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]]>The idea behind Denver-based Africa Development Promise is to provide the citizens of certain impoverished communities in Rwanda and Uganda with basic access to energy, water, and food. These are the things they would not obtain otherwise because of challenges in their part of the world.
Agriculture in Uganda
Uganda is mostly known for its agriculture. They are the producers of coffee, tea, cotton, and tobacco, and smallholder farmers make up 60 percent of Uganda’s agriculture. These positions are held by 70 percent of the women.
With almost two decades of experience in the water, sanitation, and global financial business, that is what Monica Labiche Brown is doing after she founded Africa Development Promise. The organization is a non-profit with offices in Denver and Uganda.
Supporting African Women
The mission of the organization is focused on helping these women, the ones doing most of the chores, who stand in line for many hours to fetch water for the household.
Labiche Brown says she has seen firsthand the struggle of the Ugandan people, and it is one of the reasons she is passionate about building the pathways to economic independence for Africa.
On June 25 at the school of Hotel Management at the University of Denver, the organization brought in a special guest, Uganda’s ambassador to the United States, to join in a discussion it described as Journey to Sustainable development, the nexus of water, energy, agriculture and food security.
Other special guests, from the government and business, included Julie Labonte, the senior vice president of MWH Global with headquarters in Denver, Luka Powanga, a professor in the School of Management at Regis University, and Jamie Van Leeuwen, a senior advisor to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper.
Africa Facts
With the event, we learned some eye-opening facts: over 750 million people in the world do not have access to clean water, 1.4 billion do not have any form of energy, and lastly, over 800 million go hungry a day.
That’s according to the accounts from the men and women on a discussion panel that was part of the event.
Through the presentation of each panelist, the understanding of how energy, water, and food are all interconnected, came alive.
In her opening statements, the HW Oliver Wonekha said, ” We should give Ugandan women the tools to be able to extract oil from the palm nut; and see what they will do with those hours when they can do their job quicker, easier, and faster.”
A great statement made by Leeuwen was, “how do we take this conversation out of the room” he said. “That’s the main question today.”
“How do we take these panel talks and instead of throwing money at the issue, go down to the cities and help these people?”
Panelists proposed many solutions to these African issues.
AGOA Bridges the Gap
The discussion included talk about the role of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) whose policies help in bridging this gap in the trade of mushrooms, coffee, and tea.
With the promises that Ambassador Wonekha and the panelists made, and the determination of Africa Development Promise, we can see this becoming a great way of generating funds for African women in Uganda.
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[/media-credit] People taking part in the Young African Leaders Initiative Summit in Washington DC on July 28, 2014.
The Power Africa Initiative is a five-year program that President Obama launched in 2013. The program aims to create 60 million new electrical connections and generate 30,000 megawatts. It would bring electricity to millions of people in rural areas in Africa and double the current amount of electricity generated by the continent.
The program has been criticized for being off to a slow start. However, U.S. officials have responded by saying that the program is not an aid program; it requires the cooperation of African governments and energy investors, with the ultimate goal of self-sufficiency. In fact, the U.S. government says the project is on course and has expanded it.
Critics further say that, while the project may be on course, it is approaching the issue of electricity in Africa wrong. Electricity projects can take up to ten years from implementation to completion. Solar power, they argue, would be much more effective as it would only take a fraction of the time. The approach to finding energy investors may be beneficial in the long run, however, because it shows that Africa is a place worth investing in. Ultimately, the success of the program can only truly be judged when it is completed and the results are available.
Associated with the Power Africa Initiative is the Electrify Africa Act. It was proposed in October 2015 and was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president in February 2016.
The bill encourages African access to reliable power sources and aims to bring electricity to 50 million people by 2020. Signing the bill means that access to power in Africa is now officially a part of the United States’ foreign policy towards sub-Saharan Africa.
Like electricity, economic prosperity is important to Africans and Americans alike. To this end, President Obama announced the Trade Africa Initiative in 2013. This initiative encourages economic growth in Africa by strengthening economic ties within Africa as well as globally. Initially, Trade Africa worked within the East African Community (EAC), where it helped expand the East African Trade Hub, which generated $2 billion in exports in 2014. Exports from the region to the U.S. has increased by 24% since 2013, and the amount of time needed to transport goods in Africa has decreased by up to 30%. In 2015, EAC officials signed an agreement that would implement World Trade Organization’s standards by making trade within the continent easier, improving food safety as well as plant and animal health, and by meeting global trade standards. The Trade Africa Initiative has been successful in the EAC, and is in the process of working with trade partners in other parts of the continent.
Of course, you can pass all kinds of initiatives to improve electricity and the economy, but it will never reach its full potential if the people it’s meant to benefit are not empowered. President Obama’s first program in Africa was the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), which he launched in 2010. The program, which focuses on African youth, encourages young people to take part in improving Africa’s future and provides them with a network of other young people throughout the continent. YALI provides them with leadership programs and opportunities in Africa, as well as discourse on Africa and its goals for its future.
The program, while largely ignored in western media, appears to be very important to Obama, as he has personally invested a lot of time into it and hosted a summit for it almost every year since its creation. In 2010, he hosted the President’s Forum with Young African Leaders, which brought 115 young Africans from all over the continent to Washington. There, they engaged in a town hall-style meeting with the president about where they wanted to see Africa in the next 50 years.
This was followed in 2011 by the First Lady’s Young African Women Leaders Forum, and the Innovation Summit and Mentoring Partnership with Young African Leaders in 2012.
In 2013, the First Lady, accompanied by her daughters, made a trip to Africa to meet with youth and encourage education as part of the Initiative. Summits from 2014 onward have hosted 500 African youths, all members of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, which was recently expanded to include 1000 members total.
While YALI has been mostly ignored by the media, there was some coverage of another of President Obama’s summits: the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. While not a program, this event shared the goals as many of them; to strengthen the United States’ diplomatic and economic ties with Africa for the benefit of all. This event was covered by the media and showed Americans that Africa is not all poverty, death, and disease, but a growing power that needs to be taken seriously on the world stage. It was the first time a president held a summit with African leaders and drew attention to African progress. Because of that, it is very important in the history of U.S.-Africa relations. Indeed, we here at Africa Agenda liked the idea so much that we went on to host Denver-Africa summits of our own in 2014, 2015, and an upcoming one in October 2016.
Many people have criticized Obama’s Africa policy as lacking, comparing and contrasting it to how President George W. Bush approached it. Indeed, Bush’s policy in Africa was widely praised, even by his critics. Bush focused primarily on health-related issues that the continent faces, including passing initiatives that reduced the spread of diseases such as HIV and malaria. During his presidency, the Bush administration donated $5 billion a year to Africa, and even today he is working to combat disease on the continent.
What critics of Obama’s policy don’t seem to realize is that the two presidents had very different approaches to African policy and very different goals. While Bush focused on providing aid and relief to the poor of the continent, Obama is more concerned with empowerment of the African people and giving them the skills and resources they need to be successful and self-sufficient. Obama touched upon this when he talked about U.S. response to Ebola in West Africa. Both approaches address known problems and both are valid, but Obama is the first president to treat Africa as a place with potential, not a place that needs rescuing. It will be interesting to see how his successor will approach the continent.
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]]>Over 130 people attended the event, mostly college students from the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder. Uhuru raised over $1300 and helped raise awareness for Uhuru’s mission on the CU campus!
Local bands The Whicker and Pine, The Belle Jar, and Jay Kraemer and Friends, played and helped Uhuru raise awareness for our mission to end poverty in Kenya.
A surprise last-minute band also joined us for the evening: Gregory Alan Isakov.
This is the second major event Uhuru has hosted since starting a division in Colorado in the fall of 2012. The evening was quite a success and we are so thankful for all who attended and partnered with us to host the event!
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]]>In this week’s news, Burundi refugees were offered university education in Rwanda, Ethiopian Electric Power signed deals with neighboring countries, and Morocco’s mosques transitioned to solar energy.
Rwanda offers university education for Burundian refugees
Gelllilla Gebre-Michael | Africa Agenda
Burundian school girls waiting for class to start.
Mahama houses the largest Burundian refugee camp in Rwanda. Those that escaped from violence in Burundi were unable to finish their higher education journey. Rwanda has opened its higher education institutions to the refugees and is also providing basic school necessities such as clothes, mattresses, soaps, beddings, shoes, and scholastic materials.
Access to higher education is limited for Burundian refugees in Rwanda. For those who have completed their high school education or in the middle of their tertiary journey, English lessons are provided. Mahama camp currently hosts more than 49,000 refugees.
Ethiopian Electric Power to foster economic integration
Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) is a publicly-traded company that seeks to engage in the development of geothermal resources and the construction of power plants. The company currently has agreements with Djibouti, Kenya, and Sudan. EEP is currently underway with signing a 400 megawatts purchase agreement with Tanzania.
Ethiopia’s exportation of energy has drawn support from Japan’s Toshiba Corporation. Toshiba seeks to contribute to projects in Ethiopia. The company will assist to develop and manufacture major equipment, create operation and management guidelines, cooperating in personnel development, and starting a waste heat utilization business. The development of geothermal power will assist Ethiopia in increasing its’ generating capacity.
Morocco’s Green Mosques program provides solar energy for all mosques in the kingdom
Gelllilla Gebre-Michael | Africa Agenda
One of the 15,000 mosques is expected to run completely on solar energy.
Morocco launched the Green Mosques program two years ago in hopes of saving the kingdom money. The program seeks to raise awareness of renewable energy in the 15,000 mosques in the kingdom. Morocco has one of the largest mosques in the world. Morocco seeks to provide all mosques with LED lighting, photovoltaic systems, and solar water heaters. The agency responsible for paying the mosques’ energy bills is the Moroccan Ministry of Religious Affairs.
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[/media-credit] Admad Ahmad
“Hayatou was seeking a record eight straight terms in office. The Cameroonian was first elected to head the largest member of FIFA, the world’s football governing body, in March 1988.” according to the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper.
Meanwhile, The Economist magazine says the process leading to Ahmad’s election “reads like the history of many African nations since independence 60-odd years ago.” Describing Hayatou’s defeat as a shock and saying this was “only the third time” he had been challenged, the magazine says about Hayatou’s defeat:
“He had clung to power for almost three decades. This is nearly as long as Paul Biya, a friend of the Hayatou family and Cameroon’s president, who has been in charge since 1982. CAF has had five presidents since it was established in 1957, the same number as Ivory Coast, one of the continent’s footballing powerhouses, over the same period.”
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Change
Stay tuned for more…
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[/media-credit] Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
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