Self-Reliant Ethiopia (and Africa) through Sustainable Livelihood development by Self-reliant Women groups (SRG)! | Africa Rural Connect

Self-Reliant Ethiopia (and Africa) through Sustainable Livelihood development by Self-reliant Women groups (SRG)! | Africa Rural Connect

Integrated Sustainable Development through women in East Africa!

   The poverty eradication by 2015, as explained in Millennium Development Goals of United Nations for Ethiopia, is only a non-meditated wish! Talking is very simple, but making it reality it needs great human efforts! It requires vision, dedication and the commitment that should be conveyed to the poor masses in the rural Ethiopia. East Africa can be developed only by educating the poor. It is also true for the entire Africa.


    The poverty in Africa is related to the condition of the rural masses that are no lesser than hungry savages. What is the solution for uplifting them? Donations and projects of millions can do nothing as long as the greedy mediators swallow 70 percent of the money! Free food and free money can spoil the uneducated masses, women and youth. The youth will have the tendency to get satisfied by the small food for work programs and they develop laziness, and attitude towards pleasure seeking mechanisms, and turn out be real beasts.

   The place of implementation is Adigrat City in Tigray State of Northern Ethiopia, having total population of 96000 in an area of 1877.46 hecters. The Adigrat City Administration has certified to start an Integrated Sustainable Development project to help the rural women farmers who have suffered severe food insecurity from recent year’s climate variation. The project is sponsored by Dr. Rajeevan himself from his own salary. It is an individual effort and conviction, that simple and committed mechanisms can make changes in the lives of rural communities!

    The project was started on 17th February 2010 and consists of the selection of 25 families who will be supported with regular income generating, sustainable livelihood mechanism. On 16th March 2010, five families out of the twenty five families have been given two high breed hens to develop a home-based poultry production. These five women will earn from the selling of eggs, selling of chicks, also will have some daily nutrition. When they get the first production of chicks they will donate two hens each to the local authority and it will be given to other five families and they continue to produce eggs and chick and earn on daily basis.

Mr. Goitom (Manager 04, Kebele, Adigrat) donating the hen!

      

              Dr. Rajeevan donating the hen!

      The 25 women are divided into different groups, known as Self-Reliant Groups (SRGs) who will develop this sustainable livelihood mechanism, which involves microfinance which saves the money and it will provide the money for the development of pre-primary and adult education, water and sanitation, health facilities and employment to the educated youth. Mr. Goitom Teklu, Manager, Kebele (village) 04, Adigrat City and Mr. Haftu Kidane (SSecretary, Sustainable Africa Initiative, a non-registered NGO) continuously monitor the progress and control the microfinance system and the delivery of other facilities, together with Dr. Rajeevan.


   The project is an attempt to change the concepts of the international organizations like United Nations and other bodies also about the rural population itself! Other mechanisms like dairy farming, cotton weaving (as in Gujarat in India), and other possible mechanisms which can bring sustainability and development through self-reliance and hard work by the women, who are the fore-front runners of rural family development. It is only through self-reliance we can bring changes into the lives of rural populations in Africa, and particularly in Ethiopia and there by empowering the Ethiopian rural community through self-reliant sustainable livelihood mechanisms!

Educate the Rural Ethiopia for Sustainability and Climate Change Adaptation!

   Climate change is an inevitable result of the world's most developed nations' extreme pleasure seeking and comfort seeking methods and mechanisms of life! The impact of the same is now sharing by almost all parts of the world! In that sense, Africa may be the end receivers while they have suffered the climate change of the globe without doing any direct contribution to it!

    Still the local variation in climate in each country is very important and the change in the climate pattern can be adapted if, individual efforts are carried out more systematically and with much responsibility to the ecology and the environment of the system they live.

     The very reason for all kinds of suffering is lack of education, and hence, the need for a more ethical, moral and life supporting education should be a part of the developmental mechanism. The importance to allocate more funds for the rural population, for their education, sustainable livelihood development, etc. should be the top priority of any government.

     Sustainable Africa Initiative (SAI) is non-registered Non-governmental organization based in Mekelle in the Tigray Regional State in Ethiopia. The organization is started by few Ethiopian youngsters such as Haileselassie, Adhonom, Haftu Kidane, etc., by the support of advises and directions of Dr. Rajeevan Moothal of Mekelle University, Ethiopia. The organisation is presently involved in educating the Aynalem village mothers and their children who are studying in Elementary School at Aynalem. Mr. Adhonom, the Director of the Aynalem Comp Elementary School supports and welcomes this program as an important support for the village children and also of their mothers.

    The support of SAI to the Aynalem village mothers and their children includes in delivering a basic environmental education for keeping their home clean and to train them to safely dispose the waste materials and also to utilize the organic waste for recycling to produce organic fertilizers, etc. The classes have been conducted to create more responsibility and awareness among Aynalem mothers to make their efforts to improve the quality of learning and also the personal cleanliness of their children.

  

Man-making, life-building education for rural children,

youth and women can only save Ethiopia and Africa!

    The importance of breast feeding and the nutritious food to their children have been explained in deatil. SAI is patiently waiting for more funding and the registration of the organization through the support of local and other international funding agencies and donors. The environmental education to the mothers, children and also to the school teachers will be conducted during the first week of February and the children, particularly orphans of the school will be supported with the old dresses collected through SAI's Old Dress Collection Program to save the waste accumulation and also to adapt the climate change effects that will be resulted from such waste deposition.

Climate Change brings extreme food shortage in 20 African Countries.

   The Food and Agriculture Organisation in its recent report, reveals the extreme condition of 20 African countries which requires external support to balance its food requirements. Statistics of food production in the last three yers are really alrming in these areas. According to report, the food insecurity in the region is part of the wider threat facing eastern Africa and the Horn, where prolonged drought and mounting conflict have left an estimated 20 million people needing food aid (IRIN News).


The report categorises the countries according to their severity and need to act urgently in supplying the food materials to each country. The countries like Kenya, Lesotho, Somalia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe have recorded with large fall in their food production compared to their previous years. The main culprits in this unexpected fall in the total food prdcution are adevrse weather, economic crisis and intensification from the civil violence, HIV/AIDS and other public health vulnerabilties. The lack of rain and extreme warming together with inadequate productivity will worsen the situation in these countries in the coming years.

  The countries like Eritrea, Liberia, Mauritania and Sierre leone are the countries where food production has  severe fall due to low production and the accessibility to major food grains by the public are basically destructed non-existence of peace conditions in these countries due to civilian war raletd damage of the public supply systems. While Mauritania has been undergoing this pathetic situation of basic food grain shortages for many years caused by intense drought.

  The food insecurity in localized areas in countries like Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Cote d'Ivore, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Sudan and Uganda requires intensified food supply programs through World Food Programs and the help for farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change to increase their production of basic crops. The countries like Ethioia and Sudan have been undergoing drought and famine conditions. The lack of rain in tha last wet season and intense evaporation of surface waters in Ethiopian Highlands have caused the recent drought conditions in areas like Tigray state in Ethiopia. The political situations in Sudan worsened by civil violence in Darfur and health vulnerabilites like outbreak of kala azar in southern Sudan have shked the food security of the country.

Food insecurity in Sudan is severe due to

civl violence and adeverse weather

  The African countries have been receiving the impact of global climate change for the last few decades. Whether it is produced by themselves or by other developed society in the world due to their intense passion for simplifying the act of living, they are receiving it! Can they contain this severe food insecurity for a long time? Similarly like the reduction mechanism, there can be a commitment mechanism, which shold include the developed naions who should contribute large proportions of their food production to these countries to make their peanance for polluting and becoming the culprits of creating such dangerous situation in another part of the world!

Climate change causes spreading of epidemics in Sudan, despite the Global Fund approval

 Harvests failed due to poor availabilitiy of rain, intensified the drought situations with long months of insecurity caused by inter-ethnic clashes, Southern Sudan is in the grip of "kala azar" infection and numbers are increasing at a rate of 80 admissions in the hopsitals in the first week of November. Kala azar a deadly disease also known as visceral leishmaniasis, have continued to rise in Southern Sudan, according to medical workers (IRIN news).

Many are suffering from "kala azar" disease. A scene outside

Malakal Hospital, Upper Nile State, in Southern Sudan.

  The symptoms of kala azar is like malaria, but transmitted by the sand fly, has hit some of the most remote and difficult-to-access regions of Upper Nile and Jonglei states. The life in these areas are also worsened by the recent inter-ethnic clashes. "Many patients were arriving too late at health centres and some die in the same day," reports Seaman.  The disease is almost always fatal within one to four months unless treatment is given, but some 95 percent recover if treated in time, reports IRIN news.

World Health Organisation, which also supports the treatment says in its report that 42 percent of patients were children under five, and 47 percent aged 5-17. Kala azar is endemic in some parts of Southern Sudan and outbreaks occur every 5-10 years. Treatment involves an injection every day for a month - requiring patients to stay near health facilities, which can put enormous pressure on those caring for them.

  The approved US$2.4 billion Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria can be promising to fight against the spreading new diseases which are mostly developed due to increased vulnerability in the midst of climate change effects. "These grants enable countries around the world to address some of the main problems they are struggling with every day," Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopian Health Minister and Chair of the Global Fund Board, said in a press release, as reported by IRIN News.

 The funding facilities should be made available to solve the problems of sudden outbreaks of diseases like Kala azar in Southern Sudan. The funders and their mechanisms become a very rigid process that they always look for long term processing and certain criteria that should be fulfilled, which are never possible to include unexpected outbreaks of health hazards like kala azar. In this context, most of the developing countries bewildered when such outbreaks of diseases hit hard on their bellies. It is very painful that such end receiveers get no help  due to these red tapism followed by the international funders. People need a sudden responding mechanisms which can be on the real time delivery basis, that can bring long term effects in the restoration of public health in third world countries.

Community Based Adaptation (CBA) can be a new mantra for Climate change adaptation !

   The recently organised Third International Workshop on CBA in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh in February 2009, organised jointly by the IIED, the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and the Ring Alliance of 13 policy research organisations from across the world (IRIN news). Since the climate effects are suffered by the poorest communities in the villages in developing countries, the focus of the strategies is now turning towards the community-based adaptation techniqes (CBA) and the process of distribution of funding and information becomes easier and effective.

Water-logging is a problem in Bangladesh! Hence they

depend on floating islands and water-hyacinths for growing food!!!

   The community-based adaptation is still a an aspriational term according to Saleemul Huq, Head of the Climate Change Group at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and he hope that lots of money being made available by the international community towards adaptation to climate change, to the poorest and most vulnerable.

   The CBA can be an effective process if it can be effectively implemented by identifying the end receivers of the climate change effects in third world countries. They are mainly traditional farmers in Asia and Africa where the effort to feed their own family and the country in general, have sacrifices everything of their own. Even at the midst of research developments and achievements, the technical support to the tradtional farmers in third world countries are nor effective, as such scientists around the world are still negotiating their terms with the stake holders and climate change businessmen in the five-star hotels and busy in dining with the most delicious food available on the surface of the earth, when millions starve in Africa and Asia!

     Hence, the Global Initiative on CBA launched at the workshop to promote the concept and share knowledge will be hopefully effective, as the initiative would not only build a support base of information for communities but would also serve the strategic purpose of advocating "specific quotas" for the most vulnerable in any new global funds for adaptation that may be agreed in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or other global processes, said Huq. The UK-based Institute for Development Studies has set up a website for exchanging information (http://community.eldis.org/cbax/) on CBA to inform NGOs and communities. Google Earth is also working with governments to map adaptation projects globally.

    The soul of the nature is in the villages, and the community based programmes are the only effective tools to understand the need of policies and plans to preserve the available water and other natural resources. The traditional methods which are cheap and best and long lasting can be identified and funding should be made available to create and maintain such traditional natrual resource preservation methods. The recent programs in India (by organisations like TERI, Goa) and Africa, which are success stories of community based programs and are not new to the world, on rainwater harvesting and watershed management, etc., have made immense impact in supporting the traditional farming and food production! Hence Community-based adaptation, CBA, can be a new mantra in the global climate change adaptation efforts!

East Africa can Hope!, While Climate change will devastate Africa, and hit Yemen already

    The coming years Africa will be lead to a more stressful situation.  The climate change effects can devaste Africa, warns says Prof. Sir Gordon Convoy, the outgoing chief scientist at the UK's Department for International Development, and former head of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation. According to Sir Gordon the continent will face intense drought, famine, disease and floods.

  The next 100 years will take Afica to a much hotter level, upto 4 degree celcius hotter than that it has now, says Prof. Sir Gordon. There will be less drinking water, diseases such as malaria will spread and the poorest will be hit the hardest as farmland is damaged in the coming century, Conway wrote. IRIN news reports the drastic situations that prevail in the spredaing of new killer diseases like, pneumonia and other lung diseases in the continent and the water related diseases like diarrhoea in some parts of Eastern Africa.

  While serious drought and famine conditions are predicted for the continent, the East Africa and Horn of Africa will be benefited by the more wetter period in the coming years, as Sir Gordonn gives the hope for the countries like Ethiopia and Somalia.

Where as the situations in the other side of the Red Sea, Yemen already in search of water as the tens of thousands of people in Milhan District, Mahwit Governorate, around 100km northwest of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, are facing acute water shortages due to lack of rainfall, according to local officials, reports IRIN news.

 Yemenis searching for water: Climate change effects already hitting the globe.

Most of redisents in this district depend on rainwater and hence are vulnerable in the dry season, and many springs have dried up already, according to Mohammed al-Nuzail, head of the General Rural Water Authority (GRWA) in the governorate. While Abdullah Al-Numan, an environment expert at Sanaa University, reasons that decreased rainfall in Yemen over the past seven years may be the result of changing climate in the region and according to him, in many parts of Yemen, including the northwest region, rainfall decreased from 300mm more than 20 years ago to 180mm over the past five years.

  While Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change is fast approaching, situations in different parts of the globe are alarming and strategies which are near to the ground realities should be planned and implemented. The adaptation and mitigation strategies should be implemented in rural level through effective management of natural resources and new methods of livelihoods for the support of the common man.