YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon (PAMACC News) - Cameroon is witnessing significant progress in its electricity and transport infrastructure development in the last few years, but for lack of financial and technical knowhow, the impetus is coming from China, government authorities say. According to Cameroon’s minister of the economy, planning and regional development, Louis Paul Motaze, many planned infrastructure projects geared at driving double digit economic growth by 2035, lay the building blocks for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), that had been treading water in the last decade have since taken off thanks to financing opportunities from Chinese banks. “We are grateful to our partners from China for regularly providing financial support to boost the much needed infrastructure projects in Cameroon,” says Louis Paul Motaze at the signing of two framework agreements worth 973 RMB in Yaounde September 22, 2017. Government says China has become its prime investment partner in energy and road infrastructure since the launch of the country’s economic development programme dubbed Vision2035. The project is geared at eradicating poverty and help the country become a middle income country with a double digit economic growth. “It is about enabling our country to reach a level of development such that every Cameroonian can live decently on his work, raise his children properly, and have decent housing and protection from disease,” President Paul Biya said at his end of year address to the nation in 2014. In the East and South region of the country, Chinese firms have undertaken several energy and transport infrastructure projects that are changing the lives of the population. Renewable energy Infrastructure In 2015 a solar power station project constructed in Nvogmeka,the village of the President of the Republic,Paul Biya, by Huawei Technologies Company Cameroon Ltd. in Cameroon's South Region today provides energy for the over 15,000 villagers. The project constructed in two phases provides energy capacity of 72 KW. The population say the project has since brought measured hope. “It is a miracle that we are getting energy for our businesses from the sun. Now we too can fight unemployment with business activities like those in the city,” admits Jules Atangana who now operates a beer palour in Nvogmeka. Cameroonian’s Water Resources and Energy Minister Atangana Kouna Basile and Huawei Technologies Company Cameroon Ltd. General Manager Ni Zheng both acknowledged the importance of the project especially in a typical village setting.“In the absence of hydro-electricity, renewable energy provide solution pathways to energy shortage in rural areas,” says Atangana Kouna. Statistics from the government show that over 60% of villages in Cameroon have no electricity, due to the cost of connecting with national grid. But with the coming of renewable energy, the trend is changing, the minister says.Like Mvogmeka, Huawei has provided new solar power station projects for 166 villages in Cameroon, bringing benefit to more villagers in the country. Other Chinese-sponsored renewable energy projects include the 409 solar panels constructed in 2013 and today lighting Ngousso and Soa in the Centre region in Yaounde costing over 1.5billion…

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (PAMACC News) - As the global community turns attention and focus towards a green growth pathway, the African Forest Forum (AFF) is exploring avenues to improve forest management in a manner that better addresses poverty eradication and environmental protection in Africa.The AFF, a pan-African non-governmental organization, is implementing a project titled: “Strengthening Sustainable Forest Management in Africa” to generate and share knowledge and information through partnerships in ways that will provide inputs into policy options and capacity building efforts.One of the key project objectives is to enhance capacity of institutions and individuals – including farmers and farmer organizations, and other private sector actors, professional organizations, and public sector organizations – to achieve forest compatible development.“The increased global interest in forestry management and green economy offers opportunities for resource mobilization from both public and private sources to support forest management in Africa,” said Professor Godwin Kowero, Executive Secretary of AFF. “The sustainable utilization and conservation of forests to maintain and/or enhance forest ecosystem services is a major part of the green growth pathway, because it also generates co-benefits such as the conservation of biodiversity while securing forest based livelihoods of local communities”.Prof. Kowero recently addressed a regional workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which provided a platform for stakeholders in forestry education to deliberate on training programmes that will produce appropriate forestry graduates to manage forests in a changing world.“The advocacy for effective forest management policies is now driven mainly by a strong and vibrant civil society and an increasingly informed population. It is therefore important to understand how forestry education on the continent is preparing the future generation in putting the forestry sector on a green economy pathway,” he stated.He also touched on another key area – climate change – stating that over and above its contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation, the role of forests in enhancing the climate resilience of communities to environmental changes in general is being recognized as an important opportunity.“Due to the need to contain global warming, we have a new commercial product in the forestry sector, forest carbon. It is important to understand how our training institutions are handling these and related issues,” Prof. Kowero noted.He further stated that it is very important to understand how our education in forestry is shaping a generation that can meaningfully use forest and tree resources to address issues of food and nutrition security on the continent. The Africa Forest Forum has commissioned two studies in Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone Sub-Sahara African countries that look into the needs of employers of forestry graduates from the universities and technical colleges.The employer needs or expectations are matched with what these institutions offer in their curricula.The AFF will receive and discuss the findings and decide how the continent can contain the identified gaps in training that have become apparent.

GENEVA, Switzerland (PAMACC News) – Governments and non-state actors need to deliver an urgent increase in ambition to ensure the Paris Agreement goals can still be met, according to a new UN assessment.The eighth edition of UN Environment’s Emissions Gap report, released ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, finds that national pledges only bring a third of the reduction in emissions required by 2030 to meet climate targets, with private sector and sub-national action not increasing at a rate that would help close this worrying gap.The Paris Agreement looks to limit global warming to under 2°C, with a more ambitious goal of 1.5°C also on the table. Meeting these targets would reduce the likelihood of severe climate impacts that could damage human health, livelihoods and economies across the globe.As things stand, even full implementation of current unconditional and conditional Nationally Determined Contributions makes a temperature increase of at least 3°C by 2100 very likely – meaning that governments need to deliver much stronger pledges when they are revised in 2020.Should the United States follow through with its stated intention to leave the Paris Agreement in 2020, the picture could become even bleaker.The report does, however, lay out practical ways to slash emissions through rapidly expanding mitigation action based on existing options in the agriculture, buildings, energy, forestry, industry and transport sectors. Strong action on other climate forcers – such as hydrofluorocarbons, through the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, and other short-lived climate pollutants such as black carbon– could also make a real contribution.“One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future,” said Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment. “This is unacceptable. If we invest in the right technologies, ensuring that the private sector is involved, we can still meet the promise we made to our children to protect their future.But we have to get on the case now.”CO2 emissions have remained stable since 2014, driven in part by renewable energy, notably in China and India. This has raised hopes that emissions have peaked, as they must by 2020 to remain on a successful climate trajectory. However, the report warns that other greenhouse gases, such as methane, are still rising, and a global economic growth spurt could easily put CO2emissions back on an upward trajectory.The report finds that current Paris pledges make 2030 emissions likely to reach11 to 13.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) above the level needed to stay on the least-cost path to meeting the 2oCtarget. One gigatonne is roughly equivalent to one year of transport emissions in the European Union (including aviation).The emissions gap in the case of the 1.5oC target is 16 to 19 GtCO2e, higher than previous estimates as new studies have become available.“The Paris Agreement boosted climate action, but momentum is clearly faltering,” said Dr. Edgar E. Gutiérrez-Espeleta, Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa…

ABIDJAB, Ivory Coast (PAMACC News) - The Mali ‘Rice Initiative,’ which sow the country move out of a food crisis situation in 2008 to a currently food exporting country has been cited as a good example that other countries can follow to become food secure.In 2008, food prices rose all over the world, a situation that led to food riots globally with West Africa countries suffering many of the incidents. “We had no choice other than developing a policy that would later see our country out of the crisis,” said Dr Dembele Bourema, who until July 2017 was Director for research at Institut d'Economie Rurale.As a matter of urgency, the government of Mali formed an initiative that would see farmers buy certified seed, important farm inputs and even machineries for land preparation at highly subsidised prices, and by 2010, the country was producing enough for domestic consumption according to Dr Bourema, now the Programme Officer for Africa Green Revolution Alliance (AGRA) in Mali.AGRA works with research institutions in the country to produce and multiply seeds locally for the farmers, following the increased demand.“It will take commitment of African governments to stimulate and guide the transition. If left to the private sector alone, growth in the agrifood system will not be as fast as it could, nor will it benefit as many smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs as it could,” Dr Agnes Kalibata, the AGRA President for told Thomson Reuters Foundation at the 2017 Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Abidjan.Her sentiments are also registered in the Africa Agriculture Status Report released on September 5, 2017.Following the ‘Rice Initiative’ in Mali, which has now expanded to supporting other staple food crops not limited to sorghum, millet, cowpeas, ground nuts and maize, the country has been allocating at least 15 percent of the national budget to agriculture, superseding targets to invest ten percent of GDP in agriculture, agreed at the 2003 African Union (AU) Summit as part of The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Apart from seed and farm input subsidy, the government of Mali started buying new 1000 tractors every year from 2009 and selling the same to farmers at half price. But farmers were and are still allowed to pay just 20 percent of the value of the machinery in cash, and then pay the remaining 30 percent as loans to commercial banks in installments. Poor farmers were not left behind because they were and are still allowed to buy the machineries at the same subsidised rate through groups as long as they demonstrate ability and willingness to cultivate at least 50 hectares of land. By 2008 when the initiative was thought through, the West African nation was producing only 900,000 metric tons of rice against domestic consumption of 1.1 million metric tons. But in 2016, Mali produced 2.7 million metric tons of rice with government subsidies worth CFA35 billion ($61.7 million) in the entire agriculture sector. This rice production is double the country’s annual consumption.For food in general, the…