UN Radio

UN and Africa
Programme Number: 161
Week of: Sunday, 15th July, 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 19th July, 2007
Topical Issue(s):

" Burundi has suffered enormously because of conflict which has destroyed the country's infrastructure. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, Carolyn McAskie says the new government has to keep the country on track for peace while meeting the legitimate aspirations of its people.

" As the Security Council continues to discuss a draft resolution on Darfur, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stresses the need for speeding up the deployment of a joint African Union/United Nations peacekeeping force in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan.

" An affordable portable charcoal stove manufactured in Kenya is catching on in East Africa. UN Radio discuses this invention with Dan Kammen, an energy expert from the Berkeley Institute of the Environment in the United States.

RESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.

Hello and welcome to UN and Africa. I'm Derrick Mbatha.

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PRESENTER:

In today's programme, the people of Burundi face the challenge of rebuilding their country which is recovering from civil war.
CLIP 1: Carolyn McAskie
"It's an enormous challenge. It's like climbing Kilimanjaro. They are still at the bottom of the mountain." (0'06")

PRESENTER:

You will hear more on that in a moment. Also in this edition, the United Nations Secretary-General pushes for a speedy deployment of peacekeepers in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan.
CLIP 2: Ban Ki-moon
"The political situation on the ground is too fragile, the humanitarian crisis too dire to waste more precious time." (0'08")

And later in the programme, an innovative stove that is affordable and burns less fuel is catching on in East Africa.

So stay tuned to UN and Africa.

*Burundi Faces Enormous Challenges As it Recovers From Civil War

PRESENTER:

It's two years now since Burundi started to implement a peace agreement that ended a conflict lasting more than a decade and destroying the economy of one of the poorest African countries. More than half of the population live on less than a dollar a day. I discussed the situation in Burundi with the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, Carolyn McAskie who says that Burundi has suffered enormously at every level. She says the country's new government has a double challenge.
McAskie: One is to keep the country on track for peace. The other is to meet the very legitimate aspirations of the people coming out of conflict, at a time when it has very few resources to do so. And it's an enormous challenge. It's like climbing Kilimanjaro. They are still at the bottom of the mountain.

Mbatha: What is it so? Why is it like climbing Kilimanjaro?

McAskie: Because they have everything to do now. All the sectors have been affected by the war. But they have a wonderful policy now to get all the children in school. But you don't just say I am going to put all the children in school then you put them. You need the schools built. You need the teachers, you need the curriculum. You need to find ways to help families to get the children to the school. You need to feed them once they are there. So much to do. The general health levels in Burundi have been seriously affected. We are only now really beginning to understand on the global level how wars affect general health. Because of the war, the basic services which even a poor country like Burundi could benefit from fifteen years ago just don't exist. The clinics have been destroyed. The government doesn't have money to buy drugs. Everything has to be done. So it's like facing the mountain and saying which route shall we take first to get the top and basically you have to take all routes at one time. And that's very very difficult when you don't have resources, because they don't have the tax base to draw on now to provide the most ordinary basic services that we take for granted here in the West.

Mbatha: Why don't they have a tax base?

McAskie: Well nobody is working. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. You can only tax if you have income. There is no income. The people have lived for years in Burundi on the basis of subsistence. And there has always been very little money in the economy even in the good times. But the difference between then and now is that back then before the wars people could survive on the land. The Burundians had a very successful village culture based on the hills, the collines. And fifteen years ago Burundi was self sufficient in food. Now, because of the war for several reasons, one the departure of people from the land because of the fighting, the destruction of the land during the fighting and the loss, the fact that the land wasn't properly managed, plus since even in the peaceful times they suffered seriously from droughts and floods, you now have a situation where a country that was once self sufficient is fifty per cent of the population is malnourished. Now that immediately affects the most vulnerable. And the children, of course, we see the effects right away there.

Mbatha: And of course, you are now the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, which is closely aligned with the Peacebuilding Commission. Now, what is the Peacebuilding Commission doing to help Burundi tackle some of the problems that it is facing right now?

McAskie: Well the Commission was set up to offer the kind of sustained ongoing attention that countries in conflict lacked in the past. We provided humanitarian assistance. We provided peacekeeping assistance. But unless the long-term development relationships were there, the international community looked like it was walking away. So the Commission's job will be to increase the flow of resources into Burundi.

Mbatha: Is the Commission actually succeeding in mobilizing such resources for Burundi?

McAskie: It's starting and there have been a number of significant increases in donor contributions and one or two new donors, in fact.

Mbatha: Are you optimistic that Burundi will eventually be able to stand on its feet?

McAskie: I am very confident that Burundi has faced the demons as far as conflict goes. I think they have managed a very courageous peace process where they have dealt with really tough issues. I also think there is a determination that they will stay on track for that. So, they have taken the first biggest most difficult steps. You go into the rural areas in Burundi, the atmosphere is very different. They have put the conflict behind them. Whether they will be able to move into a status where they can really manage their affairs and feed their people will depend on the innovative approaches that we can determine. My challenge to all of us, UN, the international community, the Burundians themselves, is if we can't do it in Burundi, where can we do it.

NARRATOR:
Carolyn McAskie, the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support.
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Secretary-General Pushes for Speedy Deployment of Peacekeepers in Darfur

PRESENTER:
There's renewed hope at United Nations headquarters in New York that a resolution allowing the deployment of a joint African Union/United Nations force in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan may be adopted soon. The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has stressed the need to speed up preparations for the adoption the resolution authorizing the deployment of the force of twenty-six thousand peacekeepers in Darfur. UN Radio's Ransford Cline-Thomas reports.
NARRATOR:
Speaking to reporters at the beginning of the week, the United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-moon said progress has been made in preparations for the deployment of the joint African Union/United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur. More than 200,000 people have died and over two million displaced since the fighting broke out between Sudanese forces, janjaweed militia and rebel groups. Noting that last month the government of Sudan unconditionally accepted the deployment of the force, the Secretary General expressed the hope that the Security Council would adopt the resolution this week.
CUT 1: Ban Ki-moon
The resolution calls on member states to finalize their contributions within 90 days. I think this is fast by UN standards but I want to move more rapidly. The political situation on the ground is too fragile, the humanitarian crisis too dire to waste more precious time.

NARRATOR:
The Secretary-General noted that the Chinese government will soon send a contingent of military engineers to Darfur to begin the essential communications and logistical work that must precede the mission.

CUT 2: Ban Ki-moon
I am informed that several hundred international troops, or more, will be ready to deploy by October. I will push for September. The first units of the so-called heavy support package will begin to deploy this fall. I will push to accelerate our timetable to the maximum, to the extent that security and logistics allow.

NARRATOR:

Of course, before any deployment can take place, there is need to prepare the ground for setting up camps and other logistical matters. Well, the man in charge of United Nations peacekeeping operations, Jean Marie Guehenno, says that there have been discussions with the Sudanese authorities about the land that should be made available to set up camps for the peacekeepers and about water.
CUT 3: Jean Marie Guehenno
Recently Sudan has seemed to be forthcoming on that. We will need confirmation for a number of areas where we obviously need the land to put the camps and we need to do water surveys because, of course, water is a key factor and is in short supply in Darfur as we all know.

NARRATOR:
Jean Marie-Guehenno points out that the speeding up of preparations for the deployment of peacekeepers in Darfur will depend on the adoption of the draft resolution which is still being discussed by the Security Council.
CUT 4: Jean Marie Guehenno

What we do hope is that there will be an expeditious adoption of the resolution because that really triggers a new phase in the force generation process. Many troop contributors will not commit until they know exactly what is the mandate of the force is. I hope that the Council will come to an agreement as quickly as possible.

NARRATOR:

Jean Marie-Guehenno says the force's mandate must be robust because the situation in Darfur is very challenging. Reporting for UN Radio, I am Ransford Cline-Thomas.

STING UN AFRICA THEME MUSIC

Kenyan Portable Charcoal Stove Catches On in East Africa

PRESENTER:

One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Of course, people not only need food to fight hunger, but they also need the means by which to cook the food. In Kenya, collaboration between the government, local women's organizations, craftspeople and international aid agencies, has produced portable stoves -- the Kenya ceramic jikos -- which are becoming very popular in East Africa. One of the people involved in designing these stoves, is Dan Kammen, an energy expert from the Berkeley Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory in the United States. He told UN Radio's Yasmine Soliman that more than a million of these stoves have been sold in Kenya alone, and described some of their advantages.
Kammen: They are quite efficient. They burn thirty per cent or so less fuel than a regular stove and it turns out the real interesting benefit is that they produce significantly less pollution. And that's a big deal because the number one cause of environmental illness in many parts of the developing world, including East Africa is respiratory illness from all the smoke exposure.

Yasmine: And how affordable is it?

Kammen: Well it's actually very affordable. The stove today cost about two dollars each whereas an unimproved stove cost fifty cents to a dollar and they are now available in essentially every East African markets as well as in neighbourhoods where people with push carts walk around selling these stoves.

Yasmine: And how do you ensure sustainable that the local communities, can they re-create them?

Kammen: It's a good question. They don't really ensure it in any way. Early on when this was seen as a U.S. aid funded project to this Kenyan non-governmental organization, Kengo, the thought was that there will be a centralized facility probably in Nairobi and few other cities that would make these stoves and they would then be sold and the companies set up would be accountable internationally, and sort of a standard corporate model. But what evolved instead was a much more informal process because the stove is so easy to make. But the design matters critically for how efficient they are. Lots of informal sector producers now make them. I think there is a bout a hundred different manufacturers in Nairobi alone. The last time I was in Kampala there was around fifteen different groups making for the Ugandan market.

Yasmine: And the material you can find actually in those countries, in Kenya? I mean do you use material that's…?

Kammen: That's right. This stove is just made out of sheet metal which is pounded in shape and then a ceramic inside that which is made of clay. And there is a lay of vermiculite, of mica between the metal and then the ceramic. All of those materials are local. The stoves typically get built around malls and people just use tin snips and clay making to put them together. So it is very very local material. There is no high tech component.

Yasmine: And who uses these stoves?

Kammen: Pretty much anyone who cooks which, of course, in most of East Africa means women. But urban families almost uniformly have these stoves whether they are rich or poor. And in the rural areas then it starts to fall off. But definitely in the urban settings you are seeing every household tends to have one or more of these stoves in place.

Yasmine: Do you think it would empower women?

Kammen: Well to some extent. I mean it certainly doesn't free you from the kitchen entirely but it does cut down on people's bills quite significantly because they no longer need to spend as much money buying charcoal and wood fuel and since savings on fuel purchases tend to directly benefit women because they actually control much of the household money. But no, it doesn't change you a slave to cooking to a free spirit all by yourself.

PRESENTER:

That was Dan Kammen of the Berkeley Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory in the United States.
SIG TUNE ((Bring up briefly, dip and hold under)
PRESENTER:
And that's all for this edition of UN and Africa. Our Production Assistant was Nyi Nyi Teza and our sound engineer was Zach Pruwitt. I am Derrick Mbatha saying bye bye.
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