covid in Africa

 fast forward to 23 minutes:

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also discusses the new Marburg virus outbreak.

Chinese neocolonialism in Africa

 StrategyPage has a long article about Chinese investments etc. in Asia and Africa.

they invest in projects but bring their own people to do the work (so no local jobs). And afterward, the Chinese stay to take over the economy. They mainly work with corrupt governments who will take their bribes to do so.

and then the locals protest.

Hmm... sounds familiar. they are doing a lot of this in the Philippines. heck, even the last buybust drug raid in our are resulted in the death of a "chinese national" who was running the drug gang.

Because of this, China is increasingly seen as a supporter of evil governments and that has generated widespread African hostility towards all things Chinese.

 

This has led to anti-Chinese riots in some countries and a general animosity towards the Chinese at the grass roots level. Thus when these countries go through their next rebellion, Chinese are likely to be a popular target and a major loser if the rebels win.

 

These problems exist, to a lesser extent, in the Middle East and Asia. China has been at this for since 2002. This really kicked into high gear when China declared 2006 was officially "The Year of Africa." China went all out to make a favorable impression on African governments and increase Chinese economic and diplomatic activity in Africa that year. To that end, about a billion dollars-worth of debts, of African nations to the Chinese government, were forgiven. The year before, Chinese commercial and government organizations invested over $13 billion in Africa. This was less than one percent of China's GDP but by African standards, it was a huge investment.

 

However, there was some blowback. The Chinese were mainly after raw materials, especially oil. A lot of that $13 billion was bribes for local officials.

well, duh. 

As usual, the average African was getting screwed by these deals. China is also flooding African markets with inexpensive goods. This and imported Chinese workers are hurting local businesses and causing unrest among African business owners and workers. As a result, it's become common for opposition parties in Africa to accuse China of "neo-colonial exploitation." The accusation fits, and the Chinese will pay for it down the road, as will peacekeepers brought in to help clean up the mess.

 

millet and teff and Sorghum oh my

PhysOrg article on alternative cereal crops in Africa.

Actually our farmers in Zimbabwe often planted these crops as an alternative if the rains were not enough to get a good harvest of maize. Also, we advised moms to make sadza for babies with them because maize was hard for malnourished kids to digest.

another article on the cereal grains of Africa.

Millet Before maize was introduced to Sub Saharan Africa, millet was the most widely eaten grain across the continent. In fact, up to 50 years ago, it was still the grain of choice. Millet, particularly pearl millet, is said to have originated in Africa prior to being exported to Asia. In fact, according to the National Research Council, it has been documented that pearl millet was domesticated over 4000 years ago in West Africa. Other types of millet include fonio and finger millet (rapoko). Millet is highly nutritious and provides far more to the African food economy than maize does, however, due to the amount of scientific research and investment in cultivating maize, the use of millet as the main staple has been surpassed by that of maize. This is unfortunate because the plant is highly resistant to droughts, requires less irrigation than maize does and is a viable option for the provision of food security.

 

Sorghum Sorghum is sometimes used interchangeably as millet, however, it is a different grain. It is popular in countries such as Botswana and is used to make pap or sadza, known in Botswana as bogobe. It can be fermented and made into a sour porridge known as ting.

In Zimbabwe we ate maize but rice was eaten in Liberia. The article does not mention rice even though there was an alternative rice domesticated in west Africa.

the article also mentions teff, but that is grown in the horn of Africa where I did not work.

More here: Foods of Zimbabwe.

Stopping the desert

 Atlas Obscura has an article on projects in Senegal that are hoping to stop the spread of the desert along the southern edge of the Sahara.

LINK

The garden is the latest iteration of the pro

ject known as The Great Green Wall, first envisioned as a viridescent belt squiggling thousands of miles across the Sahel region, from Senegal to Djibouti. Launched in 2007 by the African Union with backing from the European Union, World Bank, and the United Nations, the project was initially meant to help stave off desertification by stymying the Sahara as it wandered south. ... The drivers of desertification include climate variability and climate change, overgrazing, the construction of river dams, and conflicts that displace people and spur shifts in land use. Long droughts can leave fertile soil vulnerable, and winds and rains can whisk it away. “Deforestation can accelerate the process, because trees serve as windbreaks,” Okolie says. That’s where the Great Green Wall concept came in. The initial plan emphasized trees as an anchor for soil and a buffer against the encroaching sand. Some elements of the idea made sense, says Geert Sterk, a geoscientist at Utrecht University who studies land degradation. “Tree and shrub roots hold soil, [and] the canopies trap raindrops before reaching the soil surface and reduce strong winds,” curbing erosion by wind and the region’s relatively rare but fierce rain,

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it is not just a problem in Africa: China worries about the Gobi.