What do you get when you combine the President of the African Development Bank, the Minister of Agriculture of Nigeria and an active member of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa? In this case, they are all one person. Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina was deservedly recently named the 2017 World Food Prize Laureate for his work in transforming African agriculture and solving Africa’s food issues.
Growing up in poverty himself, Adesina’s mission to improve farming in Africa has the potential to lift millions out of poverty. He studied Agriculture at the University of Ife in Nigeria, and eventually went on to earn his Masters and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University in Indiana, U.S.A.
A firm believer in making a better world for the next generation of Africans through education, health and economics, Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina has been a political pioneer for millions of farmers throughout Africa. He works on everything from financial assistance for farmers to access to agricultural technologies and investments in agriculture.
Dr. Adesina believes that fertilizer and hybrid seeds can be some of the greatest assets to African agriculture in the coming years. He had a leading role in organizing the African Fertilizer Summit, which “was one of the largest high-level meetings in history to focus on Africa’s food issues,” according to CNBC. The mission of the summit? “Combating poverty and food and nutrition insecurity in Africa, and to direct our attention to key decisions that can move us forward with a view to eradicating hunger by 2030.”
The summit established a forefront to the Green Revolution across Africa, which in turn gave birth to AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, established by Bill and Melinda Gates.
With his Electronic Wallet System technology (or E-Wallet), Adesina has been able to cut out corrupt distributers, giving farmers access to seeds and fertilizer directly from the source. This mobile phone-based technology improved the lives of 14.5 million farmers and their families in its first four years.
Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji also co-founded the African Leaders for Nutrition Panel with John Kufuor (former President of Ghana) with a goal to end malnutrition and stunting.
In 2011, he helped orchestrate the largest bank negotiation to aid farmers and agribusiness ever attempted in Africa, convincing the Central Bank of Nigeria to use $350 million in creating a facility that would pull $3.5 billion from commercial banks into agriculture.
At the 50th anniversary celebration of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in July of this year, Adesina announced that the African Development Bank (of which he is president) would be investing $24 billion in agriculture in Africa over the next 10 years. Adesina hopes that the two institutions can work together to transform African agriculture into being self-sustaining, with the potential to feed the entire continent within 10 years.
In a speech delivered last year at the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, Dr. Adesina exposed the importance for improving agriculture in Africa and its effect on the world.
“Africa needs to invest more in science and technology to become more efficient and competitive in agriculture – and to diversify rapidly its economies. For Africa must fully unlock its immense agricultural potential. That potential is massive: Africa has 65 percent of all the arable land left in the world to feed 9 billion people by 2050. Africa cannot eat potential.”
These powerful words by such an influential man ring true, and hopefully more technological and scientific developments will come soon and impact Africa as positively as Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji’s.
– Katherine Gallagher
Common Diseases in Trinidad and Tobago
Heart Disease
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Trinidad and Tobago, accounting for 32 percent of all deaths in 2014.
Uncontrolled hypertension (high blood pressure) is the main cause of heart attack and stroke and can also lead to blindness, kidney failure and other health problems. The prevalence of hypertension in Trinidad and Tobago is high; approximately 29.8 percent of males and 23.1 percent of females are affected.
In 2013, The Ministry of Health in Trinidad and Tobago started a campaign aiming to reduce the risk factors of heart disease among the population. The “Fight the Fat” campaign focuses on reducing obesity, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets. For the World Health Campaign, the Ministry of Health launched “Know Your Numbers; Get Screened.” Initiatives included raising awareness about hypertension and creating opportunities for adults to check their blood pressure.
Cancer
According to a report released by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 2013, Trinidad and Tobago has the highest cancer mortality rate in the Americas. Among men, the majority of cancer deaths are due to prostate cancer and, among women, breast cancer. The high number of deaths from breast and cervical cancer has led to calls for better access to screening and treatment services, given that cervical cancer is very preventable, and breast cancer can be detected and treated early.
Diabetes
Diabetes is another one of the most common diseases in Trinidad and Tobago and is responsible for about 14 percent of all deaths. As of 2016, 10.9 percent of men and 14.1 percent of women in the country are living with diabetes.
Since 1980, there has been a 350 percent increase in the number of people in Trinidad and Tobago living with diabetes. The Ministry of Health attributes this rise to unhealthy lifestyle choices among the population, such as poor diet and physical inactivity. In its fight against diabetes, the Ministry of Health is establishing more accessible screening programs, educating medical professionals about treatment and expanding programs to promote healthy lifestyles.
Like most other developed countries, the most common diseases in Trinidad and Tobago are noncommunicable. Though genetics can play a role in an individual’s development of an NCD, many are at risk because of unhealthy choices. This can be seen by statistics provided by the World Health Organization: 30 percent of the population is obese, with sedentary lifestyles and diets high in sugar, salt and fat to blame.
The Ministry of Health has taken a stance on personal responsibility, in a statement that reads: “The Ministry of Health will do its party with the strengthening of primary health care interventions, but the population of Trinidad and Tobago has a role to play in making better dietary choices and increasing physical exercise.” However, the Ministry of Health also has a role to play in helping Trinidad and Tobago make these changes. It is unlikely that everyone in the country is actively deciding to be unhealthy – there may be issues of accessibility and education at play, too.
– Hannah Seitz
Photo: Google
Migrant Workers and Human Rights in the UAE
A darker side of the Emirates exists concurrently with the nation’s modern image. Human rights in the UAE are sorely lacking, and the experience of some Emiratis, particularly for its migrant workers, is one of labor abuses, indefinite detention and even torture.
Amnesty International has identified repeat offenses where human rights are violated in the UAE. Peaceful critics of the ruling royal family regularly face prosecution without sufficient trials; arbitrary detentions have led to “disappearances” of critics altogether and female Emiratis are largely unprotected under UAE law from sexual violence or domestic abuse.
The UAE is a nation of immigrants who make up 88 percent of the population; 65 percent of these are migrant workers from South Asia and this community often faces harrowing violations of their human rights. The ‘kafala’ system requires workers to receive sponsorship from an employer before arriving, making them legally dependent and vulnerable to abuse.
On projects like Saadiyat Island, soon to be home to an NYU campus and a surrogate of the Guggenheim Museum, striking migrant workers have been deported, others have had their passports confiscated and wages have been withheld. In a 2009 report, Human Rights Watch urged the UAE government to reform the kafala system to prevent these abuses taking place. However, subsequent visits to Saadiyat revealed violations to have continued and any reforms put in place to have been inconsequential.
Human Rights Watch, under pressure from the UAE authorities, has to conduct their research and interviews discreetly. As a result, the extent of human rights violations is unclear and difficult to address effectively with any third-party organizations.
However, organizations such as the Tourist Development and Investment Company (TDIC) have taken steps to address the abuse. TDIC has introduced new labor guidelines for employers to prevent passport seizures and ensure fixed working hours. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) acts as a compliance monitor.
Reforms to the kafala system that enable workers to change employers more easily have so far failed to be properly implemented. Under the auspices of the TDIC and the Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority (EAA), human rights in the UAE and its situation for migrant workers could improve significantly.
– Jonathan Riddick
Photo: Flickr
Operation Good Neighbor: Syrians and Israelis Together
The beginnings of this aid project started in 2013, when injured Syrians arrived at the Israeli border. The government made the decision to give them treatment. Since then, 4,000 Syrians have been treated. Operation Good Neighbor, started in 2016, expands this humanitarian initiative to a larger scale. The IDF serves around 200,000 Syrian residents who live in southwestern Syria. These Syrians are close to the Syrian-Israeli border, along the Golan Heights. One-third of them are displaced refugees and half of them are children. They all have been devastated by the Syrian civil war.
The IDF not only gives out medical care, it has begun supplying other necessities as well. The list is expansive and includes medicines like painkillers, anesthetics and insulin, 450,000 liters of fuel for heating, baking and energy for water wells, generators, water pipes, equipment for schools, 12,000 containers of baby formula, 1,800 diaper packages, 12 tons of shoes and 55 tons of clothing for cold weather.
In a statement, the IDF explained its two reasons for helping Syria. The first was the obvious “moral imperative.” The second was more nuanced. It contended that “the aid will ultimately create a less hostile environment across the border.” This security would “lead to improved Israeli security.” These two reasons are both compelling arguments for providing aid to Syria.
Operation Good Neighbor becomes more incredible after considering the historical Israeli-Syrian animosity. Currently, Syria and Israel are technically in a state of war. Syrians have historically been taught to resent Israel and vice-versa. But citizens on the ground in Israel and Syria have found ways to look past their history of enmity. In fact, Israeli citizens have been pressuring Israel’s government to give more aid to Syria for years.
Syrian victims bear striking resemblance to Jews displaced by tyrannical regimes throughout history. Gadi Eizenkot of the IDF puts it best: “I think this [Operation Good Neighbor] is our basic obligation as neighbors and as Jews.”
Being a good neighbor means watching out for everyone around you, even if they don’t look like you. It means treating others how you would like to be treated. It means reaching out, with a helping hand, when someone close to you is hurting. With this in mind, it becomes clear that Operation Good Neighbor is aptly named and that the work that it’s doing is indispensable.
– Adesuwa Agbonile
Photo: Flickr
The Most Common Diseases in Austria: A Result of Lifestyle
Due to the fact that clean water is widely available in the nation, Austrians are not very prone to waterborne illnesses, such as cholera and dysentery. Austrians tend to suffer more from diseases that are affected by genetics and lifestyles.
The top five common diseases in Austria that cause the most deaths are Alzheimer’s, lung cancer, ischemic heart disease, COPD and cerebrovascular disease — all of which are noncommunicable.
Statistics prove that Austrians drink a substantial amount more than their European peers. According to research, they are the second largest alcohol consumers in the OECD. In a study, only 10 percent of Austrians stated that they didn’t consume any alcohol in the prior year. In addition to their high alcohol intake, Austrians also have high tobacco consumption rates — more than half of Austrian men ages 18 to 28 smoke.
Drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco excessively leads to health problems. The top common diseases in Austria listed above consider either smoking or drinking as risk factors.
While one cannot really control their genes, they can control their lifestyle. Austria is making an effort to reduce the amount of tobacco consumption, so that they can eventually reduce the number of cases for the noncommunicable diseases that strike the nation. In 2009, the country banned smoking in public places, excluding restaurants and cafes. By 2018, Austria plans to ban smoking in restaurants and cafes, as well.
Although the country still has room to improve, it has still made a lot of progress. By taking measures such as banning smoking in public places, Austria is making it harder for its people to continue their unhealthy habits. Implementing policies to reduce risk factors, such as drinking and smoking, puts Austria on the right path toward healthier lifestyles and less noncommunicable diseases.
– Raven Rentas
Photo: Flickr
10 Facts About the Poverty Rate in the Netherlands
10 Facts on the Poverty Rate in the Netherlands
The Netherlands is a wealthy country in Europe, but it also faces many problems such as child poverty. The poverty rate in the Netherlands is relativity low compared to many other countries in the world, but there is always room for improvement.
– Mike Liu
Photo: Flickr
Healthcare Helps Common Diseases in Turkey
The healthcare system in place in Turkey, although complex, is one of the world’s best, with high-quality doctors and the latest technology available to bring the highest-quality care to individuals. This leads to higher life expectancy for both males and females, with men living to be about 76 and females living to be just over 82 years old. Both are well over the worldwide average.
Turkey’s public facilities consist of government-run hospitals associated with universities to bring the highest quality of care. However, the state-run hospitals are lagging behind the private sector and have shortages of personnel and equipment.
One of the most common diseases in Turkey is heart disease. However, many forms of heart disease have diminished in severity and occurrence over the past decade. Ischemic heart disease has dropped almost 15 percent over the last decade. The new technology that is becoming more widely available in Turkey is working to decrease the most common diseases in Turkey, and the rates of many of these diseases have decreased in the past decade.
Another common disease in Turkey is Alzheimer’s disease. This is a deadly disease that has impacted millions around the world. It is also on the rise in Turkey, with its rate of occurrence jumping up nearly 10 percent over the past decade. In 2012, it was estimated that 331,512 people were living with dementia in Turkey. This represented 0.44 percent of the population of Turkey.
Alzheimer’s disease mostly impacts people who are 75 and older, with the highest rates of occurrence in those that are 80 to 94 years old. However, it is estimated that half of the people with dementia have not been diagnosed. It is imperative that Turkey works to create opportunities for new methods of diagnosis and treatment for the disease. Over the past decade, awareness of Alzheimer’s has increased drastically, and thus more people are paying attention and attempting to help find treatment and a cure.
The common diseases in Turkey are much like the rest of the world, but Turkey is more fortunate than many to have great healthcare for most of the people in the nation. There is still work to be done to research these diseases and find strategies to help those hospitals that are less fortunate than others.
– Brendin Axtman
Photo: Flickr
Education in Afghanistan: Lifting the Nation Out of Poverty
At Mirman, Khajo Secondary School students hurry into class bundled up in their winter uniforms. The school bell chimes. Teachers rush around the room handing out tests. Just a few years ago this wasn’t a reality. The school was recently built as part of the country’s major push to bring access to education to its populace as well as improve the overall standing of education in Afghanistan.
U.S ambassador to Afghanistan Hugo Llorens stated that Afghanistan has made significant educational strides over the past 15 years, but also emphasized that the nation still has a lot of room left for improvement.
According to Asia Foundation’s Survey of the Afghan, people find education is one of the only sectors where the Afghan people feel that the government has made an improvement. The Ministry of Education, with support from USAID, has created a widespread community-based class system, built 16,000 schools and hired and trained more than 154,000 teachers. As a result, enrollment has increased by 60 percent, more than nine million students, 40 percent of whom are girls.
In Afghanistan, 80 percent of the people own smart phones. This prevalence of technology and internet access further aids education in Afghanistan. The Asia Foundation, for example, has developed an education app designed to improve reading skills in grades one through three. The organization has also developed online mock exams to prepare students for the real ones.
The increase of access to education in Afghanistan has also improved higher education. According to the Afghan Central Statistics Organization, public university enrollment has increased from 7,800 in 2001 to 174,425 in 2015, with 21 percent of those students being women.
While Afghanistan has increased education access, it has not achieved the quality of education. Only 30 percent of Afghan students score high enough on the standardized tests to make it into college. While good private schools exist, many public schools are poorly administrated. Irfan, a 10-year-old Afghan student, claims that in public school there are only two lessons a week and teachers will often chase students out of the classroom so they can listen to music.
In order to lift itself out of strife and economic woes, Afghanistan needs an educated public. The government has done incredible work in creating access to education; now it just needs to focus on monitoring public and private schools in order to improve education in Afghanistan.
– Bruce Edwin Ayres Truax
Photo: Flickr
Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina: 2017 World Food Prize Laureate
Growing up in poverty himself, Adesina’s mission to improve farming in Africa has the potential to lift millions out of poverty. He studied Agriculture at the University of Ife in Nigeria, and eventually went on to earn his Masters and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University in Indiana, U.S.A.
A firm believer in making a better world for the next generation of Africans through education, health and economics, Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina has been a political pioneer for millions of farmers throughout Africa. He works on everything from financial assistance for farmers to access to agricultural technologies and investments in agriculture.
Dr. Adesina believes that fertilizer and hybrid seeds can be some of the greatest assets to African agriculture in the coming years. He had a leading role in organizing the African Fertilizer Summit, which “was one of the largest high-level meetings in history to focus on Africa’s food issues,” according to CNBC. The mission of the summit? “Combating poverty and food and nutrition insecurity in Africa, and to direct our attention to key decisions that can move us forward with a view to eradicating hunger by 2030.”
The summit established a forefront to the Green Revolution across Africa, which in turn gave birth to AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, established by Bill and Melinda Gates.
With his Electronic Wallet System technology (or E-Wallet), Adesina has been able to cut out corrupt distributers, giving farmers access to seeds and fertilizer directly from the source. This mobile phone-based technology improved the lives of 14.5 million farmers and their families in its first four years.
Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji also co-founded the African Leaders for Nutrition Panel with John Kufuor (former President of Ghana) with a goal to end malnutrition and stunting.
In 2011, he helped orchestrate the largest bank negotiation to aid farmers and agribusiness ever attempted in Africa, convincing the Central Bank of Nigeria to use $350 million in creating a facility that would pull $3.5 billion from commercial banks into agriculture.
At the 50th anniversary celebration of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in July of this year, Adesina announced that the African Development Bank (of which he is president) would be investing $24 billion in agriculture in Africa over the next 10 years. Adesina hopes that the two institutions can work together to transform African agriculture into being self-sustaining, with the potential to feed the entire continent within 10 years.
In a speech delivered last year at the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, Dr. Adesina exposed the importance for improving agriculture in Africa and its effect on the world.
“Africa needs to invest more in science and technology to become more efficient and competitive in agriculture – and to diversify rapidly its economies. For Africa must fully unlock its immense agricultural potential. That potential is massive: Africa has 65 percent of all the arable land left in the world to feed 9 billion people by 2050. Africa cannot eat potential.”
These powerful words by such an influential man ring true, and hopefully more technological and scientific developments will come soon and impact Africa as positively as Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji’s.
– Katherine Gallagher
Informal Economies Quelling the Tide of Globalization
However, from the floating markets of Nigeria to the burgeoning markets of India, informal economies, or what Robert Neuwirth calls “system D” economies, are filling the void left by globalization. Secure jobs are becomimg more and more scarce, as multinational corporations control ever more of the production and distribution of goods across the globe. As these practices continue to drive up economic inequality and leave people battling unrelenting poverty, informal economies are quickly reversing the course and offering alternative economic practices that are quelling the tide.
An informal economy, as defined by the International Labor Office (ILO), is “all economic activities by workers or economic units that are — in law or practice — not covered or sufficiently covered by formal arrangements.”
Informal economies are on the rise across the globe, although accurate statistical data is hard to come by. They are estimated to be worth $10 trillion a year.
Terence Jackson reports that the informal economic sector in Africa “represents about three-quarters of non-agricultural employment, and about 72 percent of total employment in sub-Saharan Africa.” In India, informal economies are estimated to generate 90 percent of jobs and half of the national output. In both Africa, Asia and the world at large, many GDPs are heavily reliant on informal economies.
As talk of new and emerging economies fill the airwaves, informal economies offer alternative means to lift local people and communities from the coercive and restricting structures of globalization. Ironically, globalization is credited as having increased the size and importance of informal economies while these very economies stand to threaten the reign of multinational corporations and globalization.
A study by Martha Alter Chen, a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and international coordinator of Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), explores how in today’s economy, formal jobs are not being created in sufficient quantities, and existing jobs are being made informal. “Informal employment is here to stay in the short, medium, and probably long term. It is the main source of employment and income for the majority of the workforce and population in the developing world,” her study states.
Informal economies across the globe are expanding, and increasing numbers of people are dependent on the profits generated. As informal economies seem to be here to stay, it is imperative the world embraces the revolutionary entrepreneurship pouring out of the sector. It holds the potential to not only fill the labor void left by globalization but to offer an alternative way forward that addresses local problems with local answers.
– Joseph Dover
Photo: Flickr
Belo Monte Dam Progress Halted on Environmental Concerns
Community and Forest Effects
The dam, which was scheduled to be completed in 2019, would be one of the world’s largest hydropower plants. As of April 2017, 10 turbines are already running, with plans to build 24 in total. The budget for the entire project is 30 billion Reais, or $9.6 billion.
The construction of the Belo Monte dam is a complicated issue. Droughts in southern Brazil led to energy shortages, increasing pressure on the Brazilian government to push forward construction of the dam.
Additionally, the desire to reduce Carbon emissions is a top priority for Brazil. Yet the deforestation and destruction of local communities due to dam construction are also pressing concerns.
The Belo Monte dam complex partially blocks the Xingu River, one of the major Amazon tributaries. The blockage forced the construction of a new channel, which has inadvertently flooded thousands of acres of rain forest. It is reported that many low-lying islands have been submerged and deforestation is occurring as a result.
Hydroelectric Dam Disruption
The construction of the dam disrupted the natural flow of rivers through the rain forest. It also forced many of the local inhabitants, primarily river dwellers and fisherman, to abandon their current lifestyle and relocate to urban areas. The forced relocation and loss of current lifestyles and employments exacerbates the risk of falling into extreme poverty in an already poverty-stricken area.
There is a loss of water supply and fishing stocks in several regions of construction as well as the lack of social support and economic compensation provided for local communities, many of which have indigenous populations. This is a major catalyst for lawsuits filed by the national Indian protection agency (Funai) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Hydroelectric dams, while currently favored not only in Brazil but throughout South America, are just one of several solutions for cleaner energy. Energy options powered by the sun or wind are also potential choices that could provide clean energy and reduce carbon emissions without contributing to deforestation.
As plans for the Belo Monte dam are reworked to better address certain environmental concerns, alternative forms of energy should also be considered as a way to reduce damage caused by hydroelectric dams.
– Nicole Toomey
Photo: Flickr