Friday, April 22, 2016

XYZ AFRICA NEWS BULLETIN @ 20h00 | 22 April, 2016 | Weekly Review of "Focus" Stories


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”


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”


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? 

The publication “Who Really Governs Urban Ghana?” is authored by Mohammed  Awal of CDD-Ghana and Jeffrey Paller. It is a 12-page piece that includes sub-headings, such as “how to win at politics”; “the rules of the game”; “landlords and housing”; and “crisis?
                             
            
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.


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