Author: AFP

Kenyan commandos on frontline of poaching war

Members of a ranger elite team run after a "poacher" during a drill on August 6 2014 at the Ol Jogi rhino sanctuary. (Pic: AFP)
Members of a ranger elite team run after a “poacher” during a drill on August 6 2014 at the Ol Jogi rhino sanctuary. (Pic: AFP)

With camouflage uniforms, assault rifles, night vision goggles, thermal imaging devices and radios, wildlife rangers in Kenya’s Ol Jogi rhino sanctuary prepare for night patrol in the “war” against poaching.

As the late afternoon sun creeps towards the horizon and shadows lengthen on the sweeping plains dotted with rocky outcrops, Ol Jogi’s armed rangers get set for another tough night on patrol.

“It sounds crazy, but it’s actually a war,” said Jamie Gaymer, head of security for the vast reserve.

“It is organised crime on an international level and it is completely out of control. And these are the guys on the frontline who are having to put their lives at risk in order to protect these animals.”

Through the thick bush, some 20 men from the local community head out in pairs into the reserve covering some 240 square kilometres, an area twice the size of Paris situated in the high plains north of Nairobi.

Some men spend the night on patrol creeping through the forests, others take up “ambush positions”.

Trained by the Kenya Wildlife Service and police, the 32 men in the security force are also reserve police officers, allowed to carry weapons.

The teams have also had military training to even the odds in a potentially deadly battle with a “well-equipped enemy”, Gaymer adds.

They risk their lives every night. The poachers they hunt shoot on sight, while the rangers must also be watchful for the wild animals themselves: elephant, lion, buffalo and leopard.

“It’s dangerous, but it is also the danger that gives me a job and allows me to eat,” said 27-year-old ranger Joseph Nang’ole.

“I have children, and if we do not protect these animals, my children will not be able to see them.”

Conditions can be harsh: the night is long, cold and often wet: but for the head of the unit, Benson Badiwa, protecting the rhinos is key.

“They bring tourists to Kenya, so they help the people,” he said.

Rangers do not speak of “poachers” but rather “the enemy.”

Their mission is to protect the 66 rhinos in Ol Jogi, including 20 southern white rhino, and 46 critically endangered eastern black rhino, which face extinction with fewer than 800 left, with the vast majority in Kenya.

The animals’ horns are coveted in some Asian countries as a traditional medicine and as a status symbol.

On the black market, a rhino horn is worth twice its weight in gold: as much as $80 000 per kilo in the Middle East or Asia.

A poacher receives between $10 000 – 15 000 per kilo, a fortune for a night’s work that would take a lifetime to earn legally.

Their weapons are sometimes rented for $200-300 a night from unscrupulous police or soldiers.

Alfie, a blind juvenille black rhinoceros, receives a pat from his minder on August 6 2014 at the Ol Jogi rhino sanctuary. (Pic: AFP)
Alfie, a blind juvenille black rhinoceros, receives a pat from his minder on August 6 2014 at the Ol Jogi rhino sanctuary. (Pic: AFP)

In July, Ol Jogi suffered the worst massacre of rhinos in Kenya in more than 15 years.

Four rhinos were killed in a coordinated double attack, something “never seen” in Kenya, said Gaymer, who suspects the organised gangs had inside knowledge.

As in any war, intelligence is a crucial weapon, and Gaymer maintains a network of local informants who report on those suspected of links to poachers.

“If a guard is offered 300 000 shillings ($2 000-$3 000) to guide them to a rhino, he’ll think twice,” said Johnny Weller, Ol Jogi’s managing director.

In 2013, at least 59 rhinos were killed in Kenya, twice as many as the year before, leaving around a thousand left in the whole country.

At Ol Jogi, six rhino calves have been born this year, but eight rhinos were killed.

“We cannot let this trend continue,” said Gaymer, adding that armed rangers are now “unfortunately necessary” with the costs of protection spiralling.

At Ol Jogi, some 130 people are working to protect 66 rhinos, with some costs covered by the top-end tourists who visit.

“I have so many people, so much equipment,” Weller said, recalling simpler days in the 1980s, when the private reserves were established.

There were fewer than 400 black rhinos in Kenya in 1987, and private conservancies like Ol Jogi have contributed to the species’ survival.

Today they protect nearly 60 percent of Kenya’s rhinos, but security costs are mushrooming and rely on donations to continue.

“If the rhinos disappear, then what? Elephants, buffaloes? Where does it stop? There will always be a market for something,” Weller said.

“There is a (human) population explosion, there is need for land in this country, but if there aren’t substantial areas left for wildlife, there won’t be any left.”

In the battle to protect the wildlife, winning hearts and minds is key, to persuade local communities of the long-term benefits of protecting wildlife.

“I’d love to see political will to support rhino and wildlife,” Weller added. “Without that it will be an uphill battle.”

As dawn breaks and the night patrol ends, the rangers report all had been quiet, as they head home after debriefing, to catch some sleep before another night on the frontlines. The night may have passed without incident, but Gaymer is still downbeat.

“Across Africa we are fighting a losing battle at the moment,” he said.

Ebola taking toll on West African economy

Locals in a market in Kenema, Sierra Leone. (Pic: AFP)
Locals in a market in Kenema, Sierra Leone. (Pic: AFP)

The worst-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus is taking a heavy toll on West Africa’s economy as crops rot in the fields, mines are abandoned and goods cannot get to market.

The epidemic has ravaged the region since it erupted in the forests in the south of Guinea earlier this year, killing 1 427 people and infecting thousands more.

On Friday health officials said the fever had spread to every corner of Liberia, the worst-hit country in the grip of the epidemic where 624 people have died so far.

But beyond the mounting death toll, the disease is also undermining the region’s economic growth and threatening the long-term development of some of the world’s poorest countries.

“It is a total catastrophe. We are losing lots of money,” said Alhaji Bamogo, who sells clothes in the market in the Liberian capital Monrovia.

“All those who are coming to the market come only to buy food or products for the disinfection of Ebola,” he said.

Economic crisis
Across the resource-rich countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria, companies are suspending operations due to fears of the haemorrhagic fever, which is spread through contact with bodily fluids.

Steel giant ArcelorMittal this month said the contractors at its expanding iron ore works in Liberia had suspended operations and were pulling out staff.

Several international airlines have halted their flights to west Africa in a move that Moody’s ratings agency warns “will exact an economic toll” on the region.

And in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer and most populous country where 15 cases have been identified and five people have died, experts warn that the impact for the regional economy could be dire if the disease takes hold.

“The Ebola epidemic is not just a public health crisis, but an economic crisis… affecting many sectors of activity,” the president of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka warned this month.

Too dangerous to invest
Philippe Hugon, Africa research director at the French think-tank IRIS, said the biggest threat for west Africa is a long-term pullout of global companies that the region relies on.

“Everything depends on whether this stays limited or whether the epidemic continues to spread in a prolonged way. The heads of foreign businesses on the ground are very concerned,” he said.

The epidemic may “reinforce the idea that Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are countries where it is dangerous to live — because of diseases like Ebola and AIDS — and thus to invest in,” he said.

The disease is also exacting a direct economic toll on the countries where it is spreading by sapping already stretched government budgets.

Moody’s warned it will squeeze state coffers from all sides, by forcing both “increased health expenditures, and… an Ebola-induced economic slowdown on government revenue generation”.

This month the African Development Bank pledged $60 million to support the over-stretched health systems of the four affected countries.

Critics have accused west Africa’s governments of being slow to admit the extent of the problem because of the cost of deploying resources to fight the disease.

Amadou Soumah, a trade union official in Guinea, which only last week declared a national emergency despite being at the epicentre of the outbreak earlier this year, said the government had played down the crisis “to stop investors fleeing”.

And now “Guinea is going to deploy its forces along the border to rack up even more spending,” he added, referring to the closure of its frontiers with Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Food shortages
For people on the ground, the epidemic has created an even more pressing problem: food shortages.

In the markets, supplies of staple commodities such as rice are already dwindling, with only the bravest traders willing to venture far afield to buy stocks.

In quarantined zones in Sierra Leone and Liberia, key cash crops such as cocoa and coffee have been left rotting in the fields as farmers fear to stray far from home.

“People are going to move around less and less,” said Philippe De Vreyer, a specialist in west African economics and professor at the University of Paris.

“For instance, the man who usually goes to the local market to sell his vegetables will decide to stay home. People are not going to get their supplies, with all that entails.”

In Nigeria, even though it is the least hit by the epidemic, Ebola fears are already keeping people indoors.

So far the epidemic has not threatened the economically vital oil industry, which is centred in the southern Niger Delta about 1 000 kilometres from Lagos, where the cases have been found.

The service industry is feeling the effects, however.

“Bookings to hotels have dropped by almost 30 percent so far this month, as have orders for food and drink for large social gatherings like weddings and funerals,” said Bismarck Rewane, head of the Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Company.

Zoom Dosso for AFP

Survivors enlisted in Sierra Leone’s Ebola battle

An MSF medical worker feeds a child at an MSF facility in Kailahun on August 15 2014. Kailahun along with Kenama district is at the epicentre of the world's worst Ebola outbreak. (Pic: AFP)
An MSF medical worker feeds a child at an MSF facility in Kailahun on August 15 2014. Kailahun along with Kenama district is at the epicentre of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak. (Pic: AFP)

Hawa Idrisa was visiting her father-in-law in an Ebola ward in eastern Sierra Leone when his drip snapped out and his atrophying veins spurted thin, uncoagulated blood into her eyes and mouth.

She had been carrying her infant daughter Helen but luckily she had laid the child down, otherwise the baby would almost certainly be dead by now.

A single droplet of blood smaller than a full stop can carry up to 100 million particles of the deadly Ebola virus, yet one is enough to end a human life.

“The blood got all over me, and people were running away. So I took a bucket of chlorine and poured it over myself,” Hawa said.

She returned home to forget her ordeal, but a week later she began experiencing fever and headaches, the early symptoms of the Ebola.

Her 12-month-old mercifully tested negative, but her husband Nallo was infected and he and Hawa checked into the Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) treatment facility in the eastern district of Kailahun.

Hawa spent four weeks drifting between life and death at the centre, in the district capital Kailahan city, a trading post of 30 000 in the Kissi triangle linking to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t even know where I was. I don’t remember anything from that time,” she told AFP of the ordeal she survived.

Ebola kills more than half of the people it infects, putrifying their insides in the worst cases until their vital organs seep from their bodies.

It is highly infectious but not particularly contagious, meaning that once you are exposed, your chances of escaping the fever are extremely low, although it can only be passed on through bodily fluids.

The good news is that when patients are caught early enough, given paracetamol for their fevers, kept rehydrated and nourished, their chances of survival increase dramatically.

Hawa proudly shows off a certificate saying she has recovered fully, and she is preparing to return home.

“I know there is nothing wrong with my daughter, but my mind and heart will be at the centre with my husband,” she says.

Hardest-hit districts
Already more than 2 100 people have been infected across four west African countries, and 1 145 people have died, dwarfing previous Ebola outbreaks.

The epidemic is perhaps worst of all in Sierra Leone, which has registered 810 cases, more than any other country.

A sign warning of the dangers of Ebola outside a government hospital in Freetown on August 13 2014. (Pic: AFP)
A sign warning of the dangers of Ebola outside a government hospital in Freetown on August 13 2014. (Pic: AFP)

The hardest-hit districts, Kailahun and the diamond trading hub of Kenema next door, have been sealed off to ordinary members of the public.

Around a million people in the two districts are in effective lockdown, and locals say soaring food prices are pushing the region towards a crisis.

Local doctors and nurses are fighting not just the disease, but also the distrust of locals who fear modern medical practices.

Relatives have been known to snatch infected loved-ones from clinics to die in their own villages, exacerbating the spread of the virus.

They have even attacked treatment centres – as armed men did in neighbouring Liberia at the weekend – convinced that Ebola is a Western conspiracy against traditional African communities and that foreign healthworkers are in on the secret.

Some 1 500 police and soldiers have been deployed to prevent raids, but they are powerless faced with the suspicion and fear of poorly educated traditional communities.

Many tribespeople at the epicentre of the outbreak either don’t know how to prevent and treat Ebola or do not believe it exists at all.

This, says MSF, is where the survivors come in.

Survivors returning home
Ella Watson-Stryker (34), a health promoter with the aid agency, is part of a team taking Hawa and other survivors home to their villages.

She will gather their neighbours and family members around, answer their questions about the virus and try to reassure them that Hawa poses no danger.

“This is very exciting for us. It’s also really beneficial to the overall response to the outbreak because when survivors go home, they can explain about their stay at the centre.

“They give people hope that it is possible to survive and it really builds trust between the community and MSF,” she says.

Watson-Stryker also says that when survivors go back to their communities, people begin to understand that treatment centres are not just “a place where people go to die”.

They are surprised to learn that patients are fed, given unlimited soft drinks, access to toilets, showers and medicine, and that their families are encouraged to visit.

“We try to assuage the fears of the community, because there are a lot of rumours out there, that as soon as you come to the treatment centre you will just be left to die.”

Back at the MSF centre, Nallo enthuses about his future with Hawa and their baby girl, despite remaining in grave danger in the high risk area.

“At first people thought that when they got here, they were going to have all their blood removed and they would die,” he says.

“They have been giving me drugs and I am much better, so when I get back to my community I will tell people that if it ever happens that they get Ebola we advise them to come here.”

Role reversal as African technology expands in Europe

Africans have long used technology developed abroad, but now a Kenyan cash transfer network which bypasses banks is being adopted in Europe.

The M-Pesa mobile money transfer system which allows clients to send cash with their telephones has transformed how business is done in east Africa, and is now spreading to Romania.

“From east Africa to eastern Europe, that’s quite phenomenal when you think about it,” Michael Joseph, who heads Vodafone’s Mobile Money business, told AFP in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

“I think that this is something the rest of the world can look at, to say that there are ideas that can emanate out of the developing world, and take it to the developed world.”

M-Pesa – or “mobile money” in east Africa’s Swahili language – was introduced in Kenya in 2007 by Safari.com, the country’s largest mobile telecommunications company, in partnership with British giant Vodafone.

(Pic: AFP)
(Pic: AFP)

Since then the service has grown exponentially, with about $40-billion flowing through the service in Kenya alone.

Part of daily life
In Kenya, the system has become a part of daily life, with more than 18-million customers, and is used by almost two-thirds of the population with more than eight million transactions daily.

The network allows customers to bypass the traditional banking system, using an application available on the simplest of mobile phones to pay utility bills, buy a drink in a bar, or send cash to family and friends.

Romania is the latest nation Vodafone is tapping, with its first European launch last March.

For Michi Carstoiu, an engineer in the capital Bucharest, M-Pesa complements established online payment services.

“Most importantly, I save time – plus I think the transaction fees are smaller,” Carstoiu told AFP, shortly after activating his mobile phone account at one of the 1 000 outlets already open.

The number of distribution points is expected to triple by the end of the year.

“Everyone has a mobile phone, and it is very simple to send and receive money or make payments,” he added.

Users can charge up their phones by paying in cash at mobile-money agency points, and often at one of the points where they are doing a transaction.

Similarly they can withdraw cash against mobile-money credits at an agency, or when settling a bill, much in the same way as customers in Europe can obtain cash at some supermarkets when using bank cash cards.

Agents are often found in the form of shops or street kiosks.

The outstanding credit can be sent via a special text message to others for a small transaction fee.

African countries using the system include Egypt, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania, and it has also been rolled out in India.

A savings version has been set up as well, allowing those without access to formal banking systems to earn interest on their savings.

The scheme has largely succeeded in Kenya because it meets the needs of millions of people without a bank account who would otherwise operate strictly within a cash economy.

They benefit from a network of M-Pesa agents spread across the country.

Romanians reliant on cash
Officials said that Romania was chosen as the European launchpad because many people in the eastern European country still rely on cash.

“The majority of people in Romania have at least one mobile device, but more than one third of the population do not have access to conventional banking,” Joseph said.

He is targeting seven million potential Romanian customers who operate in cash alone, and the company aims to reach 300 000 customers by the year’s end.

More than $1.2 billion worth of person-to-person transactions are sent on the system each month worldwide, according to Vodafone.

In Kenya, transactions can be as small as a single cent or as much as $1 600, while in Romania up to $9 000 can be sent each day.

Moving beyond emerging markets means adapting to fresh challenges however.

The operator will face different regulatory environments, and consumers who already have access to a wide range of financial services.

For Kenyans, where the network is used for everything from paying for grocery shopping and restaurant tabs to sending cash to relatives in remote regions, the spread abroad has given some a sense of pride.

In a way, the M-Pesa system has taken banking full circle, back to the founding principles of Venetian banking when money changers began keeping ledgers of credits and debits for traders who did not want to carry gold and silver with them.

These money dealers set up networks of correspondents, or agents, who ran parallel ledgers, enabling traders who otherwise had no “banking” system, to settle accounts, paying in or drawing out cash only when necessary.

“Technology that started out in Kenya is being exported to Europe,” said 24-year-old Rhoda Kibuchi, who runs an M-Pesa outlet in Nairobi. “It’s good news.”

Ebola epidemic sparks state of emergency across West Africa

A fast-spreading Ebola epidemic sparked a state of emergency in overwhelmed West African nations on Thursday as the death toll neared 1 000.

In Liberia, where the dead lay in the streets, lawmakers gathered to ratify a state of emergency while Sierra Leone sent troops to guard hospitals and clinics handling Ebola cases. Nigeria held out hope it could receive an experimental US-developed drug to halt the spread of the virus.

Since breaking out earlier this year, the epidemic has claimed 932 lives and infected more than 1 700 people across west Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.

Staff and volunteers at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia wearing protective gear. (Pic: AFP)
Staff and volunteers at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia. (Pic: AFP)

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.

Spanish priest, nun evacuated
As African nations struggled with the sheer scale of the epidemic, Spain flew home a 75-year-old Roman Catholic priest, Miguel Pajares, who contracted the disease while helping patients at a hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia.

The missionary was the first patient in the outbreak to be evacuated to Europe for treatment.

A specially equipped military Airbus A310 brought him to Madrid’s Torrejon air base along with a Spanish nun, Juliana Bonoha Bohe, who had worked at the same Liberian hospital but did not test positive for the deadly haemorrhagic fever, the Spanish government said.

Immediately after landing Thursday morning, ambulances took the pair to Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, which specialises in tropical diseases.

The priest was stable and showing no sign of bleeding while the nun appeared to be well but would be re-tested for Ebola just in case, health officials said.

Two Americans who worked for Christian aid agencies in Liberia and were infected with Ebola while taking care of patients in Monrovia were taken back to the United States for treatment in recent days.

They have shown signs of improvement after being given an experimental drug known as ZMapp, which is hard to produce on a large scale.

The vast majority of those infected face a far inferior level of health care at home.

State of emergency in Liberia, Sierra Leone
There is no proven treatment or cure for Ebola and the use of the experimental drug has sparked controversy as Ebola experts call for it to be made available to African victims.

Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared a state of emergency of at least 90 days on Wednesday, saying extraordinary measures were needed “for the very survival of our state”.

“The scope and scale of the epidemic, the virulence and deadliness of the virus now exceed the capacity and statutory responsibility of any one government agency or ministry,” she said.

Liberia’s Parliament is to ratify the decision on Thursday.

In Sierra Leone, which has the most confirmed infections, 800 troops including 50 military nurses were sent to guard hospitals and clinics treating Ebola patients, an army spokesman said. The Parliament was to meet to ratify a state of emergency declared last week.

Nigeria
Fears are growing that the disease is also taking hold in Nigeria after the death of a nurse in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million. It was the second Ebola death in Nigeria, where another five people have tested positive for the disease.

Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters he was in contact with the US Center for Disease Control on the possibility of getting drugs from them.

“I said we are getting reports that this experimental drug seems to be useful. Is it also possible that we can have access for our people presently being treated and under incubation?” he said Wednesday.

Chukwu said all seven confirmed cases in his country had “primary contact” with a Liberian finance ministry employee who brought the virus to Lagos on July 20 and died later in hospital.

US President Barack Obama said it was too soon to send experimental drugs for the treatment of Ebola to west Africa, however, urging officials instead to focus on building a “strong public infrastructure”.

“I think we have to let the science guide us. And I don’t think all the information is in on whether this drug is helpful,” Obama said on Wednesday.

WHO emergency session
The World Health Organisation is meeting in emergency session behind closed doors in Geneva to decide whether to declare an international crisis. It is not expected to make a decision until Friday.

A Saudi Arabian who had travelled to Sierra Leone and developed Ebola-like symptoms died on Wednesday of a heart attack while being treated in hospital in Jeddah, the Saudi health ministry said.

First discovered in 1976 and named after a river in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood, saliva and sweat.

It has killed around two-thirds of those it has infected over the last four decades, with two outbreaks registering fatality rates approaching 90 percent. The latest outbreak has a fatality rate of around 55 percent.