Tuesday, October 7, 2025
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Gates Foundation Commits $2.1 Billion to Advance Gender Equality Globally

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As part of the Generation Equality Forum convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of Mexico and France, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a commitment of $2.1 billion over the next five years to advance women’s economic empowerment, strengthen women and girls’ health and family planning, and accelerate women’s leadership.
The forum takes place in Paris from June 30 to July 2, 2021, bringing together governments, the private sector, and civil society partners to commit to specific actions and announce financial, political, and programmatic commitments that will accelerate gender equality and advance women’s rights. Not since the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, when 47,000 participants and activists traveled to Beijing, has the world come together to take ambitious action that will have a transformational impact for women and girls.
“The world has been fighting for gender equality for decades, but progress has been slow. Now is the chance to reignite a movement and deliver real change,” said Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. “The beauty of our fight for gender equality is that every human being will gain from it. We must seize this moment to build a better, more equal future.”

With return to peace, Somali children look to the future with hope

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Thirteen-year-old Ahmed Abdinur Abukar dreams of being a teacher. This year, in May, he took an important step towards realising that dream and sat for the national Primary Education Certificate examinations in Mogadishu, Somalia.
The Ministry of Education and Higher Education says over 60 000 students across the country sat for their end of year national examinations for primary and secondary school in May and June, a continuation of a positive trajectory in the education sector thanks to the return of relative peace and security after years of war, turmoil and ruin. The improved security continues to remarkably increase student enrollment in school. So, too, an improvement in the quality of education.
The Federal Government of Somalia has invested heavily in education. In the 2021 budget, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education was allocated US$10.5 million most of which, according to education officials, has gone into the rehabilitation and construction of schools and offices to accommodate the huge number of school enrolment since the government introduced free primary and secondary school education.

Former African heads of state appeal for international solidarity

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Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a global success story, with 43 countries having eliminated an NTD. However, the UK government has decided to withdraw £150 million in funding to tackle these diseases funding that would have delivered over 250 million treatments this year alone. In response, 33 former heads of state have called upon the “international community and humanitarian assistance agencies to mobilize the requisite aid resources in an attempt to avoid further loss of life.”
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) like blinding trachoma and intestinal worms are preventable and treatable, yet they still affect 1.7 billion people around the world. By preventing children from going to school and adults from being able to work, NTDs trap individuals and whole communities in cycles of extreme poverty.
The UK’s decision to withdraw funding effectively abandons over 200 million of Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable people that it promised to support. Out of the 26 countries affected by these aid cuts, 24 are in Africa.

CHAOTIC TIMES

As the modern world system unwinds, chaos is visibly in the ascendance. To those aware of the lopsided (inequity) nature of the world system, (@1500 AD-onward) recent anti-systemic developments cannot be altogether unexpected. Expectedly, those who have been immensely benefitting from the global regime are increasingly concocting schemes to retain their (mostly) undeserved privileges. Continuous wars are amongst the overall contemplated schema. Unlike before however, many of the wars the psychopaths/sociopaths’ want to wage, will not be easily winnable. Observe the situation in MENA (Middle East & North Africa) and Afghanistan. At the same time and characteristically, the gullible sheeple (human mass) is, by and large, at a loss as to the real reasons for the various wars!
The polarizing economic regime of the world system is undergoing acute distress, not only in the core countries of the West, but also in the peripheries and semi-peripheries. For instance, in South Africa, a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA) major rumbling is in the offing. The South African sheeple is demanding an equitable share of the country’s wealth, as in the distribution of land. Despite provisions agreed upon at the time of liberation, (from apartheid) the sheeple is forcing the compromised political leadership of ANC to raise the issue of land afresh. This certainly doesn’t spell peace in ‘Rainbow La La Land’, at least in the coming few years! The Namibian sheeple is also eager to review the issue of land. One should recall the political arrangement on the eve of independence in that neighborhood! Mozambique has now succumbed to another round of debt slavery, so to speak, a mere two decades after it was relieved of its massive debts, odious as they were. The situation is more or less the same in many of the so-called ‘emerging countries’ of Africa. Beware; debt is mostly a weapon of control and not always a tool of economic progress! Here is how one analyst put it: ‘Globalization is all about world control. It is about getting the nations addicted and dependent on fiat currency and then managing them for the benefit of the looters.’
South Americans’ suffering is leaving them without much energy to instigate debates on the fundamental reorganization of theirs’ structurally ‘dependent economies.’ Brazil is witnessing its most severe depression in its modern history! The attempt (by the current politicos in power) to bring back the traditional regime of social polarization and economic stagnation a la old-style compradorial servitude might not work this time around. The whole ‘Africa Rising’ meme also belongs to this stupid charade. Luckily, it is being challenged by the growing militancy of the sheeple, eager to redress parasitic economic and social orders. Anticorruption movements in Nigeria are becoming more virile. In the wider East African region, anti-establishment activities are gaining ground, despite the numbing rhetoric of the status quo at the service of dominant/oppressive capital. Even in the relatively progressive developmentalist state of Ethiopia, its unripe ethnic federalism notwithstanding, the sheeple is flexing its muscle, intent on throwing out degenerate political goons and affiliated oligarchs (foreign & domestic, big & small) who have been taking unfair advantages of its decency for far too long!
Last week the Chinese state/leadership made the decision to look at its complex economy more soberly and realistically. Accumulating debt with the objective of growing the economy non-stop, as if there is no tomorrow, will bring stagflation and more, the day after tomorrow (even if most of the debt is domestic, like Japan.) Prudence and resilience, both in economic development and social progress need an atmosphere of predictability, transparency and most importantly, integrity, in other words-the rule of law! The decision to slow down the current rate of growth in China should be commended, as resources are/were being wasted royally, for the sake of maintaining unrealistic growth rate that might not bring much to human happiness, at leas at this level of economic development. It should also be noted that in the long run, newly minted parasites/cronies exclusively benefitting from state largess would only undermine collective harmonious existence, even in places like China!
Admitted or not, the Western world is also in secular decline, mostly as a result of unsustainable debt, parasitism (cronyism), militarism (overreach), overconsumption, complacency, etc, etc. The dominant global system has no clue about the core essentials that can potentially foster general peace & wellbeing amongst diverse humanity, outside of the absurd, narrow and untenable idea of infinite growth, on a finite planet! Consequently (and amongst other things), the system cannot bring its stupid self to accept the benefits of depopulation. The system is finding it difficult dealing with the welcomed trend in global demography, because it negatively impacts the economies of the core countries as well as the semi-peripheries (China, etc.) So far, the system’s panacea for all and sundry has been the massive creation of debts (to increase unnecessary consumption to compensate for declining income and population), but debts (only pull future consumption forward) take away, not only opportunities, but also rights of the unborn future generations. The humongous debts being created all over the global system will hardly be payable and therein lies the source of major conflicts in the years to come! Two centuries later, the following pertinent observation still applies to each and every country of our planet!
“If the American People ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the bankers and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.” (On the dominion of banks – letter to James Monroe, January 1, 1815) Thomas Jefferson. Good Day!