The U.S. Trade and Development Agency announced it has awarded a grant to Nigeria’s Daybreak Power Solutions Limited, a subsidiary of African renewable energy company Daystar Power Group, for a feasibility study to help optimize clean energy supply to business entities in the country.

Daybreak Power Solutions selected Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) to carry out the study.

“USTDA has long worked with our partners in Nigeria to help expand energy access and advance climate resilience,” said Ambassador Vinai Thummalapally (ret.), USTDA’s Acting Director. “Our support for this project will offer Nigerian businesses a clean energy solution for their power needs and facilitate partnerships with U.S. companies that supply high-quality infrastructure solutions.”

USTDA’s study will assist Daybreak Power Solutions with developing 20 solar-plus-storage minigrids that will supply power to Nigeria’s grid when it is operational and provide power directly to Nigerian businesses when the grid is down. The minigrids will provide a clean and reliable alternative to diesel back-up generators and produce up to 40 megawatts of solar power. The study will develop the technical designs of the minigrids, select the sites for deployment, and finalize the project’s business model.

“We are thrilled to partner with RMI and USTDA on this landmark project to explore win-win opportunities for industrial manufacturers, solar energy providers, and distribution companies in Nigeria,” said Jasper Graf von Hardenberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Daystar Power Group.

This activity supports USTDA’s Global Partnership for Climate-Smart Infrastructure, which connects U.S. industry to major clean energy and transportation infrastructure projects in emerging markets. It also supports the U.S. government’s Power Africa and Prosper Africa initiatives.

India’s World Development Foundation provided seven community radio stations in Ethiopia.

One of the essential aspects of civil society is community media – media that provides accurate and unbiased information relevant to local populations. Low-power community operated radio is an important way for communities to stay in touch and communicate important information necessary for good governance, economic and social development.

When the government of Ethiopia issued a tender in 2014 for seven new community radio stations, the World Development Foundation in Delhi responded and was pronounced the low bidder. The Ethiopian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), Federal Republic of Ethiopia and World Development Foundation signed an agreement on 30th June 2014.

The contract was for establishing seven 700 Watt power FM Community Radio Stations at: Finote Selam, Dilo (Borana), Adola Rede (Guji), Chewaka (Illubabor), Semera, Ari Woreda (Debub Omo) and Uba Debretsehay (in Gamo Gofa zone, Southern Nations, Nationalities and People Region), Ethiopia.

The transmitters were purchased from DB/DM Broadcast in Italy.

World Development Foundation, with an active support of different agencies of Govt. of India and Embassy of India in Ethiopia and MCIT, Ethiopia was able to complete the job and hand over all the Community Radio Stations to MCIT last year.

The stations provide the opportunity for citizens to express themselves socially, culturally, politically and spiritually, thus preparing each and every member of the community to participate in decision-making.

This week French energy giant Total became the latest global target for the Fridays for Future Climate Strikes, when protesters attacked it for human rights violations, greenwashing, and ecocide connected with its destructive fossil fuel projects across Africa.

Total was under attack throughout the past week in protests across Africa for its leadership position in driving three major threats to global warming and the environment. Though the company has been involved in African fossil fuel projects for some time, the latest attacks were for the company’s new triple-threat leadership of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project, the Tilenga Development Project which will ravage the environment through major drilling in dozens of locations throughout Uganda, and the Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas project.

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP), if it is allowed to be built, will bring 230,000 barrels of crude oil every day from drilling areas in western Uganda’s Lake Albert region to Tanga, the Tanzanian port city located on the Indian Ocean. If the protesters fail in their efforts to force Uganda’s hand to stall the pipeline, it will feature the world’s largest electrically heated pipeline and will run almost 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) across much ecologically sensitive terrain. The total cost of this project is estimated at $3.5 billion.

According to environmentalist studies, the pipeline will impact some 770 square miles (2,000) square kilometers of currently protected land in the region. An estimated one-quarter of that land is currently the home of endangered species such as African savanna elephants, lions, and eastern chimpanzees. Within Tanzania, the pipeline also travels through seven forest preserves and the Wembere Steppe, an important biodiversity habitat, as well as now at-risk marine areas near the Tanga port.

Despite the obvious toxic nature of the project, Total says the EACOP development will “generate a positive net impact on biodiversity,” something even Total’s business partners have not had the audacity to suggest.

“Imagine a tropical version of the Alaskan oil pipeline, only longer,” wrote environmental author Fred Pearce about EACOP. “And passing through critical elephant, lion, and chimpanzee habitats and 12 forest reserves, skirting Africa’s largest lake, and crossing more than 200 rivers and thousands of farms before reaching the Indian Ocean—where its version of the Exxon Valdez disaster would pour crude oil into some of Africa’s most biodiverse mangroves and coral reefs.”

As the EACOP project became more of a reality, in 2017 the World Wide Fund for Nature Uganda group also called out the pipeline as “likely to lead to significant disturbance, fragmentation, and increased poaching within important biodiversity and natural habitats.”

A report from the NGO Osfam published in 2020 said the pipeline “will cross poor, rural communities in both Uganda and Tanzania that lack the political and financial capital of the project stakeholders.”

Unfortunately for those poor who will be disproportionately affected by what is happening, Oxfam continued, there are unfortunately “lopsided complications of this power dynamic [which are]…well-documented in similar extractive industry projects.”

“Powerful companies are often able to hide their operations behind local contractors and permissive government authorities,” the report went on. “Often the only hope that local communities have for remediation or justice is through local government bodies that are often weak, fragile, or captured by corporate and national interests.”

As one Ugandan farmer in Rakai located near the Tanzanian border said in an interview recently, “when this pipeline project came, they promised us too many things. Up to now they have done nothing.”

The project is also expected to cause breaches of the divide between human populations and those of the natural species they share the land with at this time.

“We have always had a problem of human-wildlife conflict in the village,” said Elly Munguryeki, a farmer who lives on the borders of Murchison Falls National Park, in an interview with reporters just a few weeks ago.

“With drilling and road construction across the park, the invasions are more frequent,” Munguryeki added. “We keep reporting the losses to park authorities but nothing happens. Each night a herd of buffalo, baboons, and hippos from the park would invade my farm and neighboring plots and eat our crops until dawn. Whatever they left would be eaten by baboons and wild pigs during the day, forcing us to harvest premature crops.”

Total responds to criticism like this by claiming it carefully crafted the route of the pipeline to “minimize the number of residents relocated,” which NGOs and local residents dismiss as total fantasy.

In an April 2021 report published by the online news source Mongabay, on the human side of the equation alone an estimated 12,000 families will be kicked off their homeland to make room for yet another major and unneeded fossil fuel project.

The second target of the protesters’ ire is the Tilgenga Oil Fields Development Project. Already well under way, if this project is allowed to finish construction, involves the construction of 400 environmentally-risky water injector and projection wells in six major oil fields across Uganda, plus a central processing facility and almost 100 miles (160 kilometers) of flowline infrastructure to interconnect the system. Those oil fields are located in Jobi-Rii, Ngiri, Gunya, Kasemene-Wahrindi, Kigogole-Ngara, and Nsoga. 31 well pads at those fields will be used as the base for the new wells.

The various fields are positioned in various locations not far from the Victoria Nile River. The Jobi-Rii field is just north of it and the others are on its southern end. Part of the project will take place in the rich biodiverse lands of Murchison Falls National Park.

The central processing field, located in the Ngwedo sub-county of the Buliisa distrct, will process an estimated 190,000 barrels of oil a day via a separation process which will extract the oil from a mix of water and gas. The gas, which is likely to dump significant carbon emissions into the atmosphere as the mix is processed, will be used to produce electricity to run the facility. The used water which is separated off from the oil will be re-injected into the oil fields.

The Tilenga Oil Fields Development Project is a joint effort by Total SE, a division of Total France, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC).

The third major effort in Total’s plans in Africa that the protesters went after yesterday was its $20 billion liquefied natural gas project planned for Mozambique. Total bought a $3.9 billion stake in the project in 2019 and had hoped to begin exporting the LNG fuel by the end of 2024. Even the first phase of this initiative is expected to produce greater than 13 million tons of LNG per year.

Total ended up suspending work on the LNG processing and distribution program in Mozambique after a March 2021 attack which happened to be in the same area where construction of the LNG infrastructure was taking place. The attack was from militants linked to the Islamic State and had nothing to do with  LNG protests.

Total expects to continue work on this project when the violence eases up.

It because of the combined greed, corruption, and mass ecological damage that Total and its co-conspirators in governments on the continent, in partnership with China, and with local industrial partners, that protests against Total grew hot this past week throughout Africa.

The peak of the protests took place on Tuesday, celebrated annually as Africa Day, as a reminder to all of what is at stake as Total’s activities continue to deploy.

Protests took place in various-sized gatherings at Total petrol stations in Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, and Uganda.

Andre Moliro, an activist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said to reporters much of what sums up the anger and frustration Africans have with the damage Total is creating in multiple regions on the continent.

“Total’s fossil fuel developments pose grave risks to protected environments, water sources, and wetlands in the Great Lakes and East Africa regions,” he said.

“Communities have been raising concerns on the impact of oil extraction on Lake Albert fisheries and the disastrous consequences of an oil spill in Lake Victoria, that would affect millions of people that rely on the two lakes for their livelihoods, watersheds for drinking water, and food production,” he continued.

The protests are proceeding, despite the Uganda government actively supporting its oil drilling partners via police actions against anyone who might stand in the way of bringing the landlocked Uganda its expected billions of new revenues from the various projects in that country.

On May 24, for example, police in Buliisa arrested Ugandan human rights defender Maxwell Atuhura, who also works with  the African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), and Federica Marsi, an Italian journalist, just as both were on their way to meet with local community members.

AFIEGO is one of several NGOs who have sued Total for its environmental crimes within Africa.

Journalist Marsi was released from custody later the same day he was arrested. Police authorities directed him to get out of the oil region immediately, threatening him with the warning that he should do so “before bad things happen.”

Atuthura is still in the hands of the police. The World Organization Against Torture has issued a global demand for help to ensure Atuthura’s immediate and safe release.

Despite the risks to their own personal safety, the urgency and seriousness of the cause is what keeps the protesters speaking up.

“We cannot drink oil, said Venessa Nakate, founder of the Rise Up Movement and an Ugandan climate justice activist. “This is why we cannot accept the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. It is going to cause massive displacement of people [and the] destruction of ecosystems and wildlife habitats.”

“We have no future in extraction of oil because it only means destroying the livelihoods of the people and the planet,” Nakate continued. “It is time to choose people above pipelines. It is time to rise up for the people and the planet.”

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the award of a $4.5 million cooperative agreement with Pact Inc., an international nonprofit organization, to combat child labor in mica-producing communities in Madagascar.

In the Anôsy region where mica mining occurs – where the poverty rate is 96.7 percent – an ongoing drought has contributed to a near famine. The coronavirus pandemic and the drought have devastated the region’s agricultural harvests and increased the cost of staple foods. The price of mica and the incomes of the families who mine it have also decreased as a result of the pandemic. Amid these dire conditions, Malagasy families feel that they have no choice but to send their children to work in and around the mines to buy food and fulfill basic needs.

An estimated 10,000 children endure unsafe working conditions currently in Madagascar’s informal mica industry. Typically, boys work underground digging to extract mica ore; some have suffocated to death in poorly ventilated mines. Above ground, girls haul and process mica and face frequent pressure from mica collectors to engage in sex for money. These children often develop respiratory illnesses from mica dust particles. All of this happens in a country where inadequate labor laws are poorly enforced.

Companies in China buy Madagascar’s mica for use in manufacturing a variety of products, including automobiles, cosmetics and electronics, many of which find their way to U.S. consumers.

Administered by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, Pact Inc.’s Madagascar Shines project will:

• Improve resiliency of mining families in mica-producing communities by providing approximately 1,800 children with educational services and 2,200 adults with livelihood services.
• Increase the capacity of government officials to coordinate the child protection measures in the mica supply chain, including establishing a code of conduct for mica mining.
• Support the efforts of civil society organizations and the media to improve public awareness around the issue of child labor in the mica supply chain.
• Promote the formalization of the mica sector and design a traceability system, fostering a sustainable mining industry that does not use child labor.

As China spreads its backwards culture into Africa, the market for African versions of traditional Chinese medicines has exploded. With that has come the mass killing of native African species for their body parts.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is an odd part of the Chinese economic invasion of the world. It brings with it beliefs in medical treatments which originated in some cases millennia ago, long before understanding even of basic anatomy and how to treat illnesses even of the simplest kinds were well understood. While there are some aspects to it that are valid and highly useful, there are also aspects that are based on erroneous beliefs and are highly destructive.

In Africa, relying on traditional medicines created by their own ancestors is a fundamental part of the culture of some nations. They are also made from a variety of animal parts to gain their supposed medicinal power, just as TCM are.

So, it is an easy sell to bring TCM into the continent, as well as to market it in a similar way, arguing for the long-term historical relevance of old knowledge, even if what the Chinese are peddling in these medicines has no real healing power.

Bringing in the medicines also involves, for the companies China is establishing on the continent to make and sell them, locally sourcing ingredients like those in the traditional medicines fabricated in Asia. As it turns out, these “authentic” reconstructions of CTMs – now being sold to yet another massive potential market of the uneducated in Africa – serve also to include many unproven ingredients which are either toxic, include parts from endangered species, or both. By doing so, they are endangering the lives of those species on an even broader scale than ever before while also putting the lives of those who take the medicine at risk.

That is the conclusion of Lethal Remedy, a just published report by the United Kingdom-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

The spread of Chinese Traditional Medicine manufacture, use, and sale is embedded in China’s global Belt and Road business initiative, a strategic venture under which China is attempting to integrated much of the global business market within just a few days’ shipping time of the PRC (People’s Republic of China).

As the report notes, “Major TCM companies and countless clinics of already been established across Africa, with further plans to construct full supply chains for sourcing to sales.”

The invasion of Africa which this involves has been managed carefully on multiple levels, including:

• Signing official agreements between African nations and the PRC to develop TCM products and sales.
• Working to get individual countries to pass local laws endorsing the making and use of TCM products in the countries there. Namibia and South Africa are noted as key examples.
• Taking advantage of the pandemic panic among the peoples of Africa to create an effective marketing campaign for these non-medicines as something to take while potentially dying of the coronavirus. These campaigns also include treatments to be taken despite having no evidence of the presence of the coronavirus.

In terms of statistics, currently it is known that some 21,000 medical professionals and at least 2,000 people now claiming to be trained practitioners of TCM are present on the continent. 45 countries provide the bases of operation for these people, in countries such as Cameroon, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

These have been established over decades in some locations, with a boom period in recent years. It is part of China’s explicit marketing plan for the region.

Though the so-called medicines have mostly no ability to ease pain, slow the spread of disease, or cure anything, the poor and uneducated are an easy target for the Chinese marketing assault which has made TCM sales so successful.

According to the EIA report, the TCM makers have pulled multiple pages out of their use of ingredients such as body parts and bodily fluids from species ranging from Chinese tigers to the Asian pangolin, transplanting them into the local market by replacing them with similar elements from lions and the scales of the African variant of the pangolin.

Common to both traditional African medicine (TAfM) and TCM are parts of species such as the rhino, hedgehog, tortoise, and pangolin.

The elephant, in its Asian form at least, may not be listed among the ingredients lists in the global Pharmacopeia, but the EIA notes that there are at least four registered patent medicines which use elephant ivory as shavings or powder, to treat everything from sore throats, seizures, and boils. Elephant skin is also used by traditional Chinese medical practitioners to help heal routine wounds, ulcers, and even hemorrhoids. Some of the Chinese manufacturers even source these parts all the way from endangered African elephants, in the form of ivory, elephant skin, and hair. That is also all happening legally – except for the ivory – as written into the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), with Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe all noted as legally authorized to export such materials.

For the TCM makers setting up shop in Africa, direct access to those elephant parts plus availability of ingredients from the other common parts, whether endangered or not, makes the African market appealing as a new source of mass exploitation of animals even if it pushes many of them close to extinction in the process.

Among other creatures being taken in the wild and sometimes bred just for body parts and bodily fluids for the African form of TCMs are seahorses, the tokay gecko, leopards, African rhinos (for their horn), saiga (for their horn), local endangered versions of tortoise, hedgehog, and porcupine.

For African nations which are in dire need of hard currency, inviting the Chinese in to take advantage of their people and to make and sell products which can kill off animals while posing a genuine danger to those taking the medicines is taken by many countries as a fair exchange, despite the damage it does to all. South Africa and Namibia, just as two examples, have gone so far as to formally recognize traditional Chinese medicines as legitimate treatments within those countries’ treatment protocols. Other countries, such as South Africa, have now legalized captive breeding of wild large cat species such as lions or leopards, for the purpose of harvesting their parts for TCMs.

In South Africa, a November 2019 memorandum from the Northern Cape government uncovered by the Environmental Investigation Agency authorizes the sale of Rhino horn “in order to expedite the process of legalizing commercialization …for medicinal purposes.”

Besides the obvious evils of potentially wiping out endangered species, marketing useless medicines made of those species, and encouraging the public to take these medicines at a high risk to themselves, there is yet another reason the EIA warns that theses medicines should be blocked from manufacture and banned for sale. That is the potential risk of spreading zoonotic diseases, illnesses such as the coronavirus which likely was derived from similar viruses found in Chinese bats and crossed species to infect humans, broadly across Africa.

None of this will stop without the African governments themselves stepping up and demanding the end of foisting these dangerous and exploitative concoctions known as traditional Chinese medicines on the people. With those governments more than happy to be bribed with money and more from Beijing to allow this to happen, no one should count on those governments doing anything about this anytime soon.

With total sales of traditional Chinese medicine in 2021 estimated to hit 75.3 billion Chinese yuan (US $11.81 billion) by the end of 2021, with an estimated annual compound sales growth rate of about 5 percent just in China’s core home market, and with high gross margins, no one should look to the PRC to do anything on their end to stop this abuse of nature and the public who happily consume these fake medicines.

One of the factors that is allowing TCM to flourish in Africa is the predatory nature and failure of western medicine and its forced vaccination program. Many Africans simply don’t trust western medicine or the evil billionaires behind it. At the same time, practitioners skilled in TCM can often more accurately diagnose ailments, even if they can’t prescribe an effective treatment.