Month: August 2024

Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana — Ghana’s ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) launched its manifesto Sunday in a vibrant event in Takoradi, as the party gears up for a fierce battle in December’s politically charged elections.

The party’s presidential candidate, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, unveiled the document, which places a strong emphasis on job creation and economic development.

“Our vision is clear,” Bawumia said to enthusiastic supporters decked out in the NPP’s signature red, white, and blue.

“We will create jobs, empower the youth, provide tax amnesty, and unleash the potential of the private sector to drive Ghana’s economic transformation.  

“We are the party of jobs, and under our government, every Ghanaian who wants to work will find the opportunity to do so.”

The event drew a significant crowd, including high-ranking party officials, members of the diplomatic corps, and President Nana Akufo-Addo, who is set to step down after serving the maximum two terms in office.

Unemployment is one of the country’s most pressing problems.

With young people making up a significant portion of the electorate, the NPP is aiming to appeal to young voters by promising more opportunities and a brighter future.  

“We know the challenges our youth face, and we are committed to tackling unemployment head-on,” said Bawumia.

Tax, education

The manifesto also highlights a tax amnesty program designed to encourage businesses to comply with tax regulations without facing penalties.  

This, “will bring more businesses into the formal economy, increase government revenue, and ultimately create more jobs,” said Bawumia.  

Bawumia also promised to expand access to education and improve infrastructure.

“We will ensure that every child, no matter where they come from, has access to quality education. This is not just a promise — it is a commitment we will fulfil.”

Some observers, however, remain skeptical.  

For Joshua Jebuntie Zaato, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, party manifestos are “shopping lists” that often go unfulfilled.  

“Political parties tend to promise the moon during campaigns, but the reality of governance often limits what can actually be delivered,” he told AFP.

The NPP is seeking an unprecedented third consecutive term in office but faces a formidable challenge from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by former President John Mahama.

Mahama is determined to reclaim power. Both Bawumia and Mahama hail from northern Ghana, adding a regional dimension to the contest.

Ghana, one of West Africa’s stable democracies, faces significant economic challenges, including a $3 billion-loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund after an economic downturn in 2022 resulted in record-high 54% inflation.
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Cairo — Sudan has been stricken by a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly two dozen people and sickened hundreds more in recent weeks, health authorities said Sunday. The African nation has been roiled by a 16-month conflict and devastating floods.

 

Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement that at least 22 people have died from the disease, and that at least 354 confirmed cases of cholera have been detected across the county in recent weeks.

 

Ibrahim didn’t give a time frame for the deaths or the tally since the start of the year. The World Health Organization, however, said that 78 deaths were recorded from cholera this year in Sudan as of July 28. The disease also sickened more than 2,400 others between Jan. 1 and July 28, it said.

 

Cholera is a fast-developing, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and possible death within hours when not treated, according to WHO. It is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.

 

The cholera outbreak is the latest calamity for Sudan, which was plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into open warfare across the country.

 

The conflict has turned the capital, Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields, wrecking civilian infrastructure and an already battered health care system. Without the basics, many hospitals and medical facilities have closed their doors.

It has killed thousands of people and pushed many into starvation, with famine already confirmed in a sprawling camp for displaced people in the wrecked northern region of Darfur.

 

Sudan’s conflict has created the world’s largest displacement crisis. More than 10.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes since fighting began, according to the International Organization for Migration. Over 2 million of those fled to neighboring countries.

 

The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the U.N. and international rights groups.

 

Devastating seasonal floods in recent weeks have compounded the misery. Dozens of people have been killed and critical infrastructure has been washed away in 12 of Sudan’s 18 provinces, according to local authorities. About 118,000 people have been displaced due to the floods, according to the U.N. migration agency.

 

Cholera is not uncommon in Sudan. A previous major outbreak left at least 700 dead and sickened about 22,000 in less than two months in 2017.

 

Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesperson for WHO, said the outbreak began in the eastern province of Kassala before spreading to nine localities in five provinces.

 

He said in comments to The Associated Press that data showed that most of the detected cases were not vaccinated. He said the WHO is now working with the Sudanese health authorities and partners to implement a vaccination campaign.

 

Sudan’s military-controlled sovereign council, meanwhile, said Sunday it will send a government delegation to meet with American officials in Cairo amid mounting U.S. pressure on the military to join ongoing peace talks in Switzerland that aim at finding a way out of the conflict.

 

The council said in a statement the Cairo meeting will focus on the implementation of a deal between the military and the Rapid Support Forces, which required the paramilitary group to pull out from people’s homes in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.

 

The talks began Aug. 14 in Switzerland with diplomats from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the African Union and the United Nations attending. A delegation from the RSF was in Geneva but didn’t join the meetings.
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DUBAI — Sudan’s government said it will send a delegation to Cairo for discussions with U.S. and Egyptian officials on Monday, keeping open the question of participation in peace talks aimed at ending a 16-month war. 

The government, controlled by the army which is fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for control of the country, has said it would not attend the peace talks in Switzerland unless a previous agreement struck in Jeddah is implemented. 

The U.S.-led talks, which the RSF is attending, aim to end the devastating war that broke out in April 2023, and address the crippling humanitarian crisis that has left half of Sudan’s population of 50 million facing food insecurity. 

A statement from the ruling Transitional Sovereign Council said the decision to go to Cairo came after contacts with the US special envoy and the Egyptian government, which is an observer in the talks, and was limited to discussing implementation of the Jeddah agreement, under which the RSF would leave civilian areas. 

High-level government sources told Reuters that the government had presented its vision on that and other topics to US and Saudi mediators, and that its approach to further talks would be based on their response. 

The sources denied media reports that the government had already sent a delegation to Geneva. 

Another sticking point for the army is the presence of the United Arab Emirates, which it accuses of supporting the RSF, a charge the UAE denies. U.N. experts have found such accusations credible. 

The army on Thursday pre-empted a key topic of the talks when it said it would allow an RSF-controlled border crossing into Darfur to be used for aid deliveries.  

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had agreed to the opening during a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken the day before. 
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MLOMP, Senegal — It’s almost dusk, and the West African heat is finally faltering. In Mlomp, a village in southern Senegal, dozens of teenagers in colorful jerseys are throwing each other to the ground to the rhythm of Afrobeats against a backdrop of palm trees. 

It’s a common sight across Senegal, where wrestling is a national sport and wrestlers are celebrated like rock stars. The local variation of wrestling, called laamb in Wolof, one of the national languages, has been part of village life for centuries. Senegalese wrestle for entertainment and to celebrate special occasions. The professional version of the sport draws thousands to stadiums and can be a catapult to international stardom. 

But in most of the country, wrestling remains off-limits for women. 

There is one exception. In the Casamance region, home to the Jola ethnic group, women traditionally wrestle alongside men. At a recent training session in Mlomp, most teenagers on the sandy ground were girls. 

“It’s in our blood,” said coach Isabelle Sambou, 43, a two-time Olympian and nine-time African wrestling champion. “In our village, girls wrestle. My mum was a wrestler, my aunts were wrestlers.” 

But once Jola women marry, they are expected to stop practicing and devote themselves to family life, considered the main duty of Senegalese women regardless of ethnicity or religion. 

Sambou’s aunt, Awa Sy, now in her 80s, was the village champion in her youth, and said she would even take down some men. 

“I liked wrestling because it made me feel strong,” she said, standing outside her house nestled between rice fields and mangroves. “I stopped when I got married.” She didn’t question it at the time. 

That hasn’t been the case for her niece, who, despite her humble demeanor and small size, exudes strength and determination. She defied many barriers to become a professional athlete. 

As a teenager, Sambou was noticed by a professional wrestling coach at a competition during the annual Festival of the King of Oussouye, one of the few events accessible to women. The coach suggested that she try Olympic wrestling, which has a female national team. But she only agreed after her older brother convinced her to do it. 

Wrestling brought Sambou, who did not finish primary school, to the Olympic Games in London and Rio de Janeiro, where she placed outside the medal contenders. But being a successful professional female athlete in a conservative society comes with a price. 

“If you are a female wrestler, people are going to make fun of you,” Sambou said, recalling her experiences in parts of Senegal beyond her home region. “When I walked around in shorts, people were saying: ‘Look, is it a woman or is it a boy?'” 

Others claimed that her body would change and she would no longer look like a woman. 

Such things can “get to your head,” Sambou said. “But I tell myself: They don’t know what they are talking about. It’s in my blood, and it brought me where I am today.” 

In 2016, facing her mid-30s, she decided to retire from professional sport and move back to her village. 

“I thought it was the time to stop and think of something else, maybe find a job, start a family,” she said. “But that hasn’t happened so far.” 

Instead, she focused on finding “future Isabelles.” After not fulfilling her dream of winning an Olympic medal, she hopes a girl she coaches can achieve that. 

That mission has been complicated by the lack of resources. Female sport is often underfunded, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Around Sambou’s village, there are no gyms where girls can do strength training. They don’t have the special shoes used in Olympic wrestling, and instead train barefoot. They don’t have mats, so they make do with sandy grounds. 

And yet, at Africa’s youth championship in wrestling held in June in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, Sambou’s students won 10 medals, including six golds. 

“Despite everything, they did magnificent work,” she said. 

She has received little in return. Senegal has no pension system for retired professional athletes. Her lack of formal education complicates her career as a coach. She helps to coach the national wrestling team, both men and women, but on a voluntary basis. To get by, she works in a small shop and cleans people’s houses. 

“I gave everything to wrestling, to my country,” she said. “Now I don’t have anything. I don’t even have my own house. It hurts a bit.” 

She listed the countries she has visited, including the United States and Switzerland, while sitting outside the home she shares with relatives. Her bedroom is decorated with a picture of Virgin Mary and posters celebrating her participation in championships — the only sign of her glorious past. 

“It’s difficult to be a professional athlete. You have to leave everything behind,” she said. “And then you stop, and you come back here and you sit, without anything to do.” 

But times are changing, and so is the perception of women in Senegalese society. These days, parents seek out Sambou and ask her to coach their children, regardless of their gender, even if it’s still for free. 

Sambou’s 17-year-old niece, Mame Marie Sambou, recently won a gold medal at the youth championship in Dakar. Her dream is to become a professional wrestler and compete internationally. The big test will come in two years when Senegal hosts the Youth Olympic Games, the first Olympic event ever organized on African soil. 

“It’s my aunt who encouraged me to start wrestling,” she said. “When I started, many people were saying they have never seen a girl wrestle. But I never listened to them. I want to be like her.” 
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BENTIU, South Sudan — Elizabeth Nyachiew was 16 when she watched her neighbor bleed to death during childbirth. She vowed to become a midwife to spare others from the same fate in South Sudan, a country with one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates. 

“If I saw people dying, I wanted to know why,” she said. “I kept thinking if I was educated, I’d know the cause and I could help.” 

Now 36, in her office at a hospital run by the aid group Doctors Without Borders in the city of Bentiu, Nyachiew said she has weathered civil war, hunger and displacement to make it this far. 

She is one of some 3,000 midwives in South Sudan. The country’s health ministry says that number is insufficient to serve the population of 11 million people. 

And yet Nyachiew’s journey shows the extraordinary effort needed to get here. 

As a girl in Leer in northern Unity State, Nyachiew faced pressure from her family, who didn’t think girls should attend school. She stayed home until age 9 helping cultivate beans, pumpkin and maize on their farm. 

When she finally persuaded her father to let her study, more fighting had begun in the long conflict that eventually ended with South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011. 

Her family fled into the bush. Women were raped and relatives were killed, including her pregnant sister-in-law. As fighting ebbed and flowed, Nyachiew did what she could to study, even traveling to Khartoum and learning Arabic. 

At 18, Nyachiew was admitted to a midwifery course sponsored by aid groups and based in Leer. She struggled to understand medical terms and thought she’d never pass. During the second year, she became pregnant. The school had a policy of not allowing pregnant women to participate, worried they might be distracted. 

But Nyachiew wouldn’t drop out. She threatened suicide and begged her brother to intervene. The administration let her stay. 

Nyachiew named her daughter Jephaenia Chigoa, reflecting the term for “something good” in the Nuer language. 

Even after she became a midwife, Nyachiew lived the dangers that many pregnant women in South Sudan face. 

Much of the country has no road network, meaning that pregnant women often walk for hours or days to the nearest clinic. Some are carried in wheelbarrows or stretchers with the help of relatives and friends. 

Nyachiew made that journey herself. During one miscarriage, she walked for two hours to the closest clinic in Leer while screaming in pain as blood streamed down her legs. 

It was 2011, the year of South Sudan’s independence. A civil war began two years later, killing nearly 400,000 people and ending in 2018. 

When the fighting began, Nyachiew was studying in the capital, Juba. She returned to Leer, and her family again hid in the bush for months as people — including four brothers-in-law — were killed around them. Soldiers beat her, seeking money. 

But the most difficult part was still being unable to help pregnant women, watching them die for lack of proper equipment and care. 

South Sudan has made a fragile recovery from civil war. Violence between some communities remains deadly, and the United Nations says 9 million people — 75% of the population — rely on humanitarian aid. 

Nyachiew lives in a displacement camp along with 100,000 others, including 17 relatives who rely on her as their sole breadwinner. Like others in the camp, she is scared to move out, worried that conflict could resume. 

South Sudan’s health system continues to suffer. The government allocates less than 2% of the national budget to the health ministry, whose system is propped up by aid groups and the international community. Many health centers outside the capital still have a desperate, wartime feel. 

“The changes have been slow and uneven,” said Janet Michael, director general for nursing and midwifery at the health ministry. 

Data collection is so poor that no one knows for sure how many women are dying in childbirth. The U.N. has estimated that 1,200 women die per 100,000 live births. 

Some women who survive still lose their babies. 

In June, Nyalith Mauit lost one of her twins while giving birth. Health workers at a clinic struggled to deliver the first twin, who came out feet first. She was transferred to the Doctors Without Borders-run hospital, where Nyachiew leads more than a dozen midwives. But they were unable to deliver the second twin in time. 

Mauit cradled her surviving day-old son. 

“I am grateful there is a hospital here. If there wasn’t, yesterday might have been the end of my life,” she said. 

Nyachiew, slender and serious, holding a walkie-talkie as she did her hospital rounds, hopes to see more midwives emerge to help. 

The United Nations Population Fund is working with South Sudan’s health ministry to train them and create mobile clinics to reach remote areas. But schools lack textbooks and trained tutors, and there is never enough funding, the health ministry said. 

Nyachiew, who was expecting her sixth child while speaking to The Associated Press, hopes such issues can be addressed by the next generation. 

“My message to little girls is to tell that they have to go to school because school it is very important, because if you go to school, you should become a doctor, you should become a nurse, you should become a midwife,” she said. “So that you can help the entire community.” 
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HARARE, Zimbabwe — About 68 million people in Southern Africa are suffering the effects of an El Nino-induced drought that has wiped out crops across the region, the regional bloc SADC said Saturday.

The drought, which started in early 2024, has hit crop and livestock production, causing food shortages and damaging the wider economies.

Heads of state from the 16-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) were meeting in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare to discuss regional issues including food security.

Some 68 million people, or 17% of the region’s population, need aid, said Elias Magosi, SADC executive secretary.

“The 2024 rainy season has been a challenging one with most parts of the region experiencing negative effects of the El Nino phenomenon characterized by the late onset of rains,” he said.

It is Southern Africa’s worst drought in years, owing to a combination of naturally occurring El Nino — when an abnormal warming of the waters in the eastern Pacific changes world weather patterns — and higher average temperatures produced by greenhouse gas emissions.

Countries including Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi have already declared the hunger crisis a state of disaster, while Lesotho and Namibia have called for humanitarian support.

The region launched an appeal in May for $5.5 billion in humanitarian assistance to support the drought response, but donations have not been forthcoming, said outgoing SADC chair Joao Lourenco, the president of Angola.

“The amount mobilized so far is unfortunately below the estimated amounts and I would like to reiterate this appeal to regional and international partners to redouble their efforts… to help our people who have been affected by El Nino,” he told the summit.

The drought is a major talking point at this year’s summit, alongside issues such as the ongoing conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which Lourenco said was a source of great concern.
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