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The Power of the Rising Development Generation Africa
The Power of the Rising Development Generation Africa
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Untitled
Related to this project: TIG Press Club

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In a scene on a popular Benin TV series, a farmer named Codjo puts his wife out on the streets because she kept asking him for more and more money to buy groceries. But then, when he goes shopping by himself, Codjo discovers that prices have indeed doubled.

He laments having driven away his wife.

This fictional sketch is being played out in reality with the rapid rise in prices of basic foods in the capital Cotonou and other towns in Benin over the last six months.

"Compared to November 2007, prices are between 20 and 50 percent higher," said Claude Allagbe, director of commerce at the ministry of the interior.

IRIN found vendors in Cotonou selling a kilogramme of salt for 450 CFA francs, up from 250 CFA francs in November. Rice was selling at 450 CFA francs per kilo compared to 300 CFA francs and palm oil had leapt to 900 CFA francs from the earlier price of 500 CFA francs.

The psychological impact these price rises have had on families is palpable.

In Attogon, a village near Cotonou, market sellers are saying that it is now common to see men accompany their wives to market to check and compare prices.

At Glodjigbem, another village 35 km from Cotonou, elders said they recently had to calm the local mechanic who had flown into a rage at his wife's requests for more money.

Everyone suffers

The price rises are adding pressures at many levels of society. "The price of some products have increased even beyond the reach of people who work," said Anselme Amoussou, a teacher.

For Etienne Badou, a member of the Consumers Defence League in Benin (LDCB),
"the fissures within families and the society are more apparent in urban than rural areas but in fact they are much worse in rural areas where people are poorer".

The highest rates of nutritional deficiencies in Benin are in the rural north in the districts of Malamville and Karimama. But in total some 33 of the country's 77 districts are "at risk of food insecurity" according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

WFP says that 23 percent of Beninois children under five show signs of moderate stunting and 11 percent of children suffer from severe malnutrition.

Tax solutions

On 30 April Benin's government announced that it would undertake a series of measures to alleviate the price rises.

On 1 May, the tax levied on domestic and imported products to pay for social services called TVA (Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutée) was suspended for rice, flour and other staples.

However the measure does not appear to have worked. "There were some problems with applying the policy change," Allagbe, the director of commerce, said.

The problem, says Beninois economist Rhetice Dagba, is that there is no way for the government to ensure that traders pass on their tax savings to consumers. "To apply this policy it would be necessary to go to every market and rigorously inspect the price of every good," Dagba said.

Self-sufficiency

Another measure to alleviate high food prices that Benin's government is pushing is food self-sufficiency which agriculture minister Roger Dovonou said would require the more than doubling of current production levels.

As in others African countries, Benin's agricultural policy for the past three decades "was "to encourage cash crops for export to the detriment of food production," according to Dagba, the economist.

The new policy of food self-sufficiency will take time to implement, she added.

Cereal reserves

Another shorter-term solution is dumping food reserves. "Cereals the government keep in reserve have been released onto the market," the director of the food reserve, Irene Bio Aboudou said.

Her hope is that as supplies increase prices will go down.

But the measure is costing the state more than 35 billion CFA francs (US$83 million), according to government statistics. And so far prices have kept rising, one housewife told IRIN spoke while she was shopping in the market.

"My family are finding it harder to live on what we can afford," she said. "They make me feel that I am at fault. That I am doing something wrong."

May 22, 2008 | 3:09 PM Comments  0 comments

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Untitled
Related to this project: Taking the Millennium Development Goals to the People Programme

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

An elderly woman sits under one of the few scrawny trees in a parched landscape as she and 8,000 other displaced people wait for aid workers to begin handing out some 100 tonnes of flour, salt, sugar, and cooking oil.

The woman's name is Hawa Brahim and the displaced site is Koloma, near the town of Goz Beida in Chad's southwest. Brahim said that she has no idea how the food arrived here. "They bring it; we eat it," she says. "All I know is that back in my hut I have ten hungry mouths that need feeding," she said. More than 50,000 tonnes of international food aid finds its way to this remote region each year to feed hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians. But how does it get there?

The process starts by identifying the need then designing a food aid package, requesting donations, purchasing the food, transporting it, assessing its impact, reporting back to donors and doing it all over again.

At each stage there are complications, Moumini Ouedraogo, WFP deputy country director in Chad said. "People don't understand how it works, not even our partners," he said. "(They think it is as if) you walking into a shop and buy a few cans [but] it's not like that at all," he said. "It's a very long process." The time it takes between when a donor decides to donate food and the moment the recipient receives it can take more than one year.

May 22, 2008 | 2:54 PM Comments  0 comments

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Untitled
Related to this project: Taking the Millennium Development Goals to the People Programme

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Dear Colleague:

Alliance Library System, in cooperation with LearningTimes, will offer a one-day online conference exploring the possibilities of using virtual worlds to teach history and to promote its appreciation. The conference - entitled "Stepping into History: Exploring the Past through Virtual Worlds" - will be held entirely in the virtual world of Second Life on June 10, 2008. "In-World" online attendance at the conference is limited to 60 participants, however you may also choose to attend via the virtual classroom simulcast.

The cost is $45 USD per person. Registration is available at the website:

http://www.steppingintohistory.org

The highly interactive experience will include "field trips" into historical locations that have been created in Second Life. We will explore 19th century America, where participants will meet Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln; Virtual Harlem, to hear live music from the Jazz Age/Harlem Renaissance; and Renaissance Island, for a Shakespearean play in a replica of London’s Globe Theatre. Everyone will discuss what they have experienced with simulation creators and other conference participants.

The conference will continue with a panel discussion with a variety of experts and a late afternoon photo workshop. The program concludes with a period ball at the Lincoln era White House.

For more information and to register, please visit http://www.steppingintohistory.org .

And to keep up with LearningTimes activities in 3D Worlds visit:

http://www.learningtimes.net/3D

May 22, 2008 | 2:52 PM Comments  0 comments

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New HIV/Aids Infections Still Rising
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

A new World Bank report launched today says African countries must continue to champion HIV prevention efforts to slow and reverse the rate of new HIV infections, and that HIV/AIDS will remain for the foreseeable future an unprecedented economic, social, and human challenge to sub-Saharan Africa. The region remains the global epicenter of the disease.

According to the new report-The World Bank's Commitment to HIV/AIDS in Africa: Our Agenda for Action, 2007-2011-for every infected African starting antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the first time, another four to six become newly infected, even as regional figures show falling prevalence in countries such as Kenya, and parts of Botswana, Côte d'Ivoire, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. About 22.5 million Africans are HIV positive, and AIDS is the leading cause of premature death on the continent, especially among productive young people and women. As a result, some private firms in Southern Africa recruit two workers for every job in anticipation of losing staff to the disease.
In laying out its continuing plans to help African countries fight the epidemic, the Bank's new strategy says that more than 60 percent of people living with HIV in Africa are women, and that young women are six times more likely to be HIV positive than are young men. As a result of the epidemic, an estimated 11.4 million children under age 18 have lost at least one parent.

"With AIDS the largest single cause of premature death in Africa, we can't talk about better, lasting development there without also committing to stay the course in the long-term fight against the disease," says Elizabeth Lule, Manager of the World Bank's AIDS Team for Africa (ACTafrica), whose team consulted widely with African countries, people living with HIV, sister UN agencies, NGOs, private companies and others in devising its new HIV/AIDS strategy for Africa.
The World Bank has mobilized more than $1.5 billion to more than 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to combat the epidemic since 2000.

Next Steps Through 2011

With its African HIV/AIDS 'Agenda for Action', the Bank says it is moving away from its initial 'emergency response' role as the world's principal financier of HIV/AIDS programs, towards a new mission with four new strategic objectives.

These include: at the global level, advising countries on how best to manage the complexity of the international financing they receive; and at the local level, helping countries to accelerate implementation and take a long-term sustainable development response to HIV/AIDS; strengthening the monitoring and evaluation capacity of countries to track the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of their HIV/AIDS response; and building up stronger health and fiduciary systems.
Amalgamating HIV/AIDS services with those for reproductive and maternal health, nutrition, and other diseases such as malaria and TB, would remedy a long-standing defect in many national HIV/AIDS programs to date. The 'feminization' of the epidemic and its links to sexual and reproductive health, and the frequency of co-infection with TB (and the emerging Extensively Drug Resistant TB) and other opportunistic diseases, amplify the importance of providing people with integrated health services.

Specifically, the Bank would commit to: provide at least $250 million a year for HIV/AIDS initiatives, based on country demand and establish a grant incentive fund of $5 million annually to promote capacity building, analysis, and HIV/AIDS project components in key sectors such as health, education, transport, public sector management and other sectoral projects.

"After 25 years, it is time to apply the lessons of experience and scale up what is working. With this Agenda for Action, the World Bank reaffirms its long-term commitment to assist partner countries achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by integrating AIDS into their national development agendas, scaling up responses, and strengthening national systems," says Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

The World Bank is one of ten co-sponsors of UNAIDS, along with International Labor Organization (ILO), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization. The Agenda for Action will be implemented in the context of this partnership.