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:
AfDB starts feasibility studies to improve rural electrification in Nigeria and Ethiopia
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has kicked off a feasibility study, aiming to explore the potential of electric cooperative business models in Nigeria and Ethiopia
The aim is to improve rural electrification, while creating sustainable businesses. (Image source: Andrew Martin/Pixabay)
The effort is part of AfDB’s goal of achieving universal electricity access across Africa by 2025. Currently, power shortages diminish the region’s GDP growth by two to four per cent per year, holding back job creation and poverty reduction efforts.
The study, funded by the South-South Cooperation Trust Fund, will be conducted by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) International over three months.
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has announced 30 research fellowships for 2019 under the framework of the CARE project, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
The fellowship program seeks to contribute to policy development on youth engagement in agribusiness and rural economic activities in Africa.
Applicants, not more than 40 years old [of African origin] from the following countries: Benin, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Senegal, and Zambia.
Banking on wheels for rural Ugandan workers
Over 4,000 employees of the 600MW Karuma Hydro Power have not had access to banking services. The contractor of the project, Sinohydro Corporation Ltd has had to pay local area workers their wages by cash. This is because Karuma town where the project is located does not have banking facilities.
Bank of Africa has now launched ‘bank on wheels’ to meet the needs of employees in Karuma Town. Billy Bisanga, public relations officer Bank of Africa said the bank purchased and deployed a truck to traverse several towns to provide banking services.
Clinics worth R36m to open in rural Eastern Cape
The Eastern Cape Department of Health will on Friday open two clinics built at a combined cost of R36 million for two rural areas of the province. Zabasa Clinic, built at a cost of R17.5 million, will be opened at Engcobo.
Department spokesman, Lwandile Sicwetsha said the services available at the clinic include national health insurance programmes of Central Chronic Medicine Dispensing Distribution which entails patients providing designated, accredited pickup point for chronic patients, Ward Based Outreach Teams and Integrated School Health Services. The second clinic is Mahlubini Clinic in Cofimvaba which has been built at the cost of R18.5 million rands.
South Africa: Expropriation Bill – It’s Rural Black People Who Are Most At Risk
The problem with creating uniform legislation in South Africa is that people don’t own land or rights in land in a uniform way. Private property rights are registered in the deeds office and ownership is easy to prove.
But the land rights of the majority of South Africans living in the rural areas of the former homelands or in townships are not registered in the deeds office. Not only is it often too expensive, but the deeds registry is not designed to cater for customary or indigenous forms of ownership with overlapping rights, for example, or rights attached to membership of the community.
Without the title deed or the registration in the deed’s office, it is far more difficult for land rights holders not only to prove their rights, but to show the value of those rights. Creating a system of expropriation that is more difficult for rural people to navigate may well entrench further inequality between the holders of private property rights and other land rights holders.