LIBREVILLE, Gabon (PAMACC News) - Water experts, policy makers, government representatives, UN agencies, donors and nongovernmental organisations kicked off the celebration of the seventh edition of the Africa Water Week in Libreville city of Gabon on 29th October 2018, calling on African governments to reflect on achievements made so far towards availing clean water and sanitation services to all.The one week long event is convened by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) in collaboration with UKaid supported project for Unlocking the Potential of Ground Water for the Poor (UpGro), USAID, Africa Development Bank (AfDB), The Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the International Water Management Institute.According to Prof Makame Mbarawa, the AMCOW President and the Minister for Water and Irrigation for Tanzania, the event is a call to action and positions Africa to creatively think, act and win.“This is an opportunity to share lessons and good practices in water security management, to share lessons and good practices on enhancing water and sanitation resilience to climate change,” he said in a statement.One of the objectives is also to create an opportunity to contribute to developing strategies on raising adequate and sustainable financing of water and sanitation agendas.The 7th Africa Water Week, brings together over 1000 participants from governments, regional institutions, international partners, the private sector, the scientific community, civil society, and the media particularly from AfricaThe Minister for Water and Engergy for Gabon Hon Patrick Eyogo Edzang lauded Prof Mbarawa’s statement saying that accomplishing water security is imperative to safeguarding sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water to maintaining livelihoods, human wellbeing, and socio-economic development. The Africa Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, H.E Sacko Eyogo Leonel Correa urged all African governments to include more water sanitation and hygiene projects in their National Determined Contributions (NDC) to unlock more climate related financing mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, AfDB Climate related Funds, and a host of other sources of funding.Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) is a term used under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that all countries that signed the UNFCCC were asked to publish in the lead-up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris. Once the agreement is ratified, the INDCs automatically changes to NDCs.“I also want to congratulate AMCOW on the launch of the 2018 - 2030 strategy, and therefore, I call upon our ministers to take action, and they should not keep this important document on their shelves,” said Correa, calling on development partners to help in implementation of the tool.In a video recorded speech to the delegates, Amina Jane Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations and a former Minister of Environment of Nigeria noted that the challenge of water scarcity is exacerbated by the widening impacts of climate change. “This is both unacceptable, and yet avoidable,” she said. She called on political leadership to accelerate progress. “In this regard, the United Nations is working…

IKOM, Nigeria (PAMACC News) - Chiamaka Abraham is a hygiene hero from Ikom LGA, Cross River state, South-south Nigeria. She attends Holy Trinity Academy and she is 8 years old. Chiamaka recently visited another school in her neighbourhood (PCN Primary School, Ikom) to talk about the importance of handwashing with soap or ash and the implication of not practicing handwashing at critical times. She demonstrated how to and supported in constructing a handwashing gallery for the school. She also demonstrated the steps to proper handwashing to the host pupils. At the end of her discourse and demonstrations, she entertained questions from the school kids, and boldly advised the management of PCN Primary school to encourage good hygiene practices such as effective handwashing in the school. On what motivates her, she informed the WASH unit staff that she would not want to contact germs that would lead to illness for her, making her parent spend money in the hospital or she dying as a result. She further said, ‘I want to be part of the campaign to save other children’s lives. I want to advice all children to always wash their hands with soap and water, else they contact germs. If they contact germs, they will fall sick, spend money in the hospital or die. Today I visited PCN primary school, to tell them the importance of Handwashing. I will continue to preach this message to all children around me, to save their lives and save mine too’. Global Handwashing Day 15th October, together with its cousin World Toilet Day on 19th November, brings attention to the most basic issues – hygiene & sanitation – that to our shame still account for two million child deaths a year.A third of the world’s population – 2.4 billion people – live with poor sanitation and hygiene which, according to the World Bank, costs countries $260 billion annually. Every day 2,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday due to diarrheal diseases, the vast majority caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Diarrhea alone has killed far more young children in Nigeria over the last 12 months – around 150,000 – than Boko Haram’s slaughtering and the wars in Syria combined. Whilst we continue the daily search for even a hint of a resolution to these two brutal and complex conflicts, we already know the simple solution to tackling hygiene and sanitation-related diseases.We know that handwashing with soap is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal diseases - reducing incidence by up to 47% - and combined with improved sanitation, this is boosted to 68%. We know that in countries with the highest child mortality rates, as few as 1% of people wash their hands effectively and that the global average is only 19%. Most frustratingly, effective tools and participatory methods are readily available and it is estimated that interventions that promote handwashing could save close to a million lives. So why is hygiene promotion not a focus of most development projects?The relative…

NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation and the World Bank are working towards an agricultural observatory platform that will enable institutions access high resolution agro-meteorological data. The partnership is to support Kenya Climate Resilient Agriculture (KCSAP) project under the Ministry of Agriculture Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation to pilot the Agricultural Observatory Platform for the sector for one year. The data that will be received from satellites will help policy makers and farmers optimize on data that supports agro weather, market, climate and advisory markets. Speaking during the launch of the pilot Agricultural Observatory Platform, KALRO Director General Dr. Eliud Kireger said the biggest challenge in agriculture performance has been lack of accurate, timely and reliable weather. “This data will be able to give accurate information as it will observe information such as temperature, weather and rainfall that will be availed to scientists to make sense of it and in turn provide digital meteorological information using modern ICT tools,” he said. Kireger added that depending on the focus given through the platform, information collected will also be availed to policy makers and farmers to make timely and informed decisions.For the farmers, the DG said they will be able get information on how to prepare early depending on indication of the weather such as early rainfall, poor rainfall or even lack of and thus plan. He said that the policy makers and through the observatory platform will now be able to advise farmers through the Agricultural extension systems on even the variety of maize they need to plant depending on the area data. Kireger noted that the two-year Agricultural Observatory Platform will be able to aggregate field and farm level data into able information that provides insight in addressing the challenge of where it rained, where crops failed and how many people were impacted. The Lead Agriculture Economist from the World Bank, Ladisy Komba Chengula said that the system will be up and running by end of the month. He explained that with only 23 meteorological sites that are providing agro weather data and mostly concentrated in Central and rift valley the current observatory platform will be providing data on rains, temperature, wind and speed in an area of 9 by 9 kms square. “This access is high resolution, reliable and it means we will be having 7,200 agro weather stations that will be giving data,” he said. Chengula explained that the current 23 Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) owns the ground stations that compliments the data gotten from the satellite and will cost yearly subscription of USD 50,000 which is a subsidy considering one MET stations would cost USD10, 000. “The biggest climate risk Kenya has is drought which alternates with floods even with good rains, this platform will see scientism be able to predict when floods will happen and in which area,” he said. Agronomists says two weeks delay of rains means that 40 percent reduction of yields will occur but with this system one can…

LAGOS, Nigeria (PAMACC News) - Mariam Shuaibu, is one of the 845 victims of insurgency residing at the Gongola Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp, in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory. Mariam, like other peers suffering the same fate, finds succor in this camp, after activities of insurgency in Madagali Local Government Area of Adamawa State, made them flee their homes in 2015, being ravaged by terrorists. At a visit to the temporary make-shift community along airport road, one could see the untold hardship glaring, with look of despondency, not knowing where the next meal or succor would come from. Narrating her ordeal was a tale of dashed hopes of resettlement and rehabilitation of their home in Madagali Local Government Area in Adamawa, North-east Nigeria.According to her, several attempts at relocation to their base met a brick wall, following continuous insurgent attacks. Mariam noted that the camp which had become home to her family and other settlers, was being neglected by the government of the day, noting that these was evident without access to potable water and sanitation facilities. ``We don’t have any good source of water here, all we use is the stream that is a kilometer away, there were two occasions when two women going to fetch water were bitten by snakes. ``This is not the first time that this has happened, we had to take them to the health center in Karamajiji Lepers village, a distant community to assess first aid care for them.Mariam, a mother of four, also bemoaned the lack of toilet facilities at the make-shift community, saying they had to make use of surrounding bushes to defecate in the open.Another settler, Hannatu Peter, worried about continued cases of occurrence of infection women suffer from lack of toilet, saying the cost of hospitalization was taking its toll on them. ``We go to the stream, we don’t have water here, even toilets, it is the use of bush, a woman was bitten by a snake while defecating in the bush, and another one was bitten when she went to pick firewood for cooking. ``We want them to help us, especially on this toilet and water issue, some women urinate anywhere and get infected, majority of us are having infections, to treat it in hospitals is expensive,” Peter said. Curious to know the hygiene situation of the community, I had the opportunity to witness poor living conditions, with the smell of open defecation permeating the air.Without been told, one would believe that open defection practice in that community was the reason why a large number of the children had bouts of cholera.The camp Chairman, Mr Joseph Jauro, noted that there was the need for immediate interventions from the relevant stakeholders, saying this was necessary to forestall future occurrences. He recounted numerous cases of diarrhea and cholera cases and deaths among under-five children, saying this was been linked to poor sources of drinking water.Jauro narrated the difficulty in getting water, adding that water vendors usually came around to sell…