A well-known South Sudanese politician who a few months ago had called on government soldiers to lay down their weapons saying that would leave President Salva Kiir with no power, said Monday she has reconciled with the president.

Rebecca Nyandeng, widow of South Sudan founding father John Garang and former adviser on gender affairs to the president, told South Sudan in Focus that in a meeting in Kamapla last week between her, President Kiir, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, and former detainees, she and Kiir agreed to seek a solution to South Sudan’s political crisis.

Nyandeng said it was Kiir who asked for a reconciliation with her.

“For me, a reconciliation between me and him; we don’t have any problem; our problem is how we can rescue people of South Sudan. It needs all of us to come together so we can see how we can mend the fence,” Nyandeng told South Sudan in Focus.

Nyandeng said despite her new relationship with Kiir, she will not return to the country until all of its political forces are reunited.

Asked about the terms of her reconciliation with Kiir, Nyandeng responded, “President Kiir called me mom, and if President Kiir call me ‘mom,’ then I am the mom of all people of South Sudan. If I am the mom of the people of South Sudan, I will not leave them out; I want everybody to be included. I want peace, comprehensive peace,” she said.

Asked how she will convince the doubting Thomas’ of South Sudan who only believe she has reconciled with Kiir if they see her in Juba, Nyandeng answered with a question of her own: “When they were doubting, what happened to them? Jesus Christ appeared to them!”

Pressed on when she will return to the South Sudanese capital, Nyandeng said, “When Jesus Christ appear to me, that is when I will be going back to Juba.”

Nyandeng said she wants her people to be reunited. “I want them to come together, and I pray for that. We need to see that all the people who are aggrieved come to the table,” she adds.

Nyandeng said South Sudan is her country and wondered “why should I not go back?”

“Mama Nyandeng,” as she is known in much of South Sudan, added, “I will not leave all those children outside. What am I going to do with the big son when the younger children are outside the country?”
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European and African ministers are meeting in Tunisia about efforts to regulate the flow of refugees from Africa to Europe, primarily along the deadly central Mediterranean route originating in Libya.

In a declaration Monday in Tunis, the capital, the ministers said they agreed on a multi-pronged approach to the crisis, including informing people about the risks of illegal migration and the possibility of voluntarily returning home, addressing why migrants leave home and beefing up actions against human traffickers.

Participating in the meetings were interior ministers from Algeria, Austria, Chad, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Libya, Mali, Malta, Niger, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tunisia and Estonia, which currently holds the EU Council presidency.

Through the first half of 2017, nearly 84,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea, 20 percent more than during the same period last year. Detention centers and temporary shelters that Italy has for migrants have reached their maximum capacity of 200,000 people, but there are many other migrants in the country working illegally.

The meeting in Tunisia focused on Libya, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said, since 95 percent of the migrants crossing the sea to Europe set sail from Libya. The ongoing political upheaval in Libya makes the problem worse, Collomb said, adding: “As long as a stable government is not in place, the control of this flux cannot be assured.”

The European Union has proposed training and financing to increase the capabilities of Libya’s coast guards, and last week the bloc also approved new rules for refugee-rescue ships operating in the Mediterranean. The vessels that charities operate to rescue refugees stranded on the open sea are now forbidden to coordinate their movements, either by phone or signal lights, with people-smugglers who pick up would-be migrants in Libya and sometimes leave them stranded at sea.

The refugee-rescue ships also are now required to stay out of Libyan territorial waters, where they previously have picked up asylum-seekers close to shore. Any vessel that breaks the new rules risks being banned from Italian ports.

Humanitarian ships now pick up more than a third of all migrants attempting the perilous Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy, compared to one percent in 2014.

Not all stranded migrants are rescued. More than 2,200 people died this year during unsuccessful attempts to cross the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration.

In their final declaration in Tunis, the ministers agreed that their countries should try to address “the root causes of irregular migration” and “strengthen the exchange of strategic and operational information on criminal networks for trafficking in human beings.”

The statement said public development aid is needed to fight the causes of migration and create more opportunities at home, as well as to help border authorities with training, equipment and infrastructure.

“We have to stick together,” said Dimitris Avramopoulos, European commissioner for migration. He insisted “Europe is not a fortress,” but added that legal migration procedures must be followed.
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The U.S. government says the HIV epidemic is “coming under control” in Swaziland, the country with the world’s highest prevalence of the virus.

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) said Monday that new infections among adults in Swaziland have dropped by nearly half since 2011. It said the latest research also shows that life-saving anti-retroviral treatment has doubled in the country during the same time period and now reaches over 80 percent of infected adults.

PEPFAR has focused much of its efforts on increasing access to anti-retroviral drugs for over 11 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Monday’s statement also says the southern African nations of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe “demonstrate significant progress toward controlling the HIV epidemics.”

The U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, Deborah Birx, said “These unprecedented findings demonstrate the remarkable impact of the U.S. government’s efforts … We now have a historic opportunity to change the very course of the HIV epidemic.”

The data shows that the number of people in Swaziland who have achieved a suppression of the virus – meaning the virus does not replicate to make them sick – has doubled since 2011.

While the results show large progress in combating the epidemic, it also reveals key gaps in HIV prevention and treatment. PEPFAR says the data shows that women ages 15-24 and men under age 35 are less likely to know their HIV status, be on HIV treatment, or be taking anti-retroviral drugs than older adults.

“These gaps are all areas in which PEPFAR continues to invest and innovate,” the statement said.

Swaziland’s government says about 27 percent of its population was HIV-positive in 2016, down from 31 percent of adults in 2011.

 
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Animated chatter spills out from a corner of tech giant Google’s Nairobi offices as five Kenyan schoolgirls discuss their upcoming trip to California where they hope to win $15,000 for I-cut, an app to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The five teenagers, aged 15 to 17, are the only Africans selected to take part in this year’s international Technovation competition, where girls develop mobile apps to end problems in their communities.

“FGM is a big problem affecting girls worldwide and it is a problem we want to solve,” Stacy Owino told the Reuters, while snacking on chocolate on a break from boarding school before flying to the United States on Aug. 6.

“This whole experience will change our lives. Whether we win or not, our perspective of the world and the possibilities it has will change for the better.”

The five girls from Kenya’s western city of Kisumu call themselves the “Restorers” because they want to “restore hope to hopeless girls,” said Synthia Otieno, one of the team.

One in four Kenyan women and girls have undergone FGM, which involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia, even though it is illegal in the East African nation.

Although the girls’ Luo community does not practice FGM, they have friends who have been cut.

“We were very close, but after she was cut she never came back to school,” said Purity Achieng, describing a classmate who underwent FGM. “She was among the smartest girls I knew.”

I-cut connects girls at risk of FGM with rescue centers and gives legal and medical help to those who have been cut.

Its simple interface has five buttons — help, rescue, report, information on FGM, donate and feedback — offering users different services.

Kenya is one of the most technologically advanced countries in Africa, known for its pioneering mobile money transfer apps.

Technovation, which is sponsored by Google, Verizon and the United Nations, aims to teach girls the skills they need to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders.

“We just have to use this opportunity as a stepping stone to the next level,” said schoolgirl Ivy Akinyi who plans to become a computer programmer.
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Three African nations are holding major elections in August: oil giant Angola, East African powerhouse Kenya and tiny, rapidly developing Rwanda.

Campaigning is under way in all three nations ahead of these votes. While these nations are geographically, politically and economically very different, analysts say each of these polls could be a turning point for their nation.

Rwanda

First up is tiny, landlocked Rwanda, which will vote August 3-4. Again, the undisputed favorite is the longtime president, who has ruled since the end of the tiny nation’s horrific 1994 genocide.

Even the head of the European Union electoral commission said to VOA in May, “I think you would not lose any money if you bet on Mr. Paul Kagame.”

Senior Horn of Africa analyst Murithi Mutiga of the International Crisis Group says poll watchers agree, but that the democratic exercise is an important one for Rwanda and its wealthy aid partners.

“It’s been essentially the Paul Kagame show for the last two decades, and not too many people see that changing,” he tells VOA from Nairobi. “…I think it matters to the extent that obviously there have been questions as to whether Rwanda is an authoritarian country, whether it respects the norms and practices of a democratic country, and especially as a major recipient of aid from the West.”

Kenya

Kenya, he says, is a different story: the August 8 poll is a contest between incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga. That may be why the EU has decided not to send observers to Rwanda, but to deploy more than 100 observers to Kenya.

The African Union is sending an observer mission headed by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, and the U.S.-based Carter Center will send a mission co-led by former Secretary of State John Kerry.

This poll falls 10 years after the worst episode of post-election violence Kenya has ever seen. Odinga’s loss in 2007 sparked weeks of political and ethnic violence that took the lives of more than 1,100 people.

This year, voters are again divided along ethnic lines, but since 2007 Kenya has enacted constitutional reforms designed to prevent such violence.

This poll, Mutiga says, is a test, of whether those reforms can hold up.

“Just as in 2007, the outcome will be close, the stakes are high for the candidates and the institutions, especially the electoral commission, are struggling to cope with the huge responsibility on their shoulders,” he says.

Angola

And last up, the oil juggernaut, Angola. On August 23, the southern African nation will hold its first vote in decades without President Jose Eduardo dos Santos at the helm. The 74-year-old, who has recently taken several trips to Spain for medical reasons, is stepping down after 38 years in power.

The poll itself is a straightforward two-way race, between the longtime ruling party and the established opposition; but, the winner will lead a nation whose fortunes are heavily dependent on oil, which accounts for about 45 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, and 95 percent of exports.

Angola’s economy has recently been shaken by the slump in oil prices, which has hit the economy hard.

Analyst Maja Bovcon of business consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft says that while the poll itself is interesting, the real test will come after the winner is announced. The new president will have to address the nation’s foundering economy and gaping inequalities.

To do so, Bovcon says, the president will have to untangle the complicated network of state resources, which until now have been largely controlled by President dos Santos and his family.

“Because Angola has never actually had this transition — or, okay, it has not had a real transition for almost the past 40 years, nearly 38 years — means that everybody now, all analysts, everybody, is looking at how this transition will succeed,” she says.

 
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