Africa
A decision by the Nigerian government to halt a hefty fuel subsidy on January 1 prompted one of the largest and most coordinated protests in Nigeria’s history. Though the protests are over, the issues that prompted them remain.
UPDATE, 2/9/2012: Yesterday, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed his rival in last year’s presidential election, Nuhu Ribadu, as chairman of a new oil task force dedicated to tracking revenues paid to the government, and monitoring crude oil production and exports. Mr. Ribadu is formerly the chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and accepted the post at the helm of the 21-man Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force despite his political affiliations because of the “national consensus” on the “deadly impact of corruption.”
Occupy Nigeria movement. Photo credit: Temi KOGBE/ fatcityafrica.com
What is the fuel subsidy?
Though Nigeria produces more than 2 million barrels of oil a day, the vast majority of Nigerians see limited benefits from their country’s natural resources. Nigeria has four oil refineries that only operate at about 23 percent of their potential capacity — and as a result, the government has had to import refined products such as petrol to meet the needs of citizens. The government paid the importers in order to control the price, kept low at $1.70 a gallon, thus ensuring that Nigerians were able, until January 1st, to enjoy the low fuel price as one of the benefits of the crude oil they produce.
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This piece is cross-posted from Morgana Wingard’s Wanderlust blog.
In Ghana, 8 out of 10 children under the age of five and 3 out of 10 adult women suffer from some form of malnutrition, including stunting, wasting, and/or deficiencies in iron, iodine, and vitamin A. I recently visited Nyankpala Community Management of Acute Malnutrition in Tamale, Ghana, a Health Service (GHS) project that integrates and promotes community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) services and supplies.
With funds from USAID and UNICEF, GHS has established support units for acute malnutrition at the national, regional and district levels. Between 2008 and 2011, Ghana has increased CMAM from two learning sites in two districts to 403 sites in 31 districts. In total, 2,040 health care providers have been trained on CMAM services and 5,973 children with severe acute malnutrition have been admitted to the program. Of these children 71 percent were cured, 2 percent died, and 1 percent did not recover; 26 percent failed to follow up.
Mac-Jordan Degadjor is a Ghanaian social media entrepreneur and rising star among global tech bloggers. The 26-year-old recently spoke about the positive effects of social media at the TEDxYouthInspire conference in Ghana’s capital city of Accra and was spotlighted in the Christian Science Monitor’s “Thirty Ideas from People Under 30.” We asked Mac-Jordan to explain why mobile tech advancements are important for Ghana’s economic and social growth.
Why is Ghana ready for a mobile technology boom? Are investors looking to Ghana as a market ready to advance with mobile?
Anytime I’m asked if Ghana is ready for the mobile technology boom, my answer is always YES. In Ghana, there are two major organizations providing locals with the business and technology skills they need to leverage ideas into successful mobile web companies: Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology and Mobile Web Ghana.
New opportunities are showing up that make it possible for low-income economies to leapfrog other countries by adopting technologies that are suitable to their specific circumstances. I’m happy to say that Ghana is taking that bold step in adopting new mobile technologies. Take a critical look at the continent: Africa has more than 110 million Internet users, a number that is poised to grow by 2400 percent in this decade alone.
What about Ghana’s market makes it ready for mobile phone technology? How are smartphones being introduced into the market? Can bandwidth improvements keep up with the technology?
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Joseph Terranova, co-founder of Tukula, shares his company’s model for women’s empowerment.
In the East African country of Uganda, a staggering 276,000 young people cannot find jobs each year. Even though many of these youth are university or trade school educated, there is simply not enough infrastructure to accommodate them in the job market. And without jobs, many of these youth will relapse into the cyclical poverty endemic in much of their country.
Photo credit: Bobby Neptune/Tukula
Young women are particularly vulnerable to unemployment. Many find themselves caught in premature marriages, struggling to support their children with little hope of saving for the future of their families.
But in the heart of Jinja, Uganda’s second largest city, five young women work diligently to create beautiful handmade bags and other accessories for Tukula (meaning “we grow” in Luganda), a for-profit social enterprise based out of Lancaster, Pa. The women, who range in age from 16 to 33, have different life stories.
All of them have completed some amount of tailoring school, and two are continuing their education using the money they earn at Tukula. The women hail from different tribes and ascribe to different religions. But what brings them together is their desire to better the future of themselves and their families.
One of these women, Ayakaka Sally, talks about the impact that Tukula has had on her life. “I used to depend on people,” she says. “But Tukula has made me to be on my own. Now I can afford my food. I can pay my rent. It’s good for me.”
Tukula works with its artisans to create budgets and savings programs aimed at preparing each woman to attain her future goals. By creating and selling beautiful, high-quality products, the company hopes to impact more women in the future.
Tukula is working to eliminate abject poverty in Uganda before it begins, one woman at a time. To learn more visit tukula.org.
Jan 29th, 2012 9:00 AM UTC
By Field
ONE member and Peace Corps volunteer Brandon Green will be sharing his experiences in Burkina Faso with ONE Blog readers in the series, “Back to Africa” over the next few months. We look forward to hearing about all his adventures!
Me and my students at our HIV/AIDS talk
At one of my English Clubs — a place for students to practice their English — last Tuesday, 140 7th and 8th graders crammed into a classroom that shouldn’t be able to hold more than a third of them. They were there to learn a few English words and watch the American put a condom on a wooden penis. I was there to teach them about HIV/AIDS. The class started by discussing what HIV/AIDS is and how it affects the human body. Then, I showed them some statistics about people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. I told them that sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of infections, and that 1.2 percent of the population of Burkina Faso is currently living with HIV/AIDS.
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Life happens here at the Tema Clinic in Accra, Ghana. Babies trade a death sentence for life. Mothers transform their sickly skeleton figures to healthy, able bodies. Tema offers hope in a place that was once hopeless and ravaged by AIDS.
Funded by the Global Fund through financial support from Product (RED), Tema Hospital cares for 2,200 people living with HIV. We recently visited their facility again –- their work never ceases to amaze me. The Global Fund make it possible for the hospital to provide ARV treatment and PMTCT (prevention of mother-to-child-transmission). Thanks to these interventions, only 4 percent of babies at Tema with HIV-positive mothers are born with the virus.
SEE ALSO: Tema Clinic in Accra, Ghana
Senior ONE Adviser Michael Gerson is on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this blog post, he writes about the benefits of cocoa crops on the country’s economy.
A farmer from the Greenhouse project in Beni separates raw cacao beans from an opened cacao pod to be washed, fermented, dried, and shipped.
We traveled down dirt roads near the town of Beni, in eastern Congo, close to the Ugandan border. Militias are active in the region, so our group was protected by an armed escort. Interactions at checkpoints along the road are unpredictable. In the town of Beni itself, a curfew is imposed each night at sunset.
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