New US Aid program to invest in science based social businesses

President Obama is rolling out some changes and new programs for US development aid. One of the new programs announced last week will invest in science and technology innovations that address the world's problems. The program is a sign that the government is willing to give some development responsibility to social business.

From Just Means, writer Harry Stevens introduces us to the US Aid program called "Development Innovation Ventures."

Last week the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the official launch of "Development Innovation Ventures," a new department devoted exclusively to fostering innovation in the delivery of global aid. The department, to which the acronym "DIV" has been applied, is part of President Barrack Obama's comprehensive scheme to encourage innovative approaches to improve the delivery of social services.
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DIV, which will be led by Harvard Economist Michael Kremer, intends to seek out and invest in "high-risk, high-return projects" that offer inventive and scalable solutions to global social challenges. DIV has already chosen eight U.S.-based investees to receive between $99,000 and $230,000 of USAID's $21 billion budget. Among the investees are a mobile reporting platform for Afghanistan, a solar lighting framework for Uganda, and a rapid pregnancy-induced hypertension diagnosis test for Nepal developed at Johns Hopkins.

Rubble begins to clear in Haiti

Finally some of the rubble that was left behind after the Haitian earthquake is beginning to be cleared away. The New York Times has a fascinating story about a couple of American businessmen who won the contracts from the government to work on the rubble. The contract winners say that the start of work was delayed by a lack of funding, and grand development plans that never came to be. Writer Deborah Sontag gives us the background on what delay.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the American military and several American contractors were busy clearing roads and setting up logistical support for the Haitian government and international groups. One of Mr. Perkins’s chief competitors — the DRC Group of Alabama — already had an office in Haiti and started right in with the grisly task of recovering bodies.

After that initial burst of activity, though, the cleanup slowed to a crawl. International officials blamed the Haitian government for failing to take charge and create a master plan for debris removal and resettlement. Haitian officials, however, maintain that international donors themselves were slow to make rubble a priority.

“What is happening now could have happened in March if there had not been a laxity on the part of the international community,” said one senior official in the planning ministry, who asked that he not be identified for what he called political reasons. “As you know, we ourselves don’t have the means.”

Chuck Prieur, senior vice president of DRC-Haiti, said that rubble removal was never “sexy” to donors. “Nobody wants to do cleanup,” he said. “Everybody likes to do shiny stuff you can put your name on.”
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Major cleanup and rebuilding is not expected to happen until next year, frustrating contractors like Mr. Prieur, although his firm does have work, building shelters and a residential camp for the United Nations.

“I’m here, so I’d love to get going, and my American greed says I’d love to have everything given to me,” Mr. Prieur said. His company’s competitor, Mr. Perkins’s firm, got the first major cleanup contract because it had “the capacity,” Michel Content of the planning ministry said.

The government is paying $32.50 to $58 a cubic yard for debris removal. That is considerably more than the American government paid contractors after Hurricane Katrina.

But the work in Haiti, contractors say, is tougher: trucks can haul fewer loads a day because of bad roads; fuel costs are higher; buildings have to be demolished. On the other hand, labor costs are far lower. The Haitians Mr. Perkins has hired and trained — close to 100, he said — are getting $1,000 a month, a substantial wage in Haiti, though much less than the $450 to $500 a day he is paying American machine operators here.

A call for Zimbabwe to stop paying debts

A debt forgiveness advocacy coalition says that debt repayments are preventing Zimbabwe's women from getting essential health care. The coalition called ZIMCODD says that Zimbabwe should stop getting loans from the big international lending institutions and stop paying of the loans they already made.

From the IPS, writer Stanley Kwenda tells us more about how debt affects health in Zimbabwe.

Indications are that many Zimbabwean women opt to give birth at home, with some children being born HIV positive because their mothers cannot afford the maternity fees or the fees charged at hospitals and clinics for the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, according to the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD).

ZIMCODD is a coalition of organisations working on social and economic justice issues in the politically beleaguered southern African state. Its calculation of Zimbabwe’s debt as being 8,3 billion dollars includes interest costs.

Hospitals and clinics in Zimbabwe’s urban areas charge 250 and 50 dollars respectively in maternity fees. Delivering a baby at state hospitals with the help of a professional midwife costs 173 dollars.

Given that even civil servants mostly earn less than 200 dollars a month, the charges put health services out of reach for most citizens.

Says Tariro Chikwanha: "We cannot get AIDS drugs or drugs for opportunistic infections because they are too expensive." Even the tests to determine whether an HIV-positive person should go on to antiretroviral drugs are out of reach, costing 10 dollars each at state hospitals.

Chikwanha, who has lived with HIV for 13 years, is increasingly worried about the inaccessibility of health services in Zimbabwe. She founded DREAMS, an organisation that works with youths who are living with HIV and AIDS or are affected by it.

"Because of the cost most people give up and wait for death at home," explains Chikwanha.

She blames the country’s unsustainable debts levels for the dearth in state funds for public healthcare. The government has a so-called "social dimension fund" which is supposed to take care of these needs but it is virtually non-existent.

"Government debts are killing us as women. The government should stop getting more loans," Chikwanha told IPS. "We have enough money to look after ourselves. We have diamonds, platinum and gold. They should sell these minerals and get us money to live a better life."

Super typhoon Magi threatens Philippines rice crop

A super typhoon has hit the northern Philippines today putting at risk as big portion of the nation's rice crop. Super typhoon Magi hit the main island of Luzon with winds of 155 miles per hour, the strongest typhoon to hit the nation this year. Northern provinces of the Philippines have issued a "state of calamity," but damage estimates are unknown at this time as the weather has yet to clear.

From Reuters AlertNet, our snippet from writer Manny Mogato concentrates on the damage to rice that could make the nation food insecure.

Angelito Banayo, administrator of the National Food Authority (NFA) told Reuters the government's worst case scenario was Megi could damage 232,169 tonnes of unmilled rice crop in the north with only 30 percent of it able to be harvested.

The Philippines is the world's biggest rice importer and damage from the typhoon could see it buy more than had been expected for 2011, which could push up international prices.

Andrew Villacorta, regional executive director in the agriculture department, said the Cagayan valley accounted for 12 percent of national rice output, or about 1 million tonnes of unmilled rice.

He said just over one third of the crop had been harvested, while about 90 percent of the corn crop had been harvested.

Last year, the country lost 1.3 million tonnes of paddy rice following three strong typhoons in September and October, prompting it to go to the market early to boost its stocks.

"This could bring destruction to our crops," Val Perdido, a regional farm official, told reporters.

"It's the peak of harvest season now. More than 230,000 hectares of rice fields are still in their reproductive and maturing stages."

A MDG summit for the Philippines and grumbles about lack of funding

Government officials in the Philippines are complaining of budget shortfalls in a recent Millennium Development Goal summit. The summit is being held to explore ways to meet the MDGs in the Philippines, but many are warning that some goals will not be reached.

Statistics presented at the summit give evidence that the goal on improving maternal and childbirth health will not me be met. The goal of improving access to education in the Philippines is also unlikely as enrollment has not improved enough.

From GMA News, we read more about what was discussed at the summit.

"Considering the threats of climate change, there will be a greater difficulty in the attainment of some of the MDGs given that the Philippines is one of the so called 'climate hotspots'," Economic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga said Monday during the first Philippine MDG summit at Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati City.

The country is facing the daunting task of achieving its MDGs because it has to compete for a slice of the "shrinking development pie" with the impact of the global financial crisis on developed economies, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo said.

Past experiences have shown that it was difficult to get official development assistance (ODA) from traditional donors during global economic down turns, he added.

As a country with middle income country (MIC) status, the Philippines is less viable than low income nations to qualify for ODA and access development loans.

"Our status as an MIC is of no comfort to millions of our countrymen who live below the poverty line, unaware of the dynamics of the politics of development assistance," Romulo said.

Paderanga said despite government interventions for the MDGs a “significant proportion" of the country's population remain impoverished — 30 per cent to 32.9 per cent in 2006.

“With five years remaining" before the MDG target by 2015, "we need to do more," he said.

Guest Voices: World Food Day, October 16th

For the next installment of guest posts from Concern Worldwide, we read about World Food Day. October 16th is a day to raise public awareness of hunger and to strengthen the resolve of those already fighting it.

The writer on this post is Allyson Brown, the Operations Director for Concern Worldwide. Allyson says that female farmers need to be empowered, as they already grow a majority of the food in the under-developed world.

Did you know that women produce more than half of the world’s food but earn only 10% of the world’s income? And although women produce up to 80% of food in the developing world, they often aren’t able to grow enough to feed themselves and their families. Despite global commitments to improve gender equity, we know that poverty and hunger still have a woman’s face. Why? Because when times are hard, they eat last and least.

Tomorrow, October 16th will mark World Food Day, a day designated to heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen unity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty. If we are serious about fighting hunger and beating global poverty, the empowerment of women farmers must be prioritized.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) almost a billion people go hungry every day, and 60% are women. This is not just today, this week or this month—it’s every day. Hunger continues to be the single biggest risk to health worldwide and poses a greater threat than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Concern Worldwide passionately believes that we can and should give this crisis the attention it deserves, and that women play a vital, yet unrecognized, role in the fight against global hunger.

Agatha Akandelwa is one of these women. These days, she takes care of 21 people in her Zambian village, including her grandchildren and several children of sick and deceased relatives. But sometimes it’s hard to find food for her large extended family.

“Our food situation becomes very difficult every year, starting in about September and lasting right through until January. During that period we only get about one meal per day. I really don’t feel good during that time. As an adult, I can go all day without food and then get up and go to the field the next day, but I get really concerned for the children during the hungry times.”

Concern Worldwide works daily with women farmers like Agatha. We help provide them with tools, training and a little money to invest in seeds—and the women farmers have seen a significant impact. They’ve not only been able to grow enough to feed their families, but they’ve also been able to use the income from their surplus crops to send their children to school and keep their families healthy.

Concern is empowering women marginal farmers in Uganda, Zambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere to:
• help build community networks
• promote alliances and external links to markets
• organize needs-based training and workshops
• develop flexible and innovative approaches tailored to specific needs
• become a recognized voice and force for fighting hunger

Women farmers are responsible for growing, harvesting, preparing and selling the majority of food in poor countries. They are on the front lines of the fight against hunger, but far too often they do not have a seat at the table with policy makers or aid organizations. Until recently, policies designed to address hunger have failed to adequately value the role of women farmers as crucial players in providing their families and communities with food for both consumption and sale. There must be a reform of land tenure rights, as well as property and inheritance laws as measures to help women farmers succeed.

The US, with its new Feed the Future Initiative—a $3.5B commitment to improving the global food supply—has already made investment in women and girls a key part of the program. Unless world leaders focus on women farmers, the target they set to halve poverty and hunger by 2015—one of eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) originally set in 2000—will not be reached. It’s that simple.

Concern Worldwide’s Women Can’t Wait campaign urges the international community to listen to women like Agatha and to increase support for women in the fight against global hunger. On September 21st during the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals, Mr. Tom Arnold, Concern’s Chief Executive, delivered 10,336 “Women Can’t Wait” petition signatures to the UN where they were received by Dr David Nabarro, UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition. Dr Nabarro received the petition very positively, saying:

“I welcome Concern’s Women Can’t Wait campaign, which has the support of over 10,000 signatories worldwide. Hunger is one of the most important challenges facing our world today, and it is essential that we acknowledge the central role women play as farmers, mothers, and providers of food to their families. All of us have a responsibility to make sure that by 2015, significant progress has been made in ending hunger for good.”

Kiva celebrates five years of making microcredit loans

Kiva is now celebrating its five year anniversary. The new generation of charity website launched as a way to get more people involved in microcredit. Anyone can contribute as little as 25 dollars to help make more micro-loans to people in the under-developed world.

Kiva now makes over a million dollars of loans every five days. Since its launch, 500,000 different borrowers have received over 123 million dollars.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, writer Robert Selna tells us where Kiva stands after five years in operation.

Micro-asset financing is a relatively recent innovation in micro-finance - which is best known for small loans issued to people trying to escape poverty by starting a business - and is an example of how the field has explored different loan models.

Kiva, celebrating its fifth anniversary on Wednesday, took that experimentation to a new level in 2005 when it coupled the Internet and large numbers of individual lenders with needy borrowers.

Using a Web portal, Kiva facilitates loans from individuals who can log onto its site and read borrowers' stories. Kiva partners with lending organizations in developing countries, which take the no-interest loans from Kiva and distribute them locally.

Kiva lenders are paid back if the borrower succeeds, but do not earn interest. Interest charged by the local lender typically goes toward operating costs and salaries.

In recent years, with the help of Kiva, micro-finance as an anti-poverty tool has quickly grown in popularity. But it also has developed critics. Some note that at least half the field is now occupied by private banks, which in the best case are seeking profits along with positive social impacts, and in the worst, are simply looking to make a buck off the poor - even from minute loans.

Others have complained that Kiva overstated the connection between its online lenders and needy borrowers.

Kiva and others in the micro-finance field agree that there have been bumps along the road. But they point to the growing number of websites modeled on Kiva as well as new programs - such as the asset financing helping Ndung'u in Kenya - as proof that the industry is evolving and is likely to continue influencing economic development worldwide.

Ananya Roy, a professor at UC Berkeley, has written a book about micro-finance and has focused in part on Bangladesh. She said many lending organizations in that country are not encumbered by relying on government funding and therefore are free to experiment - applying new and old finance techniques in an effort to alleviate poverty.

We just love Kiva and we do help to make some loans through it. Some of the money raised via the ads on our site goes into our Kiva account. This would be a good time to plug our group on Kiva, that we invite fans of the blog a apart of, go to this page to join

Good news on the Latin American economy

Chile has given Latin America exposure with headlines around the globe about the miner rescue. However the continent in general doesn't get that much media attention. While those of us who advocate for poverty awareness concentrate on Africa and Asia, Latin America is also in need of development.

Yet in a commentary for McClatchy Newspapers, Frida Ghitis says that there is a lot of good news about the economy in Latin America. While America might soon have a double dip recession, Latin America has recovered and continues to boom. We found Ghitis commentary at the Winnipeg Free Press.

With the notable exception of Venezuela and its few imitators, Latin economies are booming. In some -- Brazil, for example -- the country not only moved quickly out of the global recession but emerged at such a scorching pace that the most serious challenge for policy-makers is slowing down the economy lest it overheat. With the United States and Europe struggling to keep from plunging back into recession, Brazil's economy grew at a blistering 8.9 per cent in the first half of 2010.

The latest analysis from the International Monetary Fund predicts 2010 GDP up 7.5 per cent in Brazil, just one example of a regional phenomenon. Brazil, Peru, Argentina, each should grow more than 7.5 per cent, a number that American and European leaders would not contemplate even in their wildest prosperity fantasies.

Chile, which suffered a devastating and costly earthquake this year, will still expand five per cent. Uruguay's 2010 forecast stands at 8.5 per cent, Paraguay at nine per cent and Colombia, still fighting -- although winning -- a war against leftist insurgents should expand 4.7 per cent.
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To be sure, poverty remains an urgent problem in most of the region, and prosperity has been too slow to reach the poorest. But a middle class is emerging. Corruption and a weak education infrastructure are still a problem. Also troubling is how much of the growth still comes from selling commodities -- raw materials -- to other countries, particularly China. Commodity exports risk plummeting with sudden drops in price or demand. But some Latin nations are doing a good job of diversifying and salting away their riches in rainy-day funds.
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By contrast, Latin America, the land where democracy had such trouble finding its way to people's hearts, has found a strong consensus in favour of democracy. In many countries presidents enjoy stratospheric approval ratings thanks to the strong results they have produced. There is growing agreement that the best approach is to fight poverty aggressively with market-friendly and fiscally responsible policies alongside special programs to lift up the poorest and build up the middle class.

FAO finally invite activists to talk

One good thing that has come from the dual crises of food price shocks and the global recession. The world's governments are looking to more people and different ways to prevent crises from repeating.

Leaders of poor countries are beginning to be invited to the big rich nation meetings like the G-8 and G-20. Now, activists are also being invited to meetings of international bodies. The activists and non-governmental organizations used to just protest outside the door, but now the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is beginning to talk to them.

From the IPS, writer Marwaan Macan-Markar talks to a couple of activists who were finally heard by the FAO.

"It was very empowering. We had opportunities to intervene simultaneously since we were there as co-equals with the governments," said (Marlene) Ramirez, secretary-general of the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas, a Manila-based regional grassroots network. "It has made a major difference for civil society."

This week’s debates on finding solutions to food security were influenced by "the voices of many civil society sectors," she revealed during an interview from the meeting site. "Governments got to hear alternative solutions and the need to explore alternative ways."

(Sarojini) Rengam and Ramirez were among 150 civil society representatives from across the world that took part in this week’s groundbreaking meeting. These groups, of which 30 were from Asia, represented regional and international farmers’ organisations, herders associations and indigenous organisations.

This break from the format of conventional U.N. meetings – where civil society groups are accorded marginal, or at times only symbolic, space – is winning early praise from some government delegates, among them the representatives from the Philippines and Argentina.

"It is very important that finally, member governments have recognised that NGOs and CSOs (civil society organisations) have a role to play institutionally," said Noel de Luna, current head of the CFS, during an interview. "It serves as an assurance that the voices who we have excluded in the past are heard."

"CSO are directly in contact with the people going hungry and living in poverty and were able to bring that reality to the discussions," the delegate from the Philippines added. "In the past, all we heard were only statements by governments."

Little known "tropical diseases" still infect 1 million dollars

A release from the World Health Organization today focuses on some of the little talked about diseases in the under-developed world. The WHO says diseases such as dengue, rabies and leprosy still infect one million people.

From this Associated Press article that we found at the Guardian, writer Colleen Barry details the WHO comments and tells us of more pledges of help from pharmaceutical companies.

WHO identified 17 diseases and disease groups present in 149 countries one-third of the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day. Thirty countries have six or more of the diseases. In all, more than one-third of the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day are affected.

"They cause massive but hidden and silent suffering, and frequently kill, but not in the numbers comparable to the deaths caused by HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis or malaria," said WHO director general Margaret Chan.

Still, Chan said that the diseases take a serious toll that serves to "anchor large populations in poverty."

Two of the diseases, onchocerciasis, known as river blindness, and trachoma, a bacterial eye infection, cause blindness. Leprosy and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis, leave victims deformed, hamper productivity and normal social interaction, Chan said. Sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis, debilitates before it kills. Left untreated, rabies is fatal.

Novartis has renewed a commitment to donate drugs to treat leprosy, while GlaxoSmithKline said it would expand donations of a drug to treat worm infections and Sanofi-Aventis will continue its support to help eliminate sleeping sickness and other illness.

Also active in the fight are Bayer, Eisai and Johnson & Johnson, WHO said.

Howard Buffett calls for a "brown revolution"

As was pointed out in our previous post, increased food production can help to lower the cost of food. If the small farmers of the world could greatly increase their yields, not only would they have more food for themselves, any extra they sell in market would be more affordable for their hungry neighbors.

How best to increase yields is being discussed at the World Food Prize symposium. Howard Buffet used his speech to state the need for improved soil nutrients in Africa. Howard, the son of the investor Warren Buffet, leads his own foundation concerned with farming.

The article on Buffett from Bloomberg mainly focuses on his future at his father's business Berkshire Hathaway. For our snippet, writer Alan Bjerga and Andrew Frye touches on his speech at the World Food Prize forum.

A “Brown Revolution” to improve soil quality is more important to African agriculture than new seeds and fertilizers, said Howard Buffett, who may succeed his father, Warren Buffett, as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Africans who farm plots of less than 3 acres (1.2 hectares) will need tailored solutions that may be different from the “Green Revolution” that boosted crop yields in Asia, Howard Buffett, 55, said today in a speech at the World Food Prize conference in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Food security is complicated, agriculture is complicated,” said Buffett, who illustrated his speech with anecdotes and photographs from interviews with African farmers. “Simply distributing seeds and fertilizer, if that’s the plan, will fail long term.”

Buffett, a Berkshire director since 1993, is an ambassador against hunger for the United Nations’ World Food Program and runs the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which aids subsistence farming. Today, the foundation announced $13 million in grants over four years to small farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
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Fluctuations in the cost of staples are “a pretty scary thing” to poorer populations that spend almost all of their income on food, Buffett said in an interview after his speech. A stronger agriculture infrastructure will protect against higher prices, he said.

“You have to start with the basics,” including agricultural education, literacy and investment in roads and storage necessary to bring farm goods to market, he said. Then, farmers will be integrated into the global market as poor countries become more self-sufficient and are able to export cash crops, he said.

2010 World Food Prize winners on aiding small farmers

The World Food Prize was awarded today to Heifer International president Jo Luck and Bread for the World president David Beckmann. The prize usually goes to scientists who invent ways to increase food production in the under-developed world. This year, the granters of the prize decided to recognize the contributions of the non-profit community.

One of the major criticisms of the non-profits is that they just give food away, but that is not so of Heifer and Bread for the World. Instead, both organizations give resources and materials that the poor can use to produce more food so they can gain more money from it.

From the Des Moines Register, newspaper for the host city of the World Food Prize, writer Philip Brasher interviews both Luck and Beckmann.

Q: Brazil dramatically increased its agricultural output through large-scale farms, and the Economist magazine recently said that model could likely be repeated in Africa. Why focus on small-scale farmers?

Beckmann: In Africa, poor people are on the small farms and it is feasible to improve their productivity. If you do that, you get more food into the local markets, so that brings down the price of food. Heifer has long demonstrated that you can increase the productivity of these small farmers.

There are situations where large-scale agriculture could do some good. I'm not ideological about this. But most of the poor people in the world are smallholder farmers, so the most direct route to reducing poverty is in increasing their productivity.

Q: So aid to farmers is important not only to increase food production but lift people out of poverty?

Luck: Absolutely. You just give them the animals. They have better nutrition for their children. They use the manure to plant their crops. They're usually relegated to the worst land in the world, slash-and-burn hillsides. I've gone in where the entire place looked like it was painted with tan paint. There was nothing colorful about any of it. I went back just two years later in Honduras and they had terraced those slash-and-burn hillsides. They had planted nitrogen-fixing trees. They had crops going. They had ribbons around the necks of the goats. They had built pens for them to keep them healthy and safe. Children were exercising them. Big companies can't do that.

Q: But doesn't humanitarian aid often foster dependency?

Luck: It does, if they don't help people become self-reliant. Don't just hand it out and deliver it and leave. That is not sustainable. That's why I believe so much in the work we do and others with this kind of approach working beyond the disaster assistance or emergency assistance. Give them a few resources, give them a few animals and some training and you can't hold them back. They may not all be a millionaire, but they're going to be successful. They're going to be proud and making decisions and they're going to be influencing the government.

Beckmann: The U.S. government's world hunger initiative is focused on countries that have good policies in place and are investing their own money in agriculture.

Luck: So it's more sustainable.

Beckmann: Where you have dubious results is where local people aren't doing what they should be doing. In poor countries that have their act together and are using their own money, well, there are lots of opportunities.

Senegal gives scholarships to Haitian students

One of Africa's poorest nations is taking in students from Haiti, offering them scholarships at a Senegal University. Despite the touching act of charity, it has caused some grumbles amongst the public who complain about Senegal residents having trouble receiving scholarship money.

For the students taking Senegal up on the offer it's an opportunity to complete their education. They realize that the country of Senegal is almost as poor as Haiti, but most of Haiti's schools have yet to be rebuilt.

From the Independent On-Line, this Associated Press story depicts the students arrival.

The 163 students are the first batch of arrivals from Haiti in a grand scheme that began when President Abdoulaye Wade saw images of the devastated Caribbean nation following the January quake.

He was moved to help, arguing that Haitians are the sons and daughters of Africa because their ancestors were taken from the continent as slaves. French is the main language of Senegal, while Haitians speak French-derived Creole.

He initially offered free land to the quake victims, and the attempt to help them has become one of the main planks of Wade's larger goal of creating a global African community, which includes a proposal to unite the continent into a single country.

He was criticised at home when he went so far as to say that he would be willing to hand over a region of Senegal if a large number of Haitians were to agree to relocate here. The project has since been scaled back and the students will receive free housing - not land. They will also be offered scholarships in a nation where the campus of Senegal's largest university is frequently paralysed by strikes because of the late payment of scholarships.
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“This is a historic day,” said airport security guard Abdou Salam, who leaned against the peeling blue wall of the airport's VIP room in the hours before the chartered jet landed. “But it's a little weird. We're chartering a plane and giving them free scholarships, and yet we know that our own students can sometimes go six months without seeing their payments.”

Last year, students angry at not receiving their scholarships seized municipal buses as they entered the campus of Cheikh Anta Diop University in downtown Dakar. They blocked roads and were beaten back by police. The university's dorms are so overcrowded that rooms made for two often house four or more, forcing students to sleep in spoons on twin-sized beds.

World Food Prize symposium begins

The World Food Prize symposium begins today in Des Monies. Experts and advocates on agriculture from around the world will meet in Iowa to talk about solutions for the small farmer.

The event will also award this year's World Food Prize. The Prize is given to people who help to increase food production in developing countries. This year, the prize will be given to Heifer International president Jo Luck and Bread for the World president David Beckmann.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Google news, writer Micheal Crumb presents what will happen at the symposium.

Their problems will be the focus of this week's World Food Prize symposium, as agriculture officials from around the world gather to talk about what can be done to fight hunger. As many as 60 farmers are expected to join agriculture officials from the U.S., Afghanistan, Pakistan and Liberia, said Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, which hosts the annual conference in Des Moines.

Former U.S. Secretary General Kofi Annan is scheduled to give the keynote address Thursday, when the foundation will give its World Food Prize to the presidents of Heifer International and the Christian advocacy group Bread for the World in recognition of their efforts to fight hunger. Heifer International provides families with food- and income-producing animals, such as sheep, while Bread for the World presses U.S. lawmakers to support anti-hunger policies.

The goal for the conference is to find ways to provide smallholder farmers with technology "so they can get the most out of their land, not to just feed themselves but to become produces who are growing food for others in their country and their society," Quinn said.

"It's become clear that smallholder farmers play a critical role in the global food supply," he added.

But Howard Buffett, whose foundation runs research farms in Illinois and South Africa, said technology isn't always the answer. Western-style farming, which relies heavily on expensive fertilizers and equipment, may not work in poor countries, he said.

"People want to provide a silver bullet solution and there aren't any," said Buffett, who is scheduled to speak Wednesday. "It's not easy to do and you can't take technology, better seed and fertilizer and think that's going to solve the problem."

He said smallholder farmers need what he called "basic types of intervention," such as cover crops, conservation-based tillage systems and very basic farm equipment. They also need help improving soil fertility to stop "slash-and-burn" farming.

"They will farm a few acres for a few years and then get no more production because there is no soil fertility left and they will chop down and clear three to four more acres to farm on," he said. "We need to do this in ways that will improve food security and agriculture and be good for the environment."

New government benefits for the poor in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's wealth cap continues to spread even after the global recession. To combat the gap, Hong Kong Chief Executive David Tsang has announced some new government benefits for the poor.

From Bloomberg, writer Frederik Balfour details the announcement.

Responding to the widening wealth gap in Hong Kong, the government will provide transport subsidies for commuters, expanded medical services for the elderly, and will make housing ownership more affordable, Tsang said in his annual policy address broadcast live on local television.

“Social tension in Hong Kong stems partly from the wealth gap,” Tsang said. “The wages of some low-educated and low- skilled workers have continued to lag behind economic growth.”

The number of people living in poverty rose to a record 1.26 million, or about 18.1 percent of the total population, in the first half of 2010 from 1.2 million last year, the Hong Kong Council of Social Service said in an Oct. 3 report.

Inequality is rising even as the city with a population of 7.15 million recovers from its deepest recession in more than a decade. Hong Kong’s gross domestic product climbed 6.5 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. The wealth divide is the most pressing social problem in Hong Kong, a July survey of 894 residents by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found.

Gaza blockade prevents medicine from entering

As a part of the Gaza blockade, one of the items that Israel stops from passing through the border is medicine. Israel controls all of the goods that reaches the Palestinian people that are blocked in. They do make some exceptions for food, but most medicine and medical equipment does not enter Gaza.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Mohammed Omer illustrates how the blockade infringes on human rights.

The health ministry now lists 375 deaths due to shortage of life-saving medicines. The medicines sit just outside the borders of the territory until most pass their expiry dates. But there are no expiry dates on about 10,000 coffins that have been donated for Gaza. The coffins do make it to those that eventually need them.

By the end of last month more than 70 percent of medicines donated for Gaza had been dumped because they were past their expiry date, the health ministry says. They were worth many millions of dollars. And they were worth many lives.

"Much of the donated medicines came from Arab states," Dr Mounir Al- Boursh, director of the pharmaceutical department at the health ministry tells IPS. This added up to 10,300 tonnes of medicines worth 25 million dollars, he said.

Only about 30 percent of this could be used, he said; the rest either expired, or was inaccessible because of restricted distribution by the Israelis, who control what gets into Gaza.

It's not easy to dump medicines safely either. Much of unused supply mixes with domestic waste, creating health hazards far from bringing relief. The World Health Organisation has had to "raise concern about the unsafe disposal of expired medication and other medical disposable material," WHO spokesperson told IPS.

But the Gaza ministry has received 10,000 coffins, about 1,000 of them for children, Dr Boursh said. Such help, he said, "does not meet with the needs of the Gaza Strip."

A call for tougher action against human trafficking in East Africa

From the Voice of America, a story on human trafficking in East Africa that reminds us that victims of trafficking fall across both genders.

The International Organization for Migration says there’s an urgent need for tougher action against human trafficking in East Africa. The IOM has released a new assessment of the problem, saying men, women and children of all ages are being exploited.

Human trafficking often begins with the basic desire to seek a better life in another country. However, the IOM says that dream often turns into tragedy with exploitation by family members, religious acquaintances, businessmen and retired prostitutes.

Alice Kimani, the organization’s counter-trafficking program officer in Nairobi, says, “In East Africa, all the countries have been identified as sources, transit and destination countries for human trafficking.”

Although it affects both genders and all ages, Kimani says some are more attractive targets for traffickers.

“You find that children and young people are more vulnerable. But we also see a trend of men being trafficked, even older men for purposes of forced labor, though not in large numbers,” she says.

Many types of exploitation

“For example,” she says, “in Kenya we found women and children being subjected to sexual exploitation. We have found them exploited for domestic work. We’ve recently found some children from Tanzania trafficked to Kenya for street begging. We’ve also come across children who are trafficked to work in the agricultural sector. They are employed in farms and they are subjected to hard labor, forced labor.”

The assessment also found a lot of internal trafficking within Tanzania. Children from rural areas are lured by the promise of going to school. The tempting offer often comes from relatives or friends of their parents. They never make it to school. Instead, they are forced to do domestic labor.

It’s difficult for the IOM to give a good estimate as to how many people in East Africa are victims of human traffickers. “Because of lack of identification techniques or a centralized way of collecting data, a lot of this information gets lost in the way. So the victims may get assisted or they may not get assisted and we’ll never know their numbers,” Kimani says.

Organizing against traffickers

Some 50 senior East African government officials, civil society members and international experts reviewed the IOM’s assessment at a recent meeting. As a result, they proposed the organization take steps to help establish a regional network to share information on trafficking. That could eventually lead to a centralized database that could be shared with law enforcement agencies.

The organization says, currently, Rwanda is the only country in the region where the government has established both shelter and hotline services to assist victims of gender violence and trafficking.

Alice Kimani says they also called for implementation of a region-wide 116 emergency hotline number to report possible cases of human trafficking.

“It was recognized that 116 [is] a number that has been adopted by many countries in the region. For example, Mozambique and Zimbabwe already have 116. Kenya also has a 116. And 116 is a number that has been used in other countries as a very child-friendly line. So the participants were recommending for this number to actually be adopted by all the countries in East Africa,” she says.

Many victims are afraid to talk about their experiences. They say if they go public, traffickers could hurt their families or they could be stigmatized if they returned to their homes.

Kimani says, “It is only through counseling and assisting them that we can actually assist them to come out of that sort of hibernation.

Besides counseling, the International Organization for Migration also offers adult education or business classes to help them find jobs.

Continued violence in the Eastern DRC is contributing to the human trafficking problem. Buses and lorries carry war-weary Congolese to Uganda in hopes of finding a better life, but they often become prey of traffickers.

Ibrahim rings alarm bells on African democracy

With his recent survey of Africa's governments, Mo Ibrahim warned that some areas of governance have not improved in the last couple of years. The Ibrahim Index of Good Governance survey found that economic development and quality of life is improving in Africa. However, the survey has found that the areas of human rights, safety, and rule of law seem to be in decline or stagnant.

From the Guardian, writer Jonathan Glennie has this comment on the survey results.

With all this data and credibility at his fingertips, Ibrahim has chosen this moment to "ring alarm bells on democracy". The progress witnessed across the continent in recent years is slipping, according to his figures. Countries doing better economically, but where these alarm bells need to be sounded, include Gambia, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire and Madagascar.

Worryingly, some African leaders can be heard muttering about a trade-off between development and rights, citing "the Chinese model".

There is certainly some truth in the idea that strong but not necessarily democratic government can be good for development, while participatory democracy can create problems. But it is worth remembering Matthew Lockwood's useful maxim (in his excellent book The State They're In): "Authoritarian rule seems to produce developmental outcomes that are either very good or very bad; democratic rule tends to languish in the middle". In Africa, it is hard to find an example of authoritarian rule that has achieved "very good" outcomes, though there are many examples of the opposite.

The key is accountability. Ibrahim makes the slightly exaggerated but nonetheless compelling claim that "poor governance is the only reason for slow progress" in Africa. The development of representative government in most countries in the world has been the most important means of allowing poor people more power over decisions that affect them – the power to vote for someone else, or the opportunity to meet and influence their representatives.

It would be a grave mistake to believe that because Africa has progressed economically and developmentally in the past decade, that is the only trajectory available to it in the future. On the contrary, shocks and struggles for power, often to do with resources, are more than likely to challenge this direction.

A challenge that could prevent health care for Bangladeshi sex workers

From IRIN, a story about a political fight in Bangladesh that might prevent sex workers from receiving HIV prevention health care.

Civil society is preparing to challenge a recent government decision in Bangladesh to exclude “prostitution” as a profession on new voter cards on the grounds it effectively blocks sex workers’ access to HIV prevention and life-saving health care.

On 17 August the Bangladesh Election Commission (BEC) announced “prostitution” would be recognized for the first time as a profession on new voter ID cards. But pressure from conservative religious groups led the BEC to reverse its decision, according to Shahnaz Begum, president of Sex Workers Network (SWN), a local NGO that works in half of the nation’s 64 districts.

Election commissioner Sohul Hossain told IRIN the term “sex worker” was omitted in order to prevent commercial sex work, in line with Article 18(2) of Bangladesh’s constitution, which states that “gambling and prostitution” should be “discouraged”.

But activists are seizing upon Article 40 of the constitution, which gives citizens the right to “enter upon any lawful profession or occupation”, arguing that women, therefore, can choose sex work as a profession.

This decision is “ripe for a public interest challenge”, said Khaled Chowdhury, a lawyer at the Supreme Court. “Sex work is not illegal, but as moral and social issues are involved, it is not encouraged. The decision of the EC [Electoral Commission] may have an impact [on the acceptance of sex workers], as voter ID cards are now essential in many aspects of a citizen’s life.”

ID cards are necessary to open a bank account, apply for a passport, and to register property. While not required for health services, almost all other government forms require an ID card as proof of identity.

Limited legality

When the government tried to shut down two large brothels in Dhaka, the capital, a decade ago, 100 sex workers fought back - and won. As a result, sex work is now legal for women over 18, pimps and brothel owners.

But the ruling offers sex workers little protection, as police still frequently harass them, which, according to Begum, can lead to unsafe sex practices. “Clients are often taken to a dark alley and the sex workers have to rush because they are on the lookout for police. If sex work was properly recognized they could take the time to convince their clients to use a condom.”

To make matters worse, a sex worker in Dhaka who gave her name and age as Tania, 28, said police often demand half her average daily earnings of US$7. And without police protection, she has little recourse when clients are abusive. “Yesterday a client gagged and beat me. I don’t want to live this life any more.”

Health care

The government has offered no-cost health care to sex workers at designated clinics around the country since 1978, but the Health Ministry reports that only 2,000 sex workers used these services in 2009 (0.5 percent of the 400,000 sex workers the NGO SWN estimates are working nationwide).

Begum said the government’s mixed messages about sex work are hurting the fight against HIV because sex workers who seek medical treatment are often turned away on the grounds they are “bad women”.

A consistent government stance on sex work would help prevent such discrimination, she added. “The legal framework for sex workers exists, but it is not implemented. The mixed public health messages from the government and Election Commission are undoubtedly harmful for reducing the spread of HIV.”

NGO clinics

There are dozens of NGO-run drop-in centres nationwide that provide free HIV counselling, condoms and medicines, and a referral system for HIV testing to sex workers and their clients. IRIN spoke to 10 sex workers: All said they preferred to visit NGO clinics due to the conservative attitudes of public health staff.

In 2007, 67 percent of sex workers reported using a condom with their most recent client, according to the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) 2008 Progress Report.

According to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), in 2009 estimated HIV prevalence among Bangladesh’s 160 million people was less than 0.1 percent. The rate for sex workers was about 1 percent, according the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

However, the Global Fund warned that a highly mobile population, coupled with poverty and a low level of awareness about HIV, threaten to increase prevalence.

And until the law can protect sex workers and guarantee their access to health care, civil society leaders taking their case to court say that Bangladesh's status as a low HIV prevalence country may change.

“HIV is not spreading at an alarming rate, but I believe it would decrease further if the government gave [it] full recognition,” said Begum.

Legal protection is one of the issues to be addressed at the first UNAIDS consultation in Asia on sex work and HIV to be held 12-15 October in Pattaya, Thailand.

One instance where buying local doesn't work

Since President Obama is working on revamping the foreign aid structure, we hope that he includes a change in how the US purchases food aid. Instead of buying grain from an area close to the hungry nation, the US buys from American grain warehouses only. This hurts the economy of the hungry nation even further, and wastes a lot of time and money shipping the food over there.

The prior administration under George Bush tried to change this policy, but it was stopped by Congress. The members of Congress were probably concerned about how American farmers would react to the change. Changing policy to buy foreign products doesn't sit well with American voters and we are sure that some agriculture lobbyists has some things to say about it as well.

This opinion peace that we found at the Pasadena Star News sums up the problem with this policy. Writer Yifat Susskind works for MADRE: Rights, Resources and Results for Women Worldwide.

Meet Khalida Mahmoud, a 29-year-old woman whose farming family was driven into worsening poverty, after U.S. food aid poured into her home region of eastern Sudan. That's not how food aid is supposed to work, but just look at the policy: your tax dollars are used to buy grain from U.S. factory farms, the same giant corporations that already receive $26 billion in tax subsidies. Then the grain is transported halfway around the world, using thousands of gallons of fossil fuel and releasing tons of harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The transport typically takes months while hungry people grow more desperate.

Once the food finally arrives, it floods agricultural markets, destabilizing fragile local economies. Small farmers are the first to go bankrupt. Most of them are women like Khalida, who work small plots of land hoping to sell enough at market to buy cooking oil, flour, a bar of soap and a pair of shoes so a child can stay in school.

These women are more than the backbones of their families: they grow most of Africa's food. Unlike giant grain corporations, these women farm without fossil fuels and harmful chemicals. Fortunately, there is a straightforward solution: the U.S. should buy food aid crops directly from local farmers in Africa. When the U.N. World Food Program did this, they were able to obtain 75 percent more corn to feed hungry families than when they purchased grain from factory farms in the U.S. Buying specifically from women farmers has an enormous added benefit. Studies consistently show that when poor women gain access to money, they use it to provide food, healthcare and education for their children.

Read more: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_16307280#ixzz129M7g9L2