Author: svadmin

The Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Maggie Sotyu says with women recognised as the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change, inclusive economic growth is key to addressing gender inequality.

Sotyu said this when she participated in the debate on International Women’s Day during a sitting of the National Assembly on Tuesday.

She said women are increasingly being recognised as more vulnerable to climate change impact than men as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor as they are more dependent on natural resources which climate change threatens the most.

“It is therefore important that inclusive economic growth is key to addressing unemployment, gender equality, health and other poverty-related issues,” she said.

Sotyu said government’s National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, which was approved in 2020, defines the country’s vulnerabilities and outlines plans to reduce those vulnerabilities.

She also said that the strategy leverages opportunities and outlines required resources for such action, with demonstrating progress on climate change adaptation.

“It also outlines the set objections, interventions and outcomes to enable the country to give expression to its commitment on the Paris Agreement.

“As a guiding principle, our strategy aims to promote the participation of women, take gender differences and vulnerabilities to climate change into account and address the needs and priorities of both women and children,” she said.

Sotyu said the years 2020 and 2021 have been record-breaking for extreme weather events around the world with extreme weather that is more frequent, intense and widespread than experienced in past years.

She also said that the vulnerability to biodiversity loss and climate change impact are deeply connected to gender and sustainability interventions, responses and solutions need to consider gender issues if they are to fully meet the objects for which they were established.

“We are also promoting integration of gender issues in disaster resilient-related programmes, including promoting and requiring the generation of gender disaggregated data and analysis and the monitoring and evaluation of the specific impact these events have on women and girls.

“Furthermore, our department has developed a strategy towards gender mainstreaming in the environment 2016-2021 – the first of such sector strategy in the country – to provide strategic guidance for gender mainstreaming in the environment sector. This is with the purpose to ensure that initiatives in the sector are aimed to support the creation of policies that support gender analysis and mainstreaming during the development of new projects and including gender perspective into the whole project cycle management.”

Source: South African Government News Agency

The Department of Public Works & Infrastructure (DPWI), has welcomed the judgement handed down with regards to the Beitbridge Border fence project.

The judgment was handed down by Judge Lebogang Modiba on Tuesday.

This as the department and Special Investigating Unit (SIU) had sought just and equitable relief in terms of section 172(1)(b) of the Constitution, including an order seeking to divest the contractors (Caledon River Properties (Pty) Ltd and Profteam CC) from any profits derived from the contracts relating to the 40km long fence.

The construction of the fence was done as part of the emergency COVID-19 procurement during 2020 but soon after it was erected; it fell apart – prompting an SIU investigation.

Judge Modiba has stated that “it is just and equitable to apply the no profit and no loss principle” and dismissed the right of the contractors to retain the profits arising from these contracts.

The judgement requires that the profits accruing to the contractors from the project be repaid to the DPWI. The department also noted the statement from Judge Modiba that further corrective measures lie in holding to account “the officials who designed, approved and implemented” the project.

With regards to these further corrective accountability measures, the DPWI’s Acting Director General, Imtiaz Fazel, confirmed that in February 2022 the State concluded its case in the majority of disciplinary hearings against the implicated DPWI employees.

The defendant employees are scheduled to finalise their response to the State’s case by the 8th April 2022.

In addition to these disciplinary processes, the acting Director General, has offered the Engineering Council of South Africa the DPWI’s full co-operation to investigate the conduct of professional engineers within and contracted or sub-contracted to the DPWI in this matter.

“I wish to assure our employees and the wider public that the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure is committed to clean governance and enacting consequence management where necessary. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance and bravery of the State’s witnesses from the DPWI, SIU and National Treasury in last month’s disciplinary hearings.

“As the DPWI works to improve delivery, communication and consequence management, we are seeking to play our part in rebuilding the confidence and trust that South Africans have in their government,” said Fazel.

Source: South African Government News Agency

Tall, stately and clad in brightly colored fabrics that stand out against the arid landscape, the women at a U.N. food distribution site in Jonglei state, South Sudan, wait patiently in line in the stifling heat to receive their monthly rations.

“My life changed since [South Sudan’s 2011] independence. Now I’m getting aid – things are better,” Rebecca Akeer, aged in her 50s, said outside her simple mud hut as aid workers handed out large sacks of grains.

But Akeer and others in a war-torn African nation could soon see the knock-on effects of a distant European war, with analysts wondering if China can dampen the anticipated impact that international sanctions against Russia will have on the African continent.

Food insecurity

The conflict in Ukraine and resulting sanctions on Russia are driving up global oil and food prices, which could lead to increased hunger in Africa, and even more unrest, analysts said.

“We are heading for a disruption,” said Steven Gruzd, a Russia expert and foreign policy analyst at the South Africa Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg.

“The price of bread is going to go up. It sometimes brings people into the streets,” he added, noting that the revolution in neighboring Sudan basically began as a 2018 bread riot.

“I think food insecurity will be a massive consequence of this war.”

Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, and Ukraine ranks fifth. Countries in North Africa, such as Egypt, Russia’s top Africa trade partner, are expected to especially feel the impact of the sanctions. Tunisia has said it is already looking elsewhere for wheat supplies.

“When looking at the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on global food security, in a year of unprecedented humanitarian needs, WFP is extremely concerned as the conflict may have far-reaching consequences,” Claudio Altorio, a World Food Program spokesperson, told VOA.

Russian activity under President Vladimir Putin expanded rapidly in Africa over the past decade. Facing sanctions from the European Union, Vladimir Padalko, vice president of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Moscow planned to expand its trade missions to Africa as an alternative for products such as fruit, tea and coffee, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.

Russia has engaged with chronically unstable nations like Mali and the Central African Republic, where it has mineral interests, and where private, Russia-based military contractors are stationed. China, on the other hand, is engaged across the continent through loans and infrastructure investment.

In 2021, total bilateral trade between China and Africa reached $254.3 billion, Chinese authorities said. By contrast, Russia-Africa trade was worth about $20 billion, according to the African Export-Import Bank.

“The magnitude of China’s trade with Africa is already 10 or more times bigger than Russia’s trade with Africa,” said Gruzd. “If supply lines go down, China would probably be best placed to pick up that slack.”

Cobus van Staden, senior China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, sees potential benefits for Africa’s top exporting nations as well.

“African countries are in general trying to increase their agricultural exports to China. South Africa exports a lot to China and Russia … so South African companies may be looking to China to make up for disruptions,” he said.

But Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, said he didn’t think sanctions on Russia would increase China-Africa trade. He said he thought the European Union, the United States and Canada would be better placed to supply Africa with grains and, to some extent, oil.

“China doesn’t really have the supply of products like oil and grains that African countries actually need. … Even though it’s amongst the major grain producers, they produce much for their own consumption,” he said.

China has had a particularly bad growing season. Last week, China’s agriculture minister said the winter wheat crop could be “the worst in history.” Prices have already skyrocketed because of the Ukraine crisis.

African energy

While food insecurity will hurt ordinary Africans the most, the coffers of some oil-rich African states are likely to benefit from disruptions to Russian oil and gas.

“The oil producers [in Africa] in the short term could have a bit of a boom,” Gruzd said.

Van Staden said that boom could be even greater if China cooperated with international sanctions against Russia, something that has yet to happen.

“If it’s a situation where they [China] do manage to block Russian oil and gas exports, oil and gas producers in Africa may have some short-term benefits,” he said, adding, “You could see China buying more oil from Angola, and there’s a series of natural gas projects starting to come on-line in Tanzania.”

“For the Chinese, they’re such a huge economy that diversifying their sources for commodities is a strategy for them anyway,” said van Staden. “This is kind of why China started the Belt and Road Initiative.”

Shifting alliances

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, many African nations were seen as either under Washington’s or Moscow’s sphere of influence, a divide some analysts believe could be revived by the war in Ukraine.

“The areas of risk I see are that African governments may feel compelled to ‘choose a side’ in a new Cold War situation,” said Yunnan Chen, a doctoral candidate at the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.

“We’ve seen a big divergence on that with South Africa and BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] on the one end and Kenya on the other,” she added, referring to South Africa’s abstention from last week’s U.N. resolution that Russia withdraw from Ukraine (China also abstained).

By contrast, Kenya and Nigeria expressed support for Ukraine and condemned Moscow.

Source: Voice of America