The African Development Bank’s Board of Directors has approved a $1.2 million grant to Ethiopia’s government to finance a feasibility study for construction of a standard-gauge railway (SGR) link between Ethiopia and neighbouring Sudan.
The grant, from the African Development Fund, the Bank Group’s concessional-rate lending arm, would cover 35% of the total estimated $3.4 million cost of the study. The remaining funding will be provided by the NEPAD Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (NEPAD-IPPF) in the form of a $2-million grant, and by a contribution of $100,000 each from the two countries involved. The financing was approved in January.
The two-year, comprehensive feasibility study will assess the proposed project’s technical, economic, environmental and social viability, as well as alternative financing arrangements, including a public-private partnership (PPP).
The railway line will link Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Khartoum in Sudan, with an extension to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. The route, agreed by both governments, stretches 1,522 kilometres between Addis Ababa and Port Sudan.
AfDB gives $1.2 million for Ethiopia-Sudan railway study
Defence attaché association cooperation with the military medical sector
Colonel-Major Souley Mamane, dean of the Military Attaché Association accredited to Ethiopia and African Union, supplied the Main Health Department of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces a set of equipment able to fight against Coronavirus spreading within Defence Forces. The delivery was held at central hospital Addis-Ababa (Armed Forces Hospital, at Torhayloch). The equipment consists of 400 masks KN95, 940 sanitizer bottles (250 ml) and 4 thermo-scans. This gesture of solidarity and brotherhood is provided by the members of the Military Attaché Association (MAA) representing in the Ethiopian capital almost 90 Defence forces from the 5 continents.
Afdb unveils strategy roadmap to safeguard food security against impacts of COVID-19
The African Development Bank has unveiled a strategic roadmap of projects and programmes to assist African countries in tackling the nutrition and food security aspects of the COVID-19 crisis through a raft of immediate and longer-term measures.
The Feed Africa Response to COVID-19 (FAREC) paves the way for a comprehensive intervention to build resilience, sustainability and regional self-sufficiency in Africa’s food systems and help farmers cope with coronavirus-related disruptions to the agricultural value chain.
“The Bank’s response to support the agriculture sector lays out specific measures aimed at addressing challenges faced by African countries across all aspects of the agriculture sector. Africa cannot afford a food crisis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Jennifer Blanke, the Bank’s Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development.
A report released alongside the roadmap recommends immediate, short- and medium-term solutions for the agriculture sector including; support of food delivery for the most vulnerable; stabilization of food prices; optimization of food processing; extension support services, and provision of key agricultural inputs through smart subsidies.
Looking into the lives of rural women in trying times
By Abisola Alaka
It is a known fact that rural women in Africa are at the heart of the food supply chain – production, handling and storage, processing and packaging, distribution and marketing, and consumption. Thus, the active engagement of rural women in agriculture is necessary, if improved food security and nutrition in Africa is to be achieved.
The multitude of shocks and crises, nonetheless, repeatedly hinder them from actively involving into and benefiting from the full potential of the sector. Droughts, famines, floods and landslides are common challenges that every farming woman is facing frequently. Harsh plant and animal diseases also pose unprecedented and disproportionate threats against these segments of the society, affecting harvests and livestock.
If we take the Eastern Africa region as an example, the 2020 Regional Report on Food Crises indicated that about 28 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, the Sudan and Uganda were classified in crisis or worse levels of food insecurity. This figure represents around 20 percent of the global total number of acutely food-insecure people in need of urgent humanitarian food assistance.
Weather extremes, conflict and animal and plant diseases are attributed to this calamity. The recent invasion of Desert Locust and Fall Armyworm have also destroyed thousands of hectares of crops in the subregion. In Ethiopia, floods displaced over 300 000 people, of which women and children takes up the bigger proportion.
In recent months, we are witnessing the spread of Covid-19, leaving the agriculture sector and the farming households in the realm of uncertainties. The invasion is projected to take an immense human toll in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 110 million people by some estimates. The immediate economic consequences of the pandemic for African economies are also estimated to be severe, resulting in the first regional recession in nearly 25 years and pushing an estimated 23 million more people into extreme poverty. In the face of the human and economic crisis caused by Covid-19, existing gender inequalities in economic opportunities may worsen, as was seen in previous large-scale health shocks such as the Ebola epidemic.
Rural women are disproportionately affected by Covid-19
While the health aspects of the pandemic have not affected rural areas as much as urban centres, containment measures pose new challenges to rural women with regards to their roles in household food security, as agricultural producers, farm managers, processors, traders, wage workers and entrepreneurs. Past experience shows that rural women are disproportionally affected by health and economic crises in a number of ways, including but not limited to, food security and nutrition, access to health facilities, services and economic opportunities, and gender-based violence (GBV).
The vulnerability of rural women to disasters and crises emanates from the lower economic and social positions they hold in the society. Inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to information, resources, capabilities and opportunities systematically disadvantage rural women, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact of crises.
Rural women also have limited savings or assets to endure external shocks or survive the crises. Recovery periods are often challenging for rural women because of their limited access to farmlands and other productive resources. Securing farm inputs, extension services and microfinance services are hard to come by to resume farming activities. They are also required to work harder to carry out the functions of daily living for their families. This can include lining up for relief supplies and having to travel farther to access water or firewood in challenging conditions. Furthermore, they have to care for the sick; and seek employment, if the main breadwinner is killed during the crises.
What can governments and institutions do to support rural women in times of crises?
In the spirit of the 2030 Agenda and “Leaving No One Behind,” the focus of the disaster risk management actions should be on the most vulnerable, particularly on rural women. Interventions should explicitly recognise the specific constraints faced by rural women during and after crises in maintaining household and national food security and nutrition. Building and enhancing the capacities of organisations and communities are imperative to enable gender mainstreaming into disaster risk management plans. In doing so, collecting gender-specific data and statistics on the impact of disasters, vulnerability risk and capacities are crucial to formulate and implement relevant programmes.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) works with member states to support the design of gender-responsive policy measures in crises, including Covid-19, to address the needs of rural women. It promotes the collection of sex-disaggregated data and evidence to assess the gendered impact of crises and the measures to contain them to inform policy interventions.
FAO pays attention to the long-term responses that support women farmers by enhancing equitable access to and control over productive resources, inputs and rural services.
Gender equality is essential for attaining food security, nutrition and achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By providing equal provision of rural services, it is possible to facilitate the access to education, health facilities and productive resources so as to protect them from and build their resilience to major crises that include Covid-19.
Abisola Alaka is Senior Administrative Officer at FAO Subregional Office for Eastern Africa
