Niger will pitch new food security plan to international investors

The country of Niger is about to present a new plan for agriculture to international investors. Titled 3N or Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens, the plan includes 11 different programs to help the country feed itself. The programs range from improved irrigation, storage and transfer of milk, and diversifying seeds.

From the Guardian, reporter Liz Ford talked to 3N commissioner Hassane Mamoudou about the project.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels this week, Mamoudou said local civil society and grassroots organisations in the country's 266 municipalities can propose ideas for how the money is spent in their areas. "All actions will start at the grassroots," he said.

"We have to target where projects are implemented. Sorghum and millet will only grow in regions where there's enough rain. If a region does not have enough rain, we don't produce it [there]. Some areas will be for livestock breeding only. If fisheries are an activity in one region, we will focus on fisheries there. We won't do everything everywhere."

A proportion of the resources will be reserved for people from marginalised groups, who are sometimes excluded from programmes. All project proposals must come with an environment and social impact study, to prove sustainability and ensure they do not have a negative impact on the environment.

The 3N initiative has been in development since 2011, when the country's president, Mahamadou Issoufou, established an action plan and called on donors to help respond to the looming food crisis following a poor harvest. This swift action helped prevent a crisis becoming a famine.

Two-thirds of Niger is desert, and only around 11% of the land is suitable for farming. "The main problem is water. Water to drink, of course, water for agriculture, for animals. And now, we have food crises recurring [video]," said Mamoudou. "We used to have a food crisis every 10 years; now every seven, every five, every two years we have a crisis. They come closer and closer and are bigger and bigger."

Dissapointing test results for anti-Malaria drug RTS,S

The highly anticipated anti-Malaria drug RTS,S has completed its third round of testing. Some of the results were disappointing but not bad enough to stop development of the drug. The tests find that the drug reduces malaria illness by a third in infants. That fell short of expectations for the drug because RTS,S now has the same effectiveness as mosquito bed nets. The manufactures of the drug say that the results mean that RTS,S will have to be given to children a couple of times, once at birth and a booster shot later on.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Carey Biron describes the reaction from the test results. 

The study, funded largely by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is part of the largest malaria trial ever conducted, taking place in seven African countries. Results were published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, a U.S. publication.

While still significant, the results were disappointing in having followed surprisingly positive findings last year, when a similar study suggested that RTS,S was almost twice as effective (47-56 percent) on slightly older children, those five to 17 months old.

If this most recent phase could replicate that level of efficacy among infants, researchers had hoped that RTS,S doses could become incorporated into the standard round of initial vaccinations commonly given to newborns – an approach that has now been proven safe.

“It’s a little frustrating that we’re seeing different levels of protection in different age groups compared to last year and this year,” Andrew Witty, the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, a major drugs manufacturer and one of the central partners in developing RTS,S, told journalists Friday from London.

“As it turns out, this phase of study was not the final step that I think many people might have hoped. But it’s an important step and takes us further forward towards the goal we’ve been working toward over the past 50 years … this remains the lead and most encouraging candidate vaccine.”

Indeed, the new research constitutes the first time that scientists have found such high efficacy for an anti-malarial vaccine for infants. Witty notes that if the two rounds of study had been reversed, the psychological impact would be far different and the findings would undoubtedly have been widely lauded.

Further, the higher efficacy among the slightly older cohort remains extremely important, given that scientists have found that this age category has greater susceptibility to severe cases of malaria than do infants. While the ease of a single early vaccination would have been the most efficient scenario, researchers say they will now be looking into additional strengthening options, such as giving toddlers a booster later on.

“Two things are very, very encouraging,” Witty says. “One, the trial is successful, despite the fact that it doesn’t achieve quite the high level we would have hoped. Two, the benefit we’ve seen is higher than bed nets, which themselves deliver about 30 percent gain over nothing.”

Broken aid promises continue, this time with climate change

The recent history of development aid is full with broken promises. Over and over again rich nations have promised to give more money, but the donations often fall short of what they promise. This is playing out again when it comes to aid for climate change and its related storms.
At a United Nations summit in 2009, rich nations including the United States promised 100 million dollars in new aid money, specifically for climate change and weather protection. A few years later, most of the nations have yet to spell out how they will give this much. Many fear that donations will remain the same or even drop. Some critics warn that the money might be taken from other development aid projects.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Alister Doyle and Nina Chestney preview U.N. meetings in Doha, Qatar that will discuss this issue.

"Finance is key to agreeing on a package at Doha," said Pa Ousman Jarju of Gambia, chair of the 48-nation group of least developed countries. He expressed hopes for "renewed U.S. action on climate change" after Obama's re-election.

Small island states want "scaled-up, new and additional, predictable and adequate climate finance" from 2013, said Samoa's ambassador to the U.N., Aliioaiga Feturi Elisaia.

Developing countries want at least new cash for a fledgling, still-empty U.N. Green Climate Fund that is meant to channel aid towards developing nations

Christiana Figueres, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said that aid would not fall.

"Governments ... will at least maintain the current funding and they will in Doha look at the path along which they will ramp up to reach the $100 billion of mixed-sources of funding," she told Reuters in Singapore.

Some analysts are not so sure.

"At the very best we are looking at a flat-lining but we fear we will see a fall compared to the fast start finance," said Tim Gore of development group Oxfam. He said Spain, Italy, Greece and eastern Europe would all cut.

Under the U.N. plan, all nations will agree by 2015 a deal to slow climate change that will enter into force by 2020. China, the United States, the EU, India and Russia are the top emitters of greenhouse gases.

The handicapped smugglers of Benin

The tiny African nation of Benin has poorly secured borders. This makes smuggling goods out Nigeria a major problem for both countries. Nigeria is one of the biggest producers of oil in the continent. They also subside the price of oil so it is about half of the price as it is in Benin. So it is oil and gas that is often smuggled over.

A story from the Guardian this morning tells us that the handicapped of Benin have used the situation to their advantage. They hack their wheelchairs so they can store oil within them or with attached trailers. Because they are disabled, the border agents don't hassle them. The smuggling provides good income for the handicapped in a country where they have little else to do.

Guardian writer Monica Mark describes this practice. 

A childhood polio survivor, Isaac chose one of the few careers available to wheelchair users in Benin: smuggling.

When night falls, a host of ingenious home-made vehicles emerge on the sandy roads that connect this little lick of land with its giant oil-producing neighbour, Nigeria. From rusting trays on wheels to wagons cobbled together from spare parts, each is designed to lug as much fuel as possible.

Among the improbable vehicles are modified scooters designed to be driven by disabled people – and hide four 50-litre jerrycans at the same time. They provide a financial lifeline for thousands in a country where disabled people face social exclusion as well as one of the world's highest rates of poverty.

"Because of our handicapped condition, the border agencies don't bother us. Nobody asks us any questions, and we can cross the borders easily," said Isaac one recent evening as a friend helped him on to his Vespa near the frontier.

Tiny west African neighbours Benin and Togo have long been havens for smugglers, who slip easily through poorly policed frontiers and shorelines. Cocoa, frozen poultry and second-hand clothes are the main trafficked goods, border agencies say. But the trail is dominated by a network of illicit fuel traders. They fill up on cheap, subsidised Nigerian fuel before returning to sell it at a rate that undercuts official prices in Benin's filling stations.

"So many do it that recently the customs officers have started asking even [disabled people] for a cut of our profits," Isaac said as an uninterested border guard waved him through the first checkpoint.

 .....

Most nights of the week, Isaac will make a two-hour round trip to a Nigerian border town, jostle his way to the front of large crowds at fuel stations and return with enough fuel to fill up four 4x4s. Three nightly trips brings in around $75 profit.

World food prices remain just below the crisis levels of 2008

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization has issued their latest forecast of world food supply and prices. The good news is that food prices have dropped slightly, but that might not last long. The FAO's forecast points to a decrease in harvests worldwide that might bring the prices back up. Food prices are slightly below levels of 2008 when the high cost of food sparked riots around the world. The FAO says wheat production has dropped 5.5 percent from last year, while all grains have dropped 2.7 percent.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer James Mackenzie summarizes the report.

The FAO's November Food Outlook report pointed to continuing pressure on grains output in the current season following this year's droughts in key producer regions from the Black Sea to the U.S. cornbelt.

Wheat production, which has also suffered heavily in the droughts in eastern Europe and central Asia, was seen falling 5.5 percent to 661 million tonnes, the agency said.

World cereals production is expected to fall 2.7 percent to 2.284 billion tonnes in the 2012/13 season, it said, trimming slightly its previous output forecast of 2.286 billion tonnes.

"This season's world cereal supply and demand balance is proving much tighter than in 2011/12 with global production falling short of the projected demand and cereal stocks declining sharply," the FAO said.

The Black Sea drought is set to cut wheat output in Russia and Ukraine by some 30 percent, while Kazakhstan will see its crop down by more than half.

Wheat production is set to rise in the United States but U.S. maize output was decimated by a drought which caught farmers by surprise and slashed the corn crop.

On wheat, FAO noted that levels were close to the average of the past five years and it said plantings in major producing regions next year would match or even increase over levels seen in 2012, pointing to a rise in production next season.

U.K. will end aid to India in 2015

As India continues to move from a developing nation to a developed one, aid money from the richer nations will begin to go away. The world is currently debating when and if aid money to India should stop. The U.K. has made the next step and announced today that aid to India will end by 2015. India has happily agreed with the decision saying that they now have enough money to fund their own development projects.

From the Guardian, the U.K.’s development secretary Justine Greening explains some of the reasons behind the decision.

"After reviewing the programme and holding discussions with the government of India this week, we agree that now is the time to move to a relationship focusing on skills sharing rather than aid," Greening said.

"Having visited India, I have seen first-hand the tremendous progress being made. India is successfully developing and our own bilateral relationship has to keep up with 21st-century India. It's time to recognise India's changing place in the world.

"It is of course critical that we fulfil all the commitments we have already made and that we continue with those short-term projects already under way which are an important part of the UK and government of India's development programme."

The move follows criticism of the government for maintaining aid to India, which has a booming economy and its own space programme. It will delight Conservative MPs critical of David Cameron's commitment to spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.

The changes will mean Britain spending about £200m less from 2013 to 2015 than had been planned by the former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell.

Free medicine program about to begin in Rajasthan, India

One of the most populated states in India is about to begin a free medicine program. 68 million people in Rajasthan can now have access to over 300 generic drugs for free. After people see a doctor and get a prescription they can go to over 13,000 drug distribution centers throughout the state. The government buys the generic drugs directly from manufacturers. Doctors however, are upset by the scheme as it makes it harder for them to prescribe more expensive brand-name medicines for a profit.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Zofeen Ebrahim received a description of the program.

“(This) has broken the cosy relationship enjoyed for decades between doctors and (drug) manufacturers,” Dr. Nirmal Kumar Gurbani, advisor to the Rajasthan Medical Service Corporation (RMSC) that was constituted by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to run the scheme, said during a presentation at the Second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Beijing last week.

Gurbani, a professor at the Indian Institute of Health Management and Research (IIHMR), added that the ‘Rajasthan model’ is being used as pilot for a similar scheme throughout India, which could bring free drugs to the country’s 1.2 billion residents.

Gurbani, a former secretary of the Essential Drug List Committee for the Rajsathan state government, says medical expenses are the second most common cause of rural indebtedness in India.

Citing official data, he told the audience at the conference that more than 40 percent of those hospitalised in India needed to borrow money or sell assets in order to afford treatment.

The cost of a single hospitalisation has pushed 35 percent of patients below the poverty line. In fact, unaffordable healthcare has prevented over 23 percent of the sick from consulting a doctor.

The scarcity of medical professionals has contributed to healthcare costs reaching astronomical rates. According to the World Health Organisation, India has just 6.5 physicians to every 10,000 patients. By comparison, China has 14.2 doctors, while Britain has 27.4 physicians for the same number of patients.

The expenditure on drugs alone constitutes between 50 to 80 percent of healthcare costs in India. And all this in a country regarded as the “world’s pharmacy”, Gurbani lamented.

India’s pharmaceutical industry is the third largest in the world with annual production of about 25 billion dollars and domestic sales amounting to 12 billion dollars. India exported medicines worth 13.2 billion dollars in the last fiscal and the government plans to double it to 25 billion dollars by March 2014.

And yet, said Gurbani, “two-thirds of the population do not have regular access to essential drugs.”

18 months after a storm, people in Missouri are still looking for a home

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, FEMA is hard at work providing temporary housing for people who lost their homes in the storm. The last big storm that FEMA provided this service for was a tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri in 2001. Eighteen months after that storm, many are still living in the FEMA mobile homes. They remain for a variety of reasons, not earning enough for an apartment, unable to find work after the storm, or simply never getting a chance. Their time in the free housing is about to run out, FEMA will begin charging rent to those people in June.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Kevin Murphy introduces us to some of the people still using the housing. 

Edwards, who does debris cleanup for the nearby city of Duquesne, Missouri, said she is unable to find rental property because she has seven children. "I have good credit, I have never fallen behind in payments but no one will give me a chance," she said.

Leslie Armitage said she and her husband planned to move out this fall but recently learned that state assistance they expected in paying first and last month's rent is unavailable because of his income. She feels cramped in their two-bedroom home with two dogs. "I can't wait to get out, seriously," she said.

James Williamson, who works two part-time jobs as a cook at fast-food restaurants, said residents of the FEMA units face a stigma.

"There are a lot of stereotypes about FEMA trailer people - no cars, free rent, free this, free that, people not working," said Williamson, who planned to move out as he pursues his GED and better jobs. "I'm a guy who believes in moving forward."

Jason Calvin, whose lost his job as a cable TV account manager because of the tornado, said health issues and not being able to afford a car have hurt his chances of finding work. He is upset that FEMA will soon be seeking rent.

"I think that is totally asinine and ridiculous," Calvin said. "If we could afford $757 a month, we wouldn't need low-income housing."

Williamson and some other residents, do not fault FEMA.

"I'm in total agreement with them charging rent," said Williamson. "With the other price-gouging that went on after the tornado, I don't see how people can complain about what they have out here."

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/fema-still-provides-free-housing-in-joplin-18-months-after-tornado

African inventors use simple design to do complex work

One of the great things about Africa is the resourcefulness of the people. Especially for the people who have little, they can still do a lot with it. An inventor’s fair that just wrapped up in Logos, Nigeria proves this point. What is especially surprising about this fair is the simplicity of the inventions. They use everyday household items to make energy conserving lamps, or work saving machines. It's a lot different than the complex design and the wealth of resources that inventors in the western world have.

From the Guardian, writer Yinka Ibukun shows us some of the inventions at the Maker Faire Africa.

In the large outdoor space, a mini-generator – similar to those used in many households across the country to boost the national grid's intermittent power supply – coughs to a start. However, students had removed its fuel tank and powered two outlet boxes and a lamp using urine. "We encourage our students to think up ideas that will solve Nigerian problems," said Lawal Oluseyi Olaide, the science project supervisor at Doregos private academy in Lagos.

The fair featured a mobile multicrop processor for cassava and other local crops, worth about £3,700, in a country where a lot of the farm processing is still done using traditional techniques. "What women on the farms do in five hours, this machine does in five minutes," said Suleiman Famro, adding that his machine would allow them to clean the cassava and collect its starch.

Ibrahim Adekunle, 27, a blacksmith, said he started innovating after getting tired of waiting for work in his shop. His latest creation, nicknamed "the entertainment Jeep", is a vehicle that can carry a large speaker. He rents it out with a DJ during carnivals and rallies to supplement his irregular income. It earns him up to £600 during festive months.

Famro and Adekunle were among a handful of adult innovators at a fair dominated by children. Gerard Odo, a soft-spoken 12-year-old, travelled from the south-eastern city of Enugu with his mother to show his robotic toy excavator. He built its body using plywood and added hydraulic cylinders with the help of syringes. "If he could do that with no resource, imagine what a generation of people like him could do," said Emeka Okafor, a Maker Faire Africa co-founder, blogger and New York-based social entrepreneur.

Norway suspends aid money to Uganda

Norway has suspended aid to Uganda after an audit found that 13 million dollars had been embezzled. Three other European countries previously ended aid to Uganda over similar theft. Uganda says that they have fired 12 government officials who are suspected of taking the money.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer  Elias Biryabarema gives us more details.

The growing scandal adds to concerns about corruption under President Yoweri Museveri, accused by his critics of creating a culture of impunity for cronies who steal public money but are loyal to his party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Norway joined Britain, Ireland and Denmark in suspending aid after Uganda's auditor general last month exposed the theft of funds meant for reconstruction in two impoverished regions. It implicated officials in the prime minister's office.

"Norway has suspended any disbursements to Uganda government institutions until further clarification has been provided," Ambassador Thorbjorn Gaustadsather told Reuters, saying Norway's total aid to Uganda amounts to about $70 million a year.

Uganda's information minister, Mary Karoro, said the government was determined to punish all officials involved in embezzling the money that was meant to fund recovery efforts in northern areas after an insurgency by the Lord's Resistance Army in the 1990s and early 2000s.

A unique struggle for Palestinian farmers

We often talk about how agriculture needs to improve in many under-developed countries. Not only does more land need to be used for local farming, but governments must also put more resources into improving food supply.

This is also true of the Palestinian territory. According to the Palestinian Authority agriculture only makes up 5.8 percent of their GDP. The government also puts little effort into agriculture, only spending one percent of their total budget on it. The Palestinian authority has instead made security and institutions a spending priority

Farming is made more difficult in the Palestinian territory because of the watchful, untrusting eye of Israel. The Israeli settlements also take up more and more of the Palestinian land.

From the Guardian, writer Phoebe Greenwood gives us this struggle of one Palestinian farmer.
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Zuhair al-Manasreh, once the governor of Jenin and later of Bethlehem, is now a date farmer. He runs the largest date business in the occupied Palestinian territory. "I love the land. I'm the son of a farming family," says Manasreh. He lovingly describes the olive and almond trees of his childhood home in Hebron, but says it was too risky to cultivate there.

Hebron is among the most volatile areas of the occupied West Bank, distinguished by a strong Israeli military presence and frequent clashes between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian community. Olive trees are the mainstay of the Palestinian agricultural economy, but they are also the most frequent casualty of settler attacks. More than 7,500 olive trees were uprooted or destroyed by Israeli settlers between January and October this year, many in the southern Hebron hills.

In 2006, a year after retiring from politics, Manasreh hit upon the idea of dates. They take longer to spoil than olives and have a relatively high rate of return, he reasoned. The sweetest, plumpest majul dates flourish in the Jordan valley, not far from the Dead Sea. So he planted 7,000 trees there.

Initially, Manasreh relied entirely on his own capital but in 2011, when the bank refused to give him another loan, he merged with Palestinian business giants Padico, and Nakheel Palestine was born. The business now owns six farms, with 20,000 date palm trees, and employs 100 people (rising to 150 during the harvest). They also grow and export dates. They are yet to turn a profit. Manasreh's farms are surrounded by 28 Israeli settlements, occupying 90% of the Jordan valley.

A recent report by 21 NGOs found that the EU imports £185m worth of goods from Israeli settlements every year, mostly dates and citrus fruits – 15 times the value of European imports from Palestinians. Israeli dates are cheaper. Palestinian farmers aren't able to travel to Israeli ports to oversee their exports, so they hire Israeli middlemen. Their pesticides, boxes and shipping pallets are all bought from Israel.

The World Bank returns to Myanmar

After many years of military rule, Myanmar is now transitioning to a civilian led government. When Myanmar President Thein Sein showed up at the U. N. General Assembly in September, the U. S. granted the World Bank permission to begin dealing with the country. The Bank plans on studying the country's economy for 18 months before making suggestions to the leadership. They hope the suggestions will improve the private workforce, regulation and the country's central bank. The World Bank might also issue new loans to the Myanmar.

Human rights observers warn that the World Bank should not dive in too aggressively, just in case the military junta tries to resume control. They also say that there are still human rights abuses occurring under the current leadership.

In this snippet, Inter Press Service writer Carey Biron focuses on the abuse. 

Civil society observers in and out of Myanmar have increasingly been warning donors against being overeager in re-engaging with the country. A primary worry here is that offering significant concessions would weaken the international community’s ability to react punitively should the Myanmar government begin to renege on the current reforms process.

Many thus see the World Bank’s interim strategy as an important test case.

“The World Bank’s re-engagement plan for Burma looks naive on human rights,” Jessica Evans, a researcher with the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, a watchdog, told IPS. ”The strategy celebrates Burma’s steps toward reform while closing its eyes to the ongoing repression.”

Indeed, recent weeks have publicly underlined the Myanmar government’s still problematic relationship with the country’s many ethnic communities. Most notably, sectarian violence has again flared up in the western state of Rakhine (Arakan) involving the Muslim minority Rohingya, a long oppressed group that has been systematically denied citizenship since the early 1980s.

In addition, there are ongoing allegations of the arrest and prosecution of peaceful protestors, alongside flagrant abuses in conflict zones where government forces have battled armed ethnic minorities for decades.

The recommendations also noted that the bank “does not have non-discrimination safeguards, but considering the recent inter-ethnic violence in Arakan State and history of ethnic conflict and discrimination generally, this is of crucial importance for all projects in Burma”.

Evans noted, “A principled donor should offer a frank, honest assessment of the climate for development, and identify the urgent changes that are still needed, but the World Bank instead suffers from a rose-tinted view on human rights in Burma.”

In a detailed set of recommendations sent to the World Bank in September, Human Rights Watch called on the institution to “require that proposed projects in Burma go forward only after specific human rights safeguards have been rigorously implemented”.

Burundi receives praise but sees little improvement

 Burundi is a land locked country in central Africa that has drawn praise for economic reforms. Those reforms have yet to see much improvement for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Taxes are still to high for many and the local currency still can't buy much.

From Reuters alert Net, writer Duncan Miriri tells us more.

The tiny country targets economic growth of around 4 percent this year, supported by booming exports of tea and coffee, but high oil prices, drought and lower aid assistance have eroded the Burundi franc's value against the dollar by nearly half in the past three years, driving up consumer prices and causing widespread hardship for its citizens.

Inflation soared to 25 percent in April this year, forcing the government to remove taxes on essential imported commodities such as beans, rice and potatoes, after surging prices prompted many in the capital to stay away from work in protest. Inflation remains high at just above 14 percent.

The tea and coffee producer's Achilles heel is its heavy reliance on external aid to fund a budget that pays for free education and healthcare for pregnant women and children under the age of five.

Export earnings, mainly from coffee and tea, grew 17 percent to $86 million in the first nine months of this year, but they were outpaced by imports which jumped by close to a quarter to $533 million, creating a precarious balance of payments situation.

Foreign donors prop up state spending, expected to provide over 50 percent of the 2012 budget for the country, landlocked between Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While streets in the capital are busy, in shops like Alimasi's there is little sign of the consumerism seen in many fast-growing African economies.

Only 5 percent of the entire population of 8 million has a bank account. Many live from hand to mouth.

The World Bank has ranked Burundi, a member of the five-nation East African Community (EAC) common market, among the most improved economies worldwide for regulatory reforms, highlighting its new tax collection agency set up to help the government self-finance its budget.

Such reforms are leading to a much-needed pick-up in aid, which the government has pledged to plough into roads and energy-generation projects, to create jobs and kick-start the mining sector that could boost exports.

Zimbabwe unable to afford elections

One country today is unable to afford elections and will be asking for international donations to help pay for it. Zimbabwe has twice delayed elections because it doesn't have the money run them. They might have to do the same again next year unless they receive help. Zimbabwe not only needs to hold an election for officials, but they also need to have a referendum on a new constitution.

Zimbabwe's inflation has been off the charts during the last few years. Calculators can no longer compute how much things cost in the country. The cost for the two elections is said to be 219 million U.S. dollars, but it is an astronomical amount in Zimbabwean dollars.

From the Guardian, writer Simon Allison explains the dilemma further. 

It's a two-for-one deal. In the coming year, if all goes to plan – and it rarely does – Zimbabweans should vote twice: once in a referendum on a new constitution and again during national elections. According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, the referendum will set the state back a hefty $104-million, while the elections required $115-million.

As a bonus, these elections will include three by-elections which should have been held this year. They were postponed when President Robert Mugabe successfully argued they should be delayed. His reasoning? They were too expensive. According to his estimates, the by-elections would set the state back around $38-million – that's just under $13-million per member of parliament.

Zimbabwe's situation is not unusual. Elections are a generally expensive business. In the United States, spending in preparation for next week's elections is estimated to be nearly $6-billion, with campaign adverts taken into account. That's more than twice the GDP of Lesotho. In fact, it's only a few billion short of the GDP of Zimbabwe itself.

But the United States can afford expensive elections. Zimbabwe, alas, cannot. Finance Minister Tendai Biti came out last week and told the rest of his unity government quite bluntly that there's unlikely to be enough money in the budget to fund the necessary democratic processes. He suggested that Zimbabwe look to foreign donors for assistance: to the likes of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

U. S. candidates avoid talk on poverty; Part II

The candidates for the U.S. presidential election have focused on the issues important to the middle class, and senior citizens. They do that because those two groups vote in the largest numbers. So talk of poverty and the poor rarely occurs in the campaign, because those who are poor vote in small percentages.  What should be one of our most important issues gets little attention just because of polling numbers.

From the Christian Science Monitor, writer Eric Spanberg gives us this analysis.

The last time poverty was a major issue in presidential politics was the 1960s, when President Lyndon B. Johnson instituted a national War on Poverty and Robert Kennedy made a poverty tour in Mississippi. While Mr. Obama’s health-care reforms could have a profound impact on the poor – and were clearly designed to help them – they were often couched in terms designed to appeal to the middle class. 

Partly, that is because of what Mr. Johnson’s Great Society achieved. The programs led to a dramatic reduction in the poverty rate down to about 14 percent by the 1970s. While the rate has not declined since then, it has not gone up much, either, meaning the poor remain a significant minority of the population. Today’s rate fluctuates between 14 and 16 percent, says Professor Parker.  

In addition, the poor consistently vote at much lower levels than other groups, says James Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin. “People with low incomes have a harder time finding the time and getting out to vote,” he says. “They tend to be less directly engaged, and they have less political information pushed to them.” 

 Voting participation among the poor could decline further if voter ID requirements percolating in many red states become law, Professor Henson and other experts say. The obvious conclusion for campaign strategists: Why cater to populations that vote less?

...

We also found this iten near the end of the article very important. Superstar economist Jeffery Sachs weighed in on how even the voices of the middle class is quited during the campaign.

The bigger problem is that money has changed politics so that it serves neither the poor nor the middle class anymore, says Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.  

“It’s a serious distortion of our political process,” he says. “In a two-party system the poor might get neglected anyway because of an aim for the middle class. But in our political system even the middle class is relatively neglected to the interests of the affluent. They pay for the campaigns.” 

Despite pronounced philosophical differences in how to address poverty, both parties are motivated by money, Sachs says. That leads to an unwillingness to advocate policies that could hit the wealthy too hard. 

An African view of the U.S. election

We have mentioned in a previous post how poverty in America has barely been mentioned in the campaign for president. What has been discussed even less by the candidates is poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Many Africans have felt ignored by the U.S. over the last four years. This cold shoulder has been reflected in trading statistics as well. China is now the biggest reading partner with Africa, eclipsing a record that the U.S established in 2008.

From Reuters Alert Net, writers  Njuwa Maina and Tosin Sulaiman have this view of the U.S. election from African eyes.

Looking across the Atlantic to the Nov. 6 presidential election, the continent is cooler now towards the "son of Africa" who is seeking a second term. There are questions too whether his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, will have more to offer to sub-Saharan Africa if he wins the White House.

Obama, who hailed his "African blood within me", only visited sub-Saharan Africa once in his four years - a stopover of less than a day in Ghana in between summits elsewhere.

In Kogelo, which was put on the tourism map by Obama's election and where his grandmother still lives, locals take this personally.

"He should have come to at least say 'hi' to the people of Kenya so that we can know that we are still together in spirit, rather than abandoning us as if he was not our son," said Steven Okungu, 21. "It is a disappointment."

Many in Africa feel their enthusiasm for Obama was not requited by him in terms of increased U.S. commitment and fresh concrete initiatives on the world's poorest continent, a deficit they see being filled by other emerging players such as China, Brazil, India and South Korea.

Sub-Saharan Africa has gone virtually unnoticed as a topic in the U.S. presidential election campaign, focused heavily as it has been on pressing domestic issues such as the lack of jobs and how to prod America's stuttering economy into faster growth.

But analysts see a strong counter-terrorism focus increasingly driving U.S. policy towards Africa, as Washington throws its weight behind efforts on the continent to confront the spreading presence there of al Qaeda and its Islamic jihadist allies in hotspots from Somalia to Mali and Nigeria.

"These concerns don't recognise borders," Mark Schroeder, Director of Sub-Saharan Africa analysis at STRATFOR Global Intelligence, told Reuters, predicting this security focus will figure strongly whoever wins the election.

In 2009, China overtook the United States as Africa's largest trading partner. According to the Brookings Institution, President Hu Jintao of China has made up to seven trips to Africa, five as head of state, and has visited at least 17 countries. In contrast, Obama's 20-hour 2009 sojourn in Ghana has been his only trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president.

"We would have expected to see more American involvement instead of a retreat. If you go to many countries and ask them about who is doing more, they will tell you China," said Mwangi Kimenyi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Hurricane Sandy’s damage to the Caribbean

Yesterday while visiting with family most of us men were huddled around the TV watching football. During the New York Giants vs. Pittsburgh game someone made the joke wondering how many generators were being used to power the Met Life stadium, while millions in the area are still without power from Hurricane Sandy. Then we began to wonder why there was such a controversy over having the New York City Marathon while there was none over the Giants game. Why was one event canceled, while there was no talk of moving the football game to Pittsburgh?

This is our roundabout way of saying how good we have it here. We have the power, ability and money to pull of major events just days after a super storm. The U. S. wasn't the only place hit by Hurricane Sandy, many islands and countries in the Caribbean were hurt by the storm as well. The difference being that they don't have the money to recuperate as quickly as we do. They are unable to do it by themselves and ask for assistance from abroad. For some of those islands, it's another in long line of major calamities that they never fully recover from.

From the Guardian, commentator Garry Pierre - Pierre has this reminder of other regions hurt by the storm.

But when it became clear that the New York region would bear the full force of Sandy, the news media deployed their own massive force to cover every movement of the story. The networks and local television stations battled to show which reporter was bravest as they fed us live feeds of journalists standing in the middle of the hurricane.

The resilience and heroism of average people were the narrative the day after the storm. The dead were rightly given a face and their lives memorialised.

But we seldom see these kinds of reportage out of places like Haiti, a country that has seen more natural disasters than the richest countries would be able to handle adequately, let alone one of the poorest nations on Earth.

Hurricane Sandy drenched the country's south with more than 20 inches of rainfall. As the rivers receded, allowing officials to travel through the storm-drenched southern peninsula, the death toll rose to 52.

In Cuba, 200,000 homes were damaged by the hurricane.

In the Bahamas, the total cost of damage to private property and public infrastructure is expected to reach $300m, according to a report from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility. That total would be higher than last year's Hurricane Irene, which caused about $250m in damage to the island chain east of Florida.

Treatment for a drug resistant strain of malaria could be years away

A new strain of drug resistant malaria is growing in Thailand and Myanmar. As of yet, there are no new drugs developed to treat this strain. It might take years for scientists to develop the new treatment. The development might take even longer because there is still no new funding available for research.

From Reuters Alert Net, we learn more about this gap in combating malaria. 

The strain is resistant to the most effective malaria drug available to doctors – artemisinin. Experts say it has spread because of the incorrect use of artemisinin and fake and substandard versions of the drug.

Doctors have little alternative to artemisinin and it would take years to develop a new malaria drug. They’re worried that if the drug-resistant strain goes unchecked it will spread to Africa where the majority of malaria cases and deaths occur.

Malaria killed 655,000 people in 2010, 90 percent of them in Africa, the majority children.

....

In the 1970s and 1980s, strains of malaria that were resistant to previous generations of medicines, such as chloroquine, originated in Cambodia and spread to Africa via Myanmar and India.

The first cases of confirmed artemisinin resistance were found in the late 2000s in western Cambodia along the Cambodia-Thailand border. They have since been reported in Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam.

“If we don’t care about (this resistance), what will happen is what happened with the chloroquine resistance – more cases, more deaths … We don’t have any products to replace artemisinin,” Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, executive director of Roll Back Malaria, a partnership of U.N. agencies, the World Bank, leading drugmakers and aid experts, said.

“What needs to be done is to say, ‘Now we have a small window of opportunity to contain it and let’s contain it’,” said Nafo-Traore, who was in Thailand prior to the Malaria 2012 summit in Sydney which began on Oct. 31.

One of the main challenges is funding.  

Frank Smithuis, a doctor who’s worked in Myanmar since 1994, criticised donors in an earlier interview with AlertNet, saying Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam were included in malaria containment programmes but not Myanmar, despite it having the highest malaria burden in the Greater Mekong region.

Donors have traditionally been reluctant to fund programmes in Myanmar for fear of propping up the previous military regime, which ruled for five decades. But a military-backed reformist government which took over last year is generating more goodwill.

Africa can feed itself, and free trade within the continent can help

When we look for answers on how Africa can produce more food we are often looking at drought resistant seeds, more land available to the people, and irrigation. The World Bank has recently weighed in on the subject with a new report.

The bank’s answer is not surprising for an institution that often encourages more trade. But with all of the roadblocks, checkpoints and bribe taking between the countries, their argument seems to make sense.

From the Guardian, writer Greg Nicolson unpacks the report. 

In a new report, "Africa Can Help Feed Africa" pdf, the World Bank looks at how the continent can prevent food shortages and unlock its massive agricultural potential. The general recommendations might be predictable for the institution known for its support of neoliberal policy, but they offer key recommendations to achieving food sustainability. The report looks at how opening up cross-border trade will increase Africa's potential food production, increase food security by improving access to food, and raise returns for small-scale farmers.

It begins with the basic premise that regions have natural food surpluses in certain staples and deficits in others; the key is to maximise output and get the food to where it's needed. Attempts at national self-sufficiency haven't worked and the effects of climate change will only make production more volatile, says the report. "Removing barriers to regional trade presents benefits to farmers, consumers and governments." Farmers will make more money from meeting the rising demand; consumers get cheaper access to food and benefits such as jobs from a growing agricultural sector; governments can better deal with food security.

But from producer to consumer, barriers to regional competition and trade have limited agricultural output. Because of inconsistent policies within Africa, seeds and fertilisers are generally imported from outside at high prices, with new innovations coming years later than in other developing regions. Transport services remain extremely expensive, outdated and uncompetitive as roadblocks eat time and money. Regulations on imports and exports are volatile, with changes often only communicated to foreign producers when they reach the border. Those borders remain hotbeds of corruption and abuse: traders are regularly harassed, sexually abused, or forced to pay bribes.

From a private investor's point of view, the enormous potential hardly seems worth the costs and risks. But the World Bank argues that if these problems are addressed, the incentives for farmers will greatly increase. Production will then rise and consumers can get basic foodstuffs from a neighboring region rather than foreign shores.

26 countries meet today to determine next development goal

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is in charge of setting up the next big development goal for the United Nations. Cameron is hosting a meeting today with politicians around the world to discuss what to do after the year 2015. That is the year the U.N's Millennium Development Goals expire. Some of the goals such as decreasing poverty have been met, others such as sanitation and education have not.

From the BBC, we read more details about today's meeting. 

He is co-chairing the first meeting of a United Nations panel, along with the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia.

Mr Cameron has been asked by the UN to look into how poverty in developing countries should be tackled after the year 2015.

Thursday's meeting, the first of a series, will be attended by 26 members.

The panel will meet again in Monrovia and Jakarta next year, before reporting to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.

Most of the other attendees of the London gathering are ministers from foreign governments or heads of economic committees.

The president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is currently on a three-day state visit to Britain, staying at Buckingham Palace. The other co-chair is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.