Category Archives: Global development

Uganda elections: on the campaign trail with the country’s rudest feminist

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From naked protests to spells in prison, Stella Nyanzi has stood up to President Museveni – now she’s standing as an MP

“Stella is my Mama Africa, because she has always fought for women!” shouts Hanifa Nagujja, a 28-year-old cook at akatale kabalema or “market of the disabled” in the heart of Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

Nagujja is one of about 15 women in gingham aprons who are jumping in the air in elation, clapping, finger-clicking and ululating as Stella Nyanzi weaves her way through bubbling pots of groundnut sauce, beans and matooke. Some of them chant “Nnalongo! Nnalongo!” – the name given to mothers of twins in Buganda culture.

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Child labour doesn’t have to be exploitation – it gave me life skills | Elizabeth Sibale

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Growing up in Africa taught me to be self-reliant and resilient. Putting children to work must be seen in local context

Aged eight, Tayambile would walk with her mother every day to fetch water. On her 2km return journey in 30C heat, she would carry 20 litres in an aluminium bucket on her head.

She would then help to pound maize in a mortar and prepare food for the family – typically fresh fish caught by her father on the lake.

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Lahore’s metro line opened to fanfare – but what is the real cost of China’s ‘gift’?

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The Pakistani city’s railway is a hit with passengers, but critics say worker deaths and huge debt are too high a price to pay

In a global pandemic, people across the world have avoided public transport systems where they can. But last week the Pakistani city of Lahore unveiled its “gift from China” – a $1.6bn (£1.23bn) light-rail transit system. The Orange Line metro is designed to carry nearly a quarter of a million people a day in Pakistan’s second-largest city.

As 50,000 masked commuters packed into gleaming, air-conditioned trains festooned with Chinese and Pakistani flags to celebrate the first day of operation. Tayyaba Urooj, a 45-year-old mother, was among them, and had brought nine of her relatives from Karachi along for the trip. “Alhamdulillah, the train just started. We want it to succeed and for Pakistan to succeed,” says Urooj in the packed carriage. “I am a little worried because it’s congested – but it’s Pakistan, so there’s always a rush.”

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‘Don’t stop the music’: songs bring hope to a Nigerian psychiatric unit

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There is a huge mental health treatment gap across Africa, but in one Nigerian hospital, music therapy is having a positive impact

The music comes on – a soft blend of guitar, saxophone, piano – and people sit still at first, then heads start to sway to the sound. Some hum along; mostly they sing, or laugh and dance. At the end, when quiet returns, their mood is assessed – as it was when the session started.

Once or twice a month, Bola Otegbayo brings a team of singers and instrumentalists into this psychiatric unit at University College hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, Nigeria. Otegbayo realised a few years ago that some of her patients were lonely even though their loved ones visited and caregivers provided succour. So she began to share music. Now she is a musicologist alongside her main job as a renal technologist.

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Uganda’s ‘street uncles’ transform young lives in the slum – a photo essay

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In an area that is infamous for high drug use, a group of men use their own experience of addiction to help children strive for new goals

  • Photography by Katumba Badru Sultan

It was as a child in 1983 that Mark Owori first began using drugs. He started by supplying them to his sister, Lucky, who was a soldier in Uganda’s bush war. Eventually he also became both involved in the war and an addict.

This was under the rule of Ugandan independence leader Milton Obote and during a conflict in which Owori says that everyone had a role – from spying to looking for food. His was to keep soldiers supplied with drugs.

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‘We live in constant fear’: Kabul buries its dead after Isis attack on university

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The brutal killing of at least 35 people on Monday has left Afghanistan’s younger generation fearful of the future

At a mountainside graveyard, surrounded by dusty brown hills specked with colourfully painted houses, 20 year-old Marziah Tahery was laid to rest on Tuesday; a light breeze in the warm autumn air, echoes of children’s play in the distance.

The morning before – as on most other days – she had gone enthusiastically into Kabul University where she had been studying public administration and policy.

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Rich states’ Covid deals ‘may deprive poor of vaccine for years’

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Wealthy countries already have agreements for 3.73bn doses, with another 5m under negotiation, study finds

Governments in predominantly wealthy countries are negotiating to buy nearly 8.8bn doses of prospective Covid-19 vaccines in a “frenzy of deals” that could mean many poor countries would not get access to immunisation until at least 2024, a report says.

None of the 320-plus potential vaccines in development have been approved for use, but countries have already struck advance purchasing agreements for 3.73bn doses of the most promising candidates, with negotiations underway for another 5bn doses, the study by Duke University’s global health innovation centre calculated.

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The women who risk their lives to deliver Pakistan’s polio vaccines

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As activists target female vaccinators, Pakistan remains one of only two countries worldwide not to have eradicated polio

Nasreen Bibi never saw the face of her killer. The 44-year-old had just finished work for the day, vaccinating children against polio in Chaman, Pakistan. As she and her co-worker, Rashida Bibi (no relation), stood waiting for a rickshaw home, a motorcycle skidded up in front of them carrying two masked men.

The men did not utter a word, but through the churned up dust that filled the air, Rashida remembers seeing the raised pistol, hearing the shots and feeling the pain as the bullets hit her hands, her thighs, her back and her stomach. Rashida fell to the ground and felt Nasreen crumple beside her, blood pouring from a dark hole in her forehead.

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‘Lives have been lost’: Pregnant women in Zimbabwe forced to pay bribes when giving birth

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Two women took Harare authorities to court to force them to reopen 42 maternity clinics

In agonising labour pain and turned away from a Harare health centre, Aurage Katume feared that, like many other Zimbabwean women, she could lose her unborn baby.

She struggled to another clinic in the country’s capital. The midwives there were not ready to help her either.

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Rotten river: life on one of the world’s most polluted waterways – photo essay

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Indonesia’s Citarum is relied upon by millions, but decades of pollution have choked it with chemicals and rubbish

  • Words and pictures by Andrea Carrubba in Dayeuhkolot

The smell is the first thing that hits you on the banks of the Citarum River in West Java, Indonesia. The odour is dense: rubbish rotting in hot sun mixed in with an acrid tone of chemical waste.

Some 9 million people live in close contact with the river, where levels of faecal coliform bacteria are more than 5,000 times mandatory limits, according to the findings of the Asian Development Bank in 2013.

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For the sake of Cameroon, life-president Paul Biya must be forced out | Vava Tampa

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The country should be rich, but millions live in dire poverty. France must stop supporting the president and his electoral ploys

On 6 December, Africa’s oldest serving leader, Paul Biya, and his ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), will be declared the winner of the country’s first ever regional elections.

That much is clear, and is expected inside and outside of the west African country – Biya has misruled with an iron fist for nearly 40 years. But the question we should be asking, but as yet have not, is what this means for Cameroon’s 25 million people. In my view the answer is more poverty, more violence, more corruption and more suffering. This should compel us all to act.

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Nollywood’s new generation in the spotlight at Film Africa in London

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Gender equality, postnatal depression and transatlantic migration are all tackled in quest for international audiences

Once Nollywood might have meant films that were low budget and high drama and aimed mostly at a west African audience. But Nigerian cinema has evolved and this year a slew of new film-makers are tackling grittier subjects – and winning international acclaim.

A roster of screenings at autumn’s Film Africa festival in London reveal directors unafraid to look at issues such as gender equality, postnatal depression and transatlantic migration.

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Russia loses UN vote over women’s rights in conflict zones

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Security council resolution that many feared would weaken human rights is rejected by UK, US and other states

Attempts by Russia to introduce a UN security council resolution, which activists said would have unravelled the rights of women in conflict have failed as 10 countries abstained on a crucial vote on Friday.

The UK, US, Germany and France were among the abstaining member states, which meant the resolution did not gain the nine votes required to pass.

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Women Deliver racism investigation verdict described as a ‘slap in the face’

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Complaints of ‘white saviourism’ and harassment at the group led to the review, which found no individual responsible

The results of an investigation into allegations of racism and harassment at one of the world’s most high profile women’s rights organisations has been described as a “slap in the face” to those who complained.

Investigators concluded this week that no single person was responsible for the “challenges” at the group, Women Deliver, which had undergone a period of rapid growth “during which its policies and practices lagged behind”. The report added the workplace culture had been “too demanding, urgent, and high-pressure”.

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‘I feel free here’: how a miracle girls’ school was built in India’s ‘golden city’

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A strikingly-designed centre reminiscent of Rajasthan’s famous forts will soon be opening its doors in conservative Jaisalmer

“Don’t even try,” friends told Michael Daube, when he said he wanted to coax women in Jaisalmer to embroider yoga bags to help them earn some income.

For the most part, at least in rural areas, this is Federico García Lorca territory, where marriage for a woman, as a character in the Spanish poet’s play Blood Wedding describes it, is “a man, children, and as for the rest a wall that’s two feet thick”. Rajasthan is one of the most conservative states in India, where ancient customs circumscribe a woman’s freedom and in turn any chance of economic independence.

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‘We have a right to be at the table’: four pioneering female peacekeepers

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Twenty years after a landmark UN resolution, leading figures share insight on women’s vital role in mediating conflict

In October 2000, the UN security council adopted resolution 1325 – the first resolution that acknowledged women’s unique experience of conflict and their vital role in peace negotiations and peacebuilding. Twenty years on, we speak to four women helping keep the peace around the world.

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Russia makes bid to water down UN commitments on female peacekeepers

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Move comes on 20th anniversary of first resolution to recognise women’s unique and disproportionate experience of conflict

Russia has introduced a new UN security council resolution that could threaten the rights of women in conflict by attempting to water down previously agreed commitments on human rights.

Negotiations are ongoing and it is doubtful they will conclude ahead of a special virtual meeting on Thursday to discuss women’s role in peace and security efforts.

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Yemen on brink of losing entire generation of children to hunger, UN warns

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Food security crisis means acute malnutrition among under-fives at highest levels since war engulfed the country

Almost 100,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying in Yemen as the country slides back into a hunger crisis.

An analysis by UN agencies says the coronavirus pandemic, economic problems and conflict have led to the highest levels of malnutrition ever recorded in parts of the country.

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EU accused of abandoning migrants to the sea with shift to drone surveillance

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Border agency Frontex accused by campaigners and MEPs of evading its responsibilities towards people in distress

The EU has been accused of condemning migrants to death by critics of its recent €100m (£90m) deals for drone surveillance over the Mediterranean Sea.

Campaigners and MEPs have accused the EU’s border agency Frontex of investing in technology to monitor migrants from afar and skirt its responsibilities towards people in distress.

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‘We are drinking sewage water’: Zimbabwe shortages threaten thousands

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As the search for water in Bulawayo becomes more desperate, diarrhoea outbreaks from dirty water are endangering children

It is 6am on a Saturday and residents of Sizinda, a poor suburb in Bulawayo, have begun their desperate hunt for water. The taps at home dried up three months ago.

Water has become a daily struggle in Zimbabwe’s second biggest city, largely the result of a severe drought last year which has dried up the reservoirs. The poor rains expected this year will bring more hardship.

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