In Kenya, it’s difficult to provide African herdsman in the bush with an education, but volunteers and aid groups have found a way to ensure they do not miss out. Volunteers and NGOs are setting up night schools where nomadic people live.
It is also where illiteracy levels are highest. Now some herders head for their classrooms after putting their animals in their pens.
Most of the students are in their twenties and have to learn eight years work of schooling in just three years. They want to learn how to write, read, and count.
Yet they are too busy during the day, and school was never really an option before. Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi reports from Kajiodo, South West Kenya.
A very well made and detailed documentary by John Allan Martinson Jr. regarding the Jewish control over the African slave trade during the founding of the America’s. Using only Jewish sources, he proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jews owned the African slave ships, controlled the entire African slave trade, and gained an incredible amount of wealth through their involvement.
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U.S. Sen. Christopher Coons joins top African investment managers and business leaders before a live audience to highlight some of the most successful investments in Africa, in a panel moderated by Editor-at-Large Sir Harold Evans. (October 1st, 2012- Reuters TV)
This is a short film about making crafts from banana and palm leaves at the Dewe School of Art in Uganda.
People who attend the project use banana and palm leaves grown on the project’s plantation to weave various products, including baskets, purses, mats and hats.
The people who attend the project are learning new skills so that they can learn practical skills to help make an income.
I took this film while volunteering at the project in May and June 2010. The film features Msangi Christine and at the beginning, she is talking with Namatovu Jane.
Dewe is on the edge of Lake Victoria, in Uganda, Africa.
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Rock climbing is one of the most dangerous forms of extreme sport but if done the right way, it is a thrilling adventure. NTVSPORT joined the Mt Kenya School adventure for what was an exhilarating day in and around the scenic mountain, where we came to learn, that extreme sports is also a team sport.
UNTV: United Nations, New York (September 25) – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia said today (25 September) that the “ultimate goal of the post-2015 developing agenda is to end world poverty and to improve the well-being of our citizens.”
Yudhoyono was briefing the media immediately following the first meeting of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, together with the other two Panel’s Co-Chairs, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom.
The Indonesian President said it was also clear “that the agenda must be built upon the MDG’s achievements as it sets new goals and targets.”
Johnson Sirleaf said gender inequality is “universal” adding that “in most developing countries it reaches a critical level.”
She said “even in countries that are referred as developed, the issue of gender inequality is still prominent.”
The Liberian President said “we must redefine our priorities and change the nature of the debate” as “we cannot apply the same solutions and expect different results.”
For his part, David Cameron said “we are not here to get rid of the Millennium Development Goals” but “to urge countries to complete and meet the Millennium Development Goals and to meet the promises that countries have made about how they will help to meet the Millennium Development Goals.”
In July 2012, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the members of a High-level Panel to advise on the global development framework beyond 2015, the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There are 27 members on the High-level Panel from civil society, the private sector and governments.
The Panel is part of the Secretary-General’s post-2015 initiative mandated by the 2010 MDG Summit. UN Member States have called for open, inclusive consultations involving civil society, the private sector, academia and research institutions from all regions, in addition to the UN system, to advance the development framework beyond 2015.
The work of the Panel will reflect new development challenges while also drawing on experience gained in implementing the MDGs, both in terms of results achieved and areas for improvement. The Panel will submit a report containing recommendations to the Secretary-General in the first half of 2013.
September 27, 2012 (enewschannel) In this week’s episode ‘Against All Odds’ showcase the lives of two former gardeners who have attained phenomenal success. Both children of domestic workers and raised in abject poverty, Lindelani Mnguni and Patrick Mabena were both driven by tenacity and hunger to forge a better life. Patrick Mabena’s love for art had to be put on hold and had little option but to become a gardener so he could feed his family. But his dream was later realized by one of his employers who saw potential. Patrick has flourished in the art scene, producing exceptional work at the Unity Art Gallery in Johannesburg.
As Africa’s leaders, scientists, private sectors and donors gathered at Arusha’s Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, Tanzania to deliberate on how to scale up investment for agricultural growth in the continent, it has been re-iterated that any meaningful intervention to eradicate poverty and ensure food security must address issue of low productivity and production in agriculture.
Tanzania’s President, Dr. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, made this declaration at the official opening of the 2012 African Green Revolution Forum organized by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
While thanking AGRA for choosing his country for the event, he said the theme; ‘Scaling up Investment and Innovation for Sustainable Agricultural Growth and Food Security’ was timely.
President Kikwete said inadequate investment and innovation are major constraining factors to modernization, transformation and growth of agriculture in Africa.
“In turn, it is the source of prevailing precarious food security situation on the continent.”
While arguing that the economic growth of most African countries is anchored on agriculture, he said if African leaders succeed in boosting agricultural productivity and production, “we stand a better chance to attain more robust economic growth and sustainable development, ensure food security and eradicate poverty.”
He added “unfortunately, Africa’s agriculture remains backward and primitive, characterized by low application and production due to limited application of modern science and technology.”
President Kikwete decried the over reliance on rain water for agriculture in the continent , just as he said there is low use of high yielding seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
“Farmers lack modern agricultural production skills and knowledge and do not have access to financial and other supportive services.”
The President said with all these militating factors, farm sizes are meager, thereby making many people who depend on agriculture to form the bulk of poor and so their nations.
“This, in many ways, explains the high prevalence of income poverty and food insecurity in Sub-Sahara Africa. Malnutrition is also a serious problem in Africa particularly among children and pregnant women contributing to high child and maternal mortality.
President Kikwete said the best way out is for African leaders to scale up investment and innovation in agriculture, “if we cannot do that all efforts to transform agriculture will be an exercise in futility.
Thousands of people are stranded as flooding in central Nigeria cuts a major north-south highway. Reuters Deborah Lutterbeck reports that thousands have no place to go after heavy flooding in Central Nigeria. According to Reuters, the flooding blocked the main road linking the South and North.
Many have been stranded for days. The floods are among the worst in recent decades. Homes and businesses are under water. Nigeria’s rainy season stretches from May to September sometimes causing flash floods with lethal consequences.
Young women and girls carry water in Africa, 300 million people still do not have sufficient access to safe drinking water.
The figures are shocking. According to the UN Environment Programme (Unep), more than 400 million Africans now live in water-scarce countries; 300 million people still do not have reasonable access to safe drinking water and nearly 230 million people defecate in the open.
But the reasons African governments cite for not implementing integrated water management policies or meeting commitments they have made to provide sanitation are many and varied. A survey of officials by Unep in 40 African countries suggests they are not mainly constrained by a lack of money.
Congo-Brazzaville, Nigeria and Sierra Leone don’t even have a formal water policy, they told the UN and African Union in the report, referred to this week at the World Water Week in Stockholm. São Tomé and Principe said it did not have the necessary laws in place; Cameroon said it had no one to champion the cause of water provision, and 25 countries, including Namibia, Swaziland, Rwanda and Mozambique, said they did not have enough human capacity.
Some governments were brutally honest about their failings. Congo-Brazzaville said it could not get the private sector or civil society interested, Burundi that it had experienced too many changes of ministries, and Ghana that it had problems collecting revenue from local sources. Liberia said it had difficulty accessing donor funds, and Libya and Zimbabwe said they did not have the infrastructure.
Only 18 African countries cited money as a constraint to developing water resource management. Ghana and Liberia said they found it hard to access donor funds, and Burkina Faso and Congo-Brazzaville said a big problem was slowness in mobilising financing.
But there is a growing belief that it makes little sense for governments to make more commitments on water and sanitation. Haba Arbu Diallo, former Burkina Faso water minister and chairman of the Global Water Partnership in west Africa, argued for a moratorium on more commitments. “Many African countries [at this rate] will need two or three millennia to meet their MDGs,” he said. “If urbanisation continues at this pace in 10 years’ time, every African country will be faced with a massive challenge. The time has come to stop making commitments and to implement what we have already agreed to.”
On sanitation, says a report by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCW), Africa is making little progress and is likely to miss its MDG target by more than 300 million people. Only nine African countries are on track to meet their targets.
A statement from the third African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene added: “The poorest 20% are 20 times more likely to defecate in the open than the richest 20%. The impact of this hidden scandal is devastating to health and quality of life.”
Rwanda has emerged as the poster child for hygiene and sanitation, largely because of high-level political support. More than 54% of the population has decent sanitation, from fewer than 1.5 million people in 1990 to more than 5.5 million today. “In Rwanda, political prioritisation for sanitation and hygiene has come from the very top. This unprecedented level of support has been critical,” said Therese Dooley, of Unicef.
Some progress has been made elsewhere too. “Before we were not even allowed to say toilets or defecation,” she said, “but now we see UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon using these words, which greatly increases exposure and awareness of the issue.”
But water and sanitation are still not top priorities for governments, despite overwhelming evidence that a country’s development and people’s wellbeing depends on efficient use of water.
The secretary of the AMCW, Bai Mass Taal, from Nigeria, said the best way to push water and sanitation up the political agenda is to find new ways to measure the contribution of water to development. “It is very important to provide a basis for highlighting the pivotal role of water resources as an essential ingredient in the advent of a green economy in Africa,” he said.
