IPS – The consequences of the Doha Round of trade talks for larger developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa could include job losses and deindustrialisation if a new study forecasting how Kenya is set to be affected is anything to go by.
Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49311
IPS – Poor women will bear the greatest ‘climate burden’, says the United Nations Population Fund in its 2009 State of the World Population report, released today.
The report emphasises that climate change is more than an issue of energy efficiency or industrial carbon emissions; it is also an issue of population dynamics, poverty and gender equity.
Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49323
Numerous research institutes and international organisations agree that climate change will in the short and medium term worsen Africa’s agriculture and food production capabilities, unless greenhouse gases emissions (GHE) are substantially reduced and adequate trade and investment policies put in place.
Fresh studies on the effects of climate change on agriculture predict that, without proper mitigation and adaptation policies, sub-Saharan African countries will suffer the most in the form of increased malnutrition, unemployment and reduced export earnings.
In its “Climate Change Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation” report, published Sep 29, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) warned that “the negative effects of climate change on crop production are especially pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa, as the agriculture sector accounts for a large share of GDP (gross domestic product), export earnings and employment in most African countries.”
The report indicates that by 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa, average rice, wheat and maize yields will decline by up to 14 percent, 22 percent and five percent, respectively, as a result of climate change. This decline will lead to more malnutrition, especially of children.
Without adequate climate change mitigation and adaptation, and in the absence of proper investment and trade policies, “food availability in the (sub-Saharan African) region will average 500 calories less per person in 2050, a 21 percent decline”.
Due to climate change, the number of malnourished children in sub-Saharan Africa could jump from 33 million in the year 2000 to 52 million in 2050.
Gerald Nelson, leading author of the report, told IPS that, globally, some seven billion dollars per year must be additionally invested in climate change adaptation programmes such as “research, rural infrastructure and irrigation in the developing world to offset the negative effects of climate change on human well-being.
“Sub-Saharan Africa requires the greatest overall investment – some 40 percent of the additional amount estimated – and a greater share of investments in roads,” Nelson added.
Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48834
This year, World Teachers’ Day puts the spotlight on the global teacher shortage and the challenge of increasing the teaching force and its capacity to provide quality education, at a time when the financial and economic crisis is placing increasing strain on education budgets.
“Many countries are making tremendous efforts to meet educational goals,” said Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO. “But they will not make it without recruiting and training many more teachers. We cannot let the financial and economic crisis cut into education budgets. Lower spending on education will have dramatic short and long-term consequences on the quality of education.”
“This is a crucial period to keep our pledges,” he continued. “I am deeply concerned about the 22% drop in aid to basic education observed between 2006 and 2007. Further cuts in aid could seriously threaten progress made since 2000 in many low income countries, especially in Africa, where the teacher shortage is the most acute.”
Twenty-six out of 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa face a critical teacher gap, according to new projections from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. In these countries, 2.6 million teachers were in the classrooms in 2007. This number must grow to 3.7 million in just eight years to meet the UPE goal by 2015. This means that for every two teachers teaching in 2007 in the region, there must be three in 2015. The Central African Republic, for example, would have to expand its teaching forces by 18.5% each year in order to ensure that there are enough teachers in the classroom by 2015. Teacher gaps are also severe in Eritrea (15.9%), followed by Chad (13.8%), Niger (12.5%), and Burkina Faso (12.0%).
Read more – http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=46543&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
As the global economic cycle moves to recovery, there are grounds for optimism that sub-Saharan Africa’s performance relative to the rest of the world will be better than in the past, the IMF says.
But the world slowdown is exacting a heavy toll that is all the more harmful given endemic poverty.
In its Regional Economic Outlook for the subcontinent, the IMF says that sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is set for a recovery to mirror that projected for the rest of the world. The report adds that while average per capita incomes should escape the sustained reductions that marked previous downturns, living standards for some may deteriorate markedly and there may be some acute increases in poverty.
Policies in most SSA economies seem to be responding more positively to the current global economic crisis better than they have in the past, the report states. Fiscal and monetary policies have helped counter the effects of the slowdown and the region seems to have generally avoided the major macroeconomic instabilities that followed previous global downturns.
“The effective use of counter-cyclical macroeconomic tools marks a new era in the policy environment of sub-Saharan Africa,” Antoinette Sayeh, Director of the IMF’s African Department, said in a press briefing.
Read more – http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2009/CAR100309B.htm
