Lazarus Sauti

Lazarus Sauti The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both non-violent and violent), riots, and civil wars in the Arab world that began on the 18 th of December 2010, according to Wikipedia. By December 2013, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. More so, major protests had broken out in Algeria, Morocco and Sudan; and minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Djibouti and Western Sahara. “Weapons and Tuareg fighters returning from the Libyan Civil War stoked a simmering conflict in Mali which has been described as ‘fallout’ from the Arab Spring in North Africa, and the sectarian clashes in Lebanon were described as a spillover of violence from the Syrian uprising and hence the regional Arab Spring,” Wikipedia asserts. Without doubt, the West contributed immensely to the Arab Springs; they wanted to install “who they think was proper and nice for these countries.” Leaders from Western countries also tried to ins...

Lazarus Sauti Based on information being supplied to media, Africa’s Information and Communication Technology industry is growing, and this revolution is boosted by the advent of mobile products and services. The good news is also that this transformation or growth is a tonic to economic transformation in Africa. Leaders only need to sustain and place this growth to all developmental initiatives. However, sustaining this growth is dependent on the identification and implementation of the right investment in information and communication technology, skills and innovation, and to effectively develop and profitably compete with other continents, African countries must of necessity, foster sustainable technological development. They must embrace technology and use it as a game changer in social and economic aspects of development. Remember, embracing sustainable technological development is the only panacea to problems affecting the continent of Africa as it allows countrie...

Lazarus Sauti “Young people really are dreamers. They dream of a better kind of world,” once said Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Because of this, young men and women of Africa must be placed as central to all development initiatives in their respective countries if Africa’s envisaged development is to be realised. Addressing a national youth consultative forum on the African Union’s Agenda 2063 in Pretoria, South Africa recently, South Africa’s Deputy International Relations Minister Luwellyn Landers agrees young people of today are the main players and partners of the development of Africa. Sharing same sentiments, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment, Cde Francis Nhema says placing youth as central to all development programmes and encouraging them to be focused is critical as they are key resources and assets in transforming economies. “We must place our youth as central to our development programmes and encourage them to be focused si...

Lazarus Sauti Reflecting on the World Anti-Counterfeiting Day recently, Joseph Y. Yun, United States Ambassador to Malaysia says c ounterfeit medications are raising false hope and pose a threat to those who take them. He asserts that besides raising phony hope, these false drugs are putting lives of those who take them at real danger as they are killing them. “Counterfeiters are killing people and are making deadly diseases like malaria even stronger,” notes Yun, adding that “t he global counterfeit drug trade, a billion-dollar industry, is mostly thriving in Asia and Africa. Affirming Yun’s assertion, the World Health Organisation – a specialised agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health – states that more than half a million people died from malaria in 2012 and 20 per cent of those deaths are attributed to false or sub-standard medication. WHO also adds that most of those deaths occurred in Africa. Jocelyne Sambira , a digi...

Lazarus Sauti Dr. Ephraim Mukisira believes that despite food shortage challenges persisting in Africa, it is possible for nation states to produce enough food, generate incomes and secure the livelihoods of many Africans. Mukisira, director of Kenya Agricultural Research Institute , a premier national institution bringing together research programmes in food crops, horticultural and industrial crops, livestock and range management, land and water management, and socio-economics in Kenya,   also said producing enough food for Africa is possible only if countries within and across the continent foster demand-driven research in the agriculture sector. “Countries in African can only feed their citizens if they embrace demand-driven research, innovations and strong policies in agriculture,” notes Mukisira. The International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas , a member of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres, and a non-profit agri...

Lazarus Sauti Professor Philip Kuchel of the Australian Academy of Science says the supply of future clean energy to meet ever-increasing requirements is one of the global challenges for the present generation. Worldwide energy needs are estimated by the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation dedicated to serve as an information source on statistics about the international oil market and other energy sectors, to increase by over 50 percent from 2004 to 2030 as populations increase and economies expand. As the specialist in the theory and practice of nuclear magnetic resonance, Kuchel adds that the reliance on fossil fuels is not sustainable because of their contribution to increased greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, and these scenarios have led to an increased interest in alternative sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind, processes for energy production from coal and other fossil fuels with carbon captur...

Lazarus Sauti Ecosystems – biological communities of interacting organisms and their physical environments – play a crucial role in transforming economies as they support revenues and future development opportunities. This is so because livelihoods and sustainable harvest sectors rely heavily on natural resources, such as in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Furthermore, healthy ecosystems provide the platform upon which future food production and economies are ultimately based. African countries and other developing nations must therefore protect ecosystems and use them as springboards to economic development. Opportunities ecosystems provide for future development, however, are threatened by a serious and increasingly complicated transnational organised environmental crime that is undermining sustainable development in many African states. This is according to the United Nations Environment Programme, an agency established to promote environmentally sound practice...

Lazarus Sauti In many maritime regions of the world, illegal fishing has massively contributed to the depletion of fish stocks, especially in developing countries’ coastal waters, according to the World Ocean Review , an extensive report, dealing with the state of the world ocean, the interactions between the ocean and ecological, economical and socio-political conditions. Illegal fishing threatens ocean ecosystems and sustainable fisheries; it violates conservation and management measures; and undermines domestic and international conservation and management efforts. More so, it threatens food security. The Food and Agricultural Organisation , an agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger, says that globally fish provides about 3 billion people with almost 20 per cent of their intake of animal protein and 4.3 billion people with about 15 per cent of such protein. Furthermore, countries are losing millions of dollars through illegal f...