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:
One district, one factory will end rural-urban migration
The Ministry of Trade and Industry has said one of the key objectives of government’s One district One Factory policy is to address rural-urban migration. The outline of the project is to have factories set up in all the two hundred and sixteen districts across the country.
Speaking on the Citi breakfast Show, a Deputy Trade and Industry Minister, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, noted that it will be unrealistic for the government to give the public a specific date where all the two hundred and sixteen districts across the country will be implemented.
The Ministry believes an effective implementation of the policy will open up opportunities within the nations rural and peri-urban areas.
Drought-hit Kenyan women trade their way out of poverty
Widow Ahatho Turuga lost 20 of her goats to drought early last year, but the shopkeeper is planning to reinvest in her herd once she has saved enough money.
“I think I will start with four goats and see how it goes,” she said, rearranging soap on the upper shelf of her shop in Loglogo, a few kilometres from Marsabit town.
She recalled how frequent droughts had left her on the edge of desperation, struggling to care for six of her own children and four others she adopted after their mother died. But Turuga is finding it easier to cope since taking part in a rural entrepreneurship programme run by The BOMA Project, a non-profit helping women in Kenya’s dry northern areas beat extreme poverty and adapt to climate change.
5,253 Anambra Rural Farmers Benefit From FADAMA Intervention
Mr Chucks Egbueh, the Project Coordinator of FADAMA in Anambra, says 5, 253 farmers benefitted from the various interventions of the FADAMA III project in 2017.
Egbueh, at a parley with newsmen in Awka on Thursday, said that 4, 000 of the beneficiaries were rice farmers, while the rest were into cassava production.
Ghana may import water from 2030 – Lands Minister
Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Hon. John Peter Amewu has indicated a likelihood of Ghana importing water from other countries if measures are not put in place to curb negative practices having effect on the country’s water bodies.
According to the Minister, Ghanaians are gradually digging their own graves with degradation and destruction of the countries lands, indicating that the country would have been in a much worse state if earlier generations engaged in such illegal practices.
Tanzania: Rural-Urban Migration Returns to the Limelight
Population growth and rural-urban migration are challenges which governments worldwide must address through proper planning and management of cities as global estimates show that 50 percent of the population will constitute urban dwellers by the year 2030.
In Tanzania, the number of people living in urban areas increased from just 2.2 million people in 1978 to 13.3 million people as per the population census of 2012, the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, Dr Moses Kusiluka, has explained.
“It is necessary therefore to have in place sustainable urban development plans; development of cities is closely associated with population growth,” Dr Kusiluka stated, in a speech read on his behalf by the Director of Urban and Rural Planning in the ministry, Prof John Lupala.
AfDB makes a compelling case for Africa’s industrialisation
President of the African Development Bank, AfDB, Akinwumi Adesina, has made a compelling case for accelerating Africa’s industrialization in order to create jobs, reduce poverty and promote inclusive economic growth.
Citing data from the Bank’s 2018 African Economic Outlook launched in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on Wednesday, Adesina said infrastructure projects were among the most profitable investments any society can make as they “significantly contribute to, propel, and sustain a country’s economic growth. Infrastructure, when well-managed, provides the financial resources to do everything else.”
The rural home concept; where does Rwanda fall?
The media in Kenya has lately been awash with debate on the issue of rural homes. I find the discussion not only interesting academically, but also practically empowering to a city like Kigali and a nation like Rwanda that aspires to harness urbanisation to its full potential in the near future.
Rwanda’s vision is clear; achieving 35 per cent urbanisation by 2020. Alongside the capital, Kigali city, six secondary cities have been launched and there are already efforts to make them more livable, green and vibrant economic hotspots.
What this means is that rural areas will increasingly diminish as they will continually transform to urban areas and all citizens become urbanites.