The practical issues of fighting the pandemic is best summed up in the assertion that no-one if safe until everyone is safe.

The moral issues, equally plain, have been more problematic as rich nations grab more of the vaccine than they need to save their faltering economies.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan  and the United States had a packed agenda preparing for next month’s G7 summit to be hosted in Britain.

In pre-meeting briefings they listed Russia, Myanmar and Iran ahead of COVID a.

Then members of the Indian delegation – invited as observers along with Australia, the Association of South East Asian Nations, the European Union, South Africa and South Korea- reported cases of COVID and were forced into self-isolation.

India and Brazil are responsible for the overwhelming majority of COVID cases as the pandemic goes into its third wave.

The media covering the deliberations at Lancaster House in London’s West End have eyes for nothing else.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set the moral tone calling on the G7 to fund the global push for COVID vaccine.

Speaking as the UN Envoy for Global Education he called on the richest nations raise $60 billion over two years, saying inaction now would lead to greater global division.

“By our failure to extend vaccination more rapidly to every country, we are choosing who lives and who dies”, he warned. 

“And I say the world is already too deeply divided between rich and poor to allow a new unbridgeable divide to become entrenched between the world’s vaccinated who live, and the under-vaccinated who are at risk of dying.” 

Brown asserted that mass global vaccination is not an act of charity, but “the best insurance policy for the world”.  Though costing billions now, the result will be “trillions of additional economic output, made possible when trade resumes in a COVID-free world.” 

Brown will be remembered as the British premier who hosted the G20 summit in 2009, where the world’s major economies committed an additional $1.1 trillion to address the fallout from the global financial crisis,  

World Health Organization  chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked Brown for his call to the world’s economic and political leaders. 

“The G7 are also home to many of the world’s vaccine producers. We will only solve the vaccine crisis with the leaders of these countries”, he said.

For those of a more cynical or dubious bent, a poll by the People’s Vaccine Alliance shows that70 percent of G7 citizens believe their governments should ensured pharmaceutical companies share the formulas and technology of their vaccines.

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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.

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Like the rest of the world caught up in the pandemic, Africa waits impatiently for a vaccine.

Baffling the experts, Africa has had comparatively low numbers of infections.

These infections are starting to increase, but thus far Africa accounts for just over two million of the more than 60 million cases worldwide.

Medical experts say there has been an increase in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria as the winter weather closes in.

South Africa, with more than 502000 infections and over 21 000 deaths tops the continental COVID list.

These experts fear it will later next year and perhaps even 2022 before Africa sees widespread distribution of vaccines.

It is unlikely, they say, that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are currently the frontrunners in the northern hemisphere, will be distributed in Africa.

Cost is not the chief obstacle.

According to the International Vaccine Access Centre at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,  the storage and transportation of the vaccine are the chief obstacles.

The Pfizer vaccine has to be kept at minus 80 degrees.

Distributing it requires special refrigerated storage facilities and refrigerated aircraft and vehicles to move it around.

Africa requires a more hardy medication that does not require such expensive care.

There is also a question of safety.

Fourteen years ago Pfizer had to pay compensation to the 11 families in Nigeria’s Kano state who lost children in tests on the anti meningitis vaccine Travan.

African nations responded angrily early in the pandemic to French doctors suggesting Africans would be good subjects for testing a COVID vaccine.

The movement calling itself Africans Are Not Lab Rats has silenced similar suggestions.

However it is undeniable that if a vaccine is be effective in Africa, it needs to be tested here..

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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.

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The World Press Freedom Index puts it top of the continental list and ranks it 23rd in the world.

The Paris based non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders has been publishing its annual world press freedom index for 25 years.

This year the Scandinavian countries Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden are judged to be the freest in the world.

For the eighth successive year Eritrea is at the bottom of the list of 180 countries.

South Africa is in 31st position – the same place it occupied last year.

The organisation calls 2020 a decisive year for the world media and says its difficulties have been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic.

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They are all small, relatively remote and have tests rates either extremely low or not all.

South Africa continues to top the continental table of COVID 19 infections.

Its1462 cases recorded this morning are far and away ahead of second place Algeria which has 986 cases.

Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia follow that.

The African countries that have not recorded COVID19 cases are Comoros, Lesotho, Sao Tome and Principe, South Sudan  and Western Sahara.

All of these fall into the World Health Organisation’s remote category mentioned when it confirmed that the global infections exceed one million.

The total number of African deaths from COVID 19 is currently 290.

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Three more African countries has recorded confirmed cases of COVID 19.

These include Burundi where authorities admitted last week there were no cases recorded simply because they had not been testing.

Scientists assume that the five African countries that have not acknowledged cases of COVID 19 are doing this because, like Burundi, they have not been testing for it.

Somaliland and Sierra Leone have registered their first cases.

This morning there have been 6 383 cases of COVID 19 confirmed in Africa. 5 642 of these are still active.

505 of these patients are described  as recovered and 236 have died.

South Africa has the highest figures of the continent with five deaths from the 1325 active cases.

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The announcement comes as President Mokgweetsi Masisi announces a national lockdown and declares a state of emergency.

There are three confirmed cases of COVID 19 in Botswana and the patients have been quarantined.

A further 14 people are in isolation awaiting the result of tests.

President Mogsweetsi Masisi has not said how long the emergency regulations will remain in force.

He says, taking account of conditions in neighboring countries, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, a 21-day lockdown might not be enough to curb the spread of COVID19.

He’s concerned about the low rate of testing and the cumbersome health protocols.

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The East African country has 19 patients infected with the coronavirus.

The decision to release the prisoners was taken by the national task force to tackle COVID 19 which is lead by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

The premier has launched a nationwide fund raising drive to fight the spread of the the virus and prepare the nation to deal with a worst case scenario.

Ethiopia, along with Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt and South Africa have been named by the World Health Organization as the African countries that will probably be worst hit by COVID 19 because of the number of people passing through them.

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There were 14 survivors.

The victims are believed to be Ethiopian.

ends intro

Immigrations officials in the northwestern Mozambique province of Tete stopped the truck from Malawi at the Moatize checkpoint near the Zambezi River..

They heard banging from inside the container and made their grizzly find after ordering the driver to open it.

The 14 survivors were taken to hospital where they will be tested for COVID19.

The Mozambican driver has, according to officials, confessed to having been hired to smuggle people across the border from Malawi.

Authorities say the dozens of dead died of oxygen deprivation.

Last October, Mozambique police stopped a lorry from Malawi carrying 42 people in a container headed for South Africa.

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