Oxfam Southern Africa Blog

COP 17: Global shipping tax could generate billions for Green Climate Fund

By Rashmi Mistry
Climate Change Lead, Oxfam, South Africa

It’s time for countries to seize the opportunity in Durban and mandate the IMO to develop and implement a fair scheme that could help small-scale farmers and fishing communities survive the effects of a changing climate.

Just over a year since the success of the football World Cup and Durban is again preparing to welcome thousands of foreign visitors. This time, the International Convention Centre rather than Moses Mabhida Stadium is the venue for a complex and globally critical event: the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) 17 climate change negotiations.

Africa’s third COP could be a significant moment for South Africa as it seeks a permanent place at the top table of international politics. If the negotiations achieve even a measure of success, the Government will be lauded for the Durban legacy, but while the big power politics may be alluring, those involved should remain focused on the golden opportunity these talks could present.

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Life on the edge

By Nicole Johnston
Regional Media Coordinator

Civil society organisations in Zambia are reaching out to communities across the country to ensure that issues around the delivery of health-care are highlighted in the upcoming elections.

Chiawa district lies between two mighty African rivers – the Kafue and the Zambezi. The village overlooks the banks of the Zambezi, with Zimbabwe visible on the other side of the water. A small herd of elephants graze at the riverside, buried up to their massive tusks in lush greenery. This may sound like an African idyll, but life is hard in Chiawa.

Rosemary Chimwanga cares for Zezai Gubo (5). Photograph: Nicole Johnston/Oxfam

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A crack in the sky

Nicole Johnston on resilience, hope and dignity in Dadaab.

Secretly, I was rather dreading Dadaab. For weeks I’d seen the images on TV: babies so emaciated they looked like a bundle of twigs wrapped in cloth; elderly people dying, their faces shrouded in a cloud of flies. I was bracing myself, mentally preparing to try to bear the unbearable and do the best job I could.

Children play at the reception centre at Ifo camp. Photograph: Nicole Johnston/Oxfam

I hadn’t reckoned on being buoyed by the incredible energy that is generated by the half a million people living in the world’s biggest refugee camp, by engaging with people as three-dimensional human beings instead of cardboard cut-out caricatures of suffering and, most of all, by their hope.

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Time for a fair deal for Africa on finance

South Africa Planning Minister Trevor Manuel will be the guest speaker at a public discussion on Wednesday 7 September on how to secure progress on finance at the 17th Conference of Parties and Kyoto Protocol members (COP 17).

The negotiations on climate finance, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, have profound implications for Africa. Decision on a package of sources for long-term climate and development finance is not only achievable, but an essential outcome for the success of COP 17 in Durban late this year.

Join Oxfam and WWF for the discussion, “Time for a Fair Deal for Africa on Finance – Will we get out of the bunker in Durban?”, and for the launch of “Out of the Bunker”, a new briefing paper on how to raise at least $10 billion a year for international climate finance, with no net costs to developing countries.

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Getting help into Somalia

The United Nations is expected to announce today a worsening of famine conditions in Somalia. The country is at the epicentre of the current drought affecting East Africa; with 3.7 million affected by the crisis – and an estimated 3.2 million in need of immediate, life-saving help. The expectation is that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate over the coming months; and that lower-than-expected rains in some areas will mean the emergency will continue well into next year.

Getting aid into conflict-affected Somalia is difficult, but not impossible.

One of Oxfam’s local partners, WASDA (Wajir South Development Association), operates programmes to drought-hit communities in Wajir, north-eastern Kenya, as well as Lower and Middle Juba, in Somalia itself.

WASDA programme manager Bashir Mohamed, who regularly travels into Somalia, spoke to Caroline Gluck about the current challenges they’re facing getting aid to those who need it most.

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Malawi fuel shortages threaten village livelihoods

By Elvis Sukali
Media and Communication Officer

Perched on a hill facing the Nkula hydro electric power plant, Namputu village overlooks Malawi’s biggest river, the Shire. Yet the inhabitants of this village have lived most of their lives at the mercy of unreliable rains, with dry spells and seasonal droughts reducing their harvests and keeping them in perpetual poverty and hunger. Villagers resorted to cutting down trees and burning charcoal to earn money to provide for their families.

In 2010 Oxfam partner the Blantyre Synod Health and Development Commission (BSHDC) stepped in to provide the village with a motorised pump and assist in the establishment of an irrigation scheme alongside the Shire. The scheme was a turning point for 23 households cultivating 10 hectares of land given to them by the village chief. They witnessed a dramatic improvement in the productivity of the land, putting the community on the path to finally bidding poverty farewell.

Village headman Alfred Tobiyasi: It will be difficult to enforce our own regulations regarding protection of trees because people are saying where will we get money to buy food?

However, the chronic fuel shortages experienced in the country since last year threaten to reverse the gains of the irrigation scheme. The village can no longer run the motorised pump because of the lack of fuel. Village headman Alfred Tobiyasi is concerned that people will again resort to cutting down trees because they are not harvesting enough food.

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Bridging the divide between policy makers and the people

Zambian musician Maiko Zulu was a keynote speaker at the launch of the “Civil Society Health Forum – Health Election Campaign” in Lusaka last week. Zulu is an ILO ambassador in the fight to end child labour and an ambassador for the Fair Play For Africa campaign. Misozi Tembo caught up with him at the launch of the campaign.

Maiko Zulu at the launch of the health election campaign.

Why are you involved in this campaign?
How can I not be? We are nearing elections and it’s important that as a nation we raise our voices loud enough so that the leaders campaigning right now can hear us. Not just them knowing what our problems are, but ensuring that they really understand and decide to do something about them.

What are some of the issues that bother you regarding health service delivery in Zambia?
The main one is over the biggest government-owned hospital in Zambia, the University Teaching Hospital (UTH). It is insane and unacceptable to have a private pharmacy at UTH. No wonder people are always given prescriptions from hospitals so that the sales at the pharmacy are increased. Why not simply declare the hospital a private business entity then?

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Zambia elections 2011: Making health a priority

The Zambia general elections are scheduled to be held on 20 September to elect a president and representatives to the National Assembly. Civil society organisations in Zambia have identified the elections as an opportunity to ensure key health issues are a priority during the upcoming elections. This has been done successfully in various African countries, most recently in Malawi.

The campaign will target leaders standing for election with the aim of asking them to commit to prioritising equitable and improved access to health-care services. The campaign will reach out to communities across the country to ensure that issues around the delivery of health-care services at the local level, in terms of access and quality, are highlighted. This will be done through community meetings with leaders, case studies, roadshows and other popular mobilisation activities, as well as through lobbying political and community leaders. The campaign is being run by a broad range of organisations under the Civil Society Health Forum and Fair Play for Africa umbrella.

This blog will help give voice to citizens and health-care workers to highlight some of the experiences and challenges with health-care provision in Zambia.

Jacob Kaneya is an environmental health technologist at Lungobe Rural Health Centre.

In theory, Kaneya’s job is to focus on preventing outbreaks of disease such as bilharzia, cholera and malaria. But the reality of working in an under-resourced rural health clinic is that he often has to turn his hand to a range of other medical interventions – including delivering babies.

A ward at the under-resourced Lungobe Rural Health Centre. Photograph: Nicole Johnston/Oxfam

The health centre has a clinic officer who runs tests on patients and prescribes medicine, as well as a nurse. “We are actually supposed to have two nurses. My house is here on the clinic grounds, but my colleagues live elsewhere, so once they go home I am only trained health worker here.” Kaneya raises an eyebrow and chuckles: “Let’s just say I have delivered lots of babies in the middle of the night.”

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The East Africa food crisis was not inevitable and solutions exist

The drought in East Africa is an urgent humanitarian crisis, but one which also highlights the underlying problems people face in having sustainable and affordable access to food.

It was well known that failing rains would affect farmers, pastoralists and other communities, yet governments haven’t done enough to protect them. Now their lives and livelihoods are being devastated.

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Has Zambia really escaped “the poverty trap”?

by Monica Mutesa
Essential Services Coordinator, Zambia

In development circles there was much debate last week when it was announced that Zambia had moved up the World Bank rankings and become a “middle-income country”.

But the truth is that this “news” remains a mere academic pronouncement – for the majority of Zambians the news that Zambia has now graduated to being a middle-income country will not even register as a blip on their radar.

Almost half of Zambian children suffer from chronic malnutrition and almost one in five are underweight. Photograph: Nicole Johnston

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