YAMBIO, South Sudan (PAMACC News) - Since 2013, South Sudan has never known peace, and the country has been a beehive of foreign media reporting all manners of stories that depict a desperate, helpless and a bleeding nation.However, a recent Job Fair, and event organized by the State Government of Gbudue in Yambio, some 430 kilometers west of the capital Juba depicted a totally different spectacle. It was a picture of thousands of enthusiastic women and youth – most of them ex-rebel fighters, but have a lot of hope for their future, a picture of a resilient society, and a community that is eager to produce own food to become self reliant.“Gbudue is a peaceful state, and its citizens are mediators of peace. They come up with homegrown solutions to their own problems,” Governor of Gbudue State Hon. Daniel Badagbu told a UN mission at the Job Fair, who had come to interact with local partners and beneficiaries of UNDP’s multi-dimensional support to recovery and resilience in the State. The mission, which consisted of UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director, UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa Ms. Ahunna Eziakonwa Onochie and UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director, UNDP Crisis Bureau Ms. Asako Okai was also joined by the Kingdom of the Netherlands Director-General for International Cooperation H.E. Reina Buijs, and high-level delegations from the Embassies of Japan, the Netherlands, and Sweden.“Now that peace is here in South Sudan, we need to create jobs, especially for the youth, we need to empower the women and the youth, and include these groups in decision-making,” added the governor.AGRA is already on the ground planting the seed of hope by introducing smallholder farmers – most of them women and the youth to profitable agriculture to make them food secure and have a source of livelihood.At the Job Fair, Global Agriculture Innovation and Solutions (GAIS), a local seed company working with AGRA in South Sudan showcased different types of improved seeds for drought tolerant crops, fast maturing and crops that cope well with climatic conditions in Gbudue State.The company is working closely with local smallholder farmers to multiply the seeds so that they can be planted by thousands of women and youth who have returned home from the battlefields.The event which was hosted with support from the Kingdom of Netherlands brought together women entrepreneurs of Masia Market and is supported by the Government of Japan, youth benefitting from economic empowerment projects to boost re-integration, and peace committees.“If you see the energy among the youth and women here, you will realize that they all yearn for development in their communities. Their hard work shows that they are ready to join entrepreneurships and fend for themselves,” said Pia Philip Michael, the Gbudue State Minister for Education, Gender and Social Welfare.Previously “the government could apprehend and imprison all the ex-fighters returning from the bush,” added Michael.According to the minister, the government learned that nearly all the returnees had joined the rebel groups because they were promised a constant salary of 200…

BUEA, Cameroon (PAMACC News) - A government programme to provide both private and public radio and TV media houses with up-date meteorology information is seeing a rise in awareness and change of attitude by local farmers as climate change in Cameroon becomes increasingly unpredictable.Mary Ngule, 44 and farmer normally grows maize, beans and potatoes on her 30-hectare farm Ndop, northwest region of Cameroon. But for the past three years, worsening droughts and early rains destroyed much of her harvest. "As usual we plant with the first rain signal. But for the past three years planting at the first rain signal has been disastrous. No sooner do we plant than the sun comes drying up everything" she said. Usually the local farmers could predict rightly the planting season with early rains and appearance of some insects experts say and their early harvest fetched them much income. But that in the past three years has disappeared as climate change brings harsher and unpredictable weather causing great loss to farmers and food supply shortages to the population. In riposte the ministry of agriculture organized seminars and field trips to caution farmers on the dangers of planting just after the first rain signals but this approach failed as farmers will not heed. “We tried severally to caution farmers but the failed to heed,” said Ekungwe Christopher regional delegate for agriculture for the Southwest region.So last year, for the first time, the government in collaboration with some telecommunications enterprises in the country started a meteorology information safety net programme that provides daily weather information for broadcast to better sensitize farmers. Over 200 community radios, 60 commercial radios and 15 television enterprises across the country now receive daily meteorological content in the form of SMS from the National Meteorological Centre for broadcast. "We now broadcast early morning weather programmes and farmer related information from the ministry of agriculture,” say Koum Leonard, station manager of Royal FM radio station in Yaounde. Farmers attest the climate information has been of great help to them. “Last year thanks to daily information from the state television channel CRTV I waited till the rains were consistent before planting and my harvest was far better that the last two years,” said Helen Njume a maize farmer in Yaounde As harsher droughts and hotter weather linked to climate change ruin crops more frequently in Cameroon, the country is facing a new challenge: growing demand for climate information programmes. Cameroon just like many African countries today suffer from the effects of climate change with many economic and social sectors increasingly vulnerable to floods, droughts, heavy winds among other calamities.Environment experts say the dissemination of climate information services by the media for the benefit of specific users remains essential to support Africa's response to climate change. It is against this backdrop that the African Policy Centre (ACPC ) at UNECA has hooked up with media partner networks to assist with continental dissemination of Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER) key messages and knowledge…

OPINIONNAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - When you move into gender people ask you what’s the business case, why does it matter? The truth is, for a long time gender equality has been viewed as just a human rights imperative, but latterly women’s contribution to the global economy has been under scrutiny. In 2015 the McKinsey Global Institute came out with a report that looked at what would happen if we started to close the gender gap and gave women the same opportunities as men. They used a ‘best in region’ scenario, where all countries match the rate of improvement of the fastest improving country in their region. They found that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025. Nowhere is the gender gap more striking than in African agriculture. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) did some analysis that showed because women have lower access to land, seed, fertiliser and mechanisation: married women receive 2% of extension services and as head of households this figure rises to 5%. Just from closing these input gaps productivity in women’s fields could be increased by 20 to 30%. That would immediately lift 180 million people out of hunger.So now there are numbers next to it, there is a compelling business case for female focussed programmes. But directing that focus is important. AGRA’s women in agriculture strategy aims to unlock farming as a business for women. In the run-up to World Women’s Day on 8 March I want to look at how that differs from how we do it for men. The end goal is the same – lift people out of poverty and give them a better life– but the pathway to doing it for women and men can be very different.Because we live in a gendered society a woman faces a different set of challenges as she goes about her daily business: she may not have the same mobility, sometimes a woman might not even be able to leave her home without permission from a man;she has huge time constraints, performing as much as four to six hours of extra work every day cooking, cleaning and looking after the children;she doesn’t have access to assets, she doesn’t own the land that she farms, so she can’t get credit and she doesn’t want to invest in the land because she doesn’t own it -why add nutrients to the soil when it’s not her land and could be taken off her at any time? These are a whole different set of challenges often not faced by men. Women account for about 5-10% of business owners in cash value chains, mainly their participation is limited to working in the fields and they are often absent when the family’s farming produce is sold. More female-owned land may counter this, but land ownership is a complex issue to tackle.Concentrating on agri-businesses, higher up the value chain,is one pathway to women’s empowerment; if the business is off farm we avoid many of the gendered…

Yaoundé, Cameroon (PAMACC) Deux personnes se livrant au trafic d'écailles de pangolin ont été arrêtées à Yaoundé au cours d'une opération coup de poings menée par la Délégation Régionale de la Forêt et de la Faune du Centre et de policiers du commissariat de 10ème arrondissement de Bastos à Yaoundé. Au cours de l’opération menée avec l'assistance technique d'une organisation non gouvernementale appelée LAGA, ils ont été attrapés en possession de 42 kg d'écailles de pangolin, ce qui est totalement interdit par la loi. Les deux sont des trafiquants spécialisés qui, depuis plusieurs années font dans le trafic d’écailles de pangolin. Ils transportaient le chargement dans un taxi quand l'un d'eux s'est rendu compte que la police se dirigeait vers eux, et a tenté de s'échapper mais a été poursuivi et arrêté par des agents de la faune. Le deuxième trafiquant profitant de la confusion, s’est enfuit dans un hôtel à proximité, mais a été arrêté. Selon des sources proches du dossier qui ont requis l'anonymat, les deux trafiquants qui mènent leurs opérations depuis leur base située dans le quartier de Nkolndongo depuis plusieurs années sont populaires auprès des vendeurs de viande de brousse du quartier. Ils ont contacté plusieurs petits braconniers et trafiquants à Nanga Eboko et dans des villages environnants, où ils se sont régulièrement rendus pour acheter des écailles de pangolin. Des enquêtes sur leurs activités illégales ont été entamées avant qu’ils ne se déplacent à Yaoundé, ont indiqué des sources. Le quartier Nkolndongo à Yaoundé acquiert rapidement la réputation de plaque tournante du trafic de pangolins, à la fois de viande et d’écailles. Ceux qui visitent fréquemment la zone, disent que des pangolins entiers accompagnés d’écailles pourraient être achetés auprès de vendeurs de viande de brousse. Bien que les pangolins soient des espèces totalement protégées, ils sont parfaitement exposés dans le quartier, ce qui est notoirement difficile à gérer pour les responsables de la faune.Les deux hommes ont été présentés au Procureur de la République L’arrestation et les poursuites contre les trafiquants devraient jouer un rôle dissuasif dans le trafic de viande et d’écailles de pangolin, en particulier dans le quartier de Nkolndongo. Jusqu'à sept trafiquants ont été arrêtés cette année pour trafic d'écailles de pangolin au cours d’opérations menées dans le cadre d'une collaboration entre le Ministère des Forêts et de la Faune et LAGA. L’intensification des opérations résulte directement de l’amélioration des mesures d’application de la loi sous l’égide du Ministre des Forêts et de la Faune, Jules Doret Ndongo, qui a supervisé l’amélioration des performances de son personnel. Cette situation est une évolution de bon augure en matière de conservation dans le pays.Photo : Un trafiquant transportant des sacs d'écailles de pangolin peu après son arrestation à Yaoundé.