways. This makes it highly unlikely that any visions of transforming lives on the continent can succeed without taking the sector into adequate account

But the sector also plays a negative role. It contributes to social and gender inequality, insecurity, congestion and pollution.

Overall, we found that the informal sector has a lot to offer the future of African cities. We therefore recommend that public policy focuses more on regularising the sector, instead of displacing it. This is often done to make way for elitist big capital projects.

Also, we warn that ignoring or marginalising the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on the sector could spell a social bloodbath on the continent.

 

The ‘smart cities’ craze in Africa

There has been a resurgent interest in building so-called “smart”, “modern”, “globally competitive” cities in Africa. Some are seeking to build entirely new cities. But, for the most part, most governments want to put cities on the “map” through large-scale redevelopment or by “modernising” existing city districts.

African cities have long been blamed for not serving as engines of growth and structural transformation as their counterparts did during Europe’s Industrial Revolution. This makes it refreshing that leaders on the continent are seeking to turn things around.

The problem, however, is that these visions of city modernisation tend to heavily marginalise and antagonise the informal sector in their design and execution. Some even have a strong focus on displacing informal workers and activities – particularly hawkers and hawking, slum dwellers and slum settlements – from the central business districts of the cities.

For instance, early this year, the authorities in Nigeria sent a combined team of police, military and other law enforcement officials to destroy a Port Harcourt informal settlement that housed some 15,000 families.

Their counterparts in Ghana are currently conducting similar exercises.

These decisions are often justified on the grounds that informal workers and their activities generate “congestion”, “crime”, “filth/grime”, and “disorderliness”.

In other words, they impede sustainable city-making, and hence, must be eradicated.

But is this premise backed by the evidence? This is the question our team recently interrogated.

We conclude that the informal sector is rather the goose laying Africa’s golden eggs.

 

Unpacking the data

We argue in our paper that African leaders must re-think the informal sector as a potential site for innovation and solutions.

Consider its employment creation potential for instance. In 2018, a study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that the informal sector employs some 89.2% of the total labour force in sub-Saharan Africa if agriculture is included.

Even without agriculture, the share of informal employment is still significant: 76.8%. In central Africa, without agriculture, the sector’s share of employment hovered at 78.8% and 91% with agriculture. In east Africa, the contributions stood at 76.6% without agriculture and 91.6% with agriculture. The figures for southern and western Africa hovered around 36.1% and 87% without agriculture and 40.2% and 92.4% when agriculture is included.

The informal sector also makes other important contributions to Africa’s economy. In 2000, the gross value additions of Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo’s informal sector (including agriculture) hovered around 71.6%, 55.8%, 51.5%, and 72.5% of the countries’ total GDPs.

The sector’s contribution to housing too is substantial. The most notable form of informal housing, popularly called “slums”, provide accommodation to millions of urban dwellers on the continent.

The United Nations’ data suggest that Nigeria’s share of urban population that are accommodated in slums as of 2015 stood at 50.2%. That of Ethiopia was 73.9%; Uganda’s 53.6%; Tanzania’s 50.7%. Ghana and Rwanda’s hovered around 37.9% and 53.2%, respectively.

Clearly, the informal sector oils Africa’s urban economy in many important ways. This makes it highly unlikely that any visions of transforming lives on the continent can succeed without taking the sector into adequate account.

More importantly, the millions of working-class people whose lives depend on the sector have shown consistently that they won’t take their continuing marginalisation lying down. They frequently resist eviction orders.

Perhaps, their most profound moment of resistance was witnessed at the height of the COVID pandemic.

Many African governments imposed lockdowns to limit community transmission of the virus. However, after subjecting informal workers to extensive brutalities, they still refused to comply, forcing many governments to suspend the lockdowns. The pandemic has shown that the continuing systematic marginalisation of informal workers in city-making heralds more trouble for the future.

 

Informality at the heart of city-making

The issue is not that city authorities must allow informal workers and activities to go unchecked. They clearly have a responsibility to deal with the problems in the sector to ensure the security and health of the public. This includes the informal workers themselves.

The problem with current approaches is that they largely dispossess the workers and displace them to make way for big capital projects which serve the needs of a privileged few.

African leaders must recognise the enormous potentials of the continent’s informal workers and begin to integrate them better into their city-building visions and strategies.

The recent integration of informal waste collectors/recyclers – popularly called Zabbaleen – in waste management in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, offers great lessons.

The Zabbaleen had long been neglected for so-called “formal” private companies which, however, continued to prove inefficient and structurally unable to navigate the narrow streets of several neighbourhoods of Cairo.

When Cairo authorities finally recognised that the Zabbaleen are better suited for the job, they changed course and brought them onboard. The emerging evidence suggests that the change is paying some fruitful dividends in improved sanitation.

Cairo’s progressive example paints a powerful image of how the capabilities of informal workers could be seriously incorporated and integrated into building African cities. Hopefully, more of such interventions will be replicated in other sectors of the continent’s urban economy.

Dr Henry Mensah and Professor Imoro Braimah of KNUST’s Centre for Settlements Studies, and Department of Planning contributed to the original article.

Gideon Abagna Azunre, PhD student, Concordia University; Festival Godwin Boateng, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainable Urban Development, The Earth Institute, Columbia University; Owusu Amponsah, Senior Lecturer, Department of planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and Stephen Appiah Takyi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Estonia has repelled "the most extensive cyber attacks since 2007", it said on Thursday, shortly after removing Soviet monuments in a region with an ethnic Russian majority.

Főleg lopások és kábítószeres bűncselekmények miatt intézkedtek a rendőrök a hétfőn zárult Sziget fesztiválon – közölte a Budapesti Rendőr-főkapitányság (BRFK).

Azt írták: hat emberrel szemben kábítószer-kereskedelem gyanúja, tizenhét ellen pedig kábítószer birtoklása miatt indult eljárás. Lopás miatt hat, garázdaság miatt öt, súlyos testi sértés miatt egy feltételezett elkövetőt állítottak elő a fesztivál területéről, ellenük büntetőeljárás indult.

A BRFK közleményében hangsúlyozta: a fesztivál területének biztonságáért elsősorban a szervező és a biztonsági cég felelt, szorosan együttműködve a rendőrséggel.

A rendőrök egyenruhában és civilben is ügyeltek a látogatók biztonságára. A rendőrség egyenruhás állományának tagjai elektromos járművekkel láttak el szolgálatot, a Dunai Vízirendészeti Rendőrkapitányság egy hajója a nap 24 órájában cirkált a sziget körül. A jól látható rendőri jelenlét mellett a civil ruhás nyomozók a látogatók közé vegyülve dolgoztak a bűnelkövetők kiszűrése érdekében – tették hozzá.

A rendőrség közölte azt is, hogy csaknem 1600-an keresték fel a BRFK prevenciós pontját, ahol bűn- és balesetmegelőzési programokkal, baleseti szimulátorral, hasznos tanácsokkal és játékokkal várták a látogatókat, valamint tájékoztatást adtak a határvadászképzés és az iskolaőri pálya iránt érdeklődőknek.

A külső biztosítási feladatokban a BRFK mellett a Készenléti Rendőrség állománya, valamint a polgárőrség vett részt – írták.

 

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Igor Matovič mozgalmának parlamenti sajtótájékoztatója