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Can pineapples thrive in Africa’s Sahel? A Burkina Faso farmer says the answer is yes
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Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:29:37 +0000
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ELIA BORRAS
The soil beneath Oumarou Compaoré’s boots is sandy and stony. It’s hardly the lush setting usually needed to support growing pineapples. But this farm in landlocked Burkina Faso is part of national efforts to reduce overall reliance on imports and adapt to an ever-harsher climate in the dry heat of Africa’s Sahel region.
Pineapples have long been seen as exotic fruit grown by richer coastal neighbors, and more expensive than the mangoes that grow outside many Burkinabe homes.
“People told us that here we could only grow cotton, maize or sorghum,” Compaoré said at the farm he founded in 2018 outside the western city of Bobo-Dioulasso, where he drives around in a van with an inscription that reads, “Pioneer in pineapple production in the Sahel.”
His pineapple initiative, inspired in part by border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, is one of the more unusual projects challenging the idea that people in Burkina Faso must rely on neighbors for much of what they eat.
“Because the fruit was in short supply, we were able to sell it easily,” said Compaoré, who also had been growing papayas with little profit. Now his pineapple field has grown to about 50 hectares (124 acres).
The country’s military leaders have taken note. Their economic growth plan is tied heavily to agriculture. Pineapples are now part of the government’s formal development plan as it seeks to boost food self-sufficiency for the country of 24 million people.
While there are no available government data on pineapple production, farmers say more of them are venturing into it.
As of November, pineapple fields had expanded to around 100 hectares (248 acres) in the administrative region that includes Compaoré’s farm, the regional director of agriculture, Adanabou Eric Pascal, told local media at the time.
Kola Jean, the agricultural engineer at Compaoré’s farm who helps to train others on pineapple farming, estimated that over 100 farmers are now getting into production.
Food production is called a sovereignty issue
Under Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who took power after a coup in 2022, Burkina Faso has presented food production as a sovereignty issue. It suspended rice imports in April this year with a stated goal of facilitating local production. It inaugurated two factories for tomato paste, a local staple, in 2024.
And at a major supermarket in the capital, Ouagadougou, there is a section dedicated to locally grown food — like shea butter, corn and cassava flour and drinks like mango juice — labeled, “Let’s consume what we produce.”
All are steps toward shaking off the dependence on imports that for decades has exposed millions of people to shifting transport costs and other price shocks.
Hunger remains widespread. A decadelong security crisis that has left jihadis in control of large swathes of territory has disrupted access to farmland and markets. Many people have been displaced. U.N. agencies have said some 2.7 million people face acute food insecurity during the annual lean season when stocks from the previous harvest run low and market prices peak.
Other farmers are being inspired
Mdme Kaba Séré, a pineapple farmer in Houet Province, said she used to work in the nonprofit sector but switched to farming in 2023 following international aid cuts.
She recalled being told at a young age that pineapples cannot grow in the Sahel, the dry strip of land south of the Sahara. Then she was trained on pineapple cultivation by Compaoré. “We saw what Oumarou was doing and thought: It is possible, why not?” said Séré, who has expanded her farm to about 60,000 seedlings.
“With pineapple, there is profit,” she said. “It has impacted my entire family because thanks to this I have been able to support them.” Because pineapples had long been seen as rare in Burkina Faso, farmers say the business is lucrative because it’s easy to find buyers even before the fruit hits the market.
But hurdles include investments in everything from fertilizer to irrigation and reliable transport. Pineapples require a lengthy growing period of up to two years, plus reliable access to water. Compaoré said he irrigates part of his land from a well, but digging wells is an investment many farmers cannot afford.
The climate can be problematic, too. Farmers are finding ways to adapt, including by irrigating with cool water in the evening during intense heat, said Pascal Bazongo, a professor of soil science and natural resource management at Burkina Faso’s University of Fada N’Gourma and an expert involved with Compaoré’s farm.
Compaoré is upbeat about future innovations and better yields. On recently acquired plots, about 30 workers moved through the field as music played from a loudspeaker. Their goal that day, he said, was to plant roughly 60,000 pineapple seedlings.
He expects the new fields to produce between 60 and 75 metric tons (66-83 tons) of pineapples, with a projected revenue of about 35 million CFA francs, or roughly $62,000. “We could even make the country self-sufficient in this fruit,” he said.
AP
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Inside the worst places on Earth to give birth
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Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:17:04 +0000
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The Independent’s chief international correspondent, Bel Trew, traveled across the Central African Republic and Nigeria, speaking to women who are risking their lives for motherhood
BEL TREW
The muted beeps of the neonatal intensive care unit are drowned out by a sudden scramble of sound. A bundle is rushed into the corridor of this hospital in the Central African Republic (CAR) with a gaggle of people in its wake.
Under the swaddle of cloth is a newborn baby girl, eyes closed, her chest heaving with tortured, syncopated breaths.
Nurses quickly connect the baby up to a confusion of monitors, tubes and drips. A roar of a ventilator kicks in. The baby’s grandmother looks on anxiously.
Emmaus Johann, the doctor and seventh-year medical student, looks grimly at the statistics on the monitor. They have tried intubation, ventilation and now CPR. Blood is seeping onto the blanket. The newborn’s face goes grey. Her tiny body gives in.
“There was no ambulance. The only ambulance had taken a different child. There is nothing else out there,” the doctor says as the baby’s grandmother shatters into sobs in the background.
“They came just like that… by motorbike,” he continues, trailing off.
This is the only dedicated pediatric hospital in the whole of the CAR, a small landlocked country of five million people that suffers from some of the highest maternal and early infant mortality rates in the world.
This little girl has been brought in from a rural area 10km outside the capital. After a difficult labor, she was struggling with birth asphyxia. She had been on this Earth for about two hours and had spent almost all of it on the back of a speeding motorcycle in the desperate rush to get here.
“There’s a lack of equipment and care. There should be a neonatology service out there. But there isn’t one,” Dr Johann continues. “If the baby comes to us this late without oxygen, we cannot resuscitate her; it’s part of our daily routine,” he adds quietly.
And the fear is this horrific situation is only going to get worse. For centuries, giving birth was one of the most dangerous conditions a woman could go through: mothers and their babies died regularly in childbirth.
But over the last 25 years, that changed. Combined global efforts saw maternal mortality plunge by 40 per cent. Until now.
Now, the United Nations, aid agencies and humanitarian organizations are all sounding the alarm that progress is stalling, and in some cases reversing, across the world, including even in the UK.
The biggest factor is unprecedented aid cuts, first triggered by Donald Trump’s gutting of USAID in 2025, followed by European countries, including the UK, channeling foreign aid into defense. Compounding the crisis is an unprecedented level of conflict worldwide.
Researchers say that 2025 saw the highest number of conflicts between states since World War II, and the highest number of fatalities recorded since the Rwandan genocide. Although there is no aggregated global data since aid cuts were introduced last year, the signs are grim.
In the CAR, not only does it struggle with some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world and its own internal conflict, it is now dealing with an influx of refugees from neighboring war-ravaged Sudan.
Women in the CAR are 60 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than in the United Kingdom, according to the United Nations’ latest data. For every 100,000 births in the country, 829 women die.
At the only pediatric hospital in the country, Dr Kango Semplice, head of the emergency department, says this is translating into deaths. “The cuts were sudden. The country had just been getting back on its feet after conflict.
“We’ve had no funding since last year. With the little money that we have, we are targeting children that can be treated free of charge. I can assure you there will be deaths, both among babies and their mothers.”
Among the projects slashed were programs led by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which lost $3m in funding alone.
New data shows 11 million people have lost access to their essential sexual and reproductive health and protection services. Almost 1,100 health facilities and mobile clinics were forced to close, while an additional 727 facilities were disrupted, operating with reduced staff, limited hours or shortages of medicines and supplies.
Almost 6,000 health service providers lost their jobs, including frontline health workers and midwives. “When services get shut down, when maternity wards close, the mortality rate rises. It’s as simple as that,” explains Monica Ferro, head of UNFPA in London.
“That will mean that they will have no skilled birth attendants. They will have no access to medicines to treat the most preventable causes of maternal death. “This is completely unacceptable. No woman should die of childbirth, giving life.”
Conflict, climate change, and the weight of external debt are preventing countries like the CAR from becoming less dependent on external help, she continues.
“This is the perfect storm gathering. You have more people moving, more people in need and health systems that are stretched to the limit with less funding.”
In Birao, located just 60km from the Sudanese border, families are camping in the courtyard of the city’s hospital, which only has 60 beds, covering a local and refugee influx of more than 40,000 people. Many of them are pregnant mothers and their children, piling pressure on the already inadequate medical centers.
At the maternity ward, eight of the 12 medics lost their jobs following aid cuts over the last year, including all four midwives.
Delphine Zanaba, an assistant nurse, manages hundreds of consultations alone, at a time when the number of pregnant women coming every day has increased threefold.
She tries to comfort Amna, 37, a mother-of-six, who is screaming in agony just hours after losing her baby at nine months, and nearly bleeding to death herself.
Zanaba says she came in this morning with malaria, and her baby was breech and stillborn – both of which could have been prevented.
“The pregnancy hadn’t been monitored at all; this is a recurring problem. They don’t come for a single consultation for the entire pregnancy, not even one.”
Her niece, Radiya, 24, who fled slaughter at the hands of militants in Darfur with her on foot last year, says Amna would have had pre-natal consultations and been treated if the mobile clinics in the nearby refugee camp where they live had not closed.
“She keeps asking for her mother and saying she doesn’t want to live any more,” she adds in distress. “There used to be many more midwives… If this was available, the baby would have survived.”
Outside the ward, the hospital’s lead doctor, Ngonzo Lezin, explains they are the only hospital in a 20km radius. Since the massive reduction in aid, women have to pay for their care and so are not coming in anymore.
“Women are forced to give birth at home, in the camps. The numbers of deaths will increase, both mothers and children. It will be distressing not just for Birao but for the country.”
In the nearby refugee camp, a mobile clinic and safe space supported by UNFPA used to provide medical care, pre- and post-natal care and hospital transport for pregnant women. It was one of four such spaces in Birao serving thousands of women. Those have closed without US funding, along with two US-backed health facilities.
UNFPA’s program officer, Marie-Justine Mamba-Ibingui, shows off what are now just piles of rubble. “The women bitterly regretted the closure of the site here. And for me, too, it is bitter to see women taking risks when they want to give life. It’s heartbreaking,” she adds.
Mothers, who are waiting by what was the center, recount their horror stories. There, Busayna, 25, a mother-of-five who gave birth seven months ago, nearly died after she had to walk miles mid-labor to the hospital because there were no longer services in the camp.
Busayna’s husband was murdered by militants as they fled on a donkey from El Fasher, where human rights experts believe a genocide has taken place. En route, armed groups tried to rape the women, and when their husbands intervened, killed all the men.
“I’m just too exhausted, there are so many troubles. My husband is dead and we ended up on the street.” “When it was time for me to give birth, I had to walk to the hospital. They told me there was no transportation available at night, so I went on foot.
There was no aftercare. I gave birth that same night and left immediately.” This is playing out all over the world. In primary healthcare facilities in Nigeria’s restive northern states, mothers in the waiting rooms recount similar stories.
Nigeria has long been the worst place to give birth on earth. The country accounts for well over a quarter, or 29 per cent, of all estimated maternal deaths worldwide. In 2023, there were 75,000 maternal deaths, one death every seven minutes.
Part of the issue is the lack of doctors. In Nigeria, there is only one doctor to 9,000 patients; in the UK, that ratio is one to around 1,700. That means primary healthcare centers, staffed by nurses and midwives, are often the first and only port of call for pregnant women, despite having almost no supplies.
Blessing’s sister died, as did her baby, after three grueling days in labor, because the family didn’t have the money to take her to hospital. When Blessing was pregnant with twins and showing all the signs of deadly pre-eclampsia, she was terrified she might follow the same fate.
“It was not easy for me; I was very scared. I had a seizure, I even collapsed. They said they needed to operate on me, and I started crying because I know that my husband cannot afford the money,” she continues, explaining the hospital bills were the equivalent of two years’ salary.
Family and friends started frantically crowdsourcing the funds. “I thank God for my life and that my babies survived.”
The facility manager of this center in Adamawa state in northeast Nigeria, Simka Zamani, says the biggest issue is that they sometimes only get 30 minutes of power a day.
They also lack drugs and staff to help with the influx of women who only attend these centers because they can’t afford hospital bills. This center used to be supported by NGOs who helped purchase essential drugs and equipment for the most underprivileged women, but that has all gone in the last year.
Similar concerns are voiced at a second primary health center. There, the handful of women in the waiting room had lost 15 babies between them. Asina lost her baby just two days before.
Hawwa, 40, who is pregnant with her 13th child, said six of her babies have died in childbirth, and she has got to the point where she dreads being pregnant, but a lack of funding means she has no access to family planning.
“It is very traumatizing because where you give birth to a child and they survive, I fear the next one will die. I always fear the one I’m carrying will die,” she continues.
Nigerian health officials, like the doctors in CAR, fear that the situation will only get worse as funding cuts and conflict bite. Nigerian security forces have been battling a 12-year insurgency in the restive north of the country, as Boko Haram militants morph into multiple groups, including the so-called Islamic State.
The situation has got so bad that Donald Trump authorized multiple bombing raids on Nigeria at the end of 2025 and into this year.
“The cessation of the US funding was so abrupt, short notice, there was no adequate window for transition,” says Dr Sulaiman Saidu Bashir, executive chairman of Adamawa State Primary Healthcare Department. “And if we don’t address this problem here, it may spill over to other places, and it contributes to a global burden.”
Back in the CAR, nurse Zanaba is working her way through dozens of women in a makeshift waiting room. Most of them are refugees with terrifying stories of escaping drone strikes and slaughter.
“No woman should unnecessarily die in birth; we must stop this. I didn’t want to lose a mother. I don’t want to lose a mother. No more maternal deaths. It must stop now.”
The Independent
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Africa: Why Do Most African Countries Stay with the ICC?
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Sun, 09 Aug 2026 10:20:16 +0000
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MARTINA SCHWIKOWSKI
A new wave of African withdrawals has swept through the International Criminal Court. Chad turned its back on the court after three junta-led states in the Sahel exited. But most African countries still trust The Hague.
The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 was seen as a breakthrough in the global fight against war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Yet criticism from parts of Africa is almost as old as the ICC itself: Time and again, the court has been accused of targeting Africa in a one-sided manner. Recently, this criticism has grown louder again — and culminated in a veritable wave of withdrawals.
At the end of July, Chad also announced its withdrawal from the court in The Hague: The government stated that the ICC’s effectiveness was “limited and unbalanced.”
In September 2025, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger initiated their withdrawal from the ICC, accusing it of being a neocolonialist tool of the West. The withdrawals officially take effect one year after they are announced.
At the same time, the ICC is at the center of a scandal: Its members have voted to remove Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Khan has denied wrongdoing.
Justice: Withdrawal or accountability?
The wave of withdrawals from the ICC is cause for concern, says Attila Kisla, head of the International Justice Group at the Southern Africa Litigation Center in Johannesburg. Especially since some of these countries cited an alleged bias against Africa among the reasons.
“It is important to remember, however, that many of the proceedings — particularly in the early stages — were based on voluntary referrals by African countries seeking the court’s assistance,” Kisla told DW.
In 1998, Senegal became the first country to sign the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the ICC in 2002. Today, 125 countries are parties to the statute. Of these, 33 are African states, representing about 60% of the continent.
The ICC aims to prosecute the most serious crimes under international law and operates according to the so-called principle of complementarity: It can only take action when states are unwilling or unable to prosecute certain crimes themselves.
However, according to Kisla, the fact that there have been no significant proceedings against individuals from powerful states or Western countries has not helped the court’s image.
The US itself is not a member of the court but its citizens could be prosecuted if they are accused of crimes committed on the territory of member states.
Furthermore, one must not ignore the current global political climate: “These withdrawals are taking place at a time when the US has openly declared its intention to dissolve the ICC and is exerting unprecedented pressure on the court and its supporters,” said Kisla.
The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, even though neither Russia nor Israel is a state party.
In these politically charged times, the large number of African states that remain parties to the Rome Statute is of crucial importance: “Their continued membership reflects a conscious decision to defend international justice at a time when the ICC is under political attack,” said Kisla.
Conversely, however, according to Kisla, every decision to remain in the ICC also sends an important message: “Accountability for atrocities must not depend on politics or power,” he told DW. “It reflects a commitment to the rule of law and ensures that victims and survivors continue to have access to justice when domestic systems fail.”
War crimes victims lose protection
For the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI), the withdrawal of the four Sahel region states is a setback for the right to justice of the people in the affected countries.
“As victims of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, they are losing their last resort when they cannot find justice in their own countries,” said Alice Banens, a legal expert at AI’s regional office for West and Central Africa in Dakar.
She, too, describes these withdrawals as “attacks on the integrity of the international system and the International Criminal Court.” These fit into the broader context in which the ICC is facing attacks and sanctions from several states aimed at weakening the court’s ability to fulfill its mandate.
Amnesty has called on the states that have withdrawn so far — Burundi was the first African state to do so in 2016 — to voice any criticism within the system through discussions in the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute.
Former member states can also reverse their decision: For example, South Africa formally initiated its withdrawal from the ICC in 2016 but halted the process in March 2017.
The occasion was the state visit of Sudan’s then President Omar al-Bashir, against whom the court had issued an arrest warrant for war crimes in Darfur. The South African government refused to arrest him.
More prosecutions outside Africa
According to Banens, there is still a widespread perception today that African issues dominate the ICC’s agenda. “That is simply not true,” she told DW. “While this was the case in the early years of the ICC’s work — when most, if not all, investigations concerned the situation in Africa.”
Today, however, more active investigations are taking place outside Africa than within the continent — for example, in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Venezuela, the Philippines, and Ukraine, according to Banens.
Some states considering withdrawal argue that the ICC interferes with domestic legal processes and national reconciliation, according to Christopher Isike, a professor of international relations at the University of Pretoria.
“African countries, as well as major powers such as the US, Russia, and China — which are not members and do not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction—have also cited this as a reason for their criticism,” Isike told DW.
Nevertheless, according to Isike, the ICC provides an external mechanism for accountability when countries recognize that their domestic judicial systems lack the independence or the political will to prosecute political or military officials.
According to Isike, countries such as Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and even Mali have in the past themselves requested the ICC’s intervention because they lack the capacity to prosecute the perpetrators. This weakens the argument that any intervention by the court constitutes outside interference. “This perception of selective justice is the main reason for this way of thinking.”
There are also governments for which remaining a member of the ICC signals their commitment to human rights, democratic governance, and international law, according to Isike: “They believe that this gives them diplomatic credibility as a form of soft power,” he said.
For Isike, the debate over inequality in the justice system touches on something fundamental: the competition for the international order. African governments do not, in principle, reject international justice. “They want a system that is more universal and uniform and gives less cause for accusations of political selectivity.”
DW
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In West Africa’s Benin, Women Make Centuries-Old Salt Production Methods Sustainable
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Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:25:53 +0000
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NEHA BANKA
It is barely noon, and a group of women sit near the beach on the outskirts of Djégbadji village, in West Africa’s Benin, sifting through mounds of salt harvested from the Gulf of Guinea’s ocean.
Large concrete vats covered with black tarpaulin show traces of white salt sediment as the seawater slowly evaporates under Benin’s midday sun – except that instead of using fire, the group uses solar energy.
The women have been working as part of a grassroots project called ProSEL Benin, a collaborative effort of the governments of Benin along with India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that focuses on strengthening local salt-producing communities to access sustainable energy sources and create medium-sized enterprises for the production and marketing of local iodized salt.
Salt production is one of the main income-generating activities for the populations living in and around southern Benin.
Generations-Old Traditions
“In Benin’s coastal areas, women skim the salt from the coastal marshes… they put up their little huts and boil salt water in massive vats over an open fire inside the hut. They then sell the ‘cooked’ salt at the markets and on the roadsides.
It’s an unhealthy practice for various reasons,” says Robina Marks, who served as South Africa’s ambassador to Benin and Togo from 2021 to 2024 and was closely involved in the implementation of the IBSA-backed project.
The traditional method of collecting and cooking the salt has been practiced in Benin since at least the 15th century, primarily by women, and involves collecting saline soil, evaporating the water and filtering brine by burning chopped mangrove wood to produce salt.
The practice harms women’s health due to how they collect the salt and the conditions in which it is prepared. “It takes a very long time and is very labor-intensive,” Marks says.
The ProSEL Benin project attempts to change this traditional practice and make the process of collecting salt healthier and cleaner. Salt-making is an important source of income for communities here, relying heavily on the cutting down of mangroves.
ProSEL Benin’s research estimates that approximately 20,000 cubic metres of mangrove wood are cut down annually in coastal Benin for use as firewood in Indigenous salt-making. The UNDP and the Benin government discussed the new method about five years ago.
“But the idea came from the people on the ground, who had the needs. The Benin government came up with the project and wanted to work with UNDP,” says Aoualé Mohamed Abchir, who served as the UNDP Resident Representative in Benin from 2020 to 2024 and was instrumental in its development.
ProSEL Benin, Abchir says, is an attempt to advance three out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: gender equality; decent work and economic growth; and responsible consumption and production.
This project aims to help rural women in Benin make and sell clean salt and become self-reliant.
In 2021, the Board of Directors of the India, Brazil and South Africa Facility for Poverty and Hunger Alleviation Fund awarded USD 1 million to the UNDP to implement the salt project.
IBSA is an example of collaborative efforts between the three developing countries, as well as a South-South cooperation initiative within the United Nations that focuses on development cooperation among developing countries in the Global South.
When 60-year-old Cécile Koffi was first introduced to the salt project, it took some time to convince her to switch from the traditional method of making salt.
“There are a lot of things the salt does. Salt is intrinsic to the community’s women,” Koffi says, examining the day’s salt collection. Salt is culturally important to Benin, and its uses go beyond culinary applications.
“It is not only used as food, but it also has a cultural aspect to it. It is regarded as sacred and is used in many of the vodoun practices,” says Marks.
“When we go to the market to sell our produce, we sprinkle salt on the ground and sweep it up before setting up our spot. It is believed that every bad spirit will go away if we do that. Salt is very important. We use it in a lot of rituals,” says Koffi.
These deep-rooted cultural beliefs were one reason why it was difficult to get the women to change and adapt to the ProSEL Benin project, even though it was backed by the Benin government, explains Abchir.
Traditionally salt production is a cultural activity carried out by the Xwla populations of the coastal zone in Benin. The traditional production of salt by the salt farmers in the villages is subject to many prohibitions related to working days, village deities, and so on.
“The name Xwlajè is also intimately linked to the Xwla ethnic group,” says Luc Obale, national project director of ProSEL Benin. The Benin government has been working to certify the salt so that it can be sold with the label ‘Xwlajè’ to identify its cultural origin.
“The old method is their ancestral way of producing salt, so it has significance. Sometimes when you change the way you produce something, some people believe it may have negative implications.
The women could have got the salt directly from the sea, but there is a reason why they weren’t doing that before the project,” says Abchir.
The ProSEL Benin project targeted five areas in coastal Benin where people have traditionally harvested salt: Sèmè Kpodji, Grand Popo, Ouidah, Kpomasse, Comè and Lokossa.
“In those other areas, people have been more open to using sea water to make salt, but Ouidah is Ouidah. It is very special. They believe that the best salt can only be cooked, not dried. They believe that they have to cook it,” explains Abchir.
Ground-Level Interventions
The ProSEL Benin project is not the first intervention program that has attempted to make local salt cleaner and more environmentally sustainable, but it has been successful because caseworkers managed to get it off the ground, says Cessi Marlene Capo-Chichi, who works with UNDP as a project coordinator.
“Organizations have struggled to convince the local community to change their ways,” she says.
Some 500 meters from where the ProSEL project is ongoing by the beach, within the limits of Djégbadji village, is a coastal lagoon where women work inside a network of thatched huts, making salt in the traditional way.
“The traditional way of making salt is more laborious,” says 45-year-old Julienne Dekon, lifting a cane basket heavy with saline soil collected from the marshy land that surrounds her.
These days, the Benin government prevents the chopping down of mangroves for wood, and women are encouraged to use dried palm leaves and coconut shells for fuel instead.
Dekon says that she wants to continue working using the traditional method, although many of her friends have now switched to the modern method of salt making using seawater after joining the ProSEL project. As she begins boiling the saline water inside her hut, smoke fills the small space.
“When I have to work a lot, I do get tired. But I don’t know much about how this affects my health,” says Dekon. Dekon doesn’t remember when she started making salt, but it has been a very long time, and she is now accustomed to preparing using the traditional methods.
“The method on the beach (ProSEL project) is easy to do. But when it is raining, it is not possible to do it outside. But I can continue to make salt even in the rain, because I collect the soil and start cooking indoors.
The two systems are too different,” says Dekon, referring to the open-air concrete salt vats by the sea that are susceptible to the vagaries of the weather. However, the wet weather also affects the women using traditional methods.
From April to August, Benin experiences its rainy season, with short spells of rain between September and November, and the low-lying marshes near the lagoons are prone to flooding.
“We are pushing them to switch to the ProSEL system because during the rainy season the area where the salt is produced traditionally is inaccessible. It is completely flooded, and so for more than half the year, there is no production of salt. We needed to give them alternatives,” says Abchir.
While it is easier for the women to avoid the rains by tracking the weather, it is harder to bypass the persistent floods, he says.
Abchir says the project focused on giving the women access to seawater to make sure they could make salt and have steady income through the year.
“Using the seawater to make salt is less painful. You just get the water and let the sun evaporate it. You don’t have to cook it, and it is safer. You can also make more money,” says Abchir.
Just down the unpaved road from where Dekon works, a woman stands by the highway selling salt.
The difference between the salt produced by women like Dekon, who have been working using traditional methods and those engaged with ProSEL Benin is clear: the traditional salt is visibly yellow-brown with streaks of grey, colors that come due to the lack of a filtration process.
The ProSEL Benin salt is clean and white, fortified with iodine that the women mix into the salt just before filling it into bags.
A one-kilogram bag of salt produced by women using the traditional method, sold in local marketplaces and by the road, would cost approximately 800 West African CFA franc (approx. USD 2), while the same amount produced by ProSEL Benin would sell for 1,000 CFA.
For Public Consumption
ProSEL research indicates there are about 4,000 women harvesting salt in Benin. The country imports most of its salt from countries like Ghana, Senegal and India because its Indigenous salt farming covers only a small fraction of the country’s actual needs.
Stakeholders realized that it was not enough to teach the women how to make cleaner salt; they also had to be given access to markets to sell it.
One market that the project aims to tap into is the World Food Program (WFP) under the UN’s Benin office, which helps feed over 1 million children annually with daily school meals.
The WFP has been undertaking research to understand the feasibility of purchasing and using salt through these cooperatives led by women under ProSEL. The Benin government has ambitious plans for the harvested salt.
In December 2025, Benin’s food safety agency, ABSSA, the Agence Béninoise de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments, certified the salt for public consumption, after which the salt was prepared to be sold under the label Xwlajè.
Presently, the Xwlajè salt is sold in seven different supermarket chains across Cotonou, as well as in standalone shops located in the municipalities of Porto-Novo, Cotonou and Comè.
“In addition, steps are underway to market Xwlajè salt in the duty-free shops at Cotonou International Airport,” says Obale.
Abchir adds that a process that would take the women six hours now takes them two. Bringing about change has been difficult, he says, because it involved convincing people who were accustomed to working in a specific way for generations.
He admits that they wouldn’t have been able to do much without winning the trust of the women, their husbands who still oversee their lives, the mayor and the local community leaders.
“The local team went down to the women and understood their needs so that sensibilities could be understood, and it would be accepted. It is very difficult in Benin when outsiders come in and tell them what to do.”
Abchir says that there is a high risk of undoing all that work if there is mistrust in the community towards the project.
“They are accepting the changes. Now we are trying to build construction for storage, keeping machines, etc. It is a sensitive phase, but we are hopeful that it will work.”
Benin’s government has prioritized tourism over the last few years, and its Indigenous salt farming practices are a key part of its plans to introduce tourists to Beninese culture.
The ProSEL project does not aim to fully remove the traditional method of salt farming, says Obale.
“The modern salt production unit is located not far from the traditional production site to allow tourists to see the difference between the two production methods,” he says.
Mireille Adjovi, a new mother in her 20s, has come to work at the ProSEL site with her infant sleeping on her back.
“With the money I get, I am able to take care of my children. I will be able to send them to school. I think about myself last: my husband and children come first. Maybe the men give money for the household, but women still suffer a lot.
If women need something, husbands give the amount of money they want to give you, not what you need. The men don’t think about the women. So, the project helps me earn my own money,” says Adjovi.
For women like Adjovi, making salt is not just about following the jobs women before her have done for generations.
She doesn’t know what the UN’s SDGs are or even what IBSA means, but the work at ProSEL Benin allows her to prioritize her own health and well-being while working collectively in a women-led cooperative.
When she talks to other women working at the site, she also thinks about the hard-earned independence and self-reliance she now has.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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The head of the family is 17. Money is tight. The roof leaks. How did this happen?
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Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:50:09 +0000
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GABRIELLE EMANUEL
Whenever it rains, Joseph, Gift and Alumbwe — ages 17, 15 and 12 — scramble to move their clothes to a dry corner of their home, deep in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia. That’s because rain streams through holes in the roof.
“The house is not okay. Even though we live here it’s only because we have nowhere else to go,” says Joseph, speaking in the local language Bemba. “When it starts raining, where we sleep becomes wet.”
They don’t have to move their mattresses, he explains, because they don’t have any — the boys sold them when they needed money. Instead, they sleep on a bamboo mat on the floor and share a blanket.
Their mother died in January, their father in February. Now these brothers are in the process of figuring out the basics of living alone. NPR is not using the brothers’ last name because they are minors.
Both parents were HIV positive but had been able to survive because of the daily medications they took to prevent the virus from progressing.
When the U.S. overhauled foreign aid at the start of President Trump’s second term, there were major cuts to global health — and disruptions to the U.S.’s flagship efforts to combat HIV/AIDS globally called PEPFAR or the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
The boys say that, in the overhaul, their parents could no longer get their HIV medications as the program that delivered medication to their remote area suddenly stopped. It took just about a year for both parents to succumb to the virus.
The phenomenon of child-headed households and orphans was a defining element of the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s. But it diminished with major support efforts from the U.S. as well as the widespread availability of HIV medications that dramatically improved life expectancy.
It’s too early for official statistics to capture whether the shifting aid landscape has caused a spike in orphans and child-headed households. However, a reverend in Zambia — Billiance Chondwe — says he’s noticed a change.
NPR profiled Chondwe — affectionately known by his congregation as Pastor Billy — last year as his community dealt with the aid cuts and disruptions.
At the time, he told NPR many of his community members had suddenly lost access to their HIV medication as the nearby PEPFAR-funded clinics they depended on had shuttered. Now, he reports, children are paying the price.
In his community, he says, parents are dying of HIV. And that’s leading to the return of child-headed households.
He is trying to help 25 newly orphaned children, up from 11 a couple months ago. “There is a lot of stress and pressure,” Pastor Billy says, ticking off a long list of concerns. “They don’t have enough food. Where they are staying [is not suitable]. There’s no support.”
“God can take care of us”
As a teenager, Pastor Billy lost his twin sister to AIDS. “It brought me to my knees,” he remembers. In the decades since then it’s driven him to help others with the virus. Lately, that work has entailed tracking down people whose U.S. funded HIV-clinics closed overnight as a result of aid cuts last year.
Sometimes, he can help people connect with Zambian government clinics to get the medications they need — but not always. Increasingly, he says, he’s finding children scrambling to figure out what to do as their parents get sick without their HIV/AIDS medications.
That’s what happened in January when a community member asked him to check on a family living in a remote area. When he got there, he found Joseph and his brothers along with their ailing father.
“There was so much fear in the faces of the boys. There was so much worry and panicking in the face of the father,” Pastor Billy recalls.
Because Joseph’s family lived three, almost four, hours walking distance from the nearest hospital, community health workers — paid for by a U.S. government aid program — had brought HIV medications to their home. U.S. funding cuts changed that.
“In the rural remote areas, there used to be mobile clinics and nowadays it is not there,” says Pastor Billy. The boys watched as AIDS took hold and their parents grew weak and lost their appetite. Soon they were losing weight rapidly and struggling with diarrhea. They didn’t have the strength to walk to the hospital.
So the family came up with a plan of action. “We started selling things in the house,” Joseph says. “Whoever wanted to buy a mattress, we would sell. Whoever wanted pots, we would sell.” The money was to pay for a motorcycle taxi to get to the hospital.
Each night the boys would kneel in the dark and pray for help. The final months were fraught and painful as their parents argued about how the virus had been introduced into their household and worried about what would happen as their condition worsened.
Their mother ended up going back to her sisters’ place and dying there. Once their father died, Joseph says, he had no idea what to do. “We started going to church so that God can take care of us,” he says.
“Creating orphans at a remarkably rapid rate”
When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first hit Africa, the virus was infamous for killing people in their child-bearing years — and “creating orphans at a remarkably rapid rate,” says Dr. Eric Goosby, the second director of PEPFAR from 2009 to 2014 and now a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.
That’s what he told NPR last year. “The community around [the kids] rejected them because the stigma for HIV was so severe.”
PEPFAR, which was created under President George W. Bush and grew to be a widely celebrated program, was committed to helping these children.
“We created a system of care that took care of almost 6 million kids every year,” Goosby explains. “It’s a largely unsung story for PEPFAR and it’s the only non-traditional medical intervention PEPFAR heavily funded.”
The system found local adults and provided stipends so they could care for the children and keep them in their home community. PEPFAR also paid for education, nutrition and medical care since about a quarter of the orphans and vulnerable children were HIV positive.
Pastor Billy says he saw how these efforts transformed children’s lives and futures. Now, much of that support network has disappeared. “Cutting [aid] this suddenly has taken us backwards to a place and a season of hopelessness. There is no clear direction, especially on how we can help child-headed homes,” he says.
Asked to comment on these assertions and the situation Joseph and his brothers find themselves in, the State Department sent NPR a statement saying that the U.S. is the most generous country with humanitarian assistance.
“If there are such tragic cases happening around the world, it’s not because we’re not spending enough money. It’s because the rest of the world is not spending enough money,” the statement said.
The statement also said: “The United States has not cut health funding, including PEPFAR, for Zambia.”
While appropriations from Congress for HIV have not changed, the money is often not being spent. The Trump Administration is in the process of revamping how the U.S. does global health work and it is trying to hammer out new agreements with individual countries, including Zambia.
The Foundation for AIDS Research or amfAR found an almost 20% drop in PEPFAR expenditures between 2024 and 2025 in Zambia and the loss of more than 5,000 PEPFAR staff in the country.
In the Copperbelt Province in particular, the amfAR country report shows that thousands of HIV-positive people lost access to their HIV medications between 2024 and 2025.
“The children they left behind”
As his family life turned upside down, Joseph says he had no choice but to drop out of school and give up on his dream of becoming a doctor. Unable to pay rent, the boys moved several hours away to the small, dilapidated house with the leaky roof where rent is minimal.
“Sometimes the roofing sheets will start coming off because of the wind,” Joseph says.
Joseph got a job as a part-time security guard so he could provide a home for himself and his brothers — and so they can continue their schooling.
As he puts on his uniform for work, his brothers head to school. Gift wants to be an engineer and Alumbwe a soldier. While school is free in Zambia, the boys struggle to pay for school books. But they still attend class.
When Joseph is not at work, he says, he’s either doing odd jobs to make additional money or trying to get medication for his two brothers, who are both HIV positive. Their clinic is still an hours-long walk away with a multi-hour wait once there.
Waiting in those lines, Joseph says, he’s realized how common his situation is. He says he sees many other children in similar circumstances. Sometimes Joseph doesn’t make it to the clinic before they run out of the drugs his brothers need, so they must go a day or so without their pills.
Pastor Billy tries to help with the medication pick-up but he too lives far away. About once a month their Uncle John travels from several hours away to check on the boys.
“It brings me sadness and heartache to see the children [my brother] left behind,” he says in Bemba. He says he feels guilty that he can’t house the boys but his household has not only his own five children but also his late sister’s six children.
Right now, he says, the best he can do is bring food when he visits. “I do some farming and when I harvest those crops I will then share with them,” he says.
“If my parents were still alive”
Joseph says playing soccer was the one reprieve he would get from the weight of his responsibilities. “I love soccer,” he says. But right now, he’s not playing.
His sneakers wore through. “If my parents were still alive, I would still be playing. They would have bought me shoes,” he says. The best he can do now is watch other kids play soccer. He says it makes him happy that at least some kids get to keep being kids.
NPR
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‘Truly junk’: E-waste from rich nations floods local markets in Nigeria
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Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:34:01 +0000
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Discarded, near-end-of-life electronics shipped from developed countries are adding to Nigeria’s growing e-waste burden.
ABDULWAHEED SOFIULLAHI
On a bustling day in northern Nigeria, Marian Shammah made her way to the Sabon Gari Market, one of the largest electronics hubs in Kano state.
The 34-year-old cleaner was in need of a refrigerator, but with rising costs and a meager income, she saw the second-hand appliances sold at the market as a lifeline. After locating the one she wanted, she paid the vendor 50,000 naira ($36) and took it home. But just a month later, the freezer collapsed.
“Only the top half of the refrigerator was working, and the freezer wasn’t working,” said Shammah. Her food spoiled, her savings disappeared, and she was soon back in the market searching for another appliance.
Although Shammah could have bought a new local appliance by adding about 50,000 naira more, she – like millions of Nigerians – believes second-hand products from America and Europe “last longer” than new products sold in Nigeria.
Observers say this trend is part of a larger crisis. Nigeria has become a major destination for the developed world’s discarded electronics – items often near the end of life, sometimes completely dead, and frequently toxic because they contain hazardous materials.
When they break down, they add to landfills, worsening an already dire e-waste crisis on the African continent.
Around 60,000 tons of used electronics enter Nigeria through key ports each year, with at least 15,700 tons already damaged upon arrival, according to the United Nations.
The trade in used electronic goods is powered largely by foreign exporters. A UN tracking study between 2015 and 2016 showed that more than 85 percent of used electronics imported into Nigeria originated from Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, China, the United States, and the Republic of Ireland.
Many of these imports violate international restrictions, like the Basel Convention, an environmental treaty regulating the transboundary movement and disposal of hazardous electronic waste to developing countries with weaker environmental laws.
Across West Africa, the Basel Convention’s “E-Waste Africa Program”, a project focused on strengthening e-waste management systems across the continent, estimates that Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria collectively generate between 650,000 and 1,000,000 tons of e-waste annually – much of it the result of short-lifespan second-hand imports.
Health risks
The United Nations describes e-waste as any discarded device that uses a battery or plug and contains hazardous substances – like mercury – that can endanger both human health and the environment. Several of the toxic components commonly found in e-waste are included on the list of 10 chemicals of major public health concern maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to the WHO, used electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) presents a growing public health and environmental threat across Africa, with Nigeria at the center of the trade.
“Much of the equipment shipped as used electronics is close to becoming waste,” said Rita Idehai, founder of Ecobarter, a Lagos-based environmental NGO, warning that devices imported and sold as affordable second-hand goods often fail shortly after arrival and quickly enter the waste stream.
The consequences are far-reaching. Many imported fridges and air conditioners, for instance, still contain CFC-based and HCFC-based refrigerants such as R-12 and R-22 – chemicals banned in Europe and the US for causing ozone depletion or being linked to cancer, miscarriages, neurological disorders, and long-term soil contamination.
These gases live for 12 to 100 years, meaning leaking equipment adds to a multi-generational environmental burden.
After these imported items stop working or fall apart, informal recyclers then dismantle the electronics with their bare hands, Al Jazeera observed. In Kano, the recyclers inhale poisonous fumes and manage the heavy metals without protection.
Their work earns them a meagre 3,500–14,000 naira ($2.50-$10) per week, they said, and the after-effects linger – including persistent coughing, chest pain, headaches, eye irritation, and breathing difficulties after long hours of burning cables and dismantling electronic devices. The health crisis extends into Kano’s communities.
Among casual recyclers and residents who live close to e-waste dumps, many report symptoms that range from chronic headaches and skin irritation to breathing issues, miscarriages and neurological concerns, according to health surveys done by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. These ailments are consistent with longtime toxic exposure, the researchers said.
Recent field assessments conducted by Nigeria’s Federal University Dutse also stressed that in and around Kano state, where the Sabon Gari Market is located, there are rising levels of heavy metals in soil and drainage channels.
Dr Ushakuma Michael Anenga, a gynecologist at the Benue State Teaching Hospital and second vice president of the Nigerian Medical Association, warned that toxic exposure from informal e-waste recycling poses grave health risks to communities in Kano.
“Exposure to heavy metals and refrigerant gases in e-waste causes extreme brief and long-term health issues, generally affecting the breathing and renal organs,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Common casual practices like exposed burning and dismantling result in direct, high-level exposure for workers and nearby residents. Children and pregnant girls are particula