Author: AFP

Organic farm in Benin looks to set example for Africa

With his pilgrim’s staff and panama hat, Father Godfrey Nzamujo nips up and down the paths of Songhai, the organic farm he created nearly 30 years ago to fight poverty and rural migration in Africa.

The small farm covered barely a hectare when it was set up in Porto Novo in 1985 but has since become a pilot project for the rest of the continent badly in need of new ideas to maximise yields.

The centre in Benin’s capital now stretches over 24 hectares and employs an army of workers and apprentices, who toil from sunrise to sunset growing fruit, vegetables and rice, as well as rearing fish, pigs, poultry.

“Nothing is wasted, everything is transformed” according to Nzamujo’s principle, with even chicken droppings turned into the bio-gas that powers the centre’s kitchens.

Father Godfrey Nzamujo, director of Centre Songhai. (Pic: AFP)

Songhai in tiny Benin has big plans for Africa. It already has similar operations in Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone and wants to set up shop in 13 more west and central African countries.

Nzamujo’s raison d’etre is how to help Africans increase yields through simple techniques, without using pesticides or fertilizers, and while cutting production costs and protecting the environment.

The Nigeria-born priest, who was raised in California on the US west coast, said he was shocked by the appalling images of famine in Africa on television at the start of the 1980s.

He then left to discover the continent to see how he could put to good use his university training in agronomics, economics and information technology and fight against poverty on his own terms.

How it began
After visiting a number of countries, he ended up in Benin where the country’s then-Marxist government gave him a small plot.

“It was abandoned land, killed by chemical fertiliser and conventional agricultural practices. It didn’t work,” he told AFP.

“There were seven of us. We dug wells and watered with our own hands. And during the main dry season, this grey surface became green,” he recalled with a smile.

Nzamujo’s secret is in imitating nature, encouraging “good bacteria” present in the soil to maximise production without having to rely on chemicals.

Yields at Songhai speak for themselves: the farm produces seven tonnes of rice per hectare three times a year, up from one tonne per hectare once a year at the beginning of the project.

“Songhai is facing up to the triple challenge of Africa today: poverty, environment and youth employment,” said Nzamujo proudly.

The cleric’s system centres on local production and distribution, creating economic activity to tackle poverty head on.

At Songhai, jam simmers in large pots while chickens are roasted and soya oil, rice and fruit juice are packaged for sale in the centre’s shop or served at its restaurant.

Discarded parts of agricultural machinery are reused to create ingenious contraptions and used water is filtered using water hyacinths.

A man wheels coconuts in a wheelbarrow at the Centre Songhai. (Pic: AFP)

The centre also has an internet point and even a bank so that local people can avoid going into the city centre.

Youth employment is encouraged and some 400 farm apprentices – selected by competition – are trained every year. The 18-month course is entirely free.

Apprentices, interns
Paul Okou is one of them. The 25-year-old from Parakou, northern Benin, would like to follow his parents into farming but is hoping to work in a more profitable way.

“My parents use traditional, archaic methods while at Songhai we learn the modern way, albeit makeshift,” he said.

“What we used to do in two days now we do in two hours.”

The apprentices are sent into villages where they apply what they have learned. Once in charge of a farm, they join the Songhai network and are checked regularly.

Songhai also welcomes interns who are paying for their own training.

They include Abua Eucharia Nchinor, a Nigerian in his 30s, and Kemajou Nathanael, a 39-year-old former salesman from Cameroon, who both want to open an organic farm in their respective countries.

According to Nzamujo, Songhai is not a cure-all for Africa’s problems but tackles their root causes.

“Imagine if all the young people who hang around big cities did their training here and we equip them. … Imagine the productivity of Africa today.” he said.

Cecile de Comarmond for AFP

10 years ago

Liberia’s Taylor applies to serve jail term in Rwanda

Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor. (AFP)

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor says his imprisonment in Britain breaches his human rights and has applied to serve the rest of his jail term for war crimes in Rwanda, his lawyer said Thursday.

Taylor was jailed for 50 years in 2012 on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity over acts committed by Sierra Leonean rebels he aided and abetted during the brutal 1991-2001 civil war.

He was the first former head of state to be jailed by an international court – the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague – since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in Germany after World War II.

Taylor’s lawyer John Jones told the BBC: “What he has applied for is for the revocation of the sentence to be served in the UK so that he can serve his sentence in Rwanda where all the other prisoners convicted by the special court for Sierra Leone are.”

Jones added: “The UK has a duty to ensure family life, not just for him but for his family. It’s a clear duty under international law and English domestic law.

“If the UK is unable to make these family visits possible, no matter what he has been convicted of, he is going to serve a 50-year sentence, he has got a right to see his wife and children.”

Taylor’s family, which reportedly includes 15 children, has previously complained about conditions at HMP Frankland in northeast England, the maximum security prison where he is being held.

“They took him to this prison where high [-risk] criminals, terrorists and other common British criminals are kept and he is being classified as a high-risk prisoner,” his wife Victoria Addison Taylor told AFP last year. “He is going through humiliation and you cannot treat a former head of state that way.”

Britain’s foreign office said Taylor was treated in the same way as any other prisoner and the court in The Hague would decide on his application.

“In terms of him being mistreated, the answer is no. As with any other prisoner in the UK, he’s being held in decent conditions,” a spokesperson told AFP. “He and his family have the same conditions and visiting rights as any other UK prisoner.” – AFP

10 years ago

Uganda tests out rubber band circumcision

With trousers around his ankles, Justin Igalla awaits a tight rubber band for his foreskin, an innovative non-surgical technique rolling out in several African nations to encourage circumcision and cut HIV infection rates.

The simple device – two plastic rings and an elastic band – cuts off blood supply to the foreskin, which then shrivels and is removed with the band after a week.

“I felt nothing, not even a little discomfort,” Igalla said after a procedure taking just minutes, noting there was no blood – unlike traditional circumcision where the foreskin is sliced off by knife – thus reducing the risk of infection.

Igalla, a father of two, said he opted to have his foreskin taken off for “health reasons”.

Scientists have found that male circumcision can significantly reduce the chances of HIV infection because the foreskin has a higher concentration of HIV-receptors than the rest of the penis and is prone to tears during intercourse, providing HIV an entry point.

As well as Uganda, the device is being used in Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and other sub-Saharan countries. All have been identified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as “priority” states where the risk of acquiring HIV is high and male circumcision, and access to conventional surgical procedures, is low.

Uganda hopes the device, called PrePex, will convince adult men to be circumcised as part of the battle against Aids, now resurgent in the East African nation after years of decline, with as many as 80 000 people dying of the disease every year.

PrePex, a non-surgical circumcision device. (Pic: AFP)

From a peak of 18% infected in 1992, Uganda’s “ABC” strategy – Abstinence, Be faithful, Condomise – helped slash rates to 6.4% in 2005.

But rates have crept back up, to 7.2% in 2012. As many as 1.8 million people in the country now live with HIV, and a million children have been orphaned after their parents died of Aids.

The makers of PrePex boast that a man “can resume work and almost all daily activities shortly after the procedure,” with the device “designed to be placed, worn, and removed with minimal disruption”, although they should abstain from sex for six weeks afterwards.

Doctor Barbara Nanteza, male circumcision project manager at Uganda’s Aids Control Programme, said that trials had shown that circumcision reduced risk of transmission from a woman to a man by as much as 60 percent.

Although some contest the validity of these studies, WHO and the United Nations Aids programme push circumcision as an additional prevention measure in high-prevalence countries where HIV transmission is predominantly heterosexual.

The WHO says there is “compelling evidence” circumcision reduces risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men. The organisation has “prequalified” PrePex, meaning the device has been assessed and meets international standards for efficacy and safety.

And with health budgets already overstretched, the device offers a cheaper way to tackle the problem, Nanteza said.

“If circumcision can help reduce the cost, that could very good for the country,” she told AFP.

Uganda, long praised for its efforts in the fight against Aids, launched a general circumcision programme in 2010, when some 9 000 had the conventional treatment.

Since then 1.2 million men have been circumcised – or 13% of men over 15, including 800 000 last year alone, the health ministry said.

The introduction of the PrePex device is expected to boost numbers even further – but it’s still not enough, according to Nanteza.

Though the device greatly reduces the pain of traditional circumcision, she conceded the issue remained an awkward one for married men.

“It is difficult for them to explain to their wife that they want to get a circumcision to prevent HIV infection when they are supposed to be faithful to them,” Nanteza said.

Despite massive health awareness campaigns, problems remain.

James Brian, a counsellor with the Walter Reid Project, a US-based medical organisation supporting the programme, said it was essential to emphasise that while circumcision reduces the risk of infection, it does not prevent it.

“After circumcision someone should not think that they are immune against HIV,” Brian said, who works with patients to highlight the continuing need to practise safe sex.

Emmanuel Leroux-Nega for AFP

10 years ago

Malawi’s prized chambo fish faces extinction

In the decade that fisherman Edward Njeleza has been trawling the deep, clear waters of Lake Malawi in Africa’s Great Rift Valley, he has seen his once abundant catch shrink by 90 percent.

Now he spends most days on the shore searching for pods and a special type of grass he uses to make necklaces, key rings and bracelets to supplement his income.

In the past, he and his nine fishing mates would on average catch roughly 300 kilograms (650 pounds) of fish a day, but that haul has dropped to no more than 25 kilograms, he told AFP.

“We go fishing but never come back with much,” said Njeleza, waiting by the lake with a bag full of homemade jewellery slung over his shoulder.

“And we don’t catch big fish.”

Malawian fishermen pulling up fish in their nets on the shores of Lake Malawi. (Pic: AFP)

Lake Malawi, one of the deepest in the world, is estimated to have the largest concentration of freshwater fish species – up to 1 000, according to the UN Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

And a local favourite, the Oreochromis lidole or “chambo” as it is known in this landlocked southeast Africa state where it is a vital source of protein for millions of poor, is among the hardest hit.

In its last study on chambo, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated in 2004 that the population had declined 70 percent over the previous 10 years, William Darwall, head of the IUCN’s freshwater biodiversity unit, told AFP.

Overfishing is the main cause, and scientists blame both a lack of government muscle to enforce seasonal fishing bans as well as environmental degradation.

“The primary reasons why the fish stocks, specifically chambo, are going down is overfishing, (and) degradation issues because of factors related to the effects of climate change,” said William Chadza, director of the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy in Blantyre, the country’s finance and commerce hub.

Climate change is said to have affected rainfall patterns and caused a drop in the lake’s water levels, also hit by the effects of deforestation on tributaries feeding the lake.

‘Going towards a disaster’
In Makawa fishing village near Mangochi town in the country’s southeast, Njeleza has no choice but to diversify.

Apart from making jewellery, he hopes to bait the odd tourist visiting the lake into a ride in his blue and white boat, which he has named Wanangachi, meaning “What is the problem with us?”

At night he returns to fishing, but stays much longer than in previous years.

“We used to spend just about two hours out on the lake and come back with a boatload of fish – now we need about 12 hours, and bring back less than before,” Njeleza said.

Some officials fear chambo could face extinction in Lake Malawi.

“It’s a very big issue, and I think if we don’t do something … we could be in a dire state shortly,” Chadza told AFP.

But rangers say the fight to save the fish is a losing battle.

“We are not winning,” said Gervaz Thamala, chief of the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi.

Laws to protect the chambo exist, but “the major problem which we have is governance,” Thamala said.

“It seems we are going towards a disaster, which is quite critical,” he warned. “Extinction is also a possibility because we have not fully developed the aquaculture sector, which could act as a buffer.”

Back at the lake, Dogo Morris leads a team of 10 fishermen pulling in their nets, cast six hours earlier, but their haul is only about 10 kilograms of fingerlings.

“I have nothing to sell today,” he tells more than a dozen would-be customers, who walk away dejectedly clutching their empty bowls.

Fishmonger Raymond Johnson, who supplies hotels and restaurants in Blantyre, Malawi’s largest city, has waited three days to purchase chambo, which he buys in bulk – hundreds of kilograms per trip to the lake.

“My business is not doing well. It has gone down by 40 to 45 percent,” said Johnson.

Back in Blantyre, restaurant owners share his despair, saying diners complain that the fish on their plates are getting smaller all the time.

Susan Njanji for AFP

10 years ago

Sugar factory in CAR reopens amid strife

A sugar refinery – the war-torn Central African Republic’s biggest factory – is back in business after soldiers recaptured it from former rebels who occupied it for more than a year.

In a rare boost to the impoverished nation’s battered economy, the plant’s 150 employees are back on the job in Ngakobo in the east of the former French colony – with African peacekeepers providing security.

They had fled to the capital Bangui amid sectarian violence sparked by a March 2013 coup by the mainly Muslim Seleka movement.

“We had no more work, no more money. We were bored, so we are happy to be back,” said 30-year-old Solange Ngortene, a secretary at the factory.

Under a blazing sun, workers are busy cutting sugar cane on four hectares of rolling green fields. They would go on to cut 200 tonnes of raw cane that day, enough to produce 20 tonnes of sugar worth some $27 000.

Workers collect sugar cane at the largest factory in the Central African Republic, in Ngakobo, 450km east of the capital Bangui. (Pic: AFP)

“I was unemployed for more than a year. I was only getting between 10 and 30 percent of my gross salary. That wasn’t easy with a family to provide for,” Ngortene told AFP.

Like many employees of factory operator Sucaf, Ngortene fled with her family to Bangui when the Seleka seized swathes of the landlocked African state in December 2012.

Seleka rebels
The Seleka, a predominantly Muslim rebel militia, looted the refinery, which normally produces 11 000 tonnes of sugar a year, and then commandeered it as their eastern base.

Their coup three months later plunged the country into chaos, eventually displacing a quarter of the 4.6-million population.

After seizing power, some of the rebels went rogue and embarked on a campaign of killing, raping and looting.

The abuses prompted members of the Christian majority to form vigilante groups called “anti-balaka,” or anti-machete in the local language, unleashing a wave of brutal tit-for-tat killings.

Fifteen months on, Seleka has been chased from power following intervention by French and African troops, leaving the economy of the mineral-rich nation – already on its knees following decades of neglect and corruption – in ruins.

While the former rebels still control the area surrounding the refinery, the plant itself was recaptured in an operation involving 30 African peacekeepers in a force known as MISCA and 60 hired private guards. By the end of April, the factory was ready to reopen.

“The factory is going well,” says Sylvestre Serelgue, wearing blue overalls outside the mechanical workshop he helps to operate. “Our brothers from MISCA are providing security. We feel at ease in the factory.”

The problem, he says, is the local Fulani tribesmen, nomadic herders who are armed and directed by Seleka.

“The Fulani really bother us. They attack the staff in their neighbourhoods. There are 15 or 20 of them and they take our money,” Serelgue says.

Gabonese MISCA officers explain that the some 15 Seleka rebels controlling Ngakobo have recruited the Fulani to rob area residents.

“Many employees who sought refuge in Bangui after fleeing the Seleka came back here when it became even more dangerous” in the capital, says Akroma Ehvitchi, the factory’s Ivorian site manager.

“They returned alone, without their families, as there’s no transport and there are still security problems.”

Employees send money back to their families in Bangui aboard the company plane, “but the salary isn’t enough,” according to Prosper, a 42-year-old day labourer. He earns 1 100 CAR francs ($2.20) a day – barely enough to buy a kilo of sugar.

“It’s not much,” acknowledges Sucaf boss Thomas Reynaud. “But in some families you have five or six people who work here.

“The goal is to restart production to save the site,” says the young Frenchman, who was hosting a delegation of diplomats and military officials from Bangui.

Ehvitchi, leaving the factory aboard a company pickup truck, preferred to make light of CAR’s plight of widespread violence and abject poverty.

“In such a situation if you understand what’s happening it means it has not been well explained to you,” Ehvitchi says with a laugh.

Stephane Jourdain for AFP