Month: March 2024

NEW DELHI — The Indian navy said it had freed the 23-strong crew of an Iranian fishing vessel that was seized by armed pirates off Somalia.

The Al-Kambar 786 was southwest of the Yemeni island of Socotra, in the Arabian Sea, on March 28 when it was reported to have been boarded by nine pirates, according to a naval statement Friday.

The vessel was intercepted by the navy’s INS Sumedha and INS Trishul, leading to “over 12 hours of intense coercive tactical measures” forcing the pirates to surrender, the statement said.

The nine pirates are being brought to India under the domestic law against piracy on the high seas, the navy said in a separate statement Saturday.

The fishing vessel’s crew of 23 Pakistani nationals were safe and received medical checks before being cleared to continue with fishing activities, the statement said.

Piracy incidents east of the Red Sea have resurfaced for the first time in nearly a decade.

Taking advantage of Western forces’ focus on protecting shipping from attacks in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militants, pirates have made or attempted more than 20 hijackings since November, driving up insurance and security costs and adding to a crisis for global shipping companies.
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Greece Arrests Member of Smuggling Gang That Raked in $21 Billion

ATHENS — Greek authorities have arrested a senior member of an international gang that smuggled Latin American fuel products for illegal sale around the world, raking in an estimated profit of more than $21 billion, police said on Saturday.

The gang member, an Italian national for whom Interpol had issued an arrest warrant, was found in a southern Athens suburb on Friday, a police official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The warrant had ordered the man’s arrest and his extradition to Venezuela to be tried for crimes that include the illegal transport and trade of resources of strategic importance, the official said.

The gang stole the fuel products, which were loaded onto its oil tankers from ports in Latin America, and switched off tracking transponders to deceive shipping brokers, police said in a statement.

Police did not disclose the suspect’s name.
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Deadly Bomb Hits Gas Surveyors in Southwestern Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — A roadside bomb explosion in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province Saturday killed at least one person and injured 14 others.

Officials said the attack targeted surveyors from a major, private gas-producing company and Pakistani security forces escorting them in the Harnai district, 170 kilometers (106 miles) northeast of the provincial capital of Quetta.

Javed Domki, the district deputy commissioner, confirmed the casualties to VOA by phone. He said the injured were airlifted to a Quetta military hospital, where some of them were in “critical condition.”

Several personnel of Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps force were among the victims, he said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombing in turbulent Baluchistan, which is rich in natural resources.

The Pakistani province has experienced a surge in insurgent attacks in recent days. The so-called Baluch Liberation Army, an outlawed group, has claimed credit for plotting much of the violence.

Last week, ethnic Baluch insurgents assaulted a key Pakistan naval air base and a government complex in the Turbat and Gwadar districts, respectively. The ensuing clashes killed several security personnel and a dozen insurgents in both attacks.

Gwadar is home to a China-run, deep-water Arabian Sea port, central to a multibillion-dollar bilateral collaboration under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, an extension of Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure program.

Thousands of Chinese engineers and laborers are associated with CPEC and other Chinese-funded projects in Pakistan.

On Tuesday, a suicide car bombing in a northwestern mountain Pakistan region killed five Chinese engineers and their local driver.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Pakistani officials suspect militants linked to an Afghanistan-based terrorist group, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, was behind it.

The TTP distanced itself from the bombing, saying its violence campaign targets only Pakistani security forces.
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More Than Just Islamic State: Rising Militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Washington — There has been a wave of attacks across Pakistan in recent weeks by militant groups operating in the region that have widely varying objectives.

This week, a suicide attacker killed five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver in a convoy in Pakistan’s northwest. Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is the usual suspect for such attacks in the northwest, but in a statement on Wednesday, it denied being behind targeting the Chinese workers.

Earlier, two suicide attacks in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province killed nine Pakistani troops in the third week of March.

In the southwest, militants carried out a brazen attack on Pakistan’s second-largest naval airbase and a port complex near the Arabian Sea in the volatile Balochistan province. The Pakistan army said two soldiers and 14 militants were killed in the attacks. Designated terrorist group Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, accepted the responsibility.

The attacks by suspected regional militant groups came as the most active terrorist group in the region, Islamic State-Khorasan, was blamed by Washington for the attack in Moscow a week ago that killed more than 140 concert-goers.

“The recent surge in attacks is deeply concerning because it represents an escalation in militant tactics,” said Elizabeth Threlkeld, senior fellow and director for South Asian affairs at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

Who are the militant groups now active in the region, and what are their goals?

Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K, is leading the current wave of terror across the region.

The group was formed in 2015 by disgruntled Pakistani Taliban members. It considers itself a branch of the larger Islamic State, or IS, in what it calls the Khorasan, a reference to the historic region comprising parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran.

IS-K, like its parent organization IS, is a Sunni organization. IS-K claims it is working to enforce Salafi sharia throughout its region of influence. The group opposes Shia Islam, and fighters have taken credit for hundreds of deaths of Shiites in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years.

A U.N. report last year in June said IS-K’s family members and fighters in the region number between 4,000 and 6,000.

“IS-K is attracting disgruntled militants from Taliban and members of the Tajikistan-based radical group Jama’at Ansarullah, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan [IMU], East Turkistan Islamic Movement [ETIM] and those inspired by the Salafi ideology,” said Syed Fakhar Kakakhel, a Pashtun journalist in Pakistan who covers militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

IS-K has not claimed responsibility for the attack in Moscow, but its statement in Pashto last Monday glorified the attackers. The 30-page statement was a fierce polemic against the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan, scolding them for their relations with the U.S., Russia, China and other countries.

IS-K has claimed responsibility, though, for the two suicide attacks, one each in Afghanistan’s Kandahar city on March 21, and the suicide bombings on January 3 at the memorial services for the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Kerman city, Iran. More than 100 people were killed in the latter attack. Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Iraq in 2020.

Russian, Iranian and Afghan Taliban identified the attackers of Moscow, Kerman and Kandahar as nationals of Tajikistan.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan: umbrella syndicate of militants

Analysts say TTP has gotten smarter in its tactics, techniques, and weapons since the withdrawal of U.S.-led NATO forces from Afghanistan in August 2021. A U.N. report early this year said al-Qaida is conducting suicide bomber training to support TTP, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Kakakhel said TTP’s new strategy includes delegating powers to its proxies, adding sophisticated weapons such as M24 sniper rifles and M16A4 rifles with thermal scopes and night vision, along with targeted ambushes to its playbook.

“We had reported suicide attacks where a candidate came to press the button and blew himself off. But now, they fight for the last breath inflicting maximum casualties to forces and then pressing the button at the right time,” Kakakhel said.

“I assess the TTP’s threat to be more severe, especially as the TTP has sanctuary in Afghanistan and support of the Taliban. TTP also has a bigger fighting force,” said Asfandyar Mir, senior expert for South Asia with a focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, at the Washington-based U.S. Institute for Peace.

The militants carried out 97 attacks in February this year and about 789 attacks last year in Pakistan alone, a record high since 2018, according to Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies. Pakistani officials attribute a higher percentage of the attacks to the TTP or its proxies.

The Pakistan military and civilian government representatives engaged the TTP leadership in talks in 2021, but they couldn’t reach a deal. The government officials later said TTP wanted power in regions close to Afghanistan to impose their Sharia on the style of Afghan Taliban.

“Pakistani security forces should be commended for holding off attacks on Gwadar and Turbat naval station, but the broader challenge remains that the military and police are taking heavy losses across the western border region,” Elizabeth Threlkeld told VOA.

She said Pakistan’s leaders badly miscalculated in assuming a Taliban government in Kabul would support Pakistan’s interests. “As Pakistan seeks a way out of this difficult diplomatic and security challenge, it would benefit from conducting a thorough review of the analysis and decision-making that drove its Afghan policy for the past two decades to draw lessons going forward,” she said.

Balochistan: home for militant separatist groups

Baloch separatist groups, several of which are designated as terrorist groups by Britain and the United States, are largely secular but for nearly 20 years have been embroiled in an active insurgency against Pakistani troops. The feud started after the Pakistani army killed a prominent Baloch leader and former chief minister Balochistan Akbar Bugti in 2006.

As many as five known Baloch separatist groups are coordinating their attacks against Chinese-funded projects and Pakistani forces in the restive province under the banner of the “Baloch Raji Aajoi Sangar,” a Baloch name translated as Baloch National Freedom Movement.

The most lethal faction is the Majeed Brigade, a sub-group of Baloch Liberation Army. The Majeed Brigade has accepted responsibilities for some of the lethal attacks on the Chinese nationals and Pakistani troops. Other Baloch separatist groups engaged in insurgency include Baloch Republican Army, Baloch Republican Guards, Baloch Liberation Front and Bashirzeb Baloch Group.

Balochistan-based analyst Syed Ali Shah said Baloch militants are different from Islamic militants: “In Balochistan, this is a political insurgency. They are not fighting for the implementation of Sharia, rather, [they fight] for greater control over Baloch coast and resources.”

Pakistani media has reported 11 major attacks on Chinese nationals and projects in Balochistan and other parts of the country since 2018. Most of these attacks were claimed by Baloch separatist groups.

Some analysts consider the Islamist militants a bigger threat for regional security because of their transnational presence and higher number of fighters. “As for the Baloch militants, they have been trying to target Chinese interests for several years now and are in no mood to relent,” said senior expert Mir.

He said he thinks Pakistan will probably continue to exert pressure on the Afghan Taliban to reduce the threat of both TTP and Baloch militants.
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Ukraine: Russia fired 12 drones, four missiles in overnight attack

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How EU Deforestation Laws Are Reordering World of Coffee

BUON MA THUOT, Vietnam — Le Van Tam is no stranger to how the vagaries of global trade can determine the fortunes of small coffee farmers like him.

He first planted coffee in a patch of land outside Buon Ma Thuot city in Vietnam’s Central Highland region in 1995. For years, his focus was on quantity, not quality. Tam used ample amounts of fertilizer and pesticides to boost his yields, and global prices determined how well he did.

Then, in 2019, he teamed up with Le Dinh Tu of Aeroco Coffee, an organic exporter to Europe and the U.S., and adopted more sustainable methods, turning his coffee field into a a sun-dappled forest. The coffee grows side by side with tamarind trees that add nitrogen to the soil and provide support for black pepper vines. Grass helps keep the soil moist, and the mix of plants discourages pest outbreaks. The pepper also adds to Tam’s income.

“The output hasn’t increased, but the product’s value has,” he said.

In the 1990s, Tam was among thousands of Vietnamese farmers who planted more than a million hectares of coffee, mostly robusta, to take advantage of high global prices. By 2000, Vietnam had become the second-largest producer of coffee, which provides a tenth of its export income.

Vietnam is hoping that farmers like Tam will benefit from a potential reordering of how coffee is traded due to more stringent European laws to stop deforestation.

The European Deforestation Regulation or EUDR will outlaw sales of products like coffee beginning December 30, 2024, if companies can’t prove they are not linked with deforestation. The new rules’ scope is wide: They will apply to cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, rubber and cattle. To sell those products in Europe, big companies will have to show they come from land where forests haven’t been cut since 2020. Smaller companies have until July 2025 to do so.

Deforestation is the second-biggest source of carbon emissions after fossil fuels. Europe ranked second behind China in the amount of deforestation caused by its imports in 2017, according to a 2021 World Wildlife Fund report. If implemented well, the EUDR could help reduce this, especially if the more stringent standards for tracing where products come from become the “new normal,” Helen Bellfield, a policy director at Global Canopy, told The Associated Press in an interview.

It’s not fail-safe. Companies can just sell products that don’t meet the new requirements elsewhere, without reducing deforestation. Thousands of small farmers unable to provide the potentially expensive data could be left out. Much depends on how countries and companies react to the new laws, Bellfield said. Countries must help smaller farmers by building national systems that ensure their exports are traceable. Otherwise, companies may just buy from very large farms that can prove they have complied.

Already, orders for Ethiopian-grown coffee have fallen. And Peru lacks the capacity to provide information needed for coffee and cocoa grown in the Peruvian Amazon.

This comes atop other challenges, which in Vietnam include worsening droughts and receding groundwater levels.

“There will be winners and losers,” she said.

Vietnam can’t afford to lose — Europe is the largest market for its coffee, constituting 40% of its coffee exports. Six weeks after the EUDR was approved, Vietnam’s agriculture ministry started working to prepare coffee growing-provinces for the shift. It has since rolled out a national plan that includes a database of where crops are grown and mechanisms to make this information traceable.

The Southeast Asian nation has long promoted more sustainable farming methods, viewing laws like the EUDR as an “an inevitable change,” according to an August 2023 agriculture ministry communique. The EUDR could help accelerate such a transformation, according to Agriculture Minister Le Minh Hoang.

Tam and Tu, his export partner, were quick to adapt.

Even if the costs are higher, Tu said, they can get better prices for their high-quality coffee.

“We must choose the highest quality. Otherwise, we will always be laborers,” Tu said, while sipping a cup of his favorite coffee at his company’s coffee-processing factory adjoining Tam’s farm. This is where trucks laden with red coffee cherries, both robusta and arabica, arrive from other farms, where the pulp of the fruit is removed and beans of coffee are laid out on tables to dry in the sun.

Tu already has certificates from international agencies for sustainability that will enable him to deal with the EUDR. Such certificates typically address the issue of deforestation, although some tweaks may be needed, said David Hadley, program director for regulatory impacts at the nonprofit group Preferred by Nature in Costa Rica.

Ensuring that Vietnam’s roughly half a million small farmers, who produce about 85% of its coffee, are able to collect and provide data showing their farms did not cause deforestation remains a challenge. Some may struggle to use smartphones to collect geolocation coordinates. Small exporters need to set up systems to prevent other uncertified products from being mixed with coffee that meets EUDR requirements, said Loan Le of International Economics Consulting.

Farmers also will need documents proving they have complied with national laws for land use, environmental protection and labor, Le said. Moreover, coffee’s long value chain — from producing beans to collecting them and processing them — requires digital systems to ensure records are error-free.

Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, is better placed, said Bellfield of Global Canopy, since its coffee grows on plantations that far are away from forests and it has a relatively well-organized supply chain. Also, Brazilian-grown coffee is most likely to meet the EUDR requirements, according to a 2024 Brazilian study, because much of it is exported to the EU, Brazil has fewer small farmers, and about a third of its coffee-growing acreage already has some kind of sustainability certification.

The EUDR has acknowledged concerns for less well prepared suppliers by giving them more time and said the European government will work with impacted countries to “enable the transition” while “paying particular attention” to the needs of small holders and Indigenous communities. A review in 2028 will also look at impacts on smallholders.

“Despite this we still anticipate it being costly and difficult for small holder farming communities,” she said.

In Peru, collecting information about hundreds of thousands of small farmers is difficult given the country’s weak institutions and the fact that most farmers lack land titles, according to a study of EUDR impacts by the Amazon Business Alliance, a joint-initiative by USAID, Canada and the nonprofit group Conservation International.

Ethiopia, where coffee makes up about a third of total export earnings according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, has been slow to react. The national plan it rolled out in February 2024 fails to resolve the fundamental issue of how to gather required data from millions of small farmers and provide that information to buyers, said Gizat Worku, head of the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association.

“That requires a huge amount of resources,” he said

Gizat, who like many Ethiopians goes by his first name, said that orders are falling because of doubts about the country’s ability to comply with the EUDR. Some traders are contemplating switching to other markets, like the Middle East or China, where Ethiopian coffee is “booming,” he said. But switching markets isn’t easy.

“These regulations are going to have a tremendous impact,” Gizat said.
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Chocolate Lovers, African Cocoa Farmers Pay Price as Big Brands See Profits

03/30/2024 ITafLeave a comment

ACCRA, Ghana — Shoppers may get a bitter surprise in their Easter baskets this year. Chocolate eggs and bunnies are more expensive than ever as changing climate patterns eat into global cocoa supplies and the earnings of farmers in West Africa.

About three-quarters of the world’s cocoa — the main ingredient in chocolate — are produced on cacao trees in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon. But dusty seasonal winds from the Sahara were severe in recent months, blocking out the sunlight needed for bean pods to grow. The season prior, heavy rainfall spread a rotting disease.

With exports from the Ivory Coast, the world’s top producer, down by a third in recent months, the global price of cocoa has risen sharply. Cocoa futures have already doubled this year, trading at a record high of more than $10,000 per metric ton in New York this week after rising more than 60% the previous year. Farmers who harvest cacao beans say the increases aren’t enough to cover their lower yields and higher production costs.

Yet the high Easter demand for chocolate carries a potential treat for big confectionery companies. Major global makers in Europe and the United States have more than passed on the rise in cocoa prices to consumers. Net profit margins at The Hershey Company increased to 16.7% in 2023 from 15.8% in 2022. Mondelez International, which owns the Toblerone and Cadbury brands, reported a jump to 13.8% in 2023 from 8.6% the year before.

“It is likely consumers will see a price spike on chocolate candy this Easter,” Wells Fargo said in a report this month.

Mondelez said it raised chocolate prices up to 15% last year and would consider additional price hikes to help meet 2024 revenue growth forecasts. “Pricing is clearly a key component of this plan,” Chief Financial Officer Luca Zaramella said in January. “Its contribution will be a little bit less than we have seen in 2023, but it is higher than an average year.”

Hershey’s also raised prices on its products last year and has not ruled out making further increases. “Given where cocoa prices are, we will be using every tool in our toolbox, including pricing, as a way to manage the business,” Hershey Chairman, President and CEO Michele Buck said during a conference call with investors last month.

Consumer groups are keeping track. In the United Kingdom, British consumer research and services company Which? found that chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies from popular brands like Lindt and Toblerone cost about 50% more this year. It said some candy eggs were smaller, too.

Sensitive trees

Cocoa is traded on a regulated, global market. Farmers sell to local dealers or processing plants, who then sell cocoa products to global chocolate companies. Prices are set up to a year in advance. Many farmers blame climate change for their poor crops. Cacao trees only grow close to the equator and are especially sensitive to changes in weather.

“The harmattan was severe at the time the pods were supposed to develop,” said Fiifi Boafo, a spokesperson at the Ghana Cocoa Board, referring to the cool trade winds that carry enough dust to block out the sunlight needed for the trees to flower and produce beans.

Months of rain also are being blamed for black pod disease, a fungal infection that thrives in cooler, wet and cloudy weather, and causes pods to rot and harden.

“While we have a good price today, that’s not it. The cacao hasn’t even produced any [fruit],” Eloi Gnakomene, a cacao farmer in Ivory Coast, said last month. “People say that we’ve had a bit, but those living over that way, they’ve had nothing.”

Opanin Kofi Tutu, a cocoa farmer in the eastern Ghana town of Suhum, said the shortfall in production coupled with higher fertilizer costs are making it difficult to survive. “The exchange rate to the dollar is killing us,” he said.

Chocolate isn’t even one of the traditions Tutu associates with Easter. “I am looking forward to my wife’s kotomir and plantain, not chocolates,” he said, referring to a local sauce prepared with cocoyam leaves.

To help increase production, authorities are promoting education on farming methods that might mitigate the effects of climate change, such as the use of irrigation systems. The president of Ghana also has promised to step in to help farmers get a better deal.

“With the current trend of the world cocoa price, cocoa farmers can be sure that I will do right by them in the next cocoa season,” President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said last month.

The National Retail Federation, an American trade association, expects spending this Easter to remain high by historical standards despite rising candy prices. Its latest survey showed that consumers were expected to spend $3.1 billion on chocolate eggs and bunnies and other sweets this Easter, down from $3.3 billion a year ago.

In Switzerland, home to the world’s biggest consumers of chocolate per capita, domestic consumption melted slightly last year, falling by 1% to 10.9 kg per person, according to industry association Chocosuisse. It linked the dip to the rise in retail chocolate prices.

‘Very successful’ business model

The nation’s signature chocolate maker, Lindt & Sprüngli, reported increased profitability, with margins rising to 15.6% from 15% a year earlier.

“Lindt & Sprüngli Group’s business model once again proved to be very successful in the financial year 2023,” it said in a statement this month, noting that prices increases accounted for most of the growth.

Yet some smaller businesses that sell chocolate are finding it hard to keep up with the spike in cocoa prices while their sales decline.

Sandrine Chocolates, a shop in London that sells handmade Belgian chocolates, is struggling to survive after decades in business. The owner, Niaz Mardan, said the U.K.’s cost-of-living crisis and weak economy leave people worrying more about food than luxury chocolate, especially when cheaper alternatives were available at big grocery stores.

She has let go of her two employees and relies on sales at Easter and Christmas to stay afloat. “Many, many times, I thought to close the shop, but because I love the shop, I don’t want to close it,” Mardan, 57, said. “But there is no profit at all.”
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West African Project Helps Women Farmers Claim Their Rights, Land

03/30/2024 ITafLeave a comment

ZIGUINCHOR, Senegal — Mariama Sonko’s voice resounded through the circle of 40 women farmers sitting in the shade of a cashew tree. They scribbled notes, brows furrowed in concentration as her lecture was punctuated by the thud of falling fruit.

This quiet village in Senegal is the headquarters of a 115,000-strong rural women’s rights movement in West Africa, We Are the Solution. Sonko, its president, is training female farmers from cultures where women are often excluded from ownership of the land they work so closely.

Across Senegal, women farmers make up 70% of the agricultural workforce and produce 80% of the crops but have little access to land, education and finance compared to men, the United Nations says.

“We work from dawn until dusk, but with all that we do, what do we get out of it?” Sonko asked.

She believes that when rural women are given land, responsibilities and resources, it has a ripple effect through communities. Her movement is training women farmers who traditionally have no access to education, explaining their rights and financing women-led agricultural projects.

Across West Africa, women usually don’t own land because it is expected that when they marry, they leave the community. But when they move to their husbands’ homes, they are not given land because they are not related by blood.

Sonko grew up watching her mother struggle after her father died, with young children to support.

“If she had land, she could have supported us,” she recalled, her normally booming voice now tender. Instead, Sonko had to marry young, abandon her studies and leave her ancestral home.

After moving to her husband’s town at age 19, Sonko and several other women convinced a landowner to rent to them a small plot of land in return for part of their harvest. They planted fruit trees and started a market garden. Five years later, when the trees were full of papayas and grapefruit, the owner kicked them off.

The experience marked Sonko.

“This made me fight so that women can have the space to thrive and manage their rights,” she said. When she later got a job with a women’s charity funded by Catholic Relief Services, coordinating micro-loans for rural women, that work began.

“Women farmers are invisible,” said Laure Tall, research director at Agricultural and Rural Prospect Initiative, a Senegalese rural think tank. That’s even though women work on farms two to four hours longer than men on an average day.

But when women earn money, they reinvest it in their community, health and children’s education, Tall said. Men spend some on household expenses but can choose to spend the rest how they please. Sonko listed common examples like finding a new wife, drinking and buying fertilizer and pesticides for crops that make money instead of providing food.

With encouragement from her husband, who died in 1997, Sonko chose to invest in other women. Her training center now employs more than 20 people, with support from small philanthropic organizations such as Agroecology Fund and CLIMA Fund.

In a recent week, Sonko and her team trained over 100 women from three countries, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Gambia, in agroforestry – growing trees and crops together as a measure of protection from extreme weather – and micro gardening, growing food in tiny spaces when there is little access to land.

One trainee, Binta Diatta, said We Are the Solution bought irrigation equipment, seeds, and fencing — an investment of $4,000 — and helped the women of her town access land for a market garden, one of more than 50 financed by the organization.

When Diatta started to earn money, she said, she spent it on food, clothes and her children’s schooling. Her efforts were noticed.

“Next season, all the men accompanied us to the market garden because they saw it as valuable,” she said, recalling how they came simply to witness it.

Now another challenge has emerged affecting women and men alike: climate change.

In Senegal and the surrounding region, temperatures are rising 50% more than the global average, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN Environment Program says rainfall could drop by 38% in the coming decades.

Where Sonko lives, the rainy season has become shorter and less predictable. Saltwater is invading her rice paddies bordering the tidal estuary and mangroves, caused by rising sea levels. In some cases, yield losses are so acute that farmers abandon their rice fields.

But adapting to a heating planet has proven to be a strength for women since they adopt climate innovations much faster than men, said Ena Derenoncourt, an investment specialist for women-led farming projects at agricultural research agency AICCRA.

“They have no choice because they are the most vulnerable and affected by climate change,” Derenoncourt said. “They are the most motivated to find solutions.”

On a recent day, Sonko gathered 30 prominent women rice growers to document hundreds of local rice varieties. She bellowed out the names of rice – some hundreds of years old, named after prominent women farmers, passed from generation to generation – and the women echoed with what they call it in their villages.

This preservation of indigenous rice varieties is not only key to adapting to climate change but also about emphasizing the status of women as the traditional guardians of seeds.

“Seeds are wholly feminine and give value to women in their communities,” Sonko said. “That’s why we’re working on them, to give them more confidence and responsibility in agriculture.”

The knowledge of hundreds of seeds and how they respond to different growing conditions has been vital in giving women a more influential role in communities.

Sonko claimed to have a seed for every condition including too rainy, too dry and even those more resistant to salt for the mangroves.

Last year, she produced 2 tons of rice on her half-hectare plot with none of the synthetic pesticides or fertilizer that are heavily subsidized in Senegal. The yield was more than double that of plots with full use of chemical products in a 2017 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization project in the same region.

“Our seeds are resilient,” Sonko said, sifting through rice-filled clay pots designed to preserve seeds for decades. “Conventional seeds do not resist climate change and are very demanding. They need fertilizer and pesticides.”

The cultural intimacy between female farmers, their seeds and the land means they are more likely to shun chemicals harming the soil, said Charles Katy, an expert on indigenous wisdom in Senegal who is helping to document Sonko’s rice varieties.

He noted the organic fertilizer that Sonko made from manure, and the biopesticides made from ginger, garlic and chili.

One of Sonko’s trainees, Sounkarou Kébé, recounted her experiments against parasites in her tomato plot. Instead of using manufactured insecticides, she tried using a tree bark traditionally used in Senegal’s Casamance region to treat intestinal problems in humans caused by parasites.

A week later, all the disease was gone, Kébé said.

As dusk approached at the training center, insects hummed in the background and Sonko prepared for another training session. “There’s too much demand,” she said. She is now trying to set up seven other farming centers across southern Senegal.

Glancing back at the circle of women studying in the fading light, she said: “My great fight in the movement is to make humanity understand the importance of women.”
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Through the Lens: The Aral Sea Has All But Disappeared. But in Small Towns and Villages, Signs of Life Are Popping Up

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Kyrgyz Foreign Agents Law Awaits President’s Decision

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Ukraine Says Russia’s Attacks Are Threatening Energy Security

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Former South Africa Leader Zuma Barred From Running in Elections

03/30/2024 ITafLeave a comment

Johannesburg — Former South African President Jacob Zuma is not eligible to run in upcoming elections, the Independent Electoral Commission has ruled.

The commission said at a media briefing on Thursday that it had upheld an objection against Zuma’s candidacy in the May 29 elections.

In July 2021, Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for defying a court order to appear before a judicial commission that was investigating corruption allegations during his 2009-18 presidency. He was granted medical parole after two months and allowed to serve the rest of the sentence under house arrest.

South Africa’s Constitution bars people convicted and sentenced to more than 12 months’ imprisonment, without an option of a fine, from holding public office.

Zuma and his legal team stormed out of the judicial proceedings when he was asked about wide-ranging allegations of corruption during his rule, including the role of an Indian family, the Guptas, who allegedly had influence over his Cabinet appointments.

Zuma, 81, has until April 2 to appeal the commission’s ruling.

He is the now face of a new political party, uMkhonto weSizwe Party, abbreviated as MK, that has emerged as a potentially significant player in South Africa’s upcoming elections after he denounced the governing African National Congress, which he had previously led.

The new party is named after the former military wing of the ANC, which was disbanded at the end of white minority rule and racial segregation policies under the former apartheid regime.

Zuma’s announcement that he is leaving the ANC has been one of the notable developments ahead of the elections.

His face is on the MK Party’s election posters, and he is the party’s most prominent figure and the main speaker at its election rallies.

His battle against the ANC has landed in some of the country’s highest courts, with the MK Party scoring a victory this week when a court ruled against the ANC’s application to deregister the MK Party and ban it from participating in the elections.

In a separate case, the ANC is contesting the MK Party’s use of its name and logo, which closely resembles that of the ANC’s former military wing.

Local news outlet News24 reported that Zuma was involved in a car accident on Thursday but was unharmed.
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UK Anti-Terrorism Police Investigate Stabbing of Persian-Language Journalist