Author: IRIN

Press 4 for fertilizer: M-farming in Ethiopia

Ethiopian farmer Eshete Eneyew threshes maize in Abay, north of Addis Ababa. (Pic: Reuters)

One reason farmers in Africa mostly produce so much less than those in other parts of the world is that they have limited access to the technical knowledge and practical tips that can significantly increase yields. But as the continent becomes increasingly wired, this information deficit is narrowing.

While there are other factors, such as poor infrastructure and low access to credit and markets, that have helped keep average yields in Africa largely unchanged since the 1960s, detailed and speedily-delivered information is now increasingly recognised as an essential part of bringing agricultural production levels closer to their full potential.

In Ethiopia, which already has one of the most extensive systems in the world for educating the 85 percent of the population who work the land for a living, this recognition has driven the development of a multilingual mobile phone-based resource centre.

The hotline, operated by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, and Ethio Telecom, and created by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), has proved a huge hit. Since its July launch and still in its pilot phase, more than three million farmers in the regions of Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) have punched 8028 on their mobiles to access the system, which uses both interactive voice response (IVR) and SMS technology.

“On average we get approximately 226 new calls and 1 375 return calls per hour into the system,” Elias Nure, the information communication technology project leader at ATA, told IRIN. When the number of lines doubles from the current 90, he said, “these numbers should significantly increase.”

More than 70 percent of users are smallholder farmers, he said.

Timely, accurate
Ethiopia has the largest agricultural extension system in sub-Saharan Africa, the third largest in the world after China and India, according to the UN Development Programme.

This system has led to the establishment of about 10,000 Farmer Training Centres, and trained at least 63,000 field extension workers, also known as development agents. It facilitates information exchange between researchers, extension workers and farmers.
However, the reliance on development agents means that sometimes agronomic information reaches farmers too late or is distorted.

Push and pull factors
The agriculture hotline was proving popular due to its “pull” and “push” factors, according to ATA’s chief executive officer, Khalid Bomba.

Farmers could pull out practical advice, while customised content could be pushed out, such as during pest and disease outbreaks, to different callers based on the crop, or geographic or demographic data captured when farmers first registered with the system.

Recently, it warned registered farmers about the threat posed by wheat stem rust.

“These alerts and notifications were not available to smallholder farmers in the past and could greatly benefit users of the system by getting access to warnings in real-time,” said ATA’s Elias.

According to Tefera Derbew, Ethiopia’s minister of agriculture, ATA should boost its content to meet more needs.

“The IVR system offers users information relevant to the key cereals and high value crops, but I envisage that in the near future there will be the opportunity to upscale the service to include content relevant to all of the major agricultural commodities in the country, including livestock,” said Tefera.

The hotline currently focuses on cereal crops such as barley, maize, teff, sorghum and wheat, but plans are under way to provide agricultural advice on other crops, such as sesame, chickpea, haricot beans and cotton, while incorporating farmers’ feedback on needs.

For Ayele Worku, a teff farmer in Gurage zone of Ethiopia’s SNNPR State, the system’s benefits outweigh the frustrations of a patchy mobile network.

“The way of farming, especially for row-planting for teff is kind of new for me although I heard rumours about its advantage a while ago,” he told IRIN.

This break with tradition in the way teff is sown has seen yields increase by up to 75 percent.

An agricultural extension and rural development expert working at Addis Ababa University, Seyoum Ayalew, said: “The new service could build a synergy with the previous approaches of the public extension system, which is largely based on trickle down approach of communication.”

Seyoum noted that within the traditional extension system, “where information passes through different channels before reaching the farmers, [it] is subjected to distortion through filtering and translation errors.”

10 years ago

From wife-beaters to peace-preachers: Tackling domestic abuse in Zimbabwe’s hinterland

A third of Zimbabwean women have experienced physical violence at the hands of their spouse or partner. (Pic: IRIN / Jaspreet Kindra)

Jairos Maruwe used to beat up his wife so badly he once knocked her unconscious and broke her arm. It landed him in jail at least once, but it was the way he was raised.

“We grew up thinking that women are our tools and we can do whatever we want with them,” the 34-year-old farmer in northeastern Zimbabwe’s Marondera region told IRIN.

“We have this tendency to resort to violence and emotional abuse when we think they have wronged us,” he said.

That was then.

Now, Maruwe is the secretary of the local branch of a group set up to reduce domestic abuse in Zimbabwe, where one in three women, according to a 2013 study, experience physical violence by their spouse or partner during their lifetime.

“It is important for us as men to accept that we are the main culprits where GBV [gender-based violence] is concerned,” he told IRIN.

“The reality is that, in most of the cases, we are the ones that are wrong. My involvement in the GBV group has taught me that there are many ways of solving domestic disputes without having to resort to violence. I now preach the anti-violence gospel,” he said.

Maruwe is among hundreds of men in 26 rural districts (Zimbabwe has 59 districts in all, over 40 of which are in rural areas) to have taken part in an innovative project set up this year by local NGO Padare/Enkundleni, with funding and logistical support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The scheme encourages men to get involved in the fight against GBV.

It forms part of a four-year, US$96 million Integrated Support Programme (ISP) on Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV prevention launched by the government last year in conjunction with UN agencies, international donors and local NGOs in an effort to reduce maternal mortality, cervical cancer, HIV and GBV.

ISP aims to provide services to 7 000 survivors of sexual assault and rape, in addition to reaching more than a million people with interventions to address some of the underlying issues that result in violence against women and girls.

Village groups
Kelvin Hazangwi, director of Padare/Enkundleni, told IRIN rural communities have been largely by-passed by anti-GBV initiatives which have tended to focus on towns and cities.

He said they had so far trained about 50 men in each district on community engagement, gender and human rights issues and methods for working with men to combat GBV. Those men then transfer their skills and knowledge to village groups (each with up to 50 members).

The men in these groups meet to talk about local reports of domestic violence and how to deal with them, in part by engaging with known perpetrators about the negative effects of GBV.

“While there are numerous initiatives and tools to fight GBV, men, who are generally seen as the perpetrators, have largely been ignored as agents of change,” Hazangwi told IRIN.

The groups write “commitment charters” which promise, among other things, to speak out against GBV and use dialogue to stop violence, to end child marriages, and to create partnerships with relevant local institutions such as the police and health centres. The charters, which are written in local languages, are posted on billboards close to busy places such as rural business centres, while local male artists are hired to paint murals at local community halls and livestock dipping points.

Padare is also targeting two schools per district where groups of a 100 male students have been formed to educate their peers about GBV.

In Marondera, where anti-GBV men’s groups have been set up in several villages, the programme is already paying dividends, say activists.

Rugare Samuriwo (60), an elder in Maruwe’s village and a member of the men’s group, told IRIN that cases of domestic violence had dropped sharply since the programme began.

“The village is now more peaceful. Involving us [men] in fighting violence in the home works, because we have the power to change our own attitudes by talking to and counselling each other. Men are now generally ashamed to be violent because they have been made aware of the negative effects of doing so,” said Samuriwo.

Hazangwi said there are plans to evaluate the programme to establish its efficacy; to date there has not been any independent assessment of the project’s impact.

Obstacles
Samuriwo admitted they faced resistance from some male villagers who refused to be part of the group and still felt that beating up their spouses and subjecting them to abuse was a way of asserting their authority in the home.

Female victims of domestic violence, he added, generally still avoided reporting their cases to the police or health institutions.

According to the 2013 study (a baseline survey on GBV in Zimbabwe), only one in every 14 women who were physically abused reported it to the police and one in 13 sought medical attention.

10 years ago

Nigeria’s tech-savvy response to Ebola pays off

(Pic: Reuters)

When an Internet message announcing a salt water solution for Ebola went viral in July, many Nigerians were quick to take heed. Twenty people were hospitalised and two died, reportedly from an excessive intake of salt.

Madam Franca was among those ready to believe in the power of salt water. “My niece, who happens to be a nurse, sent me an SMS that early morning, and I obeyed it,” Franca explained. “I had to do anything to stop Ebola from coming close to me. I bathed with salt water, morning and night for two good days, but I did not drink. I am hypertensive. I also sent all my family and close friends the SMS.”

Nigerians watched with growing unease as the Ebola outbreak spread through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Few believed the creaking health infrastructure or the government’s managerial skills would be able to survive such a test. So when Ebola-positive Liberian Patrick Sawyer stepped off a plane in Lagos airport on 20 July, collapsed and died, social media exploded.

But it was not just the salt water claims and bogus pastors promising salvation that made the running: government agencies and proactive individuals also took to the internet to quickly debunk the rumours and offer proper advice. The authorities also threatened to arrest anyone spreading falsehoods, starting with the salt water “cure”. There was, after all, a plan in place.

A mass audience for messages
At 67 million users, Nigeria reportedly has the eighth largest Internet population in the world. It also had close to 166 million mobile subscribers as ofJune. (The country’s population is 175 million.)

With so many Nigerians online, portals like ebolalert.org set up by volunteer doctors, and the public/private ebolafacts.com initiative, have become important channels to provide accurate information to help people stay safe. They complement telephone hotlines and more traditional public health approaches.

The UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) has also taken a role in the communications work on Ebola, using the SMS portal UReport. UReport Nigeria is a free SMS platform designed as a community-based two-way information exchange mechanism. According to Unicef communications specialist Geoffrey Njoku, over 57 000 people received more than 3.6 million SMSes containing key messages about Ebola and how to stay protected over a six-week period.

Comfort and confidence
For some who have used the service, like Dr Adoara Igonoh, an Ebola survivor, the advice given offered reassurance and quelled fears. “I began to think about my mother,” Igonoh recalled. “She was under surveillance along with my other family members. I was worried. She had touched my sweat. I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. Hours later on Twitter I came across a tweet from the WHO [World Health Organisation] saying that the sweat of an Ebola patient cannot transmit it at the late stage [after the incubation period]. That settled it for me. It calmed the storms that were raging within me concerning my parents.”

Nigeria has won praise from the international community for its response to the outbreak. While Ebola continues to burn in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, in Nigeria it appears to have been contained with only 21 confirmed cases and eight deaths – with the last case reported on 8 September and tracing having proven effective.

“A key issue in the fight against Ebola after the provision of the necessary human and technical infrastructure is information management,” said Tochuwu Akunyii, an online writer on public policy and international development. “In information management, the dissemination of accurate information is crucial; social media can be vital in this process.” Akunyii pays particular tribute to Nigerian youth and its use of forums and platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Social media complemented traditional media
Nigerians who do not have access to the Internet and mobile phones have not been left out of the Ebola campaign. Traditional mediums like radio, flyers, posters, village meetings and announcements by town criers are all being used. Priority is given to local languages.

Comparing the traditional methods of campaigning to social media and SMS campaigns, Nwokedi Moses, better known as Big MO, a vernacular language broadcaster with Wazobia FM, said the two approaches worked well together. “The social media Ebola campaign was massive, but it complemented the traditional media. This is due to social media’s limited reach within rural areas.”

Local authorities have also taken the initiative. The Lagos State and Rivers State governments – the only two states where Ebola emerged – incorporated traditional awareness-raising campaigns like road shows, radio and TV jingles, distributing flyers, and educating the public on basic hygiene. Since Ebola first emerged, there has been a roaring trade in hand sanitizers and a corresponding collapse in the “bush meat” market.

As Nigeria gradually returns to normal, signalled by the slightly hesitant reopening of schools on 22 September, health campaigners are moving to tackle the new challenge of ending the stigmatisation of those who have recovered from Ebola – backed by a government warning threatening action against those that discriminate.

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola recently met survivors to confirm that an Ebola-free certificate means what it says. Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu has declared survivors the “safest people to be around”, given their new immunity to the virus.

10 years ago

Women, girls at risk in South Sudan camps

The UN base in Malakal is home to 17 000 displaced civilians. (Pic: IRIN / Jacob Zocherman)

Julie Francis’s self-imposed curfew starts when the sun sets. The widowed mother of four has been living at the UN base outside Malakal since December, one of more than 17 000 people who have fled there to escape episodic fighting in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State capital. But the overcrowded camp is not without its own dangers, especially for women and girls.

Francis can hear drunken teenagers hound women as they make their way around the site’s darkened paths. She has seen the holes men have cut through the tarpaulin walls of the showers so they can peep and leer at women. She has comforted rape survivors.

“It is too much,” she said. “They attack us at the place of the toilets or at night where we collect water.” There were 28 reported cases of sexual assault in the Malakal camp between January and June of this year, according to an assessment released by the inter-agency Global Protection Cluster late last month. But aid workers acknowledge the vast majority of attacks probably go unreported.

So Francis has decided it is best to push a bedframe in front of the entrance to her tent as soon as it gets dark. If she or her daughters need to go to the bathroom, they just use a bag.

But she doesn’t think it is fair. “People should take this seriously,” she said. “They should be serious to help. There are still people who need to know that it is not right to rape.”

Where, she wants to know, are the floodlights that could roust deter men hiding near the latrines, or the regular UN Police (UNPOL) patrols to protect women who want to visit their friends at night or go to the bathroom? Why, she asked, does it seem like she is the only one taking steps to make sure she does not get raped?

The problem is not in Malakal alone. Since fighting broke out in South Sudan in mid-December, nearly 100 000 people have crowded into 10 UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) bases across the eastern half of the country. They have been dubbed “Protection of Civilian” or PoC, sites. Though there are no official statistics, humanitarian groups say sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) – including rape, but also beating, harassment and domestic violence – exists in varying degrees at all of the larger camps, as does a growing resentment among women and girls that more is not being done to protect them.

“Increasing frustration”
“Of course there’s increasing frustration,” said Nana Ndeda, the advocacy and policy manager for Care International. She has been talking to women living in the camps about their experiences since the conflict started. “They’re getting very frustrated by the fact that UNMISS is not able to provide the kind of security that they would want provided.”

What is most galling, she said, is that the strategies for what should be done already exist. The 87-page Guidelines for Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings, compiled by a committee of UN agencies and humanitarian groups, offers detailed recommendations, including lighting communal areas, creating safe spaces where women can confidentially seek help and consistently soliciting the input of women and girls on how to improve the situation.

But in the early days of the conflict, with unprecedented numbers of civilians seeking shelter at the UN bases and scores of humanitarian workers evacuating, UNMISS employees were scrambling just to provide basic services.

“We had many more people than we could house and we needed to find a way to still be able to operate the base, as well,” said Derk Segaar, who heads UNMISS’s protection team. In the early days of the conflict, as people flooded into bases across the country, “it was a matter of trying to get them in a sustainable space that would allow just enough space for them to be there.”

Thousands of people are still living in shelters hastily constructed in the early days of the fighting, when issues like SGBV took a backseat to rescuing as many people as possible.

Tidial Chany is a community leader elected to represent one of the original parts of the Malakal camp, known as PoC 2. He works closely with UNPOL on security concerns in his area, but said it is nearly impossible to monitor all of the boggy, unlit alleys and has ultimately concluded, “It’s no good for security within the PoC.”

Aware of the problems, UNMISS started working to secure additional land and to construct more strategically planned sites almost from the beginning of the conflict, Segaar said, but their efforts were slowed by both bureaucracy and continued fighting.

New camps finally opened in Juba and Malakal in June. Within the new spaces, attention has been paid to the guidelines: women’s latrines are stationed near well-lit arteries and are separated from the men’s, for instance. Another site is slated to open in the Jonglei State capital, Bor, later this month.

“It’s not a matter of a few weeks or a few months and people will all be happy to go home,” Segaar said. “That’s why we built these bases. We need to be able to keep people safe and healthy for potentially a much longer period of time.”

Andrew Green for IRIN

10 years ago

Ethiopia’s game-changing abortion law

(Pic: Flickr)

After decades battling high maternal death rates – at least a third of which were due to botched abortions – Ethiopia took a stand: it prioritised newborn and maternal health, and in 2005 it relaxed its abortion law in an effort to save women’s lives.

Stopping short of legalising abortion, the new law decriminalised the act. It also allows women to terminate pregnancies that result from rape or incest, if the foetus has a severe defect, or if a girl is under the age of 18 and cannot care for the baby herself. Before 2005, a woman could only have an abortion if it was a matter of life or death.

“Anecdotally, I would say [the law] has had a huge impact on saving lives of girls and mothers,” said Addis Tamire Woldemariam, general director for the minister of health, but he said he did not have official numbers on the law’s impact. The latest statistics available are from 2008, which show that 27% of women who sought abortions in Ethiopia did so legally and safely. That still suggests more than 70% of abortions were done in unsafe conditions by untrained providers, but before 2005, that figure was much closer to 100%.

“Before, women would drink a tea made of plants to induce abortion,” said one health extension worker in the northern village of Mosebo. The women would then have extremely painful cramping followed by heavy bleeding – too heavy, she said. “It is much better now. We encourage them to go the health centres or clinics.”

Lack of access
But one major reason women are not getting safe abortions is that most Ethiopians live in places even less accessible than Mosebo, which is just off a bumpy gravel road that stretches 43km to the northern city of Bahir Dar. Getting to a health facility that provides abortion care is extremely difficult.

In Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, Dawit Argaw owns a Blue Star Clinic – a private health facility partnered with Marie Stopes, a global provider of newborn and maternal care, contraception and safe abortions. He explained that if he did not perform the abortions women sought at his clinic, they would just end up choosing a dangerous option. “The main reason that we do this is that we have seen so many complications [from abortions performed illegally], by [untrained] persons,” Argaw said. It used to be common that women would come to his clinic with puncture wounds or severe infections from botched abortions. “But since 2009 [four years after the new law was implemented], we have seen this maybe two or three times.”

While the vast majority of women seeking abortions are still getting them through unsafe means, in large cities like Addis, women can get to clinics and doctors more easily.

But women’s health is also helped by increased access to contraceptives, and the number of women who have unwanted pregnancies is in decline as more women use birth control. “Ten years ago, contraceptive prevalence was 6%, and the most recent figures are at 40%,” Woldemariam said.

Grateful for the service
At the Marie Stopes Clinic in Addis Ababa, a woman sits in a small room with a desk, a bed with stirrups attached and a thin curtain. Here, she receives contraceptive advice. “We consult with her and have her choose a family planning method before she receives the abortion care,” Sister Tihish, the nurse, explains. The patient, who withheld her name, also did not disclose how she got pregnant, “but many of the cases we receive are because of rape,” the nurse says.

In cases of rape or incest, women are not required to give proof. Woldemariam of the Ministry of Health said making a woman relive the psychological trauma of rape by asking for evidence would be “immoral” and “inhumane”, so many abortion-providers have adopted a “don’t ask” policy. For many, that leaves a gaping loophole in the law and gives women a way to get abortions for reasons beyond what is legally allowed.

Dr Seyoum Antonios vehemently opposes the abortion liberalisation. The general surgeon explains the requirements are far too lax. “You look at the books at these clinics and all of them say `rape, rape, rape’ with no proof,” he exclaims. “My country is being painted as a land of rapists.”

But for 29-year-old Khadija Ali, who asked that her real name not be used, access to an abortion was a matter of life or death. “I was working as a housekeeper in Bahrain when my employer raped me,” she explains, wringing her hands in pain from cramps as the abortion pills she took a few hours earlier took their toll. “I became pregnant, and immediately returned to Ethiopia because no one could know it happened, or else I would be seriously hurt or even killed.”

Her friend told her about the Marie Stopes Clinic, which provides abortion care and contraceptive counselling. “I am very glad,” she said, for the service. Still, Khadija says she will never tell anyone – including her husband – what happened, and definitely not about the abortion.

Social stigma reigns
Khadija is not alone in keeping her silence. “This is something very sensitive in the community,” Woldemariam said. “I mean people practice it, but they do not want to talk about it,” which is fine, he said, as long as women are getting the care they need.

The vast majority of Ethiopians are socially and religiously conservative within their respective beliefs. Orthodox Christian leaders, who have the most followers in Ethiopia, are willing to privately consult families on family planning but would never discuss abortions. That is the case with almost all communities, Woldemariam explained.

A local priest in Mosebo village said that is how he advises families and what he practices in his own family. “Children are a gift from God, but having more children than you can feed is an even bigger sin,” he explained. Magadesa Mugeda, a resident of Mosebo pregnant with her second child, agrees. Her daughter was born five years ago, and she used an injectable contraceptive to plan her family. “With our land and our resources, we could not afford to have more kids,” right away, she said.

When asked about abortions, Mugeda immediately tensed up. “I do not know or care to discuss these things.”

Abebe Asrat, a no-nonsense midwife at the Marie Stopes clinic agrees with Mugeda. “Do not ask me what I think of government policy,” when it comes to abortions she said. “Almost everyone is against abortions… but we do what we have to,” she explained. There are alternatives, she insisted: women should be encouraged to use contraceptives and family planning methods to prevent the whole ordeal.

Argaw said if he did not see that safe abortions saved women’s lives, he would have a harder time accepting how his work was conflicting with his religion. “Religiously [abortion] may be forbidden. Even in my religion it is forbidden. But for me as a human being I accept it [is necessary],” he admits. “So that is why I do it.”