admin December 4th, 2011
The population in war-torn Somalia received another blow last week as Al Shabaab banned 16 aid agencies from territory that it controls, including UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, UNHCR, Norwegian Church Aid and others from Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and France.
These aid agencies were banned, according to Al Shabaab, because they were “fostering secularism”, “amplifying the refugee crisis”, “financing, aiding, and abetting subversive groups seeking to destroy the basic tenets of Islamic penal system” and “undermining the livelihoods and cultural values of the population.”
Continue Reading »
Tags: Al Shabaab, Baroness Amos, Dadaab, Denmark, Drought, Famine, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, natural disasters, Norway, OCHA, Somalia, Sweden, UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO
admin December 3rd, 2011
Good news for sub-Saharan Africa – it’s not as corrupt as some other parts of the world according to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index produced by Transparency International (TI). Although there’s still quite a lot of work to be done if you have a look at the colourful map on page four of the TI report.
Unlike the recently-published 2011 version of the Human Development Index, in which the bottom places were packed with sub-Saharan African countries – and Afghanistan – there are a mere four African countries in the bottom ten of this global table. Somalia comes equal bottom with North Korea, and the other African countries in the Highly Corrupt group are Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Burundi.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Afghanistan, Botswana, Burundi, Denmark, Equatorial Guinea, Finland, France, Germany, HDI, Mauritius, New Zealand, North Korea, Portugal, Rwanda, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Sweden, Taiwan, Transparency International, UK, USA
admin November 7th, 2011
African countries prone to floods, droughts and cyclones – and that’s most of them – had another dose of bad news last week when the latest global carbon emissions data was released by the US Department of Energy.
Emissions in 2010 jumped by the biggest amount on record – so much for the fine words of the Copenhagen and Cancun summits.
This means that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just four years ago. And that means that the risk of extreme weather events has also risen. Since these extreme weather events disproportionately affect poorer countries in general and Africa in particular, the inability of the developed world – and that includes China and India who are now both major emitters – to reduce emissions has a direct effect on African lives and livelihoods.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Cancun, Carbon emissions, China, Climate change, Copenhagen, cyclone, Drought, Floods, Global warming, India, IPCC, Kyoto Protocol, natural disasters, USA
admin November 4th, 2011
The 2011 version of the Human Development Index (HDI) has been released and it’s predictably bad news for Africa.
The bottom of the pile – the Low Human Development sector – is dominated by sub-Saharan African countries. Indeed, positions 159 – 187 in the table, the bottom twenty eight in the world, are all African with the exception of Afghanistan.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Afghanistan, Botswana, Burundi, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, HDI, Latin America, Mozambique, Niger, Norway
admin October 11th, 2011
Two containers loaned by Advance Aid are being used in the Dadaab refugee camp as a logistics base. The containers provide instant secure storage and, being insulated, also remain relatively cool.
You can read the full story here.
And this is one of the containers in situ:
Instant secure storage at Dadaab
Tags: Agility, Dadaab, Drought, Kenya, natural disasters, Somalia, World Vision
admin September 21st, 2011
Two container loads of Advance Aid-supplied emergency kits – part of our partnership with World Vision and Agility – are seen leaving for Dadaab recently.
Leaving the Agility yard in Nairobi
Each forty foot container has 500 emergency kits inside, each kit will provide the basics for a family of five, so these two trucks are carrying supplies that will help 5,000 people in the Dadaab camp.
Each forty foot container holds 500 kits
Tags: Dadaab, Kenya, natural disasters, Refugees, Somalia, World Vision
admin September 16th, 2011
African-produced emergency kits sourced for World Vision by Advance Aid are now being distributed to the refugees flooding into the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
Kits for distribution
Each kit is designed to provide the basics for a family of five and contains a tarpaulin for shelter, blankets, a family-size mosquito net, a kitchen set, a hygiene kit and one bucket for clean water and another for washing.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Dadaab, emergency kits, Famine, Kenya, natural disasters, Refugees, Somalia, World Vision
admin September 12th, 2011
A new report produced by Eurodad – the European Network on Debt and Development – shows that $69 billion spent on official development aid each year goes straight back to the donor country in the form of contracts for its private sector companies. This is more than half of the total spend on development aid.
This means that companies in the developed countries of the North benefit massively from the aid that their governments are giving to the poorer countries of the South.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Eurodad, Trade not Aid
admin August 4th, 2011
Advance Aid is delighted to be partnering with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Nairobi to provide African-made goods to supply the refugees streaming into the country as a result of the famine in the Horn of Africa.
Container being packed with jerrycans
We are providing jerrycans to help with the carrying and storage of water and tarpaulins for shelter. Both products are locally-made.
Jerrycans for CRS
This partnership follows on from the one established earlier this year with World Vision.
Tags: CRS, Famine, Horn of Africa, Kenya, Local manufacturing
admin August 2nd, 2011
Sadly for the people suffering in the Horn of Africa, the famine there is destined to become a case history of international inaction in advance of a known disaster, a ‘How not to do it’ of emergency preparation and response. And all of the key players – governments, aid agencies, UN organisations – are already lining up to say that it was not their fault, even before the much-needed aid has really begun to arrive.
The first jolt to the emergency relief system was delivered by the Tsunami at Xmas 2004 when the existing systems were found wanting. In particular, too many organisations turned up to help with little or no coordination. Chaos ensued.
Some progress had been made on this front by the time the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, but there was still a fair amount of chaos.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Al Shabaab, Andrew Mitchell, BBC, DFID, earthquake, Ethiopia, Famine, FEWS, Haiti, Kenya, Mogadishu, Somalia, tsunami, WFP
