XYZ AFRICA NEWS BULLETIN @ 20h00
The best 10-minute news from
across Anglophone & francophone Africa on Radio XYZ93.1FM in Accra, Ghana.
We offer mini-features under "Focus". Original content guaranteed
weekly! Weekly review assured on Fridays. Look for #xyzAfrica on soundcloud.com
STORIES:
THE WEEK IN “FOCUS”:
* Agricultural
Expert Believes Conversation On Agriculture Beyond 12TH CAADP Platform
Should Be About Nutrition
* Third ISTR Africa Regional Conference Opens
in Accra
* Rhodes University students arrested over
rape controversy
* Publication Launch: “Who Really Governs Urban
Accra?
DID YOU KNOW? WHAT DOES BEING INDIGENOUS MEAN?
FOCUS:
| FOCUS Flashback of “Focus” |
THE WEEK IN “FOCUS”:
* Agricultural
Expert Believes Conversation On Agriculture Beyond 12TH CAADP Platform
Should Be About Nutrition
* Third ISTR Africa Regional Conference Opens
in Accra
* Rhodes University students arrested over
rape controversy
* Publication Launch: “Who Really Governs Urban
Accra?
DID YOU KNOW? WHAT DOES BEING INDIGENOUS MEAN?
FOCUS:
| FOCUS Flashback of “Focus” |
We
opened the week reminding listeners about the AU/NEPAD Conference that ended in
Accra on 14 April. We explained how…
Agricultural
Expert at the Forum for Research in Agriculture Dr.Aggrey Agumya believes
conversations beyond CAADP should involve a discussion on nutrition.
Speaking
exclusively to E.K.Bensah Jr on the “Africa in Focus” Show last week in the
third discussion since 2015 unpacking Africa’s agriculture in CAADP, he
explained how the future of food security conversations should include
nutrition.
On
the just-ended AU conference, he said that the idea of the 12th CAADP PP was
“to advance from planning to implementation”, and work towards targets. The
first decade (2003-2013), he continues, was about planning and investment. From
2014, there was recognition that it was important to walk the talk on building
Africa’s agriculture. There was, therefore, a need to develop capacities and
partnerships to take CAADP further than before.
Here
is what he had to say: [cue AUDIO 1].
Pressed
to explain how central the CAADP Country has been in domesticating the
continental agenda, he explained that for a while, it “lost momentum and the
whole thrust for the second decade of CAADP is to sustain the momentum it
started with. The Country teams also lost the momentum”, but he believes there
to be a “renewed attention and support for country teams to drive
implementation process”, but they would need support in terms of capacity.
For
Dr.Aggrey, after the 12th CAADP PP, the conversation on agriculture needs to
raise greater awareness not just on food security, but nutrition, which he
describes as “a key area of concern”: [cue:AUDIO 2]
On
Tuesday, we reported how...
The
Third International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) African Network
Regional Research Conference had opened in Accra.
Organized
by the local hosting committee that includes the West Africa Civil Society
Institute(WACSI); Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, this
2016 ISTR Conference was themed “Civil Society and Renascent Africa: a
Stocktaking.”
Twenty
years after the world “discovered” civil society and saw them as key in a
re-nascent Africa, some questions are begging to be asked in civil society
circles. These include to what extent has civil society lived up to these
expectations? Is civil society the missing key to a renascent Africa? To what
extent has civil society contributed to the triple imperatives of African
development, democratization and integration?
Opening
the conference, Executive Director of WACSI, Nana Asantewa Afadzinu, explained
how civil society is “going through evolution”, with civil society
organizations (CSOs) engaging governments more than ever. With a number of CSOs
dependent on external funding, the Executive Director explained how this
meeting offers a moment of “introspection” as well as a “meeting of minds to
engage issues.”
Topics
include “Civil Society and Development in Africa”; the “Significance of the
Women’s Movement in Africa: Successes and Challenges”; “Modelling the
influential impact of CSOs in Africa”; and “Sustaining Civil Society in
Africa.”
The
conference attracted around 70 participants and would be organized around
keynote addresses and a number of paper presentations.
On
Wednesday, we zoomed in onto… South Africa, where…
A
number of students have been arrested at the country’s Rhodes University,
following protests that allegations of rape on campus are not taken seriously.
Police
used pepper spray and stun guns on the third day of protests to try to disperse
students, some of whom demonstrated topless on Tuesday.
A
list of alleged campus rapists was leaked on social media on Sunday by a
student group angered by assaults.
Vice-Chancellor
SizweMabizela called on all the students to come forward with information,
saying the university had no record of such reports. Rhodes University's
student paper Activate says the arrested students are to be charged with
protesting in public and being in possession of weapons.
On Thursday, we revisited the
story of a new publication by the London-based Africa Research Institute that
was launched in Accra.
The
Accra launch took place Thursday at the Centre for Democratic Development, with
participants asking questions about the role of slums in offering positive
dynamics around resilient communities; whether slums should be re-drawn as
cities. Other questions included how to properly-manage slums; and how does
Ghana get different coalitions of poor to fight together?
DID YOU KNOW? >> WHAT DOES BEING INDIGENOUS
MEAN?
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported
yesterday how the world’s biggest study on health and well-being of indigenous
people has found that living in a richer country does not give indigenous
people an advantage.
The study of more than 150 million Indigenous
people in 23 countries was published in the Lancet Thursday. The
report found that the gap in life-expectancy of Indigenous people in Australia…is at par with Indigenous people in Cameroon in Central Africa.
The lead author of the report, Professor Ian
Anderson, is Chair of Indigenous Education at the University of Melbourne. He says
social inequity like access to education and jobs need to change to improve the
health of Indigenous people around the world.
The report actually also talks about the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), and makes the point that those goals will
not be achieved unless we have specific action in relation to the health and
social outcomes of Indigenous peoples across the world.
ENDs
