tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/liberia-11169/articlesLiberia – The Conversation2024-03-15T13:28:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2259122024-03-15T13:28:50Z2024-03-15T13:28:50ZUndersea cables for Africa’s internet retrace history and leave digital gaps as they connect continents<p><em>Large parts of west and central Africa, as well as some countries in the south of the continent, were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/14/much-of-west-and-central-africa-without-internet-after-undersea-cable-failures">left without internet services</a> on 14 March because of failures on four of the fibre optic cables that run below the world’s oceans. Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Ghana, Burkina Faso and South Africa were among the worst affected. By midday on 15 March the problem had not been resolved. Microsoft <a href="https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/528961-massive-undersea-cable-outage-fix-delayed-says-microsoft.html">warned its customers</a> that there was a delay in repairing the cables. South Africa’s News24 <a href="https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/nine-undersea-cables-make-the-internet-work-in-sa-four-are-currently-damaged-20240315">reported</a> that, while the cause of the damage had not been confirmed, it was believed that “the cables snapped in shallow waters near the Ivory Coast, where fishing vessels are likely to operate”.</em></p>
<p><em>Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, is currently writing a book on fibre optic cables and digital connectivity. She spent time in late 2023 aboard the ship whose crew is responsible for maintaining most of Africa’s undersea network. She spoke to The Conversation Africa about the importance of these cables.</em></p>
<h2>1. What’s the geographical extent of Africa’s current undersea network?</h2>
<p>Fibre optic cables now literally encircle Africa, though some parts of the continent are far better connected than others. This is because both public and private organisations have made major investments in the past ten years. </p>
<p>Based on <a href="https://www.submarinecablemap.com/">an interactive map</a> of fibre optic cables, it’s clear that South Africa is in a relatively good position. When the breakages happened, the network was affected for a few hours before the internet traffic was rerouted; a technical process that depends both on there being alternative routes available and corporate agreements in place to enable the rerouting. It’s the same as driving using a tool like Google Maps. If there’s an accident on the road it finds another way to get you to your destination. </p>
<p>But, in several African countries – including Sierra Leone and Liberia – most of the cables don’t have spurs (the equivalent of off-ramps on the road), so only one fibre optic cable actually comes into the country. Internet traffic from these countries basically <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/undersea-cable-failures-cause-internet-disruptions-across-africa-march-14-2024">stops when the cable breaks</a>. </p>
<p>Naturally that has huge implications for every aspect of life, business and even politics. Whilst some communication can be rerouted via satellites, satellite traffic accounts for <a href="https://blog.telegeography.com/2023-mythbusting-part-3">only about 1% of digital transmissions globally</a>. Even with interventions such as satellite-internet distribution service <a href="https://www.starlink.com/">Starlink</a> it’s still much slower and much more expensive than the connection provided by undersea cables. </p>
<p>Basically all internet for regular people relies on fibre optic cables. Even landlocked countries rely on the network, because they have agreements with countries with landing stations – highly-secured buildings close to the ocean where the cable comes up from underground and is plugged into terrestrial systems. For example southern Africa’s internet comes largely through connections in Melkbosstrand, just outside Cape Town, and <a href="https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/stations/africa/south-africa/mtunzini-cls">Mtunzini</a> in northern KwaZulu-Natal, both in South Africa. Then it’s routed overland to various neighbours. </p>
<p>Each fibre optic cable is extremely expensive to build and to maintain. Depending on the technical specifications (cables can have more or fewer fibre threads and enable different speeds for digital traffic) there are complex legal agreements in place for who is responsible for which aspects of maintenance.</p>
<h2>2. What prompted you to write a book about the social history of fibre optic cables in Africa?</h2>
<p>I first visited Angola in 2011 to start work for <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487524333/from-water-to-wine/">my PhD project</a>. The internet was all but non-existent – sending an email took several minutes at the time. Then I went back in 2013, after the <a href="https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-africa/sacs">South Atlantic Cable System</a> went into operation. It made an incredible difference: suddenly Angola’s digital ecosystem was up and running and everybody was online. </p>
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<p>At the time I was working on social mobility and how people in Angola were improving their lives after <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">a long war</a>. Unsurprisingly, having digital access made all sorts of things possible that simply weren’t imaginable before. I picked up my interest again once I was professionally established, and am now writing it up as a book, <a href="https://stias.ac.za/2022/03/when-a-cable-is-not-just-a-cable-fellows-seminar-by-jess-auerbach/">Capricious Connections</a>. The title refers to the fact that the cables wouldn’t do anything if it wasn’t for the infrastructure that they plug into at various points. </p>
<p>Landing centres such as Sangano in Angola are fascinating both because of what they do technically (connecting and routing internet traffic all over the country) and because they often highlight the complexities of <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/ad582-digital-divide-who-in-africa-is-connected-and-who-is-not/">the digital divide</a>. </p>
<p>For example, Sangano is a remarkable high tech facility run by an incredibly competent and socially engaged company, Angola Cables. Yet the school a few hundred metres from the landing station still doesn’t have electricity. </p>
<p>When we think about the digital divide in Africa, that’s often <a href="https://www.bmz-digital.global/en/datacolonialism-double-interview/">still the reality</a>: you can bring internet everywhere but if there’s no infrastructure, skills or frameworks to make it accessible, it can remain something abstract even for those who live right beside it.</p>
<p>In terms of history, fibre optic cables follow all sorts of fascinating global precedents. The 2012 cable that connected one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other is laid almost exactly <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/blog/volume-and-direction-trans-atlantic-slave-trade">over the route of the transatlantic slave trade</a>, for example. Much of the basic cable map is layered over the routes of the <a href="https://notevenpast.org/to-rule-the-waves-britains-cable-empire-and-the-birth-of-global-communications/">copper telegraph network</a> that was essential for the British empire in the 1800s.</p>
<p>Most of Africa’s cables are maintained at sea by the remarkable crew of the ship Léon Thévenin. I <a href="https://mg.co.za/africa/2023-11-27-down-to-the-wire-the-ship-fixing-our-internet/">joined them</a> in late 2023 during a repair operation off the coast of Ghana. These are uniquely skilled artisans and technicians who retrieve and repair cables, sometimes from depths of multiple kilometres under the ocean. </p>
<p>When I spent time with the crew last year, they recounted once accidentally retrieving a section of Victorian-era cable when they were trying to “catch” a much more recent fibre optic line. (Cables are retrieved in many ways; one way is with a grapnel-like hook that is dragged along the ocean bed in roughly the right location until it snags the cable.)</p>
<p>There are some very interesting questions emerging now about what is commonly called <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo216184200.html?trk=public_post_comment-text">digital colonialism</a>. In an environment where data is often referred to with terms like “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishatalagala/2022/03/02/data-as-the-new-oil-is-not-enough-four-principles-for-avoiding-data-fires/?sh=23be1821c208">the new oil</a>”, we’re seeing an important change in digital infrastructure. </p>
<p>Previously cables were usually financed by a combination of public and private sector partnerships, but now big private companies such as Alphabet, Meta and Huawei are increasingly financing cable infrastructure. That has serious implications for control and monitoring of digital infrastructure. </p>
<p>Given we all depend so much on digital tools, poorer countries often have little choice but to accept the terms and conditions of wealthy corporate entities. That’s potentially incredibly dangerous for African digital sovereignty, and is something we should be seeing a lot more public conversation about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah receives funding from the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study where she is an Iso Lomso Fellow, the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the UCT Vice Chancellor’s Future Leaders Program. </span></em></p>Fibre optic cables now literally encircle Africa, though some parts of the continent are far better connected than others.Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2216562024-01-23T12:55:03Z2024-01-23T12:55:03ZLiberia transferred power peacefully again: 3 reasons the calm is holding, and one red flag<p>Joseph Boakai was <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20240122-liberia-s-new-president-joseph-boakai-sworn-in-with-pledge-to-rescue-africa-s-oldest-republic">sworn in</a> as Liberia’s 26th president on 22 January 2024. Boakai secured a six year term of office after defeating incumbent president George Weah in a keenly contested November 2023 poll with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/joseph-boakai-brink-liberian-presidency-vote-count-nears-completion-2023-11-17/">50.9%</a> of the votes cast. </p>
<p>The west African country of <a href="https://www.afdb.org/en/countries/west-africa/liberia">5 million people</a> reached a major milestone on 17 November 2023, when Weah, of the Congress for Democratic Change, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/joseph-boakai-brink-liberian-presidency-vote-count-nears-completion-2023-11-17/">conceded</a> defeat to the Unity Party candidate. </p>
<p>Weah scored <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/joseph-boakai-brink-liberian-presidency-vote-count-nears-completion-2023-11-17/">49.1%</a> of votes cast and lost the tight presidential run-off, which the EU described as “<a href="https://analystliberiaonline.com/well-administered-run-off-remarkably-close-race-eu-observer-mission-releases-initial-report/">remarkably close and well administered</a>”.</p>
<p>Liberia has enjoyed 20 years of peace and relative stability since the <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA480890">end</a> of a civil war that killed over <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26382621">250,000 people</a> and displaced Liberians across the world. </p>
<p>During this time, the country has made gradual but significant progress in restoring the rule of law, securing civil liberties and strengthening state and human capacity. </p>
<p>One of the breakthrough moments came in 2018. That year the country saw peaceful power transfer from one democratically elected president to the other. This was the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020841">first</a> of its kind since 1944. </p>
<p>At a time when there have been <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9861/">six successful and two attempted coups</a> in west Africa since 2020, Liberia’s transition towards a more stable state appears to be focused on security reforms and respect for election results. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259642752_West_Africa_A_Comparative_Study_of_Traditional_Conflict_Resolution_Methods_in_Liberia_and_Ghana">research</a> focuses on the patterns of post-war reconstruction efforts in sub-Saharan Africa and how states in the region respond to crises, conflict and statehood. </p>
<p>During my fieldwork in Liberia, I identified three factors that have kept the country on the path to peace: military neutrality in domestic politics; war fatigue; and a national drive towards reconciliation.</p>
<h2>Military neutrality in domestic politics</h2>
<p>Liberia, like many African nations, has experienced two eras of military dictatorships. One was under <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-K-Doe">Samuel Doe</a>, Liberia’s unelected president, and the other under <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Liberia">Charles Taylor</a>, Liberia’s 22nd president and leader of one of its main rebel groups. </p>
<p>Both men held a tight grip over the country. They used the military to drive their political objectives. </p>
<p>During their rule, army officers served as ministers, judges, administrators and members of parliament. They suppressed all forms of resistance and opposition. </p>
<p>The army’s involvement in Liberia’s sociopolitical and diplomatic affairs undermined the country’s development and eroded its progress. It crippled the economy and sent the nation into a brutal war that lasted 14 years. </p>
<p>The role of the military in domestic politics, however, ended with the fall of Taylor’s government in <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/6618.htm">August 2003</a>. Since then, the Armed Forces of Liberia has enjoyed independence from the office of the president. It has carried out reforms within its institutions of governance and has committed itself to protecting the constitution and the flag of Liberia. </p>
<p>The transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule has enabled Liberia to move towards a stable state. It can hold free and fair elections, and citizens can participate in governance. </p>
<h2>War fatigue</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/Liberia.pdf">Liberian civil war</a>, which lasted from 1989 to 2003, had a profound impact. It destroyed over <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/14912_file_Liberia_Growth.pdf">70%</a> of the country’s physical infrastructure and collapsed nearly all of its vital institutions. </p>
<p>The conflict claimed over <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26382621">250,000 lives</a>, displaced more than one million people, and broke down social and community ties. The horrors brought by the war had a chilling effect on the civilian population. </p>
<p>The peace Liberia enjoys today came at a high cost. Survivors of the war still suffer emotional and psychological exhaustion that manifests in various ways.</p>
<p>The diverse effects of the war left a stain on Liberia’s economy and undermined its pre-war progress. Poverty and the scars of war are still visible. </p>
<p>But beyond the difficulties lies the resilience of the government and its people to rebuild, determined not to resort to violence to settle differences. </p>
<p>Liberia’s <a href="https://core.ac.uk/reader/71736210">post-war elite</a> no longer see their ethnic or religious identities as sources of conflict but rather as the basis of strength for national prosperity. </p>
<p>Unity, combined with the <a href="https://www.state.gov/visa-restriction-policy-on-undermining-democracy-in-liberia/">intervention</a> of Liberia’s international partners, has so far made it difficult for individuals to undermine its democracy. </p>
<h2>Reconciliation</h2>
<p>Liberia has made progress in promoting reconciliation, inter-tribal dialogue and transitional justice since the war ended. This has played a role in preventing a relapse into conflict, facilitating healing and fostering unity. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/afr340072006en.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> was established in 2005 to document the atrocities and violations committed during the war, identify key perpetrators, and make recommendations for healing and reconciliation. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.trcofliberia.org/reports/final-report.html">commission’s report</a>, published in 2009, recommended reparations, reforms and prosecution of wrongdoers. </p>
<p>Initiatives such as psychological support, vocational education and ritual purifications aimed at reintegrating ex-combatants into society have played roles in maintaining the peace. </p>
<p>Equally important is the role of truth-telling in Liberia’s recovery journey. Warlords like “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/general-butt-naked-the-repentant-warlord">General Butt Naked</a>”, who voluntarily confessed their atrocities, and went from community to community to apologise for their crimes, received forgiveness from victims (or surviving relatives of victims) and immunity from prosecution.</p>
<p>Community-based engagement and activities aimed at addressing grievances at the grassroots level have also contributed to restoring trust and social cohesion among Liberians. </p>
<p>The need for reconciliation was echoed in Weah’s <a href="https://thenewdawnliberia.com/president-weahs-full-concession-speech/">concession speech</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tonight, the CDC has lost the election, but Liberia has won. This is a time for graciousness in defeat. Let us heal the divisions caused by the campaign and come together as one united people.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What in the election’s outcome could threaten the peace?</h2>
<p>But there are still dangers, in particular the strength of warlords within its political space. </p>
<p>Since 2006, warlords and war profiteers have played key roles in choosing the country’s presidents. The relationship enables warlords to trade political support for protection, while presidential candidates exchange justice for votes. </p>
<p>This could endanger the country’s security. Liberia must hold individuals accountable for war crimes, address the root causes of the conflict, and provide reparation to victims. </p>
<p>If Liberia is to achieve sustainable peace, it must carefully consider the connection between its post-war elites and former warlords.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Wratto is affiliated with The Center for Peace and Violence Prevention. </span></em></p>As Liberia experiences yet another transfer of power, military neutrality in domestic politics, war fatigue and desire for reconciliation have been identified as reasons for sustained peace.Charles Wratto, Associate Professor of Peace, Politics, and Conflict Studies, Babes Bolyai University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151812023-10-08T08:12:37Z2023-10-08T08:12:37ZLiberia elections 2023: three things the next president must do<p>Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic, is <a href="https://www.ndi.org/2023-liberia-presidential-election">about to choose</a> its next president. </p>
<p>On 10 October, <a href="https://necliberia.org/ecal_info.php?&92fe2e1cedf0fff268b812622bbd952ff930c1b2=MjA3">46 political parties</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-06/liberia-s-weah-to-face-19-rivals-in-october-vote-amid-public-ire">20 presidential candidates</a> will compete for two million registered votes at 5,000 polling stations in 15 counties. </p>
<p>But whoever wins will confront a polarised Liberia. </p>
<p>Liberia is more divided than it has been since the end of its <a href="https://cja.org/where-we-work/liberia/">14-year civil war</a> in 2003. The war ended with the signing of a <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/LR_030818_Peace%20Agreement%20btwn%20GovLiberia%2CLURD%2CMODEL%20and%20the%20Political%20Parties.pdf">peace agreement</a>, but its <a href="https://www.huckmag.com/article/photos-capturing-the-invisible-scars-of-liberias-civil-war">scars</a> are still visible across the country. </p>
<p>Frustration around the soaring cost of living, cronyism, patronage, nepotism, and the culture of impunity which triggered the war is once again tearing the country of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/liberia-population/">5.4 million</a> people apart. </p>
<p>There are also external factors that could undermine Liberia’s recent <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/09/27/liberia-economic-update-prospects-for-inclusive-and-sustainable-growth">progress</a>. For example, the <a href="https://ecfr.eu/special/african-cooperation/mano-river-union/">Mano River Union</a>, a sub-regional body of which Liberia is a founding member, remains volatile. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/11/uncertainty-in-guinea-after-military-coup-topples-alpha-conde">recent military coup</a> in Guinea, the <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2022/08/10/deadly-anti-government-protests-erupt-in-sierra-leone">anti-government protest</a> in Sierra Leone and <a href="https://monitor.civicus.org/explore/several-killed-protest-violence-president-ouattara-announces-third-term-bid/">the violence</a> around <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alassane-Ouattara">Alassane Ouattara</a>’s third-term re-election “victory” in Côte d’Ivoire are signals of vulnerability within the Mano River Union.</p>
<p>The next president will have to address three priorities to restore hope and confidence in Liberia’s recovery:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>national cohesion</p></li>
<li><p>corruption</p></li>
<li><p>stronger state institutions. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>My previous <a href="http://cscubb.ro/cop/ro/misiunea-ecomog-reevaluata/">analysis</a> of Liberia revealed the country’s inability to manage its internal conflicts. It also showed how Liberia’s reliance on regional powers like the <a href="https://ecowas.int/">Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas)</a> escalated and prolonged disputes. The next president must recognise these realities and address the three priority areas. </p>
<h2>Falling living standards</h2>
<p>There are growing concerns in Liberia that the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Weah">George Weah-led</a> administration is not doing enough to improve living standards. </p>
<p>There were high expectations of change when the president took office in 2018. Many expected him to lift them from poverty. They saw a real chance for a better future. Today, however, a good number of Liberians feel he has lost his connection with poverty and with the people who elected him into office. </p>
<p>Over <a href="https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_download/poverty/987B9C90-CB9F-4D93-AE8C-750588BF00QA/AM2020/Global_POVEQ_LBR.pdf">50%</a> of Liberians live below the poverty line. The rising cost of basic commodities prevents families from meeting their food needs. </p>
<p>Weah alone is not responsible for all of Liberia’s problems. His administration inherited irregularities that plagued previous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opinion/liberia-george-weah-inauguration.html">governments</a>. </p>
<h2>Endemic corruption</h2>
<p>Corruption shows up in many forms and at all levels in Liberia. It disrupts democratic decision-making processes, weakens public trust in government and undermines the rule of law. </p>
<p>The nation’s integrity institutions lack independence. They include the <a href="https://www.iaaca.net/node/294">Liberian Anti-Corruption Commission</a>, the <a href="https://gac.gov.lr/">General Audit Commission</a> and the <a href="https://www.leiti.org.lr/">Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative</a>. </p>
<p>These agencies were created to curb corrupt practices. But they lack political independence, capacity and resources. </p>
<p>They are further weakened by a <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/316010/in-liberia-corruption-sanctions-are-not-a-deterrent-for-candidates/">culture of impunity</a>. And managerial appointments are often made on the basis of cronyism (jobs for friends and colleagues) and patronage (using state power to reward selected voters for electoral support). </p>
<p>Corruption is prevalent in the judiciary too. Judges solicit bribes in exchange for <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0921">decisions</a> that favour offenders. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-liberia-politics-idUSKBN1FB24B">President George Weah</a> and his <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-19876111">predecessor</a>, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, ran on the promise of fighting corruption. Both failed to live up to their commitment.</p>
<p>In 2017, after her terms as head of state, Sirleaf <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/liberia-leader-acknowledges-failure-anti-corruption-fight/3690703.html">admitted</a> that her government had not done enough to fight corruption. </p>
<p>In 2022 Weah had to suspend three of his top officials after the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/15/us-sanctions-3-senior-liberian-government-officials">US imposed sanctions</a> on <a href="https://www.state.gov/imposing-sanctions-on-senior-liberian-government-officials/">them</a> for corruption and abuse of state functions. No investigation has been launched and none has been prosecuted. </p>
<p>Weah himself has faced serious criticism for his refusal to declare his <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2023/10/03/liberias-president-weah-must-be-removed-from-power-democratically/">assets</a> upon taking office and for <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/global-witness-condemns-illegal-interference-liberian-transparency-and-anti-corruption-agency/">violating</a> Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s standard procedures. </p>
<p>The country <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/liberia/corruption-rank">ranks 142nd</a> out of 180 countries in the corruption perception index. It could slide back into chaos unless the next leader takes serious actions.</p>
<p>Like Sirleaf, Weah pledged to build an equal, fair and just Liberia. But his lack of action in the fight against corruption sends the wrong message to development partners. And it undermines voters’ confidence in the electoral system. </p>
<p>Voters’ confidence in the upcoming poll is already low. A study by the <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/organisation/center-democratic-governance/">Center for Democratic Governance</a> in Liberia shows only <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/News-release-Trust-in-elections-commission-weak-as-Liberians-approach-elections-Afrobarometer-3april23.pdf">34%</a> of Liberians believe in the ability of the <a href="https://www.necliberia.org/">National Elections Commission</a> to hold a free and fair elections. </p>
<p>The lack of trust in the electoral system is reinforced by the commission’s <a href="https://www.liberianobserver.com/liberia-necs-failure-publish-final-vr-raises-concerns">failure </a> to release the final voter roll 16 days before the elections. This has cast further doubt on the commission’s credibility and neutrality. </p>
<h2>Impunity</h2>
<p>There is also anger over the government’s failure to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/05/briefing-note-call-war-crimes-court-liberia">establish tribunals</a> to try individuals accused of war crimes, as recommended by Liberia’s <a href="https://hmcwordpress.humanities.mcmaster.ca/Truthcommissions/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Liberia.TRC_.Report-FULL.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>. </p>
<p>Victims of the war want to see warlords <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67017365">punished</a> for their crimes. But the call for justice is ignored as Weah and politician Joseph Boakai (Sirleaf’s vice-president from 2006 to 2018) forge stronger <a href="https://www.liberianobserver.com/betrayal-trust-weahs-and-boakais-pact-warlords-amidst-liberias-cry-justice">alliances</a> with perpetrators and war profiteers. </p>
<p>Weah’s 2017 election victory was largely attributed to the support he received from warlord <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-liberia-election-idUKKBN1CV2IL">Prince Johnson</a>. Weah was also supported by Jewel Howard Taylor, his vice-president and ex-wife of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/4/27/charles-taylor-trial-highlights-icc-concerns">Charles Taylor</a>, Liberia’s 22nd president, convicted for <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2013/11/crc-welcomes-charles-taylor-conviction-deterrent-use-children-armed-conflict">atrocities</a> committed in Sierra Leone. </p>
<p>Weah and Johnson have long parted ways. Johnson has given his <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/10/02/2023/liberia-election-boakai-weah">support</a> for the 2023 general elections to 78-year-old Boakai. </p>
<p>However, Weah is not isolated. He still enjoys popular support from his status as a football star, his coalition with Taylor, and his new alliance with <a href="https://frontpageafricaonline.com/politics/liberia-former-rebel-commander-roland-duo-campaigns-on-war-kills-says-he-fought-more-than-prince-johnson-so-he-deserves-a-senatorial-seat-for-nimba-county/">Roland Duo</a>, a former rebel commander who boasts of his crimes. </p>
<p>Former warlords control large voting blocs, sought after by presidential candidates. Establishing a war crime court would amount to political suicide. </p>
<p>But the new president must introduce genuine reforms and promote good governance if he is to sustain peace or govern a region filled with political backstabbing, resource competition and the struggle for new global alliances. </p>
<h2>Way forward</h2>
<p>The next head of state must act decisively on deep-rooted and unresolved grievances. </p>
<p>He or she must address public sector corruption, grant full independence to the nation’s transparency institutions and provide adequate resources for the Liberian Anti-Corruption Commission and the General Audit Commission to hold offenders accountable. </p>
<p>Liberia’s next president must ensure that the recommendations of the General Audit Commission are followed through and empower the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate and indict those suspected of bribery, embezzlement and illicit enrichment. </p>
<p>Low-level corruption should not go unpunished. That includes things like patients paying bribes for medical treatment, and teachers demanding special favours from students to pass an exam.</p>
<p>Liberians hope for a better future as 10 October approaches.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Wratto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Liberia’s next president must restore national cohesion, tackle corruption, and strengthen state institutions.Charles Wratto, Associate Professor of Peace, Politics, and Conflict Studies, Babes Bolyai University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2117882023-10-05T15:50:14Z2023-10-05T15:50:14ZMedicine or food? People with diabetes in Liberia sometimes have to choose between the two<p>Diabetes is on the rise globally. Since the 1980s the number of people living with the disease has quadrupled from 108 million to <a href="https://idf.org/about-diabetes/diabetes-facts-figures/">537 million</a>.</p>
<p>This dramatic increase is largely due to the rise in <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20351193">type 2 diabetes</a> and its associated risk factors such as being overweight or obese. </p>
<p>For many years, diabetes was considered a disease of affluence and thought to be rare in sub-Saharan Africa. This is no longer the case. Today <a href="https://diabetesatlas.org/idfawp/resource-files/2022/01/IDF-Atlas-Factsheet-2021_AFR.pdf">24 million people</a> – one in 22 adults in the region – have diabetes and rates are rapidly increasing.</p>
<p>In Liberia, one of the <a href="https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_download/poverty/987B9C90-CB9F-4D93-AE8C-750588BF00QA/AM2020/Global_POVEQ_LBR.pdf">poorest nations</a> in sub-Saharan Africa, it is reported that an estimated <a href="https://diabetesatlas.org/data/en/region/2/afr.html">2.1%</a> of its population of 5.2 million are living with diabetes. More than half of them are <a href="https://diabetesatlas.org/data/en/country/112/lr.html">undiagnosed</a>, underscoring the grave burden of diabetes in the country. </p>
<p>Available research on diabetes in Liberia excludes people’s voices and stories. It is not rooted in people’s lived experiences. As a result, the research findings seldom lead to change. </p>
<p>The goal of our <a href="https://publi.ludomedia.org/index.php/ntqr/article/view/785">study</a> was to understand people’s lived experiences with diabetes in Liberia. We used a photovoice method, providing 10 Liberian adults with cameras to take photographs representing their lives. Through discussing the meaning of their photographs, we gained insights into local assets and needs.</p>
<p>Participants were recruited from Redemption Hospital in Monrovia. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, we partnered with Adventist University of West Africa to help facilitate interviews.</p>
<p>Our study identified two major challenges: food insecurity and healthcare neglect. </p>
<h2>Worrying about the next meal</h2>
<p>Participants shared stories about worrying about obtaining food, compromising the quality of food they ate, skipping meals and <a href="https://publi.ludomedia.org/index.php/ntqr/article/view/785">experiencing hunger</a>. They were often forced to choose between food and medication. </p>
<p>Not taking medication regularly for diabetes can lead to dangerous consequences like severe <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279340/#:%7E:text=Hyperglycemia%20occurs%20when%20blood%20sugar,blood%2Dsugar%2Dlowering%20medication">hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia</a>, coma and sometimes death. </p>
<p>One of the participants who was diagnosed with diabetes four years ago had <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/diabetes/diabetic-retinopathy">diabetic retinopathy</a>, a common complication of diabetes that leads to vision loss. </p>
<p>He had been unable to work since his diagnosis and relied entirely on his sisters for financial help and the kindness of friends in his community. </p>
<p>During periods of extreme financial hardship, the 30-year-old experienced hunger. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I don’t have money, I don’t eat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If people like him survive the short-term consequences of hunger, repeated experiences of hunger can also place people living with diabetes at risk for long-term consequences such as <a href="https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/sugar-brain">cognitive impairment</a>. </p>
<p>Participants also reported concerns about the limited food options that healthcare providers recommended for their diet. They were generally advised to avoid staple foods with <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/high-glycemic-index-foods">high glycemic indexes</a> such as white rice and <a href="https://liberiainfo.co/prd/liberian-cuisine/">cassava dumboy</a> that raise the blood sugar quickly and to replace them with foods like bulgur wheat and green plantain, as they provided better blood glucose control. </p>
<p>It was not always possible to adhere to these recommendations as foods like bulgur wheat and green plantain were far more expensive.</p>
<h2>Back of the queue</h2>
<p>Liberia’s <a href="https://cja.org/where-we-work/liberia/">14-year civil war</a> coupled with the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-virus-disease">Ebola outbreak</a> left a devastating impact on the country’s healthcare system. </p>
<p>As a result the country faces unique challenges in combating diabetes because of the country’s <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d4de6de4b011a1673a40a6/t/5be085804d7a9c6daef842ea/1541440897071/Liberia+NCDI+Poverty+Commission+Report+FINAL.pdf">limited health infrastructure</a>, which neglects people living with chronic illnesses.</p>
<p>In 2018, only about 22% of publicly funded healthcare facilities could provide <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d4de6de4b011a1673a40a6/t/5be085804d7a9c6daef842ea/1541440897071/Liberia+NCDI+Poverty+Commission+Report+FINAL.pdf">diagnosis</a> and management of diabetes. This makes it very difficult, for example, to get basic diabetes care such as testing, medication and diabetes education. </p>
<p>Participants on the research attested to this. One voiced his frustration with the local hospital and the lack of supplies and resources allocated to people living with diabetes. He was particularly disappointed that his local hospital was routinely out of medications: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes at the hospital, they don’t have all the medicine. Yeah, so the whole frustrating part is when you get there, and the medicine not there, you have to pay for your prescription. With the prescription, he can just write it for me, and I will try to get it, because I want to be treated. They give you prescription, then you go to the drug store. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Participants also shared how their religious faith helped them cope and sustain hope of living with diabetes. Their transcendent hope persisted despite hardship. </p>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>Our findings demonstrate the need to improve the health and quality of life of people living with diabetes in Liberia. </p>
<p>Based on our findings, we recommended the following:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Increased prioritisation and resourcing of diabetes management. This would involve allocation of adequate resources for screening, diagnostic testing, medications, diabetes supplies and diabetes education. </p></li>
<li><p>Integrated diabetes centres to facilitate ongoing care. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no public or private diabetes centre in Liberia.</p></li>
<li><p>Community food programmes with healthy options. These should include community gardens and food banks.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nothing to disclose</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danielle Macdonald, Paulina Bleah, and Pilar Camargo-Plazas do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People with diabetes in Liberia face a vicious cycle of hunger and neglect that can sometimes spiral out of control and put their lives in danger.Paulina Bleah, Nurse Practitioner, PhD Nursing Student, Queen's University, OntarioDanielle Macdonald, Assistant Professor, Queen's University, OntarioPilar Camargo-Plazas, Associate Professor, Queen's University, OntarioRosemary Wilson, Associate Director/Associate Professor of Nursing, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2038822023-05-25T12:27:09Z2023-05-25T12:27:09ZAfrica is getting renewed attention from Washington — and some African states are courting African Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527594/original/file-20230522-25-4eb04j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C4283%2C3890&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington on Dec. 15, 2022.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-delivers-remarks-alongside-secretary-of-news-photo/1449457317?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent allegations by the U.S. ambassador to South Africa that the African nation <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/world/africa/us-south-africa-russia-weapons.html?searchResultPosition=1">gave ammunition and weapons to Russia</a> in December 2022, amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, illustrate the complexity of U.S.-Africa relations. </p>
<p>Even as <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/aa650020-030b-4ff8-9741-be1314e39eac">South Africa investigates those claims</a>, the Biden administration is trying to strengthen ties with the African Union, a continental member organization, and 49 of Africa’s 54 countries, including South Africa, on <a href="https://www.state.gov/africasummit/">geopolitical and commercial </a> issues.</p>
<p>The only African countries the U.S. is not courting <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/3773942-these-five-african-countries-were-not-invited-to-bidens-summit/">are four that were suspended</a> from the African Union, and Eritrea, a country with which the United States doesn’t have a formal relationship.</p>
<p>The U.S. is making this grand African play as it <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26301066">competes with China to influence the continent’s future</a>. And while this particular U.S.-China contest is relatively new, U.S. involvement in Africa is not. </p>
<p>The way the U.S. has been involved on the continent, though, has changed over time, depending on the era, U.S. interests and a particular African nation’s needs. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/liberia/essays/uspolicy/">In 1822, for example, the U.S. began to send freeborn African Americans</a> and emancipated former enslaved African Americans to Africa, where they settled the colony that would eventually become Liberia. That settlement was originally governed by white Americans. </p>
<p>After Liberia <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/liberian-independence-proclaimed">became a self-governing, Black republic in 1847</a>, it relied heavily on U.S. financial assistance. By 1870, that assistance came by way of high-interest loans.</p>
<h2>Decolonization and US interest in Africa</h2>
<p>U.S. involvement with other African states took root after various countries, formerly governed by colonial powers, entered into self-rule. American policy objectives on the continent centered around U.S. strategic interests and came in the form of military and economic aid. </p>
<p>The U.S., for example, established diplomatic relationships with <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-egypt/">Egypt in 1922</a>, <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-sudan/">Sudan in 1956</a> and <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-ghana/">Ghana in 1957</a>, after those countries gained independence from the United Kingdom. </p>
<p>Beginning in <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v14/d27">the late 1950s</a>, when other African countries gained independence, the U.S. formed diplomatic and commercial ties with them as well and worked to reduce the Soviet Union’s influence on the continent. In 1961 and 1962, the U.S. persuaded West African countries <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/25770/chapter-abstract/193342868?redirectedFrom=fulltext">to deny the Soviet Union commercial flyover and landing rights</a> in their territories.</p>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/59e.asp">the Cold War ended</a>, the U.S. <a href="https://cornellpress.manifoldapp.org/read/united-states-africa-relations-in-the-age-of-obama/section/4f22d59e-2be7-41b7-ba61-d965e80fa4bf">lacked clear policy objectives</a> toward Africa, and interaction between the superpower and the continent waned.</p>
<h2>Renewed US interest in Africa</h2>
<p>In the 21st century, the U.S. began to turn its attention back to Africa as a way of pushing its strategic interests and strengthening commercial and diplomatic ties with African countries.</p>
<p>In 2000, during the Clinton administration, Congress enacted the <a href="https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/trade-development/preference-programs/african-growth-and-opportunity-act-agoa">African Growth and Opportunity Act</a> to open American markets to eligible African countries. </p>
<p>Then, in 2003, President George W. Bush <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/72424694-a86e-11e9-984c-fac8325aaa04">launched the global health initiative</a>, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, that has been the U.S.’s most significant action on the continent since its nearly 250-year enslavement of Africans - first as Colonial America, then the U.S. - from 1619 to 1865.</p>
<p>Known as PEPFAR, the initiative is credited with <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-george-w-bush-government-and-politics-1950277193678c96bbdae61db9be9687">saving 21 million lives</a>, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean. </p>
<p>More recently, the U.S. has held <a href="https://qz.com/us-africa-leaders-summit-biden-obama-1849873793">two U.S.-Africa Leaders Summits</a>. President Barack Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/us-africa-leaders-summit">hosted the first one</a> in 2014, and President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.state.gov/africasummit/">held the second one in 2022</a>. And, as part of the Biden administration’s Africa outreach, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/world/africa/kamala-harris-visit.html">Vice President Kamala Harris visited </a> Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia in March 2023 to discuss security and economic issues with leaders of those countries.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a pants suit on the left and suited man on the right walk on a red carpet. Behind them on the left stands the American flag. Behind them on the right stands the Zambian flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527595/original/file-20230522-25-d55bb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vice President Kamala Harris and Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema walk outside the State House in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, on March 31, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vice-president-kamala-harris-and-zambian-president-hakainde-news-photo/1250104734?adppopup=true">Salim Dawood/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s not just about diplomacy</h2>
<p>Yet, the relationships between the U.S. and African nations run deeper than government-to-government partnerships or aid.</p>
<p>As Biden said during the December 2022 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/12/14/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-sall-of-the-republic-of-senegal-at-the-u-s-africa-leaders-summit-dinner/">U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit dinner</a>: “Our people lie at the heart of the deep and profound connection that forever binds Africa and the United States together. We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty. My nation’s original sin was that period.”</p>
<p>As the U.S. courts Africa broadly, African countries, such as <a href="https://vindicatornewspapersl.com/?p=990">Sierra Leone</a>, <a href="https://frontpageafricaonline.com/news/liberia-bracing-to-welcome-thousands-home-in-greatest-reunion-since-slavery-era/">Liberia</a> and others, are courting African Americans, encouraging them to visit, set up homes and establish businesses and economic ties in their ancestral homeland. No country has made more of an effort than <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ghana-accra-barbara-oteng-gyasi-floyd-disapora-1509845">Ghana,</a> which, for example, is making <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/ghana-to-black-americans-come-home-well-help-you-build-a-life-here/2020/07/03/1b11a914-b4e3-11ea-9a1d-d3db1cbe07ce_story.html">special accommodation for Americans who purchase land</a> there.</p>
<h2>Invitation to the motherland</h2>
<p>In 2000, the Ghanaian <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/2019-year-return-african-diaspora">Parliament passed a Citizenship Act</a>, which grants the right of dual citizenship to people of Ghanaian descent. African Americans have been able to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-slavery-usa/an-african-american-mother-and-daughter-journey-to-their-familys-past-in-ghana-idUSKCN1VC16H">trace their ancestry to Ghana</a> and other African countries because of genetic testing. And the <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/2019-year-return-african-diaspora">Immigration Act,</a> passed the same year, includes a “Right of Abode” that allows anyone in the African diaspora to travel to and from the country freely.</p>
<p>In September 2018, Nana Akufo-Addo, president of Ghana, <a href="https://www.yearofreturn.com/about/">announced a campaign commemorating</a> the 400-year anniversary of the first enslaved Africans brought to Jamestown, Virginia, with a goal of spurring African American business, investment and tourism in the West African nation. Ghana has long promised African Americans and other people in the African diaspora <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/2019-year-return-african-diaspora">dual citizenship rights</a> and business opportunities. Ghanaian leaders have made it clear that they want African Americans and others to <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/ghana-looks-long-relationship-african-americans-investment">invest</a> in the country.</p>
<p>Since the Year of Return, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/back-to-roots-why-african-americans-are-flocking-to-ghana/a-64403580">at least 1,500 African Americans have received citizenship rights</a> in Ghana, and some 5,000 African Americans <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-americans-leave-racism-in-us-to-reclaim-destiny-in-ghana/">have made Ghana their permanent home</a>.</p>
<p>The Ghanaian government launched <a href="https://beyondthereturngh.com/">another campaign in 2020</a> to increase tourism and investment in the country by people in the African diaspora, as well as to deepen social ties between Ghanaians and the diaspora.</p>
<p>Following Ghana’s playbook, in 2021, Senegal worked with African American business leaders <a href="https://qz.com/africa/2022699/senegal-launches-juneteenth-initiative-for-african-americans">to celebrate its first “The Return</a>.” Held on June 19 that year, the event was a historic Juneteenth initiative, <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-juneteenth">modeled after the American holiday</a> to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States and encourage African American investment in the country.</p>
<p>Akufo-Addo may have sparked a 21st century resurgence of trans-Atlantic African appeals to African Americans and other people in the African diaspora.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of people stand on sand, near an ocean both behind and in front of a long, elevated white wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527596/original/file-20230522-4578-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">African American tourists hold hands as they enter the ocean during a remembrance ceremony in Ghana, after visiting the ‘Door of No Return’ at Cape Coast Castle. It is where enslaved Africans were held before being taken by force to what would become the United States.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-african-american-tourists-hold-hands-as-they-enter-news-photo/1163080416?adppopup=true">Natalija Gormalova/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asafa Jalata does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the United States government builds economic and security ties with African countries, some of those countries are encouraging African Americans to establish social and economic ties in Africa.Asafa Jalata, Professor of Sociology and Global and Africana Studies, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1963452023-02-22T12:54:48Z2023-02-22T12:54:48ZGlobetrotting Black nutritionist Flemmie P. Kittrell revolutionized early childhood education and illuminated ‘hidden hunger’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509502/original/file-20230210-18-axl9fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=238%2C274%2C5663%2C3282&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">She traveled far and wide to support children and families around the world.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:549027">Cornell University</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nutrition is among the most critical issues of our time. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/31/1120004717/the-u-s-diet-is-deadly-here-are-7-ideas-to-get-americans-eating-healthier">Diet-related illnesses</a> are shortening life spans and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-urban-planning-and-housing-policy-helped-create-food-apartheid-in-us-cities-154433">the lack of conveniently located and affordable nutritious food</a> makes it hard for many Americans to enjoy good health.</p>
<p>Physicians are also alarmed by nutritional trends they see among the nation’s most vulnerable people: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/well/family/childhood-obesity-guidelines.html">children</a>. </p>
<p>I think that this situation would frustrate Black nutritionist <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/kittrell-flemmie-pansy-1904-1980/">Flemmie Pansy Kittrell</a> if she were alive today. Throughout a trailblazing career that spanned half a century, she worked to enhance food security and to improve both diets and children’s health – under the umbrella of home economics. </p>
<p>While you might view home economics as merely a set of practical skills concerning cooking and budgeting, <a href="https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/homeEc/masterlabel.html">in the mid-20th century it applied</a> scientific concepts to improve home management, strengthen parenting skills and enhance childhood development.</p>
<p>Kittrell went further, by making the case for healthy and strong families a tool for diplomacy. </p>
<p>While researching Black women’s global activism for rights and freedom, I became aware of Kittrell’s work on behalf of the U.S. State Department, women’s organizations and church groups. I was struck by her <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/ideology-in-u-s-foreign-relations/9780231201810">pragmatic approach to foreign relations</a>, which emphasized women, children and the home as the keys to good living and national and global peace and security.</p>
<p>I was also stunned by the Black nutritionist’s commitment to <a href="https://ww3.aauw.org/2016/02/24/flemmie/">shattering traditional assumptions about home economics</a> and improving the health of low-income families around the globe, especially for people of color. </p>
<h2>Humble roots</h2>
<p>Kittrell, the eighth of nine children born to a sharecropping family, grew up in Henderson, North Carolina. She began working as a nursemaid and cook when <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:45173968$3i">she was only 11 years old</a>. </p>
<p>In 1919, Kittrell enrolled at Hampton Institute, a small historically Black Virginia college that later became Hampton University. </p>
<p>A professor encouraged her to major in home economics. She initially rejected the suggestion, claiming the home was “<a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:45173968$3i">just so ordinary</a>.” Kittrell reconsidered once she learned about <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/30/metro/ellen-h-swallow-richards-pioneer-sanitary-engineering-science/">Ellen H. Swallow Richards</a>, the first woman to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the nation’s earliest female professional chemists.</p>
<p>Kittrell realized that the field was about <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-bringing-back-home-economics-the-answer-to-our-modern-woes-161632">more than cooking and sewing</a>. Furthermore, women who majored in the subject could then <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/did-home-economics-empower-women">pursue sciences</a> that were closed to them because of their gender.</p>
<p>With a growing belief that the home and family were the basis of society, Kittrell chose to major in home economics rather than political science or economics.</p>
<h2>Nutrition and Black families</h2>
<p>After her 1928 graduation, Kittrell briefly taught at a high school before becoming the director of home economics and dean of women at <a href="https://www.digitalnc.org/blog/bennett-colleges-home-economics-institute-materials-now-online/">Bennett College</a>, a historically Black college in Greensboro, North Carolina. During a 12-year tenure there, she created a nursery center that trained parents and provided child care.</p>
<p>The center also served as a laboratory for experimenting with different teaching techniques. </p>
<p>Kittrell drew on this research when she became the <a href="https://www.human.cornell.edu/flemmie-kittrell-visiting-scholar-college-human-ecology">first Black woman to earn a doctorate at Cornell University</a>. In her 1936 doctoral dissertation, she argued that the health of Black families could be improved by focusing on infant feeding practices and parental education. She was the first Black woman to get a doctorate in nutrition at any college or university.</p>
<p>In 1940 she returned to Hampton. During World War II, Kittrell and her students taught local families how to ration and substitute food. The home economics department also joined female students in hosting evening activities, including dances for <a href="https://hamptonroadsnavalmuseum.blogspot.com/2018/03/hampton-institute-and-navy-in-second.html">Black military trainees and their families</a>. </p>
<p>Four years later, Kittrell became the head of Howard University’s home economics department. She remained on that faculty for 28 years. </p>
<p>Taking advantage of Howard’s Washington, D.C., location, Kittrell persuaded national leaders that <a href="https://ww3.aauw.org/2016/02/24/flemmie/">home economics could help transform society</a> at home and around the world. She spent so much time working and traveling for the U.S. government that one biographer called her “<a href="https://worldcat.org/title/958934382">a good will ambassador with a cookbook</a>.”</p>
<h2>‘Hidden hunger’ at home and abroad</h2>
<p>In 1947, the State Department sent Kittrell to Liberia to conduct a nutrition study. Her efforts supported an American commitment to strengthen diplomatic and military with countries around the world.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/reprints/230/">her follow-up report</a>, Kittrell explained that while food shortages and hunger were not significant issues, more than 90% of Liberians suffered from vitamin deficiencies, resulting in “hidden hunger.” Though she did not invent the term, she was among the first to draw widespread attention to the issue at home and abroad.</p>
<p>Arguing that what happens in one place often occurs in others, Kittrell implored the U.S. to examine diet issues at home.</p>
<p>In 1949, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/5545597277">she published a study</a> comparing the diet and food choices of Black and white Americans. She showed that the illnesses that many Black Americans experienced were tied to racial discrimination in housing, employment and medical services rather than poor decision-making. <a href="https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/oc/np/HistoryofHumanNutritionResearch/HistoryofHumanNutritionResearch.pdf">In later years</a>, academic, professional and activist organizations similarly applied this intersectional lens to nutrition campaigns.</p>
<h2>Nutrition and democracy</h2>
<p>American foreign policy leaders found <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/winter/us-and-ghana-1957-1966-2.html">Kittrell’s pragmatic and balanced approach</a> indispensable in forging alliances during the Cold War. </p>
<p>In 1950, Kittrell persuaded the State Department’s Fulbright program to send her to India, which had recently won its independence from the U.K. She returned there in 1953 under <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/InternationalAid_Background.pdf">a government program that provided technical expertise</a> to newly independent nations as a form of diplomacy. </p>
<p>In the 1950s, Kittrell traveled across Africa to improve relations with African states that had criticized the U.S. for boasting of its freedoms while <a href="https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Postwar-Foreign-Policy-Civil-Rights/">denying basic civil rights to many of its citizens</a>. </p>
<p>In September 1958, the nutritionist traveled to Ghana, the <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/ghanaians-campaign-independence-british-rule-1949-1951">first West African country to gain independence</a> from a colonizing power. She met with Ghanaian political leaders and members of women’s organizations, delivering lectures on home economics and the value of higher education for women. </p>
<p>Ghanaians asked Kittrell about racial incidents, including the 1957 Little Rock crisis, in which a white mob tried to stop nine Black students from <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/central-high-school-integration">integrating a public high school</a>. Kittrell cast this incident, which violated the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board 1954 Supreme Court ruling</a> that rendered segregation in public schools unconstitutional, as a Southern dilemma rather than a national one.</p>
<p>She also optimistically emphasized Black Americans’ progress since emancipation and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/winter/us-and-ghana-1957-1966-2.html">contended that the U.S. Constitution would prevail</a> in ensuring equality.</p>
<h2>An appetite for justice</h2>
<p>Though Kittrell’s answers sidestepped larger issues of discrimination at home, she claimed to reject U.S. boosterism in her thinking about cross-cultural interactions, family and society.</p>
<p>She argued that newly independent nations had much to teach Americans. Even more, Kittrell claimed to see herself not as a representative of the U.S. but as “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/ideology-in-u-s-foreign-relations/9780231201810">a citizen of the world</a>.” </p>
<p>A closer look at Kittrell’s activities reveals that she maintained a strong appetite for justice. Even as a dedicated bureaucratic infighter, Kittrell was willing to move beyond these bounds.</p>
<p>In 1967, for example, she protested apartheid in South Africa, the system of segregation that oppressed that country’s nonwhite communities and privileged a white minority. Incensed by American inaction, <a href="https://projects.kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/210-808-3403/ACOA12-6-67Summaryopt.pdf">Kittrell became one of five Americans to stage a fly-in</a> – an impromptu trip in which she and her colleagues sought to enter the country without visas to dramatize their protest. </p>
<p><a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:45173968$3i">In a 1977 interview</a> with the Black Women’s Oral History Interviews Project of the Harvard University Radcliffe Institute, Kittrell hinted that she was engaged in other acts of protest, slyly suggesting that she “was very fortunate not to have gotten into more trouble.” </p>
<p>Three years later in an interview for a faculty profile with Howard University, Kittrell boldly claimed that she had not been “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/ideology-in-u-s-foreign-relations/9780231201810">afraid to speak against evil as I see it</a>.”</p>
<p>These statements suggest that she was more of a strategist and activist than many people at the time believed. </p>
<h2>Head Start</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx539W3E41w">Kittrell kept traveling extensively</a> in the 1960s. </p>
<p>She took trips to Russia and several African countries on behalf of the United Nations and professional, women’s and religious organizations, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the United Methodist Church. </p>
<p>Kittrell also increased her focus on the needs of U.S. children. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/10/how-the-geography-of-u-s-poverty-has-shifted-since-1960/">In the 1960s</a>, 1 in 5 U.S. children lived in poverty. With the conviction that good living began at a young age, <a href="https://worldcat.org/title/42072097">Kittrell expanded Howard University’s nursery program</a> with a deeper focus on parents, whom she contended were the key to stronger families.</p>
<p>That center became an early model for the <a href="https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/about-us/article/head-start-history">Head Start program</a>, which emerged as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.</p>
<p>Refusing to “<a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=finaid_manu">sit still enough to hold hands</a>,” Kittrell never married or had children.</p>
<p>Instead, as <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/finaid_manu/117/">her archival papers</a> at Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center show, she dedicated herself to assisting others by cultivating strong families through nutritious habits and healthy children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brandy Thomas Wells does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kittrell’s legacy shows that home economics was always about more than cooking and sewing. It’s also a reminder that issues that affect families are simultaneously local and global.Brandy Thomas Wells, Assistant Professor of History, Oklahoma State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1929752022-10-23T08:35:17Z2022-10-23T08:35:17ZEbola in Uganda: why women must be central to the response<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490859/original/file-20221020-15-uvpf97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women need to be involved at every level of decision-making.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Luke Dray/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/97/3/601/6180992">“No time for that”</a> was the constant refrain heard by gender and women’s health experts working in the 2014/16 Ebola response. This was an emergency and the main thing was to deal with the crisis. </p>
<p>It was the Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone outbreak of Ebola that signalled what was to come for women around the world in the COVID-19 outbreak. Quarantines saw a <a href="https://eca.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/07/spotlight-on-gender-covid-19-and-the-sdgs-0">rise</a> in domestic and intimate partner violence. Girls were <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/03/sierra-leone-discriminatory-ban-on-pregnant-girls/">banned from school</a> when they returned pregnant. Fear of health centres and hospitals and closures led to increases in other health issues. <a href="https://gh.bmj.com/content/1/3/e000065">More</a> women died from maternal mortality than from Ebola.</p>
<p>In early 2020 I worked with women around the world to raise the flag of <a href="https://eca.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/07/spotlight-on-gender-covid-19-and-the-sdgs-0">the potential gendered impact of COVID-19</a>. But few people wanted to listen. No time for that. As with Ebola, it is often only when the harm is done that people working on the response realise two crucial things. First, health emergencies do immediate and long term harm to women, disproportionately. And second, women are essential to responding to health emergencies.</p>
<p>Ebola outbreaks are scary. We’ve come along way from 2014/16 and the Ugandan government is doing all the right things – alerting the world, contact tracing, protecting frontline health workers, working with traditional healers, and working on communications to avert stigma. But there is a real risk that once again the issues that affect women and girls during a health emergency will be missed.</p>
<p>“Lessons learned” is a tired global health trope. But when it comes to the impact on women, we need to take action and here’s how.</p>
<h2>5 steps to take to centre women</h2>
<p>First, no-one likes lockdowns. But quarantines and lockdowns are specifically a feminist issue. They harm women and put an increased burden on their <a href="https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/the-impacts-of-coronavirus-on-women">time and labour</a>. If necessary, any quarantine measures should be accompanied by a full support package for vulnerable women. This means the government needs to be working with the women’s sector, particularly those working on violence against women from the onset – not as an afterthought. Any quarantine measures need to be met with full social and welfare support. International donors need to support the Ugandan government to make this work.</p>
<p>Second, women health workers tend to be <a href="https://www.who.int/activities/value-gender-and-equity-in-the-global-health-workforce">clustered</a> in community health work. This involves door-to-door work on information communication, care and contact tracing. During an Ebola outbreak this is high risk. Their personal protection equipment requirements need to be prioritised alongside medical professionals. Moreover, lots of community health workers are volunteers, yet they are the bedrock of finding information in the Ebola response. They need to be paid. Health workers need to be protected, not stigmatised or subject to violence.</p>
<p>Third, everyone involved in the Ebola response should have training to detect and report sexual exploitation and abuse, including the international community. We do not want a repeat of what happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo – what experts <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-united-nations-world-health-organization-ebola-virus-36ceb41d266190d149a74e400332e1ed">called</a> the worst case of sexual exploitation and abuse in UN history – where 82 alleged perpetrators, 21 with direct links to the World Health Organisation, were accused of the abuse and exploitation of girls and women – as young as 13.</p>
<p>Health emergencies bring a mass influx of resources to a vulnerable situation: this is ripe territory for exploitation. Tackling abuse and exploitation should never be an afterthought; often thought about when it is too late. Instead, it should be addressed as an ever-present risk when responding to health emergencies.</p>
<p>Fourth, we need good data. During the Ebola outbreak in 2014/16 I developed the idea of women being <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2015.1108827">conspicuously invisible</a>. They were everywhere in frontline community health work – but were totally invisible in decision-making or official data. Data should detect not only where and how Ebola is spreading but who is most vulnerable. This means counting how many men and how many women are getting and dying of Ebola. Data informs what measures need to be put in place to help people. Sex disaggregated data is not perfect (most systems fail to account for non-binary people for example), but it is a start.</p>
<p>Finally, and I cannot stress this enough: women need to be involved at every level of decision-making. From the high profile <a href="https://twitter.com/JaneRuth_Aceng?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Jane Ruth Aceng</a>, Minister of Health in Uganda, to the contact tracing teams, to the surveillance squads. Women leaders do not necessarily mean greater representation of women’s issues or women friendly policies. However, given that the health sector is highly feminised, women must sit around the tables that matter.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>I’ve seen at first hand the harm that health emergencies did to women in Sierra Leone in the 2014/16 outbreak. </p>
<p>When I started shouting about it during the COVID-19 response, “No time for that” was accompanied by, “Where’s the evidence and data?”.</p>
<p>Thanks to tireless work and mobilisation of gender and global health experts around the world, we have the evidence that health emergencies harm women. Now we must act so that this does not happen again in Uganda.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie Harman receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>As with Ebola, it is often only when the harm is done that people working on the response realise health emergencies disproportionately harm women.Sophie Harman, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1915062022-09-29T14:13:28Z2022-09-29T14:13:28Z5 steps to stop Ebola spreading in East Africa – a frontline expert advises<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487036/original/file-20220928-16-2bwv9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Staff from South Sudan's Health Ministry pose with protective suits during a drill for Ebola preparedness.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by PATRICK MEINHARDT/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The biggest Ebola outbreak in human history happened in <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html#:%7E:text=On%20March%2023%2C%202014%2C%20the,epidemic%2C%20the%20largest%20in%20history.">West Africa</a> from 2014 to 2015. I was on the front lines in Liberia serving as the head of case detection for the National Ebola Response team and administering critical aspects of Liberia’s Ebola response.</p>
<p>The outbreak affected Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. It <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002508#:%7E:text=The%202014%E2%80%932015%20Ebola%20virus%20disease%20(EVD)%20outbreak%20across,in%204%2C809%20deaths%20%5B1%5D.">claimed 11,310</a> lives and took <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876034120304275">36 months</a> to contain. It made its way along major highways from Guinea into Liberia and Sierra Leone, which share a long border.</p>
<p>Uganda’s current <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/business/uganda-ebola-death-toll-3963084">Ebola virus outbreak</a> has a few similarities. The first case was found in Mubende district, located on a major highway to the capital city, Kampala, and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo – putting both at high risk.</p>
<p>Ebola <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/symptoms/index.html">spreads through</a> body fluids and direct contact. The infectiousness of the virus increases as patients get sicker – when they vomit and have diarrhoea. At death the virus is at its most virulent and thus any communal burial increases the spread.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1572906430218506242"}"></div></p>
<p>In the 2014/2015 outbreak there was widespread disbelief in communities, due to ignorance, distrust and some traditional beliefs. People didn’t cooperate with response teams. Fear and disbelief <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/gaps-in-ebola-response-stick-out-as-cases-grow-3960154">have also been</a> documented in Uganda as four contacts of the alert case ran away from response workers.</p>
<p>If people doubt they have Ebola – because symptoms of fever or vomiting are similar to other common illnesses like malaria and typhoid – they’ll seek healthcare from a range of places, including traditional healers and religious groups. And they could move to urban centres in search of better care. All of these behaviours increase the risk of a further spread of the virus and more deaths.</p>
<p>On the positive side, Uganda has the <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/news/how-previous-ebola-virus-disease-outbreaks-helped-uganda-respond-covid-19-outbreak">right basics</a> to mount an effective response: experienced medical staff, knowledge and good infrastructure. The country has responded to four previous Ebola outbreaks. Its health systems are also in better shape than they were in three of the West African countries during the 2014/2015 outbreak. Health systems are as effective as the response and support they can get from the community.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ebola-outbreak-in-uganda-the-health-system-has-never-been-better-prepared-191021">Ebola outbreak in Uganda: the health system has never been better prepared</a>
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<p>But the ability of Ebola to spread must not be underestimated. There’s a <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/gaps-in-ebola-response-stick-out-as-cases-grow-3960154">knowledge gap</a> about the actual start of the outbreak and the index (or first identified) case. This means the actual first human case of this current outbreak, coupled with <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/gaps-in-ebola-response-stick-out-as-cases-grow-3960154">increasing</a> community <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/five-ugandan-doctors-catch-ebola-3966020">infections</a> and deaths, raises the risk of the outbreak spreading along the major highway to densely populated cities and neighbouring countries.</p>
<p>There’s no approved vaccine for this strain of Ebola – the <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/uganda/ebola-disease-caused-sudan-virus">Sudan strain</a>. This is due to the focus on Ebola Zaire, the most deadly and infectious strain, which was responsible for the 2014/2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.</p>
<p>It’s therefore crucial that the region be prepared to work together to contain the spread of the virus. Drawing on my experience in the management of the 2014/2015 outbreak in West Africa, here are the five steps that might help East Africa curb the further spread of the virus.</p>
<h2>1. Set up a robust cross-border surveillance system</h2>
<p>To prevent a further spread, a cross-border surveillance system must be created that can quickly identify, test and isolate cases for treatment. This system must have direct, simple communication lines with minimal bureaucracy. For instance, teams should use mobile applications like WhatsApp.</p>
<p>One of the biggest weaknesses we faced during the 2014/2015 Ebola outbreak was that response workers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea weren’t able to communicate easily with colleagues in other countries. This resulted in the use of intermediaries, like the World Health Organization (WHO) office, which caused delays. We lost the critical element of speed – every hour counts.</p>
<p>Communities along the borders must be part of the surveillance system. Ebola response workers in West Africa created a network along the borders that helped them move with speed. Cross border preparedness meetings and direct communication on the progress of the evolving outbreak in Uganda will be crucial for containment strategies.</p>
<h2>2. Create an army of community contact tracers</h2>
<p>To curb the Ebola outbreak in East Africa a portion of the response funding must be used to create an army of case finders and contact tracers. They must know people within their community well and report cases that families may be trying to hide. Fears, ignorance and cultural beliefs and practices tend to make contacts reluctant to report themselves; or they escape from treatment centres.</p>
<p>A crucial factor in containing the outbreak in Liberia was the payments of monthly stipends from the United Nations Development Fund and WHO to local pastors, imams, community leaders, teachers, university students and high school students. These ranged from US$80 to US$350 a month.</p>
<p>This is key because it can turn communities from being hostile to becoming champions of the effort. It also helps to create trust.</p>
<p>At the height of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia’s Montserrado County – where the capital is situated – we had 5,700 community leaders working with the response teams. They were able to visit 1.6 million households and identify thousands of sick people who were then either classified as suspect or probable cases by the more trained contact tracers.</p>
<p>These volunteers defeated Ebola because communities trusted them. Flying in foreigners at great cost <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/security-challenge-community-distrust-and-resistance">has been less effective</a> because communities don’t have the same level of trust in them.</p>
<h2>3. Recruit trusted messengers</h2>
<p>Misinformation, disinformation and rumours make response efforts difficult. It can create great hostility to response teams. The recruitment of messengers trusted by communities, and armed with the right message, is key.</p>
<p>During the 2014/2015 oubreak, we targeted influential people within a community. They included a former fighter during the Liberian civil war - people respected him because he was a part of group that protected them from armed robbers.</p>
<h2>4. Rapid field testing should be used</h2>
<p>Fast testing and short turnaround times are crucial to isolating cases and preventing further spread.</p>
<p>In the West Africa outbreak, our teams would ask a family to isolate a suspected case in a different room. They would then draw blood and send the sample to the field lab. Within three hours we had the results. If the person was positive we moved them to the isolation centre. If negative, we asked them to self-isolate for 48 hours so we could test them again. This allowed the families to call us as soon as they suspected that one of them had fever.</p>
<p>We also did oral swabs of all dead bodies in the communities. This helped us to pick up cases of silent super spreaders who had spread the virus <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/10/how-bloody-brawl-sparked-fears-new-ebola-outbreak-liberia-318442.html">but were misdiagnosed</a> in the community.</p>
<p>Both of these approaches helped us to restore confidence with the community and gave us much speed.</p>
<h2>5. Increase surveillance of all vehicles</h2>
<p>Since this outbreak is occurring at a major road leading to Kampala and DRC, the surveillance of all vehicles is critical.</p>
<p>In Liberia, we recruited and trained motorbike riders and transport vehicle riders. We gave them ledgers and notebooks and embedded them with our surveillance teams. They tracked all sick people and even took records of drivers who missed work. These were visited at home to see if they were sick.</p>
<p>Tracing – documenting the full address and host – was done on all recent passengers. This helped us to tightly monitor the movements of people from the epicentre.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mosoka Fallah works as the Program Manager for Saving Lives and Livelihoods at the Africa Center for Disease Control</span></em></p>When tackling an Ebola outbreak speed is a critical element - every hour counts.Mosoka Fallah, Part-time lecturer at the Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, and Lecturer at the School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of LiberiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1769752022-03-14T12:21:20Z2022-03-14T12:21:20ZSettler colonialism helps explain current events in Xinjiang and Ukraine – and the history of Australia and US, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450748/original/file-20220308-23-65clzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstration for the rights of the Uyghurs in Berlin, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demonstration_for_the_rights_of_the_Uyghurs_in_Berlin_2020-01-19_09.jpg">Leonhard Lenz, Wikimedia Commons </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Global flashpoints, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese actions in Xinjiang, share a common background: a previous history of invasion and occupation. </p>
<p>The northwestern region of Xinjiang, for example, became an autonomous region under <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Xinjiang-Chinas-Muslim-Borderland/Starr/p/book/9780765613189">Chinese rule in 1955</a>. Officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, this mainly Turkic, Muslim area is viewed by the Chinese as a <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2018.1534801">possible threat</a> to China’s security and territorial integrity. </p>
<p>The government in Beijing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24364952">encouraged mass migration</a> of Han Chinese into Xinjiang, which fomented resentment among the local Uyghur people. After clashes in 2009 that caused more than 200 deaths and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/islamist-china-tiananmen-beijing-attack">2013 terrorist attack</a> in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese cracked down with aggressive policing and <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-researched-uighur-society-in-china-for-8-years-and-watched-how-technology-opened-new-opportunities-then-became-a-trap-119615">extreme surveillance</a>. Hundreds of thousands of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/24/hrw-china-targets-uighurs-with-more-prosecutions-prison-terms">Uyghurs have been jailed</a>, more than 1 million detained in “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037">reeducation camps</a>,” and China has been accused of <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-china-committing-genocide-against-the-uyghurs-180979490/">genocide</a>. </p>
<p>These tactics of invasion and occupation can also be seen in the way 250,000 Russians moved to Crimea after it was <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/crimea-six-years-after-illegal-annexation/">annexed in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>Academics sometimes refer to these tactics as “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086534.2013.768099">settler colonialism</a>.” As a strategy of subjugation, it has many historical precedents and it provides an important lens for understanding geopolitics in various parts of today’s world. </p>
<h2>Two types of empire</h2>
<p>History is studded with empires. Broadly speaking, there are two types. </p>
<p>British rule in India exemplifies an empire of control, where imperialists extract wealth and resources without large-scale emigration from the colonizing country. The importation of the wealth of India, especially its textiles, was an essential requirement of Britain’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598220">Industrial Revolution</a>.</p>
<p>There are also empires of settlement that occupy colonial territories by moving in large numbers of settlers. Across the world, especially in the lightly settled open grasslands of Australia and the Americas, the original inhabitants were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/18380743.2013.771761">displaced and marginalized</a> as their homeland was taken by treaty, sale, guile and theft. </p>
<p>The process often involved brute force or ethnic cleansing as land was seized and handed over to immigrants. In Australia, the British justified colonization by declaring the continent “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4Lp_zzaVl7gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA121&dq=+land+rights+Australia&ots=n8SHLeMQ02&sig=enu8gL4dgOqpB5UDyrFKXi_I1to#v=onepage&q=land%20rights%20Australia&f=false">terra nullius</a>” – that is, empty and uninhabited. </p>
<p>Settler colonies were used to safeguard the edges of empires. A <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/705117">policy used by the Qing dynasty</a> (1644-1912) that moved ethnic Chinese settlers into recently captured territory is still used today in <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/23624/9789048544905.pdf?sequence=1#page=518">Tibet</a> and <a href="https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/9781526153128/9781526153128.00007.xml">Xinjiang</a>. Both imperial Russia and the former Soviet Union encouraged citizens to settle border regions, so today at least <a href="https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:44413/">20% of the population of Ukraine</a> is ethnic Russian. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="people dressed in winter coats carry their belongings through the snow, with a destroyed bridge in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450757/original/file-20220308-25-p0jl7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civilians continue to flee from Irpin because of ongoing Russian attacks in Irpin, Ukraine on March 8, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civilians-continue-to-flee-from-irpin-due-to-ongoing-news-photo/1239025598">Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Settler colonialism</h2>
<p>Many settler empires rose in the 18th and 19th centuries and continued well into the 20th century. In Africa, for example, settler societies were established by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2018.1429868">the British in Kenya</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2018.1429868">the French in Algeria</a> and the Dutch in <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315544816-25">South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>The colonists who moved in, often in large numbers, were typically white Europeans who took control over the land, lives and economy of Indigenous peoples. There were exceptions, though. In <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KiglDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA215&dq=settler+colonialism+Liberia&ots=FC-bOo_rLT&sig=wKbbbTg5R0gNm6u_cMxtqNJMIc8#v=onepage&q=settler%20colonialism%20Liberia&f=false">Liberia</a>, Black Americans settled in the land of Black Africans; in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4gxmDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=settler+colonialism+israel&ots=9cEJ4hYVFP&sig=REiAPCcCH-XhlnziblfvwjlVgtc#v=onepage&q=settler%20colonialism%20israel&f=false">Israel</a>, mainly Jewish immigrants took over the land of Arab populations; and in <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/gr2p/13/1/article-p9_9.xml">China</a>, the majority Han people moved into non-Han areas.</p>
<p>My research into the interactions between <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DQvhwDsXDVsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=John+Rennie+Short+cartographic+encounters&ots=SP3tSTaJHY&sig=rlsFbXCwPg2ZGIR3pmhCHUuBR9w#v=onepage&q=John%20Rennie%20Short%20cartographic%20encounters&f=false">Indigenous people and European settlers in North America</a> and resistance to cultural integration by an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.583576">Indigenous art movement in central Australia</a> has offered me a different way to view history. Looking at the past through a lens of settler colonialism substantially changes how we view histories of many countries, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429433733">Australia</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40388468">Canada</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_71-1">New Zealand</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6P00EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=settler+colonialism+South+Africa&ots=w7hs3O2qQU&sig=2BOHtgf2j-tWBfNnrL4VxXpYtp8#v=onepage&q=settler%20colonialism%20South%20Africa&f=false">South Africa</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515613166">U.S</a>. </p>
<h2>Today’s issues, viewed through a colonial lens</h2>
<p>Most settler societies are steeped in a prejudiced history in which racial categories define who has power. One strategy has been to make full citizenship available only to settlers and their offspring. Some of the more extreme examples include racialized rule in South Africa that created brutal apartheid and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872819870585">traumatized generations</a> of aboriginal Australians. </p>
<p>There is also a long history of child abuse, with Indigenous children taken from their homes to be assimilated into settler society. Emerging evidence of these practices, including those experienced by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1064081667/canada-pledges-40-billion-abuses-indigenous-children">Indigenous children in Canada’s residential schools</a>, is helping to rewrite the history books from the Indigenous – rather than just from the settler – perspective.</p>
<p>By restricting immigration, some countries – including Australia, Canada and the U.S., among others – have tried to maintain their racial or ethnic identities and their power. Many of these <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Not-A-Nation-of-Immigrants-P1641.aspx">policies</a> were weakened only in recent years.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>But in acts of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.583576">amazing resilience</a>, Indigenous societies have resisted cultural assimilation, political marginalization and economic insecurity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Horse-drawn carriages are scattered across a deep and flat landscape in a black and white photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451460/original/file-20220310-19-mx38c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Settlers raced into what was then known as ‘Indian Territory’ as the sound of a gunshot opened the area to white settlement on Sept. 16, 1893. The land rush marked the early beginnings of the state of Oklahoma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/OklahomaLandRush/268e07ac3a86436eaa8c0c49839bc258/photo?Query=American%20Indians&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=7118&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/A.A. Forbes</a></span>
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<p>Land is a key issue, as Indigenous groups continue to pursue land claims and resist land grabs. From ongoing <a href="https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=poli_honors">Mapuche claims</a> in Chile to aboriginal Australians’ <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4Lp_zzaVl7gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA121&dq=+land+rights+Australia&ots=n8SHLeMQ02&sig=enu8gL4dgOqpB5UDyrFKXi_I1to#v=onepage&q=land%20rights%20Australia&f=false">successful campaign</a> to overturn the legality of “terra nullius,” land seized by settlers is being disputed. </p>
<p>New facts and greater awareness of the racist nature of settler societies are challenging the triumphalist view of progress. New information is providing a darker understanding of the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240">ethnic genocide</a> and the devastating impacts of the loss of both land and cultural identity.</p>
<p>This isn’t just history. Unequal, brutal treatment of settlers and indigenous peoples continues in today’s settler societies, not least of all in Xinjiang and in Ukraine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Rennie Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is history really a triumphant march of progress? It depends on your point of view.John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1691662021-10-11T15:07:52Z2021-10-11T15:07:52ZPapers show what lay behind Condé regime’s Ebola denialism in Guinea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425254/original/file-20211007-23-g2ijth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Liberia and Sierra Leone actively sought international aid to combat Ebola in 2014, Guinea downplayed the extent of the deadly disease. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Ahmed Jallanzo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than 11,300 people died when the Ebola virus ripped through <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/ebola-outbreak-2014-2016-West-Africa">three West African countries</a> – Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia – from 2014 to 2016. It was the worst Ebola outbreak in known history. </p>
<p>But the differences in responses to the outbreak, particularly in its early stages, were puzzling. While the outbreak worsened during the March-October 2014 period, Liberia and Sierra Leone emphatically sought global assistance. They and other states highlighted the danger the virus posed to local, <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/25/remarks-president-obama-un-meeting-ebola">regional and global stability</a>. Guinea’s reaction, in contrast, was to downplay the epidemic. President Alpha Condé insisted his government <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X20303026">had the outbreak under control</a>.</p>
<p>As it’s one of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1750136">poorest countries in the world</a>, with little infrastructure, and virtually no health infrastructure, why would anyone believe President Condé’s assertion?</p>
<p>For me, this reaction did not appear to be in line with the severity of the outbreak, its potential economic destruction, the general risks to the population, and Guinea’s overall stability. </p>
<p>I decided to find out why Guinea reacted this way. And I <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X20303026">concluded</a> that the reason was fear that Ebola would panic investors. Condé’s initial response was indicative of a pattern among some leaders to prioritise the perception of political and economic health instead of the health of their citizens. As in the current pandemic, this pattern is not unique to Guinea or <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2020.1819641">to the Ebola outbreak</a></p>
<h2>Behind Guinea’s Ebola denialism</h2>
<p>In October 2014, I filed a <a href="https://www.foia.gov/">Freedom of Information Act</a> request with the US Departments of State and Defense for information and communiqués related to the Ebola outbreak from the US embassies in Conakry, Freetown and Monrovia. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marburg-in-guinea-the-value-of-lessons-from-managing-other-haemorrhagic-outbreaks-167392">Marburg in Guinea: the value of lessons from managing other haemorrhagic outbreaks</a>
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<p>After three years of prodding and waiting, both agencies delivered sets of documents that showed a blunt assessment of events in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the March-October 2014 period.</p>
<p>But Condé told US embassy officials that Guinea had the outbreak under control. The documents presented a series of communiqués that provided assessments of the Ebola outbreaks in the three countries during the March-October 2014 period. The assessments were provided by high ranking US embassy staff, up to the level of US ambassadors. </p>
<p>What I <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X20303026">found</a> confirmed President Condé’s downplaying of the outbreak. It also revealed one of his potential motives in doing so. </p>
<p>The story these documents told revealed policy failures that had their roots in both Guinea’s underdevelopment and in the <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20141219_R40703_c0408908fa72d1579006812f42d18528c2b0c125.pdf">deeply corrupt relationship</a> between mining interests and the government. </p>
<p>If you want to understand what a government’s priorities are, an examination of its budget spending can help. In 2017, the latest available data indicated that Guinea spent only 4.1% of its government budget <a href="https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#">on healthcare</a>. But it spent 10.2% of its budget on its military. That number declined in 2020 to 8.2%, but was still double the healthcare expenditures.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ebola-strikes-west-africa-again-key-questions-and-lessons-from-the-past-155566">Ebola strikes West Africa again: key questions and lessons from the past</a>
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<p>Overall, Guinea ranks 178 out of 189 countries on the World Bank’s <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2020.pdf">Human Development Index</a>. The index is a composite measure of health, education and income. It’s used as a measure of human poverty and capability that extends beyond just income.</p>
<p>Guinea’s mining interests also played a role. As the Ebola epidemic was unfolding in March 2014 – after the Guinean government acknowledged the presence of the virus – corruption scandals and mining contract issues that had been simmering since Condé took office <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/reports/guineas-deal-century/">finally boiled up</a>. </p>
<p>Condé’s government needed more investors to develop Guinea’s mining sector. The country is home to the world’s largest supply of high-grade bauxite, the key component in the making of aluminium, and one of the world’s <a href="https://www.azomining.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=42">largest untapped iron ore deposits</a>.</p>
<p>For Condé, the opportunity to advance this and other projects came with the first <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/us-africa-leaders-summit">US-Africa Leaders Summit</a> held in Washington in August 2014. The summit was critical for kick-starting a new round of investment after the previous regime’s mining arrangements collapsed. </p>
<p>The Guinean delegation to the conference – the only one of the three Ebola-stricken countries to attend – <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X20303026">explained</a> that they thought the heightened attention accorded to Ebola in the run-up to the summit would unfairly refuel Guinea’s image as “too risky” and might scare off investors.</p>
<p>While the summit produced help in the Ebola crisis, Condé also conducted high level meetings with mining investors to discuss over US$20 billion in investments. </p>
<p>Ebola denialism in Guinea had its roots in a fear that Ebola would panic investors. On August 14, 2014 after the US summit, Condé ordered a national health emergency, months after the outbreak was declared. The delay in casting Ebola as a national emergency in Guinea <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X20303026">contributed</a> to growing infection rates and deaths in the country. </p>
<h2>Quest for power trumps public welfare</h2>
<p>Condé’s approach to the Ebola crisis and his courting of business and mining interests <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/723809">continued a history</a> of African leaders who employ extraversion strategies. These strategies allow elites to marshal resources and finances that are derived from their external global relationships. Such leaders have opened their economies to investors, letting them <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/723809">divert resources for corrupt purposes</a> that extend their political and economic control in the state.</p>
<p>Such policies provided the basis for Condé to consolidate power through a stronger patrimonial network and tighter personal and familial control over the country’s mining interests. That control gave him confidence when he sought to extend his time in office beyond the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54657359">constitutionally prescribed two terms</a>. </p>
<p>Condé got a third term in office <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54657359">in 2020</a>. But his government was overthrown in a military coup <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58468750">in September 2021</a>. The coup leader, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, cited Condé’s lack of leadership, his corruption, and Guinea’s lack of development as motivation. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guinea-coup-highlights-the-weaknesses-of-west-africas-regional-body-167650">Guinea coup highlights the weaknesses of West Africa's regional body</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Guinea’s lack of development, though not new, is particularly poignant as the country moves through its current COVID-19 wave, with little or no improvement in its basic and medical infrastructure. Notably, Doumbouya was quick to assure mining investors that <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1034587283/guineas-military-declared-coup-future-uncertain">their contracts were safe</a>. </p>
<h2>Future uncertain</h2>
<p>Condé’s pursuit of mining interests during the Ebola crisis may have foreshadowed his demise as he tightened his grip over power and <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2020/08/04/guinean-opposition-alleges-largescale-corruption-by-president-alpha-conde//">plundered the state’s wealth</a>, as many before him did.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guinea-has-a-long-history-of-coups-here-are-5-things-to-know-about-the-country-167618">Guinea has a long history of coups: here are 5 things to know about the country</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>While Guinea’s people were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/09/06/guinea-coup-explained/">happy to see him go</a>, the country’s <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1894">history of corrupt leaders</a> and persistent <a href="https://www.lexafrica.com/2019/08/guinea-emerging-from-the-shadows/">underdevelopment</a> mean hope for real change may be a dream under a new military regime.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Ostergard, Jr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Alpha Condé’s pursuit of mining interests during the Ebola crisis may have foreshadowed his demise as he tightened his grip over power and plundered the state’s wealth.Robert Ostergard, Jr, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Nevada, RenoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1673922021-09-12T08:22:02Z2021-09-12T08:22:02ZMarburg in Guinea: the value of lessons from managing other haemorrhagic outbreaks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419655/original/file-20210906-15-jcxilr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photo taken in August 2015 of disinfected gloves and boots at an Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, Guinea. Lessons are being drawn to manage the Marburg virus.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cellou Binani/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on in Africa amid insufficient vaccination rollout, viral haemorrhagic fever has again raised its head. This adds to public health turmoil on the continent where resources to respond to emerging and re-emerging epidemic prone zoonotic diseases remain limited.</p>
<p>In the first week of August 2021, a Marburg <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/news/west-africas-first-ever-case-marburg-virus-disease-confirmed-guinea">virus disease outbreak</a> was declared in south-western Guinea. This was the same area in which the recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease occurred and only weeks after the end of the Ebola outbreak was <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/news/ebola-outbreak-guinea-declared-over">declared</a>.</p>
<p>To date, 14 outbreaks of Marburg virus disease have been reported since 1967. These have been mostly in <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/25-october-2017-marburg-uganda-en">sub-Saharan Africa</a>. The most recent case in Guinea is the first <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/news/west-africas-first-ever-case-marburg-virus-disease-confirmed-guinea">reported</a> in West Africa. However, evidence of Marburg virus circulation has been reported from countries where Marburg virus disease cases have not been diagnosed to date. These include <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28710694/">Gabon, Zambia, and Sierra Leone</a>. </p>
<p>The first recognised outbreak of Marburg virus disease in Africa occurred <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20407721">in 1975 in South Africa</a>. It was an imported case from Zimbabwe. Imported cases from Uganda were reported in 2008 in the US and the Netherlands and one laboratory infection was diagnosed in Russia in 2004. To date the largest and deadliest outbreak occurred in Angola in 2004–2005.</p>
<p>Recurrent outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fevers are a major burden on countries such as Guinea where health care systems are already under threat.</p>
<p>Fortunately, many African countries are experienced in managing outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fevers. Guinean health authorities have been able to respond rapidly and implement measures <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/guinea/defeating-ebola-guinea-through-better-experience">learnt during the Ebola</a> outbreak to control the spread of Marburg. This has included rapid deployment of multidisciplinary teams, diagnosis, contact tracing, isolation and treatment of patients. </p>
<p>The existence of treatment centres greatly facilitated rapid treatment of suspected cases and confirmed cases, and medical expertise improved patient care. </p>
<h2>Marburg virus</h2>
<p>Marburg virus belongs to the same family as the Ebola viruses. It causes sporadic, but often fatal disease in humans and non-human primates. Studies implicate the Egyptian rousette bat, <em>Rousettus aegyptiacus (Pteropodidae family)</em>, as the prime reservoir host. Entering the roosting habitats, including caves and mining activities have been associated with Marburg virus transmission to humans.</p>
<p>The virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, bodily secretions and/or tissues of infected persons or wild animals, for example monkeys and bats. It can also be transmitted through contact with surfaces and materials like bedding or clothing contaminated with these fluids. </p>
<p>The incubation period varies from 2 to 21 days. Symptoms include fever, malaise, body aches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and internal haemorrhaging (bleeding). </p>
<p>Marburg virus can be difficult to distinguish from other tropical common febrile illnesses, because of the similarities in the clinical presentation. Based on the laboratory confirmed cases, infection with Marburg virus can result in death in 23% to 90% of patients.</p>
<p>There is no specific antiviral treatment or preventative vaccine. Supportive care includes intravenous fluids, replacement of electrolytes, supplemental oxygen, and replacement of blood and blood products may significantly improve the clinical outcome.</p>
<p>Marburg virus can spread easily between people if appropriate preventive measures are not in place. These include personal protection, barriers nursing, safe management of funerals, case finding, contact tracing, isolation and treatment of patient.</p>
<p>The virus is potentially prone to cause formidable epidemics with serious public health consequences.</p>
<h2>Important steps</h2>
<p>The area in Guinea where the case of Marburg virus disease was detected shares close borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia. The movement of people locally and across borders could lead to the potential spread. That’s why the following steps are key:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the deployment of well-prepared response teams <a href="https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/ebola-and-marburg-virus-disease-epidemics-preparedness-alert-control-and-evaluation">at national and district level</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>surveillance and coordinated efforts within and between countries. </p></li>
<li><p>surveillance at points of entry.</p></li>
<li><p>contact tracing and active case finding in health facilities and at the community level.</p></li>
<li><p>investigations aiming at identification of the source of the infection.</p></li>
<li><p>laboratory testing without delay.</p></li>
<li><p>community engagement. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>It is also vitally important to educate the public and raise community awareness about the risk factors and the protective measures individuals can take to reduce their exposure. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>avoiding close physical contact with someone who is thought to have contracted the virus.</p></li>
<li><p>the transfer of any suspected case to a health facility for treatment and isolation.</p></li>
<li><p>the immediate and safe burial of people who have died from the virus.</p></li>
<li><p>the use of infection prevention and control precautions by health-care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed Marburg virus disease. This is to avoid any exposure to blood and/or bodily fluids, as well as unprotected contact with a possibly contaminated environment.</p></li>
<li><p>wildlife to be handled with gloves and appropriate protective clothing to reduce the risk of spread.</p></li>
<li><p>animal products (blood and meat) to be cooked thoroughly before eating. Raw meat should be avoided.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Community involvement is essential to respond effectively and control an outbreak. This must be supported by primary health care systems to gain greater participation and commitment.</p>
<h2>What needs to be fixed</h2>
<p>A number of factors get in the way of researching, responding to and controlling zoonotic diseases in Africa. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>insufficient and un-coordinated surveillance and research programmes. </p></li>
<li><p>limited regional capacity to develop new and improved diagnostic assays. </p></li>
<li><p>shortage of maximum containment facilities.</p></li>
<li><p>lack of strategic biobanks for long-term and secure storage of reference clinical materials, strains and pathogen biodiversity.</p></li>
<li><p>lack of regional External Quality Assurance programmes for dangerous endemic viral and bacterial pathogens.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>A timely, streamlined, well-funded and efficient disease reporting and surveillance system is essential to monitor the threat of potential epidemics. To strengthen the efficiency of responding quickly, each nation must improve its own capacity in disease recognition and laboratory competence. </p>
<p>We also need innovative African-driven approaches to make the necessary quantum leap in the development of scientific capacity for surveillance and control of infectious diseases. </p>
<p>Global initiatives aiming at improving health security, emergency preparedness and health systems are also important. However, a great deal of work is needed at the higher level of national governance to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Groome receives funding from the South African Medical Research Council and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prof Janusz T. Paweska received funding from the CDC Global Disease Detection Program for investigating the occurrence of zoonotic pathogens in South African bat populations, from the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation for experimental infections of bats with Ebola and Marburg viruses and for Marburg virus transmission study by bat-associated ectoparasites, and from the South African Medical Research Council for investigating the molecular epidemiology of Ebola virus disease in West Africa and the development of diagnostic capacity.</span></em></p>Many African countries are experienced in managing outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fevers and many of the lessons learnt from the Ebola can be applied to the Marburg outbreak.Michelle J. Groome, Head of the Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response, National Institute for Communicable DiseasesJanusz Paweska, Head of the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases, National Institute for Communicable DiseasesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1657732021-08-15T09:03:19Z2021-08-15T09:03:19ZIn search of advantages: Israel’s observer status in the African Union<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415852/original/file-20210812-24-z1fep5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rwanda's President Paul Kagame meets Israel's then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulkagame/35029583353">Paul Kagame/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since its establishment as a <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-israel#:%7E:text=On%20May%2014%2C%201948%2C%20David,nation%20on%20the%20same%20day.">state in 1948</a>, Israel has placed great importance on foreign policy. This is because it had been under a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/1977-04-01/middle-east-arab-boycott-israel?amp">political and economic boycott</a> by surrounding Arab states. The boycott has been falling apart since the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/israel-egyptian-peace-agreement-signed">1979 peace treaty with Egypt</a>. But it is still in place with countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Algeria and Libya. </p>
<p>As a result Israel pursues reliable political allies and trading partners on the periphery of the Arab world – and beyond. </p>
<p>This is true in Africa too. Israel’s strongest relations on the continent are with countries in west, central and east Africa. It now has <a href="https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/israel-hebrew/benjamin-netanyahu-resetting-israel-africa-relations/">diplomatic relations</a> with 46 of the <a href="https://au.int/">55 African Union member states</a>.</p>
<p>The recent <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/23/israel-granted-observer-status-at-the-african-union">decision</a> by the African Union to grant Israel observer status has once again raised the profile of Israel’s relations with the continent. </p>
<p>For over half a decade under former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure, Israel lobbied hard for this outcome. </p>
<p>Netanyahu visited sub-Saharan Africa in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/world/africa/israel-africa-netanyahu-uganda-kenya-rwanda.html">July 2016</a>, the first Israeli head of state to visit since Levi Eshkol in 1966. In addition to encouraging further political and economic ties, his mission was to secure the support of African leaders for observer status at the African Union. </p>
<p>He carefully chose Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Ethiopia and Kenya had had close ties with Israel in the past. And they were engaged in security cooperation against the threat of Islamist terrorism and were sympathetic to Israel’s goal of achieving African Union observer status. </p>
<p>Connections with Uganda were developing, while Rwanda’s leader Paul Kagame shared an affinity with Israel given his country’s experience with genocide. </p>
<p>The following year Netanyahu visited Liberia <a href="https://www.africanews.com/amp/2017/06/04/israeli-prime-minister-woos-west-african-leaders-to-join-forces/">to address</a> the 15-member countries of the Economic Community of West African States – the first non-African head of state to do so. He made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sFRsPT-OTFY&autoplay=1">an appeal</a> for political support in return for economic aid and technical assistance in sectors such as agriculture, water resources, energy and health.</p>
<p>He also lobbied for African Union observer status. Israeli officials – both in public and private – continued with these efforts in the intervening years.</p>
<p>In recent years, Israel has made inroads in North Africa too. In 2019 it re-established relations with Chad, which had been broken off in 1972 because of Israel’s then-continued occupation of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula since the 1967 War. The current African Union Commission chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, who granted Israel observer status in late July 2021, comes from Chad. Mahamat’s decision was supported by the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s president and current chairman of the African Union, Félix Tshisekedi. </p>
<p>Israel also has normalised relations with Morocco and Sudan through the <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/">Abraham Accords</a>. These were brokered by the US and came into action initially with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signing the agreement in August 2020.</p>
<p>The reasons for wanting observer status are not hard to decipher. Firstly, Palestine <a href="https://egyptindependent.com/au-grants-palestine-observer-status/">had been granted observer status</a> in the African Union in 2013. Secondly, African countries form a large bloc at the United Nations and many vote in a similar fashion. Israeli policymakers felt that the African Union would be an easier place to lobby for their positions in the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel had had observer status in the Organisation of African Unity. But <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-19-years-after-its-ouster-african-union-reinstates-israel-as-an-observer-country-1.10020545">it was denied</a> the status when the African Union replaced the Organisation of African Unity in 2002. </p>
<p>Israel hopes to get African countries to support it on issues of political interest at the United Nations, and at the very least to abstain or absent themselves. Beyond that, Israel wants to increase security cooperation and economic ties. This includes the sale of civilian as well as military items. </p>
<p>Observer status at the African Union enables Israel to have closer contacts with African policymakers and to address attendees of the organisation’s meetings. </p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>During the 1950s, as the Cold War evolved, Israel placed emphasis on ties with the US and countries in Western Europe. </p>
<p>At the same time there was a hope of developing promising relations with the independent states in Asia. The <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/bandung-conf">Bandung Conference of 1954</a> stymied these efforts as Israel was not invited to the gathering. Many of its prominent figures would later establish the <a href="https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/non-aligned-movement-nam/">Non-Aligned Movement</a>, which often opposed Israel’s policies, especially towards the Palestinians.</p>
<p>One of the consequences was that when African states began achieving their independence in the 1960s, a number received a great deal of interest from Israeli policymakers. Two factors drove Israeli efforts. One was a desire to counteract diplomatic movements by Egypt. Another was an attempt to portray Israel as a model for development and as an alternative to the former imperial European states as a conveyor of technical assistance. </p>
<p>However, all African countries, except apartheid South Africa, Malawi, Eswatini, Lesotho, and Mauritius, broke off formal relations with Israel around the time of the 1973 War. This was due to the continued occupation of Arab territory <a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt9309h7t3/qt9309h7t3.pdf?t=mnipnf">as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War</a>.</p>
<p>Some informal ties through embassies and business relations were maintained until many African countries began re-establishing relations with Israel at the end of the Cold War. This was also a period during which Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation began a process that resulted in normalising ties.</p>
<h2>Opposition</h2>
<p>South Africa <a href="https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/south-africa-downgrade-embassy-in-israel-to-liaison-office-585883/amp">downgraded its representation</a> in Israel in 2019 from an embassy to a liaison office over Israel’s actions in Gaza in 2018. South Africa has been at the forefront of the <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/">Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign</a> against Israel. The organisation’s raison d’etre is that isolating Israel will force it to relinquish Palestinian territory in the West Bank and end its blockade of Gaza. The movement has some appeal among left-wing individuals and groups in the west. But it is largely ignored by other African states.</p>
<p>The strong feelings of the South African government and the ruling African National Congress party are driven by two factors. The first is Israel’s military – and possibly nuclear – cooperation with the apartheid regime. The second is the affinity that many South Africans have with the Palestinian cause for self-determination. </p>
<p>South Africa was the country most strongly opposed to Mahamat’s decision. </p>
<p>However, most African countries have chosen to separate the issue of the Palestinians from economic cooperation with Israel, even though a number still vote against Israel on political issues at international forums such as the United Nations.</p>
<p>Some, like South Africa, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/28/shocking-south-africa-slams-israels-au-observer-status">opposed Israel’s observer status</a> on the grounds of its treatment of the Palestinians and the continued occupation of their territory. They <a href="https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/botswana-and-three-other-african-countries-oppose-israels-au-observer-status/dwep03m">included</a> Arab League members Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Libya, Mauritania and Tunisia as well as Namibia and Botswana.</p>
<p>Just as vocal critics – such as South Africa and Algeria – could do nothing about Morocco’s readmission to the African Union, it remains to be seen what they can do about reversing the decision on Israel. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Israel has an important forum in which to lobby for its interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael B. Bishku does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most countries in Africa have chosen to separate the issue of the Palestinians from economic cooperation with Israel.Michael B. Bishku, Professor of Middle Eastern and African History, Augusta UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1579812021-03-31T13:34:35Z2021-03-31T13:34:35ZHas ECOWAS made West Africa a safer place? Yes, but its track record is lumpy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392569/original/file-20210330-19-1na56za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria's president Buhari chairing the 55th ordinary session of the ECOWAS.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Adam Abu Bashal/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In an article published in 1994 titled <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/">The Coming Anarchy</a>, the American journalist Robert Kaplan predicted an impending Armageddon for West Africa due to what he considered its notoriety for breeding crime, coups and tyrannical regimes. Twenty-six years later, it bears examining whether the region has measured up to this grim forecast.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021909615570951">paper</a>, I examined how the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had fared in the context of some emerging and recurring security threats in the region. These included jihadist terrorism, <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/gulf-of-guinea-piracy-a-symptom-not-a-cause-of-insecurity">drug trafficking and piracy</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/10/30/threats-to-democracy-in-africa-the-rise-of-the-constitutional-coup/">unconstitutional changes of government</a>. </p>
<p>ECOWAS was <a href="https://www.ecowas.int/about-ecowas/history/">formed in 1975</a> by West African states to accelerate economic growth and development in the region. Its member states include Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Nigeria. The adoption of the Accord on Non-aggression and Defence in 1978 marked the inroads of ECOWAS into security <a href="https://codesria.org/IMG/pdf/sesay.pdf">regionalism</a> as a prerequisite for the attainment of economic integration. </p>
<p>I assessed the progress of ECOWAS in resolving the main security challenges in the region. I concluded that there are reasons to be optimistic. But recent conflict trends have reignited a great deal of concern about the political stability of the region. </p>
<p>I <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021909615570951">concluded</a> that ECOWAS is limited in what it can achieve. Nonetheless, it needs to be decisive in enforcing its protocols and policies and sanctioning member states and governing elites who flout them. </p>
<h2>Democracy landscape</h2>
<p>I reviewed the period between 1989 and 2020. </p>
<p>One of the categories of political instability I looked at was trends in constitutional coups. </p>
<p>Within this period, unconstitutional changes of government accounted for a high percentage of the conflicts in the region. These <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26295349?seq=1%22">included</a> Liberia (1989–2005), Sierra Leone (1991–2002), Cote d’Ivoire (1992–2002; 2010–2011), Guinea Conakry (2007–2010), and Guinea Bissau (2005–2009). </p>
<p>Only <a href="https://www.oecd.org/swac/publications/38961785.pdf">Cape Verde and Senegal</a> were spared a military coup. Even so, the erstwhile president of Senegal, the then 86-year-old Abdoulaye Wade, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/1/28/controversy-of-abdoulaye-wades-presidential-bid">did attempt a constitutional coup in 2012</a> to run for a third term. </p>
<p>In response to many of these developments, ECOWAS deployed both military and diplomatic tactics at different times. For instance, ECOWAS deployed the military in the Liberia and Sierra Leone conflicts and recorded a modicum of success, but this intervention was controversial because of alleged <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/liberia/">human rights abuses</a>.</p>
<p>Diplomacy was deployed in 2012, when a festering <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0975087813515979">terrorist challenge and Tuareg rebellion</a> in Mali led to the ousting of President Amadou Toumani Touré in a putsch. ECOWAS initiated a <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52122968.pdf">mediated</a> settlement with the junta to restore constitutional order while granting them amnesty. It failed to deploy a military tactic due to lack of capacity and disagreements by member states. </p>
<p>However, the use of Blaise Compaoré as mediator in the Mali intervention contradicted the organisation’s protocols given his despotic tactics at home. Compaoré was eventually <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/blaise-compaore-burkina-faso-president-resigns-after-violent-protests-1.2819254">toppled by a popular protest</a> in 2014. </p>
<p>After a military coup in Burkina Faso in 2015, ECOWAS returned the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/25/burkina-faso-foiled-military-coup">interim president</a>, Michel Kafando, to office. And it facilitated a political transition in the Gambia in 2017. </p>
<p>Yet it has been ineffectual in dismantling the Gnassingbé dynasty in Togo. And it failed to deplore the move by Alpha Condé of Guinea to push through a <a href="https://africacenter.org/spotlight/defusing-political-crisis-guinea/">constitutional referendum</a> in March 2020. This saw him return to power for a third term as president.</p>
<p>Similarly, President Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire capitalised on a new constitution and ran for a third term in 2020 amid some <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/7/ivory-coast-president-alassane-ouattara-to-run-for-third-term">violent protests in the country</a>. According to Adam K. Abebe in the Africa Report, the <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/34674/cote-divoire-ouattaras-bid-for-3rd-term-opens-up-a-can-of-worms/">new constitution</a> </p>
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<p>“retains the two-term limit on presidential aspirants but says nothing about terms served prior to its adoption”. </p>
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<p>In 2020, Mali was back in the spotlight when a popular <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54134614">uprising and coup</a> ended the administration of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. This time, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/62698/mali-a-whos-who-of-bah-ndaws-transitional-government-cabinet">ECOWAS imposed</a> economic sanctions and gave a deadline for the military to hand over to a transitional government.</p>
<p>Overall, I found that ECOWAS’s achievements in responding to the crises of governance wrecking the region have been strained by the non-compliance of its own leaders with its <a href="http://www.internationaldemocracywatch.org/attachments/350_ECOWAS%20Protocol%20on%20Democracy%20and%20Good%20Governance.pdf">good governance protocol</a>. </p>
<h2>Drugs, piracy and terrorism</h2>
<p>One of the major security threats in the region is drug trafficking. Coastal states of Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Cape Verde, Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Senegal have become major transit routes for <a href="https://www.stabilityjournal.org/articles/abstract/10.5334/sta.df/">drug traffickers</a>. And <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/toc/Reports/TOCTAWestAfrica/West_Africa_TOC_COCAINE.pdf">substantial seizures of drugs</a> were made between 2005 and 2007. This challenge has been coupled with alarming <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/gulf-of-guinea-piracy-a-symptom-not-a-cause-of-insecurity">kidnappings at sea</a> in the Gulf of Guinea.</p>
<p>ECOWAS tried to address the drug crime through <a href="https://www.unodc.org/westandcentralafrica/en/ecowasresponseactionplan.html">the adoption of a policy in 2009</a> and a year later agreeing <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2010/November/new-initiative-to-improve-airport-intelligence-sharing-on-drug-trafficking-in-west-africa.html">the Dakar Initiative</a>. Most of its efforts have focused on <a href="https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/WACD_En_Report_WEB_051114.pdf">restricting the flow of drugs, strengthening borders, and prosecuting culprits</a>. </p>
<p>Then there is the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/africa/terrorism-west-africa.html">ongoing terrorism of Boko Haram</a> and its splinter sects in Nigeria. This has become a normalised phenomenon with seismic reverberations in neighbouring states. The challenge is compounded by the activities of armed bandits and kidnappers.</p>
<p>ECOWAS adopted a counter-terrorism strategy and implementation plan in 2013. This outlined <a href="https://www.ecowas.int/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMPLEMENTATION-PLAN-CT.pdf">three main pillars: prevent, pursue, reconstruct</a>. </p>
<p>The priority of member states has been to pursue culprits, with little investment in addressing the ideological and political conditions of violence. </p>
<p>There are also major shortfalls when it comes to the organisation’s military unit. The most pressing are corruption and a lack of sustained and improved training.</p>
<p>And, despite its measured progress, ECOWAS still has the critical challenge of resource scarcity. There is also the lack of will to follow through on the implementation of protocols, non-compliance with the protocols, a lack of leadership by members, the brutality of state forces and a general disconnect with the realities of people on the ground. </p>
<h2>The way ahead</h2>
<p>The decline of interstate violence and civil wars in West Africa, and the greater prominence of ECOWAS in conflict management, are perhaps indications that the security situation of West Africa didn’t turn out to be as gloomy as Kaplan forecast two decades ago. But there are important lessons that have been learnt. </p>
<p>The organisation should support and safeguard the rights of its citizens to stage peaceful protest as a way of balancing the excesses of politicians.</p>
<p>The people should use their rights granted by <a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5546&context=faculty_scholarship">Article 4 of the 2005 revised protocol</a> under the ECOWAS Court to seek justice in situations where they have been abused by the state or other oppressive groups.</p>
<p>ECOWAS should appoint individuals who are not former heads of state and do not hold political office as regional mediators. Given Nigeria’s mammoth internal challenges and weakened political clout, other countries within the region must step up and drive the organisation to achieve its mandate of becoming a <a href="https://www.ecowas.int/about-ecowas/vision-2020/">community of people</a> rather than an institution that enhances the status and profile of <a href="https://gup.ub.gu.se/file/119483">subversive regimes</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Maiangwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>ECOWAS needs to be decisive in enforcing its protocols and sanctioning members that flout the provisions of its protocols and policies.Benjamin Maiangwa, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Lakehead UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1556692021-02-21T08:34:58Z2021-02-21T08:34:58ZWhy Ebola is back in Guinea and why the response must be different this time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385274/original/file-20210219-19-1yq0dac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Efforts are underway to curb the outbreak. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CELLOU BINANI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>New reports of Ebola in Guinea are causing anxiety given the history of the <a href="https://www.who.int/features/ebola/storymap/en/">West Africa outbreak</a> of 2014-2016. This was the largest Ebola outbreak reported to date – 28,000 cases were recorded, including 11,000 deaths. It originated in Guinea and then spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia. The confirmed cases this time have been reported from the southeast of Guinea about 800km by road from the capital, Conakry, but only about 100km from various border points with Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. The concern is that the virus could spread to other locations in Guinea as well as neighbouring countries if it is not rapidly contained. Jacqueline Weyer answers questions about the latest outbreak.</em></p>
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<h2>What’s been done to keep new outbreaks from developing since 2016?</h2>
<p>The development, evaluation and registration of Ebola <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-asked-questions/ebola-vaccine">vaccines</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/treatment/index.html">antivirals</a> have been major activities in the years following the 2014-2016 outbreak. Since then, <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-asked-questions/ebola-vaccine">two vaccines have been pre-approved</a> by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and registered with different regulatory bodies. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ebola-strikes-west-africa-again-key-questions-and-lessons-from-the-past-155566">Ebola strikes West Africa again: key questions and lessons from the past</a>
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<p>During the <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/drc-2019">2018-2020 Ebola outbreak</a> in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a number of countries in the region established <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/14-02-2020-four-countries-in-the-african-region-license-vaccine-in-milestone-for-ebola-prevention">national registration</a> of these products as well. Nearly 50,000 people were vaccinated as part of the containment efforts in the DRC. Ring vaccination – vaccination of individuals in a ring around cases – with the Ebola vaccine is a vital tool in the prevention of the spread of the infection as it produces a barrier of immunity that disrupts the chain of transmission of the virus.</p>
<h2>Why has the disease returned?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/resources/virus-ecology.html">natural transmission cycle</a> of the virus involves certain species of forest-dwelling fruit bats. These act as a reservoir of the virus in nature and this cycle is continuous, ensuring that the virus is maintained in nature over time. The virus may, however, spill over from its natural reservoir either to other forest-dwelling animals or directly to humans to set off an epidemic in the human population. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ebola-vaccine-is-key-in-ongoing-efforts-to-contain-the-drc-outbreak-110924">Ebola vaccine is key in ongoing efforts to contain the DRC outbreak</a>
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<p>Ebola-infected animals such as non-human primates, monkeys and antelope have been reported before and could present a source of exposure to humans. For example, hunters or people slaughtering these animals come into contact with infected blood and tissues. But, it is also believed that spillover may occur through direct contact from infected bats into humans. The exact mechanism remains to be defined, but contact with infected blood and tissues are likely sources of infection. </p>
<p>The virus is always present in nature and, when circumstances allow for it, may jump from one species to another.</p>
<h2>What lessons from previous outbreaks are being applied now?</h2>
<p>There are many important lessons but, arguably, swift and sure action will make the difference. In the aftermath of the 2014-2016 outbreak, the apparent lag in the initial responses was a <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-016-3071-4">major critique</a> of the response efforts. </p>
<p>It is critical to contain the outbreak early before it spreads beyond ground zero to other locations in Guinea and to neighbouring countries. If this happens, more protracted and complicated efforts for containment will be required. </p>
<p>One feature that sets this outbreak apart is that it is happening against the backdrop of the COVID-19 global pandemic – which has health-care and other resources around the globe under severe pressure. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-coping-mechanisms-the-drc-is-putting-in-place-as-it-faces-ebola-measles-and-covid-19-140756">The coping mechanisms the DRC is putting in place as it faces Ebola, measles and COVID-19</a>
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<p>International support has been a mainstay in the containment efforts in West Africa, but also in most Ebola outbreaks reported to date. Time will tell how efforts to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic impact on Ebola containment efforts. </p>
<h2>Does Guinea have the health infrastructure to manage the disease?</h2>
<p>Access to healthcare in Guinea has improved marginally over the years. But the country struggles with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620307509?via%3Dihub">one of the worst health-care infrastructures in the world</a>. Most <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620309259?via%3Dihub">deaths in Guinea</a> remain associated with communicable, maternal and neonatal diseases and nutritional disorders. The Ebola outbreak of 2014-2016 did galvanise intensified efforts towards <a href="https://gn.usembassy.gov/guineas-government-collaborating-improve-health-care/">improving healthcare systems</a> in the country, but progress is slow. </p>
<p>Given that the West Africa Ebola outbreak ended only five years ago, one would assume that some of the infrastructure that was developed during the outbreak remains, and could be rapidly brought back in use. The “muscle memory” for public health response to Ebola gained from the previous outbreak in Guinea will be put to the test in the coming weeks.</p>
<h2>What’s the relationship between the outbreak in West Africa and central Africa?</h2>
<p>Studies conducted during and following the 2014-2016 outbreak show that the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4024086/"><em>Zaire ebolavirus</em> species</a> was circulating in local bat populations in West Africa before the outbreak. The genomic similarity of the Ebola viruses associated with the West Africa outbreak and Ebola viruses that have caused outbreaks in central Africa since <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4197285/#:%7E:text=Three%20of%20them%20were%20identified,Uganda%5B11%E2%80%9314%5D.">1976</a> supports the hypothesis that the virus did at some point spread from central Africa to West Africa.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when analysing the differences between these viruses, there is evidence for separate evolution over space and time. The exact mechanism of spread from central to West Africa remains unclear. But the transfer is plausible given, for example, that many <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631069116301287">fruit bat species</a> – some of which are implicated as natural reservoirs of Ebola virus – are migratory, and may migrate over large distances.</p>
<p>Efforts are under way to determine the <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/news/new-ebola-outbreak-declared-guinea">genomic sequence</a> of the virus associated with the recently reported cases. This could point to the potential source of the outbreak and indicate the link between these viruses associated with the recent cases, and the viruses that circulated during the previous outbreak. Another consideration is that currently available Ebola vaccines have not been tested against strains other than <em>Zaire ebolavirus</em>. The efficacy of these vaccines against other species of the virus is, therefore, unsure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Weyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The virus is always present in nature and when circumstances allow, it may jump from one species to another.Jacqueline Weyer, Principal Medical Scientist (PhD MPH), National Institute for Communicable DiseasesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1555662021-02-18T17:20:29Z2021-02-18T17:20:29ZEbola strikes West Africa again: key questions and lessons from the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384961/original/file-20210218-21-yx9sj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Medical staff check each others protective suits.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by SUMY SADURNI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>News of a <a href="https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/ebola-virus-disease-nzerekore-guinea-february-2021">new outbreak</a> of Ebola in Guinea is indeed distressing. The last in West Africa occurred between 2014 and 2015 and affected Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. It was the <a href="https://time.com/5939733/guinea-ebola-epidemic/">world’s deadliest</a> Ebola outbreak, which began in Guinea and in which more than 11,300 people died. Among these were <a href="https://www.isglobal.org/en/ebola">over 500</a> health workers. </p>
<p>But countries in the West African region are in a very different position seven years on.</p>
<p>Liberia and Sierra Leone <a href="https://apnews.com/article/liberia-julius-maada-bio-health-guinea-ebola-virus-ede99ac43739832a3cf56041868e1cfa">have already</a> mobilised and activated their national response and preparedness plans. A clear indication that the political will is there. </p>
<p>Countries in the region also have the experience of the past, as well as new tools to tackle Ebola. They have an experienced workforce, laboratory systems are more developed and regional organisations, such as the <a href="https://ecfr.eu/special/african-cooperation/mano-river-union/">Mano River Union</a> – a regional economic and security body – and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are more proactive. </p>
<p>For example, one of the outcomes of a 2018 planning meeting in Freetown, Sierre Leone, was to prepare for cross-border transmission. A whatsapp platform was developed that provided for real time tracking of outbreaks. It is now operational and is being used to transmit updates from Guinea to the surveillance and response teams from member countries. </p>
<p>However, as Pierre Formenty, the head of the World Health Organisation’s viral and haemorrhagic fever team, once pointed out to me: the worst mistake anyone can make about Ebola is to underestimate Ebola, or to think they know all about Ebola. </p>
<p>I’m an infectious disease expert and have led national response teams in previous Ebola outbreaks. A fundamental lesson I’ve learned is that the success of a control strategy is not based on the obvious information you have, but the subtle unanswered questions. I learnt this the hard way.</p>
<p>One particular incident has stayed with me. In early August, 2014, I met with Liberia’s WHO Representative who asked me how West Point was doing. West Point is Liberia’s largest slum and is located in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. I said, with great confidence, that it was very quiet and had no ongoing Ebola transmissions. However, at that very time, there were active Ebola transmissions in the area and secret burials were happening in the early morning hours. The cases in West Point exploded.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to keep digging, and keep questioning. I’ve compiled a series of questions which are key to preparedness strategies, and which all countries in the region should address. </p>
<h2>Key questions</h2>
<p>There are some key <em>biological questions</em> that those leading surveillance and contact tracing need to answer.</p>
<p>1) The first is: <strong>how long was the first case sick before they died?</strong></p>
<p>Answering this question is crucial so that neighbouring countries
can trace possible times a sick person – or contact from the current cluster – may have come into their country. Many of the cases spread through the region in this way during the 2014 to 2015 outbreak. Many people crossed over to escape an outbreak or seek help. </p>
<p>Ebola does not kill within a day. The virus has an incubation period of between two and 21 days. People get progressively sicker as the virus multiplies in their bodies. Some studies from the previous outbreak in Guinea indicted an average of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434807/">eight days from the onset of symptoms to death</a>. </p>
<p>Having a timeline is crucial to understand who they might have passed the virus on to. </p>
<p>2) The second important question is: <strong>What was the source of infection? How did they get infected?</strong> </p>
<p>This helps surveillance teams identify whether the person was the index – or first case – and can identify their contacts. If this isn’t known it means the source of the infection is out there, and there could be multiple cases around. </p>
<p>Once the first case is infected, we know <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-asked-questions">it spreads</a> from human to human through direct contacts, fluids, dead bodies and contaminated materials from an infected person. </p>
<p>3) The final and most serious question is: <strong>what strain of Ebola is being dealt with?</strong></p>
<p>Vaccines are available for the <a href="https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/922973">Ebola Zaire strain</a>, but not for others. Reports I’ve received indicate that the current outbreak in Guinea is due to the Zaire strain.</p>
<p>There are also critical <em>epidemiological</em> questions that needs to be answered quickly too:</p>
<p>1) <strong>How many contacts – meaning people they came into contact with – has the first recognised case generated so far?</strong></p>
<p>It is crucial to find 100% of the contacts. Missing just one can lead to an outbreak. This will require tracking movements, interviewing families, friends and places they might have sought treatment. This is where the complex detective work of contact tracing kicks in. </p>
<p>In the case of this recent outbreak in Guinea, infected persons had attended <a href="https://time.com/5939733/guinea-ebola-epidemic/">the burial of a nurse</a>. Knowing this is vital because it allows the team to begin to map the potential spread of the disease. </p>
<p>In this case, the fact that it’s a funeral and that she was a nurse, indicates that this is a super-spreader event. </p>
<p>Funerals are often attended by relatives who might have travelled long distances to get there, and possibly even from other countries. Action can be taken on this basis – neighbouring countries are put on alert. In 2016 border checks worked. We were able to catch cases that had escaped from Guinea to seek refuge with relatives in Liberia.</p>
<p>The fact that she was a nurse points to a bigger, undetected outbreak. </p>
<p>2) <strong>What is the alert case’s demography? This includes age, ethnicity, occupation and economic activities.</strong></p>
<p>All these are pertinent in understanding who the person might have come in contact with. </p>
<p>For instance, in 2014, an infected case from Guinea, crossed over to Sierra Leone to seek care from a traditional healer among her ethnic group. This set the stage for the biggest outbreak in Sierra Leone which then spilled over into Liberia.</p>
<p>3) <strong>What were the person’s movements and how many places did the person visit when they became ill?</strong></p>
<p>This includes hospitals, clinics and traditional healers. A transmission map must be built which examines all the possible movements and transmissions. If the index case moved using public transport, vehicle logs and movements for other passengers are needed. </p>
<p>In Liberia, we worked with transport unions, visited hospitals and pored over patient records. We worked with commercial motorbike riders to piece these complex transmission maps to determine the the total number of contacts, locations and status. The reason this is critical is that in the control of Ebola it is an “all or nothing principle”. You must reach 100% contacts and follow them up and ensure that none escape or get sick and die in the community. Otherwise, there’s a new transmission chain.</p>
<p>Until each of these very complex questions are answered, neighbouring countries should operate under the assumption that cases are in their countries. There is a already an alert of a <a href="https://frontpageafricaonline.com/county-news/liberia-health-authorities-testing-suspected-ebola-case-urge-calm/">suspected case</a> in Liberia that came from Guinea. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>The governments of these countries must sustain the high levels of alertness and preparedness they have initiated. Everything must be done to ensure Ebola doesn’t enter densely populated areas. </p>
<p>Surveillance must be carried out – especially in border towns. Symptoms surveillance teams must look out for include fever, headache, joint pain and redness of eyes. Surveillance activities should also screen for ethnic groups to which sick people belong. It’s better to pick up all potential cases, rather than risk missing one. </p>
<p>There should also be visits to all hospitals and clinics in bordering towns. Patient records must be checked. </p>
<p>Any <a href="https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/regenerons-antibody-cocktail-regn-eb3-inmazebr-first-fda">medication</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/groups/icg/ebola-virus-disease/ebola-stockpiles">vaccines</a> that can treat the disease must be on the ready to be deployed rapidly. </p>
<p>And finally, Ebola starts and ends in the community. It’s crucial to activate, educate and empower communities to say something and report something when they see something.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mosoka Fallah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Countries in the West Africa region are in a very different position to seven years ago. They now have the experience of the past as well as new tools to tackle Ebola.Mosoka Fallah, Part-time lecturer at the Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Lecturer at the School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of LiberiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1499272020-11-11T14:55:56Z2020-11-11T14:55:56ZPasha 86: Why it’s wrong to be pessimistic about democracy in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368832/original/file-20201111-17-1hrc8of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The state of democracy on the continent is often depicted as generally negative. But the reality is more nuanced. African countries represent a spectrum, from relatively stable democracies like Botswana, Ghana and South Africa to problem spots where opposition and transfers of power are not tolerated. There is no single trend. Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Guinea may appear to be backsliding towards authoritarianism, but they don’t represent the entire continent. </p>
<p>In today’s episode of Pasha Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham, discusses influential forces such as urbanisation, and what can be done to deepen democracy on the continent. </p>
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<p><strong>Photo:</strong>
Democracy word in a dictionary. Democracy concept. By Casimiro PT <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/democracy-word-dictionary-concept-1079017649">Shutterstock</a></p>
<p><strong>Music:</strong>
“Happy African Village” by John Bartmann, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/happy-african-village">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a>.</p>
<p>“African Moon” by John Bartmann, found on <a href="https://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/african-moon">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1.0 Universal License.</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Is authoritarianism on the rise on the continent? Or is democracy doing well? Nic Cheeseman discusses.Ozayr Patel, Digital EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1395672020-06-30T14:06:00Z2020-06-30T14:06:00ZWhy the African Union has failed to ‘silence the guns’. And some solutions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343988/original/file-20200625-33524-1mjaun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A soldier from Niger patrols near the border with Nigeria. Porous borders with Nigeria and Mali are hotbeds for Jihadists and marauding local militias.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giles Clark/GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seven years ago African leaders committed themselves to working towards an end to armed conflict. As they marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the African Union they swore to ensure lasting peace on the continent. They <a href="https://dppa.un.org/en/un-support-to-au-initiative-silencing-guns-africa">pledged</a> not to bequeath the burden of conflicts to the next generation of Africans.</p>
<p>The pledge was followed by the <a href="http://www.peaceau.org/en/article/au-retreat-to-elaborate-a-roadmap-on-practical-steps-to-silence-the-guns-in-africa-by-2020-concludes-in-lusaka-zambia">adoption</a> in 2016 of the <a href="http://www.peaceau.org/en/article/au-retreat-to-elaborate-a-roadmap-on-practical-steps-to-silence-the-guns-in-africa-by-2020-concludes-in-lusaka-zambia">Lusaka Road Map</a> to end conflict by 2020. The document outlined <a href="http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/N-Instruments/2018-AU-Silencing-the-Guns-Roadmap-ENG.pdf">54 practical steps</a> that needed to be taken. They focused on political, economic, social, environmental and legal issues. They ranged from adequately funding the <a href="https://www.peaceau.org/en/page/82-african-standby-force-asf-amani-africa-1">African Standby Force</a> for deployment, to stopping rebels or insurgents and their backers from accessing weapons. Other steps included fighting human trafficking, corruption and illicit financial flows.</p>
<p>At the time of the declaration, Africa had disproportionately high levels of conflict. State and non-state actors in Africa waged about 630 armed conflicts between <a href="https://ucdp.uu.se/">1990 and 2015</a>. Conflicts orchestrated by non-state actors accounted for over 75% of conflicts globally. </p>
<p>The efforts to ‘silence the guns’ has been singularly ineffective. Since the pledge was signed conflict in Africa has <a href="https://www.prio.org/utility/DownloadFile.ashx?id=1888&type=publicationfile">increased</a>.</p>
<p>One reason for the failure is that the 2020 goal was too ambitious given the number of conflicts on the continent. The second reason is that many are internal, arising from the grievances citizens have with their governments. This internal dynamic appears to have been ignored from the outset. </p>
<p>To make some headway the African Union needs to recognise this, and design solutions to conflicts that are informed by the need to protect human rights. The continental body should be empowered to act against any party that violates core values centred on human dignity.</p>
<h2>Theatre of conflict</h2>
<p>Prominent conflicts by non-state actors include the <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/the-local-face-of-jihadism-in-northern-mali/">Tuareg separatist</a> and jihadist insurgencies in Mali, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/organisations/boko-haram.html">Boko Haram</a> in Northern Nigeria, <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/burkina-faso/burkina-fasos-alarming-escalation-jihadist-violence">jihadist and militia</a> insurgencies in Burkina Faso, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/organisations/al-shabab.html">al-Shabaab</a> in Somalia, and the <a href="https://institute.global/policy/ethno-religious-violence-central-african-republic">ethnic war</a> in the Central African Republic. </p>
<p>The most notable civil wars are those in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/war-in-libya-how-did-it-start-what-happens-next">Libya</a>, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan">South Sudan</a> and the one waged by Anglophone Ambazonia <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/02/06/Cameroon-elections-anglophone-separatist-insurgency-Ambazonia">separatists</a> in Cameroon.</p>
<p>Most conflicts are generally centred on these areas: </p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.nrc.no/shorthand/fr/sahel---the-worlds-most-neglected-and-conflict-ridden-region/index.html">Sahel region</a>, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Nigeria, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://plan-international.org/emergencies/lake-chad-crisis">Lake Chad area</a>, including Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://items.ssrc.org/category/crisis-in-the-horn-of-africa/">Horn of Africa</a>, including Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya, and </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/conflict-great-lakes-region/">Great Lakes region</a>, notably Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Though domestic, most of these conflicts tend to be <a href="https://www.routledge.com/African-Borders-Conflict-Regional-and-Continental-Integration-1st-Edition/Moyo-Changwe-Nshimbi/p/book/9780367174835">cross-border in form</a>. They threaten interstate and regional stability. For example, al-Shabaab in Somalia exploits <a href="https://www.foreignbrief.com/security-terrorism/al-shabaab-in-kenya-cross-border-attacks-and-recruitment/">porous borders</a> to carry out deadly attacks in Kenya.</p>
<p>Most of Africa’s conflicts are also increasingly characterised by violent extremism. The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52532741">emerging conflict</a> in the Cabo Delgado Province in Mozambique falls into this category. </p>
<h2>Perennial conflict, elusive peace</h2>
<p>The African Union has put a great deal of emphasis on <a href="https://au.int/en/psc">promoting peace, security, and stability in Africa</a>, including in its <a href="https://au.int/Agenda2063/popular_version">Agenda 2063</a> adopted in 2015. </p>
<p>But peace and security continue to elude the continent. Some conflicts have been raging for decades. These include fighting in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-western-sahara-remains-one-of-africas-most-divisive-political-issues-114373">Western Sahara</a>, conflict in the Maghreb region involving the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2016.1208280">Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb</a>, the <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/book/fighting-for-peace-somalia-history-and-analysis-the-african-union-mission-amisom-2007-2017">Somali civil war</a>, and the <a href="http://congoresearchgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Inside-the-ADF-Rebellion-14Nov18.pdf">Allied Democratic Forces</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361730429X">Lord’s Resistance Army</a> insurgencies in Uganda and the DRC. </p>
<p>Eighteen years ago the African Union changed its <a href="https://au.int/sites/default/files/pages/34873-file-constitutiveact_en.pdf">Constitutive Act</a>, allowing it to intervene in the internal affairs of member states. Nevertheless, it’s been reluctant to do so. For example, it is conspicuously absent while bloody conflict escalated in <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon">Cameroon</a> and <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/libya">Libya</a>.</p>
<p>There has been one notable exception: the organisation’s refusal to countenance the coup in Sudan, and <a href="http://www.peaceau.org/en/article/the-854th-meeting-of-the-peace-and-security-council-on-the-situation-in-the-sudan">suspending</a> the country’s membership in June 2019. This should be the norm. </p>
<p>But this highlighted the AU’s double standards. It tacitly countenanced the coups in Egypt in 2013 and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/african-union-wrong-zimbabwe-171204125847859.html">Zimbabwe</a> in 2017.</p>
<p>Although it did <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-protests-africa/african-union-suspends-egypt-idUSBRE9640EP20130705">suspend</a> Egypt after the coup led by Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, it subsequently restored its membership in 2014, and went on to make President El-Sisi its <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/egypt-sisi-takes-head-african-union-190210140131428.html">rotational chairman</a> in 2019. This went against its own <a href="https://archives.au.int/bitstream/handle/123456789/1143/Assembly%20AU%20Dec%20269%20%28XIV%29%20_E.PDF?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">rule</a> that bans coup leaders from occupying political office. </p>
<p>The organisation never suspended Zimbabwe over the coup that ended Robert Mugabe’s despotic presidency. Neither did it speak out against <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42053753">General Constantino Chiwenga</a>, the coup leader, becoming the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwe-coup-general-appointed-vice-president/a-41918031">vice-president</a>.</p>
<p>Another example of failure has been in Libya, where the AU has been seen to be wringing its hands while deadly conflict escalates and external actors make it their war theatre. These include <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-libya/turkey-signs-maritime-boundaries-deal-with-libya-amid-exploration-row-idUSKBN1Y213I">Turkey</a>, Egypt, Russia and United Arab Emirates. </p>
<p>The presence of foreign military forces on the continent is of concern beyond the Libyan conflict. The increasing number has been <a href="http://www.peaceau.org/en/article/the-601th-meeting-of-the-au-peace-and-security-council-on-early-warning-and-horizon-scanning">recognised</a> by the the African Union Peace and Security Council as a problem.</p>
<p>The numbers are going up via bilateral agreements between African states and foreign governments. </p>
<p>African countries gain economically from hosting foreign military bases. Djibouti, for example, earns about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/world/africa/us-djibouti-chinese-naval-base.html">$63 million annually</a> from the US and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-parting-the-red-sea-why-the-chinese-and-us-armies-are-fortifying/">$20 million annually</a> from China by leasing parts of its territory for their military bases. It also <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000203971605100107">hosts</a> British, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish military bases. </p>
<p>The foreign actors establish themselves in Africa to protect their <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79S01091A000300050001-3.pdf">economic interests</a> and for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/90018134?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">strategic reasons</a>. Djibouti, for instance, is strategically close to the Middle East and the Red Sea.</p>
<h2>Credible solutions</h2>
<p>The African Union should revisit its Constitutive Act to address principles that limit its ability to intervene in conflicts in member states’ territories. This will set the stage for crafting robust legislation, policies, institutions and mechanisms for long-term stability in such countries.</p>
<p>Following that, the organisation should work through regional economic communities and people at grassroots to end conflict. Its eight <a href="https://au.int/en/organs/recs">recognised regions</a> should emulate the successes of the <a href="https://www.ecowas.int/member-states/">Economic Community of West African States</a>.</p>
<p>The regional bloc occasionally gives early warnings of brewing conflicts in member states. It has also provided military support and helped reform the security sector in <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137280794">Sierra Leone</a>, The Gambia and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/civil-war-and-democracy-in-west-africa-9780857720740/">Liberia</a>. It has also helped with post-conflict reconstruction in these countries.</p>
<p>Notably, its military intervention in The Gambia <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-west-africa-built-the-muscle-to-rout-dictators-and-keep-the-peace-71688">forced the despotic Yahya Jammeh to vacate office</a> in early 2017, after losing the presidential elections. </p>
<p>Ordinary people can also provide vital information to early warning systems. It’s thus imperative to set up long-term, people-centred, innovative and inclusive measures to promote peace. Such bottom-up solutions, based on intimate knowledge of local areas, are key to success.</p>
<p>Finally, the issue of foreign military forces on the continent. Here the African Union has no control over their growing presence because they come through bilateral agreements between member states and foreign powers. Nevertheless, the African Union should work through its regional organisations to play a role in these decisions. </p>
<p>There’s a precedent: the Southern African Development Community under the chairmanship of late Zambian President <a href="https://ndupress.ndu.edu/portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-49.pdf">Levy Mwanawasa</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-usa-africom/u-s-africa-command-aid-crusader-or-meddling-giant-idUSL3030068820070930">opposed</a> the establishment of an American base in the region. Southern Africa went on to establish its own regional military <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/zambia-mwanawasa-launch-of-the-sadc-brigade-17082007-2007-08-17">brigade</a> instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Changwe Nshimbi receives funding from the European Commission (Erasmus+), Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation (DST/NRF, South Africa), The Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES). </span></em></p>Leaders’ efforts to end conflict have been ineffective. Working through regional economic communities might be part of a better approach.Chris Changwe Nshimbi, Director & Research Fellow, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1392382020-05-24T07:49:03Z2020-05-24T07:49:03ZCompendium of new research celebrates African solutions to national and global problems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337030/original/file-20200522-124845-8cyoxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of outgoing Senegalese President Macky Sall cheer during a rally ahead of presidential elections in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Seyllou/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.gov.za/AfricaDay2020">Africa Day</a> celebrates the foundation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. It’s all about <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/pan-africanism/african-liberation-day-celebration-resistance">recognising</a>, as the First Congress of Independent African States held in 1958 in Ghana put it, “the determination of the people of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation”. Indeed, it was previously called African Liberation Day. </p>
<p>The continent is now formally free of colonial rule. Nevertheless, the aim of remembering and furthering the fight for self determination remains relevant as ever. This year has seen Africa – once again – characterised as a set of helpless states that face devastation by the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>Such lifeless and homogenising depictions fail to recognise the ability of African communities and governments to overcome major health challenges such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-nigeria-beat-the-ebola-virus-in-three-months-41372">Ebola</a>. They also ignore the remarkably varied and dynamic – and in many cases effective – response of different groups and individuals to the COVID-19 pandemic. As Kenyan writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola recently <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/coronavirus-colonialism-africa/">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Africa is not waiting to be saved from the coronavirus.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A new major publication – the <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/page/african-politics/the-oxford-encyclopedia-of-african-politics">Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics</a> – contains many important chapters that make the same point on a wide variety of topics. With 122 authors, 109 articles and more than a million words, it is one of the largest volumes on African politics ever published. </p>
<p>Chapter after chapter shows the ability of leaders, intellectuals and activists to find their own solutions to national and global problems.</p>
<h2>Recognising African agency</h2>
<p>All too often, the achievements of African countries are overlooked. Conflict and controversy make for more attention-grabbing headlines than peace and democracy. Yet, while the continent features more than its fair share of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/authoritarian-africa-9780190279653?cc=gb&lang=en&">authoritarian repression</a>, in some respects African countries are leading the way.</p>
<p>As political scientist Mamoudou Gazibo points out, countries like Ghana and Senegal became democracies despite the fact that they faced a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=JVmtCAAAQBAJ&q=agains+the+odds#v=snippet&q=agains%20the%20odds&f=false">particularly challenging context</a>. They lacked the kind of national wealth, strong state and large middle class that many theories suggest are necessary for a smooth transition out of authoritarian rule. Yet they have proved that <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-702">democracy is feasible in Africa</a>.</p>
<p>Similarly, Liberia and Sierra Leone should also be seen as remarkable – but not, as is usually the case, because they had horrific civil wars. Instead they should be recognised for overcoming extreme and prolonged violence to forge a pathway back to democracy. In addition to maintaining political stability, both countries have experienced peaceful <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-the-change-of-power-in-sierra-leone-is-a-big-win-for-the-people/a-43269230">transfers of power</a> via the ballot box.</p>
<p>In all these cases a combination of good leadership, institution building, and the support of ordinary people for democratic values has enabled African states to change their futures for the better. </p>
<p>Yet this story is rarely told.</p>
<p>One reason is that stories like this don’t fit with the popular narrative that democracy is somehow “unAfrican”. In other words, that modern governance was introduced to the continent by the West. </p>
<p>This is not only untrue. It also turns history on its head.</p>
<p>As political scientist Kidane Mengisteab <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1347">shows</a> in one of the chapters of the book, in many countries “traditional institutions of governance” featured important checks and balances on how power could be exercised. These measures were typically destroyed, eroded, or radically transformed by colonial rule. This paved the way for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-colonial-rule-predisposed-africa-to-fragile-authoritarianism-126114">emergence of authoritarian regimes</a> after independence.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337039/original/file-20200522-124832-f372ei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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</figure>
<p>Similarly, multiparty elections were not reintroduced in Africa in the early 1990s simply because the UK and the US decided this was a good idea. These freedoms and rights were <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/422153?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">fought for</a> by activists, opposition leaders, trade unionists, religious leaders and ordinary citizens who risked their personal safety to bring down authoritarian governments. Some paid with their lives.</p>
<h2>Recognising African genius</h2>
<p>A major casualty of the tendency to overlook the creativity and contributions of African leaders and intellectuals is the neglect of African political thought. Africa has produced some of the most thoughtful and articulate leaders in the world on how political systems can best be designed. These have included <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819276?casa_token=4ihOwPICM8cAAAAA:tuJTaO6aWc2YH22kj6GBoPdo211VsS1syG1Wqex_4V2QGqZwKy5sM8TLSP9esDopBollzQxv76yD2nfykzJVQCa28jlP9zhwpnMBxJzpeGztfOtx0qu7#metadata_info_tab_contents">Kwame Nkrumah, Tom Mboya and Leopold Senghor</a>. Yet the continent is often treated as if it is devoid of interesting political ideas and ideologies.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-kwame-nkrumah-used-metaphor-as-a-political-weapon-against-colonialism-129379">How Kwame Nkrumah used metaphor as a political weapon against colonialism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is one reason why many African intellectuals have been attracted to the idea of the African renaissance. In his chapter <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-720">Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni</a> describes this as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a ‘re-membering’ of a continent and a people who have suffered from ‘dismembering’ effects of colonialism and ‘coloniality’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This concept continues to inspire both ideas and action, and fed into the #rhodesmustfall and “decolonize the university” campaigns that began in South Africa and had ripple effects across the world. </p>
<p>Yet despite this, African contributions continue to be downplayed – even within intellectual movements that are supposed to be all about breaking down racist assumptions and hierarchies. Take post-colonial theory, which analyses the enduring legacies of colonialism and disavows Eurocentric master-narratives. It is often said that African intellectuals have played a minor role in developing post-colonial critiques. Yet <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-830">Grace Adeniyi Ogunyankin</a>, an expert in gender studies and critical race theory identifies</p>
<blockquote>
<p>African thinkers and activists who are intellectual antecedents to the post-colonial thought that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is often overlooked, she points out, because some – though by no means all – of those working in these frameworks have been “dismissive of African theorising”.</p>
<h2>Recognising African leadership</h2>
<p>The path-breaking leadership shown by many African countries has also been criminally overlooked. When asked to name two of the most advanced and progressive constitutions in the world, how many people would say Kenya and South Africa? Outside of the continent, my guess would be almost no one. Yet as legal and constitutional expert <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1324">Muno Ndulo argues</a>, the constitutions introduced in these countries over the last years 30 years enshrine democratic norms and values. They also go well beyond their European and North American counterparts by institutionalising socio-economic rights (South Africa) and the principle of citizen participation in the budget making process (Kenya).</p>
<p>While including a clause in a constitution doesn’t mean that it is automatically respected, historically marginalised groups have mobilised creatively to demand the rights they are supposed to enjoy under the law. African women, for example, are not waiting for others to save them from patriarchy. They are mobilising across the continent to claim their rights. According to <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-852">Robtel Pailey</a>, an activist, academic and author,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>African women have simultaneously embraced and challenged cultural and socio-economic norms to claim and secure citizenship rights, resources and representation. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Recognising African diversity</h2>
<p>These are, of course, just a small number of the stories that deserve to be told. The encyclopaedia includes articles on everything from political parties and elections to the role of China and migration, oil and religion. But despite featuring a chapter on every sub-region, political institution, and major trend, there is still so much more that needs to be said about a continent that is remarkably diverse.</p>
<p>That is one reason why we should celebrate <a href="http://democracyinafrica.org/continent-brilliant-free-african-journalism/">the showcasing</a> of the voices of African journalists and researchers, and share them far and wide. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00007046">Nelson Mandela once said</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nic Cheeseman is the editor of the volume discussed in this article.</span></em></p>Africa is now formally free of colonial rule. Yet, the aim of remembering and furthering the fight for self determination remains relevant as ever.Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1345302020-04-28T12:11:21Z2020-04-28T12:11:21ZMeasuring maternal grief in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330839/original/file-20200427-145499-upbyfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2295%2C1995&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In places where children die with tragic frequency, the collective grief of parents affects all society.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/sad-lonely-woman-depression-flying-hair-1471114553?irgwc=1&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Pixabay+GmbH&utm_source=44814&utm_term=https%3A%2F%2Fpixabay.com%2Fvectors%2Fsearch%2Fgrief%2520woman%2F">Mary Long/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Most parents living in industrialized countries today reasonably presume that <a href="https://www.who.int/data/gho/publications/mdgs-sdgs">all their children will survive childhood</a>. </p>
<p>But child death remains woefully common in some parts of the world. A baby born in certain sub-Saharan African countries is roughly 20 times more likely to die in early childhood than a <a href="https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/under-five-mortality/">baby born in North America or Western Europe</a>. </p>
<p>Our recent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907343117">study</a> measures the proportion of parents who’ve lost a child. Academic research on child death typically focuses on an individual child’s risk of death, so examining this tragedy from the perspective of parents is a new approach. </p>
<p>To determine how many parents have lost children, we used <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/">Demographic and Health Survey Program</a> <a href="https://www.statcompiler.com/en/">data</a> to track 30-year trends in 20 sub-Saharan African countries with the highest child mortality rates. These surveys have collected detailed reproductive histories from women for decades, allowing us to evaluate the experiences of mothers over time.</p>
<p>We found that <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2020/02/04/1907343117.DCSupplemental/pnas.1907343117.sapp.pdf">more than 20% of all young mothers</a> across West, Central, East and Southern Africa have lost a child under the age of 5, primarily due to infectious and waterborne diseases. Among older mothers aged 45 or higher, 25% to 50% have lost a young child. </p>
<p>Data from the West African countries of Mali, Liberia, and Nigeria, as well as from three southern and eastern African countries – Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda – is even more staggering. In those places, up to one in five mothers has suffered the death of two children. Some have lost more than two children. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>The death of a child is an excruciating and enduring event that affects parents in lasting ways. </p>
<p>Bereaved parents have an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X07302728">elevated risk of depression, anxiety</a> and an <a href="https://jech.bmj.com/content/66/10/927.short">array of physical health problems</a>, from cardiovascular disease to early death. The stress of losing a child also <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00846-7">strains marriages</a>, leading to more conflict, intimate partner violence, divorce and abandonment. </p>
<p>Quantifying how many mothers have lost a child gives us a sense of these individual and collective strains in a given place. In our paper, which published in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/journal/procnatiacadscie">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> journal in February, we call this collective grief the parental “bereavement burden.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330443/original/file-20200424-163098-9tm4jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High child mortality rates affect both women who’ve lost children and those expecting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://shutterstock.7eer.net/c/44814/42119/1305?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shutterstock.com%2Fen%2Fimage-photo%2Fid-730996924&subId1=image&subId2=list&subId3=nohits&sharedid=https%3A//pixabay.com/vectors/search/pregnant%2520woman%2520afro/">Vivid Vector/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That measure, in turn, tells us something important about the broader social context for all women. In places where infant and child death rates are high, the fear of losing a child is acute. Even women who have not lost a child worry that they will. </p>
<p>Maternal grief, in other words, is a shared phenomenon that affects how all women in a society navigate major life decisions.</p>
<p>For example, fertility researchers know that if mothers anticipate the loss of their own children – both current and future – they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100206">will have more children</a>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanian-president-bluntly-attacks-contraception-saying-high-birth-rates-are-good-for-economy-103513">Using contraception</a> to plan for small families – <a href="https://theconversation.com/kenya-needs-a-new-plan-to-make-contraceptives-accessible-again-48470">assuming it is available</a> – is a luxury reserved for those who can reasonably think all the children they give birth to will survive.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>In the shadows of the high child mortality rates are millions of grieving mothers who bear the personal, social and marital costs of a child’s death. </p>
<p>Yet this population receives very little scholarly or political attention. In some sub-Saharan African countries, that’s more than half of all women who are invisibly suffering the bereavement burden.</p>
<p>Our study illustrates the pressing need to understand the mother’s experience of child death and incorporate grief into a country’s public health considerations. </p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In many sub-Saharan African countries, 20% of mothers have suffered the death of a child, a new study finds. In Mali, Liberia and Malawi, it’s common for mothers to lose two children.Emily Smith-Greenaway, Associate Professor of Sociology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesJenny Trinitapoli, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1283652019-12-12T08:34:06Z2019-12-12T08:34:06ZIs it Ebola, or just a drill? How to test a public health crisis response<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305855/original/file-20191209-90574-1u9tekw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hugh Kinsella Cunningham/ EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There wasn’t an Ebola outbreak in Lesotho – but for a few hours in November 2019, you may have heard that there was.</p>
<p>On <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/11/14/lesotho-confirms-first-ebola-case">November 14</a>, Lesotho public health authorities conducted a simulation exercise involving a woman who was rushed to hospital and tested positive for Ebola after crossing the border from South Africa. Media picked up on this event and reported it as if it were true. But a few hours later it was revealed that there had been no Ebola case in Lesotho, and this event was only a drill.</p>
<p>The Lesotho government was conducting a public health simulation exercise. When done properly, a simulation exercise is a useful tool for evaluating preparedness for a public health emergency. When done poorly, a simulation exercise can cause unnecessary panic in local or international communities. Here, we’ve drawn on our <a href="https://bushchicken.com/ebola-simulation-in-three-counties-gives-liberias-health-system-a-failing-grade/">experience in Liberia</a> to outline how to properly plan and execute a simulation exercise.</p>
<h2>What is a simulation exercise?</h2>
<p>A public health simulation exercise is a test of an emergency response system. Simulation exercises are used to develop emergency response protocols, train staff, and monitor and evaluate the capability of the public health system to respond to emergencies. Regular exercises make it possible to identify areas for improvement and ensure that a health system will be able to respond appropriately to a true crisis.</p>
<p>The World Health Organisation (WHO) lays out <a href="https://www.who.int/ihr/publications/WHO-WHE-CPI-2017.10/en/">guidelines</a> for planning various types of simulation exercises. Simulation exercises can range from tabletop discussions to partial tests to full-scale field exercises.</p>
<p>The simulation in Lesotho was a full-scale exercise. This is the most complex type, intended to mirror real-life emergency situations as closely as possible. It tests many components of an emergency plan and may involve many organisations and multiple countries. Full-scale exercises are immensely valuable for testing emergency management plans under close-to-real conditions. But they are difficult to plan and can cause alarm in the wider community if not executed thoughtfully and deliberately.</p>
<h2>Planning a simulation</h2>
<p>Planning a simulation exercise should involve discussions with key stakeholders about the purpose, scope and objectives of the exercise. An exercise management team should be created to develop and conduct the exercise. This will typically include a project management plan, identification of participants and logistics management.</p>
<p>The people being tested – such as local health workers – should not be told that they are undergoing a simulation exercise. After all, the purpose is to assess what would occur in a true emergency. That said, key stakeholders who are not being tested should be made aware that a simulation exercise is under way. Otherwise they may respond as if there were a real crisis, leading to unnecessary mobilisation.</p>
<p>Key stakeholders may include the leaders of ministries such as health, information and internal affairs; members of the media; and leaders of partner organisations who may be involved in a public health response. If the simulation involves multiple countries, stakeholders in each country should be informed.</p>
<p>Stakeholders should be informed in advance and updated while the simulation exercise is under way. It is very important that the word “simulation” or “exercise” is displayed prominently in all communication. </p>
<p>Media organisations should be informed ahead of time. If news media outlets hear about the event but are unaware that it is a simulation, they may report it as if it were true. This can cause unnecessary panic.</p>
<p>WHO <a href="https://www.who.int/ihr/publications/WHO-WHE-CPI-2017.10/en/">guidelines</a> for simulation exercises recommend creating a strategy to communicate with media, local communities and the public. There should be a designated media point person and clear lines of communication should be publicised. News outlets should be able to contact the exercise management team and receive reliable information.</p>
<p>The exercise management team should anticipate potential media and public relations issues and help prevent misinformation from spreading.</p>
<h2>Running the exercise effectively</h2>
<p>The exercise will begin with a message sent containing the prompt. In a full-scale exercise, teams of health workers are physically deployed to the location to respond as they would in an actual emergency. Actors may play the role of patients – for example, in a simulation exercise testing infection prevention control and management, an actor may play a person who is exhibiting Ebola symptoms. The exercise management team will observe and evaluate the emergency response.</p>
<p>If the initial team of health workers fails to respond appropriately, the exercise management team will escalate the response to the next level. For example, if health workers at a village clinic fail to properly isolate a suspected Ebola case, the management team may call an ambulance, and then test how the ambulance workers respond. Eventually, the response could grow to the national or international level.</p>
<p>A full-scale simulation exercise will last for at least one day and up to four or five days. At the end, the project management team will review what happened and whether the response was appropriate. Findings are used to improve emergency protocols, train staff and solve other problems that arose. </p>
<h2>Lessons</h2>
<p>A simulation exercise strengthens health systems – and helps countries prepare for real public health emergencies.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to determine if Lesotho’s public health simulation exercise was a success because lessons about emergency preparedness were overshadowed by panic. With proper planning and management, Lesotho and other countries can conduct future simulation exercises without making headlines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mosoka Fallah consults for MERCK/MSD as an expert from Africa on the process of the Ebola vaccine licensing.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Tantum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When done properly, a simulation exercise is a useful tool for evaluating preparedness for a public health emergency.Mosoka Fallah, Part-time lecturer at the Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, and Lecturer at the School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of LiberiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1256792019-11-05T14:30:22Z2019-11-05T14:30:22ZEU targets fragile West African fish stocks, despite protection laws<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298941/original/file-20191028-113991-6rnb5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fishing boats in Senegal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fabian Plock/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most of the large fishing vessels that operate in West Africa <a href="https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/10665.pdf">are from</a> distant water fishing nations – such as countries in the European Union (EU) and China and Russia. To get permission to fish in West African waters they form agreements in exchange for a fee that is payable to the government. </p>
<p>But these agreements have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236227528_Overfishing_in_west_Africa_by_EU_vessels">been criticised</a> for contributing to the over-exploitation of fish stocks in the region. Specifically affected are, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d′Ivoire, Liberia, Cape Verde, Mauritania, Senegal and The Gambia.</p>
<p>So far, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-depleting-fish-stocks-may-pose-a-threat-to-regional-security-105168">over half</a> of the fisheries resources in waters off West Africa are already over-fished. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0964569119301620?via%3Dihub">our recent paper</a>, my colleague Dyhia Belhabib and I show that the EU’s agreements with West African countries continue to target fragile fish stocks. This is despite the fact that the EU is bound by policies that are meant to protect fish stocks. </p>
<p>EU activities alone are not to blame for over-fishing in the region. The impact of trawling by other countries, <a href="https://chinadialogueocean.net/5984-foreign-trawling-west-africa/">like China</a>, is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-47698314/is-china-s-fishing-fleet-taking-all-of-west-africa-s-fish">well-documented</a>. But, through its fisheries policies, the EU has a commitment to sustainable fishing. It also continues to enter into fresh agreements with countries, despite evidence of serious population declines in the species of interest.</p>
<p>Marine fisheries play <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201550">a significant role</a> in the food and economic security of millions of people in West Africa. If stocks are depleted, small-scale fishers that depend on them won’t be able to make a proper income and many people will lose their main source of protein. Competition for depleting resources is already <a href="https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/10665.pdf">leading to conflict</a> between fishers and foreign fishing vessels. </p>
<p>It is crucial that these natural resources are better protected. We propose that one way to do that is for countries to renegotiate their naively low royalties with the EU. And there needs to be more investment in marine enforcement.</p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/114/the-common-fisheries-policy-origins-and-development">original objectives</a> of the EU’s <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/114/the-common-fisheries-policy-origins-and-development">Common Fisheries Policy</a> was to preserve fish stocks, protect the marine environment, ensure the economic viability of European fleets and provide consumers with quality food. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569119301620?via%3Dihub">our paper</a> we argue that the policy protects EU waters, but damages the marine environment of third countries to which it has now been extended. </p>
<p>We also argue that subsidies under the policy are a key driver of this over-exploitation of fisheries in third countries. For instance, these subsidies <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/opinion/the-eu-must-bury-the-debate-on-harmful-fisheries-subsidies-once-and-for-all/">incentivise</a> the construction of new vessels to allow boats to go farther and remain active at sea for longer, and even support the fuel costs for these more extensive activities. </p>
<p>And we highlight that abuse by EU vessels undermines local food security and provokes conflict with artisanal fishers. This is because demand in EU countries has led to EU vessels targeting fragile fish species such as the European anchovy, bigeye grunt, sardinellas, bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna and swordfish. </p>
<p>Our study used a review of existing literature and policy documents. This included an analysis of <a href="http://www.seaaroundus.org/data/#/search">catch data</a> between the EU and countries with whom it has fishing partnership agreements in West Africa, between 2010 and 2014. </p>
<p>We then cross-referenced EU catches with the exploitation status of certain species extracted from the <a href="http://www.fao.org/home/en/">Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)</a> and the <a href="https://www.iccat.int/en/#">International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas</a>. The categories we used were:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Fully exploited: this means that there’s no room to catch more of that fish species,</p></li>
<li><p>Over-exploited: this means that too many are being caught and that numbers will decline, and </p></li>
<li><p>Depleted: which means that the number of fish stock are at the lowest they’ve ever been. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>We found that, of the species caught by EU vessels:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Over 20% of the species in Sao-Tome and Principe were over-exploited; 10% of the species caught in Liberia are fully exploited. In Mauritania we found that 41% of the species caught are over-exploited and 5% are fully exploited while in Guinea-Bissau, 7% of the species are over-exploited and 21% are fully exploited.</p></li>
<li><p>In The Gambia, 55% of species caught are over-exploited and in Cape Verde 28% of the species caught are over-exploited. In Côte d'Ivoire, 23% of species caught are over-exploited.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>We also found that the EU selectively applies regulations when it comes to <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32008R1005">preventing</a> illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The EU issues warnings (yellow) or a complete ban in fish trade (red) to countries that are not making their fisheries more sustainable. This is when there are inadequate local provisions, like laws and enforcement measures.</p>
<p>We uncovered a trend. Yellow cards are issued to countries with whom the EU have a high level of trade, and a ban to countries where it has less fishing trade. </p>
<p>Guinea-Bissau, for example, <a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2018.00079/full">has not</a> received a warning despite evidence of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. Its maritime enforcement agencies <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/892031523024988244/ICR-final-P119380-04302018.docx">aren’t adequately equipped</a> to monitor the activities of vessels operating in its waters.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>We recommend that the EU review the implementation of the provisions of its Common Fisheries Policy, including the terms of their subsidies which have been identified as being harmful to sustainable fisheries. West African countries should also do far more to ensure that future and renewed fishing agreements are negotiated more robustly.</p>
<p>It is possible. For instance Guinea-Bissau was firm in its negotiations over a new agreement with the EU when its old one expired in 2017. After a year of negotiations, the EU offered a much better deal than previously proposed. <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/press/eu-concludes-sustainable-fishing-partnership-agreement-guinea-bissau_nl">In return</a> for providing five years of access to 50 EU fishing vessels, the EU will pay Guinea Bissau €15.6 million per year. The previous agreement’s rate was €9.2 million. </p>
<p>They were also required to put more investment into effective marine governance and enforcement.</p>
<p><em>Dyhia Belhabib is a Principal Investigator, Fisheries, ECOTRUST CANADA</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood is a Visiting Fellow at The Centre for Strategic Research and Studies, National Defence College Abuja, Nigeria</span></em></p>The EU continues to enter into fresh agreements with countries, despite evidence of serious population declines in the species of interest.Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood, Graduate Teaching Assistant, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1215902019-08-11T09:11:03Z2019-08-11T09:11:03ZHow to manage in a crisis: lessons from the West Africa Ebola outbreak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287336/original/file-20190808-144878-1wpst1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A man walk pass an Ebola awareness painting in downtown Monrovia, Liberia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is currently grappling with the world’s second largest Ebola outbreak. More than 1,800 people have died and 2,600 infections have been confirmed since the outbreak was declared in <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/drc-2019">August 2018</a>. </p>
<p>North Kivu and Ituri provinces are at the epicentre of the outbreak. Neighbouring countries are taking steps to mitigate the risk of spread. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has more than 600 staff on the ground supporting the response together with <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/drc-2019">national and international partners</a>. </p>
<p>In July this year, the WHO declared the current Ebola outbreak in the DRC a “public health emergency of international concern” under international health regulations. </p>
<p>This is not the first time Africa has faced a crisis in taking control of the spread of the Ebola virus. In 2014, the epidemic was detected in Guinea and rapidly became a sub-regional health problem. By February 2015, there were 22 859 Ebola cases – Guinea (3 044); Liberia (8 881) and Sierra Leone (10 934) – and a total of 9 162 deaths. The deceased included 488 health workers out of 830 infected. </p>
<p>Recently <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/governance-and-the-postcolony/">published research</a> by Bongiwe Ngcobo Mphahlele and myself explored the African dimensions of crisis management. To do this, we used existing crisis management frameworks to explore the following questions: do African decision-makers and leaders approach crises differently from their counterparts elsewhere? How do they make sense of a mess, and act to protect what they can? Do they – and the institutions within which they operate – learn lessons? </p>
<p>We found that some approaches to crisis management are unique to African countries’ specific contexts. And it’s also clear that the key role players dealing with the current Ebola outbreak in central Africa are learning lessons from the West Africa crisis. But many local players are still ill-equipped to manage the crisis. </p>
<p>Our research draws on the dynamics of the Ebola crisis that afflicted West Africa in 2014 to explore the conceptual assumptions relating to the strategic and political, rather than the managerial, dimensions of crisis management. It concludes with an assessment of the value of crisis management models and points out to areas where it can be strengthened for use in settings where fragile states are examined.</p>
<p>A crisis is a sudden and unexpected event that threatens an established way of life. Crises tend to disrupt peoples understanding of the world around them, therefore testing the resilience of a group or society, and often exposing the short comings of its leaders and public institutions.</p>
<h2>Ebola crisis</h2>
<p>The Ebola crisis of 2014 epitomised a crisis management dilemma. The global community, ill prepared, was taken by surprise by the rapid spread of the epidemic. Local and global health governance structures appeared inadequate. In addition, the international commitment to bolster pandemic preparedness and responses capacity in poor countries was tardy, and global support for strengthening health systems was weak.</p>
<p>The patterns of response and early warning observed in the West African case study (Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone) suggest that weak governance is a challenge that goes beyond fragile health systems. We demonstrate the correlation between the spread of the disease and poor governance by pointing out that poor crisis management and weak institutions exacerbated the spread of Ebola. Furthermore, government’s failure to provide information, to detect Ebola in its infancy stage, delayed response and weak containment strategies reveal governments’ poor crisis management.</p>
<p>However, we should also note that crisis management is in part a political process. Public leaders, whether in the US or in Africa, must manage a crisis in the interests of society. In so doing, they demonstrate the interplay of power, conflict and legitimacy. Although this is a global phenomenon, our chapter examined the performance of African leaders when faced with a significant crisis.</p>
<h2>Governance</h2>
<p>Good governance requires state capability, responsiveness and accountability. A state with good governance is also characterised by strong functioning institutions, effective communication and good leadership. Many African countries struggle with poor governance and coupled with corruption they are unable to deal with crises. </p>
<p>Our research demonstrates how the inability of the three governments to respond to the needs of its citizens during the Ebola crisis and failure to contain the spread of the virus points to incapability to handle a national crisis. </p>
<p>A coordinated communication strategy when a crisis breaks is a basic requirement of good governance. During the Ebola outbreak governments in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone failed to communicate effectively with citizens. In Liberia, this resulted in frustrations and riots in the capital city, Monrovia. Proactive communication allows the public to adopt cautious behaviour and minimises confusion. An effective communication strategy with the public by the three governments would have contributed immensely with the management of the Ebola crisis. </p>
<p>By all accounts many of these lessons are being learnt by the key role players dealing with the current outbreak of Ebola in central Africa. A robust flow of information allows for improved sense-making and crisis decision-making. Despite this, it is hard to ignore the reality that many local players – governments, health workers, media – remain ill-equipped to manage the crisis. </p>
<p>Many African nations continue to suffer from weak governance – both institutionally and in practice – and remain dependent on Western governments and the international organisations they support – for crisis decisions including the deployment of resources in managing the crisis. In this sense, much work remains to be done for African decision-makers to rise to the challenge of managing national and regional crises.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited excerpt from the book “<a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/governance-and-the-postcolony/">Governance and the Postcolony: Views from Africa</a>”, published by Wits University Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthoni van Nieuwkerk received funding from the NRF.</span></em></p>Do African decision-makers and leaders approach crises differently from counterparts elsewhere in the world?Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, Associate Professor, School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1196722019-07-07T09:03:30Z2019-07-07T09:03:30ZSharing data can help prevent public health emergencies in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282471/original/file-20190703-126360-6ijqvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Countries can be better prepared and respond faster to disease outbreaks if public health data is shared more freely.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Global collaboration and sharing data on public health emergencies is important to fight the spread of infectious diseases. If scientists and health workers can openly share their data across regions and organisations, countries can be better prepared and respond faster to disease outbreaks.</p>
<p>This was the case in with the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28405027">2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa</a>. Close to 100 scientists, clinicians, health workers and data analysts from around the world worked together to help contain the spread of the disease. </p>
<p>But there’s a lack of trust when it comes to sharing data in north-south collaborations. African researchers are suspicious that their northern partners could publish data without acknowledging the input from the less resourced southern institutions where the data was first generated. Until recently, the authorship of key scientific publications, based on collaborative work in Africa, was dominated by scientists from outside Africa. </p>
<p>The Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness, an international network of major research funding organisations, recently published a <a href="http://www.glopid-r.org/new-release-roadmap-to-data-sharing/">roadmap to data sharing</a>. This may go some way to address the data sharing challenges. Members of the network are expected to encourage their grantees to be inclusive and publish their results in open access journals. The network includes major funders of research in Africa like the European Commission, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust. </p>
<p>The roadmap provides a guide on how funders can accelerate research data sharing by the scientists they fund. It recommends that research funding institutions make real-time, external data sharing a requirement. And that research needs to be part of a multi-disciplinary disease network to advance public health emergencies responses. </p>
<p>In addition, funding should focus on strengthening institutions’ capacity on a number of fronts. This includes data management, improving data policies, building trust and aligning tools for data sharing.</p>
<p>Allowing researchers to freely access data generated by global academic counterparts is critical for rapidly informing disease control strategies in public health emergencies. </p>
<h2>Why share data</h2>
<p>Mounting appropriate and timely responses to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases requires global cooperation on data analysis across disciplines. Examples include Ebola, Lassa fever and Yellow fever.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html">2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa</a>, field and laboratory data collected in real-time were shared between scientists from different countries. These data revealed how the Ebola virus was evolving and spreading in the region. The information was then used to contain the spread of the virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.</p>
<p>Ninety-six individual investigators, including clinicians and scientists, from 60 institutions in 18 countries worked together. They collected and analysed data by sequencing 1,610 Ebola virus genomes. The data informed policy decisions in West Africa because government ministers from Sierra Leone and Liberia were part of the investigators. </p>
<p>The work done in West Africa shows that global data sharing can work.</p>
<p>This north-south collaboration is the research partnership model that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-partnership-is-closing-the-door-on-parachute-research-in-africa-102217">European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership</a> uses on the continent. </p>
<p>This is a partnership between the European Union and national institutions in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. It was initially created in response to the global health crisis caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Now it includes research and responses to neglected and emerging infections. </p>
<p>It currently supports several institutions that were involved in the West African study. As the regional director for Africa, I promote global collaborations that acknowledge inputs from Africa researchers and institutions. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-partnership-is-closing-the-door-on-parachute-research-in-africa-102217">How a partnership is closing the door on "parachute" research in Africa</a>
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<h2>Collaborations</h2>
<p>Our north-south partnership is also making strides to improve the capacity for collaboration and data sharing. </p>
<p>The global research collaboration includes a number of members such as the African Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Egypt and the South African Medical Research Council.</p>
<p>There are several initiatives under way. </p>
<p>For one, the African Academy of Sciences is in the early stages of building a <a href="https://aesa.ac.ke/cari/coalition-for-african-research-and-innovation/">Coalition for African Research and Innovation</a>. This platform will foster collaboration on research and innovation in Africa. It will also address the under investment in scientific talent and research infrastructure.</p>
<p>Another example is the <a href="https://pactr.samrc.ac.za/">Pan African Clinical Trials Registry</a>. This is hosted by the South Africa Medical Research Council. The registry provides access to contacts for researchers as well as trial sites. It also provides information on which organisation or institution funds various research projects. This data can be used to map clinical trial activity in several disease conditions relevant to the continent such as Ebola. </p>
<p>In 2017, for example, two public health emergencies networks and four regional networks of excellence were funded. This was to ensure that African countries are better prepared to prevent, respond to and minimise the impact of infectious disease outbreaks. </p>
<h2>Building partnerships</h2>
<p>Collaboration and data sharing has become a serious focus in the fight against public health emergencies. </p>
<p>Funding agencies, ethics and regulatory bodies in Africa, reviewers and grant recipients have been looking for ways to consolidate a efforts for collaboration and data sharing. </p>
<p>Among the issues that need to be addressed are big data, the way that databases can be managed and the implementation of systemic reviews. This is critical to prevent the next epidemic.</p>
<p>What the Ebola crisis in West Africa has shown us is that wide scale collaboration is helpful and works. The Global Research Collaboration roadmap instils confidence for such inclusiveness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Moses John Bockarie works for EDCTP which is funded by the European Commission. In addition to his honorary appointment at the South African Medical Research Council, he is also a honorary professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He previously received funding from the UK Department for International Development</span></em></p>Sharing data openly across regions and organisations can help to accelerate preparedness and responses to public health emergencies.Moses John Bockarie, Honorary Chief Specialist Scientist, South African Medical Research CouncilLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1168772019-06-14T12:41:34Z2019-06-14T12:41:34ZHow an aid gusher helped and hurt Liberia<p>Two violent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13729504">civil wars in Liberia killed a quarter million</a> people between 1989 and 2003 and destroyed the West African country’s economy. A massive influx of foreign aid followed that turmoil, ushering in a period of relative peace and stability. Yet Liberia remains among the <a href="https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/the-poorest-countries-in-the-world">world’s poorest countries</a>. </p>
<p>In 2017, one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/world/africa/george-weah-liberia-election.html">democratically elected president</a> stepped down and another took office for the first time in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13732188">over 70 years</a>. At the same time, Liberian foreign aid subsided. According to the World Bank’s database, total aid fell from an all-time high in <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.PC.ZS?end=2017&locations=LR&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=1960&view=chart">2010 of US$359 per capita</a> to about $130 in 2013, although aid flows did rebound briefly to <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.PC.ZS?end=2017&locations=LR&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=1960&view=chart">$243</a> per capita during the country’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0006580">2014-2015 Ebola crisis</a>.</p>
<p>Having lost so much foreign support, Liberia’s economy is struggling. Reportedly accompanying these economic woes are <a href="https://frontpageafricaonline.com/news/liberian-diaspora-leaders-concerned-about-state-of-civility-in-liberia/">an uptick in violence</a> and <a href="https://www.kget.com/news/world-news/thousands-descend-on-liberias-capital-to-protest-president/">political unrest</a> that’s now hard to ignore. Thousands of demonstrators joined together to protest how the government is handling the economy in June 2019.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cla.purdue.edu/ppp/about/team.html">We belong to a team of researchers</a> that includes one Liberian, several Americans and people from India, Nigeria and other countries. Our team has been working to reduce political violence <a href="https://cla.purdue.edu/ppp/projects/liberia.html">in Liberian communities</a> by partnering with local leaders, concerned citizens and police forces for more than five years. </p>
<p>Because we know economic and political tensions often rise as foreign aid agencies withdraw, we are deeply concerned about the long-term prospects for Liberia’s new-found stability. We also believe the situation in Liberia may serve as an example of how foreign aid that can seem to be healing a war-torn country’s wounds may do little to strengthen those nations in the long term.</p>
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<h2>A short-lived patch</h2>
<p>Overseas development assistance, the most common kind of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/foreign-aid">non-military foreign aid</a>, is a mix of money, food and other supplies, plus services that goes to countries that are low-income, enduring a crisis or both. In Liberia’s case, it has included everything from <a href="https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/unmil">UN peacekeepers</a> to nurses caring <a href="https://www.mcsprogram.org/">for pregnant women and newborns</a>. This assistance was intended to end armed conflicts and human rights violations while reducing poverty rates and fighting illnesses like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-018-2506-z">malaria</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/ebola-6-months/liberia/en/">Ebola</a>. </p>
<p>The civil wars slashed the size of <a href="http://www.lr.undp.org/content/liberia/en/home/countryinfo.html">Liberia’s economy by 90%</a>, causing its gross domestic product, or GDP, to decline to only $54.50 per capita by 1995. In large part due to the foreign aid influx, its gross domestic product ballooned from $748 million in 2003 to <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/country/liberia">$3.3 billion in 2017</a>, with <a href="http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3A101%3BcurrID%3AUSD%3BpcFlag%3A1">per-capita GDP of about $600</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/liberia/liberia-needs-both-african-and-international-partners-build-lasting-peace">Relying heavily on foreign cash</a> established a false sense of stability and growth in the economy, as infusions of foreign cash were temporary. The lasting impacts of Liberia’s aid flows are coming into focus now that much of the world has moved on.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-liberia-peacekeepers/u-n-closes-up-liberia-peacekeeping-mission-after-15-years-idUSKBN1GY2FX">United Nations Mission to Liberia</a> has pulled out altogether. Other major organizations and countries have reduced their funding too, including <a href="https://openaid.se/aid/sweden/liberia/2018/">Sweden</a>, a leading donor to Africa.</p>
<p><a href="https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/LBR?measure=Obligations&fiscal_year=2019%22%22">Aid from the U.S.</a>, whose leaders helped <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/liberia">found Liberia in the 19th century</a> as a destination for <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479823178/">freed African Americans</a> who either moved there by force or free will, fell sharply as well. It dropped from $228 million in 2011, when assistance began to dry up, to $86 million in 2018.</p>
<p>There were two apparent aftershocks: inflation surged and growth faltered. </p>
<p>After hovering <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?locations=LR">around 8%</a> in recent years, Liberian inflation reached an all-time high of <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/liberia/overview">28.5% in 2018</a>. Following years of <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=LR&name_desc=false">growth rates</a> ranging between 5% and 10% per year, the economy contracted in 2016 and growth remained low for the next two years.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2019/06/11/pr-19208-imf-executive-board-concludes-2019-article-iv-consultation-with-liberia">International Monetary Fund</a> projects a meager 0.4% uptick in 2019 that will not keep up with population growth. Many Liberian civil servants have told us that their pay is being cut or their paychecks delayed, prompting struggles to pay rent and school fees for their children.</p>
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<h2>Too much aid?</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2008.00568.x">International economists</a> have tried and failed to prove that getting <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-boost-growth/">more aid makes economies healthier</a>, even when a boost in aid coincides with faster growth. In this case, rather than strengthen the economy in the long term and make Liberia more able to fend for itself, international assistance may have merely <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/30/liberia-un-mission-helped-restore-confidence-rule-law/">propped it up</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-data/Africa-Development-Aid-at-a-Glance-2019.pdf">$776 million in aid per year</a> Liberia obtained between 2010 and 2017 accounted for anywhere from <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=LR">40% to 25%</a> of its GDP during that same period. </p>
<p>Given how the economy has shrunk since aid declined, international assistance would likely be better equipped to succeed in the long run if it emphasized building the skills of local people to make them better at running their own country and <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/liberia/liberia-needs-both-african-and-international-partners-build-lasting-peace">building their own economy</a> how they deem best rather than depending on outsiders to get things done. As the Chinese proverb says, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”</p>
<h2>Real gains</h2>
<p>Even so, it is hard to see a country in crisis and do nothing.</p>
<p>According to the United Nations’ <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data">Human Development Index</a>, Liberia ranks No. 181, among the world’s lowest. In 2007, for instance, foreign aid paid for more than three-quarters of the cost of Liberia’s health care. Without it, many more people, especially children, would have suffered malnutrition and died, according to an <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/news/embracing-challenge-good-data-collection-post-conflict-liberia">interagency international health report</a>.</p>
<p>Spending also brought about many other significant benefits. For example, the share of <a href="http://www.aho.afro.who.int/profiles_information/index.php/Liberia:Analytical_summary_-_Health_Status_and_Trends">children dying before their fifth birthday</a> fell by half, from 220 per 1,000 live births in 1986, to 110 in 2007. Liberian <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=LR">life expectancy gained a decade</a> after the war ended in 2003, rising from about 53 to 63 years and is much closer to the global average than it used to be.</p>
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<p>It’s easy to see how when foreign aid <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-un-had-to-go-but-is-liberia-really-prepared-for-peace-62453">provides most of a country’s health care</a>, withdrawing it can leave that health system in tatters.</p>
<p>And it is still too soon to tell what the future holds for Liberia – a return to war or just a long, rocky path toward economic and political stability. While we hope for the latter, the economic woes following a steep decline in foreign aid make us fear for the worst.</p>
<p><em>This article has been corrected to say that Swedish aid to Liberia has declined.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stacey L. Connaughton previously received funding from philanthropist Milt Lauenstein to build and direct the Purdue Peace Project, a political violence prevention initiative based at Purdue University. She serves as an independent consultant for Social Impact, a global management consulting firm, on a USAID-funded leadership development program serving young professionals in Liberia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Eise does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Depending on foreign aid to pay the bills makes moving on when it’s gone harder.Jessica Eise, Ross Fellow in the Brian Lamb School of Communication Doctoral Program, Purdue UniversityStacey L. Connaughton, Associate Professor, Director of the Purdue Peace Project, Purdue UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174442019-05-27T14:02:42Z2019-05-27T14:02:42ZHow climate change could affect some of West Africa’s iconic bird species<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275418/original/file-20190520-69213-8f08xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>If scientists know how particular species are responding to the realities of global climate change, they can help to recommend <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/sowb2018">better conservation strategies</a>.</p>
<p>But information about climate change response and adaptation is either limited or not available for many tropical bird species. This is a glaring oversight: particularly for range restricted tropical birds – that is, species with narrow ranges that occur only in a particular place or habitat. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3223">Scientists</a> <a href="http://sekercioglu.biology.utah.edu/PDFs/Sekercioglu%202012%20BiolConserv_The%20effects%20of%20climate%20change.pdf">have shown</a> that range restricted tropical birds are extremely vulnerable to global climate change, owing to their specialised habitat requirements. These species include a number of West African birds which occupy the region’s tropical forests. </p>
<p>Like most regions on the continent, future <a href="http://parcc.protectedplanet.net/system/comfy/cms/files/files/000/000/039/original/PARCC_climate_report_FINAL_EN.pdf">climate change projections for West Africa</a> suggest there’s a high chance of temperature increases. But they’re more equivocal with rainfall: different projections indicate significant increases or decreases in future rainfall, with little consensus among models. </p>
<p>My colleagues and I wanted to address the gap in knowledge about what’s needed to protect West African species from the effects of changes in climate. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://www.academia.edu/39053433/Effects_of_climate_change_on_the_distributional_potential_of_three_range-_restricted_West_African_bird_species">looked at</a> three range restricted endemic West African bird species: the Timneh Parrot (Pscittacus erithracus timneh), Ballman’s Malimbe (Malimbus ballmanni), and White-necked Rockfowl (Picathartes gymnocephalus). These birds are only found in West Africa and have restricted habitat requirements, making them highly susceptible to climate change. </p>
<p>Using <a href="https://ebird.org/home">a variety</a> of <a href="https://www.gbif.org/en/">open access</a> <a href="http://vertnet.org/">occurrence data</a> available for our three target species, and <a href="https://www.worldclim.org/">27 global climate models</a>, we created ecological niche models for each species to assess how climate change will affect the current and potential future geographic distributions of these already restricted range birds. </p>
<p>Based on our modelling we showed that the impact of climate change on two bird species – the Ballman’s Malimbe and White-necked Rockfowl – would be minimal. The data suggest these species’ ranges will remain stable and closely similar to their present-day distributions. </p>
<p>But the story is quite different for the Timneh Parrot. Our models suggest that it faces a marked loss of range due to climate change. The model shows that by 2050 the species will be entirely limited to Liberia: its current range extends beyond Liberia into neighbouring Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire. </p>
<h2>Under pressure</h2>
<p>Our three focus species were selected for several reasons. These were the fact that they are globally threatened – listed as either endangered or vulnerable by the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/resources/conservation-tools/iucn-red-list-threatened-species">International Union for Conservation of Nature</a>; the fact that they occupy restricted ranges and the fact that they are likely to be highly susceptible to habitat loss and climate change.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/39053433/Effects_of_climate_change_on_the_distributional_potential_of_three_range-_restricted_West_African_bird_species">Our findings</a> – that the effects of climate change on the present distributions of West African birds will be minimal in some cases – but devastating for the Timneh Parrot – are extremely worrying.</p>
<p>We found marked climate change–driven potential range loss across the Timneh Parrot current range in West Africa. And, worse, our models suggest that no areas will become newly suitable for its habitation. By 2050, our models suggest that the parrot will be almost entirely restricted to Liberia, representing a loss of about 75% of its range.</p>
<p>The Timneh Parrot already faces a number of threats, most related to human activity. Habitat loss is one big problem; the birds are also trapped and sold into the <a href="http://datazone.birdlife.org/trade-in-africa%E2%80%99s-grey-parrots-and-timneh-parrots-is-currently-not-sustainable">illegal international pet trade</a>. There are only between <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22736498/129878408">100 000 and 500 000</a> of these birds alive today in the wild, and their numbers are falling. Any more pressure could push this species to the brink of extinction.</p>
<h2>What needs to be done</h2>
<p>One of the things we attempted to predict through our models was how easily each species would be able to move to and colonise new, uninhabited areas that are suitable for their needs. For this to happen, there must be suitable corridors along which the birds can travel. This is even true for the Timneh Parrot, which can disperse a little under suitable conditions.</p>
<p>This means that conservation efforts in the region should not only focus on protecting individual habitat fragments suitable to these species. These efforts should also prioritise creating corridors for connectivity between suitable habitats. </p>
<p>We recommend that regional and national species conservation action plans in West Africa should incorporate climate change adaptation strategies for individual species. This will optimise conservation of these species, now and in the future, and of bird diversity in general.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Funding for this study was provided by the Global Environment Facility (GEF-5810) through Conservation International.</span></em></p>Models suggest that the effects of climate change will devastate the already threatened Timneh Parrot.Benedictus Freeman, PhD student, University of KansasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.