Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), a Zimbabwe-based NGO advocating for violence-free and conflict-free extraction of natural resources now wants the government to halt the scourge.
“We are gravely concerned on syndicates who abuse their proximity to power and defraud Zimbabweans and the central government of funds that should be expanding the country’s revenue base and improving the socio-economic lives of Zimbabweans,” says Simiso Mlevu, a project and communication for development chief at CNRG.
On May 9, South Africa’s Hawks Serious Organized Crime Investigation team arrested Tashinga Nyasha Masinire at OR Tambo International Airport on charges of illegally possessing 23 pieces of gold valued at $700,000.
The gold was discovered in Masinire’s luggage and he failed to produce a permit that allows him to transport the gold.
According to Mlevu, the arrest of Masinire by South African authorities raises questions about the porosity of Zimbabwe’s ports.
“The smooth departure of Masinire with his loot exposes the complicity of Zimbabwe’s immigration and security authorities in the smuggling of the country’s minerals,” she told Ubuntu Times in an email interview.
The NGO further calls the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the role of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation and politically connected cartels in the smuggling of minerals.
It further wants the judiciary to consider smuggling of minerals as a high-level crime and impose deterrent sentences on members of criminal networks involved in smuggling of minerals
Zimbabwe continues to lose billions of dollars annually to organized criminal syndicates which have spread their wings from diamonds, chrome, gold, semi-precious gemstones, coal to copper, among other minerals.
With the majority of Zimbabwean working population majorly found in the informal sector, many of those living in mineral-rich areas risk their lives digging underground in search of gold to better their lives.
Research by International Crisis Group estimated that over $1.5billion of gold is smuggled out of Zimbabwe each year, denying the cash-strapped economy of crucial foreign-exchange revenues.
The Central bank-owned Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) is the sole legal buyer of extracted gold in Zimbabwe and is also the country’s notes and coins minter.
This, analysts say, could be a major factor for smuggling of gold because of the poor prices offered by FPR to the sellers.
Late last year, as one of the efforts to curb this, announced that it would close down all unmonitored airstrips, install a new radar control system to monitor small aircrafts flying in the country with a belief that they might be used to smuggle minerals out of the country.
Kenya’s public hospitals are likely to ground to a halt as nurses and clinicians vow to stay off work even as millions are facing three weeks in a row without healthcare amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
With the rising cases of Coronavirus and the deadly toll the pandemic is taking on Kenyan, nurses, and clinicians at public hospitals made good their threat to boycott work over poor working conditions on December 6.
Through its union, the Kenya National Union of Nurses (KNUN), the nurses’ number 23,000 said they will only resume work after their demands are met.
Seth Panyako, the union’s Secretary-General, among other demands, told the State to compensate families of 26 nurses who have died of COVID-19 in line of duty.
The striking healthcare staff lament that many of their colleagues are dying from COVID-19 due to a lack of both protective gear and health insurance.
Joseph Ondiek, whose wife was to undergo delivery through Cesarian Section had to seek medical services at the Kenyatta National Hospital, a facility already struggling with the surge of cases.
“My wife requires to undergo a Caesarian Section. On reaching Kenyatta National Hospital, I could not be attended to the emergency requirements because of the long queues. All I am praying is that the government come to our rescue by listening to the nurses’ demands,” said Ondiek, who resides in Mathare, one of the informal settlements in Nairobi.
Worsening this already dire situation was when Kenyan doctors in pubic hospitals, said to number 7,200 members joined nurses and clinical officers in the nationwide strike.
The doctors’ concerns revolve around the lack of protective equipment and health insurance for frontline workers fighting against the spread of Coronavirus.
However, the doctors called off the strike three days later after the government acquiesced to their most immediate demands. Nurses and clinical officers’ demands were never attended to and hence continue to picket.
Healthcare staff strikes are a significant threat to universal access to healthcare globally and especially in Sub Saharan Africa. Kenya’s healthcare sector has seen an increase in such industrial action.
Since 2013, Kenya’s public health sector has been affected by frequent short strikes, culminating in nationwide strikes lasting a total of 250 days by doctors and nurses in a span of 11 months in the years 2016 and 2017.
Whilst health professionals have the right to picket, experts say their strike cripples health services with almost no public hospital inpatient services being administered, thus violating people’s right to healthcare.
In most of the healthcare workers’ strike, the Kenyan government has been employing reactive solutions such as sacking striking workers, jailing trade union officials which neither addresses the underlying problems nor build the resilience of the health system.
Last week, Mutahi Kagwe, the Cabinet Secretary for Health directed county governments to sack all striking healthcare staff.
“County governments should start advertising vacancies to replace those on strike if the striking health staff continue to be adamant,” Kagwe gave the directive when he addressed the media.
Kagwe urged the over 8,000 nurses currently jobless to apply for the positions once advertised.
However, officials of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMDU) were quick to rubbish the directive.
“We are shocked by the government’s level of insensitivity and arrogance in dealing with the grievances raised by our members on their welfare and safety in COVID-19 times. The minister’s ‘appreciation’ to healthcare workers is illaudable,” KMPDU Acting Secretary-General Chibnzi Mwachonda told a press conference.
Samson Cherargei, a senator in Nandi, one of the counties in Kenya’s Rift Valley called on CS Kagwe to instead use his energy in unraveling those behind a multi-million COVID-19 heist scandal under his health ministry.
Bowing to pressure, the CS later said the government will not replace the healthcare workers on strike, a move he said was aimed at ensuring services continue to be provided in all public health facilities.
With the virus spreading, and on the frontline between a nervous public, the healthcare workers on whom all depend have in many instances been forgotten.
The World Health Organization estimates that health workers during the Ebola outbreak and six years ago were between 21 and 32 times more likely to be infected than the general adult population. More than 350 healthcare workers died while battling Ebola in West Africa.
Kenya, currently with some 48 million people has 9,068 licensed medical doctors, 537 Intensive Care Units, and only 256 ventilators.
Nairobi, 18 November 2020 – With Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) threatening development and health in Africa, six international and continental organizations are launching the first partnership of its kind to combat this public health crisis on the continent.
Noting the ‘silent public health threat’ that antimicrobial resistance poses in African countries, representatives from key health agencies have expressed concern over uncontrolled antimicrobial use across the continent.
The leaders spoke during a virtual press conference on the first day of the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) Campaign for Africa.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa says Africa needs to act swiftly on AMR to curb a looming health crisis.
“Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most pressing health challenges Africa faces. If we don’t act now, we could see the continent roll back the gains in health we have made through immense effort and sacrifice. We must stop endangering our future and think before we pop a pill in our mouth,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti told the virtual press briefing.
Antimicrobials include antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitics used to prevent and treat infections in humans, animals, and plants.
Antimicrobial agents have saved millions of lives and protected animal health and welfare, as well as food security. But their rampant misuse in health settings and agriculture is killing 700,000 people annually around the world.
In Africa, research findings estimate that 4.1 million people could die of failing drug treatments by 2050 unless urgent action is taken.
While data on AMR is sorely lacking on the continent, there are signs that resistance to commonly prescribed antimicrobials is significant.
Malaria, which kills 3000 children in Africa every day, is increasingly showing resistance to once-effective treatment options. Tuberculosis is becoming resistant to the drugs typically used to treat it.
Current studies indicate that drug resistance to HIV is increasing and could cause 890,000 deaths by 2030 in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Antimicrobial resistance threatens the health, safety, and prosperity of Africa. We need immediate and sustained action from governments and all partners across the human, animal, and environmental sectors. Together, we can prevent infections, ensure antimicrobials are used appropriately, and limit the transmission of drug-resistant infections,” Dr. Nkengasong John, Director of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told the virtual press briefing.
AMR is exacerbated by the easy availability of medicines without a prescription. An estimated one in ten medicines globally is substandard or falsified, and the African region is one of the most affected in the world.
In markets and on street corners, people are buying antimicrobials of unknown quality. Without proper medical supervision, people often stop their drug course too soon or they double-dose rather than keep to a prescribed strict time interval for appropriate drug-taking.
The same happens in the treatment of animal diseases coupled with under-dosing, disrespect to drug withdrawal periods, and use of antimicrobials as growth promoters.
The improper use of antimicrobial medicines enables bacteria, viruses, fungi, and microscopic parasites to mutate into superbugs that are resistant to the drugs designed to kill them.
These superbugs can travel across countries, resulting in thousands, or potentially millions, of deaths. Their treatment is resulting in prolonged hospital stays and the need for more expensive medicines, leading to huge additional costs in health expenditure by governments and individuals.
“We are at a critical time to change the way we use antimicrobials for humans, animals, and plants and reduce the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. If AMR is left unchecked, the next pandemic we face could be antimicrobial-resistant, and much deadlier if the drugs needed to treat it do not work,” Dr. Abebe Haile-Gabriel, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa told the media briefing.
The World Bank projects that the additional health care cost by 2050 could be between US$ 0.33 trillion and US$ 1.2 trillion.
AMR in agriculture reduces productivity, hinders the provision of safe food, and has a direct impact on food security and sustainability of livelihoods for farming communities. Improper disposal of pharmaceutical, hospital, abattoir, human, and animal waste contaminates the environment with antimicrobials and antimicrobial-resistant organisms.
“Antimicrobial resistance is a matter of concern for Africa because of the public health threat on African citizens and the negative socio-economic impact on wellbeing and livelihoods,” noted Prof. Ahmed EL-Sawalhy, Director African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources.
AMR is not only a health issue but a complex problem that requires a united multisectoral approach. The six partners making this joint statement represent the public health, agriculture animal health, and environmental sectors.
The organizations jointly committed to 10 points of action, including fostering a One Health approach and leveraging each organization’s core competencies.
Areas of collaboration include strengthening advocacy for the more prudent use of antimicrobials by increasing general public and medical practitioner awareness, understanding and behavior change; supporting the integration of AMR action in routine infection prevention and control (IPC) measures as well as vaccination, farm biosecurity, and good hygiene practices; and supporting compliance with international standards for the management of human, animal and industrial waste.
Nairobi, Kenya November 19 — Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) meeting at the 8th Pan African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation in Nairobi have expressed deep concern over African governments limited interest in the High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency, and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI Panel) consultations.
They are calling on African governments to actively participate by providing written and oral input into the FACTI Panel High-Level Africa regional consultations, saying to date, only the governments of the Republic of Sudan, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa have confirmed participation at the ministerial level.
The FACTI Panel regional consultations seek to bring together high-level representatives from member states, along with leaders from the private sector, civil society, and academia.
The inputs from these stakeholders will feed into the FACTI Panel’s determination of technically feasible and politically viable recommendations to be made in its final report in February 2021
On 18th November, the High-Level FACTI Panel and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa hosted the High-level Africa regional consultation to discuss possible means to address the shortcomings identified in the interim report published by the FACTI Panel on 24 September 2020.
It is only by active participation can African leaders ensure the FACTI Panel’s final report addresses the needs of African countries as losers in a rigged international finance architecture.
The FACTI Panel represents a critical institutional space to call for the implementation of measures targeted at curbing illicit financial flows and widespread tax evasion and tax avoidance that most harm countries in the Global South.
By participating in the FACTI Panel High-Level Africa Regional Consultation, African leaders can use the opportunity to critique the shortfalls of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) processes and demand the establishment of a truly inclusive and democratic global tax governance structure.
Reforming the global structure of the international financial architecture and strengthening the fiscal and policy space for socio-economic transformation were key recommendations of the PAC conference.
They also call on African governments to demand that the FACTI Panel explicitly recognizes the immediate need for a universal, intergovernmental tax body at the United Nations, where developing countries can defend and safeguard their national interests through collective action at the United Nations.
“As Africans, we are saddened with how African Ministers of Finance are taking the FACTI Panel consultations casually. This is the moment to correct an international tax system that has all along been rigged against us. We cannot afford to lose this moment!” Alvin Mosioma, Executive Director, Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA) told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
In the face of the fundamental lesson that COVID-19 has taught governments, the centrality of public resources to Africa’s development is critical.
According to Munir Akram, the 76th President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, today, member states face three simultaneous global challenges. These are COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, the realization of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs and the existential threat of climate catastrophe.
“Adequate financing is key to addressing each one of these challenges. Such financing will have to be mobilized at both the national and international levels. The ability of developing countries to mob dome finance is obviously constrained and this capacity has further diminished due to the impact of Covid-19,” Munir highlighted.
To allow illicit flows to continue at this time, he adds, would be nothing short of criminal. IFFs deny vulnerable people access to basic services and infrastructure and condemn them to a life of inequality and poverty.
To ensure African governments build back better and sustainably post COVID-19, the CSOs called on African governments to ensure the creation of a truly inclusive architecture of international tax cooperation to end IFFs.
IFFs deny governments billions of dollars that would otherwise be invested in public services particularly health, education, and social protection.
African civil societies hosted the 8th Pan African Conference (PAC) on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) and Taxation from 9-13 November 2020 whose theme was ‘Africa We Want Post COVID-19: Optimizing Domestic Resource Mobilization from the Extractive Sector for Africa’s Transformation.’
Trust Africa organized the 8th PAC in collaboration with 18 co-conveners, including Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), African Union (AU), United Nations Economic Commission on Africa (UNECA), Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ), African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), OXFAM, Action Aid among others.
Nairobi, Kenya November 6, 2020 — Officials from the eight-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) converged in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi to assess the development of the regional infrastructure master plan that is due in December 2020.
The IGAD region has shown to make strides in the development of new regional infrastructure projects such as the Ethiopia-Kenya Power Interconnector and the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
However, leaders argue that underdeveloped infrastructure remains a major constraint in the IGAD region with no regional master plan of priority projects built on the consensus of its member states.
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development Regional Infrastructure Master Plan (IRIMP) which began in May 2018 seeks to establish regional infrastructure development for the region to enhance regional physical and economic integration, and in the long run promote trade, movement of goods and persons, and poverty reduction amongst its Member States.
IGAD To Work Closely With Civil Society
Elsadig Abdalla, IGAD Director expressed his delight in the program, affirming commitment to working with the Civil Society and NGOs in the IRIMP project.
“Previously we have been criticized as being too governmental,” Alsadiq told the conference through a speech he read on behalf of the IGAD Executive Secretary, Dr. Workneh Gebeyahu.
The IRIMP comes in to address this, and solve the problem of inadequate and poor regional infrastructure networks, connectivity, and efficiency.
“In this regional study, we have involved all our stakeholders, especially the NGOs because they are the real owners of our interventions and are the ones who have direct connection with our people at the grassroots in our region,” Elsadiq told Ubuntu Times at an interview.
The development of IRIMP is being financed through the support from the African Development Bank (AfDB) with the overarching objective to create an open, unified, regional economic space for private operators – a single market open to competitive entry and well-integrated into the global economy.
Its components will include a network of efficient infrastructure services; transport, energy, and communications.
Patrick Kanyimbo, the AfDB regional integration coordinator, assured the member states of the bank’s support.
“We are excited to be part of this master plan as we believe it will lead to greater investment floors in the region and we hope it also results in increased trade and economic activities among the member states,” Kanyimbo told the conference.
Banking On Africa’s Youth Bulge
Amb Lemoshira, Director at Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the conference that the African continent consists of an informed and technologically-savvy youth bulge, hence the need to put in place the appropriate infrastructure for them to be able to practice the tech skills acquired.
“AfCFTA is a game-changer, we are going to set the pace for our future in three ways. That of our capacity to ease movement, absorb new technologies and optimizing Africa’s youth dividend and potential,” said Amb. Moi Lemoshira.
The master plan constitutes one of the region’s high regional integration priority pillars which we leaders have been looking for since the first revitalization of IGAD in 1996.
Guided with two current initiatives, which are the African plan and the continental development agenda for 2063, IGAD regional infrastructure master plan has been drawn and tailored to fit with continental scenarios for development.
In 2018, IGAD contracted IPE Global Limited in association with Africon Universal Consulting to undertake a comprehensive 18-month study at a cost of $ 3.6 million.
Sarima, Marsabit County —In Sarima, a dry, desolate land, traditionally seen as too inhospitable to inhabit in the corner of Kenya’s north sits the country’s largest private investment. Upon completion, it was projected to become Africa’s biggest wind farm project.
For over one year, long trucks were seen carrying strange-looking cargo as they made their way into what was a barren landscape just ten years ago.
The pastoralist inhabitants of Marsabit County say at least two convoys would go along the route every other day. Their destination is a field of 365 powerful wind turbines strategically placed along with one of the windiest corridors in Kenya.
Set in the remote north of Kenya, 700 km from the capital Nairobi, the Lake Turkana Wind power (LTWP) is expected to generate some 300mw of clean energy.
Power is transmitted over 428km and six counties away to Suswa in Kenya’s Rift Valley in a transmission line built by a government agency, the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company ( KETRACO).
Africa Development Bank calls it ‘one of the best private investments in Kenya yet. The project is co-owned by among others Vestas and several other Scandinavian investors.
KETRACO had contracted Isolux Corsan, a Spanish company to build a transmission line but a few kilometers into the project, it declared bankruptcy, stalling things temporarily.
To keep the project running, the Kenyan government awarded a Chinese company the responsibility of completing the transmission line.
KP & P Africa BV, a company of Dutch and Kenyan investors and the initiator of the project also owns LTWP Limited.
Community land acquisition raises questions
However, there are some questions on how the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project came to own the land considering that ten years ago when nobody wanted to come here, this was ancestral land for pastoral communities.
President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya unveils the Lake Turkana Wind Farm project plague Marsabit County. LTWP is Africa’s largest wind farm project. Credit: Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP)
Sixty-year-old Simon Ekitoye has lived in Sarima all his life. He was among the first beneficiaries of what villagers claim was a lot of promises of jobs that the development would bring to Sarima.
“They employed me for two and a half years here to supervise the evacuation of villagers and to demarcate land lots for their respective owners,” Ekitoye told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
Ekitoye and a few others helped in mobilizing residents to move the village off the path of the road developed so that developers could access the site, this happening alongside compensation for their homes.
Sarima village was relocated in 2014, moving 1km away from its original location to pave way for an access road to the project’s site.
The people of Sarima village are part of the indigenous community that calls the Sarima hills and plains their homes.
Original residents like Ekitoye claimed that they were each paid $100 to rebuild their homes. This community, having seen little development since before Kenya’s independence, was keen on advancing itself.
“They promised to build schools, hospitals, provide us employment and plenty of water. In the end, they only dug us one borehole,” says Ekitoye.
Lack of formal education means no permanent employment for locals. Patrick Ole Kaunga, a human rights activist, says LTWP is a highly technical project that does not rely on unskilled manpower to run.
Ole Kaunga says LWTP representatives first approached the Municipal Council of Marsabit in 2007, seeking 40,000 acres of land for the project. Then they asked for a further 110,000 acres which they claim was for ‘future development’.
“The case that the community has confronted since 2014 has been how 150,000 acres of community land was alienated.,” Amina Hashi, a community land lawyer, said in an interview.
According to Ole Kaunga, the board of a divisional land was never set up to consult with the community. Instead, the Marsabit County Council town planning committee was the body that approved the leasing of 150,000 acres of land to LTWP.
But on his part, Charles Keter, the Cabinet Secretary for Energy disputes claims that the community was never consulted before the communal land take-over for the establishment of the Ksh. 70 billion wind power project.
For Hashi, her client’s concern is simple: how did the investor acquire the land?’ A question she says has never been answered in court.
“This was never given the prominence we thought it deserved it being an environment and land court whose specific mandate is to address the land question,” says Hashima.
An influx of people leads to environmental hazards
Before the establishment of LTWP, Sarima was a much smaller village but has grown from under 500 to over 1500 residents as people move in to look for jobs and businesses.
There has been a change in Sarima though. According to Ole Kaunga, when one looks around, there is a lot of business.
“Every small hut is a pub or a shop. It tells you money is circulating. On the other hand, the level of alcoholism has increased. There are even prostitutes. It is not the Sarima we used to know,” laments Ole Kaunga.
Huge wind turbines during setting up of the wind power farm in Marsabit by the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP). Credit: LTWP
Josphine Ngumi runs a bar at the far end of this tightly packed village. She shares the same concerns as Ekiteiyo as well as the same hopes.
“There are no hospitals. They said they would build some, but they have not. They built a school but there are no teachers. The children return home without having been taught,” Ngumi told Ubuntu Times.
Once complete, the 365 wind turbines would catapult Kenya into a league of clean energy producers, a rare status for an African nation.
“We were not exposed to alcohol but when these people moved here their employees introduced alcohol and soft drinks. They even made their own alcohol,” says Ekiteiyo.
Ekiteiyo’s worry would be for his source of livelihood, the livestock saying garbage piles and plastic threaten to kill animals.
This story was written as part of the Sustainable Energy for All fellowship, by Climate Tracker and Hivos.
Nairobi, Kenya October 13 — Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia will host this year’s World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-21), the first of such conferences to be held in the African continent.
In preparation for the global event, the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) in conjunction with the National Communication Authority of South Sudan convened the first preparatory meeting held virtually.
The meeting aimed to bring together duty bearers of the telecommunications sector across Africa to establish leading committees to develop the African common proposals and positions on the WTDC agenda items.
The conference and its preparatory meetings come at a time when the world is increasingly acknowledging the crucial role that ICT plays in times such as the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.
“Digital solutions, economies, and connectivity are key enablers of development and achievement of Sustainable Development Goals,” said Dr. Alsadig Gamaldeen, the Director-General of Telecommunication and Post Regulatory Authority (TPRA) Sudan.
WTDC is a crucial forum for ICT development as it sets the roadmap for achieving telecommunications development across the world.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having shifted the spotlight to connectivity, the forthcoming WTDC will be seen as the foremost conference for driving global ICT development to enable the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
For the first time, the conference will be held in Africa from 8th to 19th November in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“These preparations will consider our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as the African States. We will also sanction special consideration on the pandemic’s outcomes so far and use them to enhance our individual and international collaborations as well as relevant partnerships during the conference,” said ATU Secretary-General Mr. John Omo, who spoke during the opening of the forum.
Through this online preparatory meeting, Africa is expected to among other things, evaluate the implementation of the WTDC-17 outcomes in Africa and consider their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals action plans.
As a matter of consequence, this should be able to assist in the evaluation of the progress of projects launched under initiatives by regional bodies.
Besides, the professionals say the meeting is crucial in starting the formulation of the African common proposals to the conference that would reflect the new challenges of ICTs in Africa and the mechanisms that would help to accelerate the implementation of the African digital transformation strategy.
“Digital technologies act as a catalyst that could accelerate progress towards the SDGs and make the African region the digital frontier where the truly transformational power and potential of connectivity will finally be realized,” Ms. Doreen Bogdan Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) told the meeting.
Omo also noted that having a common understanding of the issues that Africa faces and how telecommunications can downplay them is highly crucial for community engagements, economic growth, and international collaborations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nairobi, September 3 — The recent diplomatic tiff between Kenya and its neighbor, Tanzania is likely to spell doom for the East African Community (EAC) and by extension the highly ambitious African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which was entered into force on May 30, 2019, after 22 African countries had deposited ratification instruments.
Experts say the dispute helps put into perspective the enormous challenges awaiting African states in their attempt to eliminate trade barriers under AfCFTA.
While promoting intra-African trade and integrating the African market towards making the continent a strategic player in global trade and policy, an argument has been raised as to why African politicians are not showing leadership for this to succeed.
Closer home, the East African Community, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia have ratified AfCFTA while Tanzania and the EAC’s lone ranger, Burundi are yet to ratify.
The Kenya-Tanzania border trade disputes following Corona fears exposes African political leaders as the weak link in promoting African integration.
“The route cause of the diplomatic row between Kenya and Tanzania lies in the history of how the old EAC split and who was left with what sorts of assets and those undertones still exists. These can be wiped out if our political leaders take an initiative to focus people’s eyes on the current structure,” Waturi Matu, coordinator of the East Africa Federation of Tourism told Ubuntu Times.
When the EAC broke, it was necessary to create some sort of cooperation on how both countries would cooperate because like in tourism, they share an ecosystem and mutual plans, which gave rise to the 1985 bilateral agreement
When the new EAC was created and the East Africa treaty was signed and the common market protocol came into being, Matu says Kenya stopped following the 1985 bilateral agreement to the later.
“Until about July 2013, the sectoral council directed Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to meet and iron their issues around free movement of services. Kenya and Uganda were quickly able to agree that the issue that was pending was how to allow foreign vehicles to enter national parks,” says Matu.
As at February last year, both countries agreed at a meeting to go back and implement the bilateral agreement. However, one party had not recognized what impact this would have on the tourism operation, which includes close access to the national parks and attractions such as the airport.
Following fears of COVID-19 cross-border transmission between Kenya and Tanzania, Kenya maintained that long-distance truck drivers must be subjected to COVID-19 test before being allowed entry into Kenya.
This was after Kenya identified Kenya-Tanzania and Kenya-Somalia borders as hotpots for Coronavirus. Tanzania authorities would then swiftly retaliate by restricting movement between the Kenya-Tanzania border by forbidding all automobiles and persons from Kenya.
In July during his tenth State address, President Uhuru Kenyatta said countries not making public their COVID-19 data does not mean they were doing better in handling the pandemic. He asked Kenyans not to take the virus lightly adding that Kenya is a democratic society and must conduct its business in the open.
“The fact that countries don’t report what happens in their countries does not mean they are fine, we are an open society and we have to tell our stories,” he said.
It is a statement that appeared to hit at neighboring Tanzania as it was not making public its COVID-19 cases.
In what is viewed as reciprocation, Tanzanian aviation authority redirected a plane carrying Kenya’s envoy to the late former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa mid-air on grounds that the weather was bad.
In June, Tanzania President John Mugufuli suggested that Tanzania was free of COVID-19 as God had ‘answered their prayers.’
Magufuli’s directive came a few days after he skipped the video-conference between East Africa Community head of states and government on May 12. Present in the virtual meeting were Presidents Kenyatta (Kenya), Museveni (Uganda), Kagame (Rwanda), and Salva Kiir (South Sudan) with Magufuli (Tanzania) and former Burundi’s president the late Pierre Nkurunziza, missing.
According to the EAC, the consultative video conference was meant to assess the development of COVID-19 in the region in a bid to develop a regional approach.
When Tanzanian authorities burned 6,400 poultry allegedly imported illegally and imposed a 25 percent import duty on Kenyan confectionery in 2017 and 2018 respectively, Kenya on the other hand banned Tanzanian tour vans from accessing Maasai Mara National Reserve.
In the latest heightened and deepening row, Tanzania moved swiftly and banned Kenya Airways flights “on a reciprocal basis” after Kenya decided against including Tanzania in a list of countries whose passengers would be permitted to enter Kenya when commercial flights resumed on 1 August.
If successful and fully implemented, AfCFTA will create a single market for its population of about 1.3 billion, perhaps the best for Africans since breaking colonial chains and catapulting Africa into the leagues of China and India in terms of market.
Nairobi, August 22 —Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA) and the East African Tax and Governance Network (EATGN) has cautioned the government of Kenya in its pursuit of new Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs) with the government of Barbados and Government of the Republic of Singapore.
Singapore is globally ranked as the 8th most aggressive tax haven allowing for extensive avoidance and evasion of taxes from other jurisdictions around the world. The civil society argue that having DTAs with both countries doubly places Kenya at risk of eroded tax revenues in a time of increased debt strain.
DTAs serve to relieve the double taxation of income that is earned in one jurisdiction by a resident of another, providing relief from double taxation in the situation where income is subject to tax for both countries.
In response to a notice issued by the Ministry of Finance, National Treasury, and Planning, on July 13 this year requesting for public submissions on the respective treaties, TJNA and EATGN welcomed the change in policy behavior and submitted comments for the two DTAs on August 17.
This represents a fundamental shift in the inclusion of stakeholders in treaty-making and ratification processes in Kenya.
The civil society group now urges that the process moves beyond invitations for comments to more constructive consultations, analysis, and decision making that involve other participants including the Kenyan parliament.
Having previously petitioned the High Court and won against the National Treasury on the issue of public participation as related to the DTA with Mauritius, TJNA recognizes this significant step taken by the government to begin opening up the process of policymaking as enshrined in the Kenya Constitution.
Alvin Mosioma, TJNA Executive Director had previously stated “TJNA intends to ensure that in future similar tax negotiations are not in contravention with the laid down laws and procedures.”
Nevertheless, considering the increasing significance of tax havens in the loss of domestic revenue, TJNA and EAGTN have asked the Kenyan Ministry of Finance to note key considerations during the process.
“The government needs to publicly explain why there’s an urgency to sign DTAs with known tax haven jurisdictions such as Mauritius or Singapore instead of prioritizing the implementation of one that has already been developed by the East African Community (EAC) members, who are Kenya’s largest trading partners,” Alvin Mosioma told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
EATGN is a civil society collaborative initiative of individuals and non-state actor institutions in the East Africa Community (EAC) that share the understanding that taxation is fundamental in achieving social justice and development goals.
Further, TJNA wants that further to submission of comments, the Barbados and Singapore tax treaties will require parliamentary scrutiny and public debate under the Treaty Making and Ratification Act of 2012 (TMRA 2012).
This is in line with the fulfillment of the monist principle in the Constitution; requiring approval by the legislature on treaties that become part of domestic law, especially if they affect public finance and the burden of taxation, as laid down in articles 1, 2.6, 114(2), 201 and 210(1) of the Constitution
According to Mosioma, there is a need to evaluate both tax treaties in relation to how they are likely to negatively affect Kenyan tax law. A cost-benefit evaluation on the desirability of the Barbados and Singapore tax treaties as specified in the TMRA is necessary.
This is especially because these treaties entail a restriction on tax sovereignty and have major revenue implications; they grant tax benefits and exemptions to foreign investors not available to Kenyan citizens or companies, resulting in the reduction of government revenue and directly affecting the public finances and the sharing of the burden of taxation (Constitution Article 201).
A public impact on the risk of revenue loss will need to be shared for and national debate. The revenue implications of the various benefits and possible loss from exemptions in tax treaties must be evaluated against the conceivable gains, or otherwise, of extractive investment from abroad.
Nairobi, August 1 —With COVID-19 proving to be the most adverse peacetime shock to the global economy, tax advocates have raised concern over a possible rise in the scope of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) in Africa.
Fearing that existing fragile health systems might be swiftly overwhelmed if the pandemic spreads beyond a small number of cases, governments across Africa are stepping up their preparedness to curb its spread.
A recent tax justice advocacy training done via online conferencing sought to end aid dependency in Africa, helped redefine roles to be played by various sectors in an effort to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa.
The training by International Tax Justice Academy (ITJA) and Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), attracted participants from 40 African countries drawn from the media, academia, civil society, and trade unions.
“Since we started such training in 2014, we have so far imparted knowledge on over 1,000 participants on issues which include the need for domestic resource mobilization to finance Africa’s development,” Alvin Musioma, Executive Director at Tax Justice Network Africa, a Pan-African advocacy and research network of 31 members in 16 African countries told the conference in his opening remarks.
It is estimated that illicit financial flows in Africa stand between $50 and $80 billion annually; with 44 percent of the continent’s financial wealth thought to be held offshore, which corresponds to tax revenue losses of some $20 billion. The ultimate objective is not only to reduce but ultimately eliminate illicit outflows.
Africa, endowed with significant natural resource wealth with good husbandry has the potential to finance its development but existing illegal cross border movements of money and capital that threaten the continent’s sustainable development have been growing every year.
“The threat that illicit financial flows pose on the continent’s integrity and stability of its financial system in normal times has existed over decades, and now there is much to worry of in the face of the pandemic,” adds Mosioma.
Carried out by experts in their respective fields, the trainers shed light on an array of topics including Double Tax Treaties and the role they play in facilitating international corporate tax avoidance, global financial secrecy and how tax systems are rigged against Africa as well as techniques used by multinational companies to reduce or avoid taxes among others.
This year marks the 7th Edition of ITJA training with the theme: Tax Justice Advocacy: Increasing Participation of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Journalists through Capacity Building. This, according to Mosioma proved that with technology, regular capacity building activities can be held amid a global pandemic as COVID-19.
Africa is home to the world’s largest arable landmass, second largest and longest rivers (the Nile and the Congo), and its second-largest tropical forest.
A study carried out by the African Development Bank Group estimates that the total value added of the continent’s fisheries and aquaculture sector alone stands at US$ 24 billion. Besides, about 30 percent of all global mineral reserves are found in Africa.
The continent’s proven oil reserves constitute 8 percent of the world’s stock and those of natural gas amounting to 7 percent. Minerals account for an average of 70 percent of total African exports and about 28 percent of gross domestic product.
Even with such enormous resources, the continent’s poverty rate stands at 41 percent, and out of the world’s 28 poorest countries, 27 are in Africa all with a poverty rate above 30 percent.
Undoubtedly, IFFs have turned the continent into a net creditor. During the academy, TJNA empowered the target groups with skills to identify, track, and report illicit outflows from the continent.
Trade misinvoicing, tax evasions, and the criminal smuggling of cash, illicit goods ad human trafficking across borders are the main types of IFFs.
A recent Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report on the problem of trade misinvoicing found that illicit cross-border movement of money by hiding within the regular commercial system indicates massive levels of IFFs are going undetected through the global trading system.
“Approximately $ 8.7 trillion is the sum of the value gaps identified in trade between 135 developing countries and 36 advanced economies over the ten-year period 2008-2017,” says the GFI report.
Between 1980 and 2018, Sub-Saharan Africa received $2 trillion on foreign direct investment and official development assistance and emitted over $1 trillion on IFFs. Ethiopia, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria account for over 50 percent of illicit financial flows in Sub Saharan Africa.
Nairobi, June 3 — As many as 30 million children’s lives are at risk from deadly diseases such as malaria, lack of immunization, or increased malnutrition, as health systems are overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report has warned.
“Although key differences exists between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and Covid-19, Ebola outbreak provides valuable insights into the secondary health impacts children can experience during an infectious disease outbreak where weak health systems are already stretched to their limit, people’s routines are disrupted, and fear takes hold,” says the report, authored by World Vision, a Christian humanitarian agency for children.
Of the UN’s 24 world’s poorest and most fragile countries with preexisting humanitarian plans, 14 are from the African continent. They include Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Libya, Ethiopia, DRC, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Burundi, and Burkina Faso.
While countries across the globe are required to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, those with existing crises are considered particularly vulnerable, and less equipped and able to do so.
According to the report, the very real secondary health impacts of COVID-19 in countries of fragility will reverberate through these communities and countries for years to come, compounding what are already extremely difficult situations and threatening to undermine progress made towards increasing health, wellbeing, and prosperity.
“The Ebola outbreak’s transmission rates were slightly different from the current COVID-19. We had not experienced a disease of pandemic levels in the recent years that were going to paralyze the entire world. Ebola was hence the closest we could reflect on in this report,” Joseph Kamara, World Vision East Africa Regional Director, and Emergency Affairs told Ubuntu Times in a zoom meeting interview.
As a result of the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone lost an estimated $2.2 billion of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) due to health costs, loss of lives, lower agricultural production, and reduced investments.
“The world is only beginning to understand the impacts of pandemics like COVID-19 on the least-developed countries as a whole and over the long term,” the report says.
Despite having established health systems, developed nations struggle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic as seen in high mortality rates, medical supply shortages, and overburdening of health care providers and facilities.
Countries identified in the UN’s global humanitarian response plan are prime examples of countries whose health systems were underprepared and underdeveloped prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Even if the children do not represent the high-risk group of COVID-19 fatality particularly, it is crystal clear that this pandemic has hidden risks to African children’s rights and well-being,” Eric Hazard, Director of Advocacy and Campaign for Africa at Save the Children, the British humanitarian organization for children told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) analysis of 182 Member States, 10 percent were not ready to respond to an infectious disease outbreak.
The report further warns that over 26 million children are at a greater risk of being exposed to potentially fatal diseases due to a 30 percent reduction in Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) immunization coverage.
“More than five million additional children could suffer from malnutrition, including severe wasting, and 100,000 additional children could die from malaria,” the report warns.
The UN identifies children as a group of priority concern, highlighting their increased risk of experiencing shocks.
Surpassed only by pneumonia, diarrhea, and sepsis, malaria is the fourth highest killer of children under five.
In the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, says the report, the region saw a 50 percent reduction in access to healthcare services, leading to increased deaths from malaria by an average of 50.5 percent across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
“Due to fear, outpatient visits to hospitals dropped to as low as 10 percent as people were afraid to visit healthcare facilities in case they caught the virus themselves. Similar fears are being seen with COVID-19,” the report says.
According to the UN children agency, UNICEF, malnutrition causes nearly half of all deaths in children under 5, either directly from acute forms or from increased vulnerability to infections and other illnesses.
And with the pandemic restricting access to nutritious food, children previously relying on school feeding programs no longer access the services, coupled with closed markets, limiting opportunities to buy or sell produce and other food items.
In Kenya, children have been out of school for three months due to COVID-19, but current heated debate pitting parents, education stakeholders, and the government on whether to reopen schools or not has created an environment of confusion.
A young child is guided on the importance of and how to carry out proper hand washing using running water and soap to fight Coronavirus. Many Kenyans have raised concerns over the challenge of access to water and sanitizers even as the government urges the population to practice handwashing. Children living in arid and semi-arid land as well as children in urban slums face challenges of water availability in the face of the pandemic. Credit: World Vision EARO
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has been insisting that children will sit for national exams this year despite being out of school, adding that children were going on with learning through digital skills.
It is a statement that has left parents from disadvantaged economic backgrounds in dilemma as inequalities such as access to smartphones, a reliable internet, and television as well as radio sets exist.
“Not every child has access to online learning or through radio or take-home material. If those can be supplemented with going to school, at particular intervals or phases, that would work,” says Kamara.
He adds, “We have to come up with innovations that fit into our context. Our context is much different than the context in the western world where they have access to fast internet. We do not have the infrastructure to extend online learning, especially to rural children and urban poor.”
“The rapid spread of the pandemic has been clearly overburdening an under-resourced African system. We have managed to resist the pandemic from the sanitary point of view, but in another way, the system has been shifting as there has been a disruption hence the continent is likely to be in a scenario of an increase in incidences from preventable and treatable diseases,” says Hazard of Save the Children.
JOHANNESBURG/NAIROBI APRIL 4, 2020 — The coronavirus pandemic is currently putting a lot of strain on Africa’s health systems beyond its limits in curbing the exponential spread of the disease. Africa’s continued reliance on imported finished generics and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) is likely to slow efforts in treating victims of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, warns the African Union Development Agency New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD).
Already, coronavirus has put a lot of strain on Africa’s healthcare systems beyond its limits in curbing the exponential spread of the disease.
This is happening in the face of the growing prohibition on the export of many medical technologies and priority medicines, the continent is already experiencing shortages of medical products required by medical staff to efficiently fight the spread of the virus.
“The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD has for a long time been raising awareness about this over-dependency,” says Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of AUDA-NEPAD, adding that it is deemed necessary to set up initiatives such as the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa and its associated business plan to alleviate the phenomenon.
At continental level, the African Union has established a Coronavirus Fund with commitments already totaling 20 million USD while at national level, most African countries are implementing lockdowns, testing of suspected cases and contact tracing.
As African governments implement lockdowns in efforts to contain the spread, there are growing fears that prolonged lockdowns will have a negative impact on socio-economic activities.
“Our short-term response and support to member states at the AUDA-NEPAD is geared towards slowing down the pandemic, knowing more about how COVID-19 is spreading and lessening the socio-economic impact of the pandemic,” says Mayaki.
While ensuring the protection of Africa’s economic foundations, experts say the move is a proactive, efficient and direct response in enhancing continental coverage and improving access to sustainable and resilient health services.
This comprehensive set of responses which if expected to reach their full potential must be fully supported not only by institutional actors but also by the private sector and civil society, within the context of the principles of collective consciousness and shared responsibility.
By launching the COVID-19 Response Plan of Action, AUDA-NEPAD aims to set up, along with other African Union competent institutions, a coordinated and effective plan in addressing this exceptional health crisis.
BUDALANGI April 5, 2020 — For 54-year-old Esther Anyango, who resides in Maduwa village nestled in the swampy Yala, an island within the Lake Victoria waters is not her choice.
“This time, the waters are too much to bear. This is different from the other floods,” she tells Ubuntu Times in an interview, speaking through a translator, referring to the ongoing flooding in Budalangi, a region that sits on the shores of Lake Victoria.
It has never been Anyango’s delight to endure floods that happen in her village almost every year. Those financially okay, she says, have relocated and established their new residences in much safe land, mostly Bunyala north.
A mother of six, Anyango’s family is one of hundreds displaced due to the ongoing flooding in Budalangi, which experts say is much due to rising water levels at Lake Victoria.
As of March 28, close to 500 families were reportedly affected by flooding, forcing them to seek refuge on safer raised grounds.
Of concern to Anyango and thousands of residents here is how they will balance having to practice self-distancing and handwashing using clean water or sanitizers, now that they have their homes submerged.
“Toilets have been submerged in floodwater. The water is now contaminated and soon, we are foreseeing a cholera outbreak and other water-borne diseases. To worsen it, families are forced to share single rooms in safer places,” Elijah Wanjala, a resident of Mabinju told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
In its Eastern Africa regional flood snapshot for November last year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said over 2.8 million people had been affected by the floods.
The floods, which came in the back of consecutive droughts triggered flooding and landslides across the region, destroying homes, infrastructure and livelihoods, and the risk of communicable diseases — including cholera.
In Kenya’s western region, as floodwaters stagnate, potential threats of a water-borne disease outbreak is imminent, threatening to jeopardize the government’s efforts in containing the spread of coronavirus pandemic.
A spot check at one of the trading centers saw businesses brought to a halt, with few remaining shops staring at a possible total closure as the floodwaters continue to occupy the surrounding.
Raphael Wanjala, a Member of Parliament for Budalangi constituency, told Ubuntu Times in a telephone interview that the ongoing floods are likely to complicate the government’s efforts to combat coronavirus spread.
A woman with her children is spotted outside her submerged homestead with few belongings. Ongoing floods have caused residents to flee to safer grounds in Budalangi. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
“The flooding threatens to sink the people of Budalangi into deeper poverty. One of the biggest concerns will be managing overcrowding in safety camps where families affected by the raging floods seek refuge,” says Wanjala.
Plagued by heavy rain and flooding over the last few months, with the February flooding leaving 40 dead and 15,000 people displaced, Tanzanian authorities had to order at least 25,000 people to evacuate to safer grounds.
This was after Nyumba ya Mungu dam, located in Mwanga district in the northern Kilimanjaro region, showed signs of breaking due to rising water levels.
Last month, roads in and around the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam were closed due to heavy rains, with a bridge in Kilosa district on the important Morogoro-Dodoma highway collapsing.
A March report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicates that torrential rains caused damage in Mutimbuzi and Kabezi communes in Burundi’s Bujumbura rural province and Nyanza-Lac in Makamba province resulting in two deaths and over 300 people displaced from their homes
Other provinces affected by the torrential rains in Burundi include Rumonge, Gitega and Ruyigi provinces.
The unusual torrential rainfall witnessed in most countries of the East African region within the last quarter of last year, were said to be primarily been driven by the positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)-an irregular oscillation of sea surface temperatures in which the western Indian Ocean becomes alternately warmer (positive phase) and then colder (negative phase) than the eastern part of the ocean.
Budalangi in Kenya, currently witnessing floods is home to a multi-million Bunyala rice irrigation scheme, with fears emerging that continued flooding will disrupt jobs and food security given the timing of the floods which come at the time of planting season.
A child is seen sleeping outside a grass-thatched mud-walled house in Runyu village as Lake Victoria’s backflow water cause havoc in Budalangi constituency. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
Leaders say the sudden rising water levels in Lake Victoria could have been occasioned by neighboring Ugandan government’s decision to let off water from its Jinja dam through Kiira and Nalubaale powers stations spillways into the River Nile.
For residents living in villages within the Yala swamp, accessing medical services is a tedious exercise, with the nearest health center located in Osieko, several miles away
“People here live by the mercies of God. For them to access medical care, they have to sail a boat far away. With floods causing havoc, the situation is worsened,” says Collins Ayango, a water and beverage consultant from the region, who is in the process of putting up water treatment and bottling plant, seeking to solve the problem of access to clean portable water for the region’s residents.
Uganda and Kenya are part of the countries that signed the 2010 Cooperative Framework Agreement that allows the development of projects along the Nile without approval from Egypt. Under the framework, the River Nile Basin Commission was established to act as a forum for co-operation and a clearinghouse for the planned measures that could cause any harm to other riparian states.
Collins Ayango told Ubuntu Times that lack of political goodwill in the implementation of infrastructural projects, including building reliable dykes on the River Nzoia that empties its water to Lake Victoria used to contribute to annual floods in Budalangi.
“Until when the World Bank funded construction of concrete dykes few years ago, residents used to witness fatal flooding. The ongoing floods look different from the past. It seems it is being caused by the lake’s backflow,” he says.
Some of the vastly affected areas in Budalangi include Osieko, Maduwa, Bukhuma, Bulwani, Iyanga, Rukala, Runyu, Bubamba. Others are Kholokhongo, Mabinju, Musoma, Rugunya, Omena Beach and Buongo villages.
NAIROBI MARCH 26, 2020 — Kenya, on Thursday confirmed its first Coronavirus (COVID-19) death after a 66-year-old male Kenyan citizen passed on in the afternoon as confirmed cases rise to 31.
Mutahi Kagwe, the country’s health minister, said the patient who was suffering from diabetes arrived in the country on March 13 from South Africa from Swaziland and had been treated at Aga Khan, a private hospital in Nairobi.
“He died this afternoon at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where he had been admitted,” said Kagwe in a statement.
The ‘sad’ news came barely hours after a 27-year-old Kenyan who had tested positive on March 13 recovered from the virus after a test analysis.
The reported recovery gave Kenya a much-awaited hope against the pandemic, with so far five of its 47 counties having reported confirmed cases.
Amidst increasing fears over the virus, the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, when he addressed the nation on Wednesday announced measures meant to help prevent its spread.
So far, since the virus’ outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December last year, it has spread to at least 175 countries and territories as per data compiled by the United States-based Johns Hopkins University.
And with over 2,400 confirmed cases of Covid-19 across the African continent, the continued growth of reported cases poses major challenges for the continent’s under-resourced healthcare services.
Kenya will go into a lock-down beginning Friday March 27 every day from 7 pm to 5 am in an attempt to avoid a catastrophe, said the president, Uhuru Kenyatta when he addressed the nation.
In Kenya, the announced lock-down seeks to confine all persons excluding medical professionals, health workers, critical and essential service providers.
Most African nations have imposed restrictions and taken a range of extraordinary measures to try to combat the crisis. Many flights have been suspended, with entries for travelers from much of Europe and the US effectively impossible.
Other countries that have imposed curfews and lock-down in recent days in Africa include Rwanda and The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
President Uhuru further announced that he and other top Kenyan officials would have salaries, while countries like DRC is seeking to isolate its capital, Kinshasa from the rest of the country, as Ethiopia is planning to release more than 4,000 prisoners as one way of de-congesting crowded jails.
There are fears that lockdown will bring significant hardship for the continent’s poor, many of whom live hand to mouth without formal employment.
African governments are now worried if the virus spreads through crowded cities, and places like refugee camps as its healthcare systems can only deal with a fraction of those needing care from the virus.
Other measures announced by President Uhuru include implementation of a 100 percent tax relief to increase disposable income, with the country’s Labour and Social Protection ministry appropriating $95 million for the elderly, orphans and other vulnerable citizens through cash-transfers to cushion them from adverse economic effects of the pandemic.
KAKAMEGA, KENYA MARCH 21, 2020 — Julius Shilenga Lumwamu struggled 13 months in a series of misdiagnosis beginning June 2006 after discovering a swollen lymph node on his left arm and numbness on small fingers of both his hands.
Then aged 48, and a teacher in one of the local schools in Kakamega, some 390 km north-west of the capital, Nairobi, he would frequent Nairobi to seek medication after exhausting all medical options in his rural district.
“I underwent a series of medical tests, all at my own expenses which involved traveling all the way to Nairobi and back. It was a costly affair, and more painful because I wasted the little money I had without getting to unearth the cause of my sickness,” Lumwamu, 62-year old father of six, who is a cancer survivor tells Ubuntu Times as he attends to his dairy cows in his rural home.
Now a retired teacher, Lumwamu story depicts a sense of hopelessness for millions of citizens living in low and middle-income countries, in which the World Health Organization in its February report dubbed ‘Setting priorities, investing wisely and providing care for all’ predicts a 60 percent increase in cancer cases if the current trend is anything to go by.
“There is a need to step up cancer services in low and middle-income countries. If the current trend on cancer cases continues, the world will witness a 60 percent increase in cancer cases over by 2030,” states the report.
Kenya, like countries in the developing world, has had to focus limited health resources on combating infectious diseases and improving maternal and child health, while health services are not equipped to prevent, diagnose and treat cancers.
According to WHO, the year 2019 saw more than 90 percent of high-income countries reporting that comprehensive treatment services for cancer were available in the public health system compared to less than 15 percent of low-income countries.
Unlike millions of Kenyans who die in silence of cancer, Lumwamu was lucky to access medical help and a financial facility to have him undergo early diagnosis and treatment at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) – Kenya’s oldest and largest public, tertiary referral hospital for the Ministry of Health located in Nairobi.
“It was traumatizing. I was required to part with some 500 USD for manual biopsy, a test in which sample tissue is taken from the body in order to carry out close examination at KNH. I had exhausted a 5,000 USD loaning facility from my teachers SACCO and so became hard to raise the amount,” says Lumwamu, who got help from a family friend who linked him to a private hospital where his biopsy specimen was done.
“Again, I was to take the biopsy specimen to KNH to confirm the type of diagnosis but then again, the facility’s biopsy machine had broken down and so the sample had to be flown to India for further analysis,” he narrates.
What he didn’t know then was that two weeks later, the verified results would prove that he had tested with Non-Hodgkin lymphomas cancer, a cancer that arises from lymphocytes, a kind of white blood cell usually found in blood and lymph nodes.
Sitting in their living room on a quiet village in Kakamega County, Lumwamu and his wife Esther Shimenga said they were so shocked at the results, especially having a loan of 500 USD to repay, with the real treatment cost staring at their stretched financial resources.
“Having received the exact diagnosis, I had to be subjected to chemotherapy treatment twice a month for three months. I now had no other option than approaching a commercial bank for a loan,” Lumwamu, who sourced for a 10,000 USD loan from Equity Bank.
Julius and his wife Esther Shilenga display documents for a loan they took from a commercial bank to facilitate treatment. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
Despite being a subscriber to the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), this only helped him pay a bill of a meager $43, against a required $500 for biopsy test at the KNH, the public health facility.
“From what I went through, I don’t think the government has ever known exactly how to go about helping especially people facing life-threatening diseases like cancer. People just die quietly, they suffer because the time they are supposed to get treatment, the drugs are not there and if they are available they are very expensive,” he says, adding that for him, he was forced to buy drugs in the city, far from KNH where he was receiving treatment, which would cost him up to $300.
One of the hospital document obtained by Julius while seeking treatment. Accessing cancer medication in Kenya is an expensive one, barring the poor from quality treatment. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) through its recent report titled ‘Cancer Research for Cancer Prevention’ says high-income countries have adopted prevention, early diagnosis, and screening programs, which together with better treatment, have contributed to an estimated 20 percent reduction in the probability of premature mortality between 2000 and 2015, but low-income countries only saw a reduction of five percent.
“The challenge will be for countries to select treatments balancing considerations including cost, feasibility and effectiveness. Each government is tasked with choosing the appropriate innovative cancer therapies, while recognizing that established treatments, many of which are very effective and affordable, can provide benefits for cancer without causing financial hardship,” says the report.
Each time an affluent Kenyan or a politician succumbs to cancer disease, government operatives are quick to fill airwaves with promises of improving the healthcare system, including policies governing cancer management, but fade into thin air a couple of days.
Dr. Catherine Nyongesa, physician and radiation oncologist, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Texas Cancer Centre told Ubuntu Times in an interview that Kenya, compared to years back, has made progress combating cancer.
“Introduction of oncology packages by NHIF since 2016 to cater for treatment be it surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, launching of the National Cancer Control Strategy, formulation of national cancer treatment guidelines 2013, National Cancer Treatment Protocols 2018 and the National Cancer screening guidelines has upped efforts to combat this life-threatening disease,” she said.
In Kenya today, cancer is ranked as the third leading cause of death, exceeded only by infections and heart disease.
The Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) 2018 findings show that each year, about 47,887 Kenyans get cancer and 32,987 die from the disease. The most common remains breast cancer with 5,985 women and men diagnosed every year compared to 2,864 prostate cases. Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, in developing countries, constituting a real public health problem.
NAIROBI MARCH 13, 2020 — “When the safety and security of our population is threatened by foreign forces regardless of how they came into Mandera County, our position is very simple, which is that of protection of our population at all costs. We respect our neighbors and wish them well. Their problem is their problem and Somali Government and its people must find a solution to their problem in their own ways,” so goes a statement by Ali Ibrahim Roba, governor for Mandera, a county bordering Kenya to the porous Somalia in the north.
Earlier last week, heavy fighting erupted in the border town of Bulla Hawo, a contested frontier town, a business hub, a transit point, and a critical geopolitical outpost lying along the common borderline when the Somali Federal Government troops engaged forces from the semi-autonomous regional government of Jubaland.
In 2019, Jubaland authorities raised accusations against the Federal Government of Somalia for what it termed as attempts to interfere with its elections, so as to facilitate removal of Jubaland President Sheikh Ahmed Madobe who is perceived as a close ally to Kenya.
“Some desperate leader from northern Kenya has resorted to hired goons in the name of Strategic Intelligence who are pretending to be experts who know more about the desperate security situation in Mandera. Our level of patriotism and sense of belonging can never be measured through a partisan support to a regional government of Jubaland at the expense of the security of our population,” reads the response statement.
Somalia Federal Government had accused Kenya of harboring fugitive Jubaland security minister Abdirashid Hassan Abdinur also known as Janan, who is said to have escaped from a Mogadishu prison on January 28, where he had been held since August 31, 2019 on accusation of ‘grave human rights violation and killing civilians in Gedo region’.
Somalia’s government army engaged Janan’s troops in Bulla Hawo, forcing the fugitive’s fighters to cross over to Kenya’s border county of Mandera, raising fears among locals.
And with these myriads feuds between the fragile government in Mogadishu and its federal states, it would prove a huge obstacle to fighting the armed Al-Shabaab group in war-torn Somalia.
After over two decades of civil war and inter-clan conflict, Somalia started an ambitious program of national reconciliation and development, with federalism as a pillar of its plan, leading to the establishment of regional governments under the federal government based in Mogadishu.
After several attacks by armed insurgents in Kenya’s northeastern region, mostly targeting non-Muslim, leaders from the region were under pressure to seek local solutions on curbing the menace.
Recently, eleven Members of Parliament who made a secret trip to neighboring Somalia were later arrested by police for questioning when they jetted back into the country. Of the 11 MPs, six were from Mandera, three from Wajir and two from Garissa counties.
“The legislators might have had a genuine reason on seeking amicable solution to terrorism activities in neighboring country of Somali about terror issues plighting the northeastern region, but they ought to have sought the government protocol,” says Mbijiwe.
According to Governor Roba, the article sought to sway the Kenyan government views to have him change the position he holds against the presence of foreign forces in the county of Mandera.
“Let it be clear to everyone that we have nothing against Jubaland forces in Mandera. We have nothing against Jubaland or anyone else but are just interested in the safety of Mandera people against foreign fighters. If not accepting such risks translates to opposing anyone so be it,” reiterated the governor.
At least 11 people were killed in the fight involving the Somali government army and the Jubaland troops in the border town of Bulla Hawo.
Mohammed Mahmoud, a senator from Mandera County says with an already existing internally displaced persons, such conflicts are likely to put the lives of residents in the northeastern counties in limbo.
“Our people have borne the brunt of calamities such as droughts and hunger. Such a situation in our borderline threatens the existence of a people living in fragility,” said Mahmoud.
NAIROBI MARCH 13, 2020 — The virus which exploded in China’s Wuhan City in Hubei Province has claimed 4,600 lives with over 126,000 people infected globally out of whom 67,000 have recovered.
Kenya has become the first country in the Horn of Africa to confirm the first case of coronavirus, a virus which the World Health Organization on Wednesday declared it a global pandemic.
The case, which the country’s health ministry said was confirmed on March 12 become the first case to be positively confirmed in Kenya since its outbreak in China’s Wuhan city in December last year.
Addressing the country at a press conference today, Health cabinet secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the victim, a Kenyan female is said to have jetted in the country on March 5 from the United States via London.
The case was positively confirmed by the National Influenza Centre Laboratory at the National public health laboratories of the ministry of health.
“The patient is in stable condition and is being managed at the infectious disease unit at the Kenyatta National Hospital,” said Kagwe when he addressed the media.
The health minister assured Kenyans that proper measures were being strengthened through its National Emergency Response Committee on Coronavirus by providing strategic leadership working through the government approach to respond to the case in the implementation of mitigation measures.
And while the news sends shocks to Kenya’s 50 million populations, the government said it has traced contacts and names of the persons who traveled with or sat next to the victim, including their names to help in curbing possibility of its spread.
“Most people who become infected may experience only mild illness and recover easily, but the disease can be more severe in others, especially the elderly and people with chronic illnesses,” said Kagwe.
Kenya now joins the 11 African countries drawn from northern, western and Southern Africa after the continent’s first case was reported in Egypt on February 14.
The latest statistics from WHO indicate that already Egypt leads with the number of confirmed cases standing at 59, followed by Algeria with 20 confirmed cases.
Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Morocco (each reported two confirmed cases)
Togo and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) confirmed two cases each.
The African Union’s centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) through a statement by its Africa head Dr. John Ngekasong at the Africa Union (AU) on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, said proper measures have been put in place.
“We have distributed testing kits capable of testing over 10,000 people, purchased more emergency medical items including test kits, thermal scanners and other critical medical supplies and stockpiling them to meet the requests from member states,” he said.
The current global death toll from COVID-19 which now stands at over 4,000, and more than 110,000 confirmed cases, according to WHO, the pandemic has already spread to more than 115 countries and territories.
NAIROBI, KENYA MARCH 7,2020 — Kenya, on Friday issued a temporary ban on meetings, conferences and international events that involves attendees from countries affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19). The announcement comes in the wake of the deadly virus making inroads in a handful of countries in Africa.
The ban, which included a temporary ban lifting on flights from Italy, will see the government allow flights from Italy to Kenya, with no passengers and will jet into the country to evacuate Italian citizens.
“As a government, we are only doing a temporary lift on Italian flights to Kenya, but only to evacuate Italian citizens from the country. The flight(s) will only contain their cabin crew, who will not be allowed to disembark while the passengers are being picked,” Mutahi Kagwe, the country’s Health Ministry Cabinet Secretary told a press conference in the capital, Nairobi.
The cabinet secretary said this when he launched a newly completed Kenyatta National Hospital isolation center and the infectious disease unit for coronavirus, located at the city’s Mbagathi Hospital as part of efforts to contain the virus should it be positively reported.
Cabinet Secretary for health, Mutahi Kagwe (left) in brown shirt is taken through installed equipment at the newly launched coronavirus isolation center at Mbagathi, a public hospital in the capital, Nairobi. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
Although the East African nation, despite having investigated 23 alerts involving 31 suspected cases that have tested negative for Covid-19, with two of recently investigated cases being in the capital, Nairobi, continues to assure its citizens that proper measures have been put in place.
Kenya is boasting of having set up over 100 hospital beds in public hospitals to handle patients in case of positively identified cases. China built two coronavirus hospitals in over a week, with a 1,600-bed capacity.
“Our government tells us the country is ready to fight coronavirus in case there is an outbreak while at the same time allowed flights from China which is the origin of this threat. Our government should not gamble with our lives,” Joseph Omolo, a resident of Kibera, Africa’s largest slum located in Nairobi told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
Togo is the latest African nation to have reported a positive case of coronavirus, adding to the list of African countries affected so far standing at eight, other countries being Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, South Africa, and Cameroon.
In February, there was an uproar when a Chinese plane carrying 239 passengers touched down at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). The government demystified fears, telling its citizens that the passengers were safe having been scanned from their country of origin and that they would be put on self-quarantine for 14 days.
Following the uproar, a high court in Kenya issued temporary orders suspending all flights from China, after the Law Society of Kenya moved to court seeking orders to bar the government from allowing planes from China flying into Kenya.
The World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that as of 5th March 2020, 95,333 coronavirus cases had been reported globally, and a bigger percentage of the 3,282 death cases coming from mainland China.
Among other measures the Kenyan government has taken include having a diagnostic capacity at the National Influenza Centre and Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) laboratories to test suspected cases of COVID-19.
“We are ensuring proper and mandatory screening at all points of entry to minimize the risk of importation of the virus from affected countries,” said Kagwe, the health minister, procuring an additional 5,000 personal protective equipment with the support of United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Cabinet Secretaries Mutahi Kagwe (Health), Rachael Omamo (Foreign Affairs) together with other government officials are taken through the newly established coronavirus isolation facility at Mbagathi hospital health Cabinet Secretary together with Foreign Affairs. Credit: Robert Kibet Ubuntu Times
“The impact on FDI will be concentrated in those countries that are most severely hit by the epidemic, although negative demand shocks and the economic impact of supply chain disruptions will affect investment prospects in other countries,” says the report.
With African countries having health systems that are overwhelmed by various disease outbreaks, WHO has called on the continent’s governments to ensure it invests in early detection for efficient control of the epidemic spreading once it hits.
Outside of China, Italy is one of the worst-hit from the coronavirus epidemic with a toll of over 100 deaths. This led to Kenya banning all flights from Italy to Kenya as a possible measure to avoid threats.
Esther Lusaka, 35-year-old mother of four, a resident of Nairobi told Ubuntu Times in an interview that most of the women, like her who have been seeking medication at Mbagathi Hospital where the isolation center has been set up will tend to keep off the facility.
“We are used to theatrics in Kenyan government especially in the health ministry where officials gamble with Kenyans’ lives. How sure are we that the facility will handle the outbreak if there will be, and have normal patients seek medication at the same public hospital?” she wondered.
Ethiopia, Africa’s major airline gateway with its national airline operating 34 flights from China has strengthened its surveillance, diagnostic and medical care as well as public health information in readiness for a potential outbreak.
Homa Bay, Kenya MARCH 4, 2020 — With more than half of the estimated 2.2 billion people to be added to the global population by 2050 expected to be from the African continent, according to the UN report on global population, this rapid growth and its development policies, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa will inhibit efforts to alleviate poverty, ensuring food security, preserving the environment, and improving Africans’ well-being, increasing vulnerability to climate change impacts and undermine sustainable development efforts on the continent.
Staring at a crisis in which some 256 million people are facing hunger, and where much of its current discourse on food security is focused on increasing and expanding agricultural production, the African continent’s expansion in agricultural production is speculated to be at the expense of natural resources.
As one of the solutions, an ambitious program dubbed Regreening Africa, a multi-country project funded by the European Union is seeking to scale up evergreen agriculture targeting an estimated 500,000 farm households over an area of one million hectares by 2022.
The eight beneficiary countries; Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda in East Africa and West Africa’s Niger, Mali, Ghana, and Senegal are at the forefront in restoring already degraded land to more productive use.
The project builds on the considerable experience in land restoration consortium partners which are World Agroforestry Centre as project lead, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), CARE, Oxfam, and Sahel Eco.
“We are blending research with development and identify practices that are suitable for the different kinds of farms that we are working across the eight countries in East Africa and West Africa’s Sahel region. Working with research and development partners together helps us to be able to make decisions that are informed by scientific evidence,” Susan Chomba, Regreening Africa Project Manager told Ubuntu Times in an interview.
The project encourages the use of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), a quick, affordable and easy-to-replicate way of restoring and improving agricultural, forested and pasture lands by promoting systematic regrowth of existing trees or from naturally occurring tree seeds. It can be used wherever there are living tree stumps with the ability to coppice (re-sprout) or seeds in the soil that will germinate.
Stephen Tumhaire, a farmer in Chamkama, northern Uganda cattle corridor prunes indigenous trees on his farm. He practices Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) after acquiring skills on how to make sprouting trees regenerate. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
Maxwell Ochoo, 32-year old father of four, quit his job as a community health mobilizer to engage in farming, a risky venture amidst degraded land in Lambwe, Kenya’s lakeside region.
“I worked as a community health mobilizer but when my contract ended, I resorted to try [my] luck in farming. It was a challenging undertaking with degraded land where none believed it would one day turn green,” says Ochoo.
After successfully practicing FMNR on his farm, Ochoo is currently a proud farmer as he is able to take his children to school, thanks to reliable income from his pawpaw fruits and a fish pond he established on his farm.
Farmer James Gichuru examining his male pawpaw tree on his farm in Aringo village, Homa Bay. Farmers in this region have found hope in pawpaw farming due to its ability to do well on harsh dry climate. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
To minimize food cost for fish, I utilize calliandra — a small tropical legume tree he planted on his land, whose dry leaves are consumed by fish.
Farmers increase food security by retaining trees on agricultural land, by encouraging natural regeneration and by planting trees and other forest plants. For most of the year, herders in arid and semi-arid lands depend on trees as a source of fodder for their livestock.
Nancy Kemboi, a smallholder farmer in Baringo, a region characterized by constant drought also benefited on this simple innovative technique of protecting wildlings and pruning stumps that coppice so they rapidly regrow into trees.
Together with her husband, Nancy, through a capacity building on the FMNR skills offered by World Vision Kenya, she started regenerating indigenous trees such as acacia and re-growing pasture in the same field to cushion her livestock during extreme drought periods.
Africa’s indigenous trees coppice when cut, their stumps looking like weeds, but when farmers select the tallest and straight stems and cull the rest, trees rapidly grow.
Florence Namembwa, a smallholder farmer in Chamkama, northern ASAL part of Uganda practicing FMNR on her farm. A beneficiary of training, she has learned to regenerate trees on her farm, which provides her with fuelwood. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
“At first, the practice seemed [like] it would take long, but with patience and continuous pruning of the trees, benefits started to trickle. My children could not spend time having to fetch fuel wood mile away. I started getting fuel from tree branches, a product of pruning of growing sprouts,” Nancy told an interview at her farm.
Nancy’s children field soon started to contrast with the bare bleak ones of her neighbors. Her livestock started to thrive, with milk production increasing due to the availability of quality pasture.
“Before practicing FMNR, I used to get merely five-liter of milk a day from my cows, selling it to middlemen who used to buy at low prices,” says Nancy, adding that since her milk production increased, she now sells her milk to a nearby dairy facility.
Juliana Aoko, a 52-year old farmer mulches pawpaw fruit trees on her farm in Lambwe. Mulching helps reduce moisture in areas where there is extreme sun exposure. She has learned to plant indigenous trees on her farm, which are adaptable to the climate. Credit: Robert Kibet / Ubuntu Times
Lilian Dodzo, World Vision Kenya Country Director says the decision to train and capacity-build farmers with simple skills on how to mitigate against the changing climate is such a big phenomenon in the current environment.
“It is important to build skills in our communities to find very simple and low-cost ways in which we can mitigate against climate change to be able to build the resilience of our communities,” Dodzo told in an interview.
She adds, “Our greatest interest in these activities is to see what it contributes to the child well-being. With access to pasture and more milk to sell, the income goes all the way to helping pay for children school fees, buy food and develop gardens where women can grow drought-resistant crops.”
According to Clare Rogers, World Vision Australia Chief Executive Officer, Nancy’s courageous move has not only changed her family but the community and farms around her area, with her neighbors starting to adopt the same approach after losing livestock to drought being an inspiration for the future.
“Nancy and her husband had the courage to try something new. They began to make the change happen here, and now her having to walk miles away to collect firewood solved. The changed landscape, availability of firewood and pasture means her kids can go to school,” she said.
“Women can change the world. This was not an easy journey but the fruit of the work after they did this was so obvious that it became very hard for people to deny,” Clare told a group of local farmers who had come to see the success in Nancy’s farm model.
Nairobi February 26, 2020 – Abdulkarim Adan has lived in one of Kenya’s harshest environments in the northern arid and semi-arid region for 52 years. He has seen many droughts that have for decades left thousands of people without enough food and killing hundreds of precious livestock- their sole source of livelihoods. But the recent sequence of attacks by Alshabaab insurgents targeting non-local teachers working in counties in this region has made him question the future of his pastoral community, with education seen as a stepping stone out of extreme poverty.
Wearing a white waistcoat and holding a greyish walking stick, he sits on a bunch of fuelwood in the village of Halugho, a constellation of rickety shelters fashioned from tree twigs and sticks, and a few ridged iron-sheets structures.
Halugho is about a five-hour drive, some 250km on bone-clanking tracks from Garissa town, where men cluster to buy the mild stimulant khat as goats and camels wander by.
Kenya’s northern expanse is a classic illustration of how tackling climate change and attaining sustainable development – as defined by the UN global goals are two sides of the same coin.
Caught as it is in spans of politically-driven historical economic marginalization, educating its children appears to be the appropriate route out of poverty for inhabitants of Garissa, Mandera, and Isiolo and Wajir counties.
“I have in mind so many things,” says Abdulkarim. “Children should be sent to school in order to obtain income-generating skills. Each child needs to have access to quality education and access to trained teachers. But now, all you see here are education premises with no teachers.”
On the night of January 13, 2020, armed militants believed to be from neighboring Somalia raided Kamuthe Primary School in Garissa, where they killed three non-Muslim teachers, abducting a Muslim one and leaving another teacher wounded before proceeding to set fire to Kamuthe police post and destroying a communication mast.
Kenya’s teacher employer, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) bowed to pressure from teachers’ unions to have non-local non-Muslim teachers transferred from the regions perceived to be at risk of attacks from the Alshabaab insurgents and started transferring the teachers early this month.
With the move to transfer teachers having the potential to paralyze the education system in the region, local political leaders came strongly to protest the motion calling for an urgent meeting to resolve the standoff.
Aden Duale who is Garissa town Member of Parliament and leader of the majority in the National Assembly told Ubuntu Times, “We will spearhead sustainable solutions especially that which seeks to curb the killings of non-local teachers working in schools within the northeastern region.”
For locals, like Abdulkarim, attacks targeted at educational institutions such as schools and hospitals have a direct impact on the vulnerable, mostly women and children.
After several incidences of attacks by Alshabaab insurgents in northeastern counties, including the 2015 raid in Garissa University leading to the death of 147 students, ‘the government increased security surveillance in the region. Credit: Robert Kibet
Recently, local leaders led by Governors Ali Korane of Garissa and Mohamed Abdi of Wajir threatened to sue TSC for its move to transfer non-local tutors from the region owing to insecurity, adding that it would include seeking to have the commission stripped of powers to transfer teachers and duty taken over by county governments.
Akelo Misori, Secretary-General of the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), while supporting the role of teacher transfer bestowed on the devolved unit of government, reiterates that tutors’ security was a priority.
“We stand with the TSC’s move to prioritize the safety of tutors in the northeastern region,” Misori told Ubuntu Times in a telephone interview, calling on leaders in the region to shy away from blaming victims and instead play a role in ending insecurity and terror attacks in their locality.
A 2018 armed militants attack at Qarsa Primary School in Wajir East that led to the death of three people, including two teachers saw a mass exodus of teachers.
In this year’s early January a dawn attack at Saretho Boarding Primary School, situated in Dadaab saw a teacher and a child lose lives, leading to the immediate closure of the school.
In the new era of sustainable development, where all countries are expected to implement a universal development agenda, the Kenyan government need to be held to account for human rights abuses affecting a significant part of their young population, as well as failure to provide adequate protection to which children are entitled under the convention on the rights of the child.
Under the international humanitarian, law, schools are protected civilian objects and therefore benefit from the humanitarian principles of distinctions and proportionality.
Direct physical attacks and closure of these institutions as a result of direct threats have since 2011 been added as triggers of inclusion on the list of the Secretary General’s parties to conflict committing grave violations against children in armed conflict. Attacks on schools during conflict is one of the six grave violations identified by the UN Security Council.
Statistics indicate that over 2,000 non-local teachers already left the northern region since 2015 with the government’s efforts to replace them not bearing fruits, worsened by recent tactics by militants to attack non-native tutors, who possess the required teacher qualification.
Health staffs in Garissa came out strongly to condemn attacks carried out by armed militants targeting non-native health staffs and education tutors working in northern counties of Garissa, Wajir, Isiolo, and Mandera. Credit: Robert Kibet
The National Council for Nomadic Education (NACONEK), an agency tasked with promoting education in nomadic areas of northeastern Kenya routes for recruitment of curriculum assistance as well as employing local teachers graduating from teacher training colleges.
“The government ought to reduce entry grade level of learners who wants to pursue teaching in teachers training institutions, and retake teacher retirees aged 65 years and below from the region to curb shortage,” Harun Yusuf, NACONEK Chief Executive Officer told Ubuntu Times.
Wilson Sosion, Secretary-General of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) says the government’s delay in moving in to seek a reliable solution to the education crisis in the northeastern region is a big disservice to residents of the region.
“The government’s dalliance is a big disservice and an affront to the constitutional right of children to access education as outlined in the UN 2030 Agenda on sustainable development goals,” Sosion told in an interview.
According to Sosion, teachers must be created from children of the Somali community and equitably derived Somali clans with a mean grade of D (+) and above and registered as untrained teachers and immediately deployed immediately to class while undergoing in-service training.
In 2015, armed Alshabaab attackers raided Garissa University, leading to the death of 147 students, an attack that shocked the country’s education and security system.
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