Turkish Yapı Merkezi BEATS China in $3 Billion Railway Project Deal in Uganda

Good news! More on the scramble for Africa!

What is Turkey doing in Uganda? According to this video Turkey has apparently engaged in multiple projects across Africa.

Earliest evidence of plant farming in East Africa dating back 2300 years

Amazing stuff! Of course, this pales compared to ancient Egypt or Indus valley, where agriculture started thousands of years earlier.

"... team performed radiocarbon dating on the plant samples, finding remnants of cowpea dated to 2,300 years ago. This is the oldest crop found in eastern Africa. It dates to a time when local people also began to use domestic cattle. ..."

From the abstract:

"The histories of African crops remain poorly understood despite their contemporary importance. Integration of crops from western, eastern and northern Africa probably first occurred in the Great Lakes Region of eastern Africa; however, little is known about when and how these agricultural systems coalesced. This article presents archaeobotanical analyses from an approximately 9000-year archaeological sequence at Kakapel Rockshelter in western Kenya, comprising the largest and most extensively dated archaeobotanical record from the interior of equatorial eastern Africa. Direct radiocarbon dates on carbonized seeds document the presence of the West African crop cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) approximately 2300 years ago, synchronic with the earliest date for domesticated cattle (Bos taurus). Peas (Pisum sativum L. or Pisum abyssinicum A. Braun) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) from the northeast and eastern African finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) are incorporated later, by at least 1000 years ago. Combined with ancient DNA evidence from Kakapel and the surrounding region, these data support a scenario in which the use of diverse domesticated species in eastern Africa changed over time rather than arriving and being maintained as a single package. Findings highlight the importance of local heterogeneity in shaping the spread of food production in sub-Saharan Africa."

Earliest evidence of plant farming in East Africa Ancient plant remains found in Kenya help explain the history of plant farming in East Africa.

Early agriculture and crop transitions at Kakapel Rockshelter in the Lake Victoria region of eastern Africa (open access)

One unusual crop that Mueller uncovered was field pea, burnt but perfectly intact. 

Beating the Flesh-Eating Disease

Good news! Maybe more shoes would help too!

"A cheap, existing drug has been found to work effectively against mycetoma, a devastating infection that afflicts thousands of people across three continents ...

A clinical trial in Sudan led by Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), the Mycetoma Research Center, and others showed the oral drug fosravuconazole to be up to 85% effective. It has no side effects.

Mycetoma, caused by certain bacteria and fungi, primarily affects people in impoverished rural areas. Many are infected while walking barefoot.

The flesh-eating, bone-destroying disease can lead to severe complications requiring amputation.

Fosravuconazole’s major advantage: Just two pills of the drug (used to treat fungal nail infections) need to be taken once a week versus four pills per day of the current treatment ..."

Global Health NOW: China’s Respiratory Illnesses Raise Concerns; Flesh-Eating Disease ‘Gamechanger’; and An Egg a Day

Seychelles: The island paradise held prisoner by heroin from Iran

A high level of drug addiction can be devastating for a country! The population of this country is only about 100,000.

Just a reminder that drug legalization is no panacea either!

The main source of heroin appears to be Iran!

"Seychelles is facing what is now an epidemic.

It is estimated that around 10% of the Seychellois population is hooked on heroin. So much so that foreign workers are having to be brought in to do the work that drug-dependent locals cannot.

In the jail, Tanzanian guards are rotated onto the staff in an attempt to stem corruption and the flow of heroin into the cells - but it is not working. ...

President Wavel Ramkalawan ... "At this point in time, per capita, as far as consumption of heroin is concerned, Seychelles is number one in the world." ...

Methadone is also available to users outside prison. It is free to anyone who is registered, such is the extent of the epidemic. ...

The problem in Seychelles is so bad because the islands are caught up in well-established trafficking routes from Afghanistan and Iran to East Africa and Europe - but President Ramkalawan says the issue was exacerbated when a group of Iranian drug traffickers were incarcerated in the country.

"When they were here, they developed their network. After that, there were more Seychellois involved in the drug trade from Iran, and now today we find ourselves putting in so many resources just to fight those Iranian dhows coming into our waters to sell their poison." ..."

Seychelles: The island paradise held prisoner by heroin - BBC News: Some 10% of the local population in the tropical island nation of Seychelles is dependent on heroin in what is now an epidemic, according to the country's government. Even being locked away offers no protection for those dependent on the drug. BBC Africa Eye gained rare access to the main jail to witness the sharp end of a problem threatening to overwhelm the country.

Could groundwater drilling solve the drought problems in the Horn of Africa? Of course!

Good news!

If I am not mistaken, then it has been known for several decades that there are e.g. gigantic groundwater reservoirs underneath the Sahara desert.

Michael Rubin: Ethiopia’s hydro-hegemony has arrived

Recommendable! Apparently, Ethiopia has a history of taking unilateral action on harnessing international water resources at the detriment of its neighbor countries.

"... Ethiopia has repeatedly failed to negotiate in good faith. In 2007, the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office of the Nile Basin Initiative—an intergovernmental partnership comprising ten Nile Basin countries including Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt—reportedly concluded that the optimum storage capacity for a hydroelectric dam in the location where Addis Ababa would eventually build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was 14.47 billion cubic meters. That number is less than one-fifth of what Ethiopia later constructed. ...
While taking unilateral actions that could impact 98 percent of Egyptians might appear a casus belli—a justifiable one—Ethiopian water unilateralism is not new. Consider Ethiopia’s Gibe dams on the Omo River basin: Ethiopia’s unilateral damming, especially in the Omo River basin, including the Gibe cascade,  devastated the UNESCO-listed Lake Turkana in  Kenya. Its actions threatened the existence of the lake and exacerbated both hunger and conflict in the surrounding areas. Ethiopian actions—taken absent consultation with Kenya—may replicate the Aral Sea disaster in East Africa. ..."

Ethiopia’s hydro-hegemony has arrived | American Enterprise Institute - AEI The dam dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt most often garners international press, but the cases impacting Kenya and Somalia show that the pattern of Ethiopian defiance of international norms cuts deeper.