I Went to South Africa to See Lions and All Anyone Asked Me About Was Ebola

I flew to South Africa last week for my first adventure on the continent. It was a great trip -- I saw lions, learned about the horrors of apartheid and ate strange, delicious food -- but the one question I was asked before I left and after I came back had nothing to do with wildlife or safaris, but everything to do with our current news cycle. Any guesses?

"Isn't that where Ebola is?"

No.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Without fail, my mom, my grandparents, my friends and my roommate all asked me if I was worried about the disease that's inspired stateside hysteria and unnecessary quarantines. My 15-year-old brother went so far as to swear off the entire continent... forever, thanks to Ebola panic, and warned me not to drink the water.

I saw this lion in South Africa, but I didn't see anyone with Ebola.

I don't blame anyone for asking me if I was worried about Ebola. Yet after another resounding "no" it all goes back to the notion that Africa is not a continent of 54 nations and 1.1 billion people, but just a lumped landmass full of poverty and disease.

Some stats for you: Liberia and Sierra Leone, arguably the epicenters of the Ebola outbreak, lie some 5,400 miles from Johannesburg, South Africa by car. A road trip between Seattle and Miami, about as far as you can go in the contiguous United States, would cover about 3,300 miles. My grandparents in Idaho and my mom in Illinois were closer to an Ebola victim than I was, and my friends in New York were within a few miles of Dr. Craig Spencer before he was released from care earlier this week.

One of my good friends who spent a fair amount of time in Sierra Leone before this most recent outbreak put it simply when I mentioned the line of questioning to her: "Anytime someone mentions 'Africa' to me I roll my eyes and tell them that it's not a country."

And that's just it. Yes, Ebola is scary, there isn't a cure, and people are dying. The disease has made it's way to the U.S., and it'll be some time before the current onslaught is contained. But Africa shouldn't provoke an instantaneous association with Ebola, because Africa is not a country -- it's the world's second largest continent, home to 15 percent of the planet's population, and a hell of a lot more than disease. Even if you were to travel to Monrovia or Freetown, Ebola isn't the kind of disease you can catch from a sneeze; it spreads via direct contact with bodily fluids and that's it.

When I landed in Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo International Airport, the only sign that Ebola was a thing more than 3,000 miles away was a short questionnaire for people arriving from West Africa and a quick temperature screening that took 30 seconds. Passport control in JFK Airport in New York City was equally tempered, with a sole television looping health advisories (as they always do) for travelers: dengue fever, Chikungunya, measles and, briefly, a slide on Ebola. Those coming directly from West African countries have to undergo additional screenings that include similar questionnaires and temperature readings.

But for the bulk of international travelers, there weren't rows of hazmat-suited officials lining the terminal corridors. Traveling to South Africa should incite the same amount of fear for Americans who plan to flock to Miami or Los Angeles this winter... none.

Ebola is an international health crisis, and the impact of the disease, especially among West African communities, is one of the most important news stories of the year. But although most of us will never know someone stricken with the illness, many of us feel like it's looming around every corner. You should take a moment to look at Google maps and recognize the sheer size of the African continent.

And if someone tells you they're going to South Africa (or Kenya, or Egypt or Namibia), tell them to have a nice trip, and ask if they've packed enough socks

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-visser/i-went-to-south-africa-an_b_6158764.html

Why India, not China, is a better investment partner for Africa

Did you read the story on Chinese investment in Africa? They’re being published in droves, usually with a vaguely racist headline, like “Booming African lion economies gear up to emulate Asians.” Their texts inevitably frame African nations as witless newcomers to the global market, their leaders sitting obliviously atop mountains of untapped natural resources. China, meanwhile, is caricatured as a predatory swindler, bent on becoming an eastern superpower, while also cashing in on a growing global consumer class hungry for smartphone processors and tablet screens, and therefore the African minerals that facilitate them.

While the framing of these stories is often regrettable, the facts are the facts: China is indeed an active investor in African economies. A report from Brookings calculated that, of the ¥256.29 billion ($41.85 billion) Beijing gave in foreign aid by the end of 2009, 45.7% went to Africa. China is also the continent’s largest trading partner. Last year, The Economist reported that roughly $200 billion worth of goods were exchanged between the two in 2013 alone, and that a commodities boom in China has helped Africa’s cumulative GDP grow 5.5% annually in the last ten years.

But these projects aren’t always principally for the benefit of ordinary Africans; though some say Chinese investment on the continent began as a humanitarian pursuit, and became more commercial with the liberalization of the Chinese market in the late twentieth century. They point to Zhou Enlai’s “Eight Principles of Foreign Economic and Technological Assistance,” drafted and issued during his 1963-4 10-nation tour of Africa, and which is still in effect today. It highlights mutual benefit and political non-conditionality as tenets of Chinese foreign-aid policy, and is heavy on talk of cooperation among nations of the global South. It was supposed to be China’s blueprint for using its economic heft to develop new trading partners.

But it was a document drafted with ulterior motives. According to the Brookings report, “These aid principles were designed to compete simultaneously with the ‘imperialists’ (the United States) and the ‘revisionists’ (the Soviet Union) for Africa’s approval and support.” And it worked. African diplomats were instrumental in strategizing China’s admission to the UN in 1971, and invigorating Beijing’s “One China” policy—an effort to undermine the sovereignty and international recognition of the Republic of China in Taipei.

China has since solidified its place in the world as a geopolitical superpower, and relations with African nations have correspondingly evolved into dynamics that are less concerned with ideology as they are with commerce. Today, Chinese firms are most attracted to African markets because of a troubling combination of factors: vast stores of natural resources, and a noticeable lack of industrial regulation. And while Western companies aren’t immune to exploitative business practices while operating on the African continent, Beijing’s human rights record indicates a distinct disinterest in cultivating good governance and democratic values in the countries it invests in.

Exhibit A, as always when it comes to issues of human rights and quality of governance in Africa, is Zimbabwe’s dictatorial president of nearly three decades, Robert Mugabe. Mugabe enjoys an intimate relationship with Beijing, fortified with heavy and regular cash perks. Zimbabwe received a $10 billion aid package from China in 2011, for example, which many in the international human-rights community have criticized as a measure to preserve Chinese business interests protected by the Mugabe regime, at the expense of Zimbabwean democracy. Mugabe’s daughter reportedly studies at a university in Hong Kong, though no one seems to know which; and his infamously materialistic wife (and possible presidential successor) makes many a shopping sojourn to Chinese cities. The family is said to own substantial property in the People’s Republic of China, for purposes of safe-refuge in the event of a popular uprising in Zimbabwe, and the Chinese delegation to the UN has been a key player in diluting the more severe economic sanctions levied against Harare.

Even more egregious is Beijing’s support for the government of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, who is responsible for sparking an ongoing genocidal civil war that has killed more than 300,000 (mostly black African) Sudanese citizens and displaced more than 2.5 million in the western region of Darfur.  Chinese companies have significant stake in Sudan’s oil fields, which played a massive role in curtailing the possibility of international intervention against al-Bashir in 2003 and 2004—the height of genocidal conflict there.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report linking a spike in Sudanese oil exports to China with the sale of Chinese-manufactured weapons to the Sudanese military. Those weapons were then used against Darfuri rebels and civilians, and eventually found their way into the hands of the infamous Khartoum-backed Janjaweed.

In addition, hundreds of millions of dollars invested in infrastructural projects have mainly benefited the area surrounding Khartoum, home to the country’s (largely Arabized) political elite. The same military leaders and lawmakers who have been accused of cultivating apartheid-like conditions for Sudan’s black-African communities. Many observers attribute the secession of the majority black-African South Sudan in 2011 to the racist policies of Khartoum regimes, bolstered in confidence and cash by Chinese investments and tacit political support.

But what alternatives do African economies have? Despite being the largest foreign economic player on the continent, the US has scaled back its investments to African nations of late—a 32% drop between 2011 and 2013, according to Fortune’s Jendayi Frazer.

And although economists love to fanfare the “rise of Africa,” citing the placement of 20 of the world’s fastest growing economies there, personal GDP growth (a more comprehensive measure of development than national GDP) remains negligible continent-wide. As a region, GDP per person in East Asia grows at a rate of four times faster than Africa, according to the World Bank: 7.3% and 1.8%, respectively.

Chinese investment has contributed to these dismal numbers. Most firms bring in labor from China on a temporary basis, rather than extending employment to local Africans. The only money being pumped into African economies is filtered through government hands—i.e., China purchases the rights to harvest certain resources from an African government, but doesn’t employ any local workers to mine it, or pick it, or even pack it for shipment back to Chinese ports. Subsequently, the only individuals to receive direct, monetary benefit from Chinese development projects, or the arrival of a Chinese company in an African market, are Chinese nationals and the African political, military, and commercial elite.

But if Chinese money is dirty, and America doesn’t have much to spare, where are African economies meant to turn? In a globalized world of America and China’s making, a country without foreign investment simply cannot compete. Delicate African economies are perhaps most sensitive to this reality.

One place African leaders might look to is India. While far from corruption-free, India is the largest electoral democracy in the world, with a burgeoning consumer class to match. Indian companies are beholden to the policies of a democratic government in New Delhi, which in turn is beholden to 1.3 billion voters. The country has a corresponding philosophical disposition to engage in similar politics abroad. Does this mean an influx of Indian investment will necessitate liberalized African politics? Not across the board—but the odds seem likelier than sticking with Chinese cash.

And Indian money is there and waiting. Today, India is the fifth-largest investor in Africa—behind the US, France, Malaysia, and China. Furthermore, Indian businesses have a cultural advantage the Chinese lack: shared history. Brazil has been highly successful in cultivating economic relationships with former Portuguese colonies in Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, to name a few). There is potential for India to do the same in places like Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Botswana—countries considered to be at the forefront of African development, and all of which, like India, were once part of the British Empire.

A shared Commonwealth past means that many of these countries are home to to thriving South Asian diaspora communities. Durban, South Africa, for instance, is nicknamed “the largest Indian city outside of India.” These communities could prove to be highly useful on-the-ground links and cultural translators for Indian business interests; and might counterweight anti-imperialist sentiments among native Africans (a reputation the Chinese have had a difficult time shaking).

But more important than any of that, in Africa, rupees trickle down more easily than yuans. Following the Brazilian model for African investment, which relies more on local labor than imported contractors, Indian business has the potential to foster real, palpable economic change for Africans who reside outside the upper socio-political strata.

According to Harry G. Broadman, writing for Foreign Affairs, “Most Indian firms in Africa acquire established businesses,” contrary to their Chinese counterparts, which tend to drive out local competition. They are “less vertically integrated, prefer to procure supplies locally or from international markets (rather than from Indian suppliers), engage in far more sales to private African entities, and encourage the local integration of their workers.”

In this regard, Indian investment in Africa, by and large, differentiates from that coming from other nations. Sure, India needs to procure resources for a growing middle class, and solidify diplomatic relationships in the global South, but it seems investors are also cultivating a third, incredibly important (yet chronically underdeveloped) asset: human capital. Indo-African economic relations can be about real, person-to-person growth—on both sides of the Indian Ocean.

Source: http://qz.com/298088/why-india-not-china-is-a-better-investment-partner-for-africa/

Nightmare' for Ethiopian pastoralists as foreign investors buy up land

Suri boys with water gourds herd cattle along a road in Tulgit, Omo valley, Ethiopia.Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy

Ethiopia’s policy of leasing millions of hectares of land to foreign investors is encouraging human rights violations, ruining livelihoods and disturbing a delicate political balance between ethnic groups, a thinktank report has found.

The US-based Oakland Institute says that while the east African country is now lauded as an economic success story, the report, Engineering Ethnic Conflict, “highlights the unreported nightmare experienced by Ethiopia’s traditionally pastoralist communities”.

A controversial “villagisation” programme has seen tens of thousands of people forcibly moved to purpose-built communes that have inadequate food and lack health and education facilities, according to human rights watchdogs, to make way for commercial agriculture. Ethiopia is one of the biggest recipients of UK development aid, receiving around £300m a year.

The Oakland Institute’s research, conducted in 2012 and 2013, focused on 34,000 Suri pastoralists who have lived in south-west Ethiopia for up to three centuries. Suri livelihoods consist of herding cattle, goats and sheep, shifting cultivation, and hunting and gathering.

But the recent introduction of large-scale plantations “has not only made important grazing lands unavailable to the Suri and devastated their livelihoods, but disturbed political order between the Suri and other local ethnic groups, escalating violent conflicts”, the report says.

The investigation was prompted by 2012 reports of violence at Koka, a foreign-owned 30,000 hectare (74,000 acres) plantation established two years earlier to produce palm oil, although it has since expanded to grow moringa trees and maize, with plans for rubber trees.

According to a Kenyan NGO, Friends of Lake Turkana, the government cleared grass and trees to allow Malaysian investors to establish the plantation. Water was diverted from the Koka river to these plantations, leaving the Suri without water for their cattle.

In response, the Suri took up arms and battled government forces, Friends of Lake Turkana said. Government forces killed 54 unarmed Suri in a marketplace in retaliation. There have been more killings and arrests since.

Based on interviews with victims’ families, officials and other witnesses, the Oakland Institute found that the plantation exacerbated tensions between the Suri and another ethnic group, the Dizi, seen as collaborating with the government. The first episode of violence in February 2012, in which three Dizi police officers were killed, occurred over police marking land for expansions of the plantation.

The institute accuses the Ethiopian government of manipulating these tensions, for example, by favouring the Dizi in employment. “According to field research, the increase in violent clashes between the Suri and Dizi can be linked to the intrusion of the Koka plantation and displacement of Suri from lands vital for cattle raising, one of their most important livelihood resources.”

A generation after the famine that was screened around the world, Ethiopia claims it is on track to meet most of the millennium development goals and become a middle-income country by 2025. But the report contends that the government puts foreign and political interests above the rights and needs of local populations, especially historically marginalised and neglected ethnic groups.

It also argues that the World Bank’s support of three phases of Ethiopia’s pastoral community development project implicates western funds in the coerced settlement of pastoral communities and the conditional – and coercive – distribution of food aid.

“The dramatic reconfiguration of land for foreign investment in the Koka plantation, as well as its alleged failure, illustrates the haphazard manner in which the government of Ethiopia implements its development strategy,” it says.

“While there have been reports of Suri returning to the plantation lands to take corn and sweet potatoes, the palm tree-lined land is no longer suitable for grazing. Although, presumably, investors are unhappy with the failure of their cheaply-leased land, the local impact has been the increase of local ethnic conflicts and the drastic altering of local livelihoods.

“As such, the Koka plantation is representative of the Ethiopian strategy of pursuing foreign investor-led development at the expense of local inhabitants.”

Felix Horne, Ethiopia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Unfortunately, the Suri and other marginalised groups have no ability to voice their concerns over these developments on their land.

“There is little in the way of an independent media in Ethiopia that is permitted to cover this story, civil society that could advocate on these issues have been decimated by repressive laws, any criticism of government is met with harassment and detention. So what options are left for the Suri?”

Source: The Gaurdian

mid Ebola disaster, WHO picks new Africa chief

0 COMMENTS

PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Teresa Romero, a Spanish nurse’s aide who contracted Ebola, received well-wishes before her release Wednesday.

COTONOU, Benin — With nearly 5,000 dead of Ebola in West Africa, the World Health Organization elected a new director Wednesday of its Africa office, which has been accused of bungling the response to the outbreak in its early stages.

The new chief, Matshidiso Moeti, is a doctor from Botswana and a WHO veteran who stepped down as deputy director for Africa in March, the same month the crisis was announced.

The results of the five-candidate election were made public at a meeting of the UN agency in Benin and came amid the worst outbreak of the dreaded disease ever seen.

‘‘I hope, with all the control efforts that are now in place, the situation will have improved by the time I take office in February,’’ Moeti said.

She said that the health systems in hard-hit Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea have been devastated and need to be rebuilt and that warning systems and monitoring capabilities must be improved ahead of any future Ebola outbreak.

In an internal draft document last month, WHO accused its Africa office of initially botching the response to Ebola, deriding many of its regional staff members as ‘‘politically motivated appointments.’’ The report said WHO staff in Africa refused to help get visas for outside specialists and compromised the containment effort in other ways.

The outgoing regional director, Dr. Luis Sambo of Angola, is completing his second five-year term and was ineligible to run again. He has declined numerous interview requests.

In a report on lessons learned, released ahead of this week’s meeting, the Africa office attributed the explosive spread of the virus to such factors as poor awareness and badly trained health workers.

Aboubakar Sidiki Diakite, inspector general for Guinea’s health ministry, welcomed the election as an opportunity for reform. ‘‘A change always brings new impetus,’’ he said in Paris. He said the new director would find weaknesses in the system that need to be remedied.

Representatives of WHO’s 47 African member countries voted by secret ballot for the regional director. In her campaign brochure, Moeti listed a priority as building a responsive, effective WHO. Moeti previously held posts in Botswana’s Health Ministry and also led WHO’s Malawi office.

Meanwhile, a Spanish nurse’s aide who was the first person known to have contracted the Ebola virus outside Africa was released from a Madrid hospital Wednesday, almost a month after she tested positive for the disease.

In other developments, President Obama asked Congress for $6.2 billion in emergency funds to fight Ebola in West Africa and strengthen US defenses against the disease.

Source: bostonglobe.com

U.S. quarantines 'chilling' Ebola fight in West Africa: MSF

(Reuters) - Mandatory quarantines ordered by some U.S. states for doctors and nurses returning from West Africa's Ebola outbreak are creating a "chilling effect" on aid work there, the humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders said on Thursday.

In response to questions from Reuters, the group said it was discussing whether to shorten some assignments as a result of restrictions imposed by several states since one of its American doctors, Craig Spencer, was hospitalized in New York City last week with the virus.

"There is rising anxiety and confusion among MSF staff members in the field over what they may face when they return home upon completion of their assignments in West Africa," Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States, said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, is one of the main aid groups working in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed nearly 5,000 people.

Some MSF workers have been delaying their returns to the United States and are staying in Europe for 21 days, Ebola's maximum incubation period, "in order to avoid facing rising stigmatization at home and possible quarantine," Delaunay said.

As a result, MSF is discussing whether to shorten some Ebola assignments from their current duration of four to six weeks. Aid workers typically begin and end their assignments in Brussels, the Belgian capital, a spokesman said.

"Some people are being discouraged by their families from returning to the field," Delaunay said.

The governors of New York and New Jersey announced strict new screening rules at airports last Friday, including mandatory 21-day quarantines for people who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa. People may be quarantined in their homes in some cases.

Last weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration criticized the quarantining of healthy people as "not grounded in science," echoing criticisms from public health experts.

Delaunay's comments on Thursday are the most substantive criticism of the rules since they were announced, suggesting they are eroding MSF's manpower and forcing American workers into temporary exile.

MSF says the policies have also created a misperception that healthcare workers are endangering the public, even though a person who does not have symptoms cannot spread the virus.

Delaunay sent her statement in response to questions from Reuters about whether returning MSF workers were rearranging travel plans to avoid U.S. states with mandatory quarantines.

She did not say how many workers were choosing to delay their return or whether MSF was paying to accommodate them. MSF had already made a policy of asking its workers not to return to their regular jobs for 21 days after finishing an Ebola assignment. It pays them wages for that time.

Only one person is known to have been ordered into quarantine as a result of the new rules announced by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Nurse Kaci Hickox, 33, was confined to a tent against her will for several days after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last Friday, shortly before the new rules were announced. She had worked for MSF in Sierra Leone.

Hickox, who tested negative for Ebola and says she is completely healthy, has mounted a personal protest against the quarantine policy.

Three other MSF aid workers have returned to the United States since last Friday via one of five airports approved for passengers who have recently been in West Africa. Those workers have not been quarantined, an MSF spokesman said.

He would not say whether they had arrived at Newark, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City or at airports in states that have not called for a blanket quarantine.

Press officials for Cuomo and Christie did not respond to a request for comment.

Delaunay, the MSF director, also said there were fears among its non-American workers that other countries may follow the example set by some U.S. states.

(Additional reporting by Sharon Begley and Yasmeen Abutaleb in New York; Editing byJonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)

Source: reuters.com