Questions over Mali's ebola response

IRIN: The failure of a top Malian hospital to detect probable cases of Ebola has raised questions about whether the country's health system is sufficiently prepared to tackle the disease.

"We have several confirmed cases," Samba Sow, head of the Mali's National Centre for Disease Control (CNAM), told IRIN. "Our goal is to prevent the virus from spreading." But the government only released an Ebola emergency plan on 30 October, a week after the first Ebola case.

In Kayes, where a two-year-old girl tested positive for Ebola on 23 October, the hospital was caught off-guard. Only two of its 160 workers had received training on how to detect and treat Ebola patients and how to protect themselves while doing so, said hospital director Toumani Konaré. "The staff had the right protective gear, but they didn't know how to use it," he told IRIN.

Before the current outbreak in Mali, the World Health Organization (WHO) had categorized the country as at-risk, due to its long border and strong economic ties with Guinea, where the epidemic began. It was targeted as a country to receive technical assistance, including training on infection prevention, epidemiological surveillance and contact tracing.

Sow said preparations started in April. However, those preparations were focused mostly on the 805km border that Mali shares with Guinea. The government started to send a few health workers to check travellers for fever and other signs of the virus among the chaos of trucks, buses, bush taxis and motorbikes at border checkpoints.

The Ministry of Health says the Kouremalé border checkpoint, where an imam who died of Ebola in Mali on 27 October had entered from Guinea, checks more than 1,000 people and 150 vehicles per day....

Satellites improving lives in rural Africa

A press release from the European Space Agency: An ESA-supported project is showing how satcoms can help farmers, voters and educators in rural Africa. The three elements of the Sway4edu project are helping to run elections, educate teachers and improve radio programming.

Satellite terminals provide Internet connectivity, with solar panels and batteries (where needed), laptops, tablets, a projector with screen, and loudspeakers. Sway4edu is led by Openet Technologies, a small Italian company active in using satcoms for eGovernment services, working with Luxembourg’s SES and supported by ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems programme.

The Rural Radios element is developing a satellite-assisted radio service to support farmers, workers and the population of the Democratic Republic of Congo on food security, rural and farmer subsistence, and climate change. Through the online Openet eLearning platform broadcasters can take courses, developed with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, on delivering better radio programmes.

Feedback from broadcasters during pilot tests was highly positive: “Very good initiative to provide this tool for the use of rural radios in the bid for community development,” commented one.

Last September, Openet Technologies was contracted to provide Internet access for three years to 10 rural stations in DR Congo with the Federation de Radio de Proximité, which manages 400 such stations. By the end of this year, the contract could be extended to 100.

In October 2013, the company began providing a year of Internet and multicast connectivity for 26 rural radio stations in Mali. The contract was signed with the  Fondation Hirondelle in Switzerland, which manages a group of 62 stations in Mali – the rest are expected to subscribe to the service by the end of this year. The multicast service is provided via the Astra-4A satellite....

West Africa hopes new hydropower dams will cut poverty, climate risk

Elias Ntungwe Ngalame at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: West African states in the Niger River Basin are seeking to tackle climate risks and reduce poverty by constructing three hydropower dams in the next five years. In late November, the Council of Ministers of the Niger Basin Authority (NBA), meeting in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde, endorsed an environmental and climate action plan for sustainable management of the scenic basin and its rich natural resources, which have come under threat from climate change.

The projects include a 102 megawatt (MW) hydropower dam at Fomi in Guinea, a 25 MW hydropower plant in Toussa, Mali, and the 565 MW Kandadji dam in Niger. These aim to boost hydro-electricity and irrigation, reduce desertification and flooding, and improve economic activities across the region.

“The West African region is facing urgent problems of food security, rural poverty and climate change that demand answers in the form of investment and infrastructure. We need to give a push to these three multi-purpose hydropower dam projects as a sustainable solution that involves the region’s largest river,” NBA executive secretary Collins Ihekire said in a statement at the Yaounde gathering.

The NBA is the coordinating body for the 4,200 km-long (2,600-mile) Niger River, bringing together the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

The NBA also agreed to rehabilitate three hydropower plants at Kainji, Jebda and Lagdo, as well as multiple run-of-river hydropower stations, optimise water storage, set up irrigation schemes for an additional 1 million hectares (2.5 million hectares) of land, and increase hydropower production to 1,000 gigawatt hours per day.

“Integrating future climate change adaptation and mitigation into our development action plan will enable...sustainable management of our water resources, to better the livelihood of the over 106 million population in the area,” said Emmanuel Nganou Djoumesi, Cameroon’s minister of the economy, planning and regional development, at the closing of the Yaounde meeting....

The Niger River from space

Mali conflict ups pressure on climate-stressed herders

Soumaila T. Diarra in AlertNet: The recent conflict in northern Mali, where the situation remains volatile, has left many livestock herders in fear of losing millions of cattle, sheep and goats at a time when they were already struggling to find enough pasture for their animals due to drought.

Since the spring of 2012, violence between Islamist groups who grabbed much of the north from Tuareg nomads, and the army, supported by foreign troops for the past two months, has disturbed the West African nation’s traditional grazing system, in which herders migrate according to the seasons.

Cattle-rearing is at risk from the ongoing France-backed operation to flush out the defeated Islamists, now hiding out in the northern mountains, and the aftermath of the insurgency, according to Rene Alfonse, leader of a federation of several herders’ associations.  Malian herders own around 9 million cows and 32 million small animals like sheep and goats, he noted. “About 50 percent of Malian cattle are under threat of being destroyed,” Alfonse said, explaining that the violence has made it harder to access grazing land and vaccinations to stop animals falling sick.

The livestock sector is important for Mali’s economy, providing the third-largest source of exports after gold and cotton, and accounting for 14 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Alfonse said the past 10 months have been tough for Mali’s herders. Some have moved into neighbouring countries, including Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso, to escape the fighting….

From 2006, a livestock market in Mali, shot by ILRI, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mali war against Islamists halts climate adaptation projects

Soumaila T. Diarra in AlertNet: Escalating conflict with Islamic militants in Mali is leading to the suspension of development and aid programmes in the country, threatening efforts to deal with climate change, hunger and other problems, aid and development workers say.

In the central city of Segou, Demba Cisse, a representative of the aid group Afrique Verte, said the conflict had forced the group to halt a project designed to improve farmers’ cereal crop yields.

The France-based group helps Malian farmers use new seeds adapted to the climate in different parts of the country. “On the one hand it allows the farmers to get certified seeds adapted to each agro-ecological area of the country. On the other, it helps them to change their way (of farming) to prevent and manage the food crises linked to droughts,” Cisse said. “The system of improved seed distribution we established helps farmers to cope with climate change,” he said.

The project began in 2007 with about 30 seed banks in villages around the central city of Douentza. These were community stores managed by local people, giving the villages’ farmers access to 100 tonnes of improved seeds. The experiment, funded by international donors, was judged a success and expanded to other parts of the country...

A porter hauling hay in Mali, shot by Jelle Jansen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mali's fuelwood dependence proving difficult to break

Soumaila T. Diarra in AlertNet: Mali’s citizens almost universally prefer firewood and charcoal over gas as a fuel. As a result of their dependence, the west African country is losing large swathes of its forests, putting at risk efforts to adapt to climate change.

“A bag of charcoal costs only about 3,500 West African CFA francs ($7) and it is sufficient for my energy needs for a month,” said Saran Doumbia, a 30-year-old housewife from Bamako, the capital. In her neighbourhood of Lafiabougou, fuel wood and charcoal are the main sources of energy, and substantially cheaper than natural gas.

About 13 million hectares of Mali’s land area were forested in 2005, but the country is losing 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of forest every year, mainly due to cutting for fuel wood, according to a 2010 environment ministry report. For at least the last decade, deforestation has been a principal source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, accounting for 35 percent of total emissions.

To deal with the problem, the government in 2011 launched a five-year programme to reduce dependence on fuel wood, in an attempt to protect the country against ongoing climate change. But the fragile political situation, as separatist rebels in northern Mali wage war an armed struggle against the government, has led international donors to suspend aid for such projects....

China to build agricultural research facility in Mali

Christophe D. Assogba in SciDev.net: China plans to build a centre for agricultural research and technological demonstration near Bamako, Mali, to carry out experiments and technical training, and to contribute to the development of sustainable agriculture in the country, according to an agreement between the two governments announced last month (11 July).

The announcement came ahead of the fifth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing (19–20 July), at which the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, pledged to build further agricultural technology demonstration centres and to expand scientific collaboration with Africa.

The centre — to be built this year on a 20 hectare site in Baguinéda in the region of Koulikoro, 40 kilometres from the country's capital, Bamako — will focus on developing rice, maize and horticultural production. It will be built at an estimated cost of 55 million Chinese yuan (around US$8.6 million), with a loan from China.

Anastase Hessou Azontondé, head of the soil science, water and environment laboratory at the National Institute of Agricultural Research of Benin (INRAB), said the centre would use Chinese funds to "bring to Mali technologies developed by Chinese talent and experience". It is part of China's soft power diplomacy and research strategy, according to Azontondé, who said: "The results will be most useful to Africa"....

A boy in Mali carrying a load of hay on his head, shot by Ferdinand Reus, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Conflict, hunger, cholera and locusts: Mali's woes mount

Seed Daily via AFP: A toddler's cries ring out in a paediatric ward where about 20 children lie emaciated from malnutrition in this northern Mali town, whose occupation by Islamists has caused a humanitarian crisis. .. Gao, like the rest of northern Mali, has been occupied by Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists since late March, cutting the region off from the south and the capital Bamako.

The arid north is already suffering a food crisis along with the rest of the Sahel region, which has millions going hungry after poor rains last year. Food supplies are either brought in on charter flights by charities and the Malian Islamic High Council, or are smuggled in from neighbouring countries such as Algeria and Niger and sold tax-free in the main cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. Algeria, Morocco and Qatar have also given food aid.

But some residents of the region fear their new Islamist rulers will co-opt the aid to advance their own agenda. "The problem arises with the distribution of the aid. The Islamists, masters of the region, cannot be ignored," an accountant in the region said on condition of anonymity.

"The risk is that they make the distribution of supplies a formidable weapon" and reserve them for those who support them.

Aside from the food shortage, poor sanitary conditions have increased the risk of epidemics such as cholera, which has broken out in northern Mali and other parts of the Sahel. At the Gao hospital, Alzatou Maiga, who is weighing the children as they arrive, told AFP that three children have died in two months from malnutrition....

Gao, Mali, in 2006, shot by David Sessoms, Wikimedia Commons, via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

France sends emergency anti-locust aid

Seed Daily via UPI: France said this week it is mobilizing emergency efforts to stop locust swarms in Africa's Sahel from spreading farther into drought-stricken Niger and Mali. The French Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it had released $1 million in emergency funding targeted to Niger -- the country currently most affected -- through a contribution to National Center for Locust Control in Mauritania.

Part of the funding will also go to help in a regional response to the locust swarms though an emergency fund set up by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The latter effort will be aimed at surveying and controlling locust in Mali, where militant Islamists and Tuareg rebels have used the chaos created by the March overthrow of President Amadou Toumani Toure to seize control of the northern part of the country.

"Groups of desert locusts have been identified in recent weeks in the northern part of the Sahelian strip by the surveillance system set up by the countries of the region," the French ministry said in a statement. "These groups were notably found in northern Niger and Mali where insecurity could hamper the necessary survey and control operations."

The spread of this locust invasion to the southern part of the Sahel region, Paris said, "would have disastrous consequences, resulting in the loss of crops and the prospect of a worsening food crisis."...

A desert locust in Niger, shot by Christiaan Kooyman, public domain

Niger, Mali on alert for desert locust risk

Food and Agriculture Organization Media Center: Croplands in Niger and Mali are at imminent risk from Desert Locust swarms that are moving southward from Algeria and Libya, FAO warned today. Groups of locusts have recently been found in northern Niger, arriving from infestations further north.

FAO says locust-control efforts in the region are being hindered by continued insecurity along both sides of the Algerian-Libyan border. Political insecurity and conflict in Mali could also hamper monitoring and control efforts if the locusts reach that country.

Locust infestations were first reported in southwest Libya near Ghat in January 2012 and in southeast Algeria.  In late March, FAO warned that swarms could arrive in Niger and Mali by June. Continued rains and the resulting growth of vegetation led to the formation of swarms by mid-May.

“How many locusts there are and how far they move will depend on two major factors – the effectiveness of current control efforts in Algeria and Libya and upcoming rainfall in the Sahel of West Africa,” said Keith Cressman, FAO Senior Locust Forecasting Officer.

Both Algeria and Libya have been working hard to treat infested areas, covering a total of 40 000 hectares in Algeria and 21 000 hectares in Libya as of the end of May.

"In a normal year, Algeria and Libya would have been able to control most of the local swarms and prevent their movement towards the south, but insecurity along both sides of the Algerian-Libyan border is getting in the way of full access by local teams and by FAO experts who need to assess the situation. Libya’s capacity to carry out control efforts has also been affected in the past year,” Cressman explained...

A desert locust, shot by AtelierMonpli, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Niger river dams could displace 1.5 million

Fred Pearce in New Scientist: Seen from space, it is a vast green and blue smudge on the edge of the Sahara desert. Close up, it is a watery wilderness of lakes and flooded forests and grasslands, home to 1.5 million fishers, cattle grazers and farmers, and millions of birds wintering from Europe.

But the inner Niger delta in northern Mali, one of the world's largest wetlands, could soon run almost completely dry every fourth year. Massive engineering works on the Niger river, West Africa's largest river, are set to turn the delta into a desiccated sump. The result would be a "human catastrophe as vicious and shameful as the drainage of the Aral Sea" in central Asia by Soviet engineers, warns Jane Madgwick, head of Wetlands International.

The first threat comes from the Malian government itself. It has sanctioned a series of schemes to extract water from the Niger river just upstream of the delta to irrigate thirsty crops such as rice, cotton and sugar. The two largest projects, due to be completed by 2015, will provide water for the South African sugar giant Illovo and a Chinese state enterprise. They could take the entire river flow during the dry season, says hydrologist Leo Zwarts of the Dutch consultancy Altenburg & Wymenga...

The MODIS on NASA's Terra satellite took this picture of the Inland Niger Delta on November 11, 2007 shortly after the end of the rainy season when the landscape remained lush and green. This inland delta is a complex combination of river channels, lakes, swamps, and occasional areas of higher elevation. One such area of higher elevation is obvious in this image, and it forms a branching shape, like a tan tree pushing up toward the north. This wet oasis in the African Sahel provides habitat both for migrating birds and West African manatees. The fertile floodplains also provide much needed resources for the local people, who use the area for fishing, grazing livestock, and cultivating rice.

Mali shows the way

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: Climate change affects agriculture in Africa more than in the rest of the world and that can cause hunger in various countries there. ...An example is the West African country of Mali, which ranks as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate-related hunger, even though the country's carbon emissions are minimal.

In the developed world, climate change is an abstraction, but in Mali it is a reality. However, instead of waiting for disaster to strike, the government there is taking steps to adapt. The government of Mali shared the lessons they learnt in agriculture and climate at a session at COP 17. ...Souleymane Cissé, from the Malian environment ministry, commented: "The paradox is although Mali isn't producing carbon emissions, we are the first victim of climate change. We could not stand by and do nothing."

Dr Alamin Sinna Toure, from the Environment and Sanitation Agency in Mali, gave an overview of the challenges facing Mali and the steps taken to meet them. The bulk of Mali's economy is based on agriculture and fishing, with 80 percent of the population working in agriculture.

...Lack of rainfall is one problem. Mali's rainfall fell by 20 percent between 1971 and 2000, and things could get worse. The forecasts are alarming, with a further 11 percent reduction expected by 2025. As the rains dry up, the temperature rises. There could be an increase of between four and 4.5°C. "The result", said Toure, "is 68 percent of the population will be exposed to food insecurity.

Reviving old agricultural methods may help, according to Adama Kouyaté, from Mali's ministry of agriculture. "We are trying not to rely on rain, by reviving old agricultural techniques. We are reviving old seeds which were used long ago, replanting them and reviving those crops", he explained...

Men carrying straw in Mali, shot by Ferdinand Reus, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Africa's great 'water grab'

Claire Provost in the Guardian (UK): The banks of the Niger river, in southern Mali, have been flooded by a steady stream of foreigners. Coveted by foreign investors eager to snap up large tracts of fertile farmland, the river basin has been at the centre of a race to get hold of African land at rock-bottom prices. Meanwhile, last week, hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists flocked to the same river basin for the first international conference to tackle the global rush for land.

West Africa's largest river, the Niger is thought to sustain over 100 million people as it snakes 4,180km through Guinea, Mali and Niger before emptying into Nigeria's colossal Niger Delta. In Mali, the Office du Niger is home to the vast majority of the country's largescale land deals, seen by campaigners as emblematic of the "land grabs" taking place in developing countries. Recent estimates suggest that foreign investment in Mali's limited arable land jumped by 60% between 2009 and 2010. But the potential knock-on effects of these land deals on local communities' access to water has rarely made it centre-stage.

Ongoing research from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development seeks to redress this blindspot, honing in on how such land deals might affect water access for fishing, farming and pastoralist communities. In a policy paper out on Thursday, the IIED's Jamie Skinner and Lorenzo Cotula warn that an alarming number of African governments seem to be signing away water rights for decades, with major implications for local communities.

Investors in farmland are, understandably, after land with high growing potential – either land with lots of rainfall or land that can be irrigated. What Skinner and Cotula note is a worrying trend where governments are being rushed into signing away water rights during negotiations where they were initially only considering leasing land...

A canoe on the Niger River at sunset, Guinea, shot by L. Lartigue

West Africa experts tested on their disaster response skills

George Fominyen in AlertNet: Picture the scene: terrified, hungry crowds go on the rampage, attacking cars belonging to humanitarian organisations, storming warehouses to steal food and fuel supplies. As a government what do you do? How, when and where do you deploy security forces to restore some order to your streets? How do you coordinate civilian and military players to provide emergency relief?

Those were some the questions facing disaster management officials from the West African countries of Benin, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal, who took part in a recent simulation exercise aimed at testing the effectiveness of their decision-making. Run by the World Food Programme (WFP), the simulation exercise was held in Senegal's capital, Dakar, and involved responding to a hypothetical influenza pandemic.

West Africa is more used to dealing with natural disasters such as seasonal flooding, so how did their officials do? "We realised that we still had to improve on a lot of things in the area of coordination," Eugene Hountondji, the head of safety and civil protection training in Benin's interior ministry, told AlertNet. The officials were told to imagine a high death rate and the disruption a severe pandemic would cause a society, compared with the relatively localised problems of flooding....

A 2005 flood in Dakar, shot by MyriamLouviot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Local communities combat desertification in Mali's Lake Faguibine region

Allyn Gaestel in AllAfrica.com via MediaGlobal: The Lake Faguibine region in Northern Mali was once a thriving water system. Communities were built around the source, with agricultural and pastoral lifestyles dependent on the natural resource. However in the past hundred years the lake has experienced fluctuations of drought, completely drying up in 1914, 1924 and 1944, and remaining at drastically low levels since the 1970s.

In the past 40 years droughts have led to hundreds of thousands of human deaths and the loss of millions of livestock. Climate change has already had a visibly disastrous impact on this area and without local and global mitigation efforts the situation can only worsen.

"Before the complete drying up of the Lakes, this area was the hearth of economic development for Mali and surrounding neighboring countries (Burkina Faso and Mauritania)," Dr. Birguy M. Lamizana-Diallo, told MediaGlobal. "Thus, if effort is put into the restoration of this ecosystem, its services and functions, it will again play a leading role for food security (agriculture, fisheries, and livestock) and economic growth for Mali." Lamizana-Diallo is technical advisor for a UNEP/Mali ecosystem management project for Lake Faguibine.

The lake has long played a central role in local livelihoods. But with the changing climate and the advance of the Sahara, people in the region have abandoned their original economic activities. According to Lamizana-Diallo, "Nomadic groups lost most of their livestock and became sedentary in order to benefit from emergency relief programs or migrated into cities."

Now surviving communities are fighting back and working to restore the ecosystem so they can return to their normal, fruitful lives. Since 2002, villages have mobilized to clear channels and enable the lake to fill again. In 2006 the Malian government created l'Office pour la Mise en Valeur du Faguibine (OMVF) to support the local response in addressing desertification in the region…

Seen from a NASA satellite: Lake Faguibine, Lake Komango, Lake Tele, Lake Oro, Lake Fati, Mali - April 1991