The Future for Africa's Children (Niger and Uganda)

[Jamila]

We are all becoming more familiar with some of the challenges that Africa is currently facing through Bono's involvement with ONE and Live8, but I would like to bring to your attention the current situation for some children in two African countries: Niger and Uganda.

Niger in western Africa is the SECOND POOREST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD (with its nearby neighbor Sierre Leone being the world's poorest country) and has been suffering from drought and locust invasion for at least a year.

Because the world has largely turned its face away from Niger's looming catastrophe, Niger is now at risk of losing 3.6 million people, many of them children, to starvation and diseases that prey on sickened people, if the world does not immediately respond with emergency food, medical and other aid to help Niger,

Here is a firsthand report from a great organization, CONCERN, regarding the situation in Niger:

http://www.concernusa.org/news/item.asp?nid=198

I can only hope that you will help Concern with a donation of whatever amount you can to help save as many lives in Niger as possible.

---------------------------------------------

Uganda is a country in east Africa which was especially hit hard by AIDS in the 1990's. Many tens of thousands of children have been orphaned due to AIDS in Uganda (like many other African countries).

One organization which has tried to meet the daily living needs of these children in Uganda is the Uganda Children's Charity Foundation (http://www.uccf.org). These are the children who performed for Bono when he received the Musicares' Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2003. There is also a very famous picture of Bono "dancing" cheek to cheek with one of UCCF's children during his famous trip to Africa in 2002.

Right now, UCCF is in the midst of a fund-raising campaign to help take better care of these children. The GREAT thing about this fundraiser is that any gift you donate is matched dollar for dollar until they reach the $100,000 mark. SO YOUR DOLLAR WILL DOUBLE ITS HELPING POWER!

I have been a supporter of the UCCF since I found out about them in 2003 and have just sent then in a nice donation. I URGE YOU TO DO THE SAME - whatever you can afford will help these beautiful children!

Hurry though - the UCCF's "Celebrating a Decade of Miracles" will only around until 1 September 2005. (if you want your donation to be matched)

Thank you for taking the time to learn about the current situation for children in two African countries.

I hope you have been sufficiently motivated to help.

 

[financeguy]

Hmmm......don't know about Niger, but Uganda has been described as one of the most corrupt countries in the world :-

http://www.answers.com/topic/political-corruption

Donations from me so African leaders can open more Swiss bank accounts? Sorry, but no and I say that not to be cynical but to be professionally sceptical.

 

[Jamila]

Please, my friend, don't hijack another thread.

Helping a private, nonprofit agency ensure the future survival of innocent children has nothing to do with that country's government.

Both organizations have a great track record for using the money donated to them for actually going to the children they are helping.

No governments are involved.

How could anyone be against that?

Let's skip controversy for controversy's sake on this one.

LOVE IS BIGGER THAN US....

 

[Jamila]

Here are several excellent articles regarding the situation in Niger.

The pictures of the children are heart-wrenching:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4699643.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4700173.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4696149.stm

Let us do whatever we can for them.

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

Hmmm......don't know about Niger, but Uganda has been described as one of the most corrupt countries in the world :-

http://www.answers.com/topic/political-corruption

Donations from me so African leaders can open more Swiss bank accounts? Sorry, but no and I say that not to be cynical but to be professionally sceptical.

What makes you so sure that donating to the charity in the above post would lead to money being given to a corrupt politician?

 

[wizard2c]

reply

Suffering poor children
when does it end . . .
the white bird called "freedom"
needs to show them the way.

carol
wizard2c

 

[Rono]

actualy the problems in Niger are caused by a grasshopper plague and a lack of rain, not by corrupt politicians.

 

[Jamila]

If people really looked into the situation in Niger, Rono, people would have known that.

Africa's problems are multidimensional - not everything can be kneejerk blamed on "corrupt politicians". (God, we have corrupt politicians in our own societies.)

And, if we really knew Africa's history, we would be aware of how the countries of Europe and North America have historically helped to get Africa in the dire situation that the continent is in now.

For now, can we just find it in our hearts to help innocent children?

 

[Carmelu2fan]

I just came across this thread today...and I am ashamed to say I had no idea about the current situations in Africa, besides the snippets of info that they give you on the news from time to time...Thank you Jamila for keeping me informed, I will do my best to make others aware also

 

[wizard2c]

reply

The Dilemma and The Dream have to become reality........

carol
wizard2c

 

[Jamila]

You're very welcome, Carmelu2fan - I'm glad that your heart was moved by this tragedy.

Do whatever you can to help Africa's children - no matter what part of the Continent they live in.

Like Bono has said - they are beautiful, royal people. They deserve our assistance.

 

[Scarletwine]

Jamila,

I found this really great article about Africa and the G8. I don't want to start a new thread, so I hope you don't mind. It is a logical bringing together of those that think great things were done with those not happy with the outcome.

http://www.alternet.org/story/23709/
Measuring Victory

By Rebecca Solnit, Tomdispatch.com. Posted July 26, 2005.


The author of Hope in the Dark explores the misleading 'victory' of debt relief for the poorest countries, as promised at Scotland's G8 summit.
While we were looking at humpbacked whales a few months ago, my companion asked me if I ever thought about how Moby Dick's narrator, Ishmael, survived -- by floating away from the destroyed ship Pequod in his friend Queequeg's coffin.

Whales themselves survived into the twenty-first century in part because of petroleum, the black stuff seeping out of the Pennsylvania earth that made the Rockefellers rich and whale oil unnecessary for lighting lamps (and because of the first international whaling treaty in 1949).

Of course, petroleum went on to create the climate change that threatens habitat for whales and trashes their world in other ways. Typically, there isn't an easy moral to this, any more than there is to Ishmael floating away safely because his friend had terrible premonitions of death. And that's part of the richness of Herman Melville's telling.

The world is full of tales in which morals are hard to extract from facts. There is the delightful fact that Viagra has been good for endangered species like elk whose antlers now are less at risk of being ground up for Chinese aphrodisiacs, surely the greatest inadvertent contribution of big pharmaceuticals in our time.

Casinos have provided many Native American tribes with revenue and clout, though gambling is another kind of social problem and outside groups are the principal profiteers from some of the casinos.

McDonald's has (under intense pressure from animal rights activists) led the way in reforming how meat animals are raised and slaughtered.

Many military sites have become de facto wildlife refuges, saving huge swathes of land from civilian development (even if bombing endangered species is part of the drill).

Then there are those interesting moments when otherwise appalling politicians do something decent for whatever reason or when the principled and the sinister are weirdly mixed -- like anti-abortion, pro-death-penalty Arizona Senator John McCain's passion for addressing climate change or the recently deceased Pope John Paul II's condemnation of neoliberalism. To say nothing of our one great environmental president, Richard Nixon (and, yes, it wasn't out of purity of heart that Nixon got us the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Air and Water Acts, but purity of water and air matter more).

Sometimes, though, I think my compatriots are looking for the real world to provide stories as simple as Sunday school and sports, not as complex as Moby Dick. I would like those victories too. I would have liked it a lot if, after returning from the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, earlier this month, George W. Bush had -- in a live global telecast like the Oscars -- fallen to his knees, apologized profusely to everyone for everything, condemned capitalism, violence and himself, promised to dismantle the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, stop the war in Iraq immediately, and dedicate some of the billions thus saved to African poverty. And that's just for starters. But let's look instead at what we got.

...

Long but a really good read. It gives a welcome perspective of gradual change.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I've been reading about it in the paper..here's an article I read this morning

As famine rages, Niger's rural children waste away
Aid begins coming in; villagers still waiting
By Nafi Diouf, Associated Press | July 26, 2005

DAN MALLAM, Niger -- The thatched-roof huts where villagers store grain for the lean season are empty. The day's only meal consists of acacia leaves boiled into a paste, eaten in the evening in hopes it will lull children to sleep.

After months of repeated pleas from the United Nations, international aid is starting to trickle into this West African nation ravaged by drought and locusts. But it has yet to reach villages like Dan Mallam, where the hungry can do little but wait for help and the next harvest.

''Everything that the stomach can contain, we eat . . . anything that can calm the hunger," said Ibrahim Koini, whose gray beard and emaciated frame make him look older than his 45 years. ''We've come to eat the same leaves we give our cows."

The diet of acacia and other leaves is taking a toll on children, whose malnourished state is clear from their swollen bellies and heads that appear too big for the skeletal limbs.

Acacia leaves provide some nutrition, but are inadequate because they lack iron, zinc, magnesium, and protein. Adults can get by on the calories such a diet provides, but calories alone are not enough for children, UNICEF says.

Many children in the Dan Mallam, a village 400 miles east of the capital, Niamey, have stayed home from school because they are too weak to concentrate.

Yacoumba Mati, 13 years old, described by his teacher as a bright student, managed to make it through his final exams. He wants to become a doctor -- and he hopes to leave Niger one day. ''Because here there is nothing to eat," he said.

Most villagers have sold their cows and goats to avoid losing them to the drought. Milk, flour, and meat are too expensive.

Niger's government offers millet at $18 for a 220-pound bag, but that is out of reach for most people

An international aid group has set up a feeding center and clinic 30 miles away in Maradi, but Dan Mallam's villagers can't afford the trip. Adults watch as children's energy, muscles, and weight dwindle.

''I cannot afford to leave the rest of the family behind to take the little one to hospital," said Ibrahim Fakirou, fanning flies from the face of his son, Mouhamou, a 2-year-old wobbling on spindly legs.

''I have to plow my farm to feed the children and my wife is seven months' pregnant," Fakirou said.

Niger's 11.3 million people regularly rank among the world's poorest, and drought and a locust invasion last year have put some 3.6 million of them on the brink of starvation.

The world has been slow to react. The United Nations first appealed for help in November and got almost no response. Another appeal for $16 million in March brought in about $1 million. An appeal May 25 for $30 million has received about $10 million, UN officials say.

But donations have jumped dramatically because of increased media attention and TV images of starving children, said the UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland.

Among the aid groups working in Niger is the Kuwait-financed Agency for Muslims in Africa, which is offering emergency assistance in Maradi.

It is providing five balanced meals a day to 300 malnourished children and three to their mothers. And it has opened feeding centers in two nearby villages -- though not in Dan Mallam -- but officials say the group is struggling to cope.

When the first UN appeal was made, only $1 a day for each needy person would have helped solve the food crisis, the United Nations has said. Now $80 is needed each day per person because it is more expensive to treat people once they are weakened by malnutrition, officials say.

 

[BonosSaint]

Okay, Jamila. I took a leap of faith and sponsored a child, due to your efforts.

I get paralyzed by the sheer enormity of problems. But one child, yeah, I can do that.

Thanks.

 

[sulawesigirl4]

Thanks for keeping people abreast of what is going on here. Thankfully in neighboring Mali we are not at that level of need, since part of the country didn't fall prey to the locust invasion that really pillaged Niger. I read today in a local newspaper that the crops that are being grown for next year seem to be doing well...we are having good rains (in fact, it rained all night last night) but that does nothing for people right now.

If any of you have the ability to contribute even a little bit, it can go a long way towards helping people with less than nothing.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Hamissou lies still in the arms of his grandmother July 22, 2005 at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) therapeutic feeding center in Maradi, in the south of Niger, 650 kilometres (400 miles) east of the capital Niamey. The World Food Program said that thanks to the outpouring of international aid in recent days to help hungry Niger, emergency food distribution to 270,000 people could begin this week

 

[Jamila]

Mrs Springsteen - excellent contribution

Bono's Saint - I'm glad that you took the plunge! Change comes ONE life at a time. (Please let us know about "your child")

sulawesigirl - our thoughts and prayers are with all of you

Scarletwine - you can always make a contribution to any thread I start.

 

[2Hearts]

Contribution sent.

Btw, could anyone provide an explanation for the apparent lack of trade between African nations? I understand that trade b/w nations like Sierra Leone and Niger would be nil, but what about the more prosperous countries?

 

[Jamila]

Oh God, 2Hearts, the reason for the weak trade between African nations is really complicated.

For what I know, the main reason is that most of the materials that African nations have to trade are tied up in trade agreements that they have made with the developed countries which basically take their materials that these countries have to trade at a VERY REDUCED PRICE so that African countries are ACTUALLY MADE POORER by these trade agreements!

But, in order to qualify for assistance from developed countires, struggling African countries are almost forced into these trade agreements.

It's a vicious, unfair circular process which has actually made Africa poorer over the last 25 years!

To learn more about unfair trade and trade agreements, check out this website:

http://www.maketradefair.org

And thanks for your contribution to help Africa's children.

 

[2Hearts]

For what I know, the main reason is that most of the materials that African nations have to trade are tied up in trade agreements that they have made with the developed countries

I guess this is one of the reasons Bono calls it 'stupid' poverty. It is unbelievable how stupid agreements like that are. Thanks for the link, I'm definitely going to check it out.

 

[wizard2c]

reply

Note of interest....

Anderson Cooper's 360 will be reporting live from Niger on Monday......we can get a first-hand glimpse of what is happening there now.

 

[BonosSaint]

Hi, Jamila


Got my package from UCCF. My child--God, can't really call him a child. My good looking young man is Viani Mugumya, 14. He lives in Rakai reject: my ignorance is overwhelming. Sigh). His father died from AIDS in 1996. His mother died a few years later. I would post a picture, but have no scanner. Well, off to research.

 

[Jamila]

Probably better not to post a picture of Viani since he's still a child/young man.

SO good to know that someone took the plunge and decided to help secure a positive future for one of these beautiful, royal yet struggling children! bow: - BonosSaint)

Keep us updated about your experiences coming to know more about Viani and about his life in Rakai (an area of Uganda that has been hard hit by AIDS). I think your experiences will help others learn more about the difficulties these children face and learn more about their TREMENDOUS SPIRIT to live and to love.

BonosSaint, I have a feeling that if Bono knew what you have just done out of the love and concern in your heart that you feel for these children, he would give you a BIG HUG and tell you what I would say "THANK YOU"!

LOVE IS BIGGER THAN US....

 

[wizard2c]

reply

That is so good to hear.....I am working on a few things myself to help the childen....it's just that I've been caught in the middle of confusion the past few weeks.

Anderson's report from Niger was so sad.......Doctors Without Borders have been so helpful but still the children die such a desolate death...it tears at the

Good to see Anderson give us an idea of what is actually happening there today and some background of the region and people...for sure we need more reporters like him around....for people often see their own little segment of their world...and not the world which really exists.

 

[Tilli]

I was listening all about the situation in Niger on the news the other evening.

They were saying that the famine is not simply to do with the rains or the locust plague that the country has had. They even showed pictures of all the food that was available in a town nearby where on of the Medicines Sans Frontieres camps were. Here a family of 8 can feed itself for as little as 40 pence. The news reporter was saying that it is poverty which is leading to these people starving. I know that is kind of obvious to say but I expect this was a disaster waiting to happen in Niger and that the recent natural "disasters" that have hit the country have tipped it over the edge.

I have to admit that I was fairly ignorant of what has been going on in Africa (at least up until Live 8) but I have started to take a interest.

I have had a look on the fair trade website someone mentioned above - thanks for the link!

 

[Jamila]

Good for you, Tilli - please keep up your interest in learning more about the challenges Africa is currently facing. Africa needs all the friends she can get.

And wizard2c, I'm sorry that I missed that program. It is good news though that the media is beginning to focus their attention on Africa and are beginning to explore some of the various reasons that African people are in the dire situation that they're in.

Please do whatever you can to help the children of Niger and Uganda.

 

[Jamila]

Look at what U2 are doing to help the children of South Africa:

U2 gives music rights to HIV centre

Rock band U2 has agreed not to charge DDB South Africa for the use of their song 'Kite' which will be used in an Nkosi's Haven television commercial. They have also wavered usage rights because the commercial is for South Africa's first care centre for HIV/AIDS mothers and children. The commercial was the work of DDB's creative team Derek Postmus and Nicole Scanlan and was directed by Dominic Black from the production company Fade2Black.
[03 Aug 2005 12:52]

Every act of compassion and concern helps.

Even if its to give up your royalty rights so that these organizations canuse that money to save more lives!

SIMPLY BRILLIANT, U2!

 

[sulawesigirl4]

Plenty of Food - Yet the Poor are Starving
by Jeevan Vasagar
The Guardian

TAHOUA, Niger -- In Tahoua market, there is no sign that times are hard. Instead, there are piles of red onions, bundles of glistening spinach, and pumpkins sliced into orange shards. There are plastic bags of rice, pasta and manioc flour, and the sound of butchers' knives whistling as they are sharpened before hacking apart joints of goat and beef.

A few minutes' drive from the market, along muddy streets filled with puddles of rainwater, there is the more familiar face of Niger. Under canvas tents, aid workers coax babies with spidery limbs to take sips of milk, or the smallest dabs of high-protein paste.

Wasted infants are wrapped in gold foil to keep them warm. There is the sound of children wailing, or coughing in machine-gun bursts.

"I cannot afford to buy millet in the market, so I have no food, and there is no milk to give my baby," says Fatou, a mother cradling her son Alhassan. Though he is 12 months old he weighs just 3.3kg (around 7lbs).

Fatou, a slender, childlike young woman in a blue shawl, ate weeds to survive before her baby was admitted to a treatment centre run by the medical charity MSF.

This is the strange reality of Niger's hunger crisis. There is plenty of food, but children are dying because their parents cannot afford to buy it.

The starvation in Niger is not the inevitable consequence of poverty, or simply the fault of locusts or drought. It is also the result of a belief that the free market can solve the problems of one of the world's poorest countries.

The price of grain has skyrocketed; a 100kg bag of millet, the staple grain, costs around 8,000 to 12,000 West African francs (around £13) last year but now costs more than 22,000 francs (£25). According to Washington-based analysts the Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet), drought and pests have only had a "modest impact" on grain production in Niger.

The last harvest was only 11% below the five-yearly average. Prices have been rising also because traders in Niger have been exporting grain to wealthier neighbouring countries, including Nigeria and Ghana.

Niger, the second-poorest country in the world, relies heavily on donors such as the EU and France, which favour free-market solutions to African poverty. So the Niger government declined to hand out free food to the starving. Instead, it offered millet at subsidised prices. But the poorest could still not afford to buy.

At Tahoua market the traders are reluctant to talk about the hunger crisis affecting their countrymen as they spread their wares under thatched verandas jutting out from mud buildings. Snatches of the Qur'an from tinny tape players compete with Bollywood songs and the growl of lorries bringing sacks of rice and flour.

One man opens his left palm to display half a dozen tiny scorpions, a living advert for the herbal scorpion antidote he is selling in his other hand.

Omar Mahmoud, 18, who helps sell rice at his father's shop, blames the famine on drought: "I know there is hunger. It is because there wasn't enough rain. The price of millet has gone up because there wasn't enough rain last year."

Last month around 2,000 protesters marched through the streets of the capital, Niamey, demanding free food. The government refused. The same month, G8 finance ministers agreed to write off the country's $2bn (£1.3bn) debt.

"The appropriate response would have been to do free food distributions in the worst-affected areas," said Johanne Sekkenes, head of MSF's mission in Niger.

"We are not speaking about free distribution to everybody, but to the most affected areas and the most vulnerable people."

The UN, whose World Food Programme distributes emergency supplies in other hunger-stricken parts of Africa, also declined to distribute free food. The reason given was that interfering with the free market could disrupt Niger's development out of poverty.

"I think an emergency response should have started much earlier," says Ms Sekkenes. "Now we find ourselves in this serious nutritional crisis, with children under five who are suffering."

Three weeks ago the Niger government, its foreign donor countries and the UN did a volte-face, jointly agreeing to allow the distribution of free food. Aid is now being flown in from Europe and trucked from neighbouring countries.

A total of 3.6 million people live in the regions of Niger affected by the food crisis. According to the most reliable estimate, some 874,000 people now need free food to survive.

The food aid will arrive as children weakened by hunger face a new battle against disease. It is the rainy season in Niger, and the water helps spread diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea.

In the MSF treatment centre, a three-year-old girl called Aminata is suffering from a grotesque eye condition. Her eyeball is so swollen with fluid that it has popped out of her skull and bulges from her face. The doctors call it a retinal blastoma, the result of an untreated eye infection.

"The thing in her eye started off very small," said Aminata's mother, Nisbou. "I did not have money for hospital, so I treated it with herbs, traditional medicine."

The hunger crisis has struck communities which depend on a mix of subsistence farming and herding for their livelihoods. The stories told by the women in the treatment centre show that their plight began when locusts ate their crop and cattle fodder, but spiralled when the prices of food in the market shot out of reach.

In desperate times, adults can get by on the poorest of foods, weeds and the stubble of their crops, but mothers cannot make breastmilk on this diet and infants cannot eat weeds.

Amid the anxiety, there are unexpected moments of gaiety in the feeding centre. Asked her age, Nisbou, who is probably about 20, replied: "I am 100 years old." She burst out laughing at her own joke, then looked weary again, and tucked her baby's deformed face under a lace shawl.

 

[verte76]

I don't know as much as I should about this stuff. Thanks for posting this stuff jamila.

 

[Jamila]

thanks for the article, sulawesi.

The important thing to remember is that, though there may be food in some areas of Niger, the people who are suffering are the poor.

And we shouldn't allow them to perish simply because they can't pay the exhorbitant prices for a handful of food.

We wouldn't want that to happen to someone we know.

Thanks for caring.