The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is launching a high-tech initiative in an effort to promote awareness, tourism, and gorilla conservation. The unique Friend a Gorilla project will launch on September 26th in Kampala.  Gorilla enthusiasts will now be able to watch, track and befriend real live gorillas from the comfort of their own home.   But wait - there’s more!

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Recently the Food and Agriculture organisation (FAO) of the UN reported that millions more people may find themselves facing long term hunger and even starvation, in east Africa.

Climate change affects Africa

El Nino is blamed for changing rainfall patterns, and that, combined with inadequate harvests and increasing conflict has led to a drop in cereal production already affecting Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. This could lead to an increase in the number of people relying on food aid.

Already more than 20 million people are receiving food assistance in the Horn of Africa region and their numbers are only likely to increase further towards the end of the year as El Nino drives heavy rains across the region, leading to mudslides on tree-denuded hillsides and the destruction of crops close to harvest time. The same rains often destroy roads and other infrastructure required to bring food aid and medicine into the region and can kill livestock or cause epidemic diseases in animals or human populations, all of which add to the complexity of managing food security in a region where conflict is endemic and border raids and ‘tribal’ disagreements are a standard response to poverty.

Horn of Africa countries badly hit

The worst hit country at present is Somalia, where the FAO claims that around half the population already need some form of aid; either food or medical supplies or both. Ethiopia is also expected to tip into reliance on emergency aid, as the second harvest of the year has failed and that means that food aid reliance could rise from 1.3 million to over six million people.

Kenya and Uganda are both expecting poor harvests, and Uganda has an even more disastrous prognosis as the ongoing unrest between government forces and rebels has forced people off their land or led them to stay barricaded in their compounds, resulting in less cultivation and a probably halving of the harvest of staple food crops. The current violence has left more than a million people in Uganda struggling with food security and the number is expected to rise steadily throughout the next twelve months, according to FAO experts.

Somali roadside wreckage courtesy of Carl Montgomery at Flickr under a creative commons licence

A unique rhino conservation program in Uganda is helping local communities with an outreach program that recruits for job openings from surrounding villages, teaches job skills, and visits classrooms.

Rhino Fund Uganda is making a difference in the lives of people by integrating local communities with rhino conservation goals and educating them about responsible resource management. Established in 1997 with the objective of reintroducing the Southern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) to Uganda, RFU has created programs to help the community every step of the way. Recently, RFU celebrated the birth of the first rhino born in Uganda after 27 years of regional extinction - and the baby rhino has been named “Obama.”

Creating employment opportunities and providing job training

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Traditional farming is about to make a come-back across Uganda, according the country’s Agriculture Minister, Hope Mwesigye. Traditionally, Ugandan’s rich soil and fairly abundant rainfall allowed farmers to grow a range of staple foods, from plantains, cassava and sweet potatoes through to grains like millet, sorghum and corn as well as beans, and groundnuts.

Since the 1980s, the major cash crop in Uganda has been coffee, closely followed by tobacco, and then tea and cotton, although the ‘70s and ‘80s saw collapses in the infrastructure which meant that cotton and tea in particular lost their markets and farmers started to sell their staple crops for cash in regional and local markets instead.

Diversification was the message of the 1990s and many non-traditional exports were attempted, supported by the World Bank and the Ugandan Development Bank. So why now does the government want to return to traditional farming practices?

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Ngorongoro World Heritage Site Under Threat

Thirty years after being listed as a World Heritage Sites the Ngorongoro Conservation area is in danger of being ‘deleted’ from the prestigious listing. This legendary wildlife-filled crater, is a  8,300 square kilometer part of Tanzania’s Serengeti.

The United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has set the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority very tight goals which must be met if Ngorongoro is to retain its World Heritage Sites listing.

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Two conferences reveal the nature of the problem

Between 15—19 May, a Vatican organised ‘study week’ looked at ‘Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development’ – a title that gives some idea of the expected outcome of a more pro-GMO stance, however there won’t be an official position statement on GMOs and both sides of the argument claim to have a degree of Papal support. In the no-to-GMO camp are quite a number of social justice activists who fear that native crops and native peoples could be dislodged by the cash-crop power of GMOs and they share an uneasy alliance with some bishops and theologians, whose view is that GMOs are both a threat to the environment and human health and a possible step on the path to usurping the role of God as Creator. On the opposite side are many agribusinesses, some other development campaigners and some other theologians, who see GMOs as the logical tool to destroy poverty, feed the hungry, and maintain stewardship of the environment.

Some watchers have said that several of the speakers at the conference have financial links to Monsanto, one of the world’s largest GMO producers. The counter-argument is that with GMOs being big agribusiness, it’s inevitable that most people working the field will have had funding or sponsorship from one of the very few companies at the top of the GMO tree.

Uganda seeks to change policy, and minds

And in Uganda, another conference is currently exploring  the production of GMO crops in Africa. The participants are looking at the gap between policy and research, and giving evidence on how investment in GM technology could benefit the continent. One claim being made at this event is that the widespread adoption of GMO agriculture could ‘significantly reduce’ the cost of food in developing countries by 2050. However, this could only be achieved if consumer preferences were changed, a transformation that has happened without protest in the USA and patchily and with massive protest, in much of Europe.

Vatican courtesy of David Paul Ohmer at Flickr under a creative commons licence

Now there are a number of questions relating to this advertising campaign, not least of which is how you define locavore: is it somebody who only eats food grown fifty miles from their home, fifteen miles, five blocks? But setting that one aside, another key question is how a national company like Frito-Lay can claim, let alone prove, local production. The route they are taking is pretty blunt: five farmers will appear in five advertisements, shown in five different states, each saying that they grow potatoes that Frito-Lay then turns into ‘local’ chips. Of course, each state gets to see only its own local advert, not the other four, which could rather spoil the impression …

Frito-Lay isn’t making clear how transparent its supply chain is, where the frying oil comes from, for example, or whether potatoes are shipped from one state to another if there are production shortages. But all of that could be sorted out with adequate labelling, a proper supply chain audit and some decent environmental auditing. The locavore term, coined around 2005, is anyway, open to much interpretation.

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The recent fall in grain prices across the developed world may have given the impression that food security isn’t a problem – but it is. There are more people not getting enough to eat than there were a decade ago.

Prices for grain, globally, are still 20% above the 2006 average, so overall this is a period of extremely high costs for staple foods. And while commodity prices have fallen in international markets, retail prices have not fallen in the developing world at anything like the same rate. In other words, a warehouse full of corn is cheaper, but a bag of corner on a Nairobi street corner is more expensive, than in 2006. And while the immediate suspicion is corruption in the developing world, that’s probably not the main reason for the hiked prices staying high. Cereal stocks are at a thirty year low – a situation made worse by the use of certain crops for bio-fuel – and scarcity of reserves will always keep prices high.

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Hunting to Conserve in Uganda

Edyau Echodu, the warden of the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s Pian-Upe wildlife reserve, introduced the hunting plan. He said that hunting would help get rid of old animals that attack human settlements, killing and injuring people and damaging crops. He acknowledged that it was also aimed at increasing earnings from tourists.

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Project H has completed a Learning Landscape design, putting reclaimed tires to uses of exponential value: educating youth at the Kutamba School for AIDS Orphans in southern Uganda.

The tires are used in various math lessons, teaching the kids addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. When the sandbox grid of tires is not being used for math games, wooden benches are placed atop the precisely spaced tires, serving as rows of outdoor classroom seating.

The concept not only carries untold benefits for the students of now and the future, but given it is math-based and, therefore, uses the universal language, it can easily be adopted all across the world.

Project H Design is a non-profit organization and appreciates donations.

Sources: Dwell and Inhabitat

The company’s t-shirt division, EDUN LIVE, in partnership with Spike Jonze’s VBS.tv and VICE magazine have created a series of videos presenting the cultural and natural environments around Kampala, Uganda, where a local textile company makes some of the organic cotton t-shirts sold by EDUN.

A visitor to the “Made in Africa” section of EDUN LIVE’s web site could have a hard time choosing where to start. While the company does use some of the videos to reinforce its green and socially responsible cred with a three-part series on Japanese native Yuichi Kashiwada’s organic cotton textile mill, “Made in Africa” goes well beyond company promotion. Videos on the Breakdance Project Uganda at the Sharing Youth Center, and the Uganda Skateboard Union provide glimpses into youth culture in the city. Another features the KCC (Kampala City Cleaners) Football Club, a social welfare program that eventually produced a national championship soccer team. And the three-part “Gorillas in the Midst” takes viewers on a trek through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, with guide Levi and the WWF’s Dr. Richard Carroll, to see the magnificent, and endangered, mountain gorillas.

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The majority of Thanksgiving dinners in South Africa would be based on a very large serving of Mielie Pap, accompanied by a vegetable stew and possibly a small portion of meat. That is if it were celebrated here!

Mielie Pap is a thick white porridge produced from maize meal and is the main staple of the majority of the people of South Africa. This is especially true of poorer rural people who might aspire to bread and rice but need to rely on maize because of its low price and the fact that they are able to produce and process maize in the household. The dominance of maize in the diet of South Africans is reflected by the fact that on average one third of South African’s calorie intake is supplied by maize.

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For over a decade Shea Terra Organics has been developing high quality healing products from indigenous African ingredients. “Our most important goal from the start has always been to support Africa through self-empowerment and environmental programs, and bring awareness about the continent’s diversity and beauty.” ~Shea Terra Organics’ founder, Tammie Umbel

Shea Terra has culminated a formula for sustainability and fair trade by recognizing the value of uncontaminated raw materials. This helps it make a difference in alleviating the increasing threats to Africa’s native inhabitants and indigenous wildlife.

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But turn our eyes away from the mainstream and western face of this planet, and we see that Africa is already on the renewable energy bandwagon.

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