NIGERIA has welcomed a US decision to send up to 300 military personnel to Cameroon to help the regional fight against Boko Haram, despite having itself requested more direct help from Washington.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu on Thursday said the deployment was a “welcome development” while the military said it demonstrated cooperation was needed against the Islamists.
Washington last year provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance expertise to Nigeria in the hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from their school.
The assistance included drones and spy planes as well as up to 80 military personnel sent to Chad’s capital, N’Djamena. In 2013, the US set up a drone base in neighboring Niger.
A geothermal drilling rig at the Menengai site in Kenya’s Rift Valley to exploit energy which is more sustainable than that produced from fossil fuels. A Climate Change Bill now before the Kenyan parliament seeks to provide the legal and institutional framework for mitigation and adaption to the effects of climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
NAIROBI, Jul 27 2015 (IPS) – Alexander Muyekhi, a construction worker from Ebubayi village in the heart of Vihiga County in Western Kenya, and his school-going children can now enjoy a tiny solar kit supplied by the British-based Azuri Technologies to light their house and play their small FM radio.
This has saved the family from use of kerosene tin-lamps, which are dim and produce unfriendly smoke, but many other residents in the village – and elsewhere in the country – are not so lucky because they cannot afford the 1000 shillings (10 dollars) deposit for the kit, and 80 weekly instalments of 120 shillings (1.2 dollars).
“Such climate-friendly kits are very important, particularly for the rural poor,” said Philip Kilonzo, Technical Advisor for Natural Resources & Livelihoods at ActionAid International Kenya. “But for families who survive on less than a dollar per day, it becomes a tall order for them to pay the required deposit, as well as the weekly instalments.”
It was due to such bottlenecks that Dr Wilbur Ottichilo, a member of parliament for Emuhaya constituency in Western Kenya, and chair of the Parliamentary Network on Renewable Energy and Climate Change, moved a motion in parliament to enact a Climate Change Bill, which has already been discussed, and is now being subjected to public scrutiny before becoming law.
“Once it becomes law, we will deliberately use it as a legal instrument to reduce or exempt taxes on such climate-friendly gadgets and on projects that are geared towards low carbon growth,” said Ottichilo.
While Kenya makes a low net contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the country’s Draft National Climate Change Framework Policy notes that a significant number of priority development initiatives will impact on the country’s levels of emissions.
In collaboration with development partners, the country is already investing in increased geothermal electricity in the energy sector to counter this situation, switching movement of freight from road to rail in the transport sector, reforestation in the forestry sector, and agroforestry in the agricultural sector.
“With a legal framework in place, it will be possible to increase such projects that are geared towards mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change,” said Ottichilo.
The Climate Change Bill seeks to provide the legal and institutional framework for mitigation and adaption to the effects of climate change, to facilitate and enhance response to climate change and to provide guidance and measures for achieving low carbon climate-resilient development.
“We received the Bill from the National Assembly towards the end of March, we studied it for possible amendments, and we subjected it to public scrutiny as required by the constitution before it was read in the senate for the second time on Jul. 22, 2015,” Ekwee Ethuro, Speaker of the Senate, told IPS.
“After this, we are going to return it to the National Assembly so that it can be forwarded to the president for signing it into law.”
The same bill was first rejected by former President Mwai Kibaki on the grounds that there had been a lack of public involvement in its creation. “We are very careful this time not to repeat the same mistake,” said Ethuro.
Under the law, a National Climate Change Council is to be set up which, among others, will coordinate the formulation of national and county climate change action plans, strategies and policies, and make them available to the public.
“This law is a very important tool for civil society and all other players because it will give us an opportunity to manage and even fund-raise for climate change adaptation and mitigation projects,” said, John Kioli, chair of the Kenya Climate Change Working Group (KCCWG).
Evidence of climate change in Kenya is based on statistical analysis of trends in historical records of temperature, rainfall, sea level rise, mountain glacier coverage, and climate extremes.
Temperature and rainfall records from the Kenya Meteorological Department over the last 50 years provide clear evidence of climate change in Kenya, with temperatures generally showing increasing trends in many parts of the country starting from the early 1960s. This has also been confirmed by data in the State of the Environment reports published by the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).
As a result, the country now experiences prolonged droughts, unreliable rainfall patterns, floods, landslides and many more effects of climate change, which experts say will worsen with time.
Furthermore, 83 percent of Kenya’s landmass is either arid or semi-arid, making the country even more vulnerable to climate change, whose impacts cut across diverse aspects of society, economy, health and the environment.
“We seek to embrace climate-friendly food production systems such as use of greenhouses, we need to minimise post-harvest losses and food wastages, and we need to adapt to new climate friendly technologies,” said Ottichilo. “All these will work very well for us once we have a supporting legal environment.”
Kenya has hired two leading lobbying firms based in Washington, DC to push for the country’s agenda in the United States…
The letter, signed by Squire Patton Boggs partner David Dunn and addressed to Foreign Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, notes that Kenya is facing “a cut-off of all non-humanitarian and other forms of assistance from the US government.”
The threat arises from the State Department’s designation of Kenya as a “Tier 2” country in annual reports assessing governments’ efforts to prevent human trafficking.
Countries assigned to that group are deemed to be failing to comply fully with minimal standards for eliminating trafficking and include North Korea, Iran, Russia, Syria, Zimbabwe and Eritrea.
(Lucy Bullivant is the editor-in-chief of the webzine Urbanista.org.)
A new school in Kenya’s central highlands harvests rain for pupils, teachers and their families, but can the project be repeated in other arid regions?
Abrupt flash floods for a few weeks, then months of drought. Repeat. Water problems suffered by people living in the semi-arid regions of Kenya adversely affect whole areas of their lives, causing ill health, conflict and food insecurity.
The Endana secondary school complex includes dormitories (such as the one above), and a sports stadium which can collect and store 1.5 million litres of water. Photograph: PITCH Africa
But the opening of a school in rural Laikipia in the central highlands will hopefully break that vicious cycle for 300 children, their teachers and the wider community. More than just a simple building, the Waterbank School is a living infrastructure that harvests rainwater – 360,000 litres over the course of two rainy seasons – as well as being an education centre.
A camp set up to house foreigners in South Africa after widespread xenophobic attacks broke out.
In response to the recent spate of xenophobic attacks the South African Government launched Operation Fiela (a word which means to “sweep clean” or “clear out” the rubbish). Although the national police force led this operation, the military were also brought in to assist. They have conducted raids in various areas identified as “hotspots” in the past few weeks. Over the weekend the operation targeted the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg. At 03h30 on Friday morning the operation hit the church using apartheid-style tactics: kicking down doors, brandishing automatic weapons and rounding up immigrants who sought refuge in the place of worship. More…
INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS
By John Pontifex
May 12, 2015
Families take shelter in a Church in the Diocese of Maiduguri, Nigeria
More than 5,000 Catholics in north-east Nigeria have been killed and at least 100,000 have been displaced, according to a fresh report which highlights the scale of atrocities against Christians in the heartland of Islamist terror group Boko Haram.
The ‘Situation Report on the activities of Boko Haram in the Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri’ states that more than 350 churches in the diocese have been badly attacked, “a good number of them destroyed more than once.”
With more than three-quarters of the diocese under Boko Haram control, the report records that 22 of the diocese’s 40 parish centres and chaplaincies have been deserted and occupied by the terrorists. The report, a copy of which diocesan authorities sent to Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, records a total of 7,000 widows and 10,000 orphans.
Commenting on the report, Father Gideon Obasogie, the Diocese of Maiduguri’s director of social communications, said: “People are very scared and those who are able to return home find there is nothing left.” More...
David Njeru, a farmer from central Kenya, attends to his cabbages. This community is at risk of being displaced from their land by powerful real estate developers. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS
NGANGARITHI, Kenya, May 11 2015 (IPS) – Vegetables grown in the lush soil of this quiet agricultural community in central Kenya’s fertile wetlands not only feed the farmers who tend the crops, but also make their way into the marketplaces of Nairobi, the country’s capital, some 150 km south.
Spinach, carrots, kale, cabbages, tomatoes, maize, legumes and tubers are plentiful here in the village of Ngangarithi, a landscape awash in green, intersected by clean, clear streams that local children play in.
“I am not fighting for myself but for my children. I am 85 years old, I have lived my life, but my great-grandchildren need a place to call home.” — Paul Njogu, a resident of the farming village of Ngangarithi in central Kenya
Ngangarithi, home to just over 25,000 people, is part of Nyeri County located in the Central Highlands, nestled between the eastern foothills of the Abadare mountain range and the western hillsides of Mount Kenya. More…
VENTURE FORUMS IN KENYA AND SOUTH AFRICA, June VC4A
By Miguel Heilbron
May 5, 2015
The Green Pioneer Accelerator is gearing up for its inaugural graduation that will showcase 21 entrepreneurs. These innovative companies will present to investors and strategic partners at two closed Venture Forums on Tuesday, June 9th in Nairobi, Kenya and on Thursday, June 11th in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Green Pioneer Accelerator focused on early stage enterprises contributing innovative solutions to environmental issues such as climate change, energy insecurity, loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems. More…
The African Synod in 2009 will bear the title: “The church in Africa at the service of reconciliation, justice and peace.” The victims and the experts of peace are the groups to be heard. The church should avoid a dull review of the Africa contained in the Lineamenta and should face the question of tribalism without fear. More
It’s the deadliest conflict since World War II. More than 5 million people have died in the past decade, yet it goes virtually unnoticed and under-reported. The conflict is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Central Africa. At its heart are the natural resources found in Congo and multinational corporations that extract them. More
NIGERIA has welcomed a US decision to send up to 300 military personnel to Cameroon to help the regional fight against Boko Haram, despite having itself requested more direct help from Washington.
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