UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, on Thursday told member states that with the COVID-19 pandemic exposing social and economic inequalities rooted in racism, discrimination and xenophobia, recovery must lead to more inclusive societies. Guterres was among leaders addressing a Special Meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to investigate the links between structural racism, inequality and sustainable development, with a focus on pandemic response. The UN chief said the global crisis “represents a damning indictment of systematic prejudice and discrimination”, with COVID-19 mortality rates up to three times higher for some marginalized groups. “As we strive to recover from the pandemic and build a better…
Author: Akanimo Sampson
Religious rights advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) says something has gone wrong when government officials in a country that cherishes religious freedom treat churches worse than Hollywood, marijuana dispensaries, and casinos. For more than 25 years, ADF has been advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, freedom of speech, and marriage and family. ADF’s Media Relations Specialist, Alice Chao, in an e-mail to this reporter is querying: ‘’Shouldn’t Americans who are safely practicing their First Amendment rights be afforded the same deference?’’ The group is reacting to California’s COVID-19 ban on indoor church services. Recently, the US Supreme…
In a new analysis released on Wednesday, United Nations agriculture agency, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says poor rain fall, flooding and desert locusts are contributing to extreme food insecurity in Somalia, threatening 2.6 million people. In a joint report, FAO warns that in the absence of large-scale and sustained humanitarian assistance “the situation could worsen through mid-2021”. UN Deputy Special Representative, Adam Abdelmoula, who also serves as the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the country says, “Somalia’s long-standing crises are compounded now by the ‘triple threat’ of the COVID-19 pandemic, desert locust infestations and climatic shocks.” The report, compiled by FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis…
2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations says a record 12.4 million Syrians, nearly 60 percent of the population, are now food insecure. According to this alarming new national data from WFP, in just over one year, an additional 4.5 million Syrians have become food insecure. Consequently, this UN agency now requires an additional $375.3 million until July this year, to ensure continued assistance throughout Syria. An economic crisis, job losses as a result of the killer and economic-strangulating COVID-19 pandemic, and soaring food prices have added to the plight of Syrians who have been displaced and…
Political risk consultancy, Menas Associates, has unveiled the political undertone of the current ethnic violence rocking Nigeria. The bloodletting, going by excerpts from its Nigeria Politics & Security, a weekly intelligence report on Nigeria is aimed at aborting the 2023 presidential ambition of some frontline Yoruba leaders. Over the last weekend, the country’s escalating ethnic tensions boiled over in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital where Yoruba and Fulani youths clashed in a local Shasha market. According to the Menas report, as many as 20 people were killed and several thousand Hausa residents displaced in the two days clashes. ‘’The Oyo State Government…
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has commenced a new phase of the African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) project to increase the availability of appropriate and affordable technologies to sustainably improve cassava productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. ACAI is a five-year project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase the availability of appropriate and affordable technologies to sustainably improve cassava productivity in the short- and long-term. It focuses on five countries: DR Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, to implement its mission, which is to develop and deploy cassava agronomy recommendation tools to intensify cassava farming, improve root starch quality, and reduce…
Although Europe and some other regions are still in the grip of the coronavirus whose variants are spreading, World Health Organisation (WHO) in its update on the COVID-19 pandemic says the number of global infections have fallen by 16 per cent in a week – 500,000 fewer cases . The number of coronavirus deaths also declined in all regions by 10 per cent over the same period, with 81,000 fatalities reported in the last week, the UN health agency said in its weekly epidemiological update on Tuesday. This brings the overall number of people who died from COVID-19 to more than 2.3 million, according to WHO. Moreover, there were 2.7 million cases of new coronavirus infections last week, bringing that total number to just over 108 million. Five-out-of-six regions reported a double-digit percentage drop in the number of new cases, with Russia recording an 11 per cent decrease, the United States a 23 per cent drop and the United Kingdom a 27 per…
Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, says the Buhari administration is now spending over N50 billion monthly on electricity subsidy for the impoverished citizenry. The minister’s Special Adviser on Media and Communications, Aaron Artimas, in a statement in Abuja. quoted his principal as saying this when he received the Guild of Actors and Film Producers, otherwise known as, Kannywood in his office. “Worried by the incessant complaints by ordinary Nigerians over the unavoidable and periodic increase in the cost of electricity, the Federal Government has been subsidising electricity supply in the country to the tune of over N50 billion. “The funds…
Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) is currently making efforts to arrest the menace of vessels running aground at the Escravos channel. Managing Director of the Escravos Ship Pilots Nigeria Limited (ESPL), Charlie Tobi, says vessels run aground in the port virtually on a daily basis. As a result, its shallow depth has drastically reduced the number of vessels calling at the Warri port. This is coming as executive officers of the Port of Antwerp International are interest in Nigeria’s new National Maritime Transport Policy for possible windows of investment opportunity for Belgian entities. The executives, Kristof Waterschoot, managing director of APEC-Antwerp/Flanders Port Training Centre and Port of Antwerp International and Mario Lievens, director…
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, says the Green Chamber of Nigeria’s bicameral Legislature will not sit back while Nigerians are being killed by their fellow countrymen. Gbajabiamila who was speaking at Tuesday’s plenary on the Shasha violence in Oyo State, and the rising spate of inter-ethnic violence in the country, insisted that the House will not sit back while Nigerians are killed by their fellow countrymen. The House, according to him, has asked the Nigeria Police to conduct a speedy and thorough investigation into the Shasha violence, to allow for prosecution and punishment of those who instigated…
United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, is shopping for the next Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to succeed the trade agency’s previous chief, Mukhisa Kituyi. In the interim, he has appointed Ms. Isabelle Durant of Belgium, to the role to ensure a smooth transition as he conducts a recruitment process, in consultation with member states, to find Kituyi’s successor. Ms. Durant assumed her role as UNCTAD’s Acting Secretary-General on Tuesday, after serving as the organisation’s deputy secretary-general from July 3, 2017. “I’m deeply honoured to lead UNCTAD at this critical time as countries all over…
An official of the Cornell Alliance for Science (AfS), Pacifique Nshimiyimana, says many African communities are getting confused about agro-ecology. AfS seeks to promote access to scientific innovation as a means of enhancing food security, improving environmental sustainability, and raising the quality of life globally. As agroecology activism increases within the global food system, communities in Africa involved in agriculture, food production as well as consumers, according to the AfS official, are getting confused. ‘’This confusion stems from antagonism between the continent’s need for a green revolution — defined as access to improved seeds and modern pest management technologies, including…
President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly Worldwide, Onyeachonam Onuorah, says Imo State is not in a state of war. Accordingly, he is calling for soldiers to leave the Orlu axis of the Eastern Nigeria state. According to the Igbo group, the continued presence of soldiers in Orlu and some other communities in the Orlu Local Government Area of the state was overbearing. “We are not in a state of war”, the group says. Onuorah who is calling for calm in the area, wants soldiers to vacate the town, insisting, ‘’Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly Worldwide is asking soldiers to leave Orlu.’’…
President Muhammadu Buhari’s Governor, Aminu Masari of Katsina State, and his Kaduna State counterpart, Nasir El-Rufai, shunned a meeting of North-West Governors with Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State over the inter-ethnic crisis that flared up last week at Shasha market in Ibadan. President Buhari’s home state was however, carved out of the old Kaduna State in 1987. The Fulani are the largest ethnic group in the state. Four governors of North-West political power bloc who met with Governor Makinde at Government House, Ibadan on Monday were: Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi, Bello Matawalle of Zamfara, and Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger.…
Some concerned experts are warning against data tumbling out on piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. Piracy in the region appears to be worse than ever, judging by recent headlines. But a University of St Andrews teacher, Dr Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood, Maritime Project Leader/ Senior Researcher with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Timothy Walker, and the Institute’s Research Officer, Denys Reva, are warning that those accounts and the data they rely on must be approached with caution. ISS is however, an African non-profit organisation with offices in South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia and Senegal. It is concerned with enhancing human security as a means to achieving sustainable peace and prosperity.…
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has started the training of 40,000 young Nigerian women and men between 18 and 35 years to become self-employed or gain employment in agri-food systems. The Young Africa Works project commenced the first cohort of the training programme in Lagos, Kaduna, and Kano states. This capacity-building activity began on February 1. The training is running concurrently in the three states for six weeks and participants will gain practical and theoretical knowledge by engaging with reputable agribusiness firms and mentors who will expose them to the reality of operating a successful agribusiness enterprise. IITA Project Training Coordinator, Evelyn…
Philippines Finance Secretary, Carlos Dominguez, has advised legislators against allowing foreign ownership of land, an ’emotional’ issue for Filipinos A House committee agreed to strike out from their charter change (Cha-Cha) resolution the proposed amendment that will have allowed foreigners to own land in the Philippines. This is coming as leader of an indigenous community, Uruwaarige, Wannila Aththo, and the Centre for Environmental Justice filed a writ application with the Court of Appeal seeking an order to prevent the allocation of indigenous community lands for maize cultivation for leading companies. Minister of Wildlife, Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Mahaweli…
Missouri legislators are currently debating how to limit and track the amount of foreign-owned farmland in the state. Members of the Missouri House Agriculture Committee on Tuesday considered a bill that will require county assessors to track foreign farmland holdings. It will also cap foreign ownership of farmland at the county level to no more than 1% of the total agricultural acreage in each county. Farmland currently owned by foreign entities will not be affected by this change. State Representative, Don Rone, R-New Madrid, chairman of the committee and sponsor of the bill, said he is advocating for grain farmers…
An international environmental justice group, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) says as part of a week of action calling on President Joe Biden to Build Back Fossil Free, thousands of activists across the United States ran, rallied, and posted on social media According to the group in an e-mail to this reporter, activists organised socially-distanced events from San Francisco to Standing Rock to St. James Parish, Louisiana, urging President Biden to protect and invest in Black, Indigenous, Brown and working-class communities and to launch a national climate mobilisation to end the era of fossil fuel production. Photos from Build Back Fossil Free events across…
Sexual and reproductive health agency of the UN, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says pregnant women in the war-torn Tigray region of Ethiopia are struggling to find support and stability after their displacement. A 24-year-old Hiwot (not real name) from the embattled region says, “when you think about your future, you never plan to be uprooted from the comfort of your home and find fragile safety in a tent.” Yet this is exactly where she found herself in early December, while she was seven months pregnant. Fighting intensified around her neighbourhood, forcing her and her husband to flee. “As fighting…
Refugee resettlement is fundamental to well managed migration and refugee systems, so says Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, a senior research consultant on migration with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). But, many countries are focusing on border security and reducing pathways that negatively impact Africans while resettling few refugees and allowing appeals to go underfunded. ‘’This situation drives irregular migration and requires a global commitment to strategies that include increased resettlement and responsibility sharing’’, Mbiyozo adds. Refugee resettlements in 2020 reached historic lows despite record-high numbers of displaced people in need. At the same time, substantial funding gaps remain. This is increasing pressure on…
Criminal lawyer and the United Kingdom human rights expert, Karim Khan, will on June 16, take office replace Fatou Bensouda of Ghana as the next Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). He was elected at the weekend. President of the Assembly of States Parties, O-Gon Kwon, applauded Khan on Twitter, saying “warm congratulations! Thank you all for your hard work!!” The 123-member Hague-based court, which began work nearly 20 years ago, is responsible for judgments regarding war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. In its second ballot, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute selected Khan with 72 votes, surpassing the majority…
After a two-week visit to Venezuela, an independent UN human rights expert has noted that unilateral sanctions imposed on the country have exacerbated pre-existing crises, and therefore, calling for them to be dropped. Before now, a new set of unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela early in August 2019 prompted the concern of UN’s top rights official who said in a statement that she feared they would have a “potentially severe impact” on the human rights of the South American nation’s “long-suffering” people. Tensions started escalating at the end of January 2019, when Juan Guaidó, head of the country’s…
By comparing the weekly case counts of the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 2019 coronavirus, researchers found that the second wave started in almost the same calendar week in both cases, and the official delayed response was similar. Researchers from the universities of Zurich and Toronto say they found that in the event of a pandemic, delayed reactions and a decentralised approach by the authorities at the start of a follow-up wave can lead to longer-lasting, more severe and more fatal consequences. The interdisciplinary team compared the Spanish flu of 1918 and 1919 in the Canton of Bern with the…
Peter Fabricius, a consultant with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) that is concerned with enhancing human security as a means to achieving sustainable peace and prosperity, says the European Union (EU) will be changing the way it funds African peace and security this 2021. He said in ISS Today, a newsletter of the Institute, ‘’the changes are likely to have big implications, especially for the African Union (AU) Commission, but it’s not clear whether everyone affected is taking sufficient note.’’ For 14 years the EU has channelled its peace and security support finances through the African Peace Facility (APF) – the fund it…
Nigeria now seems to be a safe haven for Fulani terrorists simply because one of their brothers is holding sway as the country’s president. That perhaps, explains why a Divisional Police Officer at Igbon, in Surulere Local Government Area of Oyo State, had the nerve to open fire on operatives of Amotekun, a state special security outfit, for daring to arrest some outlaw Fulani herdsmen in the area. The DPO, Ayodeji Adepoju, allegedly shot and injured a member of the Oyo State Security Network Agency, Amotekun, on Friday. He also ordered the arrest of two operatives of the security agency for…
Researchers have reported that fossil fuel pollution caused more than eight million premature deaths in 2018, accounting for nearly 20 percent of adult mortality worldwide. Going by their report in the journal, Environmental Research, half of that grim tally was split across China and India, with another million deaths equally distributed among Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan and the United States. This is coming as statistics previously said a ‘pandemic’ of air pollution shortens lives worldwide by nearly three years on average, and causes 8.8 million premature deaths annually. Eliminating the toxic cocktail of molecules and lung-clogging particles cast off by burning oil,…
Progress in breastfeeding, breast milk and lactation research is currently being hampered by tensions among researchers, advocates and industry. Breast milk scientists, breastfeeding researchers and lactation specialists are concerned about these tensions and their potential to impede or delay discoveries in their field. Last year, they held a workshop to discuss these concerns and develop solutions. Their workshop paper was written before the COVID-19 pandemic. But, its recent publication is said to be timely. The pandemic has brought researchers together in ways that seemed impossible before. Breast milk research that would normally take years has been completed in months with unprecedented efficiency. A global network of…
Institute for Security Studies’ (ISS), Research Consultant, Zachary Donnenfeld, has warned African leaders to be wary of International Monetary Fund (IMF), pointing out that the Fund’s activities are raising eyebrows in some quarters. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown, IMF has been both proactive and relatively empathetic. It doubled the capacity of its two programmes meant primarily for disaster relief – the Rapid Financing Instrument and the Rapid Credit Facility – since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. It has disbursed nearly $90 billion, including more than $16 billion to Africa. Of the 100 different programmes IMF has funded over the…
Tagging products with barcodes for easy price retrieval in supermarkets is a regular practice that people often take for granted. Beyond supermarkets, barcodes is being employed across a whole spectrum of settings, including by scientists in their research. The Accelerated Breeding Better Bananas project has developed, adapted, fine-tuned, and deployed a fully operational Banana breeding Tracking Tool (BTracT), which uses barcodes. Researchers now use BTracT to routinely track each step of the breeding process of the breeding pipeline, from where the male parent’s pollen comes from to how the cooked product tastes. This unique project seeks to improve the production and productivity of banana in Tanzania and…
