Rural Health, Land Reforms, 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:

INVESTIGATION: How rural women are feeding the nation despite unfriendly land tenure, scarcity of labour — and the herdsmen problem

There are quite a number of limitations against their efforts — the land tenure practice in the community does not allow women to own land.

It is a ‘taboo’ to cultivate a plot of land for more than two years in Umukabia Ogodo, Imo state, Nigeria. Such farm lands are left to fallow for four to five years before they can be allocated again by their husbands.

Men in the community allocate land for farming. They measure land in ‘Bamboo’. Five bamboos, equal an hectare.

“When lands are allowed to fallow for five years, there are a lot of stumps to clear which can only be done using tractor and we don’t have tractor. This land tenure practice must be reviewed because it does not favour women,” Comfort says, pointing to an example of a fallowed land with stumps.

How EU milk is sinking Africa’s farmers

European milk is pouring into Africa, with disastrous effects for local herders and farmers.

Multibillion-euro dairy multinationals are exploiting rock-bottom European milk prices to expand aggressively into West Africa. Over five years, they have nearly tripled their exports to the region, shipping milk powder produced by heavily subsidized European farmers to be transformed into liquid milk for the region’s booming middle class.

Rural development trashes DA’s land reform claims

The Democratic Alliance’s claim that the Western Cape, which it governs, has outperformed all other provinces in implementing land reform is untrue, and the national government should be credited with the success of land redistribution and restitution, the department of rural development and land reform said this week.

“It is the only department which has a land redistribution programme in the country, that is agricultural land. The DA does not perform this function,” the department’s spokesperson, Linda Page, said this week. “It is a baseless claim. And so, if the Western Cape has outperformed other provinces it is because the programmes under the department have performed well in the Western Cape.”

Lawmakers want Facebook’s help providing rural broadband

Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Capitol Hill last week to talk about data privacy. But several lawmakers from rural parts of the country used the opportunity to ask the Facebook CEO to help bring high-speed internet access to their rural constituents.

Facebook has rolled out several initiatives to bring low-cost and free broadband to hard to reach areas of the world, such as India and Africa. Now US lawmakers say they’d like to talk to Zuckerberg about focusing those efforts closer to home.

“Next time you visit [West Virgnia], if you would please bring some fiber, because we don’t have connectivity in our rural areas like we really need, and Facebook could really help us with that,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, said during Tuesday’s Senate committee hearing.

Ecologist asks Kenya to feed on insects to end deaths from malnutrition           

A Kenyan ecologist wants the government to look at creative ways of feeding from nature to reduce deaths of children from malnutrition.

Dino Martins says Kenya needs to utilise proteins in caterpillars, cow peas, and mushrooms in the wake of food shortages in the country. He said insects are an additional protein that should be looked into as sources of food.

“In rural Kenya, the issue is lack of proteins. Kids in schools are hungry, they cant learn because they don’t have enough proteins in their diet.”

“If you don’t have enough, learning becomes difficult,” Martins said adding that Kenya should talk about how to own what they have and feed from it.

Upper East rural women Commend INTYON

Some rural women in the Upper East Region have commended the Integrated Youth Needs and Welfare (INTYON), a NonGovernmental Organisation (NGO), for implementing UNICEF’s Communication for Development Programme on Maternal and Infant Health in some selected communities. They said the project had helped to increase the attendance of pregnant women to delivering at health facilities, promoted exclusive breastfeeding among lactating mothers, high enrolment and retention of children in schools, reduced teenage pregnancies and forced marriages as well as inculcated the habit of hand washing among them.

‘Increase health care access in rural areas’

The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) has implored the government to increase access to health care services to the rural population which largely remains side-lined.

Doctors, who resumed work last week after a month-long strike citing poor working conditions and unavailability of medications, said Zimbabwe needs to go a step further in achieving the World Health Organisation’s Universal Health Coverage objective.

In a statement, doctors said they remain resolute in their fight for the realisation of the right to the highest attainable standard of health for all Zimbabweans.

R4 Rural Resilience Initiative Annual Report: January – December 2017

In 2017, the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) expanded from four to six countries. Overall, 57, 625 farmers (50 percent women) participated directly in R4 while around 300,000 people benefitted from it in five countries, namely, Ethiopia, Senegal, Malawi, Kenya and Zambia with its comprehensive risk management approach. This year saw the scaling-up of the initiative in Southern Africa, the R4 pilot in Kenya as well as the start of the inception phase in Zimbabwe. For the first time, some farmers transitioned from accessing premiums fully through labour to partial cash payments in both Malawi and Zambia, an important progress towards achieving program sustainability.

NYSC Medical Outreach To Treat 8,000 Kano Rural Dwellers

The Coordinator, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Kano state, Alhaji Ladan Baba, says about 8,000 people will benefit from the scheme’s medical outreach across the state.

The Coordinator made this known on Tuesday while launching the medical outreach at Rugar Duka community in Kura Local Government Area of the state. According to him, 2,000 people are expected to benefit in each of the four selected communities by the scheme.

“In Kano, we are planning to embark on such medical outreach as part of the NYSC’s initiative across selected communities quarterly,” he said

Baba explained that the week-long intervention programme include; diagnosis, treatment and referral cases, when the need arose and proper preventive measures that would enhance health status of the people.

Busayo Sotunde is a prolific writer with special focus on Business, Entrepreneurship, Reproductive Health and other development issues in Africa. Her articles have been published by different outlets including Investing Port and Ventures-Africa.com. She has a penchant for reading and sustainable development. Follow Busayo on Twitter @BusayomiSotunde
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