Author: The Guardian

Ethiopian seed bank’s novel approach to preserving diversity under threat

(Pic: Flickr / IITA)

There is concern that the work of small farmers as custodians of diversity will be undone by the G8 New Alliance, writes Claire Provost

Inside the Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity’s unassuming office complex in Addis Ababa, a series of vaults houses tens of thousands of seed samples tightly sealed into small envelopes and neatly catalogued in cold storage – a treasure trove of genetic diversity painstakingly assembled and set aside for future generations.

Founded in 1976, Ethiopia’s national seed bank is the oldest and largest of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. It is also part of a pioneering experiment to link scientists with small-scale farmers to collectively revive and conserve traditional, indigenous seeds in the face of drought and other threats.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops worldwide was lost over the course of the 20th century.

Melaku Worede, the former head of the seed bank, says recurrent droughts have put the country’s agricultural diversity at risk, a problem compounded by farmers in some areas abandoning their local varieties for new, high-yield, commercial seeds.

Hundreds of other respositories, including the famed Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway and the UK’s Millennium Seed Bank, have cropped up around the world to store and save samples of major crops and their wild relatives. But funding shortages and political upheaval have threatened collections in some countries. Other samples have been in storage for decades, and may be dead, prompting fears that seed banks are turning into seed museums or morgues.

In Ethiopia, scientists have taken a different approach, opening their doors and collections to farmers and spearheading new partnerships with rural communities.

Farmers’ knowledge has been discounted by too many for too long, says Melaku. “They are underestimated out of prejudice … but we have to give due credit, and farmers also have to be rewarded for being custodians of our natural wealth.”

Melaku was head of the seed bank in the 1980s, when drought and acute food crises threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. “I thought, what are we doing? We have one of the best facilities and yet cannot help. I thought then of doing more than just storing seeds.”

Melaku and his colleagues left the capital for rural areas where they found farmers eating the seeds they would have normally planted or saved. Alarmed, they gave out raw grain in exchange for the farmers’ seeds, to be returned after the drought.

Soon the scientists were launching rescue missions and expeditions to collect and conserve seeds. They also experimented with community banks that could house bigger volumes of seeds and keep them in farmers’ hands.

Just south of Addis Ababa, hundreds of dark, tightly sealed jars are filled with legume, pulse and cereal seeds and stored on tall wooden bookshelves at the Ejere community seed bank. After each harvest, local farmers deposit samples, and in exchange get access to the bank’s stores.

Regassa Feyissa, who worked with Melaku for several years, says community seed banks offer the chance to conserve genetic diversity at the level of local farmers, where seeds are dynamically and frequently exposed to changing environmental conditions rather than held in suspension at sub-zero temperatures, while serving as a grain reserve in times of crisis.

Outside the Ejere bank, Tadesse Reta is planting wooden stakes in the ground, labeling sections of tilled land with the names of crops planted. Tadesse, 47, a local farmer, says he is looking forward to the bank’s forthcoming “field day”, where up to 400 farmers are expected to inspect crops, and debate the merits of the various seed varieties.

This is how participatory plant breeding works, Regassa says. “There is no recipe for developing varieties. It depends on who wants what.”

It is also an interesting approach for scientists, he adds. Unlike formal research, which looks for seed varieties that can work across different climates and soil types, farmers are constantly selecting for diversity, conserving a range of varieties and choosing them not just for their yields but also for their taste or because they are particularly resistant to disease or drought.

A new push to commercialise agriculture in Africa could, however, put the future of the continent’s diverse, indigenous seeds at risk.

New regulations
Regassa says the “indiscriminate push of technology and inputs” by industrial farming schemes and their supporters has proved costly for farmers and needs to be challenged. “Seed security is more important than anything at this point, especially when the government is under all of these external pressures.”

In September 2013, the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) ministers approved regulations that would require all seeds to be registered and deemed “uniform, stable and genetically distinct” before being traded and sold. Critics say this could, in effect, criminalise farmers’ traditional practices of saving and exchanging their seeds, while allowing corporations and those who can afford the registration process to capture the market.

Private investment in seeds is one of the stated indicators of success for the G8’s landmark agriculture and poverty plan in Ethiopia. Under the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, Ethiopia is to change its seed law and policies to increase and incentivise private investment in the development, multiplication and distribution of seeds.

This could spell disaster for small farmers, says Million Belay, co-ordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. “It clearly puts seed production and distribution in the hands of companies … Yes, agriculture needs investment, but that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to bring greater control over farmers’ lives.”

11 years ago

The African Chef who’s bringing baobab to British kitchens

“Africa is the final frontier in food,” says Malcolm Riley, a Zambia-born, Devon-based chef. He has a point. Trend-hungry Brits have latched onto everything from Korean to Peruvian cuisine in recent years, but Morocco (and perhaps Ethiopia) aside, we have yet to turn our culinary antennae towards Africa in a big way. Riley is on a mission to change all that, by spreading the word about African ingredients and cooking techniques. According to him, eating more sustainably-sourced baobab, shea butter and moringa could have health benefits for Britons and help create jobs in Africa. He hopes to achieve both with his line of African Chef products and so far, he is doing most of it from his kitchen in Newton Abbot, where he is now cooking me a traditional Zambian lunch and waxing lyrical about pumpkin leaves and Ray Mears.

Riley, whose father is English and mother is half-Indian, half-Zambian, moved to the UK when he was 25. Following stints working for Planet Organic and Riverford, he was itching to set up his own company: “I wanted to source an ethical product that rural communities in Africa could benefit from”. The first lightbulb moment came eight years ago when he was watching a Ray Mears documentary: “He was in the Sahara with the San tribe, using baobab seeds to make a coffee drink. I ate baobab as a kid but I’d never seen it used like that before.” Baobab trees grow all over Africa, and their fruit pulp is a rich source of Vitamins C and B2, iron, calcium and antioxidants.

Shortly after lightbulb moment #1, Riley took a trip back to Zambia and met Margaret Zimba of the Mthanjara Women’s Co-operative. Lightbulb moment #2: Zimba was making baobab jam and donating the surplus to children with HIV. She showed Riley how to make it and he decided to produce and sell baobab jam in the UK. He has since worked with Phytotrade Africa and the Eden Project (which has a tree in its Rainforest Biome) to source baobab sustainably and says that “harvesting the fruit can help double the income of 2.5m households in rural Africa”.

Riley is at pains to point out that promoting African ingredients and techniques is not the same as suggesting African food is one homogenous cuisine. “Across Africa the diversity of the food is phenomenal. We have influences from the Persians, the Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and all the same spices that landed on the shores of India. There’s also great diversity among tribes. It could only be a village away where a dish totally changes.”

He shows me a baobab fruit – it looks like a hairless coconut. Inside are clusters of white, marshmallowy stuff: the pulp. This crumbles to a powder when you touch it. You can add the powder (which tastes a bit like mango, but tarter) to porridge, yoghurt, smoothies or condiments, like Riley’s fiery Baobab chill jam.

A fruit from a Baobab tree in the village of Thiawe Thiawe in Senegal. (Pic: AFP)

But baobabs are not the only ingredient he wants to shout about. There’s “smoky, fruity, complex” moringa, packed with B Vitamins and iron. The moringa tree is grown widely in hot countries and can be used in everything from curries to soft drinks. He also has some shea butter to show me – it’s not just for hand creams. This white, waxy substance from the nuts of the shea tree (found in many countries, including Ghana and Nigeria) “can be used for frying and roasting, or add a touch to a sauce before serving”. Riley is also hoping to visit Cameroon to learn more about the Safou – a type of plum.

Moreover, the health benefits of adding African influences to your cooking go beyond these exotic ingredients. According to Riley, the typical African diet is low-fat and high-fibre. Today he’s cooking us a typical Zambian meal of pap with village chicken (substituting thighs for the gamier bird you’d get in Zambia) and pumpkin leaves. Pap is a thick, white porridge made from maize meal (it’s also known as nshima in Zambia and sadza in Zimbabwe). “This is what fuels most of the continent. It’s high-fibre, gluten-free and extremely rich in a lot of vitamins.” It also stretches, as you need only one part maize to three parts water. “I can make a bag last two months,” says Riley who gets it from a South African shop (you can also find it on Amazon and eBay).

With shocking UK food-waste stats emerging almost daily, we can learn from such thriftiness – stretching ingredients, using cheaper cuts of meat (“My mum worked in a butchery, I grew up with brisket and shin”) and using neglected bits of veg. “Millions of pumpkins are grown for supermarkets – all of their leaves are left to rot.” Today Riley is cooking pumpkin leaves from his allotment with tomatoes and onions – a traditional combination in Zambia. They have a subtle, smoky flavour and you can use them instead of spinach.

What Riley has dedicated the last seven years of his life to, first with a brand called Yozuna, and now with the catchier African Chef, is bringing the best knowledge and ingredients from Africa to UK kitchens. If his ideas catch on, then both British cooks and African workers stand to benefit.

Katy Salter for the Guardian

11 years ago

Kenya: Cervical cancer vaccine offers hope but challenges persist

Life is rough for women with cervical cancer in Kenya. Some of those attending the country’s only public treatment facility sleep on benches and concrete floors outside the hospital to save money for their treatment. Others never make it to the capital for assistance because they cannot afford the bus journey. Now, a vaccination programme has been rolled out, offering hope for future generations.

“Cervical cancer vaccine now available for girls in primary school free of charge!” reads the turquoise poster outside the office of Christina Mavindu, senior nursing officer at the Kitui district hospital. Mavindu is two-thirds of the way through implementing Kenya’s first public cervical cancer vaccination campaign in Kitui county. The third and final jabs will be administered in the next few weeks.

The campaign has been challenging. The number of children wanting the vaccine has exceeded the doses available and, at a cost of more than $50 per vaccine, many people have been unable to pay for it privately. “It should be for everybody,” says Mavindu. Gavi (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) supported the trial to enable Kenya to demonstrate that it has the necessary infrastructure and capacity to vaccinate nine- to 13-year-olds on a national scale.

Vaccination is needed urgently; cervical cancer is a growing cause of morbidity among women in Africa, and a rising concern. The disease is nearly six times more prevalent in Kenya than in western Europe, according to WHO data. It is also the cancer that kills most women in Kenya, whose neighbour Rwanda became the first low-income African country to achieve nationwide access to the vaccine.

The treatment for cervical cancer is inadequate: nearly half of the women who were being treated in Kenya “disappeared” from their programmes, according to the results of a recent survey published in the journal Plos One of patients at the only public cancer treatment centre. “Most likely they could not afford treatment,” says Dr Ian Hampson, head of gynaecological oncology at the University of Manchester, who oversaw the research. Just 7% of women received “optimal treatment”, while 41% dropped out.

(Pic: Reuters)

From screening to diagnosis and treatment, best practice in Kenya is impeded at every stage. Beatrice Ngomo, a nurse in Kitui district hospital’s maternal and child health clinic, has a hard time persuading women to get screened. Many cannot afford medical care so do not want to know if they are ill, she explains. Others do not like invasive procedures, she says, and are scared.

Even when a woman starts experiencing symptoms, she will often not seek treatment, Ngomo explains. Some women think cervical cancer is a result of witchcraft so they prefer to see traditional medical practitioners. “They lose a lot of time while they’re doing that,” Ngomo says. Or they go to witchdoctors because they are more affordable than modern medical care. As a result, 80% of cases at the hospital are late stage cancer, according to doctors’ estimates.

Ngomo has diagnosed two women with cervical cancer this year. She recalls that at first the women assumed that the cancer would kill them. Ngomo told them that treatment was poshsible and referred them to the Kenyatta national hospital in Nairobi. “But there the problems really start,” she says. In Kitui, most people are farmers and the average daily wage is less than $2. Women cannot afford to travel to the capital, let alone buy high-cost drugs, she adds. Sometimes they reappear at the hospital in Kitui months after referral, having never made it to Nairobi.

The next problem is that the waiting time for a first appointment at Kenyatta national hospital can be up to six months, according to Dr Orora Maranga, who conducted the Manchester research and is now practising in Kenya. “The cancer is not waiting,” he says. In six months, it can grow from stage two to stage four, drastically reducing the chance of survival.

Once patients receive an appointment, they are faced with the costs of treatment. Elizabeth Mumbua Njeru, 35, sits on a step outside the casualty ward hugging her handbag to her chest. Njeru has a cancerous tumour in her cervix and is two months into a course of radiation and chemotherapy. Njeru, from Embu, 120km to the north, is unable to afford accommodation in the capital. She has been a resident of the casualty ward for two months and is sometimes forced to sleep on this outside. But she is determined not to become another women who “disappears”.

Her malnourished body is struggling to cope with the treatment regime. Her nails have turned brown, she suffers from nausea and diarrhoea, and her immune system has been severely compromised by daily injections of cytotoxins. Njeru knows the emergency department is no place for her; it is a hub of infectious diseases which she might catch at any moment. But she has no option.

Maranga’s study found that just 7% of patients at Kenyatta national hospital were receiving optimum treatment. But it is not just the cost that prevents them getting the correct treatment. The hospital lacks one crucial piece of equipment: the brachytherapy machine.

As Njeru sits in the hospital canteen enjoying a rare plate of fried chicken, she is joined by her friend, Rhonda Waeni Ndundua, who also has cervical cancer. Ndundua has also spent two months sleeping rough in the hospital grounds. Rhonda has received good news – she has been discharged. Scribbled on her patient records was one word: “brachytherapy”. Rhonda is free to go home, but has to return to see the doctor in two months. Then, she will be told that she needs to have brachytherapy, radiotherapy delivered internally, in order to receive the recommended treatment.

Hampson describes Kenyatta national hospital’s brachytherapy unit as having been “in a state of disrepair for several years”. Patients like Ndundua must travel to either Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, or to Kampala in Uganda. There, they pay 30 000 Kenyan shillings ($360) for the brachytherapy; food, accommodation and transport are additional.

This may go some way towards explaining why just 7% of women in the Manchester study received optimal treatment. Hampson suggests there is no money, and therefore no political will from the government to repair the brachytherapy machine.

11 years ago

Ugandan president condemned after passing anti-gay law

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. (Pic: AFP)

Rights campaigners and health professionals have condemned Uganda’s president after he said he would approve controversial anti-homosexuality laws based on the advice of “medical experts”.

President Yoweri Museveni told members of his governing party he would sign the Bill – prescribing life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality” – that was passed by Parliament late last year, dashing activists’ hopes he might veto it.

Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesperson, tweeted on Friday that “this comes after 14 medical experts presented a report that homosexuality is not genetic but a social behaviour”.

The MPs, attending a party conference chaired by Museveni, “welcomed the development as a measure to protect Ugandans from social deviants”, Opondo added.

When Twitter users from around the world then criticised the announcement, Opondo responded: “Hey guys supporting homosexuals take it easy Uganda is a sovereign country #you challange [sic] the law in the courts.”

Under existing colonial-era law in Uganda, anyone found guilty of “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” can already face sentences up to life imprisonment. But the new Bill represents a dramatic broadening of penalties. It bans the promotion of homosexuality, makes it a crime punishable by prison not to report gay people to the authorities and enables life sentences to be imposed for various same-sex acts, including touching in public.

When the Bill was abruptly passed by MPs just before Christmas, Museveni came under pressure to ratify it both within his own party and from Christian clerics who see it as necessary to deter western homosexuals from “recruiting” Ugandan children.

‘Scientifically correct’ position on homosexuality
The president, who has been in power for 28 years, said he wanted his governing National Resistance Movement (NRM) to reach what he called a “scientifically correct” position on homosexuality. A medical report was prepared by more than a dozen scientists from Uganda’s health ministry, officials said. They told Museveni that there is no gene for homosexuality and it is “not a disease but merely an abnormal behaviour which may be learned through experiences in life”. Dr Richard Tushemereirwe, presidential adviser on science, said: “Homosexuality has serious public health consequences and should therefore not be tolerated”.

Anite Evelyn, spokesperson for the NRM conference, said: “[Museveni] declared that he would sign the Bill since the question of whether one can be born a homosexual or not had been answered. The president emphasised that promoters, exhibitionists and those who practise homosexuality for mercenary reasons will not be tolerated and will therefore be dealt with harshly.”

The Bill is popular in Uganda, one of 37 countries in Africa where homosexuality is illegal. Ugandan gay activists have accused some of their country’s political and religious leaders of being influenced by American evangelicals.

Frank Mugisha, who heads Sexual Minorities Uganda, said: “President Museveni knows that this Bill is unconstitutional and that we shall challenge it after he signs it, although I still think he will not sign this particular Bill the way it is. But his political remarks about signing will only increase violence and hatred towards LGBT persons in Uganda.”

The findings by Museveni’s medical experts were disputed in an open letter by more than 50 of the world’s top public health scientists and researchers. “Homosexuality is not a pathology, an abnormality, a mental disorder or an illness: It is a variant of sexual behaviour found in people around the world,” they wrote. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are normal.”

They warned that the laws could undermine the fight against HIV by driving these groups away from public health services because of “fear of arrest, intimidation, violence and discrimination”.

Robyn Lieberman of the watchdog group Human Rights First said: “There should be no doubt that Museveni’s latest words on the subject have been influenced by the reaction to similar legislation in Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere.”

David Smith for the Guardian

11 years ago

FGM in Kenya: ‘Daughters seen as cattle for sale’

There can be few women who understand both the agonies and the economics of female genital mutilation better than Margaret, a grandmother in her 70s from Pokot, northern Kenya.

Her life has spanned the clumsy colonial efforts to ban the practice, which saw it become a cultural cornerstone of the Mau Mau uprising against British rule, right through to independent Kenya’s decision to reimpose the prohibition.

She has also put more girls than she can remember under the knife. When Margaret started, the tool of choice was a curved nail; more recently this has been replaced with imported razor blades.

The work, she concedes, is gruelling: frightened young girls would typically sit naked on a rock; once done, their excised clitorises would be thrown to the birds. For the cutters, or “koko mekong”, who can earn 2 500 Kenyan shillings (£18) for each girl, it is a livelihood.

“The cutters ask me: ‘If we leave doing this thing, what will we eat?'” Margaret says. “Tell the government to give us what to eat. If it’s just workshops then it will be no use. The circumcisers will not leave their career simply because they’re being told to leave it.”

The “cut” has been outlawed in Kenya since 2001. Despite this, a public health survey in 2009 found that 27% of women had been subject to FGM. Among some ethnic groups – such as the Somalis (98%) and Masai (73%) – that figure is much higher.

A second set of laws passed in 2011 made it illegal to promote or to facilitate what used to be known as female circumcision, and stiffened penalties. But changing the law was easier than changing practice.

Among communities such as the Endorois, who live near the picturesque Lake Bogoria, the cutting season has endured. But the ban has driven it underground, according to Elijah Kipteroi, the government-appointed chief of nearby Loboi, a role he describes as part policeman, part doctor, with a dash of marriage counsellor thrown in.

“In the old days there were preparations that you could see,” Kipteroi said. “Now, because of the law, the practice is carried on in hiding. It’s happening without ceremonies.”

The laws are still seen as foreign by many Endorois, especially the male elders, says the chief. They accuse him of criminalising their culture.

Dowry
Underpinning the practice is a sharply divergent vision of the roles of sons and daughters. In Kenya, a dowry is paid by the groom’s family. As a result, girls are seen as a valuable asset to their families, if they can be offered for marriage in the “right” condition.

“The daughters are seen as cattle to be sold,” said Kipteroi, who added that a bride price would be typically counted in livestock, worth perhaps as much as 30 cows. “No one will even negotiate a bride price for uncut girls.”

On the surface, communities in places such as Loboi are broadly supportive of traditions such as FGM. Uncut girls, sometimes referred to as “raw” as opposed to mutilated “ripe” women, can expect to be shunned by their neighbours. They are forced to walk for miles to fetch water so they don’t “contaminate” pumps and wells; local midwives even refuse to deliver their “unclean” babies.

Reuben Orgut, a wiry man in his 60s with a sprinkling of silver stubble, one of the elders in Sandai, is unapologetic about FGM and the economics behind it.

“When I get this dowry it’s a way to support the other siblings. It means that when my sons also marry I have something to give out.”

He says the girls who refuse to be cut and married off are “stealing” from their own families. “It is not fair since they are a source of wealth. Some who have not been circumcised leave the family without us getting the bride wealth.”

However, not everyone is so keen to defend the rite.

Changing attitudes
Joseph Kapkurere is one of a trio of local teachers who have been trying to change ingrained attitudes among pupils and parents, even if doing so comes at the cost of frequent confrontation with relatives, friends and neighbours.

Kapkurere escaped the strictures that he grew up with when he went to college in Kisumu, a city in western Kenya where female genital mutilation is not common. “I was able to question why this happens and make up my own mind,” he said.

He married a woman from another ethnic group and resisted his relatives’ entreaties to have her undergo FGM. In Kapkurere’s home community he estimates that nine out of 10 girls are mutilated. As a teacher he found that schoolgirls would tell him that their parents were arranging for them to be cut against their will. He decided to start offering sanctuary during the school holidays which were often used by parents to have the girls mutilated.

“We thought at least we can keep them in school for longer, we can buy some time and subvert the parents’ plans,” he said.

And so now, during the longer holidays, dozens of girls will stay in the sanctuary of the school in Sandai to avoid the rite of passage.

Kenyan teenage Maasai girls attend an alternative right of passage on April 19 2008 at a ceremony organised by an anti-female genital mutilation campaign, Cherish Others Organisation. (Pic: AFP)

The Cana girls’ rescue centre, set among the dark volcanic rock, aloes and thorny acacias north of Lake Baringo, is home to more proof of the limits of legislation in changing lives.

The Rev Christopher Chochoi, a Catholic priest, set up the shelter in 2002 after praying with a young girl as she died from the rat poison she had consumed rather than return to the violent and abusive old man she had been forced to marry.

Today, it houses around 50 girls, some of whom have fled forced marriages, as well as runaways or outcasts who have refused to submit to FGM and have been ostracised by their families.

One of them is Diana (16), who came to Cana two years ago. She walked for nearly three days through the bush to avoid being married off after being pressured into being cut – a brutal procedure that left her angry and disillusioned.

“I knew I was going to be circumcised because we were being pressurised but I didn’t know it was bad and would lead to marriage afterwards,” she said.

She had been expecting a “good adventure”, she remembers ruefully, and was ignorant of what was coming when she went to see the koko mekong with four friends.

“I regret having undergone the circumcision because some of my friends, after undergoing it, bled to death. Some of them had challenges when giving birth because of age and as a result they ended up dying while giving birth.”

Chochoi’s wife, Nelly, hopes that the experience of young women such as Joan Rikono, who stayed for five years at Cana, will inspire other girls. The 25-year-old earned a scholarship at a college and returns to mentor the rescue centre’s current residents.

Nelly hopes Rikono can show the community they are wrong to think of educated girls as lost or worthless.

Nonetheless, the job of persuasion is slow and dangerous. The centre’s matriarch came to face to face with the risks two years ago when furious and armed male relatives of one of the girls stormed into the centre. They demanded that one of the girls who was due to be cut and married off be handed over. A tall woman with a strong, clear voice, she stood her ground: “I told them we don’t have any wives here, just schoolgirls.”

Daniel Howden for the Guardian