Rural Women, South Africa Land Reform and other Reports
Every week, RuralReporters.com collate reports on development issues in rural Africa and its environs.
This report includes some of our top picks from recent must-read research, interviews, blogs, and in-depth articles, carefully selected to help you keep up with global issues.
Here are some of the updates you may have missed from the previous week:
Chinese Medical Experts Extend Health Care to Rural Uganda
This medical camp is one of the many that the Chinese medical experts carry out in rural Uganda when they take a break off hospital work in the capital Kampala.
Since 1983, China has sent over 18 medical teams to Uganda consisting of a total of 200 experts.
The teams, with the support from Chinese companies, have traversed different parts of the country, providing the much-needed health care.
“Over the past 35 years, the Chinese medical team has treated thousands of Ugandan patients. Besides working in the hospital, we give training to interns and staff,” said Cong Linhai, head of the medical team.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201806140383.html
Bringing rural women to the frontline
Why the focus on women living in rural areas lately?
If there’s anyone left behind, it is women and girls in rural areas. We want to take those at the back of the line to the front of the line. We are putting their critical issues high on the agenda, looking at different solutions, exchanging and sharing best practices.
How does poverty in rural areas affect child marriages?
Because poverty is higher in the rural areas, girls in these areas face a higher risk of forced and early marriage. It is important for us to break with child marriage in the rural areas, where traditional authority and cultural practices are still strong.
South Africa hosts business breakfast dialogue on rural and township economies in eThekwini
South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry said that Rob Davies, the Minister of Trade and Industry hosted a business meeting with the Member of the Executive Council for Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal, Sihle Zikalala and eThekwini Mayor, Councillor Zandile Gumede
The meeting focussed on the Rural and Township Industrial Economy.
The Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform will be embarking on public hearings across the country from Monday, 18 June 2018.
The Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill is a private member’s bill introduced by an African National Congress Member of Parliament Mr Pumzile Justice Mnguni. It was referred to the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform for consideration.
Tea and Tariffs in Rural Yunnan
“Your president is not good,” said a man in a cockeyed Mao cap. “Why does he want to hurt us common folk?” He sat at the edge of the road just outside Wengding, China’s last remaining so-called primitive tribal village. The man had never finished elementary school, but he quoted me the exact figure of America’s trade deficit with China. Even here in rural Yunnan Province, one of the most remote parts of China, tariffs are on the mind
The United States announced tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum earlier this year as well as on over 1,300 other Chinese products, and Trump threatened an additional $100 billion in tariffs after Chinese retaliated with their own proposed duties. China’s population is still roughly 50 percent rural; keeping villagers’ support is key, as revolutions historically begin in the countryside. And as trade war tensions mount, the people I spoke to in rural Yunnan seemed sympathetic to the narrative out of Beijing: The United States is an aggressor brandishing both tanks and tariffs, while China and its peaceful rise occupy the moral high ground.
There’s a New Way of Measuring Poverty in South Africa – Here’s How It Works
In 2014, Statistics South Africa adopted the multidimensional poverty index into understanding the nature of the country’s poverty. The move produced the South African multidimensional poverty index (SAMPI).
Before this, the picture of the country’s poverty was mainly informed by the money-metric approach, which examines the proportion of the population with income below the minimum level required for survival (poverty line).
The SAMPI is still a relatively new and thus developing method. With that in mind, our recently published study zoomed into Statistics South Africa’s new multidimensional approach, pointed out and addressed numerous shortcomings in the method. We were then able to develop a more granular version of SAMPI. Our version focused on smaller geographical units in South Africa, namely district municipalities, from 2001 to 2011. The aim was to identify, more clearly, the location and characteristics of the poorest individuals.
In rural West Africa, gardening offers women a way out of poverty
In Africa, it is often said that poverty has a woman’s face. Rural women face discrimination just like those in other socioeconomic sectors, particularly where access to land is concerned. But in Burkina Faso, the nonprofit association La Saisonnière (French for “the seasonal one”) has developed a technique to help women climb out of poverty while growing organic food.
“When I started coming to La Saisonnière in 2006, I had no bicycle, no idea how to take care of a garden, and no income generating activity,” says La Saisonnière’s team leader and producer Aminata Sinaré. “Today, I know how to garden and I own a motorcycle.”
Like her, many women have seen their living conditions improve thanks to the nonprofit. Initially created as an informal group in 2003, La Saisonnière became an association in 2006, after it planted a garden to grow crops.
