Day: December 20, 2022

JOHANNESBURG, Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has been re-elected to lead the party for a second term of five years, according to the election results released yesterday.

Ramaphosa was re-elected during the 55th national conference of the ANC, which started in Johannesburg on Dec 16 and will end today.

Ramaphosa, also the country’s president, got 2,476 votes, while his challenger, Zweli Mkhize, got 1,897.

“Cadres had preferences when they came to the congress, but all must be committed to the unity of the ANC, selflessness, and a great sense of responsibility. We have to support anyone who has been elected,” ANC spokesperson, Pule Mabe, told a press briefing.

The ANC national conference, which takes place every five years, was attended by about 4,500 delegates from across the country.

Source: Nam News Network

U.N. agencies say that large-scale, sustained humanitarian assistance can prevent Somalia’s looming famine from turning into a full-blown disaster in the coming months.

Thanks to generous international support this year, famine in Somalia has been delayed. But the threat of mass starvation in 2023 remains due to a fifth year of consecutive drought, skyrocketing food prices, and intensifying conflict.

A recent U.N. food assessment found the number of people facing acute food insecurity could rise to 8.3 million by April and the number of Somalis facing catastrophic food insecurity could increase to more than 700,000 by June. It warned some areas will face outright famine if humanitarian assistance is not scaled up and sustained.

Etienne Peterschmitt is the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Somalia. Speaking from the capital Mogadishu, he says the specter of Somalia’s 2011 famine continues to haunt aid agencies and what happened then must not be repeated now.

“Just to recall that in 2011, we have mentioned that in several reports, and we keep highlighting that fact is that by the time famine was declared, half of the people who actually died of famine had already died,” Peterschmitt said.

More than a quarter million people died of famine that year, half of them children under age five.

FAO reports rural communities are currently among those at greatest risk and in greatest need. The unprecedented drought, it notes, has forced entire pastoral, agropastoral, and farming communities to leave home and seek humanitarian aid in crowded displacement camps in towns.

Peterschmitt says their ability to stave off hunger and famine depends on the survival of their herds and ability to grow crops.

“Their children’s nutrition, and we mentioned that before, is directly linked to the health and productivity of their animals,” Peterschmitt said. “Unable to produce milk, those animals have been dying at a skyrocketing rate for the last year…Of great concern is the approximately 1.8 million children who are likely to be malnourished.”

Earlier projections of famine so far have been averted because humanitarian assistance has covered much of the most basic needs. U.N. agencies say this aid must continue and be increased.

On December 1, the United Nations launched a record $51.5 billion humanitarian response plan to assist 69 countries in 2023. The plan asks for $2.2 billion in support of 7.6 million people in Somalia.

Source: Voice of America

The “loss and damage” fund agreed to last month at the COP27 climate conference aims for rich nations to help those that have borne the brunt of their global warming emissions. In Niger, climate change has fueled desertification and conflict as communities compete for dwindling resources.

It’s often said those least responsible for climate change will suffer the most because of it. This is especially true in Niger.

According to nonprofits such as Concern International, Niger, along with its neighbors in Africa’s Sahel region, is likely to see a 3-to-6-degree Celsius increase in temperatures by the end of the century, with devastating impacts for one of the poorest and most difficult-to-farm regions on earth.

Yet in 2021, Niger produced just 0.007% of global emissions.

The changing climate is also adding to a rise in militant groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State, according to the United Nations.

Jean-Noel Gentile is the U.N.’s World Food Program Niger Country Director.

“Climate change is contributing to the deterioration of natural resources, with the population then competing for the same resources, which are shrinking,” Gentile said. “So, there is a direct correlation between climate change and insecurity.”

To help countries like Niger, a “loss and damage” fund was agreed upon at the U.N.’s recent COP27 climate conference in Egypt. In theory, richer countries and bigger emitters of greenhouse gases will pay to assist the countries suffering from climate change the most.

Nonprofits say the cost of the damage caused by climate change could hit $1.8 trillion by 2050.

Niger’s environment minister, Garama Saratou Rabiou Inoussa, told VOA the fund needs to become operational quickly.

She says, there’s an urgency to make the funds operational. Not only making the funds operational, she says, but also the urgency to make the funds available through an easy funding mechanism that favors countries such as Niger.”

Haoua Coba Maigardaye lives in a village in Niger’s border region with Nigeria, an area that could benefit from the fund. A project run by the World Food Program has reorganized the village’s farming practices, allowing them to farm during the dry season, in addition to the rainy season.

She says, food production has increased and the older and younger generations of the village no longer have to go elsewhere to find work, since they can grow crops twice in a year. “It’s an improvement because there is now not only enough food to survive, but also enough to sell,” she adds.

In a neighboring village where there is no assistance, a farmer says they do not have enough to eat.

Environmentalists say that details, such as how the fund will work — and how the money will make it to villages like those in Zinder — need to be nailed down.

Steve Trent is with the Environmental Justice Foundation, a U.K.-based environmental nonprofit.

“The political pitfalls are that developed states just decide not to pay. It’s hard when you want to get governments to write that check,” said Trent. “It’s difficult to get them to do it, particularly in the economic climate that we face globally now.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change declined to give an interview on how the fund might work and how long it may take to become active.

Source: Voice of America