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Weekly anb09261.txt #8

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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 26-09-2002      PART #1/8
* Africa. Sahara desert frontiers turn green - Satellite pictures of northern Africa show that areas lost to the Sahara desert during decades of drought are turning green again. Analysis of images show deserts retreating in a broad band stretching from Mauritania to Eritrea, according to research in British magazine New Scientist. The driving force behind the retreat of the deserts is believed to be increased rainfall. Better farming methods have also played a critical role, according to researchers. Twenty years ago, severe droughts turned much of northern Burkina Faso into a desert. But satellite surveys of the region have shown that vegetation is returning to the country -- and, indeed, across the southern edge of the Sahara desert. The surveys were funded by Dutch, German and American aid agencies, and will be presented to ministers in Burkina Faso later this year. And new comparisons with archived images also show increasing grassland and forest vegetation in southern Mauritania, north-western Niger, central Chad, as well as in Sudan and parts of Eritrea. And the researchers say that while overall improvements have been steady, dramatic progress has been made in particular villages and areas, particularly those where donor agencies have invested consistently in soil and water conservation. One particularly successful farming technique is known as "contour bunding". It consists in placing lines of stones along slopes and contours on the land to help rainfall soak in, and to stop topsoil washing away. And that is helping to transform thousands of hectares into productive fields -- where nothing grew just a decade ago. (BBC News, UK, 18 September 2002)
* Afrique. Méningite - Des dizaines de milliers d'Africains risquent de mourir d'une méningite à méningocoque de type W135, dit "de la Mecque", faute d'un vaccin à prix abordable, selon Médecins sans frontières (MSF) et l'Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS). Cette souche de méningite a été identifiée en Afrique pour la première fois en février au Burkina Faso. Plus de 12.000 personnes ont été contaminées et près de 1.500 en sont mortes. Le vaccin généralement utilisé dans la "ceinture méningitique", qui s'étend du Sénégal à l'Ethiopie, protège uniquement des types A et C. Selon l'OMS, une campagne de vaccination permettrait d'empêcher 70% des nouvelles contaminations. MSF a appelé les gouvernements à faire pression sur l'industrie pharmaceutique pour qu'elle augmente sa production du vaccin et en baisse le prix, qui varie actuellement de $4 au Moyen-Orient à $50 aux Etats-Unis. Selon l'ONG, les deux compagnies qui produisent ce vaccin devraient le proposer à moins d'un dollar l'unité. La méningite tue environ 170.000 personnes par an, la plupart en Afrique. (AP, 19 septembre 2002)
* Africa. New meningitis strain threatens Africa - Tens of thousands of Africans could die this year from a Middle Eastern strain of meningitis because of a lack of affordable vaccine, aid agencies said on 19 September. The aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières claimed the problem stemmed from lack of government and international pressure on drug companies. The W135 strain, believed to have been carried from the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, was identified in Africa for the first time this year. The vaccine usually used in Africa's "meningitis belt" that stretches from Senegal to Ethiopia only protects against strains A and C. The World Health Organization and government officials, donors and drug companies will meet next week in Burkina Faso to discuss the problem. Drug makers say they are doing all they can but are open to ideas. The first outbreak of W135 meningitis was discovered in Burkina Faso in February. More than 12,000 people were infected, with almost 1,500 deaths. Meningitis is a bacterial infection of membranes around the brain and spinal cord that is spread through close contact with an infected person or by droplets in the air from coughing or sneezing. The disease kills around 170,000 people per year, almost all in Africa. (CNN, USA, 19 September 2002)
* Africa. AU ministers approve anti-corruption laws - African Union (AU) ministers meeting in Addis Ababa have backed tough new laws aimed at wiping out corruption that has cost the continent an estimated US $148 billion. They signed up to 26 articles which are expected to be adopted as a convention by African heads of state at the AU summit in Maputo, Mozambique next year. The move will see countries agreeing to extradite officials who are suspected or have been convicted of corruption. Governments will also have the power to confiscate documents from banks to help with convictions. The AU also wants both civil society and the media to play a role in the fight. But within the anti-corruption blueprint is also an article guaranteeing fair trials to those arrested for corruption. The laws also include a "Double Jeopardy" rule, which means that no-one can ever be tried for the same crime twice. (IRIN, Kenya, 20 September 2002)
* Afrique. Les pays développés devant leurs promesses - Le 24 septembre, à la veille des assemblées générales de la Banque mondiale (BM) et du FMI, le président de la BM, James Wolfensohn, a demandé aux pays développés de respecter leurs promesses, en revenant sur leurs politiques commerciales protectionnistes qui tendent à aggraver la pauvreté des pays en développement. Faisant allusion aux engagements pris par les pays riches à l'issue des sommets de Doha, Monterrey et Johannesburg, il a exhorté les pays riches à prêcher par l'exemple, en réduisant notamment les tarifs douaniers, les subventions et autres obstacles aux efforts consentis par les pays pauvres. "Les tarifs douaniers progressifs (des droits de douane qui sont au plus bas sur les matières premières non transformées et qui augmentent de manière abrupte à chaque étape de la transformation) nuisent à l'activité de la transformation et à l'emploi dans les industries dans lequelles les pays en développement seraient, en temps normal, compétitives", a dit M. Wolfensohn. Par exemple, les crêtes tarifaires ont confiné le Ghana et la Côte d'Ivoire à l'exportation de fèves de cacao non transformées, l'Ouganda et le Kenya à l'exportation de grains de café brut, et le Mali et le Burkina Faso à l'exportation de coton brut. Le président de la BM a par ailleurs critiqué les subventions à l'agriculture consenties par les pays riches pour un montant de quelque 350 milliards de dollars par an, soit environ un milliard de dollars par jour et qui provoquent la faillite des paysans des pays pauvres. (PANA, Sénégal, 24 septembre 2002)
* Africa. Action against the Media - Congo RDC: A journalist with the UN peace-building radio network in Congo, has been arrested in the northwestern city of Gbadolite by the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) of Jean-Pierre Bemba. Franklin Moliba-Sese, who works for the UN's Radio Okapi, has been held by the MLC since 13 September. They were angered by a report of Moliba's on the wretched living conditions of thousands of child soldiers serving in the MLC army. He was freed on 21 September. Côte d'Ivoire: On 23 September, the Ivorian government explained new measures to censor the media, in what it described as a "state of war". Foreign journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to operate. The BBC and RFI have been blamed for stirring things up. Eritrea: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) confirms (on 20 September) that four more journalists are in prison. The CPJ had previously confirmed the detention if 14 journalists. Senegal: In a 23 September press release, the International Federation of Journalists condemned the death threats against journalists in Casamance. Sudan: On 24 September, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said that three newspapers and one journalist in Sudan have incurred the wrath of the Sudanese government after they publicly chastised it for withdrawing from peace talks in Kenya. Zambia: On 16 September, freelance photographer Henry Salim was assaulted from a stone thrown by opposition United Party for National development supporters. (ANB-BIA, Belgium, 24 September 2002)
* Africa. African countries may be source of uranium - On 24 September, Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister, said Iraq was suspected of sourcing significant quantities of uranium that could be used for a nuclear weapons programme from deposits or nuclear stockpiles in Africa. Africa accounts for 20 per cent of global production of uranium. Namibia, Niger, South Africa and Gabon are the main producers. However, Congo RDC, which has been destabilised by a four-year civil war, is a more likely source of smuggled uranium. Congo's largest uranium mine is Shinkolobwe in the southern province of Katanga, an area under the control of Zimbabwean forces. But the mine is flooded and in a state of disrepair, according to mining sources. In 1998 Italian police arrested 13 men as they were about to sell an unirradiated uranium fuel rod to the Mafia. The rod had been stolen from a nuclear research reactor in the Congolese capital Kinshasa. Nuclear industry sources said that a second uranium fuel rod which went missing from the Kinshasa reactor has never been found. The reactor, still operational despite five years of civil war, was built by Belgium and fuelled by US uranium sent in 1971. Its outer wall was hit by a mortar during fighting, and the reactor is widely seen by experts as highly insecure. At Africa's main uranium producers, production is strictly monitored and sales to power stations for electricity generation are made under exclusive contracts. Experts say it is highly unlikely that any uranium could be smuggled out. In the former French colonies of Niger and Gabon, production is in the hands of Cogema, the French company which specialises in the nuclear fuel cycle and is number two in the field. In Namibia, production is controlled by Rio Tinto, the global mining giant, and largely sold to French electricity supplier EdF under a long-term supply agreement. In South Africa, uranium is produced by AngloGold, the mining company, as a by-product of gold production. South Africa, however, is the only sub-Saharan African state to have had an advanced programme to produce enriched uranium. It dismantled its weapons capability in 1991, but analysts have long suspected it sparked a trade in nuclear secrets, expertise and materials seeking a new home. "The controls on nuclear material are uneven. Security is as good as its weakest link and loose nuclear material in any country is a potential threat to the entire world," said Mohamed el-Baradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. On 25 September, a senior Congolese official, Victor Mpoyo, a minister of state who was previously the closest adviser to Laurent Kabila, said that requests to have the uranium removed from the Kinshasa reactor have yet to bring a decision, but that negotiations were ongoing. (Financial Times, UK, 25 & 26 September 2002)
* Africa. Developing countries "hooked on aid" - An evaluation of lending programmes has concluded that many countries have become stubbornly reliant on aid from international lending bodies. The report, produced by the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also found that prolonged use of IMF initiatives has expanded considerably over the past two decades. "Prolonged use is a large, growing and persisting issue," said David Goldsbrough, IEO deputy director. "It raises questions about the effectiveness of programmes." The report noted that while most prolonged users were low-income countries, protracted use was also a feature of so-called middle-income nations, such as the Philippines. Such examples showed that long-term use of IMF resources was not always of concern, Mr Goldsbrough said. For the purposes of its report, the IEO defined "prolonged users" as countries which had been involved in IMF programmes for at least seven years in any 10-year period. By that definition, about one-third of all countries are long-term users. (ANB-BIA, Belgium, 25 September 2002)
* Afrique de l'Ouest. Améliorer la vie des enfants - Des experts des droits de l'enfant ouest-africain, qui ont achevé le 20 septembre une réunion de trois jours à Bamako, sont convenus d'adopter un cadre en cinq points destiné à améliorer les conditions de vie des enfants et à promouvoir leurs droits. Les domaines ciblés sont en premier lieu la promotion générale du bien-être de l'enfant (nutrition, vaccination...). Les efforts seront ensuite axés sur l'éducation, grâce à des réformes du système scolaire. Le troisième domaine prioritaire est le VIH/SIDA. Finalement on aborde la violence, les mauvais traitements et l'exploitation des enfants, ainsi que la nécessité d'associer les enfants à la recherche de solutions à leurs problèmes. Le document devra être approuvé par les ministres chargés des questions de l'enfant, avant de pouvoir être adopté par les chefs d'Etat lors du prochain sommet de la CEDEAO en octobre prochain à Dakar. (IRIN, Abidjan, 23 septembre 2002)
* Horn of Africa. Almost polio free - The World Health Organisation (WHO) and its partners have reported that polio is close to being eradicated from the Horn of Africa. The WHO says Sudan may have beaten polio altogether, with no reported cases of the disease for over a year. However the health agency is appealing for continued funding to eradicate polio worldwide. Two years ago, there were more than 300 cases of polio a year across Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. This year, only Somalia has reported cases so far. At a meeting of the Polio Eradication Initiative in Kenya, the initiative's director, Bruce Aylward, said that polio's days in Africa are numbered, even in countries where conflicts have ravaged domestic health systems. Dr Aylward praised the work of thousands of health officials and volunteers, whom he said had on occasion literally dodged bullets to carry out scheduled mass immunisation campaigns. (BBC News, UK, 25 September 2002) 

Weekly anb0926.txt - Part #1/8