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Africa. Environmental Degradation and Climate Change Migrants.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Environmental degradation will make the planet face up to challenges unknown until now. As a consequence of the deterioration of the environment, Africa is experiencing the phenomenon of climate-driven migration.

Africa is currently home to more than 1.3 billion people, a figure that could double by 2050, according to UN forecasts. The African population is mainly living in a context of social inequality, with worrying indicators about gender equality, access to health and education. The expected population growth implies the need for a larger quantity of food.

According to an FAO study on the incidence of climate change on agricultural production, this is expected to decline in different areas of the world, particularly in Africa. Furthermore, land grabbing practices for non-food uses, which contribute to environmental degradation, are on the rise in Africa, while more agricultural land is needed.

Water and soil
Food is and will be an even more critical issue as the population grows. Agriculture and livestock require water that, in some African regions, especially in the Sahel, is scarce. The dams that have been built to facilitate the irrigation of certain crops, sometimes prevent the natural processes of seasonal flooding of wetlands, affecting inland fishing and livestock grazing. This is happening in such countries as Mali and Senegal. It is commonly believed that there is high availability of arable land in Africa, but potential new crops affect ecosystems, and deforestation exposes the soil to high temperatures which break down the organic matter and make the soils vulnerable to erosion. The productivity of these new arable lands, in areas that were previously forested, declines after a few decades of agricultural exploitation.

The occupation and conversion of these lands must also be considered under several aspects. Those lands destined for cotton farming are increasing in Africa, but cotton is not intended to create a local textile industry, since it is destined for export. The oil palm provides biodiesel and oil for domestic consumption and various energy uses. Its cultivation is spreading in large areas, which is causing the usual degradation of the soil, in addition to the expansion of the Palm weevil disease which infests and kills palms.
But climate change does not only affect agriculture in the African continent. Fishing in Africa, whether in rivers, lakes, or in the sea, employs mainly artisanal techniques. The a fore-mentioned alterations in rivers and wetlands, or those that climate change will likely cause, will affect these activities. Millions of Africans depend on fish caught by local fishermen (more than half a million people live on artisanal fishing in Senegal), but as a consequence of over fishing by the European or other foreign fleets, stocks are further decreasing.

Local fishermen are now forced to fish further out to sea because the accessibility to stocks close the coast is diminishing. Mining is another threat to African resources; mining activities in fact destroy soil, pollute waters and, in some cases, leave ditches of sterile rock that usually leak contaminated water, with the consequent risk of breakage and toxic spills. Many raw materials, such as copper, bauxite, gold, coltan or the increasingly popular rare earth metals are extracted in Africa, and Nigeria and Algeria are the two main suppliers of oil and gas in the continent. Oil extraction in Nigeria has caused extreme environmental degradation in the Niger Delta and in the Gulf of Guinea.
In many African countries, energy is obtained by burning firewood and other biomass fuels, generating significant deforestation. Petroleum-exporting countries, such as Nigeria, do not have refineries, so they must import the petroleum products they consume. European and Chinese companies acquire – legally or otherwise – huge tracts of land in many African countries to grow crops for agro-fuels such as oil palm and other crops like cassava, which would appear as sources of agro-fuels. These crops are being grown at the cost of food crops, which that continent needs because dying of starvation and hunger is still a stark reality for the African population.

Consequences of climate change.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the projected minimum temperature is expected to increase by more than 2 °C above the 1981–2000 average by the end of 21st century. An increase in temperature would affect evaporation. Basically, the higher the temperature the higher the rate of evaporation and as a consequence there is less water on the earth’s surface. The Inner Niger Delta is the inland delta of the Niger River. It is an area of fluvial wetlands, lakes and floodplains in the semi-arid Sahel area of central Mali, just south of the Sahara desert. This food zone covers 50,000 Km^².

During the wet season, which lasts from July to September the swamp floods into a lake and naturally irrigates the land. When the dry season comes, the Inner Niger Delta area turns into a network of lakes and channels. Cattle, pearl millet, and rice are its important agricultural products. The area of inland delta also provides water and fish for the several million people living there.
To the east of the Inner Niger Delta there is Lake Chad, also in the north of the Sahel. Over the last fifty years the area of Lake Chad has reduced drastically leading to significant imbalances resulting in an increased vulnerability of the hydro- socio-ecosystem with multiple results also affecting fishermen and ranchers living in that area. The difficult situation has also caused tensions and clashes between the groups that live in the area around the lake. A tree-planting project has been proposed in order to slow down the process of desertification. Fast-growing trees, mainly eucalyptus, could be planted in the area between the Sahara and the Sahel.

Greenhouse gas
According to a new study, global sea levels are set to rise dramatically even if the strictest greenhouse gas emissions targets are met. Researchers say oceans will rise by over one metre even if the world sticks to the Paris agreement, adding that if emissions are not curbed as soon as possible the rise will be even greater. The sea level rise would deteriorate the coasts, for example in mangrove areas, which are a source for the marine fauna development, and which also constitute a barrier for the population living close to the sea.
A rise in sea levels also implies the salinization of fresh groundwater in coastal aquifers affecting agricultural areas such as the Nile Delta or coastal cities like Lagos (Nigeria), where 15 million people live and where oil pollution is also a serious issue.

Environmental migrants
Today climate-driven migration is a phenomenon that occurs in several corners of the planet, but the poorest regions of the global South, such as the African continent, are those where the number of climate migrants is the highest. This is a clear example of climate injustice since Africa is responsible only for 7% of total greenhouse gas emissions. In different regions of Africa, climate-driven migration is already a reality and the numbers of environmental migrants is expected to increase.

According to the new World Bank report “Groundswell”, published in 2018, more than 86 million people are expected to move within their countries’ borders by 2050 in the African continent due to environmental changes. In the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea, the periodic effects of droughts and variations in rainfall patterns have influenced the migration of rural populations.
Climate change is one of the main causes of human migration. Climate-driven migration is an even more evident reality in Africa where the most vulnerable people are the most affected.
Emilio Menéndez – Marina Tortosa García de Ceca

West Africa, bridgehead for cocaine trafficking.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

The region has acquired a key role in the drugs trade, becoming the major platform of intercontinental trade in cocaine, not only because of its strategic location but also because it is fertile ground for creating local groups interested in what they can gain from this commerce.

The Atlantic coast, composed of Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and, to a lesser extent, Senegal, is the main bridgehead for the drugs trade in the region. The narcotics, despatched to Guinea-Bissau from South America by sea or air, are redirected both to the surrounding international airports (Dakar, Conakry and Bamako) from where it is sent to Europe, and overland to the north of Mali where it joins with the Sahel route. This route follows the borders between Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Niger and Libya and depends on familiarity with the land on the part of the Tuareg and Tebu tribes, the main agents providing transport services or armed escorts in the region. The Sahel route is divided into two parts: the so-called ‘short route’ and the ‘long route’.
The first passes through the Malian regions of Timbuctoo and Kidal and reaches the south of Algeria where local criminal gangs operate, while the second follows an easier but longer road, passing from northern Mali to Niger, Chad, Sudan and, finally, Libya, from where it reaches the ports of Europe, mainly in Spain and Italy.

Data provided by the INCB give us to understand that the problem of drugs is becoming very serious in Western Africa. In that area, in recent years, there has been an exponential increase in the consumption of narcotics, especially among young people. This phenomenon is due to the fact that this geographical area represents the main sorting-house for the transit of the routes originating in South America and bound for Europe. This trade in drugs has been increasing for years now and has already reached impressive dimensions.
For a better understanding of the importance of the phenomenon, it is useful to recall what happened in 2013 in Guinea-Bissau (a despairing nation in West Africa) through the work of the DEA which successfully carried out one of the biggest international operations ever. An agent, passing himself off as a Colombian FARC guerrilla, invited aboard his yacht José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, former head of the Guinea Bissau army (he was later arrested and imprisoned off the coast of Cape Verde). In exchange for the protection of the drug route, the Guinean received one million dollars for every ton brought to his country from Latin America, especially from Venezuela and Colombia.

This episode shows how Guinea Bissau, one of the points on the African continent closest by sea to the American continent, transformed itself into the first ‘Narco-State’ in Africa. It is an underdeveloped country in which the institutions are corrupt and poverty is so extreme that it is easy to corrupt just about anybody. Corruption is widely used by the drug traffickers and it is therefore no surprise if it is found that the illegal trade involves such personalities as the Chiefs of Staff of the Navy and Army.Violence and corruption have constituted the red thread of an institutional compromise which, together with military interventions, has had a devastating effect on the population. Political instability has brought about the considerable impoverishment of Guinea Bissau, together with the expansion of illegal trading.
The commonest narcotic passing through the western part of the continent is cocaine, part of which stays in the territory, helping to increase consumption, especially by the better off among young people, while the rest is sent to the European markets.

The drugs are not brought in by sea alone but also aboard commercial flights. This is demonstrated by the many confiscations carried out at the airports of Lagos (Nigeria) and Lomé (Togo).
Another country in West Africa constituting a narcotics crossroads about which we have reliable statistics regarding the increase in cocaine trafficking is Ghana. According to a leading member of UNODC, the drug trafficking organisations tend to have the drugs pass through West Africa because, hitherto, the European and United States customs authorities have been less thorough in inspecting luggage from Africa than that from Latin America. Moreover, Ghana is a large synthetic drugs producer (after Nigeria) of a type of high quality marijuana, as well as being a transit zone for the despatch of cocaine being sent to England.
With reference to synthetic drugs, we must state that, in recent years, in Western Africa there has been an increase in the production of such drugs. Many centres of production have been discovered in Ivory Coast, Guinea and Nigeria where, between 2011 and 2015, no less than ten clandestine laboratories have been dismantled.
In these centres, substances like methamphetamines are produced to be smuggled to Eastern Asia and South-East Asia. This is a new phenomenon, given that, up to a short time ago, the African region had never played an important role in this trade.
Researchers also believe that the increase in online dealing in these countries has paved the way for this phenomenon, since it is harder for the forces of law and order to identify the drug pushers and consumers.

Douala is the economic capital, as well as the biggest city in Cameroon.

As regards Central Africa, we have Douala, the capital of Cameroon, which is becoming an important trafficking centre. Here, too, part of the drugs in transit is kept for local consumption and the use of synthetic drugs is widespread. In particular, we find that Kobolo is widespread among the young and iboga, containing a tryptamine which, in high doses, produces devastating hallucinogenic effects. This drug is extracted from the plant of the same name cultivated in Congo, itself also a transit country for imported drugs. In the Central African regions, among the various gangs dedicated to crime and drug trafficking, there are those who were formerly the Mai Mai militias in the Congo, as well as the Huto paramilitaries of the Interahamwe who were among the more ferocious executors of the Rwanda genocide. (F.R.)

Young Indios: “The world must listen to us”.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

During the Synod for Amazonia, we heard stories of young Indios who struggle against environmental exploitation, in recognition of their own identity, and they want to create an alliance with the young people of the West. The earth is not a good to be milked dry but an inheritance to be handed down.

Marcivana Rodrigues Paiva, an ethnic Sateré-Mawe, is from Manaus, and the youthful leader of Indigenous Peoples Coordination, (COPIME), the first organisation in Brazil to concern itself with the indigenous people in the urban context, participated in the Synod as an observer.

Speaking of indigenous peoples in cities she says: “The problem of the indigenous peoples in the urban context is destined to become a brutal reality that can no longer be kept hidden. The lack of recognition of our presence in the cities denies us our rights, approved by Brazilian law. For the indigenous peoples forced to flee to the cities, the greatest danger is invisibility: those who cannot be seen have no rights”.

“Over the past five years, the exodus from the aldeias, the villages of the entire state of Amazonia, has greatly increased. Today, 52% of the indigenous population is to be found in Manaus: they number 40,000 people of 45 different ethnic groups. Without land, we have no right to our identity. Finally Marcivana launches an appeal “to assist indigenous populations who come to the cities” by means of an “indigenous pastoral” suitable for them.

Delio Siticonatzi, 28, is from Peru. He belongs to the Ashaninka people. He studied at the Catholic University of Nopoki, the centre for third-level studies created with the backing of the Vatican in the Vicariate of San Ramón en Atalaya (Ucayali), where studies are done in six different languages by young indigenous people from eighteen different ethnic backgrounds.

He speaks to us of his difficult journey of ethnic discovery. It began when he was 13 year-old and his parents sent him to school in Atalaya since his own community, Junín, had no middle school. “It was then I first had to face discrimination. I put up with the comments in silence until I could stand it no longer and I decided to stop dressing like an Ashaninka, speaking like an Ashaninka and just being and Ashaninka. I wanted them to stop despising me”.

The turning point comes when he enrols in Nopoki (I am coming). “Nopoki taught me to rediscover the beauty of being indigenous. My belonging to the Ashaninka, which I first saw as a burden, became a plus for me”. Delio has decided to dedicate himself to teaching in the native communities. “I wanted to help other boys to understand that it is cruel to deny one’s self”. When, in 2017, Nopoki offered him a post as a teacher, he left the civil service. While at the Synod, which he attended as an observer, he made the voice of the young people heard. “I proposed an alliance between us Indios and the young people of the North of the world. They, too, are concerned about the environment as the global warming strikes show. By ourselves we cannot achieve our aims. Only if we work together can we succeed”.

Yesika Patiachi proudly displays a waterfall adorned with the traditional images of his people, the Harakbut, ancient inhabitants of the Peruvian region of Madre de Dios. Yésica is a bilingual teacher of the Harakbut ethnic group. He lives in the Apostolic Vicariate of Puerto Maldonado. “We could have died out. We almost disappeared because of the “caucheros”, the natural rubber traders. If it had not been for Apaktone….” And so Yesica starts to tell us, in her calm teacher’s voice, of the trauma of the Harakbut who were massacred, in the late eighteen hundreds, by the men of the great rubber baron Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald. “At that time there were fifty thousand of us; now we are less than a thousand”.

The thirty-three-year-old woman combines stories of the massacres with that of the intrepid Dominican, José Alvarez, who defied both smugglers and prejudices to defend the Harakbut. “For us he is Apaktone, “our wise father”». For the people of Madre de Dios, Pope Francis is, instead, “Wamambui”, the brother. “I always call him Wamambui Francesco”, Yesica insists.
She met the Pontiff on 19 January 2018 when Pope Francis went to Puerto Maldonado. “On that occasion, I was chosen to make the welcoming speech. I told him about the great fear we indigenes have of dying out, ignored by a system that does not accept us.
Before I spoke, I was very excited but then I calmed down as I thought of my duty not to make mistakes, out of respect for my ancestors whom I was called to represent”.

“It was with that same sense of responsibility that I accepted the invitation to take part in the Synod as an observer. Wamambui Francesco listens to the indigenous people. He understands that human life on this planet is in danger. We asked the Pope that we be represented in national and international institutions, so that they will not allow us to die out as a people but allow us to live independently. It is we who feel the brunt of the crimes against the common home: no journalist has taken up the cause of our protests or that of the mothers who were hunted down and killed. We have no tribunal where we can denounce these crimes. We want our cause to make a breakthrough into human consciousness, without endangering humanity”, she said

“Personally – Yesica emphasises – I do not trust the environmentalist movements: they often speak without ever having paid personally the cost of extractionism. For this reason I say this to the young people who took part in the climate: get informed. Come and see what is happening in Amazzonia. We are also fighting for you. Do not leave us alone “.

Paulinha Meireles, 21, a Law student, was born and grew up in the outskirts of Manaus, the largest metropolis in Amazzonia, says that there is too much prejudice against the culture of the Indios. The Church is the last hope of the Amazonian peoples. Only the Church has the moral authority to bring their cries to the attention of the world. No one else; the parties and movements are accused of being partial.
Paulinha remembers that also in Manaus, the schoolchildren went on strike against climate change. “I would never have thought it possible. Hitherto, there has been little interest in the environment. This reawakening is something beautiful. And it would be nice to create an understanding between two mutually distant parts of the world. We young people are the driving force for change and this gives me great confidence for the future”. (L.C.)

DR. Congo. What it means to be a doctor and a missionary.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Comboni Brother Juan Carlos Salgado, a medical doctor, has the joy of serving the poor and needy at Bondo hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bondo is a small city towards the north of the country in the province of Bas-Uelé, about 200 Km North-west of the capital Buta. It has about 40,000 inhabitants and is located in a very isolated region. The roads are poor and one can only travel by motorcycle or bicycle. Since consumer goods are transported by motorcycle and there are many military road-blocks where payment is necessary, the products are very expensive.

Bondo is a multi-ethnic city, with communities of Azande, Ngbandi, Benges or Nandes. Many people come here in search of gold. For the most part, they are Congolese and the majority come from Bas-Uelé and the surrounding provinces. The mines are rudimentary. The miners dig in the sand until they find gold which they then sell by weight. The market price here of a gram of gold is around 45 euro.In Bondo, a great deal of money changes hands but since the local authorities show no interest in the infrastructure and do not build good roads, the city is not developing. There is no electricity and solar panels are in use.
There are four of us here in the Comboni community of Bondo. We provide pastoral service in a parish a few kilometres from our house.

I am Mexican and, having taken first vows, I studied nursing at Monterrey in my home country. In 1998, I went to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. That was my first contact with the African continent. Four years later, when I had finished my religious training, I was appointed to the Democratic Republic of Congo where my first mission was in Duru. I worked there for four years in a dispensary. In 2003, in order to improve my knowledge of tropical diseases, I went to study medicine at the University of Gulu, Uganda, for six years. I wanted to complete my education in an African environment.
In 2009 I was sent to work at Mungbere Anualite Hospital. It belongs to the diocese of Wamba where it was founded in 1980 and it is managed by the Comboni Missionaries. It has 140 beds in five departments: Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, Paediatrics and Maternity. Seven dispensaries located between 10 and 54 Km from Mungbere ensure medical assistance to a large portion of the people of the region. My work was to supervise the work of the seven dispensaries. I spent hours moving from one dispensary to another due to the bad roads. Besides that, there are also the many military road-blocks.
They knew I was a doctor and sometimes let me pass but on other occasions they would ask me for money.

After about a year I was transferred to Bondo. As well as my usual medical work, I spend a lot of time coordinating the work of the dispensaries and meeting the nursing personnel. My day begins very early. I meet with the night-shift nurses and then I see each one of the patients and I see to the people who come for medical consultations. If there are cases that need surgery, they are scheduled according to urgency. We carry out at least two operations every day, even though ours in a small hospital and our resources are few. We are two doctors and 18 nurses and we have 70 beds for admitted patients.
For me this experience is very meaningful and enriching. Through my work I am able to do my best as a missionary and professional. I learn a great deal from the people. I believe it is a reciprocal enrichment. My greatest benefit is to see patients returning home cured. It always gives me great pleasure to meet someone on the road who greets me. When I ask them where we met they tell me how I was the one who assisted them on the birth of one of their children or that I was the doctor who operated on their appendix. This is beautiful and gratifying.

Mexico.The Circus as a Life Project.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

In the Nahuatl language, spoken in the central region of Mexico, Machincuepa means somersaults or ‘pirouette’. For hundreds of adolescents and young people in the outskirts of Mexico City, Machincuepa also means relaxation and recreation, but, at the same time, a school of life in circus artistry that transforms them from living a life of crime and vice.

A majestic tent for the Cirque du Soleil was set up in the wealthy part of Mexico City. A few kilometres away, in the Las Águilas quarter, among the houses built into the hills, another sort of circus, born from the Cirque du Soleil, is transforming the lives of the poorest and neediest young people in the outskirts of the Mexican capital.
The Cirque du Soleil is the largest circus company in the world. It started in Canada in 1984. With more than 4,000 employees of whom 1,300 are artistes from various countries, it tours the world bringing wonder, excitement and enthusiasm to the public with the magic of its colours, music, acrobatics and stories. The shows are characterised by extraordinary ability and beauty.

The same aim of awakening the senses and exciting the emotions of the public inspired the Cirque du Soleil to create, together with the Canadian NGO Jeunesse du Monde, a social project aimed at helping children, adolescents and young people in situations of vulnerability such as poverty and crime, women victims of abuse, prisoners, mentally and physically challenged people, drug and other addicts. Consequently, in 1995, the Cirque du Monde (Circus of the World) emerged as a form of intervention that employs circus artistry as an alternative pedagogy for young people living in difficult or uncertain conditions who need to grow in self-esteem and re-make themselves by breaking free of their life of crime. This programme, called Circus Social, rapidly spread to the five continents and has centres in 16 countries and 46 cities, one of which is Machincuepa Circo Social A.C, in the Mexican capital.

A Circus of Life

‘The circus is a metaphor that helps us to understand life. There are risks, challenges, surprises, fears, desires, satisfaction and apprenticeship’, writes Juan Carlos Hernández Vázquez, who founded Machincuepa in 1999, in a guidebook that explains how it works. He adds: ‘The circus has a lot to offer young people. Besides being an enjoyable activity, it gives them the opportunity to take the risk and channel their adrenalin in a safe context’.
Machincuepa is not just an academy for training circus artistes but a school of life that is based upon a balance between two disciplines: circus artistry and social sciences. The execution of the first is enriched by the second. And it is taught by practice. In short, a social circus may be defined as a grouping of formative activities that transmit circus values to the pupils aged from 9 to 18 years.

One way of teaching the value of teamwork is, for example, forming a human pyramid. The importance of the group, solidarity and the weighing of risks is learned when one is responsible for holding a partner on the trapeze and, in the entire process, to avoid injury. Self-esteem grows when a young boy or girl learns to do things they never before dreamt of doing, such as balancing on a wheel or juggling three or four balls.
When learning to walk on stilts, learners are at first paralysed by fear but then they have the opportunity to see life from a different perspective. The trainers help them to walk while, at the same time, they work on their fear, helping the young people to exercise the instruments of prudence in daily life such as foreseeing danger, a correct balance, the ability to give and to receive advice. Falls, criticism, being laughed at and the lack of the resources help to better oneself reflect daily life. The aim is for every boy and girl to become aware that their efforts and their work are sufficient to gain positive results, and that giving up or being violent are no solutions.

The making of costumes and materials used for the show, such as doing make-up, are part of the pedagogical process. They are a means by which the young people articulate what they have learned; reinforce their self-confidence; change the image which others and they themselves have created; and add something new to the inheritance transmitted to them.In the personal construction of the personality, Machincuepa Circo Social unites the five principles of the circus: cooperation, security, joy, perseverance, and discipline. This is because those who make up the circus do not see themselves as functionaries but as a family in which each member has his own work to do and in which all are leaders.
Juan Carlos Hernández Vázquez points out: “ We have children who come to us shy, uncertain and afraid of taking part in any activity whatever. In the course of their training we see impressive changes, both in the way they express their emotions and in their physical attitudes as well as the way they start to understand more, are more courageous and learn faster. We have courses to help the children overcome the marginalisation, exclusion and violence that characterised the lives of many of them, having been repressed by poverty or by gangs connected to drug trafficking and prostitution”.
Just seeing their pride and satisfaction when they take part in a show in front of the public is one of the great joys of the formators.

One of the courses is exclusively for young women, to impart to them leadership abilities and to reduce their exposure to violence in the family, to prepare them for courtship, marriage and the workplace.
The prevention of leaving school early and empathising with the teachers and the school community are other topics of formation.
Formation is carried out in four phases. The first is the welcoming. The students are fascinated by the magic of the circus and by the desire to get involved in a particular act that the circus has awakened in them. At the same time, they acquire a sense of belonging to the group. The second phase consists in their becoming integrated into the group and being presented with the principles of the circus. In the third phase, the students learn how they should regard their community: family, parents and neighbours. The fundamental values of family and social life are explained: friendship, respect, loyalty, cooperation, teamwork, creativity, responsibility etc.
The fourth and final phase is the one that defines the life project. The apprentices learn how to recognise the abilities they have acquired so as to become builders of their own future. They learn how to juggle, perform acrobatics, how to walk the tight rope, how to be responsible on the trapeze … these exercises are ways of facing up to life and the dangers of the difficult and perilous environment in which they live.

Fernando Felix

The Mafias.The Sea routes for drugs.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

The drug-mafias have become experts in organization and logistical planning for the management of the dispatch and distribution of drugs by sea. The Sea Route 10, the Narco-Highway.

The international drugs trade uses, for the most part, a means of transport that has been in use since time immemorial, that of maritime vessels, used today to transport 90% of the world’s commercial goods. The mafias have become part of this by setting up an increasingly sophisticated network that has evolved through the use of the most varied technologies and vessels and especially through the study and planning of the sea routes that prove more profitable in this most lucrative of illegal businesses.

The drug-mafias have become experts in organization and logistical planning for the management of the dispatch and distribution of drugs by sea. Using part of their enormous income, they have hired experts in logistics, information technology and telecommunications. The drugs cartels (in particular those of Mexico, Colombia, China, Italy and Afghan-Pakistan) have become extremely efficient organizations in the management of drug trafficking both by land and by sea towards Africa, Europe, Russia, Asia, the United States, Canada, South America and Oceania. The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans are vast, immense areas where it is very difficult to intercept cargos of drugs firstly, because of the large number of vessels loaded with drugs, secondly, the vastness of the area and thirdly, the countless ports of departure and arrival that need to be watched.

Route 10

There is one particular route that is frequently used by drug-carrying ships called Sea Route 10 that crosses the great Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from one end to the other. Route 10 takes its name from the line of latitude 10 degrees north of the Equator, known to both drugs traders and police as the ‘Narco Highway’. In her most recent detailed book, ‘The Cocaine Seas-the drugs sea-routes’, Ana Lilia Pérez, one of the most brilliant minds in Mexican journalism, describes it well. Pérez writes: “Starting in 2004, due to increased controls, Route 10 is being increasingly used to avoid the police launches so that the ships loaded with drugs can come close to the African or European coasts where smaller boats take the cargo on board.

These smaller boats are ingeniously disguised”. Latitude 10 crosses the planet from one side to the other, from Colombia and Venezuela to Nigeria and Chad, then Sudan, Somalia, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Micronesia and the most remote Marshall Islands. Are the Polynesian islands involved in drug trafficking? Yes. Perez tells of dozens of boats belonging to Mexican drug cartels that fly the Marshall Islands’ flag and so exploit a classical measure of convenience to conceal their illegal cargos. Such places of natural beauty as the Marshalls, Palau and Vanuatu are themselves outlet markets for drugs which are, of course, sold in the larger markets of Oceania, Australia and New Zealand, two markets coveted by all the drug mafias since the price of drugs in these are the highest in the world. The Chinese gangs are also trading towards Australia and New Zealand using, among other things, large yachts.

The Mexican cartels, with the help of the cartel of Arellano Felix group, may boast that they were the first to plan a fruitful and efficient distribution of cocaine using the sea routes to construct a vast and widespread logistic structure, using all sorts of vessels, even resorting, like the Colombian dealers, to mini-submarines. In the year 2016 alone, the US Coast Guard discovered six boats loaded with drugs. They were like mini-submarines able to sail close to the surface, built in such a way that only the partially windowed turret is visible above the water, enabling them to be steered. The most travelled sea route is that from North West Mexico to the coast of California. Even the Brazilian drug gangs have copied the Colombian and Mexican cartels, creating their own improvised mini-subs. It seems that the creativity of the drug traders is apparently unlimited in light of the discovery, in Calexio in August 2016, of a small, complicated tunnel, 45 metres long, used to send small parcels of drugs by letting them be carried by the current. In Calexico: a series of channels built on the Mexican side connected, on the other side of the Mexico-USA border, with the All-American Canal which was constructed to irrigate land using the water of the Colorado River. The parcels of drugs were driven by the current of the small tunnel and collected by accomplices at Calexico.

Tons of drugs from South and Central America reach the coast of northern Spain and Portugal on their way to European markets. The same happens along the coasts of many countries of Western Africa. In fact, the western face of the immense African continent has become an integral part of drug trafficking by sea. Trafficking has greatly increased in countries such as Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal and Benín where the local gangs receive about 30% of the goods unloaded from the drug ships. Crossing the Sahel, cocaine, heroin and opium traffickers exploit the vast desert expanses devoid of controls that characterise the region. The drugs provide finance to terrorist groups such as the various branches of Al-Qaeda and Isis now rooted in those regions, as is also the case with Afghan opium, the main source of finance of the integralist Taliban extremists. Guinea-Bissau especially, is a perfect base where drug ships can dock.
Despite the anti-drugs war waged by President Duterte, the Chinese Triads have no hesitation in continuing to bring meth drugs to the Philippine market. As reported by the DEA (American Drugs Enforcement Agency) and by the PDEA (Philippine National Police and the Department of Justice), a select group of Chinese traffickers is dedicated to sending the chemical precursors to the Philippines. More precisely, according to the investigators, it is the Triads, the Chinese mafia, which is behind the enormous and extremely lucrative trade. The meths are transported by vessels of all sizes, among the tourist yachts; the dispatches are usually sent towards the north of Luzon, the largest of the Philippine Islands.

The drugs are unloaded at sea, far from any of the infrequent patrols of the Philippine Coastal Guard, where accomplice fishermen are waiting to take it ashore and hand it over to local gangs who take it to laboratories where, as they say in the drugs jargon, it is ‘cooked’. The same tried and tested method is used to transport and transfer the drugs from the Mexican coast to that of the United States. One of the ports for precursors on the Pacific coast, well known to the Mexican authorities is that of Lazaro Cardenas, in Michoacàn.
The port areas of Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Culiacan are among the localities where illegal business between the Chinese Triads and the drugs cartels takes place.

Marco Leofrigio

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Nobel Peace Prize 2019.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

In February 2018, in the midst of ongoing political turmoil, few could have predicted the radical political change of direction Ethiopia would experience within a matter of weeks.

The election in March 2018 of Abiy Ahmed as Chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and consequently the country’s Prime Minister heralded the beginning of a major shift in leadership style and approach in one of Africa’s most authoritarian polities.

Within his first 100 days, Abiy had released thousands of political prisoners, liberalised press and freedom of speech, legalised various once-criminalised opposition groups, placed his own stamp on Ethiopia’s military-security complex, committed the country to genuine multi-party democracy and ended 18 years of latent conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.
Many expect Abiy, who at 42 is the continent’s youngest leader, to be announced as the next Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Abiy was a relative newcomer until shortly before becoming Prime Minister. A technocrat within the then Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO, one of the four members of the EPRDF coalition), his emergence owed much to two key interlinked elements of the polity built by the EPRDF since May 1991. The first was ethnic federalism: the rationale behind ethnic federalism was to embed the rights of different ethnic groups and peoples within the state, preventing a single ethnic group dominating the rest.

To that end, the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia provided for a federal political system based on nine regions, whose shapes and boundaries derived from the ethnicity of the majority of citizens living there. The second key element was the leadership style of one of Abiy’s predecessors, Meles Zenawi, who turned into an authoritarian strongman at the beginning of the new century.

To secure his position, Meles and his allies purged the TPLF of critics and detractors, and forced out figures in the other three parties who had sided with his opponents during the crisis.
In doing so, Meles re-shaped the EPRDF coalition into a body whose leaders owed their loyalties directly to him. The post-2001 Meles government also sought to impose stricter and more personalized control over state and party machinery nationwide.

Meles died in August 2012, leaving a vacuum. With no appointed successor and plenty of rival candidates, a power struggle ensued within the EPRDF. A compromise saw Hailemariam Desalegn, viewed within the movement as a political “neutral”, elected Prime Minister as the various factions plotted their next move. Without a strongman directing from the centre, regional administrations and power-brokers saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.

This growing free-for-all also opened up new space for regional leaders and citizens to reassess their relationships with one another and with the TPLF-dominated government. Several critical flashpoints emerged in this regard during 2015 and 2016 in Ethiopia’s two most populous regions, Amhara and Oromia. In Amhara, the arrest of activists agitating for a reallocation of territory from Tigray to Amhara led to mass protests in mid-2016.

Six months earlier, in Oromia, a federal ‘master plan’ to expand the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia state had produced a similar result. Over time, and partly in response to the government’s heavy-handed and violent response, the protests spread and shifted from being about the integrity of the country’s internal state boundaries to wider opposition to perceived political and economic marginalization and human rights abuses by an authoritarian TPLF-controlled system. It was in this context that Hailemariam eventually resigned in February 2018.

Abiy’s rise can be explained to some extent by his work in Oromia realigning the OPDO with Oromo aspirations and acting to tackle Oromo grievances against a federal government perceived to be oppressive, anti-Oromo and chauvinistic.

Before becoming Prime Minister, Abiy himself was little known as a leader as opposed to an administrator. He followed a path well-trodden by many other Meles-era technocrats and gave little indication that his premiership would be transformative. Instead, he has taken significant risks. He has also shown himself to be a leader with mettle – facing off against some of the most embedded vested interests in the EPRDF state within months of taking office. He has not, however, demonstrated significant interest in building wider alliances to secure a more stable political trajectory for his government, preferring to rely on his own image and message as a mobiliser.

A major criticism leveled at Abiy by some of his opponents is that he is ‘all talk’. While there is some truth to this, the Ethiopian leader has generally proved decisive when necessary. He has taken critical decisions, which have profoundly disrupted the status quo. Within weeks of taking office, for example, Abiy dispatched the two most fearsome TPLF securocrats in the nation – the army chief of staff (Samora Yunis) and the national intelligence chief (Getachew Assefa), two of Meles’ most longstanding and effective enforcers.

Moreover, Abiy has shown himself magnanimous, releasing thousands of political prisoners and decriminalizing opposition parties and armed groups once labelled terrorists, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). His record with individuals, however – particularly those most strongly associated with the Meles era – is somewhat more ambiguous and in line with the more traditional EPRDF approach. Indeed, Abiy’s medemer posture has not been built only upon uplifting words, progressive acts and reformist pledges. It has also rested upon a more cynical and somewhat irresponsible positioning as the un-doer and opposite of everything EPRDF that had come before.

Cynical, because Abiy was himself a part of the EPRDF machinery throughout the 2000s and a senior figure in an intelligence agency. Irresponsible, because in some of his speeches he has deliberately blurred critiques of the Meles/Hailemariam regimes with attacks on the TPLF and, most significantly, slurs on Tigrayans themselves. This has served not only to stoke further tensions between Tigrayans and their Amharic and Afar neighbours but – ironically – to strengthen the TPLF’s legitimacy and support in Tigray at a time when the party’s popularity had been in terminal decline.

Abiy has demonstrated much less interest in building coalitions and networks with the multitude of power players inside and outside the EPRDF than he has in appealing over their heads directly to the people. In the latter regard, he has managed to cultivate genuine affection and support from wide and diverse populations. Shortly after taking office Abiy undertook a tour of the country, where his appeals for unity, reconciliation and change resonated widely and inspired many.

The love of the crowd alone is, however, an unstable foundation for genuine progressive change in a country as multi-faceted as Ethiopia. This is particularly so as Abiy’s honeymoon period comes to a close and citizens begin to judge him by his achievements as well as his rhetoric. Moreover, ever since a rally in Addis Ababa was targeted by Abiy’s opponents with grenades in June 2018, with one death and over 100 injuries, these affairs have been more and more tightly policed and uneasy. Increasingly, the Ethiopian leader appears in public behind bullet-proof glass.

Abiy appears to have increasingly retreated into a highly personalized approach to government. Some of his most significant policy decisions were made without reference to wider government stakeholders and were implemented through informal or ad hoc mechanisms. Following the assassination of the Amhara Regional State President Ambachew Mekonnen in June 2019 Abiy replaced him with one of his own closest security aides, Temesgen Tiruneh, while EPRDF officials have openly speculated that the Prime Minister will either transform the EPRDF into a unitary, pan-Ethiopian party. Certainly, the next phase of Abiy’s premiership will require more institutionalization of “Abiymania” if it is to produce sustainable results.

The same is true for Abiy’s leadership in foreign policy, the arena where he has undoubtedly achieved the most in the shortest amount of time. Securing peace with neighbouring Eritrea after an 18-year cold war was a major triumph for the Abiy government, and has profound implications for regional security, stability and cooperation. The normalization of Ethiopian-Eritrean relations has relied heavily on the maintenance of friendly personal relations between Abiy and Isaias, who have undertaken numerous trips to each other’s capitals and beyond. The changed relationship between the two states remains, however, largely bound up with this personal relationship, rather than in a more formal, bilateral arrangement.

Despite a declaration of intent signed in Asmara and Jeddah in 2018, numerous key issues including trade, tariffs, currency, security and citizenship remain outside any formal legal arrangement. More generally, a resurgent Eritrea carries both opportunities and risks for Ethiopia, particularly given the growing significance of Gulf powers in the Horn. There is no guarantee that this mutually beneficial arrangement will last, particularly without a more formal legal basis.

Unlike Isaias, though, Abiy enjoys the support and confidence of Western aid donors, who continue to finance a significant part of Ethiopia’s national budget, and its security complex. While to some extent he inherited these ties from his predecessors, they are also founded on a genuine optimism in Western capitals regarding the Ethiopian leader. For decades, Western donors to Ethiopia have awkwardly balanced a stated foreign policy commitment to promoting democratization and respect for human rights with unfailing support to authoritarian regimes in the name of security and stability. Abiy represents an opportunity for donors to support a reformer and a force for regional stability.

A critical appraisal of Abiy’s leadership must also take into account the immense challenges of governing a state as diverse and complex. Ethiopia today faces an acute political and humanitarian crisis, which have made Ethiopia the country with the largest number of internally-displaced persons on the planet.

The Ethiopian leader’s hopeful rhetoric and progressive policies provide much-needed hope and optimism for the following years. Abiy’s early successes as a regional trouble-shooter are impressive, and his preparedness to challenge and overturn some of the most vicious and problematic features of the EPRDF polity shows courage and decisiveness.

That being said, a review of his record cannot help but leave one with the impression that he is contending with forces the magnitude and shape of which he has yet to fully grasp. There are pressing issues, however, which will force the matter. The first is the ongoing ethnic violence and the wider political crisis.
The second is the forthcoming election, due to be held in 2020. This will be a major test of Abiy’s leadership.

Jonathan Fisher
University of Birmingham

Music. Noa. Seeds of peace.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Deeply rooted in the land and culture of his ancestors, Achinoam Nini, known in the world of art as Noa, is still sending out a message of peace that involves all of us.
The western world came to know of her when, in 1994, with her own special grace and simplicity, she performed her own very personal version of the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, on live worldwide television in St. Peter’s Square, for Pope John Paul II. Accompanying this Yemenite Jewess from Tel Aviv, was guitarist Gil Dor as she wove musical Arabesques in that immortal melody to which she had added a somewhat pacifist text. That same music occupied the final spot on her first international album produced together with her mentor Pat Metheny.

A star was born. However, that Ave Maria and that performance gave rise to an avalanche of criticism from the ultraorthodox. And that criticism is still active today and, despite her worldwide popularity, has resulted in her being practically prevented from performing in her own country where her concerts are few and far between. Nevertheless, that same Ave Maria concludes her first album, ‘Letters to Bach’: in confirmation that neither time nor extreme views have calmed her desire for intercultural dialogue, or her desire to communicate, through her art, universal values of peace and brotherhood.

In this performance we discover her extraordinary voice, the faultless guitar-playing of Gil Dor, and nothing other than the immortal genius of Bach which she reinvents in her own way, adding her own words, like twelve timeless flowers, sung at times in English and at times in Hebrew: a risky project from which the woman emerges with her usual class – a result due also to the mythical producer Quincy Jones – confirming, on the one hand, her eclecticism of expression and, on the other, showing that certain musical treasures continue to speak to us and inspire us even beyond the confines of time and cultures.

The mother of three young children, and deeply rooted in the land and culture of her ancestors, Achinoam Nini, known to the world of music as Noa, continues to send out messages that involve all of us and, despite coming from a perennially disturbed country, has reached her fifteenth album (in a career lasting almost thirty years). She has also received a number of awards testifying to her intercultural humanism such as the Franciscan Pilgrim of Peace and the Crystal Award of the World Economic Forum and has been for years the FAO Ambassador and is also involved with a number of humanitarian organisations.

Despite the criticism of many of her compatriots, Noa continues her struggle for dialogue, especially between Israelis and Palestinians: “If we refuse to recognise the rights of both parties and to accept our obligations – she wrote some time ago in her blog – if each of us sticks to their own version, holding that of the others in contempt, if we continue to prefer the sword to dialogue, if we sanctify the land and not the lives of our children, we will all soon be forced to seek a colony on the Moon, given that our earth will be soaked in so much blood and covered with so many stones that we will no longer have anywhere
we can live”.
Franz Coriasco

Nigerian gangs.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

A large part of the drugs coming from Latin America and Asia is controlled and managed by gangs of Nigerians (such as the Area boys known as Agberos, other gangs of young boys called Bakassi and the fearsome violent confraternity of the Black Axe) dominated by the powerful Nigerian mafia which, with its centres in Europe and the rest of the world, exports drugs together with the trafficking of women.

The establishment of such groups worldwide has been facilitated by the Nigerian diaspora, present in many parts of the world as well as by Nigeria’s membership of the Commonwealth. This latter fact, in particular, has made possible close commercial relations with the Indian sub-continent, a producer of opium and heroin, and with the world of the Anglo-Saxon consumer. Such aspects, together with the qualitative leap by the Nigerian mafia in recent years, both economically and technologically, have made it a real nerve centre, capable of governing and managing a large part of the African drugs trade.

The important increase of the area, as a strategic hub for narcotics, had its beginnings in the eighties when the country became one of the main distribution points for the trafficking of cocaine coming from South America and of heroine coming into the country from Central and South-East Asia that were destined to end up in the European markets. It reached its peak in the nineties when, in 1992, the discoveries of cocaine at Lagos airport were so great that they led the Nigerian authorities to suspend direct flights to Rio de Janeiro. The trafficking was being managed by a great trans-national network with its main fulcra in Nigeria. The organisation was moving large amounts of drugs which, after leaving Colombia, were transferred to Brazil and later reached Nigeria from where they were forwarded to the main European centres. The organisation was led by Nigerian citizens and the lower levels were occupied especially by Ghanaians.

Since then, the Nigerian traffickers have been considered the main vectors of drugs, a real industry at the service of heroin and cocaine trafficking. They are present in all the key points of production and trafficking and, through their compatriots living abroad, they have formed criminal gangs comparable to those of Colombia, Turkey or China. These organisations, like others, base their strength on the tribal system and the ethnical solidarity that exists between clans and families.
The transfer of narcotics to the western markets takes place mainly through a large number of couriers who hide the drugs in their luggage or, more often, swallow them, after wrapping them in condoms or some other plastic material.
This method is so widespread in Nigerian gangs that, between 2006 and 2008, the years in which the phenomenon began to assume considerable proportions, of 1,400 couriers discovered, 57% of them were Nigerian. It is not unusual to have more than one courier on the same flight: during the previously mentioned period, more than thirty couriers were discovered on a flight to Amsterdam.

As early as 1995, the US authorities estimated that 50% of the heroin circulating in their country was brought there by Nigerians. Organised Nigerian crime, as has been emphasised several times by UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), has for some time been active beyond Nigerian borders and is now widespread in various areas of the world, led by Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Brazil and Japan.
The Nigerian mafia for the transit of drugs, both in Nigeria and its bordering countries, is compelled to ally itself with the fierce Islamic groups of Boko Haram at the height of its power in the region. In the nineties, a group was formed with a centre for studies of religious questions for the purpose of introducing Sharia Law into Nigeria.

However, in 2002, led by Mohammed Yusuf, it changed its form and its mission and its guerrillas, camped in the jungle in the north east of Nigeria, began to launch attacks on institutions and those peasant villages which resisted their extortionate demands. The turning point came in 2009 following a clear and heavy defeat in an offensive against the police which resulted in the death of about 700 insurgents and the capture and execution of Mohammed Yusuf. This situation demanded a change in leadership, assumed by Abubakar Shekau, and in strategy which led the group to carry out real terrorist attacks. According to reliable analysts, Boko Haram is not so much an expression of radical religion as of internal divisions within Nigeria where the south is rich in petroleum and the north is extremely poor. (F.R.)

Namibia. Nothing Surprising.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

Ever since it won the first democratic elections, held in November 1989 and supervised by the UN, by a comfortable 57%, the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO, now called the ‘SWAPO Party of Namibia’) has continued to enjoy an absolute majority
over its opponents.

A majority that grew even further over the years from over 70% in the nineties to 80% in 2014, keeping in power the President who is the executive head in the semi-presidential system outlined in the Constitutions. The outcome of the next elections, planned for this month of November, is taken for granted.

Namibia’s President Hage Geingob.

After the three mandates completed by Sam Nujoma, ‘Father of the Nation’ and historical leader of SWAPO, from 1990 to 2005, and the two mandates of his successor, of the same age and his companion in the struggle (also an Ovambo), Hifikepunye Pohamba, the November elections ought easily result in the comfortable re-election of Hage Geingob, born in 1941 and a Damara, who was elected Head of State in 2015 after having served for twelve years as Prime Minister under his predecessors Nujoma and Pohamba, from 1990 to 2012. As with the others, the ascent to power of Geingob developed within the majority party, shielded from any pressure from the electorate, depriving the opposition, within and without SWAPO, of any possibility whatever of affecting or interfering with it.

During the many years of SWAPO domination, the opposition progressively lost any ability to re-open electoral competition. Initially, the governing party, while enjoying a clear competitive advantage due to the unconditional support of the Ovambo who alone make up half of the electorate, had to contend with competition from the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), the moderate cartel of parties representing the other ethnic groups (Herero, Nama, Basters, as well as the whites, represented by the Republican Party of Dirk and Flenk Mudge) created between 1977 and 1983 by the ‘Turnhalle Conference’, at the desire of the South African government, to counteract the UN decision
to recognise SWAPO as ‘the only legitimate representative of the Namibian people’.
After the assassination of its first leader, Clemence Kapuuo, and its defeat in the 1990 elections, its exclusion from power exposed the DTA to defections and splits, compensated for only in part by the entry of those leaving SWAPO, which led to a reduction from 23% in 1990 to 5% in 2015 even to it being undermined in its role of official opposition by the many other groups into which the national party system fragmented.

Popular Democratic Movement leader, McHenry Venaani.

The desire to bring about a more serious and effective challenge to SWAPO domination stimulated attempts at renewal, such as the selection in 2013 of young McHenry Venaani (born in 1977) to take the place of Katuutire Kaura and even a change of name for the party – renamed the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) in 2017.
Still, the main opposition power seems very far from worrying SWAPO. It is not by chance that the few concerns to be seen within government circles regard not so much the Venaani party as the possible emergence of a new populist movement, the Landless People’s Movement, founded with the clear objective of reopening the question of land distribution.
As in South Africa, the lack of alternative politics at government level is compensated for, at least in part, by the demonstrated strength of the guaranteeing institutions – which are, according to liberal theory, the independent press, the rule of law and private enterprise. Having come to power after a long guerilla campaign supported by the Soviets and Cubans, and due also to political support from within the UN building in New York and to western diplomacy, the ruling class of SWAPO never sought to seriously limit the freedom of the press, the judiciary or private business.

The rather creative and articulate system of the Namibian media, considering the scale of its market with three TV networks, a score of national radio stations, five dailies and several weeklies, is considered the freest in the continent according to the ‘Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index. At the same time, the government, while preventing the privatisation of all the para-state institutions inherited from the South African regime, has never shown itself as wanting to limit property rights or economic freedom. Furthermore, the governing class within SWAPO has hitherto been free from the serious scandals that obscured the credibility of the African National Congress in South Africa and has never been in conflict with the judiciary. (R.R.)

Economy. Too much inequality.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

The structure of the economy of Namibia reflects the contradictions that are typical of all southern Africa.

On the one hand, the country may boast of one of the highest per capita incomes in the continent (almost 12,000 dollars which, in terms of 2017 real purchasing power, amounts to five times that of the poorest African countries), due especially to its administrative, juridical and financial structures and a transport system that is decidedly superior to its counterparts in the rest of the continent. On the other hand, it presents very high imbalance in the distribution of income, making it one of the countries with the highest levels of inequality in the world, with values on the Gini index from 60 to 75.

Husab Uranium Mine.

Like that of South Africa, to which it is closely linked, (the Namibian dollar is linked to the Rand), the economy of Namibia seems to be much more diversified than that of most sub-Saharan countries.
The mining of minerals (especially diamonds) provides 10% of GDP and a quarter of state income, while a growing quota of exports is guaranteed for meat and fish products. The tourism sector is also important.
Financial services and the manufacturing sector, though limited by the small internal market and South African competition, also play an important part.

However, the most characteristic aspect seems to be the contrast between a developed market economy, concentrated in the cities and well integrated in the economy of neighbouring South Africa and the international circuits, and an informal economy to which a large proportion of the population belongs, especially that of the countryside.
Almost half of all Namibians depend for their survival on subsistence agriculture, while commercial agriculture is dominated by around 4,000 commercial farms, many of which belong to whites or foreigners, who hold 50% of the fertile land.

Liberal Changes

It is therefore no surprise that, also in Namibia, the continuity between the ‘two-speed’ economy created under the segregationist regimes and that reformed after democratisation in the nineties, is still the most relevant political question. Just as in South Africa, here too, the coming of non-racist democracy brought to power a movement with a socialist-inspired economic programme. Like the ANC, once in power, SWAPO set aside its more radical reform plans and adopted ‘orthodox’ political policies, directed more towards growth than towards redistribution, aimed especially at attracting investments and at having the country take its place in the global economy.

The Foreign Investment Act of 1990, the law governing foreign investment, for example, besides providing protection against the dangers of nationalisation, allows foreign investors to repatriate capital and profits, the exchange of the currencies and access to guaranteed procedures for dispute resolution. This unexpected liberal turn on the part of a movement that had emerged from a long armed struggle with Soviet and Cuban support, left intact the divide that separates those who participate in the modern economy and those of the internal peripheries involved in the informal economy.
Even though the absence of large metropolitan areas has spared Namibia any growth in the sort of social protest or criminality that South Africa has to face, with the slow-down of economic growth which, between 2010 and 2015, remained around 5% or 6% p.a., there is increasing pressure on the government to respond to growing unemployment, now at almost 30% and which, also here, assumes alarming proportions among the young. Life expectancy is around 64.9 and adult literacy is about 88.3%.

Indigenous Communities and Land
In 2018, moved by initiatives adopted in South Africa, the debate on the redistribution of white-owned agricultural land has gained quota. Also in Namibia, the promise to restore lands taken by German colonialists from indigenous communities – especially the Herero and the Nama – to create the large farms on which Namibian commercial agriculture is still based, has always occupied a central position in the rhetoric of democratic governments.

The principles of voluntary sale and compensation at current market value, however, have rendered the project largely inoperative and, up to now, it has not really affected the distribution of agrarian property.
Namibia does not have to manage growing pressure on space in urban areas which seem to be the real scene of conflict in South Africa, and the total power of SWAPO shelters the Namibian government from pressure from the left that the South African President Ramaphosa has to contend with. For this reason, too, voices have been moderate for the present: President Geingob, officially reopening the question during a national conference held last October, stressed that whites, too, “have Namibian blood” in their veins. But the motive seems obvious: if South Africa were to take substantial steps in this direction, its old ‘fifth province’ would not want to be left behind.
Rocco Ronza

Research and Rating, a tool of Advocacy.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

Advocacy is a strategy used around the world by NGOs, activists, and even policy makers themselves, to influence policies. Advocacy is about creating reform of policies, and their effective implementation and enforcement. A policy is a plan, course of action, set of regulations adopted by government, business or an institution, in order to influence or determine decisions and procedures.

Advocacy is a way to address the problems through programming strategies. Beyond any doubt, the main problem to address today is how to make corporations accountable for their actions regarding human rights, climate change, economic sustainability, social cohesion and national interests of each country where they work. To this aim, many advocacies can be implemented: Research and rating, Collecting and producing documentation, Lobbying, Public awareness, Campaigning, Alliance Building. Research and investigation is often the Cinderella in many NGOs plans of action, which is the essential support of all other actions. Self-consciousness is also, what more corporations are lacking.

To fill this last gap was borne Standard Ethics. Standard Ethics is an independent sustainability-rating agency. It has been making a name for itself in the world of Sustainable Finance and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) studies since 2004. It aims to promote sustainability and governance standard principles emanating from the European Union, the OECD and the United Nations.

It believes in the notion of Sustainability as a planetary theme, linked to human knowledge, a shared and a global concept. Sustainability has to do with that climate, social and economic phenomena that go beyond the borders of nations, the aims of a company, the expectations of individuals. It states that a bank, an investment fund, a company or a conglomerate – however important they may be – are in position to decide what should be considered sustainable for the planet
and for the future.

According to the three laws of Sustainability devised by Standard Ethics earlier this year, being sustainable means that corporations should voluntarily align their activities with well-defined strategies and objectives that are provided by the above-mentioned international democratic institutions – institutions that are open to accountable decision-making processes, institutions that render the participation of experts unavoidable. These strategies are processes in which science and sharing prevail over individual positions. Only by measuring said conformity with comparable, transparent and third-party methodologies is it possible to ascertain the degree of Sustainability of an economic entity and the efforts it is making for tomorrow’s generations.

The Standard Ethics Rating (SER), which is assigned upon a client’s request through a direct and regulated bilateral relationship, combines ‘solicited’, ‘standard’, and ‘independent’ characteristics.
Its proprietary algorithm is aligned to the guidelines and recommendations on governance and sustainability issued by the European Union, the OECD and the United Nations. Its formula is mathematical based on five major variables, some of which are already familiar to long-term investors.
Standard Ethics Rating is not a forecasting rating nor is it a probabilistic model. Nevertheless, as the economist Irving Fisher said: “The future casts its shadow on the present”, and the analyses on policies and governance highlight levels of implicit vulnerability vis-à-vis the future, which can be consequently addressed together with the corporations requesting it.

SER, advocating of best practice Sustainability standards, uses Italy as a test market and has already been key in assisting some of this country’s most important corporations to comply with the international indications provided. Environmentally aware companies such as A2A S.p.A (one of Europe’s largest multi-utility businesses) or Fineco Bank (the first online bank in Europe) have used Standard Ethics’ services and have incorporated the Standard Ethics Rating in their communication on Sustainability, using it as a benchmark for any necessary future improvements. The agency’s intention is to expand its offer to other markets, and continue to support the most enlightened entrepreneurs in the enhancement of their vision, their ideas, and their intuitions.

John Paul Pezzi, mccj
VIVAT International NGO
with consultative special status at UN

Photo Gallery – Jubilee 2025. Pilgrims of Hope

Advocacy

Baobab

Youth & Mission