Al-Shabaab plotting attacks in Djibouti, UK says

June 12,2014. Al-Shabaab militants are planning further attacks in Djibouti, the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warned Thursday (June 12th), after suicide bombers last month attacked a crowded restaurant.

“There are credible reports that al-Shabaab plan, and have the capability, to attack targets in Djibouti, including Western interests,” the FCO said, adding “there is a high threat from terrorism” in the capital city.

Troops from Djibouti are part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) fighting al-Shabaab, and Djibouti’s port also serves as a key base for ships taking part in international anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa.

“Djibouti and Western interests within Djibouti may be seen as a legitimate target by al-Shabaab because of its support to the Somali government and its participation in the African Union peacekeeping mission,” the FCO said.

Last month at least one bystander was killed and several wounded when two suicide bombers attacked a restaurant, the first attack in Djibouti to be claimed by al-Shabaab since it joined the AMISOM force in 2011.

Al-Shabaab said the attack was also carried out in retaliation for Djibouti’s hosting of the United States’ biggest military base in Africa.

Britain has this week also released warnings to citizens in several East African nations including Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda — who all contribute troops to AMISOM — speaking of the threat of attacks at public screenings of the World Cup.

“Previous terrorist attacks in the region have targeted places where football matches are being viewed,” the UK said, adding that crowded areas including “transport hubs, hotels, restaurants and bars” are also possible targets.

During the World Cup final four years ago, al-Shabaab killed at least 76 people after setting off explosions that ripped through two restaurants in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

Dirty and dangerous: Child miners in Africa

June 17, 2014. Caren, 12, squats in a pit of filthy water sifting through sand with her mother in hopes of extracting minerals.
Children like Caren — and their parents — walk as far as 20 kilometres every day to work at this copper ore and gold site in Nyatike, Kenya. The work at this mine, formerly owned by a British company in the 1950s, is repetitive, dirty and desperate. If there is no gold, there is no money.
Caren stopped going to school because she couldn’t afford to buy a new uniform, and the chances of her returning are slim. Around her, small children haul loads of rocks bigger than they are and pound boulders into road gravel for hours on end.
I watch as a father and mother and their young son Brian pound rocks together to extract large hunks of copper ore out of the ground. At the end of the work day they have enough to fill a large bag. After a middleman takes a 20 per cent commission for carrying the load, the family is left with around $8. That means they were each paid around 30 cents an hour for their backbreaking labour.
This site is just one of dozens in the area. This one hasn’t had any fatalities, thankfully, however there have been many accidents. It’s not uncommon for children to fall down open mine shafts or become injured in a tunnel. Exhaustion, pneumonia and tuberculosis are commonplace here.
School dropout rates in this district are the highest in the country. The problem skyrockets when gold is found in a local community and parents flood in to mine sites with their children and negotiate with the owner to let them work.
A large-scale problem
Sites like these are remnants of what’s left behind from Western mining projects. The companies come in and mine the earth with heavy equipment and sophisticated technology for anything of value — gold, copper, cobalt and other minerals. Once the companies leave, after taking all there is, locals use rudimentary tools — hammers, chisels, picks, shovels and sometimes their bare hands — in an effort to extract anything that’s left.
Kenya is rich in resources: Mining.com says more than 300 firms are exploring the country and producing its resources after positive findings for deposits of gold, copper, titanium and zinc. Kenya’s ministry of resources says the profits will total $670-million annually, but the majority of that money will leave the country with the Western companies.
A consequence of the commercial boom is a rise in artisanal mining, where locals move into the abandoned mine sites after the Western companies leave. Local charities that work in the area told me the increase exacerbates child dropout rates and illness in the area. Watchdog group Mining Watch Canada says foreign mining companies operating in Africa have few restrictions – which poses serious risks for the health of the nearby communities.
An estimated 15,000 children are already working illegally in artisanal mines across Kenya’s Nyatike district alone. World Vision says mining work is especially harmful to growing children, and can permanently damage their growing bones and muscles. What’s worse: the minerals they’re working with are often hazardous. Exposure to uranium and mercury are not uncommon, especially at the Kenyan gold and copper mining sites, and exposure can cause profound health effects. Tuberculosis rates in the Migori region are staggering — 37 per cent — and local health officials say they see a raft of respiratory infections in miners working in the dusty conditions.
Between 30 and 50 per cent of the workforce at gold mines in Africa is made up of children under 18, according to the UN International Labour Organization. They’re seeing children as young as four and five working at the sites.
It’s not just happening in Africa: Artisinal mines dot the countryside in dozens of countries across the Asia-Pacific, as well as Central and South America. The ILO says there are a million child miners worldwide, mining everything from gravel to gold.
Poverty comes into play
The conditions may be brutal, but it’s easy to see why so many flock to mining work. There aren’t many jobs here where you can get paid with cash every day, and it’s hard to tell kids to go back to school when they’re earning a living that pays money regularly.
“The reality is that these families are dependent on the little bits they can get out of these places for an income,” said World Vision’s Cheryl Hotchkiss.
Under its new No Child for Sale campaign, World Vision is hoping to eliminate the worst forms of child labour by putting pressure on the Canadian government and big business to take a stand against unethical business practices.
It’s also trying to empower communities in Kenya through its sponsorship programs, which provide families access to things like clean water, agricultural tools and livelihood training — in the hopes families will have the income to pay for the health and education of children, so they won’t have to go to work.
“Children should be protected from the worst parts of these jobs,” Hotchkiss said. “This is no work for a child.”

Least corrupt Scandinavians fail to police bribery abroad

by News Desk / on February 10, 2014 at 10:14 /

Countries praised by the European Commission for experiencing little or no corruption at home are failing to stop their own companies paying bribes overseas, raising concerns that the squeaky-clean reputations enjoyed by much of Scandinavia and northern Europe may be tarnished by a different standard of conduct abroad.corrupt

In early February 2014, the European Union Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, released the Union’s first EU Anti-Corruption Report. It reported that that Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg and Sweden had the lowest experiences of bribery in the European Union, with less than 1% of respondents in those countries expecting to pay a bribe. These countries also earn stellar marks from Transparency International, whose widely cited Corruption Perceptions Index ranks them among the most upright nations in the world.

Yet media investigations, criminal prosecutions and successive reports by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), reveal that the same countries rarely prosecute and fine domestically-registered and even state-controlled companies suspected of paying bribes in across Asia, Africa, South America and Europe.

This disparity has raised concerns that the sunshine in European nations lauded for their transparency may not extend beyond their shores – and that some of the most influential organizations that are measuring corruption may only be telling half the story.

Yemen migrant boat sinking is 'worst this year' – UN

June 6, 2014. The UN’s refugee agency reports that 62 people have died off Yemen’s coast, in what it describes as the worst sinking incident in the region this year.

Sixty migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia and two Yemeni crew members drowned in the accident last weekend, the UNHCR said on Friday.

Every year thousands of Africans make the journey to Yemen in crowded boats.

Yemen is seen as a gateway to the Middle East or Europe but hundreds have died on the journey.

“The victims were reportedly buried by local residents after their bodies washed ashore near the Bab El Mandeb area off Yemen’s coast,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

The incident brings the number of people who have been killed trying to make this particular crossing this year to 121, the agency said.

Many thousands have fled the Horn of Africa in recent years to escape poverty and war.

The route to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea is also heavily used by migrants fleeing the Horn of Africa and, increasingly, refugees from the war in Syria.

From January to April, 42,000 migrants were detected on Mediterranean routes, with 25,650 of these crossing from Libya.

Qatar World Cup: '£3m payments to officials' corruption claim

May 31, 2014. Fifa is facing fresh allegations of corruption over its controversial decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
The Sunday Times has obtained millions of secret documents – emails, letters and bank transfers – which it alleges are proof that the disgraced Qatari football official Mohamed Bin Hammam made payments totalling US$5m (£3m) to football officials in return for their support for the Qatar bid.
Qatar 2022 and Bin Hammam have always strenuously denied the former Fifa vice-president actively lobbied on their behalf in the run-up to the vote in December 2010.

But, according to emails obtained by the Sunday Times and seen by the BBC, it is now clear that Bin Hammam, 65, was lobbying on his country’s behalf at least a year before the decision.
The documents also show how Bin Hammam was making payments directly to football officials in Africa to allegedly buy their support for Qatar in the contest.
Qatar strongly denies any wrongdoing and insists that Bin Hammam never had any official role supporting the bid and always acted independently from the Qatar 2022 campaign.
When approached by the Sunday Times to respond to their claims, Bin Hammam’s son Hamad Al Abdulla declined to comment on his behalf.
Although the vast majority of the officials did not have a vote, the Sunday Times alleges Bin Hammam’s strategy was to win a groundswell of support for the Qatari bid which would then influence the four African Fifa executive committee members who were able to take part in the election.
The Sunday Times also alleges that it has documents which prove Bin Hammam paid 305,000 Euros (£250,000) to cover the legal expenses of another former Fifa executive committee member from Oceania, Reynald Temarii.

Bin Hammam was initially banned from football for life in July 2011 after being found guilty of attempted bribery.

The allegations centred around bids to buy votes in the Fifa presidential election of that year.

However his ban was annulled a year later by the Court of Arbitration for Sport which said there was insufficient evidence to support the punishment.

Bin Hammam then quit football saying he had seen the “very ugly face of football”.

Fifa issued him with a second life ban in December 2012 for “conflicts of interest” while he was president of the Asian Football Confederation.

In March 2014, the Daily Telegraph reported a company owned by Bin Hammam had paid former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner and his family more than £1m. Payments were claimed to have been made shortly after Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

Temarii, from Tahiti, was unable to vote in the contest as he had already been suspended by Fifa after he was caught out by a Sunday Times sting asking bogus American bid officials for money in return for his support.
But the paper now alleges that Bin Hammam provided him with financial assistance to allow him to appeal against the Fifa suspension, delaying his removal from the executive committee and blocking his deputy David Chung from voting in the 2022 election.
The paper claims that had Chung been allowed to vote he would have supported Qatar’s rivals Australia. Instead there was no representative from Oceania allowed to vote, a decision which may have influenced the outcome in Qatar’s favour.
The paper also makes fresh allegations about the relationship between Bin Hammam and his disgraced Fifa ally Jack Warner, from Trinidad.
Although Warner was forced to resign as a Fifa vice-president in 2011, after it was proved he helped Bin Hammam bribe Caribbean football officials in return for their support in his bid to oust the long-standing Fifa president Sepp Blatter, the paper says it has evidence which shows more than $1.6m was paid by Bin Hammam to Warner, including $450,000 in the period before the vote.
The new allegations will place Fifa under fresh pressure to re-run the vote for the 2022 World Cup, which was held in conjunction with the vote for the 2018 tournament, in which England were eliminated in the first round with just two votes.
Fifa’s chief investigator Michael Garcia is already conducting a long-running inquiry into allegations of corruption and wrongdoing during the 2018/22 decisions. He is due to meet senior officials from the Qatar 2022 organising committee in Oman on Monday.
But that meeting may now have to be postponed in light of the Sunday Times revelations which have raised important new questions about the link between Bin Hammam and the successful Qatari World Cup campaign.

Spain arrests militant suspects in Melilla

May 30, 2014. Spain’s interior ministry says it has arrested six men on terror charges in its north African enclave of Melilla.

A statement said the men were suspected of trying to recruit fighters for militant groups in Libya and Mali.

Spain has arrested dozens of suspected militants in its enclaves in Melilla and Ceuta in recent years. The cities lie on the southern Mediterranean coast and are surrounded by Morocco.

Earlier this week, about 400 migrants breached the border fence in Melilla.

The enclave is a major crossing point for those seeking work or asylum in Europe and there have been several attempts to storm the 6m-high (19ft) border fence in recent weeks.

Friday’s arrests were carried out by Spanish police in co-ordinated raids.

One man detained was described by the interior ministry as the “first Spanish jihadist” to have returned from the conflict in Mali.

He was also suspected of attending a training camp run by Mali’s Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao).

In March, Spanish and Moroccan police detained seven men whom they accused of running a militant cell spanning both countries.

Together with a second Spanish enclave, Ceuta, Melilla is the European Union’s only land border with Africa.

Sexual violence against men, boys often a secret shame of warfare

May 16, 2014. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Male rape is utilized to destroy lives and tearing communities apart than guns alone.

Sexual abuse against men can take the form of anal and oral rape, genital torture, castration, gang rape, sexual slavery and the forced rape of others.

Starvation takes no vacation —

Feeling ashamed, fearing ostracism, many victims dare not challenge powerful myths about male rape in their cultures, experts say.

A common belief – in many African villages, is that a man who is raped becomes a woman. Another myth perpetrated is that gay men are the victims of rape, and that the only form of sexual violence against men is anal rape.

“The assumptions that underline those myths serve to silence those victims,” Chris Dolan, the director of Refugee Law Project says. His organization has produced the study with funding from British charities Plan UK and War Child.

Dolan’s briefing paper was presented to academics, policy specialists from humanitarian groups and other experts for discussion in the hopes that it will help provoke a debate on the problem at a high-level summit on ending sexual violence in conflict in London next month.

Sexual violence against men was reported in 25 countries affected by conflict between the years of 1998 and 2008, according to Refugee Law Project.

Stories from the nations of Libya, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic have come forth from witnesses. They have reported seeing male victims in sectarian battles killed and their genitals cut off.

“There is growing evidence but it tends to be anecdotal. What is increasingly clear is that the absence of evidence doesn’t mean that there’s an absence of incidents,” Dolan said.

In a study conducted by the Refugee Law Project and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. researchers screened 447 male refugees, aged 18 and older in a refugee camp in western Uganda last year. It was discovered that 13 percent of them had experienced sexual violence in the previous year alone, and that more than one in three had suffered some form of sexual violence in their lifetimes.

Africa leaders declare 'war' on Nigeria Boko Haram

May 17, 2014. African leaders meeting in Paris have agreed to wage “war” on Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamic militants.

President Hollande of France, who hosted the summit, said regional powers had pledged to share intelligence and co-ordinate action against the group.

Last month it abducted 223 schoolgirls in north-eastern Nigeria, where it is based. Fresh attacks were reported in Nigeria and Cameroon overnight.

Thousands of people have been killed by Boko Haram in recent years.

The Paris summit brought together President Francois Hollande, Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan, and their counterparts from Benin, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

Afterwards, Mr Hollande said participants had agreed on a “global and regional action plan”.

He said this involved “co-ordinating intelligence, sharing information… border surveillance, a military presence notably around Lake Chad and the capacity to intervene in case of danger”.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya said: “We are here to declare war on Boko Haram”. Idriss Deby of Chad said it would be “total war”.

Earlier, Mr Hollande called Boko Haram a “major threat to West and Central Africa”, and said it had links with al-Qaeda’s North-African arm and “other terrorist organisations”.

BBC’s International Development Correspondent Mark Doyle says the group is an international threat, drawing fighters from not just Nigeria but also from neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

Border disputes
In the latest violence, suspected Boko Haram militants attacked a camp run by a Chinese engineering company in the far north of Cameroon, near Nigeria’s north-eastern border.

Ten Chinese workers are believed to have been abducted. One Cameroonian soldier was killed, officials say.

In Nigeria itself, 11 people were reported killed in a separate attack on a village a few hours’ drive from the Cameroonian border.

A relative of one of the victims said a woman and a child were among the dead.

Representatives from the UK, US and EU also took part in the Paris meeting.

Before it began, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said regional powers needed to co-operate better when it came to cross-border intelligence.

Boko Haram has some of its bases in the Mandara mountain range that straddles the border. But the long frontier has been disputed in at least two places in recent years.

The abducted schoolgirls, who include Christians and Muslims, were seized on 14 April in the north-east Nigerian town of Chibok in Borno state.

Mr Jonathan was due on Friday to visit the town but the trip was cancelled for security reasons.

Boko Haram released a video earlier this week showing more than 100 of the girls and offering an exchange for prisoners.

President Jonathan has ruled out negotiations over their possible release, officials say.

Pirate Hijack Thwarted as Report of Cost to Merchant Shipping Released

May 11, 2014. AFRICA – Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP), a project of Marcel Arsenault’s One Earth Future Foundation, has released its annual report detailing the economic and human costs of African maritime piracy, a study which in the past has drawn criticism with some critics stating that the costs of maritime crime to freight and passenger interests mentioned are estimated, inflated and sometimes even made up entirely. The report, titled ‘The State of Maritime Piracy 2013’, examines the costs incurred as a result of pirate activity occurring both off the coast of Somalia, as well as in the Gulf of Guinea, and is released just after the most recent attack in the Indian Ocean was thwarted by EU Navfor, thankfully an increasingly rare necessity.

The study finds that attacks by Somali pirates are increasingly rare and that, at between $3 billion to $3.2 billion, the overall economic costs of Somali piracy are reduced down almost 50% from 2012. While attacks by Somali pirates have declined sharply with no large vessels taken in 2013, there are still however at least 50 hostages in captivity who have been held on average for nearly three years under deplorable conditions. At the same time local seafarers and fishermen in the region remain at high risk as pirates continue to target locally operated vessels to facilitate larger attacks. Jens Madsen, one of the report’s authors, commented:

“The efforts of the international community and the shipping industry have considerably reduced the threat of Somali piracy. But we have yet to achieve the goal of ‘Zero/Zero’ – zero vessels captured and zero hostages held.”

The report finds that while the combined economic costs of suppressing Somali piracy at sea are markedly down, there has only been a slight increase in the investment in long-term solutions ashore. Research also shows that the shipping industry increasingly relies on individualised risk mitigation, observed in the decreased use of some of the more expensive anti-piracy measures such as increased speed and re-routing. Shippers are also turning to smaller and less expensive teams of armed guards as the perceived risk of piracy is declining.

The OBP states that just three ransom payments were made to Somali pirates last year, a total maximum pay-out of $21.6 million, and a 32% decline from the previous year. In addition to the actual cost of a ransom payment however, ship owners also incur other expenses attributed to the welfare of crewmembers that were held hostage. These costs can equal the amount of gaining a worthwhile release, therefore increasing ransom related expenditures by 100%, or up to $43.2 million. As these costs usually tend to be covered by insurance policies, the OBP excludes these figures in its total economic cost estimates.

Figures which do count towards the OBP’s estimated cost of over $3 billion attributed to Somali piracy includes $999 million for military operations; $1.18 billion for security equipment and guards; $276.2 million for increased speed (which accounts for extra fuel usage as a cost of evasive measures); $462 million for additional labour related costs as a result of piracy; $12 million for prosecutions and imprisonment; $185.7 million for insurance; and $44.7 for counter piracy organisations.

The most significant trend for Somali piracy in 2013 was the aforementioned continuing decrease in the number of attacks on ships. May 10, 2014 marks two full years since the last successful hijacking of a commercial vessel by Somalia based pirates, due to the counter piracy measures taken by the international maritime community and the sterling efforts of the Combined Naval Task Forces. These haven’t completely stopped pirates from attempting to capture vessels and cargo however as, on April 26, six armed pirates captured a local dhow and her crew. Only to flee the scene after being sighted by an EU Navfor Spanish maritime patrol and reconnaissance (MPRA) aircraft.

In that case the master confirmed his ordeal to members of the Boarding Team from the EU Naval Force flagship, FGS Brandenburg, after the German warship had closed the sea area to investigate the dhow. The master stated that the pirates had forced him and his crew to sail toward the Gulf of Aden, where they had planned to use the dhow as a mother ship to attack merchant ships at sea. Before they left his ship the master said that the pirates had stolen electronic equipment and other personal items from the crew. Speaking about the incident, the EU Force Commander, Rear Admiral Jürgen zur Mühlen, said:

“This event confirms that the piracy threat is still very real. The deterrence and swift action by EU Naval Force has once again denied freedom of action to pirates.”

Reverting back to the report, piracy off West Africa is distinctly different from, and unrelated to, Somali piracy in many significant ways related to historical, legal, political and geographical differences between the two regions, a point we have made here on several occasions. Significantly, attacks off West Africa occur in both territorial waters and international waters. Because of this, security structures differ: only local forces may legally provide armed security within territorial waters, as the continuing trials and tribulations of the MV Seaman Guard Ohio bear witness to.

Given that the majority of piracy-related incidents in West Africa during 2013 occurred within twelve nautical miles of a coast, those incidents fell within a specific country’s jurisdiction and protection. Unlike in the Indian Ocean, where Somali authorities still lack a coast guard or navy with the capability to project power at sea, West African states have both the legal responsibility and in some cases the naval resources to respond to armed robbery, in effect changing the tactics that the pirates need to use, and the regulatory and judicial tools available to counter piracy.

The study finds that a critical lack of reporting in certain regions on both the piracy and maritime crime in general makes analysis difficult, but according to the information the OBP says it has gathered, pirates subjected 73 seafarers to kidnap for tactical ransom. Due to a lack of available information, the report estimates that a total of around $1.5 million was paid as ransom for individuals. Once again, this figure is not included in the total cost as it would normally be covered by insurance.

For those cost categories where information is available, OBP’s total cost estimates for piracy in West Africa are between $566.47 and $683 million, with the cost of military operation estimated between $348.06 and $370 million; the cost of security equipment between $150.9 to $225.4 million; $9.19 million for labour costs; the value of stolen goods ranging from $10.1 to $30.27 million; $40 million for piracy related insurance; and $6.64 million for counter piracy organisations and maritime capacity building efforts. Differing from action in East Africa, the prosecution of pirates in West African waters should be in some ways less complicated than prosecution of Somali pirates because the presence of national judicial institutions clarifies, in principle, who takes responsibility for prosecuting the criminals. That being said, there have been no prosecutions to date of the arrested suspected pirates held in Nigeria, leading to zero costs of prosecutions and imprisonment.

The OBP estimates that 1,871 crewmembers were exposed to attacks within the areas of interest in 2013, with 1,209 crewmembers on ships boarded by pirates. Last year, 279 seafarers spent time as hostages of West African pirates indicating that hostage rates are up from those reported in 2012. Of these 279 seafarers, as stated above 73 were abducted by pirates for the purposes of ransom. These crew members were not held for just a brief period of time while the pirates used the vessel for their own ends, but were deliberately taken off their ships. Madsen continued:

“Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is fundamentally different to that taking place in the Indian Ocean. We observe not only a high degree of violence in the attacks in this region, but also the lack of a mutually trusted reporting architecture and the constantly evolving tactics of West African piracy making it extremely difficult to isolate it from other elements of organised maritime crime.”

The report notes it is generally agreed the solution to piracy ultimately lies in building up capacity onshore, but it stresses that relatively little investment has been made towards sustainable solutions. Marcel Arsenault, Chairman of One Earth Future Foundation:

“While I am encouraged that more money is being spent on longer-term solutions ashore, these still only represent the equivalent of 1.5% of the total annual cost of the piracy. Until we have more economic opportunity and better governance ashore, we risk piracy returning to previous levels as soon as the navies and guards have gone home.”

Qaeda Affiliates Gain Regional Influence as Central Leadership Fades

New York Times (05/01/14) Schmitt, Eric

Al-Qaida is increasingly becoming a looser association of various regional affiliates, a trend which has resulted in the group’s Pakistan-based leaders becoming more and more irrelevant in the terror network’s operations, a new State Department report has found. The report, which was released Wednesday, noted that regional al-Qaida affiliates in Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and West Africa became increasingly aggressive and independent from the core al-Qaida leadership beginning last year. These groups still occasionally receive ideological guidance from al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri, the report found, but they are becoming more and more focused on achieving their own goals. For instance, al-Qaida affiliates in the Middle East and Africa are generally trying to expand the scope of their operations by exploiting the turmoil and lack of effective government in some countries, the report noted. Al-Qaida’s core leadership in Pakistan, meanwhile, has been weakened by counterterrorism efforts and is having trouble keeping the terrorist network from breaking up into a number of smaller groups. State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Tina S. Kaidanow says the shift towards greater decentralization inside al-Qaida poses a challenge for the U.S. because it means that officials will need to have a greater understanding of the conditions in the countries in which al-Qaida affiliates operate.

Zimbabwe: Savanna Decries Industrial Espionage

Apr 22, 2014. Savanna Tobacco says industrial espionage by its tobacco industry arch rivals is suffocating its potential and capacity to increase exports by a factor of at least 50 percent.

Executive chairman Mr Adam Molai said in an interview last week that customers were being haunted and their products confiscated in what could throw the victims out of business.

Mr Molai said Savanna, one of Zimbabwe’s biggest cigarette makers, could instantly increase exports by 50 percent if the issue of the alleged industrial espionage is resolved.

He said customers risk losing all their capital to well planned illegal harassment by its fiercest industry competitor.

This comes after Savanna spent over 5 million euro ($6,8million) over the last five years towards building production capacity and was now focusing on optimal exploitation of this capacity.

“We can increase exports by a minimum of 50 percent if authorities play their role by making sure these activities are stopped.

“We continue to face challenges where customers trying to buy products for exports are followed, ferreted and harassed,” he said.

Mr Molai said investment over the last five years has created capacity that the company is now working to harness optimally, but industrial espionage has been a huge let down.

Savanna has installed capacity of over 4,5 billion sticks per year. The firm has improved output from 3 000 master cartons in 2004 to between 35 000 and 40 000 master cartons monthly.

The executive chairman’s remarks came as he stressed the need to maintain growth in exports saying this remained critical in improving liquidity while hard currency would become more critical when Zimbabwe recalls its own currency.

According to Savanna Tobacco, reports have been made to authorities, but no action has as yet been undertaken on this. The company exports cigarettes to most regional countries.

British American Tobacco Zimbabwe was recently caught in an intricate web of controversy over allegations of employing industrial espionage tactics against its competitors, Kingdom, Savanna Tobacco, Breco, Cutrag, Trednet and Chelsea although this has remained difficult to prove.

However, its handlers have hitherto courted similar controversy on the continent with media reports alleging this is the group’s modus operandi in other markets in Africa.

According to media reports in Nigeria, in April 2002 a legal team from South Africa’s Port Elizabeth obtained urgent court orders in three SA High Courts, sanctioning them to raid offices of BAT, South African Revenue Services and a firm of private detectives called Forensic Security Services.

Three high court judges ordered searches at BAT South Africa offices in Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria, including the offices of the Sars and Forensic Security Services, a private investigating firm allegedly hired by BAT.

In its court application, Apollo Tobacco accused BAT of plotting with tax authorities and private detectives in “industrial espionage”.

Apollo alleged BAT conspired with the Sars officials to obtain confidential information about Apollo’s business operations.

Although the raids on BAT offices yielded incriminating documents from seized computers, BAT denied it had done “anything wrong to undermine Apollo Tobacco’s legitimate business”.

Governments more likely to negotiate with terrorists as violence increases: study

Published 2 May 2014

For decades, the hard line approach to national terrorism cases has called for governments not to negotiate with terrorists. This approach also asserted that terrorism is ineffective. A new study is proposing, however, that in certain cases the opposite may be true.“Instead of asking whether terrorism is effective, we should be concentrating on when and for what purpose is terrorism effective, especially since the empirical record shows that terrorism has both hurt and helped the causes of violent organizations that have employed the tactic,” the author writes.

For decades, the hard line approach to national terrorism cases has called for governments not to negotiate with terrorists. This approach also asserted that terrorism is ineffective. A new study is proposing, however, that in certain cases the opposite may be true.

The American Journal of Political Science has just published an article titled “Rewarding Bad Behavior: How Governments Respond to Terrorism in Civil War,” in which author Jankana Thomas, an associate professor at Michigan State University, attempts to find the reality in the long-standing debate over the effectiveness of terrorism.

In a Washington Post feature, Thomas writes that “Instead of asking whether terrorism is effective, we should be concentrating on when and for what purpose is terrorism effective, especially since the empirical record shows that terrorism has both hurt and helped the causes of violent organizations that have employed the tactic. Very little extant research, however, helps us understand this variation.”

Thomas’s own exploration has found that governments involved in civil war in Africa from 1989 to 2010 were exponentially more likely to negotiate with terror groups as the acts of violence perpetrated by those groups increased. She also cites recent examples such as the extreme and effectual violence of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

She also points out the shifting understanding of what terrorism can accomplish, saying that “one of the limitations of current research is that it relies on concessions as the sole measure by which the success of acts of terrorism can be evaluated. That is, studies consider groups successful when they are able to extract a great deal of concessions from their targets, and unsuccessful when they are not…Researchers argue that groups have also used terrorism to disrupt peace deals (spoiling) and to divert support from other organizations (outbidding).”

She goes on to explain that further increased violence eventually will force a government to submit. “Why would terrorism increase the odds of rebels participating in talks?” Thomas asks. “In short, it is because it hurts. Recurrent acts of terrorism undermine the state’s credibility,” she answers, adding “When both terrorism and counterterrorism inflict massive costs on civilians, the population is left with a choice of two bad options…For these reasons, governments should be expected to pursue negotiated settlements to stop the pain caused by terrorism and to strike deals.”

World’s Most Advanced Hackers are in Russia and Eastern Europe

08 May 2014
At Infosecurity Europe 2014, Eleanor Dallaway caught up with Ross Brewer, vice president and managing director for international markets, and Mike Reagan, CMO at LogRhythm to talk insider threats, and the global threat landscape…

As MD for international markets, LogRhythm’s Ross Brewer is well versed in the latest geographical trends and targets. “Germany is a big target at the moment”, he told Infosecurity. “It is a manufacturing country with amazing IP. It’s a country conscious of monitoring its population too much with a focus on employee privacy, and this is not lost on the hacking community.” German IP is therefore a target and tends to end up in Asia, according to Brewer.

As an emerging market, the Middle East positioning itself as ‘the destination’ is also a target, Brewer said. “The biggest threat to Europe comes from Eastern countries where the most experienced, most capable hackers are. The most advanced hackers on the planet reside in Russia and Eastern Europe.” Threats from Asia tend to be less stealthy, however, Brewer declared. “So whilst the most obvious threat comes from Asia, the most real threat comes from East Europe.”

LogRhythm’s Brewer also flagged the French market as vulnerable, notably “because they buy all their technology from within France, but forget they’re plugged into a global internet which leaves them exposed.”

Brewer also addressed Africa. “As technologies become more pervasive and wireless more common in Africa, there will be increased threat activity. At the moment, the African infrastructure is not on the same level as the rest of the world, with power and technology intermittent, but as that increases, so too will the threat”.

A recent survey of 1000 IT professionals, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of LogRhythm, found 36% of IT professionals believe employees would access or steal confidential information, yet 38% do not have, or know of, any systems in place to stop employees accessing unauthorised data.

In a corresponding survey of 200 employees, 47% admitted to having accessed or taken confidential information from the workplace. “In more than three quarters of these cases, they were not caught”, Reagan told Infosecurity. “And of the minority that were caught, there was no consequence or disciplinary action.”

What’s surprising about the results, said Reagan, “is the size of the visibility gap. There has been enough high-profile breach action for everyone to know that there is a big problem, there’s a growing abundance of information that shows what the problem is, so it’s baffling that the majority of organizations aren’t putting adequate systems in place.”

The problem, agreed Brewer and Reagan, is the high-privileged access to data that organizations are giving people. “It’s not if you’ll be breached, but when. Those that aren’t taking action will be forced to by share-holders eventually.”

The report results cite the insider threat as a bigger security risk (31%) than external threats (29%), yet the general consensus suggests that not enough importance is being placed on containing it, with 37% feeling like their business could do more to safeguard information from employees. “It will take legislation to drive this home. It could even take lives being cost before action is taken”, said Brewer.

Comparing the potential damage from the malicious insider threat versus the accidental, Brewer is clear that the deliberate threat is likely to be more catastrophic. “The accidental exposure of information is not used or deliberately targeted, so the consequences are less severe. Targeted crime is more concerning and causes more damage.”

US, African Countries Team Up to Tackle Piracy in Gulf of Guinea

Apr 23, 2014. Three blocs of African countries and the United States have agreed to coordinate efforts to fight piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

Forty vessels have been attacked by armed gangs in the Gulf of Guinea this year, according to senior officials of the U.S. military’s Africa Command. The epicenter of West African piracy is Nigeria, with 12 attacks and multiple kidnappings this year.

Aboko Patrick, mayor of Kombo Abedimo, a Cameroonian locality on the Bakassi peninsula, tells VOA that the government of Cameroon negotiated his release when he and some friends were captured by pirates.

“We were embarrassed with three gun boats armed to the teeth, with about 10 persons per boat,” he said. “There were gun firings. Some of us fell into water and we were picked up by pirates and taken to their camp. We were given indiscriminate beatings for close to about six hours. We sustained various injuries ranging from wounds and fractures.”

Philip Hey, chief of the air and maritime program of the U.S. Africa Command, says organized piracy is increasing because West African countries do not make maritime safety a priority.

“The criminals are winning. Criminals act with impunity on African waters,” Hey said. “They fish illegally, they move illegal drugs, arms, weapons, they attack ships and shippings and that has a very negative impact on trade for Africa and for economic development for Africa.”

Fondo Sikot, an economist at the University of Yaounde, says trade and movements have been seriously hampered by pirate activities. He gives the example of Nigeria, which produces 2 million barrels of oil per day, but where oil tankers going abroad face the constant threat of hijacking and theft.

“If the countries do not do something to stop that, it will be so difficult to ship or import anything and without the ships being able to move freely, because they are afraid of pirates, you can imagine what it means for the economy, especially small economies like ours that depend a lot on that [maritime trade],” he said.

Hey adds the current situation is causing harm to the economies of both Africa and developed countries.

“Maritime trade is a shared interest. Every country has an interest,” he said. “The U.S. is interested in keeping trade going. Cameroon is interested in keeping trade going and that is why we use that expression ‘No shipping, no shopping.'”

This week’s meeting in Yaounde involved senior military officers from the Economic Community of West African States, the Economic Community of Central African States, and the Gulf of Guinea commission. The officers and the U.S. Africa Command agreed to create a regional coordination center for maritime safety and also to arm it to face growing insecurity on the Gulf of Guinea.

Cameroon Defense Minister Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo says his country already has the facilities to host the center. “It will be an institution to determine all operational and practical strategies against maritime insecurity.”

The Gulf of Guinea Commission says countries on the Gulf supply around 40 percent of Europe’s oil and 29 percent of petroleum products to the United States, It says without better maritime security, the region could become another Gulf of Aden, where Somali pirates ran wild for several years before international naval patrols shut them down.

Gulf of Guinea Maritime Risks Misunderstood BY MAREX

May 2, 2014. The attack on the SP Brussels by pirates off Nigeria’s coast, which resulted in one merchant seaman being killed, could have been completely avoided maritime security firm GoAGT has said.

The Medaillon Reedererei owned product tanker was attacked off Nigeria, at 19:31 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on 29th April, as the ship sailed from Port Harcourt to Lagos. It was reported that the crew retreated to the citadel but two merchant seamen were unable to reach it. One of them was found dead during a search of the vessel and the second one was found hiding with minor injuries. Two of the attackers were killed during the exchange of gunfire.

Nick Davis, CEO of GoAGT, said: “This is a recognized high risk area. It is hugely important that shipping companies recognize the risks they are facing when in the Gulf of Guinea. The criminal gangs are well armed and will stop at nothing. Poorly trained, locally employed and under manned armed security teams are no match for the threat they are facing.

“While it is reported that the Brussels had a citadel for the crew to shelter in, this can only be an effective and valid part of the vessels defense if the security team and the crew have trained hard in anti-piracy and citadel drills. This requires a security team that has a thorough knowledge of the ship and has established highly effective communications and co-ordination procedures with the crew. Only this way will they maintain an effective lookout that allows all the crew to react in time and achieve shelter in the citadel.”

He added: “In this case it would appear that the locally employed Armed Security Team were unable to secure all crew members in the citadel, and one of the two unfortunate crew members who failed to make sanctuary was subsequently killed by the pirates. This was a very sad outcome and not one that any civilian merchant sailor should have to be subjected to in the normal course of a working day.”

The incident happened just days after the Obangame Express 2014 maritime exercise concluded on 23rd April, which aimed at providing African, European and Atlantic partner naval forces the opportunity to work together, refine tactics, and improve cooperation in order to help Gulf of Guinea nations deter piracy and other maritime threats.

Nick said: “With the end of this exercise it is likely we will see a drawdown in the active presence of the Nigerian Navy, perhaps allowing greater opportunity for maritime crime activity. Even during the exercise there were three incidents of piracy reported. This is certainly not the time for the shipping industry to relax its guard.”

Renewed hope in poaching war

May 4, 2014. SA has entered into bilateral agreements with several countries to tackle wildlife poaching, offering new hope in the war against this scourge, writes Edna Molewa.

Partnerships are key to addressing wildlife crimes. Due to their international nature, it has become important for the South African government to enter into cooperation agreements with key states so that one of the most lucrative crimes of the modern age can be tackled.

Wildlife crime, ranked with drug and human trafficking and arms smuggling as one of the top four global illegal trades, threatens some of the world, Africa and South Africa’s most popular and loved species.

This includes the rhino, which has borne the brunt of poaching by unscrupulous and greedy criminal syndicates for the past few years.

Part of the South African government’s effort to address the threat being faced by rhino is to negotiate and enter into bilateral agreements with range, transit and consumer states.

It is for this reason that South Africa and Mozambique took the significant step last month of cementing relations through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the field of Biodiversity Conservation and Management.

The agreement is the third Biodiversity Management MoU to be entered into by South Africa in the past 16 months.

While all three agreements are broadly directed at land and marine conservation, the emphasis in implementation has been rhino poaching, as part of the bid to halt the killing of these iconic animals.

Last year, a MoU with the People’s Republic of China on co-operation in the fields of Wetland and Desert Ecosystems and Wildlife Conservation was signed in Pretoria.

The MoU is to be supplemented with an Implementation Plan to be signed soon.

The MoU with Vietnam on co-operation in the field of Biodiversity Conservation and Protection was signed in December 2012.

This was followed by the signing of an Implementation Plan putting into action the terms set out in the MoU in May last year.

Good progress has been made with the implementation of the South Africa-Vietnam MoU.

A high-level delegation from Vietnam undertook a working visit to South Africa in March to emphasise the commitment by Vietnam to improving cooperation on biodiversity conservation, especially controlling the illicit trade and poaching of wildlife, including rhino.

Work at policy, regulatory and awareness raising levels is progressing with a second workshop being planned for later this year.

On April 17, a government-to-government MoU was concluded with Mozambique, less than a year since a meeting between the Mozambican Minister of Tourism Carvalho Muária and I in Maputo.

The signing of the MoU with Mozambique took place within the context of the strengthening of relations between the two countries to enhance the protection of endangered species, such as the rhino, while working towards a common and co-ordinated management approach for the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

The main areas of co-operation contained in the MoU include biodiversity management, conservation and protection; the promotion of biodiversity and sustainable use as an integral part of conservation of species and ecosystems; compliance with Cites and other relevant internationally, regional and sub- regional binding conventions and protocols; biodiversity law enforcement; joint technology innovation, development and enhancement, as well as wildlife trade, protected areas management, community development through biodiversity economy, and sustainable livelihoods.

But co-operation between the two countries to deal with the scourge of rhino poaching has not been limited to the signing of a MoU.

South Africa and Mozambique have enjoyed excellent relations since 1994.

Our two countries had a unique relationship of solidarity in the struggle for liberation prior to the advent of democracy 20 years ago.

As a strategic partner within the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the government had recognised the importance of engaging on wildlife management, particularly with respect to addressing the scourge of rhino poaching within the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP).

The signing of the treaty on the establishment, development and management of the GLTP by the heads of state of Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe signified the maturity of the relationship between the three countries.

It culminated in a number of successes that included, among others, the creation of Giriyondo tourist access facility, the translocation of more than 5 000 animals to the Limpopo National Park and facilitating the natural migration of about 1 000 elephants and 300 rhino, and many other species into the Limpopo National Park, as well as an overall enhancement of the relationship between the three countries.

Since the bilateral meeting last June where an implementation strategy to combat wildlife crime was endorsed, good progress has been made with the operationalisation of a Draft Co-operation Agreement on the Joint Protection and Management of the Rhino and Elephant Population in the Great Limpopo Park and Conservation Area.

This agreement has resulted in increased joint collaboration efforts on rhino anti-poaching interventions on park management level.

The development of a Joint Operations Cross-Border Protocol by both of the park management agencies will, once approved by the safety and security clusters of the two countries, provide for joint cross-border operations.

Well-trained and armed anti-poaching unit members are being deployed in Mozambique for joint operations with the Kruger Park team, as operational plans between the Limpopo and Kruger parks are being synchronised to ensure greater effectiveness and success.

In Mozambique, the Limpopo National Park is continuing with its community resettlement programme, which aims to move communities residing within the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park to designated areas on the buffer zone.

Within SADC, the Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security, under the leadership of the South African National Defence Force, last September adopted a decision that has enabled South Africa to collaborate with Mozambique to develop and implement a common strategy to deal with poaching.

Much progress has been made in this regard and it is hoped that the results will soon become evident.

Further afield, South Africa, as a member of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC), last year joined member states in recognising that wildlife trafficking is a significant conservation, safety and security, and social issue that has a far-reaching impact on species, ecosystems, livelihoods, sustainable development, economies and national and regional security.

Questions are often raised about the effectiveness of MoUs and bilateral agreements, with many arguing that these deflect attention from the real issues.

In the case of rhino poaching, it has been argued on social media that the agreement has come too late and that not enough is being done by South Africa and Mozambique to rein in those responsible for the high levels of poaching in, particularly, the Kruger Park.

It must again be emphasised that rhino poaching is a complex crime.

Due to its cross-border nature, it requires commitment by not only South Africa, but also transit and consumer states, to combat this crime.

Besides the MoUs signed with Vietnam, China and Mozambique, agreements are also being explored with Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

Entering international or bilateral co-operation agreements is only as effective as the levels of willingness, political commitment and co-operation that exist either within, or between, the countries involved.

An MoU is an enabling vehicle for the implementation of actionable plans – the areas which define the real work and terms of which real success can be measured.

Because the agreements with China, Vietnam and Mozambique are still in their infancy, the successes of each will be measured through the successful implementation of awareness raising, the alignment of policy and legislation, and joint law enforcement that will result in the ultimate drop in, and possible end of, rhino poaching.

What makes this MoU significant is that it is a government-to-government agreement.

That means it is not limited to the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, but to all areas being managed for conservation in both countries.

Entering into a MoU with Mozambique is not aimed at dictating to our neighbours what to do in dealing with wildlife matters, including rhino poaching.

It is rather a way for our two countries to work together to harmonise our laws and policies to ensure that crimes, such as rhino poaching, are halted.

The Mozambican government has already shown its commitment to addressing wildlife crimes, particularly rhino and elephant poaching, through the enactment of the Conservation Areas Act on April 9, 2014.

The new act is a commendable step forward for conservation in the region and provides a legislative framework for Mozambique to support its international biodiversity conservation obligations.

The Conservation Areas Act has strengthened the enforcement and punitive measures providing for significant sentences for wildlife crime-related activities, including rhino poaching, for those convicted by Mozambican courts.

The co-operation between our two countries, the strength of our political will and commitment, alongside the implementation of workable joint programmes – including cross-border collaboration and joint operations – will be the true measure of the success of the MoU.

It is a success I am confidently looking forward to.

* Molewa is the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs.

*** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.

What's at stake in war against girls' kidnappers?

May 6, 2014. CNN) — Befitting its status as a fast-growing oil exporter, for Nigeria this week was to be a coming out party of sorts, as it hosts the 24th World Economic Forum on Africa. More than a thousand academic, business, civil society and political leaders are supposed to gather in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, beginning on Wednesday, to discuss “inclusive growth and job creation.”
Conflicting with this image of an emerging regional economic powerhouse, just two days before the start of the World Economic Forum meeting, Nigeria is in the international headlines for all the wrong reasons: Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, a militant Islamist organization, released a video on Monday claiming responsibility for kidnapping more than 270 schoolgirls in northern Nigeria last month.

The Boko Haram leader explained that the girls should not be attending school and should instead get married. He also threatened to sell the girls in the marketplace because, he said while laughing, “Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women.”
That statement, coming the day after Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan held a nationally televised “media chat” in which he vowed to rescue the girls, highlights Boko Haram’s growing power in the country, as well as the government’s relative inability to stop the group’s attacks.
If Boko Haram’s growing insurgency isn’t halted in Nigeria, it threatens to jeopardize the largest economy in Africa and the some $100 billion in oil revenue the country generates every year.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” has been at war with the Nigerian state for years.

Founded in 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf, a member of the short-lived “Nigerian Taliban,” it is predominantly focused on attacking the Nigerian government and implementing Taliban-style Sharia law. Yusuf was killed in 2009 while he was in police custody.
There is no doubt that Boko Haram is a growing threat to Nigerians, but to what extent is it also a threat to Western interests? So far not much, although that could change. In the 12 years since its creation, Boko Haram has attacked an international target only once, when it bombed the United Nations office in the Nigerian capital Abuja in August 2011.
A year earlier, Shekau, the Boko Haram leader, had released a statement expressing solidarity with al Qaeda and threatening the United States, and Osama bin Laden was reportedly in direct contact with the group’s leaders. However, al Qaeda has never formalized any kind of partnership with Boko Haram.
That said, the group has received some funding from the North African al Qaeda affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM; the exact numbers are unknown, but it is estimated that AQIM has accumulated $90 million, much of it from kidnappings.
6 reasons why the world should demand action
The United States is sufficiently worried about anti-Western terrorism in Nigeria that on Friday the State Department released a warning to Americans traveling in and to Nigeria that “groups associated with terrorism” may be planning an attack on a Sheraton hotel in Lagos, the country’s commercial center.

Though Lagos has never been attacked by Boko Haram, recent bombings in Abuja — the first in two years — show that militants are increasingly turning to targets outside their home base in Nigeria’s northern territories.
To combat the growing threat of Boko Haram, the President placed the northern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe under a six-month state of emergency in May 2013; the state of emergency was extended for six more months in November. But despite the heightened presence of security forces in those states, the Boko Haram insurgency has worsened.
Amnesty International reported on Saturday that more than 1,500 people were killed because of fighting between Islamist militant groups and the government in the first three months of 2014, a total greater than in all of 2013.
Continuing this trend, 19 people were killed and more than 60 were injured in a car bombing in an Abuja suburb on Thursday. (No group has claimed responsibility for that bombing, but it occurred in the same area as a Boko Haram attack that killed at least 70 people on April 14.)
Initially, Jonathan downplayed the Boko Haram threat, calling the situation “temporary” and arguing that the Nigerian security forces were winning the battle against the militants. But after international criticism and domestic outrage, Jonathan has called for an investigation into the mass kidnappings of the girls in April and has said he is open to receiving foreign assistance.
Boko Haram: The essence of terror
Some of this assistance will be coming from the United States, with a U.S. official telling CNN that: “You are going to see a focus on this in all three channels of government: diplomatic, intelligence and military.”
Adding to the growing frustration within Nigeria over the abductions are reports that Patience Jonathan, Nigeria’s first lady, bizarrely ordered the arrest of two of the leaders of the protests that had erupted after the kidnappings of the girls in April, and had even denied the kidnappings had taken place. Patience Jonathan’s office has denied the reports, but she was quoted by the News Agency of Nigeria as saying, “You are playing games. Don’t use schoolchildren and women for demonstrations again.”

Al-Shabaab takes credit for Mogadishu blasts, including one that killed 10

May 3, 2014. Mogadishu, Somalia (CNN) — A former government official was among 10 people killed in a bombing Saturday in Somalia’s capital, with Al-Shabaab — the Islamist militant group that’s long been tied to violence in the region — claiming responsibility for the attack.
The slain official, Abdikafi Holowle Osman, was a former Benadir regional administrative secretary and an active campaigner against Al-Shabaab.
He died when a bomb went off as he was driving in KM4, a busy junction in Mogadishu, police said. Police Col. Kamal Farah said the explosive device was attached to Osman’s when it went off shortly after noon (5 a.m. ET).
Three security guards and six civilians who were nearby also died in the blast, according to Farah. Hospital sources said at least eight people injured were being treated at Media Hospital.
Separately, there were no injuries after a device attached to the car of Somali lawmaker Abdullah Ahmed exploded outside a hotel near the port, close to the heavily fortified government district. The prime minister’s office indicated that a Somali citizen had alerted authorities that the car had been rigged with explosives.
In a statement, Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for both Saturday attacks in the eastern African nation’s capital. Al-Shabaab official Ali Mohamed Hussein accused Osman of working with “foreign spy agencies” based southwest of Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab is seeking to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state, though it has carried out attacks in other African countries as well. A prime example of the latter was last September’s attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, which ended with at least 67 dead.
Somalia’s Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed issued a statement Saturday, sending condolences to the families of those killed in the latest violence.
“Shedding the blood of innocent civilians has no basis in our Islamic religion or in Somali culture,” he said.

Can You Afford The Risk?

4/16/2014 @ 2:44PM

In 2013, 80% of supply chain leaders had a material supply chain disruption. It was not just one. The average company had  three. Yet, in a study that I just completed at Supply Chain Insights, when asked about business pain, supply chain risk rates low. How come?

It is new.  It lacks a consistent definition and set of practices. Companies reward the urgent. Risk management requires a focus on the important. It requires leadership and orchestration.

Today, teams don’t know what to do. The companies that are the most mature learned the hard way. They had a disruption.

Defining the Topic

Let’s start with a definition. For the purposes of the study that we just completed, we defined supply chain risk management as the proactive identification and resolution of potential risks to the supply chain. The key word in this sentence is proactive. Unfortunately, too many supply chains are reactive. The systems respond, but they do not sense. Performance is measured by indicators, not by performance predictors.

New Insights

Supply Chain leaders answers are hard-wired for supply. Many companies will wax eloquently about the work that they are doing on “control tower” or “supply chain visibility.” It is not sufficient. We find that we are only dipping our toes into turbulent waters.

I have been working as an analyst in supply chain management for the last decade. In this role, I have done a study on risk management about every five years. I seldom get surprised on study results; but, the answer to the question on risk drivers in this survey surprised me.  As you can see in Figure 1, today it is less about supply and more about demand. Demand is the highest risk factor today; but in the future, the largest gap in risk management will be the management of global operations. The total risk profile is shown in the figure. For me, these two trends are significant:

Demand Variability. The biggest surprise for me in the research is the role of demand uncertainty on risk. Demand is more volatile and unpredictable. With the elongation of product platforms, demand latency has increased. (Demand latency is the time that it takes to translate customer purchases into an order for replenishment.) The building of demand sensing capabilities automates of market sensing and the use of channel data and can improve the time to sense market changes by 10-40X. It is much different than forecasting. Unfortunately, too few companies understand the concepts of demand latency and the importance of the use of these new forms of analytics.

When it comes to the implementation of demand sensing technologies, the implementation is easier than the organizational change management issues. However, it is difficult for the supply chain organization to accomplish this by themselves. Why?  The term “supply chain” is politically charged. It has become a function, not an end-to-end process.  Marketing and sales are also functions. The functional approach does not allow us to build demand processes. By and large, marketing and sales are not good at forecasting demand. They introduce bias. To combat this issue, and drive success in demand sensing, many companies have to rename the work stream so that it can truly be an end-to-end focus. For sales-driven and marketing-driven companies, this is a major change management issue. Simply put, to reduce risk, redefine demand processes.

Increasing Complexity of Operations. With a decade of building global supply chains behind us, companies are feeling the impact. Local regulations, fair labor, variability in shipping lanes, new materials, outsourced manufacturing and faster product development cycles are all contributing to the pain. The financial stability of contract manufacturers and third-party logistics firms is a growing risk. It is not just one factor. We are better at managing regional supply chains than tangled/knotty global ones. The organizational dynamics and politics make regional/global governance difficult. The availability of talent in Brazil, China and Africa is a also a risk.

Figure 1: Supply Chain Risk Management Issues

What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from you.

New Kenya law legalizes polygamy; women's group applauds it

May 2, 2014. (CNN) — A new law that went into effect in Kenya this week makes it legal for a man to marry as many women as he wants. And a leading women’s group is applauding it.
President Uhuru Kenyatta signed the polygamy measure into law Tuesday, formally recognizing what has long been a cultural practice in the nation.
Parliament passed the bill in March despite protests from female lawmakers who angrily stormed out of the late-night session at the time.
The bill initially allowed the first wife the right to veto the husband’s choice of additional spouses. Male members of parliament successfully pushed to get that clause dropped.
“We are happy with the law because finally all marriages are being treated equally.”
Christine Ochieng, executive director of Federation of Women Lawyers
“Marriage is the voluntary union of a man and a woman whether in a monogamous or polygamous union,” Kenyatta said in a statement. “The Marriage Act 2014 defines various types of marriages including monogamous, polygamous, customary, Christian, Islamic and Hindu marriages.”
No limit on number of wives
The law legalizes polygamous unions, but does not provide an official limit on the number of wives a man can have.
The Federation of Women Lawyers, a powerful women’s rights group, applauded aspects of the bill and criticized others.
Polygamy already is a common fixture among many cultures in Kenya and in some other African countries.
The bill, the group said, is long overdue because polygamous unions were previously not regarded as equal to regular marriages.
“We are happy with the law because finally all marriages are being treated equally,” said Christine Ochieng, executive director of the nation’s Federation of Women Lawyers.
“All marriages will be issued with marriage certificates, including customary marriages. Before this, customary marriages were treated as inferior with no marriage certificates. This opened up suffering for the women because they could not legally prove they were married to a particular man. ”
First wife has no say
However, she said, the first wife should have a say in picking her husband’s co-wives.
“What we are not happy about is that now a man can marry another wife or wives without the consent of the first wife,” she said. “That section of the law is potentially open to abuse because a man can secretly marry other wives because he doesn’t need his wife’s consent to marry.”
But Jane Kimani, a Nairobi resident, said the bill is archaic and has no place in modern society.
“Polygamous marriages should not even be an issue today,” she said. “Kenya is moving backward instead of changing with the times.”

Europol Cybercrime Chief Believes Cyber Threat Will 'Change the World'

By David Gilbert
April 29, 2014 15:53 GMT

Europol Warns Increased Threat As Internet Grows
Europol’s headquarters where Troels Oerting runs the European Cybercrime Centre, which is trying to tackle online crime across the European Union.
According to the man tasked with tackling online crime across the European Union, the continent’s reliance on the internet to do business makes it the perfect target for cybercriminals, who don’t even have to leave their armchairs to commit crimes.

Troels Oerting, head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) was speaking at the InfoSecurity conference in London on Tuesday, starkly warning those listening: “I think that the cyber threat will change the world as I know it.”

The EC3 monitors three different kinds of illicit activity – online child exploitation, credit card fraud, and cyber crime services – and he willingly admits that it has not been completely successful so far, and with the advent of the internet of things and increased internet usage around the world, things are only going to get worse.

The Dane pointed out that if we look at a map of internet usage around the world today there are vast areas – such as Africa – where the internet is yet to properly switch on.

Reliant on the internet

The current internet population of 2.7 billion is expected to grow to 4 billion in the next three to four years, leading Oerting to pose the rhetorical question:

“Do you think we will see more or less crime when we go from 2.7 to 4 billion?”

In Europe the internet is already at the heart of everything we do, and business in the region is hugely reliant on it.

The business model for organised crime is to “follow the money”. This is no different for organised cybercriminals and the inherent qualities of the internet actually make it much easier to achieve this goal.

“This part of the globe needs the internet for for prosperity and growth. The problem is that the criminals can attack anyone, any time, anywhere – without moving a bloody inch.”

An island no more
Oerting pointed out that the Britain always saw itself as an island, and would defend its borders from invasion. The problem with cybercrime is that “no one will travel to your country to conduct crime anymore. They do not move anymore.”

Tech Talk: Bitcoin Breaks into the Offline World
It means that old-fashioned techniques of catching criminals such as fingerprints and other physical forensic evidence is not longer relevant, as there is no geographical link between criminal and crime scene when it comes to cybercrime.

The problems are exacerbated by the development of technologies such as the the darknet and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which allow criminals to be paid anonymously for their crimes.

The darknet, also known as the deep web and accessed by the Tor browser, is impenetrable even for the NSA and Oerting says that “most of the activity from the top echelon of the criminals on the internet is done by utilising the darknet for the anonymity that gives.”

Oerting also warned that in the very near future criminals will be utilising the cloud infrastructure to carry out attacks, meaning law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to physically seize laptops or servers belonging to the criminals, making it even tougher to get a successful prosecution.

“The internet is a shared resource”

Another major stumbling block for successful prosecutions for online crime is a lack of standardised laws across the globe. The EC3 could identify the person behind a particular attack but if they live in a country which won’t extradite them – Russia say – then there is nothing EC3 can do about it.

“This is why we need to create norms of the internet. I believe the internet is a shared resource, doesn’t belong to anybody. It is just like the high seas and the air that we all breathe,” Oerting

The Dane believes that if we don’t address this issue, we could end up polluting the internet with crime just as we have polluted the seas and air, and it will result in a Balkanised internet, an internet with borders.

However, despite the seemingly bleak outlook, Oerting remains an optimist, claiming that in the long run “We will win. We will prevail, but it will be a tough ride. We will do it together.”

First the rape. Then the stigma. Now the healing?

by Tim Wyatt
Posted: 11 Apr 2014 @ 12:09
Sexual violence is endemic in many African countries. Tim Wyatt reports on efforts to combat it

DARFUR.

“One of the Janjaweed pushed me to the ground. He forced my clothes off, and they raped me, one by one. I did not have any energy or force against them.

“They used me. I started bleeding. It was so painful. I could not stand up. . . I was sick for seven days.”

This is the harrowing testimony of a 13-year-old girl from western Sudan. It is not an isolated incident. Starting in 2003, the government-backed Janjaweed militia terrorised locals across the region in what appeared to be a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the non-Arab population.

From the beginning, rape was used alongside guns and machetes as a weapon of war.

DRC.

Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist in the Democratic Republic of Congo, tells a similar story.

“It was in 1999 that our first rape victim was brought into the hospital. After being raped, bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs.

“I thought that was a barbaric act of war, but the real shock came three months later,” he told the BBC last year.

“Forty-five women came to us with the same story. They were all saying: ‘People came into my village and raped me, tortured me.’ These weren’t just violent acts of war, but part of a strategy.”

A US study published in 2011 suggested that up to 1000 women were being raped in the DRC each day.

RWANDA.
In commemorations of the 100 days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, attention has naturally been focused on the estimated 800,000 who were killed. But sexual violence was another characteristic of the attacks. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women and girls were raped.

As happened later in Darfur, rape was not just a by-product of the lawlessness produced by the fighting; it was an integral part of the slaughter.

In its judgment against one militia leader, Jean-Paul Akayesu, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found that sexual assault used against one specific ethnic group was as much an act of genocide as murder.

LIBERIA.
In the Liberian civil war of 1993 to 2003, almost half of all women aged between 15 and 70 reported at least one act of sexual violence from a soldier or militia member.

SIERRA LEONE.
About 65,000 women experienced sexual violence as a result of war in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2001.

THOUSANDS of miles separate all these incidents of sexual violence in sub-Saharan Africa, but the similarities are such that activists are talking about a continent-wide epidemic.

The UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in February that the scourge of rape could be found in almost every conflict across Africa.

“You meet a father in Mogadishu [Somalia] whose two children have been raped,” she said. “One is four; one is six. You meet a mother in Liberia whose three-month-old baby has been raped. So it’s everywhere you go.”

Ms Bangura has identified eight countries as her priorities in combating sexual violence, and six are in Africa – the Central African Republic, the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, South Sudan, and Sudan. (The other two are Bosnia and Colombia.)

But the message that rape is being used as a weapon of war across the continent is now being taken seriously, and many activists say that the tide is turning, and the Church is in the vanguard.

Peter Grant is the co-director of Restored, a global alliance of Christians tackling violence against women. He founded Restored in 2010 after hearing a Namibian woman speak at an AIDS conference of her experience of sexual violence. Rape has been a key factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“Sexual violence in war dates back to time immemorial,” Mr Grant said, “but the Rwandan genocide was very critical in people’s understanding. The DRC has been perhaps the highest profile area” of more recent years, he said.

We Will Speak Out is another coalition of Churches, charities, and ecumenical bodies which are working to end sexual violence. It was founded in 2011 after a conference at Lambeth Palace. Sarah Reilly, a member of the We Will Speak Out secretariat, said that the global Church now realised that it needed to raise its voice on the issue.

“In the last five years there has been much more of an international focus on sexual violence in conflict,” she said. “The environment has changed, and [the Church] has become more supportive.”

Salome Ntububa, Christian Aid’s regional emergency manager in the DRC, said: “It was the Church which started the first effort [against rape] in the DRC. In 2004, churches noticed that many women were not coming to services, and then realised it was because there was massive rape in their communities.”

But it was not until 2010 that the rape crisis in the DRC reached international attention, she estimated.

As Christians have woken up to the scale of sexual violence in conflict, so, too, have governments. The UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has made combating violence against women one of his priorities. He is organising a global summit about it in June.

Speaking to the Church Times this week, he said: “Sexual violence is often one of the first things that happens as soon as conflict or instability takes hold, yet it is usually the last thing to be taken into account by those ending wars or rebuilding nations.

“Over 140 countries will be present [at the June summit], alongside NGOs and faith leaders, where we will focus on the role of faith communities in tackling sexual violence in conflict. I want the summit to be the moment that the world wakes up and says that rape and sexual violence are not an inevitable part of war.”

THIS level of awareness was not always present. For many years, the Church as an institution remained virtually silent on the subject of sexual violence.

A report published by Tearfund in 2011, Silent No More, found that in Rwanda, Liberia, and the DRC, the Church was not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

The report quoted one survivor of sexual violence from the DRC: “Religious institutions are undermining women. They do not see women as important, and they do not see a role for them.”

A key problem is the stigma that attaches to women who have been raped. An element of blame persists, or, at the least, uncleanness, and many find it impossible to attract a husband.

Tearfund’s research suggested that either clergy were not speaking out about the evil of rape, or they were themselves contributing to the stigma surrounding victims of it.

Enlightenment has come slowly. Charlotte Simon, the founder of the anti-rape charity Mothers of Congo, said: “As Christians, we should be denouncing what is happening in Congo. The Church is the institution we rely on to help us, but it has let us down. I think of Jesus looking down and saying ‘Why?’

“What I really want is for the Church to come out and start raising awareness; to say: ‘What is happening in Congo is wrong.’ [Otherwise], the Church is an accomplice.”

This is now beginning to happen. In February, the Archbishop of Canterbury visited a project backed by Tearfund in Goma, DRC, which seeks to change the culture around survivors of sexual violence (News, 14 February).

Speaking during the same visit, the Archbishop of Congo, the Most Revd Henri Isingoma, said: “This is a priority issue for my Church, and for me personally.”

That same month, the General Synod, meeting in London, held a debate on gender-based violence, before carrying a motion condemning such violence as an abuse and violation of the image of God (Synod digest, 21 February).

One member, Dr Paula Gooder, told the Synod that the Church needed to recognise how its own tradition and theology had been used to support violence against women.

Another speaker, Canon Rosie Harper, said that “God told us to do it” was often given as a justification for gender-based violence. Quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, she urged the Synod not to sit on the fence: “Not to speak is to speak; not to act is to act.”

Many campaigners have said that the Church had a unique and pivotal part to play in tackling rape and sexual violence. Mr Grant, from Restored, said: “The Church has got a huge amount to contribute here, to make it clear that this is not consistent with scripture.”

Ms Reilly, of We Will Speak Out, agreed: “In Africa, the Church doesn’t just have a large reach – it is also a trusted centre-point in communities. Often, what the Church says goes; so they have a platform within the community to address some of the challenging issues, but also to speak openly about the issue.”

Mr Hague said this week that the support of local Christian leaders was hugely significant: “Faith groups have a key role to play. I was incredibly pleased to hear the announcement by the Archbishop of the DRC, whom I met last year, that he and the DRC’s major faith leaders had pledged to take action to prevent sexual violence in their We Will Speak Out campaign.”

BEYOND raising awareness, what action should the Church take to try to end these crimes? Campaigners say that it is difficult to pinpoint specific tactics, as the problem is so complex.

Mr Grant asked: “What would it take to stop a soldier in Congo from raping a woman? It’s not an easy answer. A whole raft of cultural factors, societal norms, and military discipline. There has got to be accountability, and an end to impunity.

“But at the same time, you need religious leaders speaking out, saying that this is morally unacceptable.”

For Mrs Simon from Mothers of Congo, the scourge of rape will never leave the DRC until the underlying drivers of the conflict are addressed.

She said: “I think the West needs to change the way the big [mining] companies are doing this. They find a village where the minerals are. They tell the militias to go to this village and rape and kill and just create chaos. Then they use it as a mine.”

Minerals such as coltan, mined from violently disputed regions of the DRC, are an integral part of electronic devices. Mrs Simon believes that the Church should look at cutting these out of the supply chain, as a means of ending the rape which is associated with mining.

“Everybody has a piece of Congo in their pocket, but at what price? Every time I pick up my phone, or watch my TV, I think: ‘I have blood on my hands,'” she said.

The Mothers’ Union also works alongside churches in Africa to tackle rape.

A spokeswoman said this week: “In our experience, one of the strongest ways in which the Church is able to offer support is to actually accompany survivors as they access services, such as any police and health-care professionals in the area, to ensure that they remain safe and supported.”

The Mothers’ Union has also initiated literacy and numeracy programmes in Rwanda, aimed at empowering victims to discuss gender-based violence, besides giving them skills to help them move on in life.

We Will Speak Out has a five-point plan to combat sexual violence, Ms Reilly said. Besides raising awareness, the plan ensures that churches must be used as safe and stigma-free spaces for survivors of sexual violence.

The problem of stigma comes up time and time again in conversations. One way churchpeople are seeking to eliminate this is by demonstrating that victims of sexual violence are still worthy of love and dignity.

Ms Ntububa, from Christian Aid, described how women from Congolese churches often welcomed rape survivors into their own homes. “They have been telling women: ‘This is not your fault.'”

Alongside its advocacy work, Mothers of Congo is supporting almost 100 children born of rape in the DRC. “Nobody wants to know about them, and they have no future,” Mrs Simon said. “We want to give them a future and confidence in themselves.”

“We are also getting international funding for church hospitals, run by local churchpeople,” Ms Ntububa said. “The Church is playing a major role both in helping women and working on protection. The next challenge is how to make justice, which is difficult.”

ANOTHER part of the solution is transforming masculinity, and challenging perceptions about what it means to be a “real man”.

Mr Grant said: “We have a campaign in the UK called First Man Standing, which challenges men to respect women. We are looking at how to contextualise that kind of approach in a range of different countries. We have got to work with ‘good’ men, but also with the perpetrators.

“The whole issue is about relationships, the image of God, and being created male and female. Relationships are the core of the gospel. It’s right at the start of what the Church should be speaking out and responding to.”

An entire chapter of a 229-page 2010 World Council of Churches report into the theology of masculinity dealt with gender-based violence. In her introduction to the chapter, the Revd Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth explained what was at the heart of the attempt to co-opt men into the campaign against sexual violence.

She wrote: “Men need to redefine masculinity and create a social climate, in male peer culture, in which the abuse of women is seen as completely unacceptable.”

In the DRC, the Church has started to act as a bridge between victims and perpetrators, who now tend to be members of local militias rather than foreign fighters.

Ms Ntububa said: “The Church has been making the community more aware of how we can have a dialogue, and ask [the rapists] ‘How are you behaving like that? These women could be your mothers, or daughters, or sisters.'”

The idea that, at the heart of sexual violence in conflict, is the broken relationship between men and women is central to Restored’s work, which has developed programmes in the UK to tackle rape and domestic violence.

“It would be wrong and very misleading to [describe it] as an African problem. The danger is a demonising of African society as being fundamentally prone to sexual violence while European peoples are not,” Mr Grant said.

“The underlying drivers of violence against women are abuse, power, and control. Rape is not a matter of sex, but a matter of power. It aims to destroy people and societies. It is obviously a different level of severity, and I wouldn’t equate it [with sexual violence in the West]. . . But the issues in domestic violence are also power and control.”

Ms Reilly agreed: it was important to recognise that sexual violence occurred in conflict in other parts of the world, too. “Rape is used as a weapon of war in any context – certainly in Syria, but also in Bosnia and other areas around the world,” she said.

Similarly, the impetus to resist sexual violence is coming not just from well-meaning Western Churches. “In our experience, there are a lot of amazing church leaders from [Africa] who are aware that it is an issue, and are speaking out. They often work with us. It is coming from the grassroots, and they just need support, training, and resources, to help them deliver their message.

“We want to empower survivors to advocate for their own rights, and work with faith leaders to lobby at a national and international level.”

IT IS clear, then, that sexual violence as a part of conflict is now firmly on the Church’s agenda. But it is clear, too, to all the campaigners, that the battle is far from won.

Mr Grant said that, while it was good that momentum was growing, Restored had only begun to scratch the surface of the problem.

As the conflict in DRC degenerates further, Ms Ntububa said that rape was becoming a part of life for some women: “In many communities, men can come and rape at any time. There is no protection mechanism. For them, that’s normal.

“There is a good level of recognition [of the problem], but in terms of ending this, we are not at that point yet. It is now 20 years after the Rwandan genocide, and this is still happening in Rwanda.”

But Ms Reilly said she had seen signs of hope. “Just last week, I was visiting some programmes in Burundi and speaking to church leaders there. There are some fantastic stories coming from communities and countries where the Church has been mobilised.”

For Mrs Simon, of Mothers of Congo, there is just a steady determination to carry on the battle. “I have cried so much,” she said. “I’m not going to cry any more. Now I’m just fighting.”

Nigeria's Lamido Sanusi Saga: Lessons for Kenya

Saturday, April 19, 2014 – 00:00 — BY MIGUNA MIGUNA

On February 20, 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan sent shockwaves in the supercharged Nigerian politics and financial markets by announcing the suspension of the Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Dramatically, Mr Sanusi’s passport was seized on the same day at the Lagos International Airport.

Mr Sanusi had a short while before his suspension precipitated a political earthquake when he publicly alleged that $20 billion (£12bn) in oil revenue had gone missing.

That unprecedented declaration, together with other centrifugal forces, quickly caused a tsunami that now threatens to bury Jonathan’s re-election chances come 2015.

Although the government quickly denied Mr. Sanusi’s assertions, it later admitted that “only $10bn was yet to be accounted for.” To oil oligarchs and corruption barons in Nigeria, such an amount is chicken feed.

Predictably – and in a knee-jerk reaction – Nigeria’s state oil firm also denied failing to account for the money, saying Sanusi’s claim was “unsubstantiated.”

Soon, there were incomprehensible conspiracy dins in the electronic mainstream and social media about north versus south, Muslim versus Christian and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) versus All Progressive Congress (APC) – and God knows what else!

Before long, President Jonathan became “bad-luck Jonathan.” Even Jonathan’s initial benefactor, former Nigerian president and strongman, Olusegun Obasanjo, has joined the fray and abandoned his protégé. Obasanjo subsequently wrote an acid open letter to the President and accused him of incompetence and maladministration.

President Jonathan fired back, accusing Obasanjo of “trying to incite the populace against him.” Boy, oh, boy! Mr. Jonathan’s Government didn’t even promise, as African governments often emptily do, “to thoroughly investigate these scurrilous allegations, get to the bottom of the matter and leave no stone unturned.”

A week before Sanusi was suspended, however, there had been media reports that the President had directed him to resign because the letter in which he had raised his claims had purportedly “been leaked” but the governor refused to oblige, apparently calculating that with mounting pressure and rock-bottom popularity, it would be difficult for the President to get the required two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to fire him.

Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of African history would be very scared for Nigeria. Having lurched from one military coup to another in the first twenty years after independence, Nigeria currently has what one can safely call a nascent democracy.

It has an elected government even if we cannot agree on whether the elections have all been free, fair and credible. Those elections are also periodic and involve many political parties at federal, state and local levels.

Until Jonathan took over from former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in May 2010, power had briefly but peacefully rotated between a southerner and a northerner. The north-south power sharing was an unwritten constitutional arrangement within the PDP tent.

However, with Jonathan’s third stub at the presidency, many critics are warning that Nigeria’s stability may once more be threatened – not by Boko Haram – but by those responsible for managing political transitions.

Prior to the reintroduction of civilian rule in May 1999, tens of thousands of Nigerians had perished in violent inter communal and inter-religious conflicts, in addition to thousands that died during the Biafran civil war.

Unfortunately, an ugly spectre of those violent periods has recently emerged, with north-south and Muslim-Christian fissures erupting like thunderbolts. And now, with the raging Sanusi saga, Nigeria has reconfirmed its place as the most perplexing and paradoxical polity in Africa.

By its sheer demographic girth alone (Nigeria has, according to the 2008 census, 151.3 million people and about 500 ethnic groups); it is so unquestionably Africa’s most dynamic society.

But it is also one of its most troubled. Nigeria’s population growth rate stands at 60 per cent. And without a known population management policy, it will soon rival China’s staggering population of 1.351 billion.

In fact, as far as global population density goes, Nigeria is number 73, after a chain of city states or tiny islands or isles like Macau, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Among countries with defined territorial boundaries, only Bangladesh (12), Mauritius (17), South Korea (23), Netherlands (30), Rwanda (31) India (33), Japan (38), Philippines (45), Grenada (47), Burundi (48), El Salvador (49), Viet Nam (52), Jamaica (55), Germany (56), United Kingdom (58), Pakistan (59), Dominican Republic (60), and Italy (62) are more densely populated than Nigeria. In Africa, only the tiny Mauritius, Rwanda, Burundi, Seychelles (70) and Sao Tome and Principe (72) are ahead.

Only Netherlands, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore can be described as either developed or developing from that list.

I’ve deliberately excluded India due to its unprecedented inequalities and astronomically high levels of poverty. Similarly, given the impact of the recent global economic meltdown on Italy, I’ve excluded it.

Analysts consider unchecked population explosion, inequality and instability to be objective indicators for existing or impending misery. Moreover, out of all these places, only Nigeria counts as a ‘resource-rich country.’ In 2000, oil exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and about 83% of the federal government revenue as well as generating more than 14% of its GDP.

Nigeria’s oil reserves are estimated by the US Information Administration at between 16 and 22 billion barrels. However, other sources contend that these could be as much as 35.2 billion barrels.

These reserves make Nigeria the tenth most petroleum-rich nation in the world and – theoretically – by far “Africa’s most affluent.” Nigeria’s natural gas reserves are over 181 trillion feet (2,800 km3) – three times as its crude oil reserves.

In other words, Nigeria, like Kenya, has had both the capacity and the opportunity to become one of the world’s industrialised and developed states. Moreover, Nigerians are highly educated, skilled and dynamic. They have produced – and continue to produce – some of the world’s leading scientists, engineers, physicians, writers and artists.

Yet, since February 2013, the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) claimed that the oil sector of the country “is killing the economy.” NACCIMA argues that the sector is negatively affecting businesses in the country by failing to add real value to the people.

The NACCIMA claims clearly corroborate Mr. Sanusi’s recent disclosure of the unprecedented plunder of oil revenues by the country’s leaders. Resource wealth hasn’t translated into quality of life and/or services for the ordinary Nigerian because virtually all the revenues from such wealth are being diverted and embezzled by well-connected public figures.

Unfortunately, Mr. Sanusi appears to be the second member of the privileged class o have publicly broken ranks with the crème-dela-crème and blown the whistle on the continuing plunder. A few years ago, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, a former Nigerian government anti-corruption official, had also tried.

But Nigeria, unlike Kenya, has had a genuine attempt to wrestle with its demons from the very top: General Murtala Mohammed (1938-1976) who headed a military government from July 1975 until his assassination in February 1976.

Unfortunately, Gen. Murtala Mohammed was assassinated by then Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo and his goons before he could transform Nigeria.

Needless to say, Mr Sanusi is widely respected after undertaking reforms to the banking sector since his appointment in 2009. The Banker Magazine named him “central bank governor of the year” for 2010.

Soon after his suspension, Mr. Sanusi – true to form – told the BBC that he would challenge his suspension in order to preserve the central bank’s independence.

Although his critics have questioned his own political ambitions and accused him of using his job to harm Jonathan’s chances in 2015; many poverty-stricken Nigerians believe that the President has chosen to protect rather than fight high-level graft.

Publicly available evidence shows that Mr. Sanusi has presented an open-and-shut-case that a genuinely committed government would have used to confront Nigeria’s runaway institutional fraud.

And on April 3rd, the Nigerian Federal High Court at Lagos agreed with Sanusi and restrained the state from arresting or harassing the suspended Governor of the Central Bank.

The court also ordered the state to release Mr. Sanusi’s passport to him immediately, and that he should not be detained unlawfully. In addition, Mr. Sanusi was awarded N50 million ($300,000) in exemplary damages.

In other words, if not managed properly, resource wealth, demographic girth and dynamism can easily become curses to a country. In view of the above, I wish to remind Kenyans that the most important human quality is integrity. The strength of a person isn’t how much wealth they have amassed but what kind of stern material they are made of.

Regrettably, Kenyans haven’t had a Murtala Muhammed at the helm of power. Many Kenyans are quick to prescribe docility and robotic behaviour for public servants.

That’s why some well-known intellectual hypocrites have argued that “a servant in the King’s Court don’t think or speak out; they keep their heads down and mouths full.” Such primitive thoughts shouldn’t be entertained in a modern society especially one operating under our new constitutional regime. We need more Sanusis, not less!

Let me end with a compelling email I have received from a Kenyan who requested that I urgently pass it on to the “relevant authorities.” I’m reproducing it without any editing so that it can speak for itself:
….- See more at: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-163764/nigerias-lamido-sanusi-saga-lessons-kenya#sthash.AXR1xgkP.dpuf

Tanzania to launch new anti-poaching operation

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania – The launch of the second national anti-poaching operation is in the pipeline during the next few weeks after some 26 elephants were killed and their tusks taken by poachers in two game reserves last week.

These hardcore suspects are said to be using sub-machine guns. Addressing reporters in Arusha soon after getting the news of the killing of the elephants and the capturing of the poachers, the furious Minister for Natural Resources and Tourims, Lazaro Nyalandu said “We shall soon launch the second phase of the ‘National anti-poaching machinery,’ (Operation Tokomeza Majangili – II) in line with the country’s war against illegal wildlife hunting and ivory trading.”

Tanzania has joined the global war on ivory trading. The initiative involves China, which is a lucrative outlet for the smuggled tusks, the United Nations and the International Police (INTERPOL).

In the killing incident of the 26 elephants last week, in Manyoni district Singida region, six people suspected to be poachers were arrested at Kiyombo Village of Manyoni District, Singida Region in connection with a consignment of 55 elephant tusks weighing 170 kilogrammes.

The Minister stressed further that despite the enormous challenges the government was against poaching, it will ensure that all killers are hunted down and apprehend with their allies everywhere.

In the late 1980s, Tanzania, home to Africa’s second-largest elephant population, led the war on poaching and championed the international ban on ivory trading that was adopted in 1989.

Today, it is the epicentre of the poaching epidemic sweeping through the continent’s forests and savannas.

A third of all the illegal ivory seized in Asia comes from or through Tanzania. The country is losing 30 elephants a day, or nearly 11,000 a year. Nearly half the country’s elephants have been shot, speared or poisoned since 2007, leaving scarcely 60,000 in total.

At the London Conference on Illegal Trade, President Jakaya Kikwete appealed to the international community to impose a total ban on trade of ivory and rhino horns to protect the wildlife from extinction.

Describing the London conference as a historic opportunity to take a landmark decision to save elephants and rhinos, Kikwete said he was optimistic the international community would pronounce itself on supporting developing nations in the war against poaching and illegal wildlife trade.

Tanzania has in the past unsuccessfully tried to seek permission from the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species and Fauna (CITES) to sell off the stockpile but lately dropped the plans as a measure to ensure trade in ivory and rhino horns is totally banned to protect wildlife.

Kikwete told the conference that Tanzania will put itself in an awkward position in the international community if it insisted on selling the ivory while at the same time it has been appealing for total ban on the trade.

Sources within the government have, however, hinted that it was mostly likely that the stockpile would be destroyed since preserving it was costly.

Many countries including China and United States have in the past destroyed impounded stockpile and Tanzania is mostly likely to do the same

By Patrick Kisembo, Monday, April 07th, 2014

Ethiopia: New Dimension of Slavery – From Labor to Organ

By Melaku Mulualem, 5 April 2014

Slavery has a long history in the world. Slave trade and slavery are among the worst violations of human rights in the history of humanity.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade (15th-19th century) forced the transportation of millions of Africans to the Americas.

There are two big categories of slavery i.e. traditional form and modern form of slavery. Nowadays human trafficking is regarded as the modern-day slavery. At the traditional form of slavery labor service of slaves was very important than other services. Considering these two categories, exploitation of man by man is the common denominator to both traditional and modern slavery.

In summarizing this point the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has put it by saying, “The means through which modern and traditional forms of slavery have operated differ greatly.

But the violation of human rights and human dignity are central issues in both practices” The core argument here is that in both traditional and modern forms of slavery the interest of slave-owner was to exploit the labor of his/her slaves often with the help of a framework legalizing or justifying such a practice. However, with the practice of organ trafficking, it is not anymore the labor produced that is at stake, but the vital organs of body that are harvested on peoples. Hence, organ trafficking is adding a new dimension to the exploitation of man by man. The traditional form of slavery demands the service of the “whole body”, but the modern day slavery demands, among others, the service of “parts of body”.

The modern-day slavery is a widespread world’s most shameful crime in the early 21st century. Currently, trafficked persons are often victims to abuses including losing their organs. Organ trafficking is a transnational crime, organized by complex networks. Since it is being conducted in a secret manner detection of the crime and subsequent prosecution is difficult.

The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime has defined trafficking in persons as “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, … for the purpose of exploitation.” In this definition the word “exploitation” includes sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

According to Global Alliance Against Forced Labor, there are about 21-30 million people in slavery around the world. Slavery generates USD 32 billion for traffickers each year. Women and girls together account for about 75 percent of trafficking in person. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is more common in Europe, Central Asia and the Americas. On the other hand trafficking for forced labor is common in Africa and the Middle East, as well as in South and East Asia and the Pacific. The majority victims in the Middle East come from East African countries.

Traffickers snatch organs of individuals for transplantation. Organ transplantation is “the transfer of organs or tissue from a donor to a recipient with the aim of restoring function(s) in the body”. The science of transplantation is saving lives of patients who faced organ failure. A legend which is mentioned in a Roman Catholic accounts says that in the 3rd century saints Damian and Cosmas had replaced “the gangrenous or cancerous leg of the Roman deacon Justinian with the leg of a recently deceased Ethiopian”.

There are different views towards the science of organ transplantation. Some religious people say donation of organ and tissue is an act of charity and goodwill. Others oppose it by saying human body belongs to God, so why you are trying to transplant God’s Property?”

Human cells (such as blood cell), tissues (such as bone marrow, cornea) and organs (such as heart, liver, kidney, pancreas and lung) can be transplanted among human beings. The current medical science has reached to the level of transplanting animals’ organ to human beings. Such practice is called xenotransplantation. Thus transplantation can be performed even between different species. It is interesting to mention that organs of pig are about the right size for transplanting into humans. But pigs have a shorter lifespan than human. The natural lifespan of a pig is 10-15 years. This means that the organ of pig cannot serve human for longer period. There is also serious concern about the possibility of transmitting disease in the process of transplanting organs from animals to human beings.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), kidney transplants are carried out in 91 countries in the world. Recently, it was also announced that transplantation of kidney will be started in Ethiopia in April 2014 at St. Paul Hospital .

The demand for transplantable organs in the world is much higher than what is available. The WHO has estimated that organ transplantation covers only 10 percent of the global need. For instance, currently, about 119,000 people in United States are on waiting list for organ transplant.

Because of imbalance between demand and supply for human organ, starting from 1980s, organ trade in a black market is growing quickly in the world. Shortage of organs for transplants led to the temptation of trafficking in human body components. Some call this trafficking in human body as ‘neo-cannibalism’.

This imbalance has also attracted “transplant tourism” in the world. Donors who are poor have aggravated the problem of this tourism by encouraging transplant commercialism (buying and selling organs for material gain). Money-driven system of organ donation benefits the rich at the expense or death of the poor. Some Asian countries are being accused by different media for conducting this tourism. A report by Organs Watch identified many developed countries as organ-importing countries. Internet has often been used to attract foreign patients. Several websites have also offer all-inclusive “transplant packages”.

Payment for organ is prohibited in many countries of the world. However, in 1989 Iran has legalized the payment for organs. In Iran a paid kidney donation is legal. Such legal permission may lead poor people to sell their kidney to rich people. Sources show that many poor people from some Asian countries have sold their kidneys for money. There are two types of organ donor to the purpose of transplantation. These are “living donor” and “deceased donor”. A living donor is a living human being from whom cells, tissues or organs have been removed for the purpose of transplantation either by consent or force. A healthy person can become a ‘living donor’ by donating a kidney, or a part of the liver, intestine, blood or bone marrow. Individuals who are in a state of brain death (but still on life support) can be donor of organs. In some cases, living donors from different countries go to the location of the patient. In other cases both recipients and donors from different countries move to a third country.

In 2011 a journalist called Scott Carney who lived in India for many years has published a book called Red Market. In this book he has mentioned about blood farmers – modern day “vampires”. He also mentioned that there are individuals who kidnap and hold humans hostage for years and continuously drained their blood to be illegally sold to hospitals or on the black market. This is done on individuals at least two times per week. A pint of blood (1/2 liter) is about 25 dollar.

The journalist has also mentioned that there are skeleton and human hair dealers. To get skeleton there are practice of grave robbing. Another big Asian country is also being accused by international media for using organs of executed prisoners for transplantation. International media show that the Sawarka Bedouin tribe of Egypt, one of the largest in the Sinai desert, involved in organ thefts. Refugees mainly from East African countries are victims of the organ piracy in the desert. According to various sources, because of unrest organ trafficking is on the rise in post Mubarak Egypt. If the above accounts are true, we should ask ourselves the following question- Is modern day slavery-moving from labor to organ, tissue and blood?

As mentioned above the second category of organ donor is “deceased donor”. If a person is declared, by established medical criteria, to be dead, then his or her cells, tissues or organs would be recovered for the purpose of transplantation.

Slavery and human trafficking are condemned as violation of human rights by international conventions and declarations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Conference which was held in South Africa in 2001, the declaration of Istanbul, the 2000 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons can be regarded as cases in point. Considering the above problems it is possible to say that this crime will sooner or later be a challenge for Ethiopia and Africa at large. Already South Africa is being accused for developing transplant tourism in the country. At Ministerial level the African Union has adopted an action plan in 2006 called the “Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, Especially Women and Children”.

This action plan did not discuss about the danger of trafficking for organ transplant purpose. In my opinion, the African Union should also give great attention to the present and future organ piracy problem in the continent. If legal frameworks are not handled properly, in the coming ten years Africa can be a destination of transplant tourism. It would be good to develop a treaty or convention at the level of Heads of State and Governments of the African Union. In history Africa was a victim of “slavery for labor service” for many years.

But Africa should not be victim of “slavery for organ service”. Comprehensive counter-trafficking activities should be done by focusing on prevention, protection and prosecution. Thus governments, research and academic institutions, policymakers and organizations should play their role in the activity of prevention through awareness raising activities. Informing the general public about trafficking in persons will help individuals to protect themselves from the recruitment tactics of traffickers. Parallel to these activities governments should manage illegal migration to prevent and detect human trafficking.

International organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) and regional organizations as well as governments should work together to provide protection to possible victims. By identifying victims in “countries of origin, transit and destination” they should provide assistance and protection. Returning and rehabilitation of victims should also be done through coordination. Involving international peacekeepers in preventing human trafficking can also be helpful in mitigating such global problem.

International law enforcement institutions must cooperate across borders in order to address organ-related crimes. There is a need to bring justice to trafficked persons and punish criminals. In different countries few traffickers are prosecuted, but there are also complaints that say the punishment for those convicted are unequal to the crime. Scholars also recommended that there is a need to continue scientific research so as to develop alternative transplantable parts that includes mechanical devices, animal parts, and organs grown from cell cultures. Of course these alternatives can be solutions in the future. More than 130 countries and territories in the world had enacted legislation that criminalizes trafficking. Ethiopia has also ratified the 2000 UN Trafficking In Person Protocol in June 2012. Ethiopia’s Criminal Code Articles 596 and 597 have also outlawed slavery and labor trafficking and prescribe punishments of five to 20 years’ imprisonment. Such legal frameworks are very important to counter possible problems.

Understanding of the global problem may assist national-level efforts. So organizing public discussions in Ethiopia on the issue of human and organ trafficking and its consequences is important. Parallel to this poverty alleviation and widening job opportunity can minimize illegal migration which leads humans to be trafficked. Incorporating human trafficking issues in curriculum and educating vulnerable persons through mass media and conferences can also help in mitigating human trafficking. Establishment of labor attaché in overseas diplomatic missions, increasing the role of NGOs in protecting human trafficking can strengthen national anti-trafficking struggle. Regarding human trafficking issues government should provide training to concerned officials such as prosecutors, judges and the like. Even if the science of organ transplantation is useful to save lives, Africa should be aware of crimes which are related with human trafficking.

Ed.’s Note: Melaku Mulualem is training department head at the Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development (EIIPD).

Corruption cases in India on the rise; up 13 pct since 2011: PwC

PTI | New Delhi | Updated: Feb 19 2014, 17:00 IST
‘Every region reported a significant number of incidences of bribery and corruption.’ (Thinkstock)’Every region reported a significant number of incidences of bribery and corruption.’ (Thinkstock)

Summary
Bribery and corruption cases jumped 13 per cent globally since 2011 with engineering and construction sector topping the list, followed by government business, a PwC report said today.

According to the multinational accounting firm, the menace of bribery and corruption will continue to rule the economic crimes chart this year as well.

“Every region reported a significant number of incidences of bribery and corruption. Twenty-seven per cent of all respondents who reported economic crime experienced corruption during the survey period, making it the third-highest crime specified and a relative increase of 13 per cent from 24 per cent reported in 2011,” PwC said in its 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey.

This was third only to asset misappropriation (69 per cent) and procurement fraud (29 per cent), it added.

Also, about 53 per cent of the CEOs surveyed expressed concerns about bribery and corruption, up from 34 per cent in 2011.

PwC said companies that experienced incidences of bribery and corruption “more frequently reported losses of over USD 5 million”.

“These large losses may be connected to the reported increase in incidents of bribery and corruption—frauds which can be especially costly to organisations, with regulatory fines, legal fees and remedial expenses potentially reaching billions of US dollars,” it said.

The survey included 5,128 representatives from over 95 countries.

Sectorally, 50 per cent said engineering and construction was the most affected, followed by energy, utilities and mining (42 per cent) and government (35 per cent).

“One driver of the high reported figures of bribery and corruption may be the megatrend of the shift in wealth from the developed economies of the West to the emerging high- growth economies of the South and East,” PwC said.

This could be because of different cultural attitudes toward fraud and corruption, fewer regulations, and less- consistent enforcement of those regulations, it added.

“These conditions naturally create a higher risk profile for this type of economic crime,” it said.

Africa and Eastern Europe reported the highest overall percentage of bribery and corruption (39 per cent), with the Middle East (35 per cent) also registering above the global average.

“Middle East and Africa have significant resource extraction and infrastructure/construction-based economies, which are traditionally industries with significant fraud and corruption risks,” the report explained.

Honduras, Venezuela have world's highest murder rates – U.N.

By Anahi Rama
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Honduras retains the world’s highest murder rate, according to a United Nations report published on Thursday, with the Americas overtaking Africa as the region with the most peacetime murders per 100,000 people.

Torn apart by gang warfare and invaded by Mexican drug cartels, the Central American nation of Honduras had a 2012 murder rate of 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people, almost double Venezuela’s rate of 53.7.

According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s report, Central America fared particularly badly. Belize had a murder rate of 44.7, while El Salvador’s was 41.2 per 100,000.

In a previous report in 2011, Honduras topped the list, with El Salvador in second place and Venezuela in third.

In the U.N.’s latest report, the Americas overtook Africa as the region with most murders, thanks to a surge in organized crime, which is often funded from the proceeds of drug smuggling.

Nearly 40 percent of the 437,000 murders committed globally in 2012 took place in the Americas, with the majority in Central and South America, the report found.

“Overall, organized crime (or) gang-related homicide accounts for 30 percent of homicides in the Americas,” the report said.

Central American countries that have a long history of gang violence, such as Honduras, have seen the problem worsened in recent years after Mexican drug cartels moved in, taking advantage of shaky public institutions to set up key logistical operations for moving drugs from South America to the United States.

Other countries with high murder rates include Guatemala, with 39.9 murders per 100,000; South Africa with 31; Colombia with 30.8; and Brazil with 25.2.

In Mexico, where about 85,000 people have died in drug-related killings since a 2007 military-led assault against the warring cartels, the murder rate was 21.5 per 100,000.

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Ken Wills)

Trade and diplomatic relations to expand between South Africa and Malaysia

Published on 2013-08-28 at 12:54:06 © DiploNews

According to the South African government, Malaysia remains the largest investor in South Africa from the Southeast Asia region through Malaysian companies such as Petronas and the Golden Hope Group. Total trade between South Africa and Malaysia has grown steadily from approximately R13.8 billion in 2008 to R19.7 billion in 2012, the office of President Jacob Zuma added.

Also, total exports increased from R5.2 billion to R8.8 billion and imports from R8.5 to R10.9 billion in 2008 and 2012, respectively, and by the end of 2012, Malaysia ranked as South Africa’s 23th largest export partner and 20th largest import partner in the world. South Africa is the largest investor in Malaysia from Africa, with investments in petro-chemicals, insurance, food and beverages industries. South African companies like Denel, Nando’s Chicken, SASOL, and Sanlam have offices in Malaysia.

Considering the growing importance of Asia as a whole, and of Malaysia within the region, President Zuma undertook an official visit to Malaysia where he met with Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak. The two leaders celebrated the 20th anniversary of the establishment of formal diplomatic relations and exchanged views on critical regional and global issues. They reiterated both countries’ interest in developing trade relations and furthering cooperation in the field of oil and gas.

On the international stage, they shared “similar views on the importance of South-South cooperation,” and the Malaysian leader stressed his country seeks to do more in the building of infrastructure in Africa.

California targeted by 'cyber-gangs,' attorney general says

Published March 20, 2014/
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – International criminal enterprises follow the money, and a report being released Thursday says they are increasingly focusing on California because of its wealth and innovation.

Aside from long-time trafficking in drugs, guns and people, the report by California Attorney General Kamala Harris says criminals are turning to cybercrime to target businesses and financial institutions.

It calls California the top target in the U.S. for organizations that often operate from safe havens in Eastern Europe, Africa and China.

“California is a global leader on a number of fronts and, unfortunately, transnational criminal activity is one of them,” the report states.

Harris said it is the first comprehensive report to outline the effects international criminal organizations are having on Californians and businesses in the state. She is set to formally release the 181-page report during a late-morning news conference with other law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, but an early copy was provided to The Associated Press.

California leads all states in the number of computer systems hacked or infected by malware, the number of victims of Internet crimes, the amount of financial losses suffered as a result and the number of victims of identity fraud. The report says the state also is particularly vulnerable to thefts of intellectual property because of its leading role in developing new technologies and mass-media entertainment.

“Not surprisingly, transnational organized crime has tapped into this new criminal frontier,” the report says. “Many of these breaches have been tied to transnational criminal organizations operating from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Israel, Egypt, China, and Nigeria, among other places.”

California’s gross domestic product of $2 trillion, significant foreign trade activity and border with Mexico also makes the state an easy target for international money-laundering schemes, the report says. It estimates that more than $30 billion is laundered through California’s economy each year.

Some is filtered through legitimate businesses or by using virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. But the report says backpacks and duffel bags stuffed with cash have been seized more frequently since Mexico began toughening its money-laundering laws in 2010.

Seizures of bulk cash increased 40 percent by 2011 in California, which now leads the nation in the number of currency seizures.

California should alter state law to make it easier for prosecutors to crack down on money laundering, the report says. Unlike federal law, state law currently requires prosecutors to prove that a suspect deliberately carried out a financial transaction in a way designed to hide the fact that the money came from or was used for a criminal activity.

The report also recommends that the Legislature change state law to let prosecutors temporarily freeze the assets of transnational criminal organizations and associated gangs before they seek an indictment.

It also calls for the state to devote more money to the state Department of Justice, which Harris leads. That would include $7.5 million to fund five new teams that would target international criminals.

Kenya to use drones to fight elephant, rhino poachers

By Humphrey Malalo
NAIROBI Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:55pm EDT
(Reuters) – Kenya plans to deploy surveillance drones to help fight elephant and rhino poachers and has introduced stiffer penalties for offenders, officials said on Tuesday.

Poaching has risen in recent years across sub-Saharan Africa where well-armed criminal gangs have killed elephants for tusks and rhinos for horns that are often shipped to Asia for use in ornaments and medicines.

“We will start piloting the use of drones in the Tsavo National Park eco system, one of the largest national parks in the world,” said Patrick Omondi, deputy director for wildlife conservation at the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Omondi said the surveillance aircraft would be imported, but did not give details of how many or at what cost.

Tsavo National Park in the southeast is Kenya’s largest, with sweeping plains and occasional water holes dotted with wildlife, including elephants.

“We attribute the problem of poaching in Kenya and other African states to growing demand and high prices offered for rhino horn and elephant ivory in the Far East countries,” William Kiprono, Kenya Wildlife Service’s acting Director General told a news conference in Nairobi.

Kiprono said Kenya had lost 18 rhinos and 51 elephants to poachers so far this year. Last year, 59 rhinos and 302 elephants were killed, compared with 30 rhinos and 384 elephants in 2012.

Kenyan officers seized 13.5 tonnes of ivory at the port city of Mombasa last year, mostly originating from other countries in the region. At least 249 suspects have so far been arrested this year and prosecuted for various wildlife offences.

In January, a Kenyan court convicted a Chinese man of smuggling ivory and ordered him to pay a 20-million-shillings ($233,000) fine or serve seven years in jail in the first sentence handed out since Kenya introduced a new anti-poaching law.

Conservationists hope the new law, which allows for longer jail terms and bigger fines, will deter criminal networks.

Kenya has emerged as a major transit route for ivory destined for Asian markets from eastern and central Africa.

The government says poaching is harming tourism, a major foreign exchange earner.

(Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Corporate Africa ‘at risk from evolving economic crime’, surveys show

27 Feb 2014
Economic crime is continuing to threaten businesses across Africa, with firms at risk of “secondary damage” from fraud and corruption, such as revenue losses and tarnished corporate images, according to two new surveys.
Bribery and internal investigations Regulatory
The 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey, published this month by professional services firm PwC, said Africa reported one of the highest overall percentages of bribery and corruption globally in 2014 (39%) – compared to 34% in a 2011 survey. The survey received 5,128 responses from more than 95 countries.
In a related third biennial Kenya Report published with the global survey, PwC said Kenya is still above the Africa average of 50% in instances of economic crime and substantially higher than the global average of 37%.
“Kenyan organisations still need to place more emphasis and dedicated resources to tackle the high instances of economic crime,” the report added.
PwC said threats and trends of economic crime are constantly evolving across Africa, alongside asset misappropriation, accounting fraud and bribery, due in part to increased use of technology.
In Africa, 61% of respondents reported bribery and corruption as posing the greatest relative risk to their organisations, followed by money laundering (25%) and competition law/antitrust law (13%).
Regionally, the highest response rates for procurement fraud were found in Africa (43%) and the Middle East (33%), areas with large government sectors, important energy and mining industries, and growing construction and infrastructure projects. “The results underscore the risks organisations in these industries face,” the report added.
South Africa headed the list of top territories reporting economic crimes. Reported fraud was 69% in 2014 compared to 60% in 2011.
In Kenya, the percentage of economic crimes reported in 2014 was 52%, compared to 66% in 2011. The report added: “This decline could be attributed to more aggressive efforts and deliberate actions by organisations to address the problem.”
According to 55% of respondents who reported suffering economic crime in Kenya in 2014, the impact is still less than $100,000 at organisational level, PwC said. “The percentage increase in the higher cost bracket ($100,000 to $5 million) on the other hand signals some warning signs with indicated response levels of 25% in 2011 up to 34% in 2014.”
PwC added: “This could indicate that fraud perpetrators in Kenya are getting bolder and targeting larger sums of money, which is generally in line with the recently reported incidences of economic crimes in the country.”
“Like any new market there are risks and when it comes to fraud and corruption often there is an assumption that it is the same everywhere in Africa,” said Barry Vitou, a corporate crime expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com. “This is wrong. Botswana turns out to be one of the less risky places in the world to do business. Businesses should take steps to make sure that they understand the environment they operate in and take steps to reduce the risks.”
Cybercrime is highlighted as a particular challenge for all companies, which PwC said offers fraudsters “an increased level of anonymity and convenience, and provides them access to larger pools of ‘virtual money’ compared to traditional types of economic crime”.
Africa is not immune from the increased use of new technologies, including the increasing digitisation of personal data and processes, which PwC said is “enabling more and more harmful incidents of economic crime”.
PwC said: “Asset misappropriation remains the most frequently reported type of economic crime globally.” Among respondents who reported economic crime in Kenya, 77% (73% in 2011) indicated asset misappropriation was the most prevalent form of fraud in their organisations.
According to PwC, the prominence of asset misappropriation “could be attributed to the fact that a wide range of irregularities can be easily classified under this type of economic crime and the opportunity to commit this type of irregularity is available to individuals at all levels of the organisation”. Other types of economic crimes, such as accounting fraud, “can be committed only by those individuals who are in a position to influence the financial statements”.
PwC added: “It is easy for those who have lived in relatively corruption-free societies to underestimate the significance and power of cultural norms related to the ‘demand side’ of corruption. It is likely that when your employees are challenged with sales and other business goals within ‘high corruption demand’ cultures, they may not perceive the risk of participating in a corrupt scheme with the expected, and required, degree of caution.”

Africa: Kidnap for Ransom – to Pay or Not to Pay?

By Liesl Louw-Vaudran, 18 February 2014

It is one of the best-kept secrets in the world. As freed hostages step on the tarmac after being released by terror groups in places like Mali, Nigeria or Yemen, no one dares to reveal whether a ransom had been paid to the kidnappers. Invariably, governments deny having handed over the huge sums requested by terrorists. Too much is at stake.

Lately, more and more governments are advocating for a ban on such payments. Yet experts believe that, faced with a moral dilemma and pressure of public opinion, many governments still pay millions of dollars in ransom money to terror groups.

As South Africans continue to wait for news of schoolteacher Pierre Korkie, who was kidnapped along with his wife in Yemen last year, analysts indicate that there is a worrying new trend of kidnappers increasingly targeting locals in the African countries where they operate.

In its latest risk report, consultancy Control Risk Management cites Mali, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan as the having the highest risk for kidnapping worldwide.

In Africa, Nigeria, Mauritania, Niger, southern Algeria, Kenya and parts of Sudan are also on the list of high-risk places where terror groups engage in kidnapping.

Other studies also indicate that Nigeria and Mexico still top the list when it comes to the number of kidnappings for ransom that are carried out annually.

Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Senior Researcher Martin Ewi says kidnapping for ransom has become one of the most important sources of income for terror groups. ‘They use the money to buy sophisticated weapons and to expand their terrorist operations,’ he explains.

A declassified August 2013 report by the UK government states that at least US$70 million was paid to terrorists in the previous three to four years, and that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which operates in the Sahel, has collected at least US$45 million in ransom payments from various governments.

‘It is the single largest source of income for a number of key groups, including al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP] and AQIM,’ the report states.

Ewi says that the governments of the United Kingdom and Algeria have been particularly steadfast in their efforts to crack down on and prohibit the payment of ransoms to terror groups.

Yet, this remains a very difficult moral choice, as governments could be accused of failing to assist citizens who become kidnap victims.

France, in particular, has been accused of dishing out millions of euros to secure the release of its many nationals held hostage over the last few years, mostly in Mali, Niger and northern Nigeria. If this is true, is France encouraging hostage taking?

Ewi says this moral dilemma, which is faced by governments all over the world, is one of the reasons why this is such a sensitive issue. ‘Even former hostages won’t talk about it, because keeping this issue a secret is often part of the conditions of their release,’ he says.

The South African government seems to be taking a case-by-case approach on the issue – sometimes with a high-profile approach and at other times discreetly participating in negotiations.

The government has consistently denied paying any ransom for its citizens. In June 2012, a South African couple held hostage by Somali pirates was released after intervention by the South African government.

A ransom of US$500 000 was demanded for their release, but the government never admitted to paying it. Despite this denial, South African citizens are increasingly being targeted for ransom.

The Korkie case has created unprecedented media interest, particularly after the involvement of charity organisation, Gift of the Givers. A deadline to pay a ransom of over US$3 million expired on 8 February, but unconfirmed reports indicate that Korkie, who was reported gravely ill, is still alive.

His wife, Yolande, who was released by the kidnappers and returned to South Africa on 17 January, made an emotional appeal, together with her two children, for his release.

South African Deputy Minister in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Ebrahim Ebrahim, also travelled to Yemen in January in an attempt to secure Korkie’s release. In an open letter to the kidnappers he appealed to their sense of humanity and stated, ‘Islam enjoins us to show mercy.’

While fewer foreigners might now be travelling to the dangerous zones in the Sahel, local workers of foreign companies and NGOs are still at risk, says Ewi.

Earlier this month, five Malians working for the Red Cross were kidnapped in Gao in northern Mali. The Islamist Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, which could be seen as an act of desperation by a group whose funds may be running out.

Ewi says that the kidnapping of locals could also be used to put political pressure on African governments – who are not likely to pay for their citizens’ release – to yield to certain terrorist demands such as the release of prisoners, or even to abandon certain policies.

‘Depending on the response, this could become a trend,’ says Ewi. In Nigeria, groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have notoriously used kidnapping not only for financial gain, but also to get their political message across.

This has abated somewhat since the 2009 amnesty offered to MEND by the Nigerian government, but Ewi says that the kidnapping of foreign and local oil workers in that country continues. The issue is just not receiving the same media attention it had in the past.

Lately, foreigners in northern Nigeria and parts of Cameroon have also become victims of kidnapping by Islamist organisation Boko Haram and its breakaway group, Ansaru.

Two high-profile cases last year – one of a French family kidnapped in Cameroon and another of a French priest, who had managed to escape his attackers – have been linked to Boko Haram.

Ewi says that while the organisation had initially distanced itself from kidnapping for ransom, considering it a ‘dirty business,’ it now engages with this practice because of the potential profits involved.

The group’s biggest ransom thus far is believed to be a payment of US$3 million for the release of the French family kidnapped in February 2013. According to the UK government report, 19 people have thus far been kidnapped by Boko Haram and Ansaru.

Could the tracking of financial transactions be of some assistance in fighting this problem? The fight against piracy has been aided, for example, by tracking the financial transactions of Somali pirates in Kenyan real estate.

Ewi says that this is unlikely to work. While pirates engage in kidnapping for personal gain, terror groups use proceeds to further their activities.

Putting an end to political instability and zones of lawlessness remain some of the only ways to stop kidnapping for ransom in Africa and elsewhere.

An agreement among states to universally prohibit the payment of ransoms, perhaps through an international treaty, will also certainly assist.

Are Africa's politicians value for money?

Posted on Wednesday, 05 March 2014 18:12

The dusty streets of Ouagadougou teemed with people last August protesting against President Blaise Compaoré’s plans to create a Senate alongside Burkina Faso’s 111 seat National Assembly.

One of the demonstrators carried a sign reading: “Some are eating. Others are watching. This is how revolutions are born.”

It might seem perverse for opposition MPs and rights activists to demonstrate against a new legislative chamber. But the oppositionists, led by Zéphirin Diabré of the Union pour le Progrès et le Changement, described the proposal for a Senate as a trick, a colossal waste of money and simply a means for Compaoré to change the constitution to allow him another term in power after 2015.

In turn Compaoré dismissed the protestors: “Even in Paris, even in the United States, a march has never changed a law.” That may prove a serious mistake on Compaoré’s part.

In a poll 69% of Africans wanted parliaments, not presidents, to make the laws

Mass demonstrations helped promote civil rights in the United States, break down apartheid in South Africa and have helped win victories for advocates of trade-union and women’s rights in France.

And in Africa, the political map is changing. More street protests – whether against bad local services in South Africa or spiralling state utility prices in Ghana – are urging MPs to stand up for the constituents against overbearing party leaders and governments.

Last year civic activists worked closely with opposition MPs to fight South Africa’s secrecy bill, which they said would criminalise investigative journalism and protect corrupt public officials.

A similar alliance between youthful protestors and opposition parties organised mass protests in Nigeria in January 2012 to scupper the government’s attempt to end the fuel subsidy.

Then the opposition MPs demanded hearings in the National Assembly to investigate claims that much of the funding for the subsidy had been diverted to benefit cronies of the ruling party.

MPs drew up a list of companies benefiting from the subsidy and summoned them to the Assembly to answer questions at hearings broadcast live on television.

Bribery and anti-corruption

Serious problems continue on both sides of Nigeria’s National Assembly. In the past this prompted a widely-believed report that Assembly members had to be bribed to approve an anti-corruption law under former-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government.

But with the ruling People’s Democratic Party now losing its majority in the lower house of the National Assembly, opposition MPs hope the legislature will be able to assert itself against the executive.

If anything, civic activists are busier in Kenya but complain that MPs tend to be in thrall to the President. “The performance of parliament thus far has been shocking,” says John Githongo, the former anti-corruption czar who is now chief executive of the Inuka Kenya Trust, which campaigns for better governance.

“There appears to be a deliberate effort to rip up the constitution,” he says, pointing to bills introduced to muzzle the media and political activists.

Kenya’s parliament has done little to check the executive. “It’s back to the future” says Githongo, hinting at a return to authoritarianism.

Evidence from opinion polls suggest that African voters want parliaments to play a stronger role rather than act as a rubber stamp for presidents and their ruling parties.

 

In 2012 Afrobarometer surveyed 12 African countries and found that 69% of the respondents wanted parliaments, not presidents and their cabinets executive, to be in charge of making laws. That rarely happens.In Uganda, 45% of respondents told pollsters that they thought the president always or often ignored parliament. Because of low expectations about what they can achieve, parliamentary elections attract a much lower turn out than presidential ones.

Measuring the quality and diligence of African parliaments is difficult, and voters differ sharply over the required political qualities.

Last year, Nigeria’s Senate passed 47 bills, and its House of Representatives passed 60: that’s an average of less than two bills a week in the parliamentary terms. In the United States, the House considers around 10-15 bills during a legislative week.

Nigerian MP Umar Barde explains: “I know for a fact that some people got re-elected not based on the ‘quality of laws I help make on the floor’ but because of ‘money I give out.’ That is what the electorate use to rate us.”

In 2013, South Africa’s parliament passed only 48 bills. It devoted just over 247 hours – or about 30 full working days – to plenary meetings and joint sittings. MPs also asked 3,207 written questions; most were answered.

Although South Africa’s MPs score higher marks than most, the country’s National Planning Commission raised “serious concerns about whether parliament is fulfilling its role adequately in the building of a capable, accountable and responsive state” – one that addresses poverty, inequality and the provision of public services.

To track MPs and ensure they are attending meetings and votes, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will use biometric measures to record their presence. The devices might promote greater political accountability, or they could alternatively be used to spy on party dissidents.

Jessica Musila, the chief executive of the non-partisan Mzalendo organisation, which monitors Kenya’s parliament, has produced statistics on MPs’ contributions to parliamentary debates in 2013 as reported in Hansard, the official record of the legislature.

“We had really hoped they would have worked in the public interest more,” says Musila. The figures show that more than 50% of the speeches are made by just 10% of the MPs.

“They are failing in their representation role,” Musila says, blaming the problem on the nomination process that political parties use to weed out problematic candidates. “That’s why we have the parliament we do. There are no independent thinkers. They are beholden to the party line.”

Kenya’s MPs are among the highest paid in the world, but the good salaries have neither improved their work ethic or dampened their appetite for political patronage.

Accusations of bribery, some involving sums as small as $200, are regularly made against MPs. Parliamentary speaker Kenneth Marende said in 2012 that he would “not condone the use of this house or the membership in it for purposes of, or as avenues for, corruption or other criminal conduct.”

Check your balances

On paper, at least, Western political systems are meant to preside over a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Activists complain that African parliaments rarely hold the usually all-powerful executive president to account.

Twenty years after South Africa’s first free election, opposition MPs complain that the ruling ANC with its 264 members often uses its huge majority to stifle debate and protect ministers from censure.

With opposition parties hoping to do well in the national elections due in April, some MPs are talking of a plan to impeach President Jacob Zuma if it is found that he had misled parliament on the $20 million security upgrade of his Nkandla compound in Kwazulu-Natal.

The probability is that the ANC will still win a comfortable majority of seats in parliament and the real threat to Zuma will come from his own party’s national executive committee, not from MPs.

“Parliament is not nearly as effective as it should be. We are not satisfied with the level of accountability of the government to parliament,” complains the Democratic Alliance’s Lindiwe Mazibuko, who is parliamentary leader for the opposition.

In Nigeria, MP Barde says the House of Representatives makes good enough laws but “maybe the executive lacks the will to implement them.” And reform often has to start with civil servants, he adds.

Ibrahim Ssemujju, an MP for Uganda’s biggest opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change, says MPs have lost their bite. “At the start [June 2011] this parliament had the ability to hold the executive accountable. Now they don’t have it. Towards the end, the MPs start to position themselves for the upcoming election. They are vulnerable to bribes and all sorts of inducements,” he explains.

Sometimes it’s a matter of political will: for example, Kenya’s new constitution offers MPs a greater chance to rein in the executive, according to political analyst Ken Opalo. “The constitution has given the institution powers over the budget, appointments and oversight,” says Opalo. “In my view, so far, parliament has not been using these to the extent that it should.”

Kenya’s executive currently seems to have most MPs well under control. Alphonce Shiundu, outgoing chairman of the Kenya Parliamentary Journalists Association, says the Jubilee government has persuaded parliament to approve everything it wanted, with one exception.

Parliament’s agenda last year was dominated by efforts to derail the trials of President Uhuru Kenyatta and deputy president William Ruto at the International Criminal Court and a push by MPs to beef up their already extraordinarily large pay cheques.

The MPs tried to ignore public outrage and swat aside attempts by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission to revise their terms but faced a huge and lively demonstration outside parliament in Nairobi in which protestors poured pigs’ blood.

“If they [the MPs] were actually working for the people, their attention would be on different things, like the Capital Markets Authority, which has not had a chief executive for 18 months,” adds Opalo.

Unlike the system in Britain or the US, MPs in Ghana cannot introduce their own bills or propose laws. Everything has to come from the executive in a system that gives the president massive powers of preferment and patronage, with little scope for parliamentary scrutiny.

So despite the praise heaped on Ghana’s multi-party democracy, its system is top-heavy and ensures the winner takes all, leaving the opposition fairly powerless.

No showdown in Abidjan

In neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, even some MPs outside the ruling party argue for a more supportive stance towards the executive to help the country recover from a decade of crisis.

“We are not going to go into a showdown with the government if it is not necessary,” explains Privat Oula, an independent MP from Duékoué (candidates from ex-president Laurent Gbagbo’s Front Populaire Ivoirien boycotted the parliamentary elections in protest at the government shipping out their leader for trial at the ICC).

“This year, we will keep putting pressure on the government on topics such as the cost of living, health and housing.” Last April, MPs approved a law allowing President Alassane Ouattara to issue decrees on economic and social policy, to quicken the pace of the reforms.

MPs hold differing views on responsibilities to their constituents. According to former MP and deputy minister Joe Annan in Ghana: “There is very little interaction on matters of policy between the constituent and his MP.”

Instead, he says, “the parliamentarian is good for making appearances at funerals, weddings, giving hefty donations, paying school fees and giving loans to people in distress and also finding jobs.”

Constituents talk about ‘protocol’ says Annan. That’s the idea that a parliamentarian will get allocated a number of positions for the army, the police, the fire service and can find a job for people in the constituency.

“So that’s what the ordinary voter is looking at. Virtually every cent that parliamentarians get paid gets sucked out of them at the constituency level,” says Annan.

Jaye Gaskia, head of United Action for Democracy in Nigeria, which campaigns for better governance, says that having more people does not necessarily help: “Too many legislators have just too many aides, and then too many aides have no relevant skills, competence nor experience to serve the need of the legislators.”

Research is power

Those MPs who want to hold governments to account are often hampered by the lack of good research facilities.

Auwal Ibrahim Musa of Nigeria’s Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CSLAC), says: “We have been calling for the establishment of a National Assembly Budget and Research Office to act as a think tank that will evaluate, criticise and make suggestions to lawmakers.” He says it would be an independent body that would produce white (or draft discussion) papers on topics of government policy.

The National Assembly Service Commission runs seminars every couple of months to educate legislators. Attendance is not compulsory and the seminars last four to five days.

Radical Ugandan MP Norbert Mao was especially critical of his parliament’s decision to equip all MPs with iPad tablet computers at a cost of $370,000, ostensibly for research. He said his country’s MPs are united only “when they are increasing their salaries and accepting iPads, which they will ultimately use to check [their] Facebook [accounts].”

Ghana’s parliament lacks its own re- search facilities to monitor the results of government programmes. Last year Vice-President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur admitted that no quantitative studies had been done to assess some government initiatives.

“They should ask civil society to help. We should work in tandem,” suggests Franklin Cudjoe, head of the Accra-based think tank IMANI.

In October, after a furore over illegal imports by the Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana’s ministry of health asked the think tank to list its recommendations and to write a petition.

“Parliament needs to be more active with executive oversight. They must use a robust cost-benefit analysis approach,” Cudjoe says.

Former MP Annan is sceptical. “Civil society is still organised along political lines. What is lacking in this part of the world is civil society organised along interest lines, in other words, miners getting together or people engaged in small-scale commercial activities.”

According to Annan, too many civic activists in Ghana are intellectuals claiming to speak for the people but really representing their own parochial interests or political ambitions.

two houses better than one?

Debate about the structure and cost of parliaments is heating up: some argue that abolishing bicameral systems hugely boosts efficiency. Fewer than half of Africa’s legislatures have an upper and a lower house.

In August 2012, Senegal’s President Macky Sall said he would dissolve the Senate so he could allocate more state funds to fight flooding.

CSLAC’s Musa says: “The cost of running the National Assembly is killing the economy of Nigeria. The cost of governance demands an uprising from its citizens – it is overbearing and underdeveloping the country. And until it is restructured, the Nigerian will continue to suffer for it.”

Musa argues that the House of Representatives is more in touch with the people than the Senate and that it passes better laws.

For Musa and others there can be some common ground between activists and opposition parliamentarians.

In South Africa, the joint street and parliamentary protests against the Secrecy Bill seem to have deterred President Jacob Zuma from signing it into law, although it was passed overwhelmingly in parliament by his ANC party.

That campaign – like the fuel subsidy protests in Nigeria or demonstrations against higher state utility tariffs in Ghana – show how popular activism can galvanise MPs into more effective political action.

Often, but not always, the successful campaigns involve cost-of-living issues.

In some of the many national elections to be held in Africa over the next few years it’s likely that one party may win the presidency and another win the parliament. That would greatly boost the prestige and authority of legislatures.

Meanwhile those MPs and activists in Ouagadougou are stepping up the pressure on Compaoré to abandon his bid to change the constitution in another test case for Africa’s new politics. ●

African migrants storm into Spanish enclave of Melilla

Feb 28, 2014. More than 200 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have broken into Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla by scaling the border fence.

It is one of the biggest migrant surges into Melilla in recent years.

Many of the migrants suffered cuts scaling the fence. During the incident, migrants threw stones, sticks and bottles at police, officials say.

This month there have been similar mass break-ins in Melilla and Ceuta – another Spanish city in North Africa.

The break-in happened at about 06:00 local time (05:00 GMT) at Ben-Enzar, a crossing point on the Spain-Morocco border.

The migrants, many of whom said they were from Cameroon and Guinea, sang triumphantly as they made their way to the Melilla migrant reception centre, Spain’s El Pais daily reported.

They are likely to be expelled from Melilla. The reception centre is already overcrowded – built for 480, it now houses 1,300 people, its manager Carlos Montero said.

On 6 February at least 14 migrants drowned when hundreds tried to swim into Ceuta.

The two Spanish territories have become a magnet for migrants seeking work or asylum in Europe.

African migrants 'storm' Spain's Melilla-Morocco border

Feb 24, 2014. At least 300 African migrants have stormed a border fence in an attempt to cross into the Spanish territory of Melilla from Morocco, officials say.

Morocco security forces clashed with the migrants, leaving 27 people wounded, they added.

Ninety-six migrants were arrested, while about 100 managed to cross over, the officials said.

Melilla is a major crossing point for sub-Saharan Africans seeking work or asylum in Europe.

Together with a second Spanish enclave, Ceuta, it is the European Union’s only land border with Africa.

Many of those making the dangerous journey come from Eritrea and Somalia.

The Moroccan interior ministry said the migrants hurled rocks at the security forces as they stormed the six-metre (20-foot) high double barbed wire fence on Monday.

Thirteen security force members and 14 migrants were wounded in the clashes, it added in a statement.

A Spanish government spokeswoman said the migrants were “very violent” and had targeted two different sections of the border fence, the AFP news agency reports.

About 150 African migrants made it into Melilla after a similar assault on the border fence on 17 February.

At least 14 migrants drowned in Moroccan waters on 6 February while trying to enter Ceuta by sea.

Spain’s interior ministry confirmed on Friday that police fired rubber bullets as the migrants swam into Spanish territory, but denied the shooting contributed to the drowning.

Apple supplier review uncovers fewer child labor cases

Thu Feb 13, 2014 7:10pm IST

(Reuters) – Apple Inc (AAPL.O) uncovered fewer cases of child labor than a year ago in its annual survey of the international supply chain that makes parts for its iPhones and iPads.

In its eighth annual supply-chain report, Apple also said the metal tantalum, an essential component in many electronic products, had not been sourced from war zones.

Apple, the world’s most valuable technology company, has been accused by labor rights groups of building profits on the back of poorly treated and underpaid workers in Asia.

The company, which sold 150 million iPhones in 2013, audited 451 plants operated by various parts suppliers. Collectively, these plants employ nearly 1.5 million people. (link.reuters.com/fac86v)

Apple’s latest audit found 23 underage workers at companies supplying it with components. The previous year’s audit had uncovered 74 underage workers at a single supplier.

In the report, Apple said some third-party recruiters had hired young workers illegally and without the knowledge of the hiring companies. (r.reuters.com/gyc86v)

Cupertino, Califorina-based Apple relies heavily on Asian partners, such as Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, for the assembly of its iPhones and iPads.

Further up the supply chain, companies must procure essential metals such as tantalum, sometimes known as ‘conflict minerals’ due to their sale by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and South Sudan.

Apple said its suppliers did not procure tantalum from any third-party providers linked to armed groups in various warring African countries.

“In January 2014 we confirmed that all active, identified tantalum smelters in our supply chain were verified as conflict-free by third-party auditors,” Apple said in the report.

“We’re pushing our suppliers of tin, tungsten and gold just as hard to use verified sources,” the company said.

The latest report identified 106 facilities that did not pay night-shift workers appropriately for legal holidays, and 105 plants that did not provide sufficient social insurance.

Apple said it had identified some abuses of migrant workers and, as a result, required suppliers to reimburse foreign contract workers $3.9 million in excessive fees paid to labor brokers.

Apple’s suppliers achieved an average of 95 percent compliance with its standard maximum 60-hour work week, the company said in the report.

(Reporting by Chris Peters and Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Apple watches for conflict metal in supply chain

San Francisco — Apple on Thursday said it has verified that an essential metal used in its mobile devices is not coming from sources that help finance violent groups in Africa.

The California-based maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macintosh computers said it confirmed in January that smelters producing tantalum used in its devices were “conflict-free” by third-party auditors.

“We will continue to require all suppliers to use only verified tantalum sources,” Apple said in a routinely issued Supplier Responsibility Report.

“We know supply chains fluctuate, and we’ll maintain ongoing monitoring of our suppliers’ smelters.”

Mines producing tantalum, gold, tungsten and other minerals needed to make Internet Age mobile devices are seen as sources of funding for fighting by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Greenpeace praised Apple’s efforts to shine light on its suppliers, calling it a hallmark of the California-based company’s chief executive Tim Cook.

“Apple has flexed its muscles in the past to push suppliers to remove hazardous substances from products and provide more renewable energy for data centers, and it is proving the same model can work to reduce the use of conflict minerals,” Greenpeace energy campaigner Tom Dowdall said in a release.

“Samsung and other consumer electronics companies should follow Apple’s example and map its suppliers, so the industry can exert its collective influence to build devices that are better for people and the planet.”

The report also indicated that suppliers were pretty much staying in line when it came to Apple rules regarding not abusing workers.

Apple suppliers averaged 95 percent compliance with an Apple edict that work weeks not exceed 60 hours, according to the report.

Apple also said it is “investing heavily” in education programs to help workers learn new skills and better understand their rights.

Central African Republic's Muslim civilians 'at risk'

Feb 7, 2014. Muslim communities in many towns in the Central African Republic are threatened from reprisal attacks on civilians, a medical charity has warned.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said violence has reached intolerable and unprecedented levels.

Many thousands of the minority Muslim population have already fled to Chad or Cameroon.

CAR, one of Africa’s poorest nations, descended into religious violence after Muslim rebels seized power last March.

Rebel leader Michel Djotodia, who became CAR’s first Muslim leader, resigned as interim president last month as part of a regional peace process, but the violence has continued.

The rebels, who called themselves Seleka, were blamed for a series of deadly attacks on Christians that prompted the creation of Christian militias – widely knows as “anti-balaka”, meaning anti-machete.

The UN Security Council authorised French and African troops to intervene last December.

‘Killed as escaping’
MSF said all communities were affected by the violence, but lately there have been collective reprisals against Muslims.

“Civilians remain in constant fear for their lives, and have been largely left to fend for themselves,” Martine Flokstra, MSF’s emergency co-ordinator, said in a statement.

In the capital, Bangui, the charity said fighting and looting continued unabated and it had treated more than 1,650 wounded patients from both communities as a direct result of the violence in the last month.

On Friday morning, witnesses said thousands of Muslims piled on to trucks in Bangui to leave the city, escorted by Chadian peacekeepers.

One person who fell off one of the trucks was killed by a crowd and his body mutilated, witnesses said.

“In the north-west and in Bangui, we are currently witnessing a direct retaliation against the Muslim minority,” said Ms Flokstra.

“We are concerned about the fate of these communities trapped in their villages, surrounded by anti-balaka groups.”

Fighting in several north-western towns had forced the Muslim population to leave and on Wednesday 2,500 people fled the village of Bozoum, MSF said.

According to MSF, about 30,000 refugees are already in Chad and another 10,000 have reached Cameroon.

In Bangui, Muslim families are gathering in a separate camp at the airport, in the great Mosque and several other sites waiting to leave or hoping for some protection, the charity said.

On Wednesday, soldiers beat and stabbed a man accused of being a rebel just moments after interim President Catherine Samba-Panza finished speaking at an army ceremony.

Last month, the UN said it believed at least 10,000 troops might be required to end the unrest.

France, the former colonial power, has 1,600 troops in CAR working with some 4,000 troops from African countries.

For a different African piracy problem, Navy seeks solutions on shore

Jan 21, 2014. NAPLES, Italy — When pirates hijacked an American supply ship and kidnapped two of its crew members off the coast of Nigeria last October, the news had a familiar ring to it. “Captain Phillips,” a movie based on the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, had just hit theaters, a reminder of another time when pirates posed an outsize threat off the coast of Africa.

It’s tempting to see a new Somalia in the Gulf of Guinea, a troubled body of water on the Atlantic side of Africa. A report this week by the International Maritime Bureau counted 48 pirate incidents in the area last year; a total of 36 people were kidnapped for ransom, and one person was killed.

Meanwhile, pirate attacks off Somalia continued their steep decline, dropping to 15 incidents last year after hitting a peak of 237 attacks in 2011, a fall attributed largely to an international naval policing effort and new protocols for vessels transiting the area.

Yet the U.S. Navy has little interest in a similar policing effort in West Africa, its top officer told Stars and Stripes in a November interview. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert said solutions in the region must be shore-based — in other words, with local governments in the lead rather than international navies.

“You need a presence of governance that has deterred the piracy up till now in the Gulf of Guinea,” Greenert said during a visit to Bahrain.

His comments parallel what data and experts say about the region, where attacks resemble those in the Horn of Africa but are complicated by the presence of weak local governments and a lack of incentive for outside countries to intervene.

A different kind of pirate

Maritime crime has long been a problem in the gulf waters stretching from Ivory Coast to Gabon, and Nigeria in particular, whose oil exports drive much of the region’s traffic, said Dirk Steffen, maritime security director at Risk Intelligence, a consulting firm for the shipping industry. Incidents ranged from thefts of opportunity on berthed ships to armed robberies of fishing trawlers and other small craft.

A more sophisticated kind of attack emerged in 2010, when violent, heavily armed gunmen in speedboats began intercepting tankers and other cargo ships transiting the gulf.

“It was just, let’s say, a qualitative change,” Steffen said.

The upsurge in piracy may be connected to a specifically Nigerian problem: the theft of large quantities of crude oil from pipelines in the Niger Delta. Oil-theft networks siphon an average of 100,000 barrels of oil a day from the country’s poorly guarded infrastructure on land, according to a study by British think-tank Chatham House.

Pirate operations in the Gulf of Guinea tend to be crudely run in comparison to the sophisticated oil-theft networks, yet connections between the two groups exist, the study said.

Steffen links the rise of tanker piracy to developments in the Niger Delta, the oil-rich but economically impoverished tip of southern Nigeria. Militants there fought for years for political power and a share of the delta’s wealth before many laid down their weapons in 2009 as part of a government amnesty, a shift that actually caused a decline in pirate attacks.

When some former militants were given jobs protecting the local oil infrastructure they once targeted, the oil-theft networks began to look for opportunities elsewhere, he said. Tanker ships had little protection.

The attacks suggest a knowledge of the ships and their contents, as well as their intended ports and routes, other experts note, indicating a level of collusion with port authorities. Former rebels may also be among the pirates, some suggest.

“It seems to be the case that these are basically paramilitary groups,” said Cristina Barrios, a senior analyst with the European Union Institute of Strategic Studies. “And we don’t know all the connections that well, because we don’t have all the intelligence from Nigeria, and we think Nigeria may not even have it.”

As the success rate of tanker hijackings has fallen somewhat in recent years — a change some attribute to joint Nigeria-Benin maritime patrols initiated in 2012 — kidnapping for ransom has surged. The Americans taken hostage from the supply ship C-Retriever in October were released weeks later after the payment of an unspecified ransom, according to news reports.

As media began covering pirate attacks in the gulf, many reports drew parallels to the Horn of Africa. Where, some wondered, was the U.S. Navy?

A different response

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Terence McKnight, the former commander of the international task force that patrolled the Horn of Africa beginning in 2009, says much of the solution in West Africa lies in policing the waters.

“The problem we have down there is there are no navies in the Gulf of Guinea,” he said. “I think if you have a show of presence … they would take warning.”

In Somalia, a near absence of government gave international militaries a free hand in targeting pirates. With the support of Somalia’s Western-backed transitional government, a 2008 U.N. resolution opened up the country’s territorial waters and its shore to pursuit of pirates.

Attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, by comparison, occur near the territorial waters of multiple countries. Most attacks are relatively close to that boundary — 12 nautical miles from a coastline — whereas attacks off the Horn of Africa extended hundreds of nautical miles from the shore.

Although the countries of the Gulf of Guinea are more developed than Somalia, few can monitor their own waters with radar, much less police them. Sailors are often untrained in anti-piracy measures and either lack protocols for sharing information with neighboring countries or are unwilling to do so.

Weak judiciaries and police forces pose additional problems. In Nigeria, where most of the attacks originate, corrupt military and government officials are tied to the very oil theft, piracy and black market sales they are tasked with stopping.

And yet there is arguably less at stake for the international community in the Gulf of Guinea than there was in the Gulf of Aden, a major international waterway linking Europe and East Asia via the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. The IMB counted 111 attacks attributed to Somali pirates in 2008, the year of the U.N. resolution.

Nigerian oil is more important to the European Union, where imports nearly doubled between 2010 and 2012, than to the U.S., where imports have fallen in recent years in favor of domestic crude. But with tighter military budgets, the U.S. and European countries may be less inclined to act unless the global consequences of Gulf of Guinea piracy grow in scale.

Observers like Steffen believe that regardless of the presence of a policing agreement, lasting solutions will come only with concerted efforts within Gulf of Guinea countries, especially Nigeria.

“This isn’t a question of sending more warships,” he said. “This is a question of how in the short term to develop more methods of law and order, governance, those sorts of things, to strengthen Western Africa countries — to strengthen what laws they have and make more use of the naval forces they have.”

Solutions on shore?

In recent years, the U.S. and EU have worked toward strengthening navies and judiciaries around the Gulf of Guinea region.

The Navy conducts annual exercises with the region’s navies. It has also funded a coastal surveillance system that combines radar and a system that allows vessels to project their position and route.

In addition, the U.S. has shared SeaVision, a web-based application developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation that gives a common picture of sea traffic. Navies can track ships and message one another about suspicious vessels.

The EU, meanwhile, began a $6.12 million project last fall to encourage seven countries along the gulf to coordinate on legal mechanisms and information-sharing, as well as mapping. While some leaders in the Gulf of Guinea have asked for international policing to stymie piracy, help from abroad seems focused on shore for now. Experts say the immediate future in the Gulf of Guinea will likely be dictated by events within Nigeria, which faces an economic downturn and a coming election.

Whatever happens, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is likely to continue in some form, as it has in traditional shipping lanes off the Horn of Africa, in Indonesia and in East Asia.

“As long as ships go to sea, you’re going to have pirates,” McKnight said.

Cargo theft: Mitigating risk requires game plan

By Adina Solomon on July 1, 2013

Look up how many air cargo thefts happen per year worldwide.

You won’t find the answer.

You will find news stories such as the 3,600 iPad minis that were taken from JFK International Airport in November 2012, or the cargo that was stolen and thrown over the perimeter wall at an Indian airport in April 2012.

Cargo security professionals interviewed say air cargo is the most secure mode of transportation, in terms of theft, because of the difficulty of stealing cargo midair.

But airfreight isn’t always in the air.

Trucks often take cargo to the airport. That cargo may sit around before or after a flight, sometimes unattended.

That’s where air cargo is most vulnerable to theft.

“Our industry, transporting high value goods as we do, is a potential target,” Oliver Evans, chairman of The International Air Cargo Association, says.

‘A system that actually works’

Cargo travels through many hands: airlines, ground handlers, trucking companies.

That’s why it must have a chain of custody, Walt Beadling, managing partner at logistics security company Cargo Security Alliance, says.

“What that means is at any point in time, you know who has a particular piece of cargo, whatever it may,” Beadling says. “You may not know where it is, but you know who has responsibility for it. And at each point where the cargo’s transferred, there’s a handoff, a formal handoff, where custody is transferred from one entity to another.”

Erik Hoffer, vice president of CSA, says someone must design a logistical plan in order to create that chain of custody and have as few handoffs as possible.

“There’s always going to be that one point where nobody’s watching the store,” he says. “Without having the ability to have a chain of custody throughout the different modalities, you’re not going to get anywhere. You’re just going to have a problem always.”

Most air cargo theft happens during these points of consolidation, JJ Coughlin, chairman at Southwest Transportation Security Council, says. Coughlin published a book called Cargo Crime: Security and Theft Prevention in 2012.

“When it’s in the plane flying is the safest it gets,” he says. “When it’s being handled at those points of consolidation is when it’s as risky as it gets.”

He says in order to fight theft, document each point of handling.

“If you take care of the small things, the process and the procedure, and you do things correctly as far as the freight handling, it makes your security issues a whole lot easier to resolve,” Coughlin says.

Hoffer says without a plan to create a chain of custody, the carrier or trucking company doesn’t know that a box contains valuable cargo, and they may not protect it in the appropriate way.

“The further into the supply chain you get with the less people have knowledge of what to look for and what to do, the whole system continues to break down further and further,” Hoffer says.

That’s why the owner of the cargo needs a game plan.

“If he can establish how to do it and it can be implemented by the receiving carrier, then by the receiving airline, then by the delivering carrier,” Hoffer says, “now you have a system that actually works.”

It is also imperative to screen anyone who handles cargo.

Coughlin estimates that 85 percent of the theft that happens during consolidation is internal.

Evans, who is chief cargo officer at Swiss International Airlines, says companies should screen warehouse and office staff and anyone else involved in the supply chain. Employers typically check police background, he says. Evans also stresses the importance of screening staff as they enter and leave the premises.

People can secure the supply chain by choosing business partners with care.

Charles Forsaith, Providence, R.I.-based director of supply chain security at Purdue Pharma Technologies, ensures the security of one of the company’s principle products, a sought-after opioid pain medication. The ingredients for the medication mostly come from Tasmania, Spain and Turkey.

In order to bring the raw materials into the U.S., the company uses airfreight almost exclusively.

Forsaith, also chairman of the Pharmaceutical Cargo Security Coalition, says Purdue, along with many in the pharmaceuticals industry, complies with U.S. Customs law by vetting all business partners. Forsaith interrogates people Purdue does business with at least once a year and also visits businesses physically.

He says the best approach to preventing cargo theft is a layered one.

“That layered approach doesn’t put all your chips on one square. Much like U.S. Customs requires, it says you need to know who it is you’re doing business with. You need to know what airline it is that’s going to fly your product. You need to know exactly how your product is being packaged or stored,” he says. “You have to physically go out and meet with these people, check those facilities, pay attention to the security that’s involved in the warehousing or loading of that aircraft and how it’s unloaded on the other end.”

Keep on trucking

Chain of custody, points of handoff and consolidation, layered approach – all these phrases point to the fact that air cargo goes through many people and entities before it reaches its destination.

Trucking companies are usually involved. If you want to talk about air cargo theft and security, you need to talk about truck security.

“Even if you handle your cargo as air cargo, the majority is still transported at the end of the leg or the beginning by truck,” Thorsten Neumann, Germany-based chairman of the Europe, Middle East, Africa region for the Transported Asset Protection Association, says. “This is clearly the weakest link within an end-to-end supply chain solution.”

TAPA provides a forum for its more than 300 member companies to converse about cargo security.

Beadling says knowing where to route trucks helps deter air cargo theft.

Neumann says logistics companies’ low margins present one of the biggest security hurdles.

“Many companies still do believe that security is purely a cost factor,” he says, “but if you take really a look and calculate your investment on security and compare that with non-secured trucks or non-secured routings, you will see that your returns in investment are tremendous.”

Cargo at rest
The saying goes that cargo at rest is cargo at risk.

Hoffer says thieves are less likely to snatch high-value cargo than general cargo because logistical hubs keep jewelry, cash and documents in cages. People take the general cargo that sits unattended, he says. He points to the iPad mini theft at JFK as an example of unattended cargo.

“If the cargo is at some intermediate point for any length of time, when it’s sitting, it’s vulnerable,” Beadling says.

Coughlin says air cargo is at the greatest risk for theft when it sits on the tarmac.

This presents a problem in Africa, Neumann says, where in some areas, the process flow is not controlled or even structured. He says high-value products can sometimes be stalled for days on the tarmac because of a lack of infrastructure.

It all comes back to having a well-planned supply chain for air cargo.

“Having an efficient and secure supply chain, those things go hand in hand because if it’s always moving, then the chance that something’s going to go wrong with it are minimized,” he says.

‘Beyond the loss of dollars’

Theft also presents another dilemma. If someone can get access to the cargo in order to steal it, that person can also put unwanted objects in the freight.

Coughlin tells of an incident where a cargo airline employee worked with drug smugglers to place pallets of marijuana into the airline’s system. The employee moved 15 or 20 of those pallets using a customer’s account.

“If you don’t control the freight handling, whether it’s theft or smuggling, it can easily happen,” Coughlin says.

But it can go further than drug smuggling, as the Yemen bomb plot in 2010 showed.

“I think it’s a real problem,” Hoffer says. “If that happened before, it can certainly happen again, and there has to be something in place where cargo in general terms has some mandate to be able to have an inspectable template for it so cargo that is moving through the supply chain can be looked at by every inspector.”

Beadling says since the Yemen incident, the scrutiny of air cargo security has improved, but Hoffer says more improvements must be made. “My fear is really not as much the theft, but it really is on the other end when you have terrorists out there who find a way to get into cargo,” Hoffer says. “Now you’re talking about a serious problem way beyond the loss of dollars and cargo.” Securing the chain In order to prevent airfreight theft, Beadling talks about supply chain design, physical security and information sharing, such as knowing where the cargo is in real time and the identity of people handling the cargo. Evans says the connected nature of the supply chain, with each company collaborating with another, makes it necessary for everyone to screen staff and choose partners carefully. Neumann says many companies believe that if they experience a security issue, it must remain confidential. But theft and security aren’t company-specific issues – they affect the entire supply chain. “Security is everyone’s responsibility,” Neumann says. “Security should not be a competition within our industry because we all face the same challenge every single day.” This story originally said that Purdue obtains its ingredients for opioid products from Tanzania. It is actually Tasmania.

Medical cargo theft: securing the supply chain

6 February 2012 Elisabeth Fischer

With companies outsourcing clinical trials to emerging nations, medical cargo theft has become a major concern. Prior to Arena International’s Clinical Trial Supply Europe, Elisabeth Fischer talks to Cathy Brown, process improvement manager within security operations at Napp Pharmaceuticals, about strategies and technologies that ensure a safe medical supply chain.

Once a clinical trial gets on track and patient recruitment has started, the main concern for drug firms is to supply the right drugs to the correct sites on time and within specification. Hundreds of sites, thousands of patients and years of testing add complexity and risks, especially when the trials are conducted in emerging markets such as China, India, Latin America, Africa or Eastern Europe.

Particularly, the increase in pharmaceutical cargo theft has hit some companies hard in recent years. Beyond the significant loss of money and trial delays, thefts also carry hidden consequences such as the incredible damage to a company’s reputation and the need to recall products not yet released to market. Furthermore, stolen products can end up in the legitimate supply chain and pose a severe risk to patients.

Identifying security procedures that ensure a secure delivery of medical goods and maintain stock by minimising theft will be one of the topics on top of the agenda at Arena International’s Clinical Trial Supply Europe.

Taking place on 21 and 22 February 2012 in London, UK, the event will bring together industry experts from around the world for the 13th consecutive year to discuss and uncover potential remedies to this issue.

Ahead of the event, we speak to Napp Pharmaceuticals process improvement manager within security operations Cathy Brown about the dangers and challenges of shipping medical cargo in emerging countries and about the strategies and technologies that can help to secure a safe supply chain.

Elisabeth Fischer: How big is the pharma industry’s loss of medical stock through supply theft in emerging markets?

Cathy Brown: It is very difficult to put a figure on the loss of goods and stock through theft in emerging markets. There are so many different information sources and statistics collated by various different organisations so the picture is constantly changing.

In 2008 for instance, the number of pharmaceutical thefts in the US rose by a third, whereas in 2011 the number of thefts declined significantly.

According to data collected by Freight Watch International, the countries most vulnerable to cargo theft are Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, the US, Russia, India and the UK, but it’s generally anywhere where there is high cargo theft. It is also important to note that as global theft risks vary from country to country, they also vary from region to region within a country.

However, the number of seizures for pharmaceuticals, mostly counterfeits, was 9% of the total seizures for theft of intellectual property in the US in 2011.

This is an increase over 2010 and the primary source country for these seizures is China. India and Pakistan also moved into the top ten source countries for seizures of counterfeit pharmaceuticals in 2011. So it is not only the theft risk that needs to be considered but also the risk of counterfeit supplies entering the supply chain.

EF: Why do emerging markets need greater security procedures when supplying goods for clinical trials?

CB: Emerging markets will always require amplified security procedures when supplying goods for clinical trials. The infrastructure in these countries is often not as well developed, journey times can be long and the trucks are often driving on open unpatrolled roads. Moreover, the local crime rates and the value of drugs on the black market can be quite high.

In addition, emerging markets often have no regulatory presence or complexity in the supply chain.

There can also be issues over traceability to the original source, issues over destruction as well as IP concerns, all of which can result in an increased risk of cargo theft.

EF: How can pharmaceutical companies identify the value of their drugs and medical supply on black markets in these countries?

CB: Information and intelligence from sources such as Freight Watch or Securing Pharma can be quite useful to help identify the risk of theft in specific regions.

Also, knowledge from the contract research organisation (CRO) and the investigator in the area, as well as the local logistics partner, should be sought. Sometimes it is even worth employing a specialist in the local country to provide the up to date information.

EF: What are the biggest challenges of ensuring the safety of medical supply during transport?

CB: The biggest challenges of ensuring the security of trial medical supplies during transport are how to get the supplies to the depot or investigator site safely and securely in a timely manner.

“The countries most vulnerable to cargo theft are Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, the US, Russia, India and the UK.”

This comes down to knowing your supply chain and understanding the routing for the supplies so all aspects of security can be built into the process in advance.

The main risks during transportation are if the supplies are held up on route or left unattended at any time during transportation.

It is always important to know when the supplies are due to be delivered so that if they do not arrive on time an investigation can be instigated and escalated immediately.

Strategies to minimise product loss during transportation are to plan in advance of a shipment and ensure that knowledge of the product, the volumes to be shipped, the destination country and depot, the type of transport to be used and the actual route to be taken are understood in advance.

It is very important to understand all risks in advance so that contingency measures can be put in place to ensure a safe and secure supply.

EF: How much time and money should be spent on securing drug supplies to high-risk regions to ensure the safety of trial supplies?

CB: The amount of time and money spent will depend on the value of the shipment and the value of the trial to the company. A lost or delayed supply of a clinical trial can result in continuity of supplies and a pack not being available when the patient arrives for their supply.

As a result, extra taxes and costs will be high due to potential write-offs and then there is the time and cost of reproducing supplies, which can add lengthy delays to clinical trials and large cost implications to the business. I personally believe the cost of ensuring security is money well spent as this will reduce the risk of costly failures.

EF: What are the best technologies to put in place to track and trace drug supplies once they have been stolen?

“Cooperation with local service providers and other pharmaceutical companies in the same region can help ensure secure trial supply.”

CB: Various technologies can be put in place to track and trace the drug supplies during transportation. One of the most obvious solutions is to use GPS tracking on the vehicle transporting the supplies.

However, if the supplies get removed from the vehicle then tractability of the supplies becomes lost. So extra tracking devices such as real-time cargo trackers can be placed within the containers being shipped.

It is also important to ensure that the logistics provider has robust documented emergency procedures in place so that, in the event of a theft, the incident can be reported and escalated immediately.

In addition, the cooperation with local service providers and other pharmaceutical companies in the same region can help ensure secure trial supply.

Good relationships and prior auditing of sites and facilities can also be beneficial so that cooperation and understanding of the nature of the supplies and any special security measures is made clear at the start.

EF: Why do drug companies take the risk of outsourcing trials to emerging regions if there is a clear danger to the security of product supply?

CB: Companies cannot possibly have a presence in all countries of the world so it is inevitable that outsourcing occurs.

What is important is that companies work closely with local partners to prepare the way for the security of product supply. Shared knowledge and local audits are important to help understand any risks in the supply chain.

A visit or audit prior to supplies being made will provide an enhanced understanding of the local area and any potential transport difficulties compared to an ‘audit questionnaire’. I’d say that even considering the dangers of medical supply theft, pharma companies will not stop to outsource clinical trials to emerging countries in the future.

West Africa: West African livelihoods weakened by graft

Jan 3, 2014. DAKAR, 3 January 2014 (IRIN) – Poor public services in many West African countries, with already dire human development indicators, are under constant pressure from pervasive corruption. Observers say graft is corroding proper governance and causing growing numbers of people to sink into poverty.

“If you want to put a human face to corruption… then see how we have kids who walk miles to school because there are no public transport systems,” said Harold Aidoo, the executive director of the Institute for Research and Democratic Development in Monrovia, the Liberian capital.

“You see women and mothers who give birth and die because there are no basic drugs or equipment at the hospitals, and no qualified or trained health professionals. You realize that many of our impoverished populations do not have access to clean drinking water,” he said.

Lapaque said this could mean creating an independent anti-corruption entity, or giving political independence to judges and prosecutors. Civil society groups and NGOs can help in developing codes of conduct, promoting integrity, and advocating the adoption of appropriate legislation, as well as the training of anti-corruption agencies, added Kalenga.

Bribery, rigged elections, shady contract deals with multinational businesses operating in the natural resources sector, and illicit cash transfers out of countries are some of the more common forms of graft. In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of countries are seen to be corrupt, the watchdog said.

“There is no doubt that corruption affects pure and sustainable development in West Africa, and there is no doubt that it most often affects the poorest and weakest portions of society”
The region accounts for 11 percent of the world’s population, but carries 24 percent of the global disease burden. It also bears a heavy burden of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria but lacks the resources to provide even basic health services, according to the International Finance Corporation.

Almost half of the world’s deaths of children under five years old occur in Africa, which also has the highest maternal mortality rate, the organization says.
Parents sometimes have to pay bribes to get their children admitted to good schools, said Pierre Lapaque, the UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) representative for West and Central Africa.

“There is no doubt that corruption affects pure and sustainable development in West Africa, and there is no doubt that it most often affects the poorest and weakest portions of society.”

Illicit cash flight

As much as US$1.3 trillion has been illegally transferred out of Africa in the past three decades, said a by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based advocacy group monitoring illicit financial flows.

Nigeria’s oil industry has been plagued by graft allegations that gave rise to complaints of neglect and a rebellion by people in the oil-producing southern regions. A draft report released in May 2013 by Liberia’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative noted that nearly all resource contracts signed since 2009 had violated regulations.

“Economically speaking, when millions of dollars are filtered out every year by corruption, this is very corrosive in terms of its impact on society,” Aidoo said. “It is very corrosive in how it undermines growth and development and the well-being of our population.”

Corrupt politics

Many political campaigns in Africa are fraught with allegations of irregularities and malpractice. “Not only are elections prone to corruption in the form of vote-rigging and fraud-monitoring, but by the way in which our political elites become entrenched in power,” said Tendai Murisa, director of TrustAfrica’s Agriculture Advocacy and Financial Flows programme.

“Corruption creates a way to perpetuate the regime, and one of the ways they perpetuate the regime is to buy votes, so that really affects the quality of democracy,” said Murisa, noting that a government deemed corrupt inspires little trust in the people, whose voices are often silenced or ignored when they speak out against graft.

Because the poor rely more on public services, they spend the largest percentage of their income on bribes to officials and even school administrators, so corruption pushes the most vulnerable further into poverty. In Sierra Leone, 69 percent of people think the police are corrupt, and in Nigeria the figure rises to 78 percent, said UNODC’s Lapaque.

Floundering anti-graft war

Despite efforts to increase transparency and accountability throughout the continent, the war against graft in sub-Saharan Africa has been on the decline over the last decade, according to the World Bank’s 2013 World Governance Indicators. With the exception of South Africa and Botswana, sub-Saharan Africa scored in the lowest percentile for the control of corruption worldwide.

“If a country’s [public] service is staffed by civil servants based in nepotism or bribery, rather than merit and competence, it creates significant problems,” Lapaque said. “Not only are fewer job opportunities made available to those who deserve them, but the rule of law is undermined and economic growth is stifled.”

Weak governance often undermines security services, which can lead to an increase in local and transnational organized crime, including arms and drug trafficking. It can also undermine human rights. “It’s really very often a failure of our government to be efficient gatekeepers of our resources, and of them allowing leakages within and out of our economies,” Murisa said.

Strategies

To fight corruption, governments first need to recognize that it is a real problem. “They need to ensure that national structures in charge of fighting corruption are well resourced, and staff have the capacity to do their work in an independent way, without political interference,” said Marie-Ange Kalenga, Transparency International’s West Africa regional coordinator.

“They also need to ensure there is an appropriate legal framework, in line with the regional and the international instruments on anti-corruption, and to educate ordinary citizens and promote integrity at the individual level,” she said.

Kalenga said this could mean creating an independent anti-corruption entity, or giving political independence to judges and prosecutors. Civil society groups and NGOs can help in developing codes of conduct, promoting integrity, and advocating the adoption of appropriate legislation, as well as the training of anti-corruption agencies.

Empowering citizens to denounce corruption and to seek redress if they are victims of corruption could also help, as could making budgets more transparent and including people in the participation of public spending, Lapaque suggested.

“Transparency is an important factor in building democratic governments that are accountable to their people,” said Tom Cardamone, GFI’s managing director. “I think that’s what we need to do to stem the flow of illicit money and stop this corruption.”

Murisa said, “If we just got back 50 percent of what we are currently losing to corruption, it could mean things like advancements in education or better road systems. We could make sure our children are back at school, we could make sure we are maintaining social welfare systems, and we could make sure our healthcare delivery systems are working properly.”

France to Increase Military Presence in Africa

January 24, 2014

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says France will expand its military presence in Africa’s troubled Sahel region.

During a visit to Washington Friday, Le Drian told VOA’s French to Africa service the new plan includes about 3,000 French soldiers to be permanently deployed in the region. He said there will be three main bases, to be located in Mali, Niger and Chad, with a logistics supply platform in Ivory Coast.

Le Drian told a press conference Friday in Washington with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that the new deployment will allow France to better react to threats in the Sahel.

“France has decided to reorganize its posture in Africa in order to have, all over the zone, a larger reactivity, a larger specialization, so that with the support of the neighboring states, we can have prevention actions or intervention in a regional approach so that altogether we can make sure that the security of the entire zone is lasting,” he said.

Asked if France could increase its presence in the Central African Republic, Le Drian said Paris had no plan to send more troops there. France already has about 1,600 troops there to try to stop deadly sectarian violence in the country.

Burkina Faso Opposition Stages Biggest March in Decades

January 18, 2014

OUAGADOUGOU — Burkina Faso’s opposition staged the country’s biggest demonstration in decades on Saturday to protest against an attempt by President Blaise Compaore’s party to abolish constitutional term limits.

The peaceful march, which was joined by dissidents from the ruling Congress for Democracy and Progress, steps up pressure on Compaore, who took power in a coup in 1987 and won an election in 2010 to secure his second and final elected five-year term under a constitution that dates from 2000. Opposition leaders say those polls were rigged.

A gradual deepening of democracy has contributed to increased stability and growth in some African countries, but Burkina Faso is one of a number of nations dominated by a leader of several decades’ standing.

It remains impoverished despite emerging as a significant gold producer, and has been an ally for Western governments concerned about the rise of militant Islamist groups in the region.

Opposition leaders said between 300,000 and 500,000 people joined the march through the capital. There was no official estimate but witnesses said it was the largest in living memory.

“We are waiting for President Blaise Compaore to become aware of what the people are demanding today, namely the abandonment of his project to revise Article 37 of the constitution,” opposition leader Zephirin Diabre told journalists.

“If Blaise Compaore doesn’t hear us, we will continue to march,” he said.

Dozens of ruling party members have resigned in recent weeks because of the drive to amend the constitution and also to establish a Senate, which the opposition says would be too costly.

Many of the dissidents had fallen out of favor since a ruling party congress in 2012.

“Increasingly, people in Burkina Faso realize that we need to change policy,” said Roch Kabore, the former president of the National Assembly.

Cooperation is key to Africa's security future

Dec 30, 2013. It has been a slow process, but the world is finally waking up to the reality of cyber-security in Africa.

The International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA) has identified Africa as a problem area in its eight-year evaluation of the modern threats to the world’s internet security. The most serious issue is the large gap between the scale of the continent’s security capability and the volume of internet-enabled devices now in the hands of ordinary Africans.

Africa is a hotbed of cyber-crime activity

The problem isn’t necessarily one of education, however. Both the criminals and the security forces already have a wealth of skills gained from direct experience on their home turf.

The Duqu malware, successor to the infamous Stuxnet, was first reported in Sudan. South Africa is home to the malware Dexter, perpetrating credit card fraud every bit as sophisticated as those you would find in Europe, Brazil and the US, and Nigeria has even provided the name for the “419” scam, after section 419 of its criminal code which the trick violates.

In response, governments across Africa have been setting up computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs) designed to counter the threat. These provide both a practical defence against on-going attacks, and a knowledge-base for the government of each country when passing laws regulating the internet. Some have even grouped together in regional initiatives, such as AfricaCERT, offering advice and expertise across the region.

The major problem, though, is that these promising ventures are by no means the norm across the continent. Just as the problems that each country faces are often very different, so too are the methods used to combat them and the laws that are in place. For example, with a higher proportion of higher wealth individuals, credit card fraud is the hot-button issue in South Africa. In North African Morocco, with greater links to Europe, network security is a priority.

Governments must come together

This inconsistency makes it difficult for Africa as a whole to present a united front against cyber-crime, which can cost the economy millions of dollars. It is estimated that ordinary Kenyans lost £14 million last year as a result of fraud, but the knock-on effects of an ongoing crime problem can have a deeper impact on the economy. It is impossible to calculate the damage to Nigerian businesses, who have been virtually blacklisted by retailers around the world that refuse to ship to the country that has become a byword for online scams in recent years.

In order to provide a lasting defence for the whole continent, much more cooperation is needed between governments, security agencies and IT professionals to align their laws, training and policies and make sure there is nowhere for criminals to hide amongst the patchy legal and security systems.

It is pointless eliminating high tech crime from Egypt if the perpetrators can cross the border to Sudan and carry on undeterred. And improving network security in Senegal is only a partial solution when the vast majority of internet use is on mobile devices.

FIRST is looking to Africa, offering training and networking between agencies, because of the threat that cyber-crime in Africa poses to the rest of the world. If Africa continues to be a weak link, criminals won’t need to fear even the most sophisticated European security, because they already have a softer entrance into the global network through Africa.

When we help develop the same terminology, similar approaches, and get innovative CSIRTs to share their technologies and experiences, that’s when we can make meaningful change.

In The Spotlight: Violent Crime in Venezuela

LEADERSHIP | 1/08/2014 @ 11:35AM

On the evening of January 6 former Venezuelan beauty queen Monica Spear, and her ex-husband, a British national who grew up in Venezuela, ran over a sharp object puncturing their car’s tires as they drove towards the country’s capital city. While being attended to by tow-truck operators, the pair was attacked by gunmen. Both were killed. Their five-year-old daughter, who was riding in the back seat, was struck in the leg. She survived.

Richard Linares, Spear’s Venezuela-based personal trainer, said “It devastates me that there is a 5-year-old girl who is asleep, and when she wakes up she will ask how her parents are, and she no longer has any parents.”

Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, called the attack a “massacre” and said “violence is a problem we have.”

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles characterized Venezuela’s problems with violence as “a state of emergency” and offered to work with Maduro’s government to “put aside the differences we have in politics and unite as on force to win the fight against violence, to win the fight against insecurity.”

Venezuela needs to take action, “Not just for the murder of Monica Spear, but also for the situation in which we’re living in in this country, where we closed a year registering almost 25 thousand homicides,” Capriles added.

The U.S. Department of State characterizes the crime level in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital city as “critical.” The 2013 Department of State Crime and Safety Report for Venezuela explains “Violent crime is the greatest threat in Caracas, affecting local Venezuelans and foreigners alike.” The report also explains that “Caracas is notorious for the brazenness of high-profile violent crimes–murder, robbery, and kidnappings–committed in neighborhoods across the city, at all hours of the day and night. Even the relatively affluent residential neighborhoods in Chacao, Baruta, and El Hatillo (where government leaders, professionals, businesspeople, and foreign diplomats reside) see regular incidents of kidnapping, home invasion, and armed robbery.”

Over the course of the first decade of the twenty-first century, during the course of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” crime rates tripled in Caracas. The city reported a murder rate of nearly 99 per 100,000 in 2011, making it one of the world’s most violent cities.

In 2013 joggers in Caracas began banding together to avoid being robbed or assaulted. The Guardian reported that in 2013 “Homicides skyrocketed, with Caracas recording nearly 4,000 slayings [in 2012], more than any other city in the world. Stories of robberies – and worse, robberies gone horribly, fatally wrong – became standard workplace chatter.” Facing this level of crime, runners in Caracas have formed a group called Runners Venezuela, to avoid becoming victimized.

Caracas’ murder rate is more than thirty times higher than New York City’s. One Gallup poll shows that Venezuelans are more likely to feel unsafe than citizens in 134 other countries.

So, while the murder of Monica Spears has brought attention to security problems in Venezuela, the incident is also just one part of a much larger trend of public security failure.

Venezuelan actress Camila Canabal tweeted “Monica and [her ex-husband] Thomas are the face of thousands of men and woman whose children have been left without parents because of the violence of Venezuela.”

CNN reported that one person is killed every twenty-one minutes in Venezuela.

Luis Izquiel, a lawyer and criminologist in Caracas said “This happens every day in Venezuela. … If the victim had not been this actress, the person would simply be one more statistic.”

Venezuelan Justice Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres said “It is painful, not only the death of this beloved Venezuelan actress and the wound her daughter received, but also the death of any Venezuelan who falls in the hands of violence.”

Ivory Coast cracks down on cyber crime

Jan 16, 2014. According to the Ivorian government, it received more complaints about cyber criminality in the first half of 2013 than any other country on the continent, making it Africa’s unlikely capital of “brouteurs” – Ivorian slang for cyber criminals.

Sitting on the edge of the Ebrie lagoon in the heart of the financial district of Abidjan, one former brouteur, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, says he started when he was 16 because it was the “fashion” at the time.

As the 22-year-old nervously stubs out his cigarette, looking around to check no-one else is listening, he describes how the “love method” is the most lucrative.

“You [find] yourself a man or a woman who is looking for love,” he explains. “Then you start chatting and exchange photos.”

After that, he says, comes what they call the tax – the money he would wheedle out of his unsuspecting “lover”.

“You say, ‘Ok, I want to come back to France but I have some debts. I need, for example, 5,000 euros (£4,200, $6,800)’.”

And it is as simple as that. His “lover” would transfer the money, and as soon as he had his hands on the cash he would vanish from their magical online romance.

“In a good month, depending on the number of contacts, I could earn between 5,000 and 12,000 euros – sometimes 15,000,” he says.

And what did he spend all his money on? “Swag,” he replies, with a smile. “You know, women, going out… clothes, perfume.”

The average age of a cyber criminal in Ivory Coast is now between 16 and 17, each making around $13,000 (£8,000) a month – teenagers taking advantage of Ivory Coast’s cheap and fast internet.

Web mayor
At a cyber cafe in Abidjan’s Riviera district, an electric fan blows humid air around a small dusty room. It costs less than $1 for four hours online – a small price to pay if you can turn that into thousands of dollars.

But Abidjan’s thriving online community is fighting back against the activities of an increasing number of brouteurs springing up across the country.

Last year they voted for Abidjan’s first web mayor – 22-year-old Emmanuel Assouan.

Tamasin Ford reports on the efforts the Ivorian government is making to crack down on cyber crime
Dressed in a smart, tailor-made suit and armed with his tablet and smartphone, he teaches young people about legitimate methods to make money online – for instance through blogging or web design.

“We try to meet them in the workplaces, generally in the cyber cafes,” he says. “We want to sensitise them to quit the darkness in which they are destroying the image of our country.”

But it is a battle.

One of his advisers, another young IT expert, Bacely Yorobi, pulls out his phone and begins playing one of the many Ivorian songs about cyber crime.

But it is estimated that these “celebrities” in Ivory Coast have conned more than $15m out of people from all over the world over the last two years – and that is just the money police have managed to trace.

‘Risk’ factor
At an office in one of the city’s many glittering skyscrapers, Stephane Konan, the co-ordinator of the country’s intelligence services, says Ivory Coast now has the highest number of cyber crime complaints in Africa.

“When we exchange with our colleagues from other [African] countries, none of them report as many [cyber crime] complaints as us,” he says.

“It’s less risky to commit a crime with a computer than to do the classical crime that we were seeing in Abidjan in the ’90s and 2000s, with lots of bank robberies by very young people. We don’t see that any more.

The country is quickly becoming infamous for technology crime, but it is also becoming recognised for how it is dealing with it.

Two years ago the government set up a dedicated taskforce to fight cyber crime, the Plateforme de Lutte Contre la Cybercriminalite (PLCC).

It is made up of the country’s law and security forces and is the first of its kind in Africa.

It has a new forensic laboratory, which works on providing digital evidence. “Two years ago we did not have that capability,” says Mr Konan, who heads the PLCC.

“First of all we identify, without any doubt, who was behind the screen when the victim was scammed,” he explains. “Secondly, we link that person that is identified with the crime with digital evidence.”

Last year alone they made nearly 100 arrests, naming and shaming the convicted criminals on the government website, while the cyber crime law, passed last May, has introduced prison sentences of up to 20 years.

‘Only money’
The data has also given them more of an idea about how the Ivorian cyber criminal works and who they target.

For instance, they now know the “love” method is by far the most common way of conning people out of their money, and more than half their cases come from complainants in France, followed by Ivory Coast, then Belgium and Canada.

Back on the Ebrie lagoon I ask the former cyber criminal whether he has any regrets.

“You know, when I was doing it, some part of me felt guilty,” he replies. “But then you just say to yourself, it’s only money. So no, now I don’t have any regrets. That’s it.”

No regrets but after being caught twice, he’s not taking any more chances. He is now at university, studying IT.

Mining Industry Endorses Rules Targeting Corruption Abroad

Posted: 01/16/2014 7:42 am EST
Canada’s mining industry has put its weight behind a push for companies to publicly disclose the government payments they make at home and abroad. The move is part of an effort to stop corruption and make the actions of Canadian companies in foreign countries more transparent.

Two corporate watchdog groups worked with Canada’s two biggest mining associations to develop a set of recommendations that target the financial dealings between miners and governments. The report will be presented to Ottawa and the provinces, as well as provincial securities regulators, who will then decide whether to adopt the protocol.

The Canadian government made a pledge at last year’s G8 summit to develop standards following calls from international development groups. The U.S. and European Union have already enacted policies that require mining companies to disclose the taxes, royalties and other payments they make to foreign countries.

Some resource companies, particularly in the oil sector, say the multiple reporting regimes will bring conflicting rules and more paperwork. But those behind the proposed Canadian standards say their rules are aligned with the U.S. and EU and a company could submit the same report in Canada as in those jurisdictions.

“A global standard is critical for this type of disclosure to create a level playing field for companies,” said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada.

Gratton’s organization partnered with Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, Publish What You Pay Canada and the Revenue Watch Institute to form the working group behind the recommendations.

Canada’s co-operation is key since 60 per cent of the world’s miners are listed on Canadian stock exchanges. In recent years, some Canadian companies have faced fines for paying bribes to foreign officials, including Griffiths Energy International and Niko Resources Ltd., both based in Calgary.

International development groups believe these rules would help keep companies and government officials honest in African countries, which is home to 30 per cent of the world’s mineral reserves but lags in nearly all development indicators, according to the Africa Progress Panel.

“We urge the federal and provincial governments in Canada adopt these recommendations not only to bring the obvious advantages of transparency to Canada, but also because they will benefit so many poor people living in resource-rich, developing nations,” said Daniel Kaufmann, president of the Revenue Watch Institute.

The recommendations would require large companies to disclose payments of more than $100,000 and venture companies to report more than $10,000 to any level of government both at home and abroad. The companies would have to report a wide range of payments from profit taxes to royalties to bonuses. Those that fail to report would have to pay an unspecified penalty, according to the proposed rules.

However, there are exceptions. The recommendations do not require disclosure from private companies or regarding payments made to First Nations. In Canada, resource companies and band councils rarely disclose the details of impact benefit agreements signed in exchange for the right to mine on First Nations land.

A recent report from The Mining Association of Canada found that between 2003 and 2012, federal and provincial governments collected an estimated $71 billion from mining companies. The new recommendations aim to shed light on how much money from those companies is going to foreign governments as well.

Cybersecurity For Africa: As Internet Penetration Grows, AU Seeks To Corral Online Crime

Jacey Fortin
on December 30 2013 2:20 PM

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The African Union is gearing up to discuss a brand new security initiative for the continent, one that has the potential to improve safety for hundreds of millions. But this decision has nothing to do with the violence and turmoil currently upending countries like South Sudan, the Central African Republic or the Democratic Republic of the Congo — instead, its focus is on Internet crime.

This is an issue that barely registers for most on the continent, where only about 16 percent of people – and just 6.7 percent of households – have Internet access, according to data from the International Telecommunication Union, or ITU. A 2013 report from the organization ranked countries around the world in Internet accessibility and affordability, and all 22 of the worst-ranking countries were African. For a continent plagued by food insecurity, conflict and poverty, telecommunications issues are often a low priority – which could be why the latest draft of the “African Union Convention on the Confidence and Security in Cyberspace” has been in the works for four years.

The new regulatory framework is scheduled for a vote at the next AU summit here in Ethiopia’s capital city of Addis Ababa in late January. Its supporters argue that cybercrime is a growing scourge across the continent, due in part to rising Internet usage, a lack of regulation and limited opportunities to make money, which spurs some to turn to criminal activities – like advance-fee scams and phishing schemes – in order to get ahead. “Cyberspace has become the center of gravity as far as national security is concerned,” Tim Akano, CEO of the IT company New Horizon Nigeria, told SciDev.Net. “A country without cyber warriors, without a national cybersecurity center, is like a nation in the 1940s in Europe without national soldiers. The funding has not been felt.”

The continent’s largest economy, South Africa, has already seen 70 percent of its Internet users affected by cybercrime, according to a report this year from Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC). The second-largest economy, Nigeria, is infamous for its so-called 411 scams wherein criminals pose as wealthy account-holders who need help transferring funds. Internet usage may be low overall, but setting up a framework early could be a smart move considering Africa’s youth bulge, especially since this year’s ITU report found that young people on the continent are about 2.3 times as likely to use the Internet as the overall population, a ratio higher in Africa than in any other region on earth.

The new framework aims to “protect institutions against the threats and attacks capable of endangering their survival and efficacy [and protect] the rights of persons during data gathering and processing against the threats and attacks capable of compromising such rights.” That involves laying out some key principles for the continent to use in pursuing cybersecurity, setting up an institutional framework for regulating electronic transactions, encouraging IT education to put more of a focus on cybersecurity, and laying a foundation for penal practices.

But not everyone is thrilled about the draft. Corporations have reason to worry; the regulation would impose restrictions on their ability to advertise, sell goods without stating a clear price upfront, or pursue direct marketing. Private individuals might also object to some articles allowing the processing of personal data by the state for security purposes, or even the “compilation of personal data directly or indirectly portraying racial, ethnic or regional origin, parentage affiliation, political, philosophical or religious persuasions or labor union membership of persons, or data relating to health or sex life.”

Then there are procedural difficulties. Despite the rise of IT professionals across the continent, experts say the number of people well-versed in cybersecurity remains low. Furthermore, an AU framework will mean nothing without the political will in individual countries to hold users and companies responsible for upholding its mandates.

But assuming other big issues don’t push cybersecurity off the agenda at this January’s AU summit, Africa could be on its way to setting up a historic new framework for its burgeoning IT industry. For some, it couldn’t come soon enough. “The leaders seem not to appreciate the fact that there has been a paradigm shift in national security in the new world of globalization,” Akano told SciDev.Net. “Our leaders need a reorientation, not tomorrow but today.”

Kenya: African Economies Transform Slowly

Jan 2, 2014. Africa’s business and political leaders are buoyed by the continent’s growth prospects.
But Donald Kebaruka, African Development Bank president, is cautious. He argues that African countries must now pay attention not to just GDP growth, but its quality and sustainability.
Currently, Africa’s growth is powered by a confluence of factors, including foreign direct investment, the rise of the middle class and a surge in global demand for commodities, especially by China.
African countries have also liberalised their economies, removing growth-stifling distortions. Moreover, a growing middle class is driving demand for goods and services.
Kenya’s last population census showed that out of 14.3 million people in employment, only two million were employed in what is considered as the modern formal economy.
Some 3.1 million people were employed in the informal sector. The remaining, 64 per cent did not work for wages. This is precisely why many pundits doubt the sustainability of Africa’s growth, arguing that the ingredients for sustained and inclusive growth are lacking.
The patterns we see in Kenya underlie Africa’s growth uncertainty and undermine its capacity for structural transformation. Unlike Africa, East Asia converged more rapidly with the West because they transformed their farming populations into middle-income industrial workers and exported a wide range of sophisticated manufactured goods. In Kenya, like many African countries, today manufacturing contributes 18 per cent of GDP, just like in the 1970s.
Africa’s much celebrated rapid urbanisation is not supplying African cities with high quality human capital to fuel innovation and creativity.
These new unskilled urbanites find low paying jobs in the service sector, such as transport, hospitality, retail, security and construction, not in manufacturing industries. Moreover, private or public sector investment in modern industries has not grown and remains too tepid to power consequential structural transformation.
Experts have long held that dominant feature of Africa’s economic landscape – the informal sector or Jua Kali – is serving a vital social safety net function in urban areas by absorbing new immigrants from collapsing rural economies. However, it cannot provide the sorely needed productive dynamism of modern industrial society.
Over a decade of credible growth and economic expansion and increased domestic consumption has raised the expectation of Kenya’s youth.
However, the economy has failed to deliver high quality wage paying jobs in sufficient numbers. According to recent Economic Survey data, the working age population is growing by 800,000 per year while the economy is adding a paltry 50,000 wage paying jobs in the formal sector.
Economic growth that does not make available broad opportunities or alienates large sections of the population, especially the youth, is a recipe for social instability.
A sense of inclusive economic growth and of an equitable society is the bulwark of social cohesion and political stability. In young country such as ours, where 51 per cent of the population is aged between 15 and 54, social sustainable and equitable growth is central to national stability.
In my view, GDP growth will not eliminate poverty or bring about economic inclusion, regardless of how strong or long. There is no such thing as trickle down.
To have a truly transformative impact, economic growth must be supported by robust social policy, which promotes investment in high quality tertiary education, including vocational training.
It will be difficult to improve the quality of Africa’s human capital sufficiently to power structural transformation.
According to a Unesco report published in 2009, gross enrolment in Africa’s higher education was just five per cent, compared to 11 per cent in India, 20 per cent in China and 70 per cent in OECD countries.
Africa’s lack of sufficiently educated and skilled work force is profoundly depressing. An audit conducted in 2011 revealed that only 10 per cent of Kenya’s civil servants have post-secondary education.
his is hardly surprising given that only 22.8 per cent of Kenya’s population has more than primary school level of education.
Even where governments, donors and the private sector have invested in education, there has been limited improvement in quality.
Competency in numeracy and literacy among primary school leavers across East Africa is deplorable. Thoughtless expansion of university education has eroded the quality of higher education, producing functionally illiterate graduates who now swell the ranks of unemployable youth.
Africa’s high GDP growth owing to liberalisation, commodity booms, growing domestic consumption and prudent fiscal management are reason for optimism. But the fundamentals necessary for inclusive, transformational and durable economic growth are lacking.