Tag: Africa

Categories
News

Trump weakens ties between the US and Africa

Among the billboards that greet passengers arriving at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo airport is an advertisement for the Bank of China, which is among that country’s largest state-owned financial institutions.

“Bridging China-Africa cooperation with tailor-made financial solutions,” the sign reads.

The message reminded me of a discussion about Donald Trump with my seatmate, a man from Namibia (or Nambia, as Trump called it) in his fifties, on a flight to Johannesburg from New York, a day after the president, during a meeting at the White House with lawmakers, reportedly disparaged immigrants from Africa and Haiti.

While Trump insults Africa, China reaches out.

Trump debases the presidency, we agreed, “and he doesn’t do anything for economic growth,” added my seatmate, who, as it happens, manages the port at Walvis Bay, one of the busiest ports in Africa.

The tonnage at the port ebbs and flows with trade. If you run a port, the more trade, the better.

I asked my seatmate how in his experience, the U.S. in Africa compares with China in Africa. “The Chinese are out to make money,” he said. “They want to have the world’s biggest economy.”

If that’s China’s goal, Trump is providing an assist. Add to his latest remarks the ways – from withdrawing the Paris climate agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership to embracing a travel ban that discriminates against Muslims – that Trump is isolating the U.S. at the same time as China ups its engagement with the world.

“To have insulted an entire continent in the most vile terms is manifestly harmful to our interests,” Reuben Brigety II, who was U.S. ambassador to the African Union from 2013 to 2015, told the Times.

The businessman who penned “The Art of the Deal” has yet to show he can be an opportunist when it comes to pursuing opportunities for anyone, including the U.S., besides himself. (Credit Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in a 2016 interview, called Trump “a faker.”)

En route to Johannesburg, I read “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” the best-seller by Michael Wolff that claims to reveal the inside dope on the dysfunction that marked the administration’s first 100 days.

Commenting on what he terms the episodes of “ohmygodness” that emanate from Trump daily, “it is worth considering,” notes Wolff,” the possibility that this constant, daily often more than once-a-day pileup of events – each one canceling out the one before – is the true aberration and novelty at the heart of the Trump presidency.”

At the White House meeting, Trump reportedly used the word “sh*#hole” as an adjective to describe Haiti and some nations in Africa.

The comment generated a wave of revulsion and followed a year of Trump’s debasing the presidency with appeals to racists, a disregard of presidential norms against self-dealing, attacks on judges and a worldview that appears to be informed solely by cable news.

The word “sh*#hole” does not appear in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. It’s profanity and slang, I suppose. Of course, racism does appear in the dictionary and, of the time of this writing, was the third most looked up word in the past 24 hours. (You can find “sh*#hole” in Urban Dictionary.)

In the wake of Trump’s comment, people the world over took to Facebook and Twitter to call him out by, among other things, noting their living in places such as “South Shi*#hole” or, to ask, as the writer Peter Godwin did, whether “Nambia is a shi*#hole.”

As the posts suggest, the Trump presidency demands vigilance against what Masha Gessen, writing in The New Yorker, calls “the ongoing degradation of the public sphere.”

The news, Gessen notes, is not that the president “is a foul-mouthed racist – we knew that… the news is that he insists on dragging the rest of us down with him.” (David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick of the Times have attempted to compile a definitive list of Trump’s racist comments, dating to his years in New York and continuing through his asserting that the nation’s first black president was not born in the U.S.).

We can choose not to be degraded – to show the self-respect that is beyond the president. As the spokeswoman for African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki, noted, “The United States of America is a big country and the United States of America goes beyond just one man or one statement.”

Categories
Economy

Ending poverty in Africa will require both growth and inclusiveness says Oxfam

Focusing solely on the sum of goods and services produced within their borders cannot alone reduce the inequality that plagues the economies of countries throughout southern Africa, a report published by Oxfam International concludes.

Despite periods of economic growth during the past two decades, the benefits have yet to reach the poorest in countries such as Swaziland, Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, notes Oxfam, which adds that the inequality falls most heavily on women and young people.

“The shape of many of the continent’s economies – characterized by an overreliance on the extractive sector, inadequate investment in agriculture and large informal sectors – has meant that the consequences of inequality have mostly been felt by the young and by women,” concludes Katy Wright, author of the report, which was released in the run-up to the recent World Economic Forum on Africa. “Instead of focusing solely on GDP and hoping to tweak it to make it more inclusive, leaders should focus directly on reducing inequality and eliminating poverty, in ways that lead to economic prosperity for all.”

“These aims should be placed above GDP growth – not because growth is unimportant, but because poverty and inequality represent the most significant barriers in Africa to achieving sustainable and inclusive growth,” she adds.

Swaziland has the greatest inequality in the world, followed by Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, notes Wright (below chart). Oxfam found recently that three billionaires in South Africa have the same wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the population.

The 20 most unequal countries in the world, using raw and adjusted Gini measurements

Across Africa, up to three-quarters of women work in the agricultural, low-paid and informal sectors, notes Wright, who adds that women who work in manufacturing, services and trade earn about 70 percent of that of their male counterparts.

The continent also has yet to deliver jobs to a majority people under the age of 24, who, she notes, have the potential to drive economic prosperity with the right investments and policies. In South Africa alone, more than half of all young people are likely to be unemployed.

The report recommends that countries boost their tax-to-GDP ratios to at least one-quarter, including reducing tax avoidance and “enhancing capacity to collect taxes from highly paid individuals and large firms.”

According to Oxfam, governments also must meet commitments to spend a fifth of their national budget on education and 15% of their budgets on health, and “make explicit plans to reduce poverty and eliminate inequality” in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a series of 17 goals that aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and promote peace and prosperity.

Categories
Law

Laws governing home tests for HIV can bolster prevention efforts in sub-Saharan Africa

Laws that encourage people to test themselves for HIV can bolster efforts to eliminate AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

That’s the conclusion of a report published Wednesday by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the South African AIDS Trust, a nongovernmental organization that coordinates efforts to counter HIV and AIDS in South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

The report examines laws relating to home or self-testing in the seven countries where the South African AIDS Trust operates as well as in the USA, United Kingdom and France. Though about 24.7 million people live with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, only about half know whether they have contracted the virus, according to the United Nations.

Michael Sidibe (l), executive director of UNAIDS, meets on January 18, 2013 with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. (Photo courtesy of UNAIDS)
Michael Sidibe (l), executive director of UNAIDS, meets on January 18, 2013 with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. (Photo courtesy of UNAIDS)

The compendium, which the law firm Arnold & Porter produced pro bono in tandem with law firms in each of the countries covered, examines whether self-testing is legal, the regulations that govern distribution of devices that make such tests possible, and protections for privacy.

“One of the key critical success factors in fulfilling the UNAIDS and global goal of zero new infections, zero deaths and zero discrimination is people knowing their own HIVsero-status and having the ability to act on the knowledge,” writes Jonathan Gunthorp, the South African AIDS Trust’s executive director, in a preface to the report.

Self-testing for HIV creates opportunities for people to access HIV treatment and prevention services. The opportunity is especially great in sub-Saharan Africa, where fewer people know their HIV status compared with people elsewhere in the world. More than 1.1 people in the U.S. live with HIV infection but about 84% of them know they have the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All of the countries surveyed by the South African AIDS Trust provide citizens who have HIV with antiretroviral drugs that suppress the HIV virus and halt progression of the disease.

Among countries surveyed, the U.S. is the only one that has a home HIV test in the market. The Food and Drug Administration approved the kit, which is manufactured by OraSure Technologies, in 2012. Though the U.K. also has endorsed self-testing for HIV a test that satisfies the European Union’s standards for medical devices has yet to appear on shelves.

According to the report, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia all would permit device makers to market home tests, although South Africa currently prohibits pharmacies from selling them. (Presumably the test could be sold over-the-counter.) By contrast, Botswana and Tanzania require that HIV tests be supervised by a trained professional.

Protections for privacy vary by jurisdiction as well, the report finds. Though France and Mozambique shield test results completely, most countries permit disclosure of test results pursuant to a court order or to guardians or partners, as well as in situations where a person is charged with a sexual offense or a disclosure is necessary for purposes of medical treatment.

Constitutional privacy protections exist in South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, while Mozambique, Botswana and Tanzania all have laws that protect HIV tests results specifically. The U.K. and France adhere to privacy protections enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. In America, rules governing the confidentiality of HIV tests vary by state.

Depending on the jurisdiction, people who test positively for HIV may have a legal duty to disclose such information to sexual partners and insurers. Though none of the countries requires an employee to disclose his or her HIV status to an employer generally, the U.S. and U.K. require disclosure instances in which an employee’s HIV status ties directly to the job.

All of the countries surveyed offer counseling in connection with testing for HIV. For example, Tanzania requires counseling before and after testing for anyone who receives a test in a state-sponsored testing center. In France, counselors must discuss the limits in reliability of so-called rapid tests. Counseling that follows tests tends to give guidance on such topics as notifying partners, connecting with care and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, depending on the test result.

“HIV self-testing is not a magic bullet,” adds Gunthorp. “In combination with other innovative thinking, however, it may hold the key to increasing reach of testing, opening new options for hard to reach communities, making life easier for semi-discordant couples, and supporting both prevention and treatment.”

The report also examines laws that govern the liability of manufacturers for harm to consumers from devices themselves or from failure of a test to diagnose someone correctly.

Categories
Life

Why I ordered a Tikker

I recently contributed $39 for an online campaign to build a digital watch that counts down the seconds you have left to life.

The device, known as Tikker, is the creation of a Fredrik Colting, a Swede who works in publishing and who found himself confronting the prospect of death after his grandfather passed away. “I realized that nothing matters when you are dead,” Colting told Fast Company. “The only thing that matters is what we do when we are alive.”

The Tikker draws on such information as your age, body mass index and where you live to determine your life expectancy. (Unclear whether the Tikker factors in the ages of one’s parents and grandparents.) The Tikker also tells time.

Apparently Tikker’s fundraising push resonated. In just over a month the startup raised more than $98,000 or nearly four times its goal.

I’ve wondered why I pre-ordered the Tikker. I know intellectually that my days are numbered and that my life could end at any moment. You don’t have to wait for the Tikker to obtain a guess as to your life expectancy. I am expected to live for 78 years and to die on Friday, April 5, 2041, according to the Digital Death Clock, an online site that will give you similar information.

I don’t even wear a wristwatch.

Maybe it’s my journey this year, having stepped out of America and decided to live awhile in Africa. Maybe my support for the Tikker comes with my being in a profoundly different culture, or having to make my way as a freelancer or to figure out what problems to work on. Some days I feel as if I launched from a skateboard ramp into mid-air.

That’s to say there’s urgency. I have to do everything as soon as possible because there’s little time. I would like to meet everyone whom I hope to meet and to ask as many questions as I can ask and to write as many words as possible and to do all that as soon as I can because I don’t know and you don’t know how much time we have left in this life that we’re all passing through.

There are many things to do and to make and to discover. By putting the date of our death on our wrists, the Tikker aims to spur us to appreciate the life we’re living. That’s a Kickstarter for me.