Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be filled with or without an agreement with the riparian countries Sudan and Egypt who view the dam as an existential threat.

They rely on the Nile for more than 90% of the water needs in their largely desert countries.

Ahmed recalls that Ethiopia was left out of negotiations on the use of the Nile waters between Britain, as the colonial power, with Egypt and Sudan.

He maintains that building the dam, which will make Ethiopia a hydro-electrical-generating power, is its sovereign right.

His predecessors warned that they would go war to protect their access to the Nile waters. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi subsequently ratcheted things down in favour of negotiations.

Recently though, both he and his Sudanese neighbour have resorted to bellicose language.

Egypt would not allow a drop of Nile water to be stolen from it, he said.

Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas warned “all options are open” in safeguarding his country’s access to the water.

Both the riparian countries and Ethiopia have in turn gone to the United Nations Security Council swapping accusations of negotiating in bad faith.

As African Union Chairman last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa attempted, without success, to mediate an agreement on the filling and operation of the GERD.

Current AU chair, Congolese President Felix Tshisikedi had a bash at mediation earlier this month that also ended in deadlock.

Al Sisi has taken yet another diplomatic initiative, sending his Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on a six-nation African safari, hoping to win support from continental partners.

Shoukry visited the Comoros, South Africa, the DRC, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia.

In South Africa, the minister engaged in some fence mending.

He thanked President Cyril Ramaphosa for his mediation last year.

It is no secret that Egypt was highly suspicious of these efforts, suspecting that Ramaphosa was biased in favour of Ethiopia

Shoukry’s trip will be viewed favorably by African leaders who hold fast to the principle of African solutions to African problems.

However Al Sisi maintains his wish to see the United Nations, the European Union and the United States involved in trying to get Ethiopia to take a more understanding view of Egyptian and Sudanese fears.

The post Egypt tries for African support on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

French Ambassador Aurélien Lechevallier is calling for a repeat of the international stamina that brought about the Paris Climate Change Agreement five years ago.

The envoy was speaking at a reception marking the event and calling for a renewed international commitment to save the planet.

“The next year is going to be very important,” he said, “because  we will have to determine the next steps we must take to end the climate disruption.

“Last month was the hottest November in Europe ever.

“We are experiencing dramatic climatic events like fires, floods and hurricanes.

“We require collective effort to save the planet.

“We achieved this in Paris five years ago with 195 countries in the same room.

South Africa played a decisive role coordinating the African position,” said Lechevallier.

“We saw a new way of negotiating multilaterally with all the stakeholders joining the government representatives.

“We are hoping this spirit will be carried to the climate summit in Glasgow next year so the expectations of the planet can be met.”

British High Commissioner Nigel Casey said the light at the end of the tunnel of the COVID pandemic was seen this week with the first vaccines being administered in Britain.

The Glasgow climate summit is being designed to bring similar relief on financing, mitigating and adaptation on global warming

A virtual summit on Saturday, the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement, will see the leader of 81 countries improve on their pledges to fight climate change.

The leaders of Kenya, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are due to participate from Africa.

“Britain’s original undertaking was to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050,” he said.

“We are now undertaking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 68% by the year 2030.

“We are hoping that similar bold initiatives will be made by other participants in next years Glasgow summit. 

The post Bold initiatives expected on fifth anniversary of Paris Climate Agreement appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

I rely on watching where people hang out as a barometer of what is happening.

Large numbers of young people lazing about during working hours shouts unemployment to me.

It tells me that countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East where I have observed this have grown up economic problems.

In those oil-rich countries of the Gulf I see men drinking coffee, smoking nargilla  and chatting in the cafes it tells me that their wives are keeping house and cooking the delicious but laborious meals that only oppressed women have the time to prepare.

The other large gatherings in these salubrious lands are outside the offices of the foreign exchange firms.

The people there are workers from Africa and other poor countries paying the premium and completing the tiresome paperwork to send money home to their families.

Remittances to Africa are a massive industry.

They amount to $48 trillion a year, according to the World Bank.

This money from more than ten million Africans working abroad eclipses both aid paid to and foreign direct investment in their countries.

Calling this a lifeline is a rank understatement.

The workers pay dearly to maintain this.

They work without protection from exploitation, social benefits and medical aid.

They pay nearly 9% commission, at least three points higher than counterparts sending money to other parts of the globe.

When the COVID 19 lockdown began this year, the World Bank was predicting a 24% reduction in remittance to Africa.

The prospect of fewer people being permitted to go abroad to earn money to send home was devastating.

The World Bank this week rather pulled its neck in.

Its latest migration and development brief  forecasts that remittances will be 9% lower this year and 6% down in 2021.

Economically painful, without doubt. But Africans, who have proven wrong the apocalyptic expert medical predictions of how damaging the corona virus would be to their countries with the poorest medical facilities on the planet, have confounded the economists too.

We learn from the central bank in Harare that diaspora remittances to Zimbabwe increased by 45 percent to $658 million during the first nine months of 2020.

Zimbabwe joins Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and the DRC.and top remittance earners south of the Sahara.

Remittances from the three million Zimbabweans living abroad are a key source of foreign currency

Last year Zimbabwe earned $635 million in remittances.

The post Africa maintains an economic lifeline threatened by COVID 19 appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

With Prince William as the eloquent and passionate Royal Patron of its comprehensive programmes , the Tusk organisation has become a poster child for wildlife conservation around the world.

Well, hardly a child. It has been operating for 30 years and currently manages more than 50 projects in 20 countries.

It has attracted muscular sponsors like Land Rover and British Airways to support high-profile campaigns like #EndWildlifeCrime and its annual awards ceremony is an envied opportunity for glitterati and conservationists to clink glasses.

So when Tusk CEO Charlie Mayhew talks about the devastating impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on saving endangered species, it has to be taken seriously.

Mayhew reckons the evaporation of tourism caused by the pandemic and the lockdown has set back conservation efforts by three decades.

Tusk is losing at least two million dollars because of  cancelled fundraising events.

The collapsed tourism industry employs more than nine million people around the planet .

They are engaged in conservation, guiding maintaining and servicing lodges and hotels and physically protecting wildlife.

No less than half the revenue stream of wildlife reserves comes from tourism.

As these profitable 62-million visitors – who bring in almost $40 billion –  stay away the extra eyes and ears they contribute to watching over the animals also disappear and the poachers move in.

Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society says tourist presence is sometimes as strong as a deterrent as that of rangers to poachers.

Some of the animals are killed for profit with their tusks, horns, scales and hides sold to organized crime.

Many other poachers  are simply the local population desperate for food.

Nico Jacobs of Rhino 911, protecting the endangered species in the north of South Africa, says at least nine rhino have been poached in NorthWest Province since the start of lockdown, adding that those are simply the ones he knows about.

Ryan Tate,a  former US Marine heads Vet Paw, an organisation of military veterans fighting poachers in South Africa.

He should be in the bush right now but finds himself in lockdown back in the US.

Also stuck in South Carolina is Map Ives, the founder and director of Rhino Conservation Botswana who has lived in the Okavango Delta for the past four decades. 

He calls the rise in poaching a “bloody calamity, and absolute crisis.”

Before the lockdown, Africa was losing 35 000 elephants to patchers every year.

Black rhino numbers are down 97,6% since 1960.

The lion population has decreased by 35 000 these past 21 years.

In Africa’s oldest game reserve, Virunga National Park on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Rwanda and Burundi, 12 rangers were were killed last week by Rwandan rebels.The rangers were protecting a convoy of civilians five of whom were killed by the rebels.

The rangers guard the mountain gorillas that number barely more than 1 000. 

The figures are horrifying.The reality is even more stark.

Things cannot possibly improve until mankind is no longer threatened by COVID 19.

Government and donor organisations cannot be seen to be giving money for conservation when people’s lives are threatened.

The post Warning from one of the best conservation organisations about the toll COVID 19 is having on safeguarding wildlife appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

President Cyril Ramaphosa had his work cut out when he took on the chairmanship of the African Union this year.

He is committed to steering the continental body along its final bumpy stretch of road to the ambitious goal of silencing the Guns in 2020.

More importantly, the bean counters argue, he  has to oversee  the final implementation of the African Free Trade Agreement.

Both of these face an existential threat from COVID 19.

Silencing the guns means ending all wars, civil conflict, violence conflict, and gender-based violence on the continent.

Herculean does not being to describe this task.

Since their inception, African conflicts have gobbled up the lion’s share of United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Deploying the blue helmets currently takes up an amount approaching $8 billion a year. That is $1 billion more than the overall budget of the world organisation.

Of the 13 active UN peacekeeping operations around the planet, no fewer than seven – Western Sahara, Darfur, Central African Republic, Abyei, South Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo – are in Africa.

The latter is the largest and most expensive blue helmet operation, taking up 20 000 of the 100 000 UN peacekeepers deployed worldwide.

To put some perspective on this, the number of UN troops deployed in the DRC is half the number of US troops stationed in Germany.

The United States currently picks up 28% of the UN peacekeeping tab which is less than one percent of total US defense spending – about as much as Washington spends in a month on its military operation in Afghanistan.

African leaders have for a time sought to pay more for peacekeeping in their determination to give credibility to the principle of African solutions for African problems. 

The best they can manage is a 25:75 split in costs with  the UN and this has yet to be inked.

As the battle with the COVID 19 pandemic turns the G7 economies on their heads, African countries know that they will feel the cost even  more keenly.

They are having to go to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for money simply to feed their people.

The Bretton Woods institutions are obliged to make their assistance conditional on the recipients adhering to strict austerity policies.

Silencing the Guns and implementing an African Free Trade Agreement are undeniably desirable.

Silencing the Nevertheless AU chairman Cyril Ramaphosa will be hard pressed to convince the lenders that these projects take priority over fiscal discipline and  financing the bare necessities.  

The post COVID 19 puts a heavy burden on Cyril Ramaphosa as AU chairman appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

At least 19 truck drivers from Kenya and Tanzania have brought the virus into Uganda, bringing the total number of cases in the landlocked country to 74.

ends intro

Uganda’s Health Minister Jane Aceng is insisting  trucks bringing goods from Indian Ocean ports to and through Uganda be stopped at the border.

Under a scheme being called relay trucking, they will transfer their cargoes into Ugandan-driven trucks to will deliver to local destinations or drive them on to the DRC and the Great Lakes.

Companies have three weeks to recruit the extra drivers.

Ugandans are on lockdown.

The truckers carrying critical goods like food are considered essential workers.

The post East African trucks being turned around at Ugandan border appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Special envoy of the United Nations Secretary General to the Great Lakes Huang Xia urges the international community not to let up on its support for the region.

Huang Xia says the number of coronavirus infections in the Great Lakes approaches 5 000. COVID 19 has killed 131.

The strict travel restrictions and quarantine has brought agriculture, mining and transportation to a standstill in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan. 

The post Holding back COVID 19 has a price for the Great Lakes appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

The virus was detected in a Ivorean who returned from visiting Italy.

ends intro

There are now a dozen African countries treating COVID19 cases.

Egypt has the highest count followed by Algeria. 

The Democratic Republic of Congo has replaced South Africa in third place.

Two of the 114 cases in Africa have resulted in deaths.

Governments have taken stringent action to stop infection.

Kenya’s banned its star athletes from going abroad to compete for the next month.

Ghana and Gabon has stopped foreign travel for their  officials. Lesotho has stopped foreign travel for its citizens.

The post Cote d’Ivoire becomes 12th African country with COVID 19 appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Presidents Yoweri Museveni and Paul kagame have signed an extradition treaty aimed at stopping subversive activities by their respective nationals.

Presidents Joao Lourenco of Angola and Felix Tshisikedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo witnessed the signing of the extradition treaty.

The four leaders’ summit agreed that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni will verify Rwandan claims of hostile activities on their border.

Within 15 days of  Museveni publishing his findings, he’ll be back at Gatuna/Katuna with Rwandan President Paul Kagame to talk about opening borders and normalizing relations.

The post Uganda and Rwanda working to ease border tension appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

He has also prayed for and end to wars in Africa.

There was a heavy African flavour to the traditional Christmas message read by Pope Francis.

He prayed for migrants seeking refuge from violence and better lives for their families, and urged the United Nations to take more muscular actions to deal with their plight.

And he prayed for peace in Burkina Faso where a Christmas Eve attack by jihadis has left 35 people – many of them women – dead.

He also prayed for South Sudan, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Nigeria.

The post Pope prays for peace in Africa appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.