They seek reforms that enable women to inherit property and punish convicted sexual predators 
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Women account for most of Africa’s agricultural workforce and acutely feel the burdens of climate change, but too often their voices go unheard in farming- and climate-related policymaking and programs.  

That’s just one of the assessments a United Nations official shared in light of Tuesday’s U.N. observance of International Women’s Day.  

“Women make up 80% of the people displaced because of natural disasters, and 14% more are likely to die in the event of a natural disaster,” said Mehjabeen Alarakhia, the U.N. Women regional adviser for women’s economic empowerment for East and Southern Africa. U.N. Women is an agency dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. 

“Similarly, women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care and domestic work implies that they are commonly responsible for fetching water or collecting cooking fuel. With the increased climate incidences, women need to invest more time to meet their family’s needs.”  

Alarakhia spoke with VOA about climate challenges, agriculture, education and women’s leadership as part of this year’s theme: “gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.”  

The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.  

VOA: How far have African women in particular come in terms of calls for their rights and equalities?  

Alarakhia: I think African women were instrumental in advocacy and activism leading up to the Beijing conference in 1995 (the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women), creating the landmark global agreement on women’s equality and empowerment. African women are starting to take leadership in political arenas. We also see it in women’s participation in education and research, various public and economic spheres. I do believe there’s still quite some work to do, but there has been progress.  

What is the relevance to Africa of the theme “gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”?  

The high dependence on agriculture also means that women are highly exposed and vulnerable to the effects of climate change and disasters. Women represent 90% of agricultural employment in many African countries.  

With women and men having different access to productive resources, other inequalities can follow, such as access to improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tools and equipment, labor, credit, and other production factors.  

Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, environmental degradation and natural disasters. Women may need to walk farther to fetch water, exposing them to increased time poverty but also to further risks of gender-based violence.  

What role does U.N. Women play in empowering African women to participate in key decision-making corridors for the continent’s sustainability?  

U.N. Women is advocating for increased space for women’s rights activists and women themselves to be part of negotiations and discussions with policymakers and decision-makers to be able to have their voices heard directly.  

We also collect data and analyze trends so decision-makers can base policy on reliable data and research.  

What policies and programs should Africa’s local governments pursue in light of climate concerns?  

The key aspect is including women in the planning and decision-making processes. Women generally are aware of their own needs and know how to articulate them.  

We have recently completed a study that looked at government spending on agriculture. 

Governments in Africa had committed to allocate 10% of their national budgets toward agriculture. We found that where women were not included in planning, they were not able to benefit. But in countries where the allocation did not reach the 10% target and yet women were part of planning, they were more likely to benefit from the allocations — and the interventions were more sustainable.  

In most parts of the continent, the percentage of women in political offices where key decisions are made continues to be low. Is this stalling efforts to promote gender equality?  

It is very important for women to be at the table as decision-makers. We have some countries where the proportion of women in parliament, for example, is among the highest in the world. (In Rwanda, women hold 61% of the lower house’s seats.) Then elsewhere, we have relatively low participation rates. It is pertinent for women to be in that space, to be role models and champions for the next generation.  

Experts advocate for more STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education for women and girls. Is this critical for sustainability?  

In terms of the fourth industrial revolution and the agricultural transformation necessary to mitigate effects of climate change, it’s absolutely important for girls and women to be part of this change.  

We did a recent study that found an estimated 24 million jobs will be created in the green economy over the next decade.  

Most will be in STEM fields. We need to ensure that women, and particularly young women, are given the skills to take these jobs.  

In another study on opportunities for rural youth, we found that even in agriculture, the future is in digital technology. We have looked at bringing in programs such as our ”African girls can code” initiative, teaching them how to code and make apps. Some have gone on to become entrepreneurs. This is truly the space that will be growing in employability and profitability. 

This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service. 

 
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Coffee farmer Robert Kabushenga in Uganda’s Wakiso district is among the coffee producers who are upset about the country’s decision last month to withdraw from the International Coffee Organization, or ICO.

Uganda says tariffs and other barriers restricting its coffee exports triggered the decision to withdraw from a two-year extension of ICO’s 2007 international coffee agreement.

But Kabushenga describes the decision as reckless and illegal, telling VOA it will harm Uganda coffee farmers.

“How does that affect the farmer? It means that the coffee buyer who has been buying can only buy the coffee he can sell because there he is sure he has a contract,” Kabushenga said. “He’s not sure he can take it to warehouses in the International Commodities Exchange. And because of that, we could quite easily end up with surplus crop here because there’s no buyer.”

But the National Union of Coffee Agribusiness (NUCAFE), which includes some 1,500 coffee farmers, supports the government’s decision to withdraw.

Executive director Joseph Nkandu says farmers now have the opportunity to take ownership of their product and to invest and upgrade their coffee.

“The farmer has been getting far less than five percent of the retail value,” Nkandu said. “Where does the 95% go? And the only way for this farmer to enhance the value that he’s getting from this coffee value chain is to upgrade.”

Uganda’s withdrawal does not mean an end to exporting coffee, according to the managing director of Uganda’s Coffee Development Authority. Emmanuel Iyamulemye says Uganda small and medium-sized enterprises can now focus on promoting their coffee in other markets.

“We are looking at specialty markets,” Iyamulmye said. “We have our young youth, SME’s, which are looking at entering big markets like the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and of course, the Scandinavian countries and Europe.”

ICO officials say the organization has tried to resolve Uganda’s complaints but has not received a response, adding that the reasons for the withdrawal were not strong or related to the agreement.

Speaking to VOA via Zoom, ICO operations head Gerardo Patacconi says the organization is looking at the integration of the private sector and a public-private task force in a new draft coffee agreement with Uganda.

“This is a new opportunity,” Patacconi said. “And this opportunity, to me, is unique and I guess that’s why it’s supported by donors, it’s supported by the industry. So, Uganda is a leading producer of coffee. It’s so sad it doesn’t see that as an opportunity. And whatever concerns should be discussed within. This is a coffee diplomacy.”

Uganda is currently Africa’s leading exporter of Robusta coffee, exporting 6.1 million bags annually.
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Uganda’s decision to withdraw from the International Coffee Organization has led to a split among coffee producers in the country.  Halima Athumani reports from Kampala on the controversy roiling Africa’s second largest coffee exporter.  
Camera: Mukasa Francis   
Produced by: Mary Cieslak
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Kenyan women were in the streets of Nairobi Tuesday in protest of motorbike taxi drivers who allegedly assaulted a woman last week.

The protesters, organized by the Federation of Women Lawyers, gave the capital’s police chief a petition seeking assurance of their safety and protection from all forms of harassment.

A video widely circulated on Kenyan social media platforms showed a woman motorcycle driver being manhandled by a dozen angry men and screaming for help in Nairobi last week.

The incident prompted a public outcry, and many women called on police to take action against drivers who act without regard to the law.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta also called for a general crackdown on motorcycle riders. Kenyan radio station Capital FM quoted police chief Hilary Mutyambai saying officers have arrested 229 riders and seized at least 900 bikes over the past two days.

The relationship between motorcycle riders and the public has deteriorated due to a perceived tendency for drivers to not follow traffic rules and to use violence to intimidate motorists and pedestrians.

The Federation of Women Lawyers has called for the creation of a task force to curb rogue riders.
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Even though there has been a wave of immigrants from China to Africa in recent years, some families made that journey decades ago. VOA’s Kang-Chun Cheng has more from Nairobi about a Chinese Kenyan and his restaurant.
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American biotechnology firm Moderna has announced plans to build a $500 million vaccine production facility in Kenya. Once built, the facility will produce about half a billion doses of vaccines per year, including vaccines for COVID-19 and HIV. Health experts say the U.S. and African Union-supported facility will help address vaccine inequity in Africa.

Speaking Monday in Nairobi, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said the partnership with Moderna can help his country and Africa respond to future health crises.

“The idea of companies in the west coming to set up vaccine production centers in Africa is a move in the right direction because it’s going to ensure that we are close to the rest of the world in terms of disease prevention,” said Rosemary Sang, a virologist based in Kenya.

“I think we have learned what happened in the world during the COVID pandemic, how Africa was also affected when it came to intervention and their distribution mobilization of resources, especially vaccines,” said Sang. “Africa was nowhere, almost nowhere, and we only received vaccines after other regions in the world started to do their vaccination and had almost adequate coverage.”

Moderna has said it will spend at least $500 million to set up the facility at a yet-to-be-determined site in Kenya. The center will be used to supply vaccines to 55 African countries.

African countries have some of the lowest rates of vaccination in the world – a problem caused partly by the absence of vaccine production plants on the continent.

Sang says an African facility will convince more people to get vaccinated against viruses.

“It’s important that we develop this capacity, and we develop the confidence and even to give confidence to the population to accept vaccination as a way of disease control, when they see that vaccines are being made in their own continent, they are not just injected with things that are brought from foreign countries that they may not understand,” said Sang.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been pushing for pharmaceutical companies to set up a manufacturing plant in Africa.

“The more capacity we have to manufacture the vaccines that’s spread across the world, then the faster it is to meet both current but also future demand for vaccines in instances, like the last two years where we had the pandemic and the global supply cannot keep up with the need,” said Catherine Kyobutungi, the head of the African Population and Health Research Center.

“I think the other good thing is that it’s not just focused on the COVID vaccine. The partnership includes consideration for other products such as the HIV vaccine, vaccine around other viruses,” she said. “It may be one way in which Africa is able to meet its demand for those vaccines at some point in future.”

Moderna and Kenya’s leaders have not said when construction on the new facility will begin.
…

Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year due to higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Hershey, the largest producer of chocolate products in the United States, said last month it will raise prices on its products across the board due to the rising cost of ingredients.   

Meanwhile, chocolate makers like Dana Mroueh said they are seeing cocoa prices rise in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer.  

“We’ve noticed the price of cocoa is going up these few years, especially organic cocoa. So, from the beginning to today, those five years, we can say the price has risen 20 percent,” Mroueh said.  

Demand for chocolate in America increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and cocoa producers in Ivory Coast are struggling to keep up with that demand.   

Experts say one reason is the impact of climate change.  

Harvard University says that by 2030, parts of West Africa will be too hot and dry to adequately produce cocoa. The West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast alone produce 70 percent of global supply.  

Cocoa farmer Raphael Konan Kouassi took VOA to his plantation, a shady orchard where fat green and yellow cocoa pods hung from tree trunks. He said trees are yielding less due to rising temperatures and poor rains.  

“Almost all of the young plants die in the high season. If you have not been able to get water to them, you have no cocoa,” he said.  

Kouassi receives government assistance in the form of cocoa trees, which are more resilient to the fluctuations of climate change, but he said government distributions happen at the wrong time of year for the saplings to survive.  

Christian Bunn of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, a global scientific organization, said information about how the climate is changing can inform farmers on how to better nurture their crops.  

“What we’re seeing is that the onset of both dry and wet season can change. It’s less reliable. During the season, there may be breaks in terms of rain during the dry season, or there’s a dry spell during the wet season, and the overall distribution or amounts of rainfall they’re receiving may change,” Bunn said.  

The data shows it may be better for farmers to stop producing cocoa and diversify into other crops, he said.   

However, Olga Yenou, the CEO of an Ivorian company that supplies The Hershey Company, said higher prices for cocoa could be welcomed by farmers.  

“My opinion is that these farmers should have better prices, should earn more, because they work hard. Most are poor,” Yenou said.  

Her wish appears to be coming true. As climate change continues to bite, prices continue to surge.  

 
…

Russian efforts to flood the information environment and rally support for its invasion of Ukraine appear to be hitting a wall as many of Moscow’s media outlets have been blocked in Europe and elsewhere.

But Russia’s propagandists are still trying to seize on developments that could boost the country’s fortunes in Africa.

Analysts at the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy tell VOA that after initially ignoring the story, Russian-affiliated outlets have tried to amplify reports of Africans and other people of color meeting with racism as they try to flee the fighting in Ukraine.

The effort, so far, appears to be small, but has involved spreading the accounts in English, French and Arabic.

In one tweet February 28, Redfish, which describes itself as a “digital content creator,” shared a compilation video posted to Twitter days earlier of Africans waiting to leave Ukraine, including what appears to be a mother and an infant.

“They have not allowed any Black people to enter outside the gates,” a voice says on the original video.

That same day, Russia’s Sputnik published a story with the headline, “Indians & Africans Fleeing Ukraine Accuse Ukrainian Border Security of Violence, Racism — Videos.”

The article reported on statements from Indian officials and politicians and included videos of Ukranian border guards allegedly harassing Indians and Africans.

Days later, articles about the alleged racism and discrimination at the Ukraine border appeared on Sputnik’s French-language website and RT’s Arabic language site.

Ukrainian officials and others in the West, including the U.S. State Department, have condemned the reported discrimination.

“Any act of racial discrimination, particularly in a crisis, is inexcusable,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA late last month, after the initial reports of racism began to emerge.

“We’re engaging closely with the U.N. agencies on the ground to ensure that every single person crossing into neighboring countries is received equally,” the official added.

Analysts say it is too early to tell whether Russia’s efforts to play up racism are resonating with audiences, especially as recent data suggest Moscow’s current influence operations, overall, are having trouble gaining traction.

But U.S. officials and lawmakers note Russia has had some degree of success in its long history of trying to amplify racial divides.

“We have seen them exploit racial fissures through a variety of means — including notable examples of Russian-linked disinformation activities that targeted U.S. elections — to undermine the United States and the West by sowing internal societal discord,” the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, told VOA.

Russia could try to use the reports of discrimination against Africans, both verified and unverified, to further divisions in the West. They could also prove useful to Russia in Africa, as Moscow seeks to enlarge its military footprint there at the expense of the United States and other Western nations.

“These incidents could prove to be a propaganda gold mine for Russia,” Schiff said.
…

Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year due to higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer. Ivorian cocoa farmers say they’ve been forced to raise prices because climate change is making it hard for them to grow their crops. Henry Wilkins reports from Adzope, Ivory Coast.
…

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday defended his neutral stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling for talks — not condemnation.

Critics have blasted the government for failing to support Ukraine against its neighbor. Analysts say South Africa is allowing historic political and economic ties with Moscow to risk relations with the rest of the world.

Negotiation rather than weapons or economic pressure is the mechanism Ramaphosa would like to see used to settle the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Ramaphosa’s unwavering stance overruled an earlier call by the country’s international relations department for Russia to withdraw its forces.

Leaza Jernberg is a Johannesburg-based independent researcher and consultant on diplomacy.

“The Department of International Relations and Cooperation, [which] is largely the diplomat for South Africa, their initial instinct was to say, ‘Well, this was not acceptable.’ And that was kind of pulled back by the president who I think has this concern about allies and Russian and what this looks like,” Jernberg said. “So even within South Africa, South Africa’s position is very contested, even within government.”

South Africa’s ties to Russia stretch back to the 1960s when the Soviet Union gave support to anti-apartheid freedom fighters.

In subsequent years, politicians, including those from the ruling party, the African National Congress, maintained close ties with Russia.

Which is why analysts said it’s no surprise that a foundation headed by former president Jacob Zuma has voiced support for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Richard Calland is a public law professor at the University of Cape Town.

“He [Putin] had a very close relationship with our former President, Jacob Zuma,” Calland said. “It was a corrupt relationship. It fueled an illegal in the end, the court said, illegal procurement of Russian nuclear power, which was stopped by the courts. And I fear that that interferes at least with some political attitudes in South Africa. But I don’t believe that it was the direct reason for the position that South Africa has taken.”

Instead, Calland says, South African officials are simply following the country’s standard position on foreign conflicts.

“I’m well acquainted with and in close contact with South Africa’s kind of senior diplomatic officials, and they are very steeped in this tradition of non-alignment,” Calland said. “Political dialogue is their middle name, so to speak. And I think that on this one, they wanted to maintain this kind of nonpartisan position in order to promote that dialogue.”

Another factor at play is the country’s position within the economic bloc, BRICS, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Analysts said South Africa may be attempting to maintain trade relations with Russia and China.

But international relations expert Jernberg said that stance is ultimately counterproductive.

“In that case, we’re actually backing the wrong horse,” Jernberg said. “When you look at the EU, the European Union as a block, South Africa’s combined trade to the European Union is actually far larger. And so then if you’re going to make an economic argument, you should surely be arguing that between the United States and between, and Europe, is actually a greater economic interest.”

Whatever the motives, it has left Western nations siding with Ukraine disappointed, and experts warn there could be implications for South Africa in the future.

Ina Gouws is a political science lecturer at South Africa’s University of the Free State.

“These kinds of things down the road, become problematic,” Gouws said. “If you don’t display that kind of cooperation and sound thinking, and firm condemnation when a country does something like this, down the road, it bites you when you need support from the international community.”

While the ramifications for South Africa remain uncertain, experts agree it’s unlikely the country will change its position any time soon.

 
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The French army says it has killed one of the leaders of al-Qaida in Mali. The news comes as French forces are preparing to withdraw from the country.

The French army said in a press release Monday that Algerian Yahia Djouadi, one of the leaders of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, was killed during the night of February 25-26.

The press release says he was “neutralized” during a ground operation supported by a helicopter and two drones, north of Timbuktu, Mali.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for several attacks in the Sahel region, including the 2015 terrorist attack on a Bamako hotel and a 2016 attack on a hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and has taken several Western hostages.

Mali’s military government, which seized power in a coup ten months ago, asked France last month to withdraw its troops from Malian territory immediately, following an announcement from French President Emmanuel Macron that the troops would be pulled out over a period of four to six months.

The French military first intervened in Mali in 2013 in an operation to take back control of northern Mali from Islamist militants in Operation Serval. The Operation was replaced by Operation Barkhane in 2014.

But the ongoing insurgency has continued and violence has moved from the north into the center of the country. On Monday morning, two U.N. peacekeepers were killed when their convoy ran over an improvised explosive device in Mali’s central Mopti region.

The French press release Monday said that even though Operation Barkhane is being moved off Malian territory, operations against “armed terrorist groups” continue.
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It took two days for Janet and some other Ghanaian students to reach Lviv from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Then they spent another 13 hours waiting to cross the border, the third-year engineering student explains.

Even her mask couldn’t hide the agitation and fear she felt traveling across war-wracked Ukraine last week. Nor did it shield the surprise and anguish she felt as she recalled being segregated from white women and their children at Lviv’s railway station and blocked from boarding a train to Poland.

VOA interviewed half-a-dozen Ghanaian students Friday after they had reached the safety of Budapest, Hungary, and another dozen African students, Ghanaian and Nigerian, in Lviv and in Uzhhorod, a Ukrainian town near the border with Slovakia. Four students said they hadn’t encountered any discrimination in their frantic journeys west from Kharkiv, Sumy or Kyiv, where they had been studying mainly medicine and engineering.

The others said racism had hindered their flight and endangered them — although without exception they all said they looked on Ukraine as their second home and reported acts of kindness toward them.

Last week, Ukraine’s government set up a special hotline for Africans and other foreign students trying to flee the country, after reports mounted they were being blocked from boarding trains and buses. Representatives from several African countries — including Gabon, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria – said they were disturbed by what they were hearing from the students they helped to flee.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, told a news conference, “There should be absolutely no discrimination between Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians, Europeans and non-Europeans. Everybody is fleeing from the same risks.” He cautioned any unfair treatment Africans experienced wasn’t the result of any Ukrainian government policies.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, stressed in a tweet that everyone regardless of origin must be treated fairly. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has affected Ukrainians and non-citizens in many devastating ways. Africans seeking evacuation are our friends and need to have equal opportunities to return to their home countries safely. Ukraine’s government spares no effort to solve the problem,” he said.

His ministry has been urging all government agencies to assist foreigners, emphasizing there must be no discrimination at the borders against Africans, while blaming Russian disinformation for exaggerating reports of color discrimination.

Nonetheless, for all of the Ukrainian government’s efforts, the Ghanaians whom VOA interviewed said they did experience harassment and aggression, creating more stress and fear as they tried to escape the shelling and blasts.

Janet and her friends say they left Kyiv two days after the invasion started. They slept in shelters as they plotted their exits assisted by a network that was quickly set up by the National Union of Ghana Students-Ukraine, led by its president, Philip Ansah.

The association also helped to fund the dash to safety of some of the students. Additionally, the Ghanaian government quickly swung into action, too, trying to find ways to get funds into Ukraine, dispatching diplomats from other European cities to border crossings with Ukraine to coordinate with the student association to be ready to assist Ghanaians once they had reached Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.

Ukraine’s education ministry calculates there were some 16,000 African students in Ukraine when Russia invaded. Nine hundred were Ghanaians, and among them, Janet, a PhD engineering student, who, with some other Ghanaians drove to Lviv. It was a hair-raising and exhausting drive, she said, made worse by some abuse she says they experienced when stopping at gas stations for fuel and food.

Janet was clearly sad to narrate her experience. “Ukraine is like my second home. I came as a teenager and it’s unfortunate. I never thought it [skin color] would be a problem as we ran for our lives.” On one occasion they were blocked at the pumps. But it was worse at Lviv railway station where they were shoved aside “even when the police came in to check what was going on.”

That was Nana’s experience, too, at the railway stations at Lviv and Kharkiv, where she was just months away from finishing her medical degree. When the bombing started, she headed to the train station and took refuge in a subway nearby, remaining there for three days, where people shared their food and water with her. As the explosions and blasts intensified, she and another Ghanaian student realized they had try to leave the city.

“Everybody was trying to get on the train as well and we had to wait outside,” she said. She then added, “And as I was waiting, I could hear the shelling and the explosions, but you couldn’t run to take cover because if the train arrived it would leave without you. So even though I was scared out of my mind, I had to stand there and when the time came, try to force my way through with the others,” she explains. “I was crying and tearing away to get on to the train and so were other women, crying and pushing and the kids were crying.”

The 29-year-old said preference was given to Ukrainian women and their children and she kept telling people, “But I’m a woman as well.” She and some other African students grouped together to try to board the train, but a Ukrainian man appeared with a shotgun and ordered the African men to go back to the end of the line. “He scared … everybody before four policemen pinned him down and took him away.”

A lanky Nigerian footballer, Golden, whom VOA interviewed last week just after he had crossed into Slovakia, said much of what he had seen was due to general chaos and fear, downplaying color discrimination. “Look, everyone was being aggressive to catch trains and cross borders. Everyone was scared and pushing and shoving and trying to get to the front of lines,” he said.

Other Africans disagree. Nana said at the Lviv station, “I was standing for hours and they kept putting Ukrainian women on the trains and not us and they were even laughing,” she said. “They even tried to use the language as a barrier to get rid of me and ignore me,” she said.

One Ghanaian student, Philip, says his most terrifying moments were when he came face-to-face with Russian soldiers as he worked his way out of Sumy, where was studying medicine. “There were a lot of Russians and they scared us and pointed their guns at us and threatened to shoot us,” he said.

The joint effort by the student association and the Ghanaian government has paid off — of the 900 students in Ukraine when war erupted, only 39 still remain inside, according to a Ghanaian official.
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Libya’s national oil company said Sunday that an armed group has shut down two crucial oil fields, causing the country’s daily production of oil to drop by 330,000 barrels.

The state-run National Oil Corporation said the group closed pump valves at the Sharara field, Libya’s largest, and el-Feel, effectively stopping production in both areas. Before the shutdown, Libya’s production of oil was at around 1.2 billion barrels per day.

Company head Mustafa Sanallah announced a force majeure, a legal maneuver that lets a company get out of its contracts because of extraordinary circumstances.

He said the closures cost Libya more than $160 million ($34.6 million) per day in lost revenues.

Sanallah said the NOC has urged public prosecutors “to take deterrent measures” and reveal “the planners, executors and the beneficiaries” of the shutdown. The same militia disrupted oil production at both fields in 2014 and 2016, he added.

An oil official in the capital Tripoli said the militia that shut down the fields is from the mountainous town of Zintan, around 136 kilometers (over 84 miles) southwest of Tripoli.

Tribal leaders in the area were negotiating with the militia leaders to allow the resumption of oil production, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The shutdown came as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shaken markets worldwide, causing crude oil prices to soar above $115 per barrel.

Libya has the ninth-largest known oil reserves in the world, and the biggest oil reserves in Africa.

The dizzying developments in Libya’s oil fields have come amid a mounting standoff between two rival governments which threaten to again drag the country into chaotic infighting.
…

The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a country long known as the “breadbasket of Europe” because of the prodigious amounts of wheat, corn and other cereal grains that it produces — will extend far beyond Europe, wreaking havoc on global food supplies, experts from aid agencies say.

Ukraine produces 16% of the world’s corn, and Ukraine and Russia combined produce 29% of the wheat sold on world markets. Much of what they export goes to Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, and with virtually no cargo moving out of either county’s Black Sea ports, prices for the staple foods are spiking. Still unknown is whether an enduring war in Ukraine will damage this year’s harvest or prevent the sowing of crops for the next growing season.

Preexisting food crisis

Globally, food prices were already at a 10-year high before Russia invaded Ukraine, according to the United Nations World Food Program. Since Feb. 25, the day after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, wheat futures have risen by as much as 40% and corn futures by as much as 16%.

Because the war is already disrupting global fuel supplies — a problem that will worsen dramatically if sanctions on Russia are expanded to cover its energy exports — higher transportation costs are contributing to the rise in prices.

“We’re already facing a hunger crisis globally that we haven’t seen, at least this century,” Jordan Teague, an interim director for the charity group Bread for the World, told VOA.

“This is yet one more example of conflict generating hunger around the world, and the world just can’t sustain this,” said Steve Taravella, a senior spokesperson for the U.N. WFP. “We’ve got Yemen, we’ve got South Sudan, we’ve got Afghanistan. A significant amount of WFP resources is devoted to addressing hunger caused by man-made conflicts around the world, and this is just one more on top of that,” he told VOA.

Areas of concern

Teague said that while multiple countries are facing serious food shortages, her group is particularly concerned about several in the Middle East and East Africa, all of which rely on imports from Ukraine and Russia.

In Yemen, she said, tens of thousands of people are experiencing famine and another 16 million are facing a food crisis and in danger of famine. Even before the current crisis, she said, price inflation, currency depreciation and depleted foreign reserves had left Yemen struggling to import food.

Similarly, Lebanon, which, Teague said, imports about 60% of its wheat from Ukraine, is having difficulty buying enough food. More than one-third of the population there is already food insecure, and that doesn’t count the thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in Syria, who are largely dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Ethiopia, currently locked in a brutal civil war, also faces a hunger crisis that the Ukraine conflict is likely to make worse. The country relies on imports for about 25% of its wheat, Teague said.

UN to continue aid

Ukraine is the WFP’s largest supplier of wheat and split peas, two key staples it uses to feed the hungry, Taravella said. However, while the shortages caused by the Ukraine conflict will increasingly strain his organization’s ability to deliver food to the more than 135 million people it serves around the world, the WFP’s programs will continue to operate.

“Because we have supply chain expertise and we have, for years, developed strategies for making sure we can get commodities into hard-to-reach countries in difficult times, we have other sources,” he said. “I’m not concerned that WFP won’t be able to find wheat or split peas or other things that we rely on Ukraine for. What we’re concerned about is what we and others will have to pay for them, because prices are going to go up.”

The agency might be forced to reduce the per-person ration of food it provides, he said. “It will cost us more, which will mean we may have to cut rations. Those are very real implications,” he said.

Ukraine food situation shaky

Within Ukraine, the fighting appears not to not have cut off food supplies, but media reports indicate that stores are finding it increasingly difficult to remain open.

Fozzy Group, the country’s largest supermarket chain, continued to operate most of its stores this week, even in cities such as Kharkiv and Kyiv, which are facing direct attacks from Russian troops. Stores have had to close on an ad hoc basis, sometimes with little notice, when managers determine that the risks of remaining open are too great.

According to the news agency Interfax-Ukraine, a group of retail outlets and the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation have created an online map that indicates whether a grocery store is open and its hours of operation.
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Trafficking in pangolins continues to rise in Malawi as the country registers a drop in ordinary wildlife crime, such as trafficking in elephant tusks and rhino horns. Wildlife authorities say pangolin-related arrests in Malawi more than tripled between 2019 and 2020. Police in Malawi say a month rarely passes with no pangolin-related arrest. Authorities fear this may lead to extinction of the endangered mammals.

The latest is the arrest last Thursday of five people in Mangochi district, in the south of Malawi after they were found selling a live pangolin.

“The four suspects are Malawian while their accomplice is a well-known businessman from Pakistan,” said Ameena Tepani Daudi, who speaks for the police in the district. “The five were arrested at the Pakistan national’s house following a tip from members of the community. We found all of them in a bedroom while negotiating about selling price. And the pangolin was found hidden in a sack bag.”

Daudi said via a messaging app that suspects are expected in court soon.

“All suspects have been charged with illegal possession of specimens of listed species which contravenes section 110(b) of National Parks and Wildlife Act. And they will appear before court, possibly next week,” she added.

Police say the incident is among many pangolin-trafficking arrests in recent years.

Last year’s report by Lilongwe Wildlife Trust says Malawi is a range state for the Temminck’s ground pangolin, the only pangolin species found in southern Africa, now threatened with extinction.

Brighton Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, says the increase in pangolin trafficking is not surprising, considering recent research estimating that global pangolin populations have declined by 80% in the last 20 years.

“For Malawi, we can speculate that a shift from ivory trafficking to pangolin is because, one, the size of a pangolin is so small, easy to conceal but also it is fetching a reasonable amount of money on a black market. But also the existence in the country of foreign nationals that eat pangolin pangolins as delicacy, but also use of scales in medicine, that’s why an increase in pangolin trafficking,” he said.

Kumchedwa says last  week’s arrest of a Pakistani national in connection with pangolin trafficking confirms that the presence of some foreign nationals, particularly from Asia is fueling trafficking in pangolin.

Kumchdewa says strategies are in place to prevent possible extinction of the endangered mammals in Malawi and these include stiffer penalties to perpetrators.

According to the revised anti-wildlife-trafficking law in Malawi, perpetrators caught in possession of live pangolins or any of their derivatives face a prison sentence of up to 30 years, with no option for a fine.

“But also we have our own investigation unit, which is helping quite a lot, because it is largely intelligence-led law enforcement. But also, more than that, is how the courts have indeed applied the law. They are giving custodial sentences. We are seeing people taken to jail for seven years, five years found in possession of a pangolin,” he said.

Kumchedwa asked Malawians to be more patriotic and help the government by reporting to authorities about people involved in illegal pangolin trade, as well as in other protected animals.
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The U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR, is appealing for $205 million for assistance to more than 1.6 million people displaced by conflict in northern Ethiopia.

The conflict, which began 16 months ago in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region has spread to the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. This has resulted in a humanitarian crisis for more than 2 million people forced to flee their homes.

The U.N. Refugee Agency says most of the victims are displaced inside Ethiopia, while nearly 60,000 have fled to neighboring Sudan. UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said all are in desperate need of support.

“Civilians, including refugees and internally displaced people have been displaced, amid widespread reports of gender-based violence, human rights abuses, loss of shelter and access to basic services, and critical levels of food insecurity. … Several camps and settlements hosting Eritrean refugees have been attacked or destroyed, further displacing tens of thousands within Ethiopia,” she said.

Ethiopia launched its military offensive in Tigray on November 4, 2020, to oust the Tigray People’s Liberation Front from its northern stronghold. The U.N. says 40% of Tigray’s population of 6 million suffers from acute hunger, with 400,000 on the verge of famine.

Eritrea, which supports the government, reportedly has attacked several camps in Tigray housing tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees.

Mantoo said funds from the appeal will help provide protection and humanitarian assistance to those affected by continuing violence inside Ethiopia.

“At least 60,000 internally displaced households will be assisted with shelter and emergency relief items. We will establish additional protection desks, adding to the more than 60 that have already been set up, to identify people with specific needs and to refer survivors of gender-based violence to services. And we will support the reintegration of 75,000 displaced families, who wish to return to their homes,” she said.

Mantoo said UNHCR will provide protection and assistance to the thousands of Ethiopian refugees who have fled to eastern Sudan. Critical aid, she said, includes construction of shelters and strengthening health care and education. She said the agency will scale up psychosocial and mental health support to the severely traumatized.

She adds $16 million is being set aside for any potential influx of Ethiopian refugees into neighboring Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan.
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Cameroon has sent military and senior civilian officials to ask residents not to flee from Ekondo Titi, an English-speaking western town where anglophone separatists this week killed seven people, including the most senior administrative official, the mayor and traditional ruler.  The government says hundreds of civilians are fleeing to safer locations.

In a video, armed men identifying themselves as Ndian warriors brandish assault rifles and pledge total allegiance to what they say is their fight for the independence of Cameroon’s English-speaking western regions.

In the video, widely circulated on social media platforms including Facebook and WhatsApp, they display two assault rifles, an undisclosed amount of money and Cameroonian military uniforms.

They say the rifles, money and uniforms belonged to Cameroonian military and government officials they killed Wednesday in Ekondo Titi — a district in Ndian, an administrative unit in Cameroon’s English-speaking South-West region.

The main speaker in the video claims to be field marshal of anglophone separatists. He says fighters are developing a new modus operandi in their battle to achieve independence for Cameroon’s English-speaking western regions.

He says besides eliminating government troops, fighters have decided to target and kill all civilian workers representing Cameroon’s central government in the English-speaking western regions. He says those posted by the central government in Yaoundé should resign or refuse to work in English-speaking towns and villages.

Cameroon’s military said the video is that of fighters who killed seven people and government troops in Ekondo Titi this week.

A government release read Friday on Cameroon state radio, CRTV, said Paul Timothee Aboloa, highest government official and representative of President Paul Biya in Ekondo Titi, was among the officials killed by fighters.

The release said Nanji Kenneth, mayor of Ekondo Titi, and Ebeku William, the Ekondo Titi president of Cameroon’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement party, also died.

The Cameroon government Friday said hundreds of civilians, especially government workers, have escaped from Ekondo Titi since Wednesday’s separatist bomb attack.

Bernard Okallia Bilai is the governor of the South-West region, where Ekondo Titi is located. He said he was sent to Ekondo Titi on Friday to ask frightened residents to stop fleeing. Bilai spoke via a messaging app.

He said he is at the head of a delegation of top government and military officials, politicians and clerics sent to Ekondo Titi by Biya. He said the delegation is telling people of Ekondo Titi who are going through terrifying moments that Biya and government troops will crush separatists who do not surrender.

Bilai said civilians should be vigilant and report suspects and strange people in the towns and villages to government troops or administrative officials.

Officials reported in November that a separatist attack on a school in Ekondo Titi killed four students and a teacher. Hundreds of teachers and students stopped going to school.

Timothe Abolo, before he died in Wednesday’s attack, said enough security measures had been taken to protect schools, teachers, students and government workers from further attack.
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Somalia is in the middle of its worst drought in decades, with millions of people in need of aid and thousands on the brink of starvation. The United Nations estimates 4.3 million Somalis are affected by the drought and more than half-a-million displaced.

Baidoa already hosts over 400,000 internally displaced Somalis but more people affected by drought are flocking to the town every day in search of food, water, and shelter.

Somalia’s Southwest State is one of the areas worst hit by a record drought not seen in decades.

Forty-seven-year-old Ali Adan Hassan’s livestock died in the drought, and in late February his family of seven ran out of food.

A blockade by al-Shabaab insurgents made it impossible for aid to reach his district in the Bakok region. So Hassan set out on foot to Baidoa, a journey that took two weeks.

He said his family didn’t have a car or money to pay for a donkey cart, so they trekked more than 200 kilometer for 15 days to reach Baidoa. During the journey, he said, his wife and 3-year-old child died from hunger and thirst. He had to bury them along the way.

Baidoa is battling water shortages and an influx of villagers like Hassan, fleeing drought and starvation.

Single mother Mumino Moalim Osman, 40, lives in one of the Baidoa’s internally displaced persons camps with her 10 children. Her husband died seven years ago.

She told VOA they arrived in late February after walking for two weeks from Bokoro village.

They had a mother camel for milk, said Osman, but it died and only the baby camel remains.

She feeds the baby camel the same tea she gives her children, said Osman. The camel is her life, said Osman, and it must survive.

Adan Farah is an adviser for U.K.-based aid group Save the Children. She told VOA millions of Somalis are in dire need.

“According to rapid needs assessment conducted by Save the Children, 3.9 million people across Somalia are not able to access food, in which 1.8 million people are facing severe food insecurity,” she said. “The ongoing drought has plunged the majority of the population into food insecurity. The key drivers of acute food insecurity in Somalia include the combined effects of consecutive seasons of poor and erratic rainfall distribution and conflict.”

Daud Adan Jiran, Somalia director for the U.S.-based aid group Mercy Corps, recently visited Baidoa and met with displaced families.

“Somalia’s situation is deteriorating,” he said. “There is a severe water and food shortage.  Most of these communities’ primary source of income is livestock, which has died.  Crops have failed, so there is no food.  Families have depleted what little reserves they had.  If we don’t get rain in April, we may be on the verge of a repeat of the 2011 famine disaster.”

The U.N. says the 2010-12 famine, at the time the first in nearly a decade, killed a quarter-million Somalis, half of them children under the age of 5.

Baidoa community activists Nadeef Abdishakur Mohamed told VOA there is still time to prevent another famine.

“The government and humanitarian agencies must act now to avert a crisis similar to the famine of 2011,” Mohamed said. “As someone who is working with the people on the ground, I am here to tell everyone that it’s not too late to provide. They can provide emergency water trucking, medicine for the dehydrated and malnourished, and fodder for the livestock of nomads. They cannot liquidate their livestock assets to buy food and water for themselves, let alone for the animals. Some people will even pay you to take the livestock off their hands, that’s how bad the situation has gotten.”

Somalia in late November declared a state of emergency over the drought and appealed for international assistance.
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Three days of mourning have been declared in Mali after the deadliest attack on Malian soldiers in months. 

Mali’s transitional president, Assimi Goita, has declared the national mourning period, starting Saturday, after 27 Malian soldiers were killed and 33 wounded during an attack on a central Mali military camp in the town of Mondoro Friday, in Mali’s Mopti region. 

Seven soldiers are still missing, according to a press release published by Mali’s military government Friday. 

The release also says that 47 “terrorists” were “neutralized” the morning of the attack, and 23 later in the afternoon.

The attack comes after the military government, which seized power in a 2020 coup, asked the French military in February to leave Malian territory immediately, following an announcement from French President Emmanuel Macron that French troops would withdraw from Mali over a period of four to six months. 

The announcement of the withdrawal came after months of increasing tensions between the French and Malian governments.

The French military has been present in Mali since it intervened in 2013, in an operation to take back control of northern Mali from Islamists. But since then, both Malian and French forces have struggled to contain an insurgency that has moved from northern Mali into the center of the country.
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The United Nations and other humanitarian organizations in Malawi have launched a flash appeal for $29.4 million to provide assistance for the next three months to those hit hardest by Tropical Storm Ana in Malawi. The U.N. team in Malawi said Friday the appeal focuses on the six hardest-hit districts where an estimated 680,000 people need humanitarian assistance and protection.

Tropical Storm Ana, which also hit Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, moved through many districts in southern Malawi in late January, leaving thousands homeless.

Forty-four organizations are making the appeal, including the Malawi Red Cross, seven national NGOs, 26 international NGOs and 10 U.N. agencies.

Shigeki Komatsubara is U.N. resident coordinator in Malawi.

“U.N. country team in Malawi, we have worked really hard to ensure this appeal is prioritized and principled and we are confident that the activities planned are those that are most urgently needed to deliver immediate relief to people who need it most,” Komatsubara said.

Government figures show that over 990,000 people were affected in 17 of the country’s 28 districts. 

The U.N team says the flash appeal focuses on the six hardest-hit districts —Chikwawa, Nsanje, Phalombe, Mulanje, Chiradzulu and Balaka, where an estimated 680,000 people need humanitarian assistance and protection.

“While we are cautious that humanitarian support is not a long-term solution to the current climatic shocks that continue to increase in frequency and intensity in Malawi, we are faced with an urgent need to act swiftly to save lives and also the livelihoods of those whose homes and crops have been [affected] by the tropical storm Ana,” Komatsubara said.

Several U.N. agencies and organizations including UNICEF, U.N. Women, the U.N. Refugee Agency and the World Food Program already have been helping the affected, especially those in evacuation camps.

Isaac Falakeza is a camp coordinator at Bangula Evacuation Camp in Nsanje district. The camp houses 8,000 displaced Malawian households and 2,500 households from Mozambique. 

“Yes, we need further support because the major area of concern is water. It is wanted. Secondly, food is really wanted and some of the utensils. Some are even waiting until a friend cooks is when they borrow a utensil for cooking,” Falakeza said.

Flood victim, Jakina Lameck, agrees. She says they also need blankets, cooking materials, food, even money which they can use to buy what they cannot find in the camp. In the meantime, the U.N. team says it appreciates help the international community has already shown in response to Tropical Storm Ana.

This includes the $3 million the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund recently allocated for humanitarian activities in Malawi.
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Among African students evacuated from Ukraine when Russia attacked were hundreds of Ghanaians, some of them arriving back home this week. But just an hour from the border with Russia, a number of Ghanaian and other African students are sheltering underground while waiting for a safe escape. Senanu Tord reports from Accra, Ghana.
Camera: Senanu Tord
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A militant attack on an army base in central Mali on Friday killed at least 27 soldiers and wounded 33 more, the government said.

Seven soldiers are still missing following the attack in the rural commune of Mondoro, which involved car bombs, according to a government statement.

Seventy militants were killed in the military’s response, the statement said, without specifying which militant group was responsible. Affiliates of both al-Qaida and Islamic State are active in central Mali.

Mali has been facing an Islamist insurgency since al-Qaida-linked militants seized its desert north in 2012, forcing former colonial power France to intervene to drive them back the following year.

The militants have since regrouped and seized vast swaths of the Malian countryside, while also expanding into Niger, Burkina Faso and other neighboring countries.

France has maintained thousands of troops across the region since 2013 but announced last month that it would withdraw its forces from Mali as relations with the ruling military junta soured.
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Nigeria has agreed to supply natural gas to Equatorial Guinea at Nigeria’s International Energy Summit in Abuja. African energy experts are urging quick implementation of the gas deal amid high demand and supply disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This week’s signing of a gas deal by Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum, Timipre Sylva, and his Guinean counterpart, Gabriel Lima, is a testament to Africa’s untapped gas market.

The deal seeks to supply Nigerian gas to Guinea’s processing site in Punta Europa.

Sylva said the deal would allow much of Nigeria’s unused gas to access the global market within two years — a timely development, experts said.

Gbenga Komolafe, head of Nigeria’s Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, said, “The supply disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in an upward surge of crude oil prices, surpassing $100 per barrel for the first time since 2014. This development offers market potential for Nigeria to key into maximizing its oil and gas assets.”

African energy experts at the signing urged officials of both countries to expedite the implementation of the deal.

Komolafe said African countries need to carry out increased exploration and adopt advanced technology to maximize production yields to increase oil and gas reserves.

Gas supply

Nigeria ranks among nine countries with the highest gas reserves in the world. In January, Nigeria’s gas reserves rose by 1.4% from the previous year. But the market remains largely untapped and previous attempts by authorities to initiate gas deals fell apart.

Nigerian authorities last week said they were willing to invest more and focus on natural gas exploration.

Simbi Wabote, executive secretary at the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, said, “It is time for us to synergize as Africa in order to expand that opportunity beyond the shores of Nigeria.”

But officials said a lack of prior investments in the energy sector could limit this opportunity for African countries.

“There’s a clear demand and supply gap that we’re seeing today, and that’s why we’re seeing the $104 oil prices in the market today,” said Mele Kyari, managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission. “No one has invested significantly in the last 10 years, more so in the last five years, to an extent that we’re seeing the effect of what that truly means.”

For now, officials and experts will be eager to see how this gas deal changes the status quo.
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