U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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Integrated Regional Information Network for Central and Eastern Africa

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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 99
10 - 16 November 2001


CONTENTS:

AFRICA: Finance ministers state a continent's demands
AFRICA: ECA addresses links between poverty and gender
AFRICA: Terror attacks affect growth, debt reduction
EAST AFRICA: Troublesome climate for tea and coffee sectors
EAST AFRICA: Campaigners welcome WTO move on access to drugs
DRC: Annan calls on parties to meet their responsibilities
DRC: Air France to resume flights to Kinshasa
ANGOLA-DRC: Angola announces "substantial" troop withdrawal
TANZANIA: WFP feeds 486,900 refugees
UGANDA: Rebel abductions on the decline
RWANDA: Government frees 552 child genocide suspects
RWANDA: Meeting on poverty reduction begins
SUDAN: Nubah access holds promise of broader progress

AFRICA: Finance ministers state a continent's demands

Well before the global economic uncertainties arising since the 11 Sept.
attacks on the US, African countries were carrying out painstaking
economic reform programmes, and they still needed the support of
international financial institutions and donors to ensure they got the
rewards, the continent's finance ministers stated on Tuesday.

"We are concerned that the policy reforms that have been carried out in
Africa, and for which we are starting to see some sign of progress, might
be endangered by what's going to happen in the next months and years,"
said Ali Gamatie, Niger's finance minister, at a news conference in
Washington DC, USA. "This is certainly not the time for the Bretton Woods
institutions [the World Bank and IMF] and the donor community to drop out
Africa from their radar screen."

The African delegates spent Tuesday meeting senior IMF and World Bank
representatives, to whom they presented demands, including equitable
access to global markets, faster and deeper debt relief, and Africa's need
for capital investment, among other issues. Altogether, a total of 23
countries have reached the decision point on qualification for debt relief
under the global Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative,
including 19 from Africa, said Gerald Ssendaula, the Ugandan Minister of
Finance, Planning and Economic Development, who is also head of the
African Bureau to the IMF and World Bank - of which Uganda holds the
presidency until 2003.

"Of the 19, [only] two have reached the completion point: Uganda and
Mozambique... Our plea was to speed up debt relief - that is, to close the
gap of the period between the decision and the completion point,"
Ssendaula said. African countries also believed "that the process should
be accompanied with grants or loans on concessional terms" so that they
did not fall into further debt in the future. "We are going to be more
coordinated in Africa to try to press further for these demands. We shall
be repeating them until we get a solution," he added. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14331]

AFRICA: ECA addresses links between poverty and gender

Most African countries have had the political will to address gender
issues and enhance the status of women, yet widespread poverty and
inequality of women's access to assets remain particular problems to be
addressed, Kingsley Amoako, the Executive Secretary of the Economic
Commission for Africa (ECA), said in his opening speech to a key meeting
on women and development in Africa on 8 Nov. "Although women and men share
the burdens of poverty, in most societies in Africa women are also subject
to socially imposed constraints that further limit their opportunities to
improve economic conditions or to equal access to public services and
consumption goods," he said.

The first challenge was how to bring about change in the process of
eradicating poverty in Africa, where it was estimated that over 70 percent
of the poor were women, he told a meeting of ministers of the Committee on
Women and Development (CWD) in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
Delegations from more than 29 countries attended, with a mix of officials
from ministries of women's affairs, finance, and economic development, UN
partner agencies and NGOs.

The second challenge for Africa - linked to improved poverty eradication
strategies - was how to address the gender inequality, which persisted in
terms of access to and control of productive, human and social capital
assets, according to Amoako. Women in Africa received less than 10 percent
of the credit going to small farmers, and just 1 percent of the total
credit given to the agricultural sector, he said. There was a clear
difference in access to essential public services, including education and
health, in nearly all African countries, he added. The third challenge was
to incorporate gender considerations in economic policies intended to help
achieve the International Development Target of reducing poverty by half
by the year 2015, he said. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=13850]

AFRICA: Terror attacks affect growth; debt reduction

The 11 Sept. attacks have dealt a severe blow to economic growth prospects
in the developing world and, according to analysts, are likely to also
undermine current debt reduction strategies.

A paper released ahead of this weekend's Development Committee Meeting of
the World Bank and IMF in Ottawa warned that the attacks are likely to
mean reduced export earnings in the face of declining commodity prices and
volumes. According to the Brussels-based European Network on Debt and
Development (EURODAD), these declining commodity prices could undermine
the HIPC designed to help poor countries weighed down by debt service
obligations.

EURODAD, a consortium of European NGOs, has argued that for most HIPCs,
commodity export earnings are key to export growth, but the current
assumptions about the future prices and production volumes of commodities
are "over-optimistic", making projections on debt sustainability highly
unlikely. "Most HIPCs will not achieve debt sustainability unless they
receive substantial additional debt reductions," EURODAD said. Statistics
from EURODAD show that the prices of commodities produced by HIPCs were at
10-15 year lows, which has induced on average a loss of 15 percent of
annual export earnings between 1998 and 2000 for commodity dependent
HIPCs.

According to the World Bank, the delayed global recovery and the continued
slump in commodity prices will have a direct impact on poverty reduction -
especially in sub-Saharan Africa. "Because the prices for agricultural
commodities particularly cotton, coffee and sugar - have fallen steeply,
farmers, rural labourers and others tied to agriculture - especially those
in Africa and parts of Latin America - are likely to bear a major portion
of the burden," the Bank said. "Of the 600 million people in sub-Saharan
Africa, the overwhelming majority are poor and many of them are
particularly vulnerable to such impacts because they depend on commodity
exports and have limited capacity to manage household risks." [Full report
at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14033]

EAST AFRICA: Troublesome climate for tea and coffee sectors

Scientists have warned that farmers in the region face particular
pressures with growing cash crops as a result of global warming in the
next few decades, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned
on 8 Nov.

Speaking at the latest round of climate negotiations in Morocco, UNEP
Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said that if the scientific forecasts of
climate change proved sound, farmers in Uganda would face serious problems
growing coffee, one of the country's key export crops, and that many
traditional tea-growing areas in Kenya would become unsuitable for
production. In order to survive, poor tea and coffee farmers in East
Africa would have to clear forests in higher, cooler areas, causing
environmental damage which, in turn, could lead to increased poverty,
hunger and ill-health.

The warning on cash crops was based on information from GRID Arendal, a
UNEP and government of Norway collaborative centre with renowned expertise
in scientific mapping. In Uganda, the total area suitable for growing the
Robusta variety of coffee would be "dramatically reduced" by an average
temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius, according to Svien Tveitdal of GRID
Arendal. [For further details, see
http://www.unep.org/Documents/Default.asp?DocumentID=225&ArticleID=2952].

According to his organisation's predictions, "only higher areas -the
Ruwenzoris, southwestern Uganda and Mt Elgon - would remain, as the rest
would become too hot to grow coffee", he added. The overall areas suitable
for tea-cropping would not be reduced in Kenya, but plantations around Mt
Kenya and the Aberdare mountains would lie outside the tea-growing
temperature range, according to Tveitdal. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=13914]

EAST AFRICA: Campaigners welcome WTO move on access to drugs

The Ugandan government on Thursday welcomed a declaration by the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) that international patent rules "should be
interpreted so as to protect public health and promote access to medicine
for all".

The move should lead to increased availability of drugs to combat AIDS,
tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics. Minister of State for Finance
Sam Kuteesa said the WTO decision was a breakthrough for Uganda, where
second-generation drugs could help reduce costs and increase the number of
HIV-positive people accessing anti-retroviral medicines to control their
illness, AFP reported.

The Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines said the decision
"puts governments in the driving seat to be able to put life before
profit". It placed the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of
government to bring down the cost of essential medicines and increase
access to life-saving treatments for the Kenyan people, the Coalition
added.

DRC: Annan calls on parties to meet their responsibilities

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on all parties to the 1999
Lusaka peace accord to "fulfil their important responsibilities", noting
that "the peace process in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be at a
turning point".

In remarks on 9 Nov. to the UN Security Council, he told the Council's
Political Committee of the Lusaka agreement that the UN Mission in the DRC
(MONUC) stood "ready to make a decisive contribution" by deploying to the
east, and urged an end to the fighting.

"No one should give any further support to the armed groups that continue
to fight in the east, and no one should take any further aggressive action
against them," he said. "At the same time, everything possible must be
done to create conditions that will encourage former combatants to return
voluntarily to their homes and enable them to be safely settled."

The reopening of the Congo River and its tributaries would be, he said,
"the most important single step that can now be taken to reunite the
country and stimulate economic and social life". Therefore, he called on
all parties to help MONUC do its part by removing all barriers to free
movement. In addition, he urged members of the Political Committee to
support Ketumile Masire, the facilitator of the inter-Congolese dialogue,
and thanked the government of South Africa for its willingness to host the
dialogue when it resumes, at a date and location yet to be announced.
[Full report at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=13946]

DRC: Air France to resume flights to Kinshasa

Air France announced on Tuesday that it would be resuming flights between
Paris and Kinshasa as of 8 Jan. 2002. There will be two flights per week,
Tuesdays and Thursdays, using an Airbus A340-300 with a seating capacity
of 252.

Flights to Kinshasa will depart from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle at 1100
(1200 GMT), arriving at 1835 local time (2035 GMT). Flights to Paris will
depart at 2230 (0030 GMT), arriving at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle at 0615
(0715 GMT). Air France suspended its flights between Paris and Kinshasa on
4 Aug.1998, two days after an armed opposition coalition backed by Rwanda
and Uganda launched an offensive from eastern DRC towards Kinshasa.

ANGOLA-DRC: Angola announces "substantial" troop withdrawal

Angolan Foreign Minister Joao Miranda told the UN Security Council on 9
Nov. that a "substantial" number of Angolan troops have been withdrawn
from the DRC, the Angolan government news agency, Angop, reported.

He was speaking during a meeting of the Council and its Political
Committee, of which Angola holds the chair. Miranda said Angola's move had
been reported to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative
in the DRC, Namanga Ngongi, who is now verifying the situation.

Miranda said it would be imperative to implement UN Security Council
resolutions on the withdrawal of those forces which had not been invited
to intervene in the DRC, adding that he expected Rwanda and other
signatories to the Lusaka accord to follow Angola's example. Miranda also
said he was "pleased" to note that the disengagement of forces was now a
reality, and that in general the cease-fire was holding. Given the latest
political and military developments in the DRC, Angop reported, Miranda
was concerned about the prevailing insecurity in the eastern region of the
country because it endangered progress made since the signing of the
Lusaka accord. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14332]

TANZANIA: WFP feeds 486,900 refugees

At least 486,900 refugees in Kigoma, Kibondo, Kasulu and Ngara districts
in northwestern Tanzania received some 2,455 mt of food from 22 October to
4 Nov., the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in its emergency report of
9 Nov.

WFP reported that it supplied around 90 percent of the standard food
ration to all beneficiaries, except for 3,900 extremely vulnerable people
who each received a full ration. In addition, WFP said it supported
various therapeutic feeding centres and supplemental feeding centres with
72 mt of food to over 18,300 malnourished people.

WFP reported that since 1 Nov. it has been in a position to increase the
food ration scale from 80 percent to 100 percent of the standard ration.
Food coordination meetings were held for camp level leaders in all
locations during the last two weeks to inform the refugees of this change,
it added. A regional official from the office of the United Nations High
Commissioner of Refugees told IRIN that from 1 Jan. to 30 Sept. there were
6,445 DRC refugees in Tanzania; some 3,200 of who, fleeing fighting,
arrived between 15 and 23 Oct. [Full report at
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14168]

UGANDA: Rebel abductions on the decline

The pattern of abductions perpetrated by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army
(LRA) in northern Uganda has changed as a result of social and political
developments in the region, according to a report released on 9 November,
by the US-based Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC).

Although abductions were continuing, most young people who had recently
returned from LRA captivity reported shorter abduction periods, focused
mostly on forced labour and banditry, rather than forced movement across
the border to Sudan for military training, WCRWC said. "The significance
of the change on the immediate security of adolescents is minimal,
however, as young people remain in constant danger of attack and
abduction, particularly those who are being re-abducted, as they face
murder if they are identified as former escapees," the report warned.

The LRA has become increasingly isolated in recent months, as
Ugandan-Sudanese relations have taken important steps forward - including
the exchange of envoys by Kampala and Khartoum, according to humanitarian
sources. Reported splits between LRA commanders, with the LRA command in
southern Sudan largely cut off from several units operating in northern
Uganda, had further weakened the rebel movement, and meant that LRA
soldiers on the Uganda side were having to loot villages and abduct
adolescents for forced labour as their supply lines dried up. Tighter
control of the Sudan-Uganda border by the Uganda People's Defence Forces
and the withdrawal in August by the Sudanese government of support for
Kony had also contributed to the change of abduction patterns. [Full
report at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14214]

RWANDA: Government frees 552 child genocide suspects

Another 552 children suspected of genocide and other crimes against
humanity regained their freedom on Monday after spending three months in
the Gaculiro re-education camp in the capital, Kigali, The United Nations
Children's Fund information officer, Cyriaque Ngoboka, told IRIN.

He said on Wednesday that 13 girls were among those freed, after a
traditional village tribunal heard testimonies of their innocence.
Monday's release brings to 1,500 the minors the government has so far
freed. The government says that one million Tutsis and politically
moderate Hutus were killed in the 100-day genocide of 1994. A local NGO,
ASOFERWA, and Rwanda's National Unity and Reconciliation Commission,
provided reorientation courses for the children to ease their re-entry
into society.

RWANDA: Meeting on poverty reduction begins

The Rwandan government, its development partners and the UNDP began their
annual meeting on Wednesday during which they will focus on the
government's overall policy framework to reduce poverty in the country.

The three-day meeting in Kigali will also discuss operational principles
for donor engagement in the country's poverty reduction effort.
Wednesday's session, the UNDP office Kigali said, was being devoted
exclusively to discussing initiatives to promote good governance and
reduce poverty in Rwanda, which affects 60 percent of the population. The
government expects development partners to provide direct budgetary
support, thereby to improve the efficacy of aid to the country. The
strategy provides for sectoral implementation and a programme-impact
monitoring mechanism through a poverty observatory, the UNDP said. With
its 7.88 million population in 1998 growing at 3.6 percent each year, and
a landmass of 26,348 sq km, Rwanda is one of Africa's most densely
populated countries.

SUDAN: Nubah access holds promise of broader progress

A major airdrop of food relief to the Nubah Mountains in Southern Kordofan
- highly significant in both humanitarian and political terms - was on
Thursday said to be "going fine" by the WFP.

The agency delivered 100 mt of food on Wednesday and plans to deliver
2,000 mt in the coming weeks to some 158,000 people. After years of United
Nations negotiations for humanitarian access to what has been the site of
serious fighting between the Sudanese government and rebel Sudan People's
Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), strong political leverage from the
United States in recent months and weeks secured an agreement from the two
parties for a four-week period of tranquillity to allow the delivery of
food aid, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Thursday.

"This relief operation is a fantastic breakthrough after such long and
difficult negotiations," said WFP's Country Director for Sudan, Masood
Hyder, on Wednesday.

The US special envoy to the Sudan, John Danforth, on Wednesday said that
the Nubah Mountains was chosen to serve as "a test case" for expanding the
potential for humanitarian cease-fires and rehabilitation efforts.

"I hope the four-week period already offered by the government for
delivery of relief will be extended indefinitely," AFP quoted him as
saying.  If there was progress in the Nubah Mountains, it would be "a test
case for something that could work nationally, and it would do a lot to -
at least within our country [the US] - to indicate that this is progress,
this is moving forward," the Associated Press quoted him as saying at a
news conference in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

Danforth set the Nubah operation firmly in the context of a four-point
plan to improve the humanitarian situation in Sudan, serve as a
confidence-building step to bring the warring parties closer together and
which could also help improve relations between Khartoum and the US. [Full
report at Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=14564]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2001


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