Zambia’s crippling drought, the worst its seen in at least 20 years, is leading to widespread food shortages with some children forced to survive on a single daily meal of boiled waterlily roots, nuts and wild fruits, said Save the Children.

Seven out of 10 provinces in Zambia have been impacted by the intense drought, with the El Niño induced dry spell killing crops and drying up water sources. The government has declared the situation a national emergency, with more than 1 million children facing severe food shortages.

Rains have failed in Zambia for nine weeks consecutively at a time when farming families needed it most, with almost half of the nation’s planted area destroyed, according to the Zambian President. Farming families are particularly hit hard by the changes in weather patterns, as they depend on rain to support the production of maize, the country’s principal food crop and have lost one million hectares (2.5 million acres) from 2.2 million planted crops due to the influence of El Nino on the 2023-2024 rainy season.

A combination of factors including limited humanitarian funding, double digit inflation rate, and skyrocketing food and commodity prices are exacerbating the food crisis in Zambia, with mothers in rural areas telling Save the Children they are unable to feed their children and fear for their lives.

Nine-year-old Namushi lives in Zambia’s Western Province with her grandmother Mafelelezo, 55, her two sisters and cousins. Her mother is unwell, so Mafelelezo takes care of Namushi and her sisters. The current drought has left the extended family – who survive by farming a small area of land – in a desperate search for food each day.

Namushi told Save the Children that hunger is the most challenging part of her day and that she doesn’t have the desire to play when she’s hungry.

She said: “The crops have all dried up compared to last year. It’s due to poor rainfall. When I see this, I feel hungry. We eat once a day. We eat the mashwa (waterlily root). We eat it boiled.

“When I’m hungry I don’t have the desire to play. I feel hungry at school. At times I feel like collapsing due to hunger. Last year things were a little better and there was food.”

Seven-year-old Lawrence also lives in the Western Province with his mother, Inonge, 38, his 13-year-old sister and grandmother. They are a closely-nit family who rely on growing their own food to survive but the current drought has left the family with very little to eat.

Lawrence said: “There’s no rain. The maize has not grown well because of the hot sun. The food has been burnt by the sun. I feel bad. Sometimes we only eat once [a day]. Sometimes we go to sleep hungry. I feel bad when there’s no food to eat.”

Sitting across from Lawrence, his mother said:

“When my children miss meals and sleep on an empty stomach, you would think they are sick from the way they look. When we get food, and they eat a little food, then they start playing around and you realise it’s just the hunger that makes them sleep. When they’re hungry, they’re not energetic, they even look like they’re confused.”

_“_We’re asking the government to help us with food, so our children’s progress won’t be affected. If they give us food, we can prepare food for our children daily. When they’re well-fed, then they won’t fail to go to school, especially the little children. When they go to sleep on an empty stomach, they’ll fail to go to school.”

Save the Children said the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has brought the extreme drought, exacerbated by the climate crisis, is causing harrowing impacts for families and children in Zambia with delayed response. For a third year in a row, Zambia topped a list of the world’s underreported crisis in 2023 as other emergencies overshadowed the slow creeping yet catastrophic suffering and enormous needs in this large, peaceful country in Southern Africa.

Jo Musonda, Save the Children Country Director in Zambia, said:

“Many hard-hit families are being forced to take desperate measures to cope with the crisis, such as reducing their daily meal intake, selling off livestock and foraging for hours each day for wild fruits, roots and nuts. Children report feeling dizzy from hunger and find it hard to concentrate during class, sometimes forcing them to skip days of school each week.

“Access to clean water is huge problem as some streams, wells and flood plains have dried up and people often travel hours each day to collect water. Some families report digging shallow holes in the ground to find water when their traditional water source runs dry.

“We are calling for urgent national and international action and funding to provide families and children with basic services including food and water.”

Save the Children is calling for child-sensitive government interventions such as introducing and scaling emergency school feeding programmes. Evidence from our previous interventions shows that this will guarantee a nutritionally balanced meal to vulnerable children across all drought-affected communities and ultimately will help combat stunting and malnutrition and boost school attendance and educational performance.

The organisations is initially responding to the drought crisis in Zambia by collaborating with the government of Zambia to assess the extent of the drought. We are further supporting the Disaster Mitigation and Management Unit in the distribution of relief maize in some of the affected areas. We will also be providing meals to school going children in the worst affected areas.

Save the Children has been working in Zambia for 40 years, running health, nutrition, education, and protection programmes across the country.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Save the Children.

The alumni of the University of Ghana Association in Liberia paid a courtesy call on the Head of Mission, H.E. Kingsford Amoako, at the Chancery on 3rd April, 2024. The alumni executives were led by the President, Daniel Blamo Nah, and Vice President, Uomah Witherspoon. The rest included the Legal Adviser, Treasurer and Chaplain to the alumni.

The group indicated that it had formed a strong bond with the Mission, which culminated in the visit of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof Nana Aba Amfo, to Liberia to inaugurate the alumni association. They expressed their desire to continue the excellent relations with the Mission, hence the courtesy call on Amb. Amoako.

The Head of Mission welcomed the leaders and urged them to bring their experience to bear on the alumni association for the benefit of all Liberians. According to him, Liberia stands an excellent chance of growth by relying on home-grown solutions. He said he was hopeful that Liberia would regain its past glory to the benefit of the entire West Africa sub-region. Speaking about the alumni association, Amb. Amoako indicated that the group entailed highly skilled professionals indicative of the sharing of skills and knowledge across West Africa. He urged them to put those skills to the service of democracy in Liberia. The alumni President noted that the alumni is focused on helping with improvements in agriculture in Liberia as part of its strategic plans. The association also intends to set up resource centres for the benefit of Liberians.

Furthermore, the alumni has put in motion plans to make UGAL a recruitment hub in Liberia. According to them, the University of Ghana continues to improve on its services which can be beneficial to all Liberians. The University of Ghana Alumni Association in Liberia expressed their appreciation to His Excellency the Ambassador and the entire mission for its good work in Liberia and promised to keep the mission abreast of its activities for the participation of the mission.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Embassy of Ghana in Liberia.

By NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman, African Energy Chamber (www.EnergyChamber.org).

On Feb. 6, 2024, the Anglo-French oil and gas company Perenco announced that it had appointed a new CEO to replace the incumbent Benoît de la Fouchardière, who has served in this capacity for the last eight years. In a press release, London-headquartered Perenco noted that de la Fouchardière would be replaced by Armel Simondin, the general manager of the company’s Cameroonian division, effective March 15.

At first glance, this press release reads like an unremarkable notice of corporate personnel turnover. It hails the achievements of de la Fouchardière, who is now slated to take the helm at Dixstone, an affiliate of Perenco. It also includes an upbeat statement from chairman François Perrodo about the company’s prospects under Simondin, a long-time employee of Perenco as well as an industry veteran.

In other words, it reads like a short statement about an ordinary example of change in leadership.

In my perspective, however, it’s an overly modest tribute to an extraordinary person. It doesn’t say enough about the contributions de la Fouchardière has made to Perenco’s operational and socioeconomic successes in Central Africa, which is home to about half of the company’s assets.

And those contributions are substantial.

Operational Successes

On the upstream front, de la Fouchardière has led the company in expanding its portfolio through Central Africa while also lifting production. Between 2017 and 2020, for example, he guided Perenco through the acquisition of most of TotalEnergies’ Gabonese assets. Then in mid-2022, he steered Perenco’s acquisition of Glencore’s upstream portfolio in Chad, thereby adding the large and untapped Badila and Mangara fields to its list of assets.

Later in 2022, de la Fouchardière also oversaw the company’s announcement of a large new oil discovery at the Pointe Noire Grand Fond Sud licence located off the coast of the Republic of Congo. And in 2023, he led Perenco through the signing of a contract for Rio del Rey (RDR), a concession in Cameroon that accounts for about 70% of the country’s total crude production.

De la Fouchardière has also championed Perenco’s efforts to develop its natural gas value chain by moving beyond production. During his term, the company began the process of transforming Gabon into a gas hub. It has, for example, agreed to work with Gabon’s Ministry of Oil and Gas to develop plans for the construction of a thermal power plant (TPP) that will use locally produced gas as feedstock for electricity production. This project is expected to help alleviate energy poverty within Gabon, thereby ensuring that the country gains direct benefits from its own natural resources.

The company has also made a final investment decision (FID) on a plan to build a facility capable of turning out 0.7 million tonnes per year (tpy) of liquefied natural gas (LNG). This facility, located in Cap Lopez, will also be able to manufacture liquid petroleum gas (LPG). As such, it will be able to process gas to produce LNG for export as well as LPG for domestic and regional use.

This is important, as LNG exports can generate revenue for Perenco — and also for the government of Gabon, which is entitled to a share of profit production. But the benefits don’t end there. The LNG project also helps supply Gabon and other Central African states with LPG, a clean-burning fuel for cooking, heating, and lighting that can replace traditional biomass-based fuels such as wood and charcoal and dirtier-burning petroleum products such as kerosene.

Environmental and Social Initiatives

That brings me to another point — namely, what Perenco has accomplished on the environmental and social fronts.

De la Fouchardière outlined some of his company’s achievements in an interview with The Africa Report in February. He noted that Perenco had worked to develop new technologies and procedures to minimize environmental risk and asserted that it had gone further in this direction than other international oil companies (IOCs).

“With our subsidiary Petrodec, we are the only ones to have launched a complete dismantling of oil wells that have ceased production and [taken] ad hoc environmental measures. Today Petrodec is working on two rigs in the UK, in the North Sea, but tomorrow its services could be called upon anywhere – for example, in Africa – to ensure the definitive closure of extractive sites,” he explained.

He also pointed out that the company was working with local government bodies to mitigate pollution and environmental damage wherever it occurred. “Despite everything, accidents can still happen and this is true for Perenco as it is for most oil groups,” he told The Africa Report. “In this case, we are doing everything we can to contain and treat the pollution, as we have just done in Gabon, in close collaboration with the relevant authorities.”

Additionally, de la Fouchardière stressed the company’s commitment to cooperation and good relationships with host communities. Perenco has launched multiple social and economic development initiatives to support the residents of the places where it operates and will continue to do so, he said.

“As for relations with local communities, we have a very specific corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy,” he stated. “Unlike other companies, we have not delegated it to external service providers but have internalised it because it is a question of responding to the real needs of the populations we meet on the ground. In Muanda [Democratic Republic of Congo], for example, our teams live among the population, including expatriate engineers. In consultation with local stakeholders, we have launched projects to improve access to electricity, education, and agroforestry as well as search for solutions to better preserve fish to be sold in Kinshasa.”

Virtuous Circles

These statements hardly come as a surprise to me and my colleagues at the African Energy Chamber (AEC). After all, de la Fouchardière spoke to us in April 2023 about similar steps Perenco has taken in Central Africa and beyond.

“From the beginning, Perenco has been engaged with the Republic of Cameroon to have a positive impact at local, regional, and national levels. At the national level, through revenues generated by our activity, employment, and training of young Cameroonians from all regions and all disciplines. Locally, we are working with IECD [Institut Européen de Coopération et de Développement], a non-governmental organization partner, to develop micro-entrepreneurial initiatives, teaching people to learn how to manage funds and reinvest effectively,” he said.

He continued: “[From] a global standpoint, we are engaged in a global initiative to remove plastic waste from the countries where we operate: Plastic Free. We are developing a pyrolysis machine at a small scale and another at an industrial scale (to be installed in Cap Lopez in Gabon). It will clean the plastic from the country and use it to produce diesel in a virtuous circle, also reducing the need for diesel imports.”

What’s more, this isn’t the only virtuous circle Perenco has set in motion. Under de la Fouchardière’s leadership, the company has maintained a policy of hiring a majority-African workforce for all of its operations — and it has increased the number of women working in the oil and gas industry. It has worked to maximize local content across its African portfolio, and it has sponsored football competitions in Cameroon and organized annual marathons in Gabon.

These are just some of the reasons why I believe de la Fouchardière deserves a round of applause. As the managing director of Perenco, he has driven the company’s successful expansion into new territory and has kept it on course to become one of the biggest investors and taxpayers in Central Africa. At the same time, he’s worked to uphold Africans and African interests. We at the African Energy Chamber are fortunate to have worked with him, and we wish him well in his future endeavors.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

UN experts* today expressed grave concern about the confirmation of the death sentences against seven individuals by Egypt’s highest court on 24 January 2024, in the so-called “Helwan Brigade” counter-terrorism case. Their executions would constitute arbitrary killings in violation of the right to life as a result of unfair trials and other human rights violations, they said.

“Capital punishment may only be carried out after a legal process that guarantees all of the safeguards required by international human rights law,” the experts said.

The experts said these cases allegedly involved grave violations of international law, including enforced disappearances and incommunicado detention, torture and forced confessions, denial of access to lawyers and family visits, protracted pre-trial detention, solitary confinement, inhuman detention conditions, and mass trials before special terrorism courts which did not meet fair trial standards.

“Egypt has also failed to independently and effectively investigate and remedy these alleged violations as required by international and Egyptian law,” they said.

The death sentences further violate international law because they are based on convictions for vague and overly broad terrorist offences, including when these may not meet the threshold of “most serious” crimes. There is also a real risk that executions in practice may constitute prohibited torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

“We urge Egypt to halt these executions, to independently investigate the alleged human rights violations and review the judicial proceedings in light of Egypt’s international obligations,” the experts said.

UN experts have previously called on Egypt to suspend executions following repeated allegations of unfair trials in terrorism cases. “We are profoundly concerned that these cases are not isolated but seem to be part of a systematic misuse of counter-terrorism and national security laws, including to impose the death penalty, which undermines human rights and the rule of law,” the experts said.

The experts also urged Egypt to consider abolishing the death penalty, in light of the pro-abolitionist spirit of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the recommendations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2023.

Note: The seven individuals are Magdy Muhammed Ibrahim Ibrahim, Mahmoud Attia Ahmed Abdulghany, Abdulwahab Mostafa Muhammed Mostafa, Musab Abdulhamid Khalifa, Abdullah Nader Al-Sharqawy, Abdulrahman Issa Abdulkhaliq, and Mahmoud Al-Sayed Amin. 

*The experts: Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Ben Saul, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism; Margaret Satterthwaite, Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers; Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; Aua Baldé (Chair-Rapporteur), Gabriella Citroni (Vice-Chair), Angkhana Neelapaijit, Grażyna Baranowska, and Ana Lorena Delgadillo Pérez, Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances;  Matthew Gillett (Chair-Rapporteur), Priya Gopalan  (Vice-Chair on Follow-Up), Miriam Estrada-Castillo, and Mumba Malila – Working Group on arbitrary detention.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).