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:
Serious flooding in Mozambique in wake of Cyclone Kenneth
Serious flooding began on Sunday in parts of northern Mozambique that were hit by Cyclone Kenneth three days ago, with waters waist-high in places, after the government urged many people to immediately seek higher ground. Hundreds of thousands of people were at risk.
Nearly 700,000 people could be at risk in the largely rural region, many already exposed and hungry. Some rivers in the region have burst their banks in the past, notably in 2000.
There was no immediate word on Sunday of other districts that had been hit much harder by the cyclone.
Aerial photos taken on Saturday showed several coastal communities flattened by the storm in Mozambique’s northernmost Cabo Delgado province. “Not a single house is standing anymore,” Saviano Abreu, a spokesman with the U.N. humanitarian agency, told reporters after the aerial assessment.
CSO Wants ICT Capacity of Rural Dwellers Built
The African Civil Society on Information Society (ACSIS) has called for collaboration among civil societies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to build the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) capacity of rural dwellers across Nigerian communities.
Miss Efe Ekpruke, National Coordinator ACSIS, Nigeria chapter, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos at the sideline of the seventh edition of the Digital Right Inclusion Forum, held in Lagos.
Ekpruke said that the capacity building would especially focus on women and youths due to their inclination towards networking.
“Our starting point is to go into the rural areas to build capacity, because most times capacity building is always from the urban and this does not get to the rural communities,” she said.
Call for Specialised Police Units in Rural Areas after Farm Killings
Farm attacks in Free State and North West have again put the focus on rural security with calls for specialised police units.
Provincial leader Jan van Niekerk, apart from calling for an extended manhunt for those who killed Boeta Powell (37), wants provincial authorities to urgently look at ways and means of upping rural safety.
“We, as a political party, will continue to pressure the provincial government,” he said adding farmers and those working for them “must do everything possible to protect themselves from attack”.
The past weekend saw another fatal farm attack this one in the JB Marks district municipality in North West. This prompted a call from the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the province to bring back SAPS (SA Police Service) rural safety units.
How 5G Will Affect Human Rights in Africa
Digital rights advocates Wednesday said the introduction of 5th generation mobile network in Africa will change the landscape around user privacy and internet accessibility.
Legal officer Media Rights Agenda Morisola Alaba said 5G will have its benefits when introduced to the African space but countries might not be ready for its implementation.
“Currently with 4G, we could see a very wide digital divide,” Alaba said. “More than the quarter of the world population are not connected to the internet. Moving on to 5G may create more digital division digital activist are trying to curb,” she added
Alaba opined that introduction of 5G might not aid digital inclusion of people in some part of Africa, sighting rural areas at a major disadvantage.
How ‘Savings Circles’ Empower Women in Rural Africa
Today, the most vulnerable in Africa are still women and children. But while in some ways it appears little has changed from the time of my mother’s savings group, we have also made great strides.
The challenges that women face today are multi-faceted and not just economic. There is a dire need for investment in women’s empowerment and gender equality around the world. We also need to combat the violence against women that is all too common in places like Democratic Republic of Congo or in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
How Drones Can Help Rural Africa Take Flight
The Lake Victoria region of Africa is the world’s most densely populated rural area in the world. Over 35 million people live in or around the Lake Region, which is notoriously hard-to-reach.
The Lake Victoria Challenge asks what could happen if Africa was no longer bound by surface infrastructure and could unlock lower skies as a resource. It asks how the nation can augment mobility from rail, road and sea; to connect excluded communities, enhance the resilience of supply chains, and create new markets and services that connect urban and rural opportunities.
John Mongella, the Regional Commissioner of the Mwanza Region expands on this: “The rural island communities in and around Mwanza are often only accessible by boat, which can be slow and expensive. A drone network will support this existing infrastructure, improving access to healthcare and opportunity. The transformative effects of drones on the African continent can be significant and the Lake Victoria Challenge has been created to advance this work.”
Permaculture Brings Prosperity to Ethiopia’s Rural Areas
Over 10 million people in the Horn of Africa region are at risk of food insecurity. But on a small scale, some people are working to reverse the trend. That’s what’s happening in a village in the Tigray region, about 800 kilometres from Ethiopia’s capital. Since the end of the 1990s, food production there has been multiplied by ten and farmer incomes by twenty. Today, this village serves as an example. France24 team reports.