As part of their commitment to fostering innovation and building digital skills, even in the remotest part of the country, Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa (www.Liquid.Tech), today heralded in a new digital dawn in the Eastern Cape with the opening of the first Innovation and Digital Skills Centre (IDSC) in Mthatha. Through this initiative, communities […]
Liquid Intelligent Technologies digitally empowers the youth of Mthatha with the opening of their first Innovation and Digital Centre — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source
Author: kaykiser
Africa cracks down on ravenous locust swarms by ignoring Greenpeace’s anti-pesticide rhetoric — Genetic Literacy Project
Viewpoint — ‘It is wrong to leave Africans at the mercy of organic farming’: Western activists should not force ‘unproductive agroecology’ on developing farmers — Genetic Literacy Project
Coronavirus – Africa: United States of America to support South Africa and India’s call for the temporary waiver of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines
Coronavirus – Africa: The Chairperson of the AUC welcomes the USA decision for waiver of intellectual property rights for Covid19 vaccines — Database of Press Releases related to Africa – APO-Source
The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, welcomes the announcement of the United States of America to support South Africa and India’s call for the temporary waiver of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization. The Chairperson commends this important show of global leadership by the United States […]
African countries deem EU carbon border levy ‘protectionist’ — Watts Up With That?
Some African countries consider the EU’s planned carbon border levy to be “protectionist”. That was the upshot of a conference organised by the French government on Tuesday (23 March), which examined the challenges posed by the EU’s upcoming mechanism. EURACTIV France reports.
African countries deem EU carbon border levy ‘protectionist’ — Watts Up With That?
Zambia antimalaria campaign Grant
Rotary-led Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia awarded US$6 million to reduce burden of malaria in heavily affected districts
This $6 million program will add 2,500 community health workers to the national health system in Zambia, allowing for effective malaria diagnosis and treatment for more than 1.3 million people
LUSAKA, Zambia, March 9, 2021/APO Group/ –To help end a leading cause of illness and death in the southern African country of Zambia, a Rotary (Rotary.org) club-led initiative aims to save and improve lives by empowering community health workers to test, diagnose and treat malaria.
Malaria, a preventable disease caused by a parasite spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes, disproportionately affects children under the age of five and pregnant women in rural populations.
By empowering community health workers, more people in areas with little to no access to health care will now be reached by trusted members of their communities
To help end malaria in Zambia, The Rotary Foundation, World Vision USA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will each contribute $2 million for the Rotary-led Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia program. This $6 million program will add 2,500 community health workers to the national health system in Zambia, allowing for effective malaria diagnosis and treatment for more than 1.3 million people in ten of the most highly affected districts in Central and Muchinga provinces.
“By empowering community health workers, more people in areas with little to no access to health care will now be reached by trusted members of their communities,” said Bill Feldt, member of the Rotary Club of Federal Way in Washington, USA, who spearheaded the program. “This proven health care delivery model is effective and financially sustainable, and will bring lasting protection by reducing and eliminating this disease at the local level.”
Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia takes Rotary members’ commitment to eliminate malaria to the next level by building a longer-term, multi-stakeholder partnership on the ground in Zambia with the National Malaria Elimination Centre, provincial health leadership, PATH MACEPA and World Vision Zambia. Martha Lungu, executive director for Malaria Partners Zambia, an affiliate of Malaria Partners International, and member of the Rotary Club of Ndola (Zambia) said, “Every day I witness firsthand the effects of malaria. This program demonstrates that Rotary members are true partners in our communities and are focused on supporting community health workers to help loosen the grip malaria has on the Zambian people.”
Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia is the first awardee for Rotary’s Programs of Scale grant. In an annual competitive grant process, The Rotary Foundation, Rotary’s philanthropic arm, will award $2 million to an evidence-based program that aligns with one of Rotary’s causes and has the capability for scaling-up to help more people. The programs are sponsored by Rotary members in collaboration with local communities and partner organizations.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Rotary.
Media Contact:
Rotary
Chanele Williams
+1-847-866-3466
chanele.williams@rotary.org
Claudia Brunner
+41.44.387.7116
claudia.brunner@rotary.org
World Vision
Nicole Harris
404-735-0871
nharris@worldvision.org
The Future Looks Bright for African Countries
Longer Term Solutions
- End Population Control Campaigns
- End DDT Bans
- Implement Hygiene Education Programs
- Aggressively Treat All Worm Infestations
- End Insistence on Subsistence Farming
- End the European Union Ban on Importing GMO Crops
- End Insistence on Solar and Wind Power Only
- Provide Electricity and Clean Water Systems for City Slums and Rural Villages
- Encourage Foreign and Domestic Investment
- End Population Control Campaigns. We need to work to stop these campaigns by groups such as UNFPA, USAID, WHO, World Bank, International Planned Parenthood, Population Council, and Club of Rome. A few ways to do this are to
- Expose the lies about overpopulation, their sources, and their aim. The overpopulation myth is all about socialist control, racism, elitism, and misguided environmentalism. Poverty, not overpopulation is harmful to the environment. Raising people out of extreme poverty will benefit the environment.
- Defund all programs that promote involuntary or forced sterilizations, birth control, or abortion. Promote voluntary, informed choices only. President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which withholds funds from foreign aid programs that promote or perform abortions. He also defunded UNFPA through the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits funding for any organization supporting coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. Unfortunately, some other population control advocacy groups have stepped in to fill the gap. The US must pressure the UN and member countries to end this practice worldwide. The US must also defund Planned Parenthood.
- End overstocking population control drugs, devices and sterilization supplies in hospitals and clinics. Use the funds from this and other population control activities to stock medical facilities with medicines and supplies for endemic diseases such as malaria, TB and parasites. Medical facilities need supplies for treating injuries, surgical supplies and vaccination sera to save children’s lives.
- Provide sanitation, clean water and soap for handwashing for all clinics and hospitals.
- Train local people as medical assistants in the tradition of the field medic as a first line of defense.
- End Western values-based sex education in schools that encourages abortion, multiple partners, and thus sexually transmitted diseases. These practices are contrary to local cultural and religious beliefs and practices. We must respect their cultural and religious beliefs, which value children and family above all else. Imposing Western values on them destroys families and results in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Encourage monogamy and fidelity in marriage to one sexual partner as one of the best ways to reduce sexually transmitted diseases.
- End DDT bans. Begin widespread spraying in homes and medicate victims to cut the cycle of malaria and other insect-borne diseases. The Environmental Protection Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and other agencies that regulate possible toxins must change their regulations to allow DDT to be used for control of mosquitos and other insects. India is a good example of how effective this approach can be. In several government facilities, India manufactures DDT and other insecticides that can be purchased by people in African and other developing countries. India sprays DDT on interior walls of homes twice a year in malaria prone areas. This practice is a good first step in ending the malaria cycle and has greatly reduced the deaths from malaria in India. Africa could reduce theirs accordingly with DDT on interior walls as well as bed nets. Bed nets alone are not a good substitute for DDT spraying.
Global Malaria Deaths[1] India is included in the South-East Asia group.
- Implement Hygiene Education Programs. Focus on educating all people, especially rural poor, about microbes and hygiene. Teach skills needed to provide clean water such as: How to filter and purify water; How to make soap and set up handwashing stations; How to dig wells and latrines; Safe use of composted wastes for fields; How to keep waste and other contaminants out of streams.
- Aggressively Treat All Worm Infestations. Alongside treating for worms it’s important to provide shoes for all children to prevent re-infestation.
- End Insistence on Subsistence Farming as a more sustainable method. Encourage modern agricultural methods and improved varieties that are better suited to their environment, with higher nutrition and higher yields. This also ends or reduces slash-and-burn deforestation.
- End the European Union Ban on Importing GMO Crops. This and other protectionist philosophies, stagnate development in European countries and cause African countries to reject improved crops. Educate the people and the leaders of developing countries about modern agricultural methods and the benefits of GMO and other high yield varieties. Educate European leaders and farmers about the potential market for their goods in developing countries. This can be accomplished through advertising campaigns to the general public, not just entrenched government leaders.
- End Insistence on Solar and Wind Power Only. Encourage large and small electricity projects by all means possible, including fossil fuel, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear. Fund large and small hydroelectric and fossil fuel power plants and transmission lines into rural areas through loans. Until larger projects and grid systems can be implemented, promote local mini and micro hydroelectric, geothermal and fossil fuel systems. These small systems can be incorporated into a wider grid when that becomes available.
- Provide Electricity and Clean Water Systems for All City Slums. Improve housing, sanitation, and clean up standing water and wastes that breed insects and disease. Spray insecticides regularly to reduce insects that carry diseases. Cleaning up the slums can go a long way toward encouraging investments.
- Encourage Foreign and Domestic Investment. It is important to encourage investment in all sectors including agricultural, natural resource extraction, manufacturing, service sector and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). It is time to re-examine the company town concept. Historically used for extraction industries in isolated areas, company towns can be useful for other businesses such as manufacturing, service and STEM in order to attract, train, and house employees and their families.
Encourage building of company towns with homes, hospitals, schools, and markets for employees in remote areas that provide electricity, clean water, latrines or sanitation systems. These company town projects should include progressively extending roads beyond the town over time to help others not directly employed but that could market agricultural products to town inhabitants. Such extensions over time can provide the basis of a larger transportation system that can encourage further foreign investment in newly opened business centers. Inhabitants of shanty towns (city slums) can be employed and live in new company towns near cities.
The future of Africa looks bright and development is booming in the cities and in more developed agricultural areas. The average GDP growth rate for sub-Saharan African countries is 6.2 percent. Cote d’Ivoiri, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have GDP growth rates over 7 percent. This is great, but somewhat misleading since a percent of a smaller economy is a smaller amount of growth in real numbers. However, if these growth rates continue as they have been, it will result in real economic progress.
Although historically agriculture and extraction of natural resources have been the mainstays of African prosperity and development, half of all foreign investment in recent years has been outside natural resources. Of the countries that have this profile, a group of countries called the African Lions, which include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia, have led the way. Rwanda has had a growth rate of 9 percent since 2001 because of its favorable business creation policies. In Rwanda child mortality has been reduced, nearly all children have access to education and 98 percent have access to healthcare. Ethiopia has a growth rate of 10 percent but 20 percent of the population are still in extreme poverty with nutritional issues. Botswana has become a leader in online banking due to its low corruption levels and secure business environment.
Corruption is still an issue in many of the developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. Corruption, along with domestic unrest, is one of the major barriers to attracting foreign investment. This corruption is encouraged, supported, and prolonged by foreign aid given to the governments, not directly to the people or to infrastructure contractors. Many government leaders have fat bank accounts by skimming most of the aid that is intended to help the poor and build infrastructure. Even when aid is given in the form of goods, not money, a similar picture emerges. The people may get very little of it as the goods filling warehouses are either sold on the black market to the highest bidder or are left to rot for political reasons.
Any foreign aid needs to be tied to full accountability and transparency by governments about how the money is used and its impact on the people. Free ride foreign aid to governments must be ended to make leaders more accountable to the people, not just their foreign donors. This can lead to free and fair elections.
[1] WHO, 2016
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My award winning book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries is now available in print and eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.
Award-Winning Finalist in the Social Change category of the 2019 International Book Awards
After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices. Visit my blog for more information and to sign up for email updates at https://savingafricafromliesthatkill.com/ and like my Facebook page.
Read the first chapter free through Bookfunnel by clicking here
The migration game – propping up corrupt leaders
Migration, Remittances & Foreign Aid Keep Corrupt Leaders in Power
Many people are encouraged and sometimes paid and helped to leave their countries by their governments. Removal of unemployed potential trouble makers is beneficial to the government in power. It is a kind of safety valve, ensuring continuation of corrupt government power that might otherwise be challenged.
Developing countries profit from emigration in two ways. First, unemployed citizens that leave the country lift the burden of providing for them and eliminates a source of civil unrest or political challenges. Secondly, the economies of poor countries benefit from remittances, i.e. money sent back to families in their home countries. Some countries depend on these remittances to prop up their economies. For example, in 2016 Mexico officially received $26.1 billion in remittances sent back to families by Mexican immigrants, mostly from the United States. That’s roughly 2.5 percent of Mexico’s GDP, which is a significant contribution to the country’s economy. Because this is an estimate with no way of knowing the exact amount, it may be much higher.
Remittances account for a significant part of the GDP of some developing countries in Africa. See values from World Bank/IMF, in the table below. As expected, the neediest countries receive the most remittances as a % of GDP. Although Nigeria is on the low side as a % of GDP, it is the most populous with comparably higher GDP, so that the actual amount is quite high.
| Country | Remittances as % of GDP |
| Liberia | > 20% |
| Cameroon | > 15% |
| Gambia | > 15% |
| Lesotho | > 10% |
| Senegal | > 10% |
| Cape Verde | > 10% |
| Togo | > 3% |
| Mali | > 3% |
| Ghana | > 3% |
| Nigeria | > 3% |
Source: “Where to Invest 2018,” Rand Merchant Bank, from World Bank/ IMF data
The Foreign Aid Trap
Government to government foreign aid with little or no accountability is also a part of this picture. Very little of the foreign aid actually gets to the people who need it, much less to infrastructure building that can encourage investment and raise standards of living and health. Leaders get rich while their people remain in poverty, sickness, ignorance and isolation. Corrupt dictators and their regimes benefit from keeping their countries poor. As long as the people are needy, the aid keeps coming. Corrupt governments are only accountable to their international donors, not to the people. Raising the economy and standard of living has the opposite effect. Any foreign aid should be temporary or emergency relief with strict accountability for its use. Without unaccountable foreign aid, governments would be dependent on their tax base and accountable to their people. They would be forced to encourage investment, develop infrastructure and contribute to economic development. In this case, raising standards of living and the economy boost the government’s income.
Additionally, poor countries have been prevented from developing by UN, advocacy groups and their own corrupt leaders. What these countries need are Infrastructure, (roads, reliable electricity, etc.), Investment (foreign and domestic), Employment, Education and Disease Control.
Natural and Artificial Migration
What is the reason for much of the new waves of migration flooding Europe and the United States? Are conditions getting that much worse in their home countries than previously, or is there another answer? According to open borders believers, it is because overpopulation is getting so bad. I have heard the refrain, “they are escaping from overpopulated countries because they have no place else to go.” That is pure rubbish aka propaganda. This myth is pushed by the United Nations and advocacy groups promoting a worldwide campaign for population control and open borders. The world is far from overpopulated by any definition, whether it is food scarcity or room for the people. Hunger usually has more to do with politics than anything else.
It is important to point out that there are two types of immigration, Illegal or unauthorized, and legal or sanctioned by receiving countries. Sending countries have historically been allowed by receiving countries to send people at a reasonable rate that allows for absorption with minimal cultural disruption. Strict guidelines have always required good health, no criminal record and evidence of self-support or a sponsor.
While a trickle of unauthorized migration with no supporting documentation has always happened, the current flood of unauthorized immigrants is a fairly new phenomenon. In many cases it is more like an invasion, complete with militant behavior, than simple migration. The flood is composed mostly of young, able bodied men, with only a few women and children. Poverty, overpopulation and violence, in the form of wars and civil unrest, are three of the “reasons,” aka excuses, given for the flood. However, these causes cannot explain the huge increase in numbers because there has been little or no change in the amount of distress in the world. What could have caused this sudden onslaught?
While some migrants are fleeing from violence in war torn areas, most are not, and they certainly are not displaced by the supposed struggling hordes of overpopulation. The image projected by pictures of overcrowded city slums is of wallowing masses of destitute people. That is certainly not the case for most of the world. Most of the people in poor countries are concentrated in cities for job opportunities, not because there is nowhere else to go. The remainder of each country is, if anything, under populated. So, if not overpopulation, why do they leave their homes and endure a difficult and dangerous journey to a strange land?
This is being encouraged by advocacy groups for various reasons, including those who want to bring down Western civilization such as Islamists, Communists and their sympathizers. The new flood of migrants originated largely as a way to disrupt Western civilization and impose socialism, Communism or Islamic Sharia Law and is supported by money and propaganda from advocacy groups. People are paid, promised jobs, given new clothing, supported on their journey with food, water and shelter, and often are given ship or rail passage. Where does all this money come from? It comes from wealthy donors and other backers that seek to change the world to fit their ideologies.
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How can you help? Read my new book, Saving Africa From Lies That Kill: How Myths about the Environment and Overpopulation are Destroying Third World Countries that is now available in print and eBook through Amazon, and available on line in paperback through Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.
Learn the truth and how you can help change this horrible situation of longstanding crimes against poor countries by international organizations and advocacy groups.
Read the introduction and first chapter free through Bookfunnel at www.bit.ly/
After reading the book, please remember to review it on Amazon; share it with a friend and do your part to end bad practices.
United States provides US$119 Million to World Food Programme (WFP) for School Meals in Five Countries
As classrooms around the developing world begin to re-open, the U.N. World Food Programme is receiving US$119 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide school meals in five countries in Asia and Africa. “Yet again, USDA demonstrates real leadership in reaching school-age children in the developing world with proper nutrition. In many countries, school meals are the only food some… Read more on https://africa-newsroom.com/press/united-states-provides-us119-million-to-world-food-programme-wfp-for-school-meals-in-five-countries?lang=en