In wrapping up her one-day visit to Nigeria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a town hall meeting in Abuja yesterday. In attendance were government officials, civil society and members of the media. The tone was said to be cordial and candid.

At the town hall there was wide ranging discussion on the paradoxes of Nigerian society. On the one hand Clinton talked about the failure of Nigeria achieve the economic successes expected of a nation with the continent’s largest population and enormous energy and natural resources, which she attributed to poor leadership and corruption. She further illustrated this by indicating that Nigeria is one of the leading exporters of crude oil and yet it imports 80% of its domestic fuel needs. Clinton went on to mention how the country is still embroiled in an election dispute two years after the universally acknowledged, seriously flawed event.

On the other hand, Clinton praised Nigeria’s prominent and continued leadership on matters pertaining to peace and security in Africa and also discussed the great potential for trade and development that exists in Nigeria. Clinton also said she was pleased about the progress that has been made in the area of basic health care and HIV/AIDS treatment and care. At an earlier meeting, Secretary Clinton agreed that the U.S. had been mistaken in not expanding some of its health commitments, a decision which she attributed to the global financial crisis. She also admitted that the U.S. should have responded more swiftly with assistance to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis on Africa.

The Secretary also took questions from the audience. One audience member raised the issue of the negative stereotypes about Nigeria that exist in the U.S., emphasizing that these conclusions are based on the actions of a few people, when the majority of Nigerians are honest, law-abiding individuals who contribute much to Nigeria and the United States. The questioner asked Secretary Clinton to address this matter upon her return to the U.S.

Women groups asked for the Secretary’s help with women’s rights and empowerment in U.S. policy towards Nigeria, and Clinton pledged to include this issue in the mandate of the soon-to-be-established U.S.-Nigeria bi-national commission. The commission was included in the recently passed House State Department authorization bill and will explore a variety of areas of U.S.-Nigeria partnership and cooperation, including in the trade, health, education, defense, science and technology sectors.

Clinton was also asked to ensure that NGOs and implementing agencies of the U.S. government be required deliver assistance to the rural areas in the country to achieve maximum impact; Clinton agreed that this is an important task and is part of the policy review of U.S. assistance to Nigeria.

The Nigerian government officials said they were delighted by Secretary Clinton’s visit and the friendship and assistance of the American people. Secretary Clinton was told that Nigeria is looking forward: the country will address the issue of the flawed election in an electoral reform bill that is currently in progress in the national Assembly (Nigerian congress), and will tackle corruption issues though institutions built to prevent the rampant practices and promote transparency and accountability.

-Maryamu Aminu & Edith Jibunoh

Secretary Clinton is in Nigeria today, the fifth stop of her seven-nation, 11 day tour. This morning she met with the Nigerian Foreign Minister, members of the legislative branch and several cabinet secretaries, taking a “noticeably softer tone” with the country’s leaders according to the New York Times.

During the meeting, Secretary Clinton acknowledged and complimented Nigeria’s contribution towards peace and stability on the African continent (the bulk of African Union and UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur are Nigerian soldiers, and additional troops will also be deployed to Somalia). Secretary Clinton noted that Nigeria is blessed with many resources and the country has the potential to develop social and economic infrastructure. She also urged Nigerian leaders to improve security and increase transparency, actions which would help attract greater foreign investment and lead to economic development.

At the meeting, the Nigerian Minister of Health and a legislator expressed to Secretary Clinton the country’s concern regarding the flatlining of funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Nigeria’s PEPFAR program is one of the largest in Africa, but funding has dropped nearly $10 million a year over the last two years, even though more people are in need of treatment and care. ONE is glad to see that African leaders are drawing attention to this issue, and ONE hopes that this language continues to remind the Obama administration of its commitment to double U.S. foreign assistance.

-Edith Jibunoh & Maryamu Aminu

Today marks the first day of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s seven-nation, 11 day trip to Africa. Her first stop is Kenya, where she’ll speak at the 8th African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum in Nairobi, an annual forum that examines trade and investment relations between the U.S. and Africa.

Following her time in Kenya, Clinton will then travel (in order) to South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and will end her trip in Cape Verde on August 14. As Ambassador Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, noted in a press briefing last week, the “Secretary’s trip follows the themes laid out by President Obama during his visit to Ghana: supporting strong and sustainable democratic governments; promoting sustainable economic development; strengthening public health and education; and assisting in the prevention, litigation, and resolution of conflicts around Africa.”

Check out Carson’s complete description of the trip (or click here to read the State Department’s press release.)

In the days ahead, stay tuned to the ONE blog, as we’ll continue to offer updates and insight on Clinton’s travels throughout Africa!

-Kara Arsenault

The State Department has announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will “travel to Africa next week on a seven-nation tour aimed at highlighting the Obama administration’s commitment to the continent.” Clinton plans to visit 7 countries including Kenya, South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.

You can read more details of the trip here. We’ll bring further news as it develops.

-Chris Scott

Reports from ONE staff who recently returned from Ghana and Nigeria are still coming in, and today Aaron Banks talks about their visit to an AIDS clinic in the Nigerian capital of Lagos. Click here to read more about this ongoing series on the ONE Blog.

America’s response to global AIDS is saving lives and we got to see that up-close during our visit to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (known as LASUTH) in Lagos, Nigeria. LASUTH is a leading HIV/AIDS facility in Nigeria and it helps coordinate HIV/AIDS treatment across Nigeria.

Nigeria is a target country under PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), an initiative to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Since it was announced in 2003, PEPFAR has put 2.1 people on lifesaving antiretroviral treatment, provided 10.1 million people with care, and provided 57 million people with testing and counseling services, to name a few of this amazing program’s successes. ONE members were an important part of the movement to reauthorize and expand these efforts to stop HIV/AIDS in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, and in July of last year, President Bush signed the five year reauthorization, committing $48 billion to combat not only HIV/AIDS, but also malaria and TB, while building health systems capacities and workforces in targeted countries.

At LASUTH, we met doctors, nurses, administrators and support staff who in a few short years of working with PEPFAR and the Harvard School of Public Health, have transformed AIDS treatment at their clinic in the hospital and at secondary and tertiary sites across Nigeria.

Our tour took us to a lab, housing state-of-the-art testing equipment that is being used to accurately diagnose HIV and save lives. Watch Dr. Ekong and Dr. Akanmu from LASUTH talk about the impact of PEPFAR funding on HIV testing and diagnosis in Nigeria.

Afterwards, I spoke with ONE’s Zita Lloyd about the effects this PEPFAR-funded testing is having on HIV-related infant and child mortality.

After visiting the clinic’s pharmacy and seeing the software they use to track patient health and adherence, we had the opportunity to hear from Saiau Ahmed, an AIDS patient and leader of LASUTH’s patient support group. His words are an inspiring reminder of the incredible progress being made in the fight against this global killer.

-Aaron Banks

On Monday, November 24th, ONE’s Africa office organized an advocacy visit to a hospital in Northern Nigeria, in a village called Kubwa, to draw media and public attention to maternal and child health issues in Nigeria. This visit was done in collaboration with Caroline Chikezie, a Nigerian born, Hollywood based actress who was visiting Abuja to present at the first MTV Africa Awards. Caroline starred in the UK series Footballers Wives before moving to the United States to work in the movie industry. One of her major recent appearances was in Aeon Flux with Charlize Theron.

Caroline was a brilliant spokesperson for the day and advocated for the media to focus on the challenges preventing progress in this area of healthcare, as well as policy that would influence change in Nigeria. Caroline was particularly alarmed by how little it cost to prevent the child and maternal related deaths that are commonplace in Africa and insisted she would take the campaign back to the United States and lobby for support from fellow actors and actresses, policy makers and philanthropists, who could collectively make a substantial difference to the continent.

Across the world, young children and pregnant women bear the brunt of failed health systems and Africa is disproportionately affected with a child mortality rate that is 20 times that of the United States, and a maternal mortality rate that is 65 times that of the United States. Nigeria’s maternal and child mortality rates are now among the worst in the world with approximately 136 women dying everyday because of child birth related complications, and 2300 children under five are lost everyday due to preventable diseases. (more…)

Last week, I took a long bus ride (10 hours) to Lagos, the biggest city in Africa (and second biggest in the world, according to my travel guide). One of the kids in the family I stay with lives in Lagos, so I stayed with her.

Julie and her family have lived there for a couple years. They have good jobs, live a comfortable life by Lagos standards, and live in one of the best areas of Lagos, Ikoyi.

While I love visiting new places to see them and the sites, I think the most interesting thing is learning about how people live in different places. On
Saturday, I followed Julie around, as she took her son for his immunization at a hospital in her area. Her life is a lot like my older sister’s – who lives in New York, has kids, and takes care of her family.

That afternoon, Julie and I went out to visit a friend. As we walked back, she was talking about how she’d like to improve her area. She lives in this enormous apartment complex (the picture is taken from her window). Refugees from Chad sleep in her doorway. As we walked in, mosquitoes were everywhere and she was talking about how she would like to pay the refugees who sleep there to keep up the place – sweep out the stairs, clean the front, etc.

And that she would like to invest in screened doors and windows for the whole apartment. She was like “If I could get together 2,500 Naira (a litte more than $200), she could do it.”

She told her husband about her plan and as they discussed it, I was so impressed by how she thought about this project. She was like, I don’t care if anyone thanks me. If I’m not going to do it, who is? Her commitment to investing in her community was so amazing to me. It’s really pretty simple, but this is how development happens. People see a problem, find a solution, and make it happen.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

Earlier this week the local government in Kaduna state, Nigeria, held its election day. Over the past couple weeks, there have increasingly been posters all over the place, promoting one candidate or another. Just this last week, the campaigns were elevated immensely, so that last Thursday, the streets were filled with campaigners, driving down the main stretch of town, playing music and urging voters to come out and support their candidate.

Their elections look a little different than ours ­ no televised debates and TV commercials (not complaining on that one). On Thursday, we were in a car
going back to the house in which I stay and we could barely drive up the main road without hitting a motorcycle because of the campaigns ­ an experience I’ve never had in the states.

I’m missing the elections at home. I hear about the primaries unfolding from text messages from my sister. There is something about elections and making decisions about the future of a country that is exhilarating, but also a little scary. The decisions we make as voters today will affect our country for the years to come.

In the US, campaigns like ONE Vote ‘08 build noise around important issues of extreme poverty, but in Nigeria, poverty is part of people’s lives everyday and therefore part of the campaign trail. The new Chairman of Jaba Local Government is a board member of the Gwaimen Center (the NGO where I work) so we are very hopeful that through accountability and effective measures to fight poverty the Jaba area can take great strides forward.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

I like to think that I know how to take care of myself. Before I came to Nigeria, I lived in an apartment, paid bills, cooked (and baked with passion), and took care of myself for the most part. One could even think that I was an adult.

At least a couple times a day here, I feel like a child ­ incapable of taking care of myself. Yesterday, I dropped my wallet into a cement wall. It’s a long story that ended happily for me (I had my wallet), but not so happily for the wall (it had a couple holes in it). Tomorrow, I’m going to do my laundry, which includes a long process of fetching water from the well, washing each piece of clothing from hand and then line drying it. I get really embarrassed if anyone else comes by when I¹m washing, as my technique has some room for improvement and I’m not really sure if my clothes are more than rinsed.

Luckily, there are generous people surrounding me, helping me out ­ poking holes in walls and the like. Maybe taking care of myself doesn¹t mean being totally self-sufficient and incapable of living on my own. Maybe the real lesson in how to take care of ourselves is how to take care of each other.

This is something that I learn everyday from the kids at the Gwaimen Center. The older kids help take care of the younger kids. When one of the young kids crying, one of the older ones are quick to wipe away their tears and comfort them. From my first moments at the Center, this amazed me.

Pictured here is Dorcas, who is eleven years old and attends primary school in Kwoi. From the second that she leaves school until they leave the Center around seven, Dorcas is with Precious, the child on her back. She¹s always taking care of her.

I am learning. Life in Nigeria is teaching me great and complicated lessons about justice, about AIDS, about poverty and how to fight it. But mostly, I’m learning life lessons. If we all took care of each other like Dorcas takes care of Precious, maybe I wouldn¹t have to learn about AIDS and poverty.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

When I left the ONE Campaign last fall, I had ONE bands everywhere that you could imagine: piles in every bag that I own, strewn about my car, and at my apartment. As I packed up for Nigeria, I piled all of those ONE bands and brought them with me.

This month, the Gwaimen Center (where I work) has had football and basketball matches to bring the young people of Kwoi together and we’ve used the opportunity to educate on those present on AIDS prevention. What better tool to use than the ONE bands?

While I enjoy watching football, seeing people from all around the area come together and talk about AIDS and how people can protect themselves was powerful. I told those gathered about ONE and the millions of people in the US who spend their free time and their energy fighting poverty and AIDS. This is a global effort and, in partnership, we’re going to end extreme poverty and global disease.

My friend who organized the match spoke about how these teenagers are examples to the children that were gathered to watch the match. I found his words inspiring. The next generation, whether we’re teenagers or elderly, is watching and learning from our example. We have an opportunity to change the course of history.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria