November 7, 2021

‘If They Die, We All Die’: Drought Kills in Kenya

The withered carcasses of livestock are reminders that drought has descended yet again in northern Kenya, the latest in a series of climate shocks rippling through the Horn of Africa.

As world leaders address a global climate summit in Glasgow, pastoralists watch their beloved animals suffer from lack of water and food. Yusuf Abdullahi says he has lost 40 goats.

“If they die, we all die,” he says.

Kenya’s government has declared a national disaster in 10 of its 47 counties. The United Nations says more than 2 million people are severely food insecure. And with people trekking farther in search of food and water, observers warn that tensions among communities could sharpen.

Wildlife have begun to die, too, says the chair of the Subuli Wildlife Conservancy, Mohamed Sharmarke.

“The heat on the ground tells you the sign of starvation we’re facing,” he says.

Experts warn that such climate shocks will become more common across Africa, which contributes the least to global warming, but will suffer from it most.

“We do not have a spare planet in which we will seek refuge once we have succeeded in destroying this one,” the executive director of East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Workneh Gebeyehu, said last month while opening a regional early warning climate center in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta agreed.

“Africa, while currently responsible for a negligible amount of total global greenhouse gas emissions, is under significant threat from climate change,” he said at the center’s opening. The continent is responsible for just 4% of global emissions.

Kenyatta was among the African leaders speaking at the global climate summit as they urged more attention and billions of dollars in financial support for the African continent.

Source: Voice of America

November 7, 2021

Death Toll in Lagos High-rise Building Collapse Rises to 42

The death toll in a high-rise collapse in Lagos, Nigeria, has risen to 42 while the number of survivors increased to 15, state authorities have announced.

The cause of Monday’s disaster is still unknown, but building collapses are common in Africa’s most populous country, where millions live in dilapidated properties and construction standards are routinely ignored.

“We have a total of 42 bodies that have been recovered,” Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said late Saturday.

The 21-story building under construction in the upscale Ikoyi district crumbled on Monday afternoon, trapping dozens of people working on the site.

As of Friday, the authorities had said nine people had survived, some were rescued alive, others on the ground floor managed to escape unharmed.

Over the weekend, the number of survivors increased to 15 after six more people who escaped the collapse were identified.

The total number of people on site is unknown, but Sanwo-Olu said 49 families had so far filed a missing persons report and that “DNA examination was being undertaken on some of the bodies difficult to be identified.”

The governor said money was set aside to help families cover burial fees and that financial support was also offered to survivors.

Search and rescue efforts were ongoing Saturday, the authorities said.

The governor set up an independent panel to investigate the causes of the collapse and declared three days of mourning starting on Friday.

Building collapses happen frequently in densely populated areas of Lagos, which is home to some 20 million people.

Two other smaller buildings in Lagos also collapsed on Tuesday following heavy rains, though no one was killed.

Poor workmanship and materials and a lack of official oversight are often blamed.

Source: Voice of America

November 7, 2021

Ethiopians Rally by Thousands to Support Abiy, Denounce US

Tens of thousands of Ethiopians rallied in Addis Ababa on Sunday in support of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government as federal troops fight rebellious forces who are threatening to march on the city.

Some demonstrators denounced the United States, which is among the foreign powers that have called for a cease-fire as a yearlong war that has killed thousands of people intensified amid rebel advances last weekend.

The United States, the U.N. Security Council, the African Union, and Kenya and Uganda have called in recent days for a cease-fire.

Abiy’s government has pledged to keep fighting. On Friday, the government said it had a responsibility to secure the country, and urged its international partners to stand with Ethiopia’s democracy.

Some of those gathered in Meskel Square in central Addis Ababa draped themselves in the national flag. Many singled out the United States for criticism.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday accused Ethiopia of “gross violations” of human rights and said it planned to remove the country from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade agreement.

“Shame on you USA,” read one demonstrator’s placard, while another said the United States should stop “sucking Ethiopia’s blood.”

Other demonstrators expressed anger at the U.S. call for the government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to begin talks.

The conflict in the north of the country started a year ago when forces loyal to the TPLF seized military bases in the Tigray region. In response, Abiy sent troops, who initially drove the TPLF out of the regional capital, Mekelle, but have faced a sharp reversal since June this year.

“Why does the U.S. government not negotiate with terrorists like al-Shabab?” said 37-year-old Tigist Lemma, referring to an al-Qaida linked militant group in Somalia. “They want to destroy our country like they did to Afghanistan. They will never succeed, we are Ethiopians.”

Speaking at the rally, Addis Ababa Mayor Adanech Abebe invoked Ethiopia’s history of resisting colonial power to justify the war.

The conflict has killed thousands of people, forced more than 2 million from their homes and left 400,000 people in Tigray facing famine.

On Sunday, U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths and the AU’s special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo, landed in Mekelle, one humanitarian source in Ethiopia and one person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A spokesperson for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia did not respond to a request for comment, and U.N. officials in New York were not immediately reachable. AU spokesperson Ebba Kalondo did not respond to a request for comment.

“I can confirm only that they are both here and we are having discussions,” TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda told Reuters.

Government spokesperson Legesse Tulu did not respond to a request for comment on the officials’ visit.

‘No youth’ to front lines

During the Addis Ababa rally, there was one call for restraint, from popular musician Tariku Gankisi, whose songs call for unity of all Ethiopians.

“Let no youth go to the front lines to fight, let the elders go holding the fresh grass and ask for reconciliation,” Tariku told the crowd, before his microphone was switched off, it was unclear by whom. Fresh grass is a symbol of peace in the country.

A state of emergency declared by the government on Tuesday allows it to order citizens of military age to undergo training and accept military duties.

Reuters has not been able to confirm independently the extent of the TPLF advance. The TPLF and their allies told Reuters last week they were 325 km (200 miles) from the capital. The government accuses the group of exaggerating its gains.

The government has also complained about foreign media coverage of the conflict and some people at the rally held signs denouncing “fake news” in Ethiopia.

Billene Seyoum, Abiy’s spokesperson, said in a Twitter post late on Saturday: “Orchestrated media propaganda against Ethiopia is escalating … Despite it all Ethiopia will overcome!”

Source: Voice of America

November 7, 2021

Sudan Internet Cuts Complicate Civil Disobedience Campaign Against Coup

Sudanese pro-democracy groups launched two days of civil disobedience and strikes on Sunday to protest last month’s military coup. Participation appeared to be limited because of continuing interruptions to internet and phone connections.

Local resistance committees and the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which led demonstrations in the uprising that toppled then-president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, are organizing the protests to try to reverse the military takeover.

People were out on Sunday on the streets in the center of the capital, Khartoum, though there was less traffic than usual, residents said.

Members of a teachers’ union said that security forces used tear gas to break up their sit-in at the education ministry building for Khartoum State staged to oppose any handover to military appointees. Some 87 people were arrested, the union said.

In the Burri neighborhood of Khartoum and across the river in the Ombada area of Omdurman, police also used tear gas to break up protests, eyewitnesses said.

There were protests also in the cities of Medani, Nyala, and Atbara, where hundreds protested the reappointment of Bashir loyalists in local government, eyewitnesses said.

Internet disrupted

Some hospitals and medical staff in Khartoum were working normally while others were on strike.

“A number of people did not know about the call for civil disobedience because of the internet cut,” said one resident in central Khartoum who asked not to be named.

Internet services have been badly disrupted since the October 25 coup, and phone coverage remains patchy. Though daily life came to a near standstill, shops, roads, and some banks have reopened since the military takeover.

The coup halted a power-sharing arrangement between the military and civilians that had been agreed to after Bashir’s overthrow and was meant to lead to democratic elections by late 2023.

Top civilians including several ministers were detained, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was placed under house arrest.

Since the coup, mediation efforts involving the United Nations have sought the release of detainees and a return to power-sharing, but sources from the ousted government say those efforts have stalled.

On Sunday the commander in chief of the military, Abdel-Fattah Burhan, met an Arab League delegation, which stressed the importance of dialogue and the democratic transition, his office said in a statement.

Burhan told the delegation the military was committed to achieving “the Sudanese people’s ambitions,” the statement said.

Activists demanding that the military exit politics have announced a schedule of protests leading up to mass rallies on November 13 under the slogan “No negotiation, no partnership, no compromise.”

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets against military rule in two demonstrations before and after the October 25 coup.

Western powers have paused economic assistance to Sudan and say that relief on tens of billions of dollars of foreign debt is at risk unless there is a return to democratic transition.

Source: Voice of America

November 7, 2021

ECOWAS Hardens Stance on Mali, Guinea

The West African regional grouping ECOWAS on Sunday hardened its stance against military-ruled Mali and Guinea, imposing new individual sanctions and calling on both countries to honor timetables for a return to democracy.

The Economic Community of West African States “has decided to sanction all those implicated in the delay” in organizing elections set for February 27 in Mali, ECOWAS Commission President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou told AFP after a summit of the 15-nation group in the Ghanaian capital Accra.

He said Mali had “officially written” to Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, who holds the rotating presidency of ECOWAS, to inform him that the Sahel country could not hold elections as planned.

“All the transition authorities are concerned by the sanctions which will take immediate effect,” Brou said, adding that they included travel bans and assets freezes.

In a final declaration following Sunday’s summit, ECOWAS said it “highly deplores the lack of progress” towards staging elections in Mali.

As for Guinea, where soldiers seized power on September 5, ECOWAS decided to uphold the country’s suspension from the bloc as well as sanctions against individual junta members and their families.

It also reiterated its demand for the “unconditional release” of president Alpha Conde, 83, who has been under house arrest since his ouster.

In the final declaration, it praised the adoption of a “transition charter,” the appointment of a civilian prime minister and the formation of a transitional government.

But it called on the authorities to “urgently submit a detailed timetable… towards the holding of elections” in the country of 13 million people.

Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who overthrew Conde after months of discontent against his government, had promised to restore civilian rule after a transition period of unspecified length.

At a September summit, ECOWAS demanded that Guinea hold elections within six months.

The regional leaders also demanded that the Mali junta adhere “strictly” to that country’s transition timetable.

ECOWAS rescinded economic sanctions against Mali and its suspension from the organization when the junta headed by Colonel Assimi Goita pledged a transition of no more than 18 months.

But Goita went on to mount a new coup in May, deposing transitional president Bah Ndaw and his prime minister, Moctar Ouane.

ECOWAS suspended Mali once again, but did not apply new sanctions.

Swathes of Mali, a vast nation of 19 million people, lie outside of government control because of a jihadist insurgency that emerged in the north in 2012, before spreading to the center of the country as well as neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Brou noted that the deployment of contractors from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner in Mali was “one of the concerns of the heads of state.”

Source: Voice of America