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SENEGAL: The “missing middle” – tackling youth unemployment

Ibra Niang, 22, was recently one of the estimated 100,000 young people who enter Senegal’s stark job market each year. After seeing many of his fellow youths end up on the streets hawking used clothing or on a rickety boat headed clandestinely to Europe, Niang decided he needed a marketable skill if he was to gain a decent wage. Under a new project to restore historic buildings in Saint-Louis, 266km north of the capital Dakar, Niang is one of at least 300 young people receiving professional...

WEST AFRICA: Meningitis emergency vaccine stock tapped early

 The UN World Health Organization’s meningitis vaccine stockpile programme has already tapped into its inventory, weeks before the worst of the deadly illness’s peak season. “These requests [from governments for vaccines] typically come in at week 12 [end March],” said WHO’s Alejandro Costa with the Epidemic Readiness and Interventions team. “But this year we have already received four requests from Nigeria.” The International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Vaccine Provision for Epidemic...

Synchronized polio campaign kicks off across eight countries in West Africa

Fifty-three million children under five are expected to be reached across eight West African countries in a coordinated polio immunization campaign that launched today. The synchronized cross-border initiative will take place in eight countries simultaneously: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Togo, and Nigeria. The goal of the campaign is to reach every child, even in the most remote rural areas or in the most populated urban areas. More than 162,000 trained immunizers...

SENEGAL: Squeezing more out of sesame

The Senegalese government has invested millions of dollars in the past decade to revive sesame production, but the sector has been slow to develop. Yet as profits decline for the country’s main cash crops - peanuts and cotton - and Asia’s demand for sesame grows, some producers are reconsidering the abandoned crop. Government agricultural advisor Khardy Ndiaye told IRIN farmers have been reluctant to cultivate sesame, but face more pressure to find a viable cash crop with higher food prices...

WEST AFRICA: Can organic cotton save the industry?

Fuel and fertiliser price hikes, insect infestations and chemical damage to soil have led some cotton farmers in West Africa to produce organic cotton. But the international recession has blunted demand for the new crop, according to an industry trade group. Global organic cotton production grew by more than 150 percent to 145,000 metric tons in 2008 – an estimated 0.55 percent of total cotton production, according to the US-based non-profit Organic Exchange, which promotes and monitors organic...

SENEGAL: Coastal erosion research goes unfunded

Environmental officials are calling for funds to document the deterioration of Senegal’s coast and take action to save coastal communities. “We need facts and figures about the sea to show people that [the threat of coastal erosion] is not just all talk,” said Sory Diallo, the director of Hydrometeorology and Maritime Meteorology in Senegal’s Ministry of Infrastructure. The government in 2008 released a strategy to fight coastal erosion, which includes 22 projects. As of February 2009...

Senegal UPDATE: El-Malick Seck’s appeal postponed again

Hearing of the appeal case filed by El-Malick Seck, a publisher of Dakar-based Daily24 Heures Chrono newspaper, has been adjourned to February 16, 2009 for judgement. The legal officer of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) who was in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to observe the hearing reported that counsel for El-Malick Seck; Demba Ciré Bathily , M. Assan Joma Ndiaye from Organisation National de droit de l’homme (ONDH), and M. Alioume Kane from Rencontre Africain de droit de...

WEST AFRICA: When there is no village doctor

An international financial recession threatens to worsen the “severe medical workforce crisis” faced by almost 60 African and Asian countries, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO). The fewer health workers there are, the less chance a woman has to survive childbirth and a child his or her infancy, according to WHO. In the last such statistics recorded by WHO, the agency in 2006 estimated a shortage of more than four million health workers in Africa and Asia. The WHO Global Health...

Dakar rally takes a 3,000-mile detour to avoid terror threat

The Dakar is renowned as one of the world’s great motor sport adventures: a race through dunes and deserts to the Senegalese capital. But any competitors speeding through the West African city will find themselves 3,000 miles off course as the 30th edition of the rally begins today – in Argentina.Africa had become too high a risk and a return to the continent is unlikely in the near future. Officials in the Francophone African countries say that the decision will cost them millions of euros...

Old man shoots Senegal crowd singing about Angry Old Men

An elderly man opened fire on fans at a Senegal rap concert he believed were making fun of him by singing a song about cranky old men, police say.The 70-year-old began shooting with a hunting rifle at Lobaly village in the Matam region at the weekend.Police say the gunman warned fans to stop singing "Pa' Tang Xol" (Angry Old Men) by popular Senegalese artist Baaba Mal before opening fire.