The Great Green Wall

Major project will see a continent-spanning wall of vegetation planted.

The Great Green Wall project aims to plant a swathe of drought-resistant income-producing vegetation from one side of Africa to the other. It will also “support local communities in the sustainable management and use of their forests, rangelands and other natural resources, and  improve the food security and livelihood of the people, while contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation,” says the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In Mali there is hope that the project might even help defeat terrorism.

The second summit of the Great Green Wall, basically a plan to fight desertification by planting a wall of trees well over 4,000 miles long and nine miles deep, stretching from Senegal to Djibouti, has just finished in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad.  Leaders from many of the African countries involved met to discuss how to coordinate and carry forward their plans.

Since 2011, when planting began after financial support had been secured from the African Union, European Union, World Bank, FAO and other international investors, nearly 12 million trees have been planted in Senegal alone. They are mostly acacias, which are hardy and can survive droughts. Their bark provides gum arabic, which is a source of income for local people as it is used as an additive in many things including pharmaceuticals and fizzy drinks.  The World Food Programme said in a report in April that the wall had started to bear fruit for families in Senegal.

President Al Bashir of Sudan was one of those attending the N’Djamena summit. Sudanese online journal, SudanSafari said that as a sign of its commitment, Sudan had settled its financial contributions. The country saw the wall not only as a way of combating desertification but also something that could be used to fight poverty, but for that to happen, technical and financial support as well as concerted political will from the concerned African leaders are needed, the paper said.

The Great Green Wall was originally intended to pass through 11 countries, but has now grown in scale and ambition and will involve many other nations including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, the Gambia and Tunisia.

Desertification in Africa’s Sahel region may be driving a range of problems including terrorism, says BBC News online asking whether the Great Green Wall could help. The war in northern Mali has drawn new international attention to this aspect. Poverty provides a breeding ground for extremism, says Kouloutan Coulibaly, Mali’s Director of Forestry. The BBC cites the French military’s description of this region south of the Sahara Desert as “planet Mars” characterised by extreme heat, drought and food shortages.

“Desertification is about poor land management which turns the land into desert,” says Michele Bozzano, a research support officer for Biodiversity International. The problems in the Sahel belt are mainly overgrazing and deforestation. To have a chance of working, plants and trees planted in the area of the Great Green Wall will have to be more valuable standing than if felled.  A report published in May by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), claims that 850 million people worldwide are affected by desertification.

Critics question whether this ambitious land restoration project can succeed in an area that is set to become even drier.  Detractors also claim there are ownership and management issues. FAO disputes accusations of top-down management and claims consultations with local communities are integral to the project.

Everyone involved in the Great Green Wall agrees that the end goal is to help rural communities. But opinions vary on how the project will best manage to do that. Some African leaders envision the Great Green Wall as a literal wall of trees to keep back the desert. But scientists and development agencies see it more as a metaphorical ‘wall,’ a mosaic of different projects to alleviate poverty and improve degraded lands.

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Notorious Somali pirate renounces

A group of Somali pirates on the MV Faina in 2008 (Picture: US Navy)

Mohamed Abdi Hassan, a man once described by the UN as “one of the most notorious and influential leaders” in Somalian piracy, has announced his “retirement”.

Hassan, more commonly known by his alias ‘Big Mouth’, has renounced piracy and has claimed that he is to become an “anti-piracy officer”.

The role will include helping other pirates to give up their life of crime and reintegrate into society. Hassan says that he has already helped over a thousand young men to leave piracy behind them.

“We are convincing the youths to give up piracy… I have influence, and have been mobilising the community… to keep the men from the water,” he told AFP  in the Somalian capital of Mogadishu.

Hassan has maintained that he does not consider himself to have been a pirate. “Perhaps you have heard a lot about this ship or that ransom… but 90% of what you hear in Somalia is false… I’m not saying I was not involved, for I was the one who initiated the fight,” he says.

Hassan says that the turbulent political situation in Somalia forced him to take drastic measure to survive: “It was legitimate because there was no government, we were like orphans without a father.”

Investment is needed to bring about a serious reduction in piracy in Somalia, according to Hassan, who says that full support must be given to pirates wanting to turn their lives around.

Piracy is estimate to cost the world economy around US$18 bn each year.

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More elephants slaughtered as poaching escalates

African countries have seen a serious increase in the illegal killing of elephants with the amount of seized ivory said to be at the highest level for 16 years.

Conservation organizations working in the Congo River Basin met in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo in April to come up with ways that governments can tackle the rampant poaching, which claims an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 African elephants each year.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said gunmen who had identified themselves as members of the Seleka rebel coalition had entered the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in Central African Republic (CAR) and headed towards a clearing called Dzanga Bai, or Village of Elephants. WWF says that the poachers were seen using a scientist’s observation platform to shoot the animals, which gather there in large numbers to drink mineral salts present in the sands.  At least 26 elephants were reported to have been killed.

The Dzanga-Ndoki park is part of the United Nations-backed Sangha Trinational world heritage site and is located in the south-western corner of CAR, where it borders Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. It is described as a unique habitat for forest elephants in particular. There are also lowland gorillas and chimpanzees.

The WWF said local sources there had by May 9th counted 26 carcasses, four of which were calves. The 17 gunmen had since left the area and villagers were now collecting meat from the dead animals.

In a statement Jim Leape, WWF’s international director general, said: “The killing has started. The Central African Republic must act immediately to secure this unique World Heritage site”.

Secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) John E. Scanlon said it was a worrying situation. “This imminent threat to elephants in a remote and relatively well-protected area is of grave concern to Cites”.

“I call on the international community to join forces and take co-ordinated action to avoid a new tragedy of similar proportions to the massive killing of elephants that occurred in Cameroon in 2012.”

Mr Scanlon was referring to attacks in Bouba N’Djida national park in 2012 that left at least 300 elephants dead.

Elsewhere on the continent, Mozambique‘s elephant population risks being obliterated within a decade unless tight anti-poaching measures are introduced, conservationists have warned.

“If we work out the numbers, in eight years probably we will have no elephants left,” said Carlos Lopes Pereira, a technical adviser for the global Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

It is left to an anti-poaching force dependent on funding from overseas to protect the elephants. The few game rangers that exist are ill-equipped to do their job, using bolt-action rifles dating back to World War II. In contrast the poachers, thought to be part of vast syndicates based in the Horn of Africa, use high-calibre military weaponry and advanced hunting techniques.

Previously secure populations in eastern and southern parts of the continent are now coming under threat as demand for tusks, particularly in Asia, heats up.

In Mozambique, as elsewhere in Africa, the threat is seen as coming from across the border.

“Historically poachers come down from Somalia, through Kenya,” said Francisco Pariela, the Mozambique government’s conservation director. But, he admitted, locals are easily recruited to the trade because the “money is tempting”. He conceded, too, that “state employees were involved, community members are involved”.

Mozambique has been singled out for its poor record in wildlife protection. In 2012 the WWF said the country was among those doing the least to control the illegal trade in animal parts, along with nations like Laos and Vietnam. Plans are afoot to strengthen Mozambique’s laws, but conservationists worry it may be too little too late.

“The ivory trade is completely out of control. Ivory poaching is getting worse by the day,” warned WCS adviser Pereira.

Meanwhile Kenyan privately-owned newspaper Daily Nation reported on its website on May 4^th that 14 elephants had been killed and their tusks pulled out in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve in the last six months as poaching escalates.

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Major new road to be built in West Africa

Construction of the Abidjan to Lagos highway – part of the long, long awaited Trans-West African Highway – will begin in 2014.

The Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS has developed an action plan on the construction of the 1,028 km Lagos-Abidjan highway.  Nigeria and the other four countries concerned  – Benin, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire – adopted the plan at a meeting in Abuja with the aim of speeding up the building work.

A supra-national agency will be set up to manage the project implementation phase and ensure uniformity in approach and standards for the road whose development will be regionally coordinated.

The Abidjan – Lagos Corridor covers a total distance of 1,028km and connects some of the largest and economically most dynamic cities in West Africa, including Lagos, Accra, Cotonou, Lome and Abidjan, said Nigerian newspaper Vanguard. Building will commence sometime in 2014 and will be completed within 24 months.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan explained that the funding of the project will be sourced from the private sector, development partners and banks, who will get return on their investment by levying tariffs and tolls on users.

The blueprint will be presented to presidents and heads of government at the forthcoming African Union Summit in late May in Addis Ababa.

The trans-west African highway network  - intended to link the Senegalese capital Dakar on Africa’s western coast with Nigeria’s commercial hub Lagos in central-west Africa – was originally envisaged back in 1967. The vision was of a high-speed road more than 4,000km long with harmonized and streamlined customs procedures.

Mike Onolememen, Nigerian minister of works who is spearheading the new initiative says a modern highway is still the way to achieve real regional integration of the ECOWAS countries, Nigerian newspaper Business Day reported. He said: “Sections of the road infrastructure are in poor condition and continue to fall below internationally acceptable standards for a regional corridor.”

He also decried the multiple check points, numerous control posts, long and costly customs procedures and lack of adequate equipment at border posts.  Against the ECOWAS stand on free movement and interstate road transport facilitation, cross-border traders and travellers with appropriate documents suffer various degrees of harassment and extortion, Onolememen said.

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Mobile money

In East Africa the banking revolution continues

Kenya’s M-Shwari (No Hassle)

M-Shwari (“No Hassle” in Swahili) is a banking platform set up in late 2012 that allows subscribers of Kenya’s biggest mobile network, Safaricom, to operate savings accounts, earn interest on deposits, and borrow money using their mobile phones.  Safaricom has 19 million subscribers, or about 70 % of the Kenya mobile-phone market.

The practice of sending money by mobile phone – M-Pesa, “mobile money” in Swahili – began in 2007 and is widely used in Kenya where about 70 % of the population has a mobile phone. M-Pesa revolutionised banking for millions of the “unbanked” – people left out of the formal system by their poverty or remote location.  Central bank estimates say at least 12 million Kenyans are still outside that formal banking system.  M-Pesa is used for all kinds of transactions including paying bills and sending money to distant relatives. There are $50m worth of M-Pesa transactions every day in Kenya.

M-Shwari builds on and expands the M-Pesa phenomenon with an application for savers and borrowers.  Loans have to be paid back within one month and a single fee of 7.5 % is charged. Maximum loans relate to the amount the client has in his or her M-Shwari account.

A privately-owned bank, the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) partnered Safaricom for M-Shwari and the family of newly elected President Uhuru Kenyatta hold the major stake in CBA.

In February 2013, three months after it was launched, M-Shwari transactions crossed the $35million mark, with 1.6 million customers having used the service for deposits or loans.

Others came before M-Shwari. Indian-owned Bharti Airtel, launched Kopa Chapaa (Swahili for “borrow money”) in 2012 and smaller micro-credit loan companies have set up similar schemes but none with the M-Shwari success.

Uganda – Usage Triples

Although Kenya leads the way, there are major signs that mobile money is on the rise elsewhere in East Africa. Charles Abuka, director for financial stability at the Bank of Uganda, said the number of users of the mobile money transfer system in that country grew from 2.9 million in 2011 to 8.9 million at the close of 2012. This pushed the number of mobile money accounts past the 4.9 million bank accounts as at December 2012, the East African reported.

“The number of mobile money transactions increased from 87.5m in 2011 to 242m at the end of 2012, and the value of the transactions grew fron $1.46 billion to  $4.5billion,” Dr Abuka said.

He attributed the development to increased  mobile phone penetration. All the five major operators have mobile money transfer platforms. They are MTN Mobile Money (MTN), Waridpesa (Warid), Airtel Money (Airtel), Msente (UTL), and Orange Money (Orange).

Experts say further development of products on mobile payment platforms is hampered by the absence of effective co-ordination between the regulatory authorities, the Bank of Uganda, Uganda Communications Commission and the Uganda National Bureau of Standards.  Mr Kasekende said building a regulatory framework for mobile money and financial inclusion would improve financial stability and integrity and would further protect consumers, especially those for whom this is the only channel to access formal financial services – up to 12 million Ugandans are outside the formal banking sector.

West Africa Lags Behind

Nigeria’s Pagatech

Nigeria’s leading mobile payments service provider, Pagatech, recorded the 500,000th user of its service at the end of March, according to the online Nigerian Communications Week on April 6th.

The local firm, which started in April 2009, received its operational licence from the Central bank of Nigeria as a fully-fledged mobile money operator in November 2011, the Pan-African News Agency (PANA) reported.

Despite the promise and enthusiasm that attended the launch of mobile money systems in Nigeria two years ago, the service is still struggling to gain a foothold in the country said Business Day Nigeria. This is despite the huge potential market size, which is expected to grow to Naira 1.1 trillion by 2015.

Industry experts and analysts say this is because banks, mobile money operators and other players have  failed to clearly define, articulate and communicate the benefits of using the service to prospective customers. Analysts have also identified regulatory issues, absence of interoperability amongst disparate mobile money systems, and poor agent networks, as some of the drawbacks to the speedy adoption of the service.

“Mobile money is not getting traction in Nigeria and across West Africa…there are regulatory issues particularly amongst West African countries which have not allowed mobile money to grow as much as we would have liked it in the telco space,” Wale Goodluck, corporate services executive, MTN Nigeria said in an interview.

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South Africa: TB testing expands

South Africa is to expand its rollout of GeneXpert tuberculosis (TB) testing machines, which can diagnose TB and drug-resistant TB within 90 minutes, but concerns remain about backing up this commitment with supplies and treatment.

The country is the largest buyer of GeneXpert technology in the world, but the machines have not yet become point-of-care tests and are often deployed at district rather than clinic level. Nonetheless, they have shaved weeks off waiting times for patients because samples no longer have to be transported to and from national referral hospitals miles away for diagnosis, according to the UN humanitarian and news analysis service, IRIN.

At the opening of the TB Vaccines Third Global Forum in Cape Town on  March 25th, Precious Matsoso, director general of the South African Department of Health, announced that an additional 135 machines, to add to the existing 150 South Africa has, would  be imported by the end of 2013.

Matsoso also announced that the health department, the National Department of Science and Technology, and the US-based non-profit TB vaccine developer, Aeras, would continue to fund the recently created South Africa Consortium on TB Vaccines.

The World Health Organization (WHO) lists South Africa in the top 22 countries with a high TB burden. An estimated 500,000 cases of active TB are diagnosed annually and the disease remains the leading cause of natural death according to the national statistical service, StatSa. It is a highly infectious airborne disease that thrives in a weakened immune system and, given South Africa’s already high rate of HIV, people are extremely susceptible to infection.

In a joint letter delivered to South African Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi in March, the South African AIDS lobby the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) stressed that the success of the GeneXpert rollout hinged on a steady supply of testing cartridges for the machines, the decentralization of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) care and treatment, and improved supply-chain management to avoid recurring drug stockouts.

The organizations also questioned the continued delay in implementing the Health department’s 2011 policy decision to move DR-TB care out of designated TB hospitals with a shortage of beds to primary healthcare clinics closer to patients’ homes.

“Provincial operational plans for decentralization of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) care have not been drafted, nor have readiness assessments been conducted of all proposed decentralized MDR-TB (sites),” the letter pointed out. The organizations urged the health department to implement the 2011 policy, which would allow all of South Africa’s nine provinces to begin initiating and managing stable adult and paediatric MDR-TB at local clinics before the end of 2013.

Lack of Awareness

TB is of course treatable, but a lack of awareness at the community level combined with challenges to completing treatment, has seen the disease spread rapidly. More worryingly, in South Africa the development of a strain resistant to drugs has emerged.

South African Red Cross Society branches in the Eastern Cape provide care and support to TB patients in what is one of the poorest regions in the country. “The community is aware of TB, but they lack knowledge on how to protect themselves from getting it, spreading it and managing their treatment,” says Ruth Mufalali, South African Red Cross Society TB project manager.

Putting stickers in local minibuses has been one activity in a month-long TB awareness campaign run by the organization across the Eastern Cape. Minibuses provide perfect conditions for TB to spread; if one person has it, then the other 14 people in the minibus are all at risk. “People tend to close windows in minibuses, stopping air from circulating. As TB is an airborne disease, it is very important to allow air circulation,” says Mufalali.

In rural areas where access is a barrier to receiving treatment, Mufalali and her team visit communities where people have to walk up to 50km to reach the nearest clinic to educate them about TB symptoms and the importance of early and continued treatment.

Mufalali says while their campaign created awareness, dialogue and focus on TB through simple activities, long-term work is needed across all areas of society to reduce and eventually stop the spread of TB.

“It’s frustrating to watch people die from TB. People need to know simple ways to prevent it and to keep from spreading it. It’s just so devastating because it is preventable.”

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Press freedom in Africa

As World Press Freedom Day is marked around the globe, the performances of African nations still vary.

The Chronicle & The Sunday News office in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (Picture: David Brewer)

May 3rd marked the twentieth anniversary of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day.  The Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of UNESCO’s General Conference.

Reporters Without Borders has released its annual report on world press freedom in 2013, which documents overall trends and has a region-by-region breakdown of key issues and developments. This year already, nineteen journalists have been killed, 174 imprisoned, and 9 netizens and citizen journalists have been killed and 162 imprisoned.

The Press Freedom Index “reflects the degree of freedom that journalists, news organizations and netizens enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom.”

According to Reporters Without Borders, following the Arab uprisings and “other protest movements that prompted many rises and falls in last year’s index [the] ranking of most countries is no longer attributable to dramatic political developments. This year’s index is a better reflection of the attitudes and intentions of governments towards media freedom in the medium or long term.”

Although many criteria are considered, ranging from legislation to violence against journalists, democratic countries occupy the top of the index while dictatorial countries occupy the last three positions. Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, and Andorra are ranked as the countries that most respect media freedom, while Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Syria, and Somalia are the countries that least respect it.

Coinciding with the release of its 2013 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders is for the first time publishing an annual global “indicator” of worldwide media freedom. This new analytic tool measures the overall level of freedom of information in the world and the performance of the world’s governments in their entirety as regards this key freedom. In view of the emergence of new technologies and the interdependence of governments and peoples, the freedom to produce and circulate news and information needs to be evaluated at the planetary as well as national level. Today, in 2013, the media freedom “indicator” stands at 3395, a point of reference for the years to come.

The indicator can also be broken down by region and, by means of weighting based on the population of each region, can be used to produce a score from zero to 100 in which zero represents total respect for media freedom. This produces a score of 17.5 for Europe, 30.0 for the Americas, 34.3 for Africa, 42.2 for Asia-Pacific and 45.3 for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Despite the Arab springs, the Middle East and North Africa region comes last with 48.5.

The high number of journalists and netizens killed in the course of their work in 2012 (the deadliest year ever registered by Reporters Without Borders in its annual roundup), naturally had an a significant impact on the ranking of the countries where these murders took place, above all Somalia (175th, -11)

Eritrea (179th, 0), which was recently shaken by a brief mutiny by soldiers at the information ministry, continues to be a vast open prison for its people and lets journalists die in detention. Sudan (170th, 0) was also on the list of the ten countries that respect media freedom least.

Big rises…

Malawi(75th, +71) registered the biggest leap in the index, almost returning to the position it held before the excesses at the end of the Mutharika administration. Côte d’Ivoire (96th, +63), which is emerging from the post-electoral crisis between the supporters of Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, has also soared, attaining its best position since 2003.

…and big falls

Mali (99th, -74) registered the biggest fall in the index as a result of all the turmoil in 2012. The military coup in Bamako on March 22^nd and the north’s takeover by armed Islamists and Tuareg separatists exposed the media in the north to censorship and violence. Many journalists were physically attacked in the capital and the army now controls the state-owned media. Tanzania (70th, -36) sank more than 30 places because, in the space of four months, a journalist was killed while covering a demonstration and another was murdered.

Varied impact of major protest movements

The 2012 index was marked by the Arab spring’s major news developments and the heavy price paid by those covering the protest movements. A range of scenarios has been seen in 2012, including countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where regime change has taken place, and countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where the authorities have used promises and compromise to defuse calls for political and/or social and economic change.

Some of the new governments spawned by these protest movements have turned on the journalists and netizens who covered these movements’ demands and aspirations for more freedom. What with legal voids, arbitrary appointments of state media chiefs, physical attacks, trials and a lack of transparency, Tunisia (138th, -4) and Egypt (158th, +8) have remained at a deplorable level in the index and have highlighted the stumbling blocks that Libya (131st, +23) should avoid in order to maintain its transition to a free press.

Uganda (104th, +35) has recovered a more appropriate position although it has not gone back to where it was before cracking down on protests in 2011.

Political instability puts journalists in the eye of the storm

Political instability often has a divisive effect on the media and makes it very difficult to produce independently-reported news and information. In such situations, threats and physical attacks on journalists and staff purges are common. Guinea-Bissau (92nd, -17) fell sharply because the army overthrew the government between the first and second rounds of a presidential election and imposed military censorship on the media. This index does not reflect the January 2013 turmoil in the Central African Republic (65th, -3) but its impact on media freedom is already a source of extreme concern.

There is no comparison with South Africa (52nd, -10), where freedom of information is a reality. It still has a respectable ranking but it has been slipping steadily in the index and, for the first time, is no longer in the top 50. Investigative journalism is threatened by the Protection of State Information Bill.

Predators

On May 3^rd,  Reporters Without Borders also released an updated list of 39 Predators of Freedom of Information ­– presidents, politicians, religious leaders, militias and criminal organizations that censor, imprison, kidnap, torture and kill journalists and other news providers. Powerful, dangerous and violent, these predators consider themselves above the law.

“These predators of freedom of information are responsible for the worst abuses against the news media and journalists,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “They are becoming more and more effective. In 2012, the level of violence against news providers was unprecedented and a record number of journalists were killed. World Press Freedom Day, which was established on the initiative of Reporters Without Borders, must be used to pay tribute to all journalists, professional and amateur, who have paid for their commitment with their lives, their physical integrity or their freedom, and to denounce the impunity enjoyed by these predators.”

Among the new predators added to the list are members and supporters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, who Reporters Without Borders maintains, have been responsible for harassing and physically attacking independent media and journalists critical of the party.

Former Somali Information and Communications Minister Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed has been dropped from the list. Also know as “Jahweyn,” this Somali politician is no longer minister of information and telecommunications. His successor does not seem to be directly responsible for harassment, intimidation or other abuses against media personnel. Journalism nonetheless continues to be very dangerous in Somalia, with a total

The list of predators has been impacted by the repercussions from the Arab Spring and uprisings in the Arab world. Members and supporters of Egyptian President Morsi’s party, the Muslim Brotherhood, Physical attacks on journalists and murders of journalists usually go completely unpunished. This encourages the predators to continue their violations of human rights and freedom of information. The 34 predators who were already on the 2012 list continue to trample on freedom of information with complete disdain and to general indifference.

The leaders of dictatorships and closed countries enjoy a peaceful existence while media and news providers are silenced or eliminated. Such leaders include Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Issaias Afeworki in Eritrea and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov in Turkmenistan. In these countries, as in Belarus, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and other Central

Dropped from the predators list

Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed Also know as “Jahweyn,” this Somali politician is no longer minister of information and telecommunications. His successor does not seem to be directly responsible for harassment, intimidation or other abuses against media personnel. Journalism nonetheless continues to be very dangerous in Somalia.

Nigeria

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists timed the release of its 2013 Impunity Index for World Press Freedom Day. Nigeria has joined the list of countries where journalists are routinely murdered and assaulted without any convictions for their attackers. It is the first time the country has been in the Index, following a decade or so of relative safety for the media. Amid Islamic militant activity in the north and politically inspired violence across the country, at least five journalists have been murdered due to their work since 2009. None of the cases have been solved. Many more have been attacked, The Independent, London reported (2/5).

The Independent’s owner Evgeny Lebedev has launched a campaign – Voices In Danger – to highlight the plight of reporters being silenced in such regimes, and is featuring regular interviews in the newspaper and online with the journalists themselves, their colleagues and families.

Ayode Longe, a senior officer with the Nigerian press freedom group Media Rights Agenda, said: “Investigations into the killings are usually carried out with sloppiness, and no real culprits are caught. That has emboldened others to assault journalists, believing nothing would be done to them.”

Many of the attacks are made on those covering the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram. Local TV journalist Enenche Akogwu was shot and killed in 2012 by Boko Haram members when he was interviewing witnesses of a terror attack in the city of Kano. No charges are thought to have been brought despite the incident being in front of a crowd.

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