Every week, Rural Reporters collate reports on development in rural Africa and its environs. The reports include some of our top picks from recent must-read research, interviews, reports, blogs and in-depth articles which have been carefully selected to help you keep up with global issues. Here are some of the updates you may have missed from the previous week:
UN agency calls for investment in rural Africa to curb migration
The UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on Monday called on African and EU governments to invest more in Africa’s rural areas to stem the flow of economic migrants.
President of IFAD, Kanayo F. Nwanze, said: “People are leaving the rural areas of Africa because they can’t find jobs or feed their families, and the ripple effects are felt here in Europe.”
He called for investment in rural areas in Africa to help African countries improve their agricultural production.
“The irony is that Africa spends 35 billion U.S. dollars a year on food imports. It is time to stop creating jobs in other countries and redirect that investment to their own agricultural transformation,” Nwanze said
Op-Ed: Rural South Africa is on a Precipice
On 22 March 2016 Sikhosiphi “Bazooka” Rhadebe, chair of the Amadiba Crisis Committee on the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape, was murdered. His murder marks the explosion of a crisis that has been brewing for over two decades around land and chiefs in rural black South Africa.
Sadc subsidies fail to ease rural poverty and soil deterioration, study finds
TEN Southern African Development Community (Sadc) countries have paid out more than $1bn in agricultural subsidies in the last 16 years but these have failed to ease rural poverty, and the overuse of hybrid maize seed and fertiliser has resulted in a deterioration of soil quality in the region, a study released on Monday has found.
The African Centre for Biodiversity said a new research report on Farm Input Subsidy Programmes (Fisps) found that 10 African governments have spent close on 30% of their agricultural budgets on large-scale Fisps since 2000.
The programmes, which provide 30%–100% subsidies on the price of fertiliser and seed (normally hybrid maize), aim to reduce food insecurity and reduce rural poverty.
Nigeria: 10 rural villages receive voice and high-speed data services
Gilat Satcom has revealed that it is providing voice and high-speed data to ten villages in the states of Adamawa, Borno, Kano, Katsina, Oyo and Yobe in the North East of Nigeria.
According to the company, its Village Island system has been deployed in each village and provides a full communications system that includes VSATs, Wi-Fi routers, solar-power, two communal tablets per village as well as service management.
The company further revealed that it is also providing the satellite connectivity to its VSATs in each village. The integrated Wi-Fi networks then provide local connectivity for data and VoIP to the communal tablets as well as to devices – phones, PCs, tablets and laptops – already owned by villagers and local businesses. The entire system is housed in a purpose-built communications block (the Community Hub) in each village.
We must act fast on the global goals, or risk leaving the poorest behind
In New York this week, in a moment sadly lacking the fanfare of their signing, comes the first test of the sustainable development goals (SDGs): the inaugural meeting of their monitoring process.
The High Level Political Forum takes place under the banner “ensuring that no one is left behind”. It’s highly encouraging that UN member states have agreed that focusing on the poorest is the most immediate priority, and countries will report on how they are responding to this new agenda.
New research quantifies how urgent this is. Using current progress on key indicators, it shows just how much harder it will be to reach some of the most relevant goals and targets if action is delayed. We conclude that if no action is taken in the first 1,000 days of the SDGs – in other words, in the first three years up to September 2018 – then governments risk leaving people behind and failing to achieve certain goals altogether.