Food Security, Rural Clinics 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:
AI Medicine Comes to Africa’s Rural Clinics
In rural health clinics across Kenya, women have started showing up with a surprising request: They’ve come for their “cervical selfies.”
Their enthusiasm is a good omen for a public health campaign against cervical cancer now under way in six African countries. Using an optical accessory that snaps onto any Android smartphone and makes use of its camera, health workers are examining women and catching early signs of cancer, enabling them to get immediate treatment. And soon this diagnostic device will be better still. With the integration of artificial intelligence, this technology may serve as a model for smarter health care in Africa and beyond
Africa’s Indigenous Technology for Rural Women Economic Empowerment
Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu’s documentary looking at ways in which indigenous knowledge and technological advancement can provide opportunities for women living in rural Rwanda.
Indigenous knowledge is critical in generating local innovation and in fostering sustainable entrepreneurship. In many rural communities, more women than men use indigenous technology at home and commercially in getting small scale, localized commercial projects accomplished.
Kenya’s hunger crisis fuelled by history of rural neglect
Emathe Namwar is the official in the government of Turkana County responsible for water supplies. His sympathies are with the opposition and he is critical of the central government in far away Nairobi.
“There is no attempt at coordination. The national government does not involve us in the search for a solution. It could be that financial relief will be forthcoming, but if there is no coordination, then we will just expend a lot energy without achieving very much,” Namar said.
Solar power dominates rural Tanzania, says report
The Energy Access Situation Report, 2016 Tanzania Mainland, reveals that solar power is the dominant electricity source in the country’s rural areas.
The report, released earlier this week by the National Bureau of Statistics and the Rural Energy Agency shows that grid electricity is the second largest source of power in rural areas with 34.5% of households connected, while solar is leading by nearly 65%. Read the report here…
“The results show that solar power is the dominant electricity source in rural areas as 64.8% of the rural households were using electricity generated from solar power. Private entity and individual electricity generated from own sources (excluding solar) was the least source of electricity among rural households at 0.6%,” part of the report reads.
Adesina Addresses Need to End Rural Poverty At One World Conference in Berlin
The President of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has called for urgent action to end rural poverty in Africa at a conference on the future of the rural world in Berlin.
“We must pay particular attention to three factors: extreme rural poverty, high rates of unemployment among the youths and climate and environmental degradation – what I refer to as the ‘disaster triangle’,” Adesina told participants during a keynote speech delivered Thursday at the ‘One World, No Hunger: Future of the Rural World’ conference hosted by the German Development Ministry (BMZ).
Food Insecurity a Pressing Issue Amidst Urban Growth in Africa
According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), more people are relocating to African cities from rural areas than ever before. UN-Habitat reports that “the global share of African urban dwellers is projected to rise from 11.3 percent in 2010 to 20.2 percent by 2050.” A new study by Dr. Takemore Chagomaka entitled “Food and Nutrition Insecurity Mapping (FNIRM) in Urban and Periurban Areas in West African Cities” seeks to “understand and map the dynamics of household food and nutrition insecurity in urban, periurban and rural settings.” Chagomaka, lead author of the study, conducted the research in two growing sub-Saharan African cities.
The African continent has the potential to feed itself and even have surplus food to export to other parts of the world. But instead, the continent imports $35 billion worth of food and agricultural products every year, and if the current predictions hold, the import bill will rise to $110 billion annually by 2025. So the question is: if the African continent has vast agricultural potential as we have been led to believe, why are we facing an astronomical food import bill?
