KAMPALA, Uganda — Only a small fraction of millions of needy people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are receiving food aid, according to an aid memo seen by The Associated Press, more than one month after aid agencies resumed deliveries of grain following a lengthy pause over massive theft. 

Just 14% of 3.2 million people targeted for food aid by humanitarian agencies in the region this month had received it by Jan. 21, according to the memo by the Tigray Food Cluster, a group of aid agencies co-chaired by the U.N.’s World Food Program and Ethiopian officials. 

The memo urges humanitarian groups to “immediately scale up” their operations, warning that “failure to take swift action now will result in severe food insecurity and malnutrition during the lean season, with possible loss of the most vulnerable children and women in the region.” 

The U.N. and the U.S. paused food aid to Tigray in March last year after discovering a “large-scale” scheme to steal humanitarian grain. The suspension was rolled out to the rest of Ethiopia in June. 

U.S. officials believe the theft may be the biggest diversion of grain ever. Humanitarian donors have blamed Ethiopian government officials and the country’s military for the fraud. Ethiopia’s government dismissed that suggestion as harmful “propaganda.” 

The U.N. and the U.S. lifted the pause in December after introducing reforms to curb theft, but Tigray authorities say food is not reaching those who need it. 

Two aid workers told the AP that the new system — which includes fitting GPS trackers to food trucks and ration cards with QR codes — has been hampered by technical issues, causing delays. Aid agencies are also struggling with a lack of funds. 

A third aid worker said the food aid pause and the slow resumption meant some people in Tigray have not received food aid for over a year. “They went through multiple rounds of registration and verification, but no actual distributions yet,” the aid worker said. 

The aid workers spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. 

Tigray, home to 5.5 million people, was the center of a devastating two-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and spilled into the neighboring regions. A U.N. panel accused Ethiopia’s government of using “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting food aid to Tigray during the conflict, which ended in November 2022 with a peace deal. 

Around 20.1 million people across Ethiopia need humanitarian food due to drought, conflict and a tanking economy. The aid pause pushed up hunger levels even further. 

The U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System has warned that crisis levels of hunger or worse “are expected in northern, southern and southeastern Ethiopia throughout at least early 2024.” A former head of the WFP has described these levels of hunger as “marching towards starvation.” 

In the Amhara region neighboring Tigray, a rebellion that erupted in August is impeding humanitarians’ movements and making distributions difficult, while several regions of Ethiopia have been devastated by a multi-year drought. 

Malnutrition rates among children in parts of Ethiopia’s Afar, Amhara and Oromia regions range between 15.9% and 47%, according to a presentation by the Ethiopia Nutrition Cluster and reviewed by the AP. Among displaced children in Tigray, the rate is 26.5%. The Ethiopia Nutrition Cluster is co-chaired by the U.N. Children’s Fund and the federal government. 

Persistent insecurity in Tigray meant only 49% of its farmland was planted during the main planting season last year, according to an assessment by U.N. agencies, NGOs and the regional authorities, and seen by the AP. 

Crop production in these areas was only 37% of the expected total because of drought. In some areas the proportion was as low as 2%. 

The poor harvest prompted Tigray’s authorities to warn of an “unfolding famine” that could match the disaster of 1984-5, which killed hundreds of thousands of people across northern Ethiopia, unless the aid response is immediately scaled up. 

However, Ethiopia’s federal government denies there is a large hunger crisis. When Tigray’s leader, Getachew Reda, raised the alarm over looming mass starvation deaths last month, a federal government spokesperson dismissed the reports as “inaccurate” and accused him of “politicizing the crisis.” 
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Blantyre, Malawi — The Malawi government and the World Health Organization launched a new COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Monday in 10 of the country’s 29 districts. This is partly in response to new cases confirmed in the past three weeks in several districts across the country.

Nsanje District in southern Malawi currently leads in the number of COVID-19 cases recorded this year.

George Mbotwa, spokesperson for the district health office, said the district has registered 17 new cases in the past three weeks and some are health workers.

“Initially there were two, but we had up to eight cases that were health workers,” he said. “Some of them have now been confirmed as negative, and others are being followed up to ensure that they are fully recovered before they can resume work.”

By Monday, Malawi cumulatively recorded 89,202 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 2,686 deaths, since the first cases were confirmed in the country in April 2020.

Malawi’s Ministry of Health says the new vaccination campaign will help boost the number of people getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccination rates in some areas of Malawi are as low as 40%.

It also says the WHO-funded campaign would help avoid waste of the vaccine as was the case in 2020 when the government destroyed nearly 20,000 expired AstraZeneca doses.

Many of those doses expired due to vaccine hesitancy amid concerns of its safety and efficacy.

However, recent government public health campaigns on the importance of COVID-19 shots have helped defeat that hesitancy.

Mary Chawinga, a mother of two of Machinjiri Township in Blantyre, said she has had the vaccine and is awaiting a booster.

“And I am ready to take my children, because prevention is better than [a] cure they say,” Chawinga said. “You never know how the wave will be like this time around considering the way it was way back in 2020. We have had it in 2021, and now this is 2024.”

Another mother of two, Habeeba Nyasulu, said she received the COVID-19 doses during the first campaign and encourages others to get the shot.

“I know that we are not safe until everyone is safe,” she said. “So, let others also receive the vaccine. I know that the vaccine does not prevent us from getting infected, but it helps us when we contract it not to be critically ill.”

Maziko Matemba is a community health care ambassador in Malawi, said the COVID-19 threat is still present in the country.

“Malawi didn’t vaccinate a required number of people against COVID-19, because the targeted population was about 11 million Malawians,” Matemba said. “But we were less than half about 2 or 3 million Malawians who were able to get vaccinated.”

Matemba said the country now needs to have the vaccine in the right places and encourage more people to get vaccinated.

The Ministry of Health says the new campaign targets 10 of the country’s 29 health districts that have recently recorded new cases. These include Machinga, Blantyre, Dowa, Mzimba and Nsanje districts.
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UNITED NATIONS — The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor told the U.N. Security Council on Monday his “clear finding” is that there are grounds to believe both Sudan’s armed forces and paramilitary rivals are committing crimes in the western Darfur region during the country’s current conflict. 

Karim Khan, who recently visited neighboring Chad where tens of thousands of people from Darfur have fled, warned that those he met in refugee camps fear Darfur will become “the forgotten atrocity.” He urged Sudan’s government to provide his investigators with multiple-entry visas and respond to 35 requests for assistance. 

Sudan plunged into chaos last April when long-simmering tensions between the military, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, erupted into street battles in the capital, Khartoum, and other areas. 

Darfur, which was wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003, has been an epicenter of the current conflict, an arena of ethnic violence where paramilitary troops and allied Arab militias have been attacking African ethnic groups. 

The fighting has displaced over 7 million people and killed 12,000, according to the United Nations. Local doctors’ groups and activists say the true death toll is far higher. 

In 2005, the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC, and Khan has said the court still has a mandate under that resolution to investigate crimes in the vast region. 

He told the council, “Based on the work of my office, it’s my clear finding, my clear assessment, that there are grounds to believe that presently Rome Statute crimes are being committed in Darfur by both the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces and affiliated groups.” 

The Rome Statute established the ICC in 2002 to investigate the world’s worst atrocities — war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide — and the crime of aggression. 

In Darfur, Khan warned, the world is confronted with “an ugly and inescapable truth” relating back to the original conflict. 

“The failure of the international community to execute the warrants that have been issued by independent judges of the ICC has invigorated the climate of impunity and the outbreak of violence that commenced in April that continues today,” he said. 

“Without justice for past atrocities, the inescapable truth is that we condemn the current generation, and if we do nothing now, we condemn future generations to suffering the same fate,” Khan said. 

The 2003 Darfur conflict began when rebels from the territory’s ethnic sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination and neglect. 

The government, under then-President Omar al-Bashir, responded with aerial bombings and unleashed local nomadic Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, who are accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes. 

Khan told the council Monday that some Darfuris he spoke to in Chad said what’s happening today is worse than 2003. 

Last April, the first ICC trial to deal with atrocities by Sudanese government-backed forces in Darfur began in The Hague, Netherlands. The defendant, Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, pleaded innocent to all 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

Khan urged the parties to the ongoing conflict to respond “meaningfully” to requests for assistance from Abd-Al-Rahman’s defense team. 

The prosecutor said he was pleased to report to the council that there has been “progress” in the ICC cases against former president al-Bashir and two senior government security officials during the 2003 Darfur conflict, Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein and Ahmed Haroun. 

“We’ve received evidence that further strengthens those particular cases,” Khan said. The three have never been turned over to the ICC, and their whereabouts during the current conflict in Sudan remain unknown. 
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Nairobi — Kenyan President William Ruto says he will appeal a court ruling last week rejecting a planned deployment of Kenyan police officers to Haiti. Ruto promised last year that Kenya would lead a multinational force to help fight gangs in the troubled Caribbean nation, but critics challenged his legal authority.

Friday’s court ruling didn’t come as a surprise because procedure was not followed said, Dr. Francis Khayundi, assistant professor of international law at the United States International University Africa in Nairobi.

“Under article 240 of the constitution that talks about the National Security Council, amongst the role and functions of the security council, there was no mention that it had a role to do with deploying of the police officers. Their thinking was that only the armed forces can be sent or deployed outside of the territory of the country and not the police service,” he said.

The ruling also said that Kenya could’ve deployed its police officers only if a so-called “reciprocal arrangement” exists between the two nations.

Khayundi told VOA that the court action puts President Ruto in a difficult position, coming after the U.N. Security Council approved a Kenya-led multinational security force aimed at helping combat violent gangs in the troubled Caribbean nation.

“It’s a bit of [a] catch 22 situation; being between a rock and a hard place particularly for Kenya, here we are talking about the executive. For those who believe in the rule of law, of course it’s victory,” he said.

In a statement, Ruto’s government reiterated its commitment to honoring the country’s international obligations and says it will appeal the court ruling. That statement was welcomed by some in Haiti.

A local Haitian says, “it’s their country [Kenya], they make their decisions but as an ally country of Haiti, we are waiting for them. As the president says, it’s not over yet.”

Khayundi says while the Kenya government has the right to appeal, he wonders on which grounds it plans to do so.

“It’ll be interesting to see their grounds of appeal but that is a right they have,” he said. For me, I would suggest that the executive try and regularize or normalize that gap because if we don’t have the legal framework, then no appeal can put in place a legal framework.”

Tirana Hassan, Human Rights Watch Executive Director told a U.N. Security Council meeting last week that while plans for the deployment of the Kenyan-led force have stalled, the situation for many Haitians has worsened.

“Killings, kidnappings, sexual violence and other abuses continue at a staggering rate, with criminal group activities and fighting intensifying and spreading,” said Hassan.

The challenge to the deployment was brought to court by three petitioners, including opposition politician and constitutional lawyer Ekuru Aukot, who told VOA at the time the proposed deployment was unconstitutional.

Reacting to the ruling on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Aukot pleaded for Ruto to accept the court’s decision and called for the government to focus on providing security to troubled regions inside Kenya including his own village.
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Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Haiti’s government said Sunday it remains hopeful for a “swift and positive outcome,” after a Kenyan court ruled against Nairobi’s plan to deploy police officers to support the troubled island nation’s security forces.

The ruling on Friday has thrown into doubt the future of a U.N.-backed multinational force long sought by Haiti’s government, which has pleaded for international help to confront its spiraling security crisis.

Kenya’s government had previously said it was ready to provide up to 1,000 personnel, an offer welcomed by the United States and other nations that had ruled out putting their own forces on the ground.

The government of Haiti said in a statement Sunday that it was “following developments in Kenya and expects a swift and positive outcome.”

It added that it would “like to thank the many countries that have come forward to offer various types of aid to restore order and security as soon as possible.”

The Kenyan government has vowed to challenge the high court ruling.

Kenyan President William Ruto has described his country’s undertaking as a “mission for humanity,” in step with its long record of contributing to peacekeeping missions abroad.

The Western hemisphere’s poorest nation, Haiti has been in turmoil for years, with armed gangs taking over parts of the country and unleashing brutal violence, leaving the economy and public health system in tatters.

The 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise plunged the country further into chaos. No elections have taken place since 2016 and the presidency remains vacant.

The multinational mission — initially approved for one year — had envisioned Kenyan police on the offensive with their Haitian counterparts, who are outnumbered and outgunned by gang members.

The U.N. Security Council approved the mission in early October.

In the statement, Haiti urged its citizens “to remain calm, to support our security forces and not to allow themselves to be intimidated by disinformation campaigns and threats of violence.”
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Bamako — The military regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger announced Sunday their immediate withdrawal from the West African bloc ECOWAS, saying it has become a threat to member states.

The leaders of the three Sahel nations issued a statement saying it was a “sovereign decision” to leave the Economic Community of West African States “without delay.”

Struggling with jihadist violence and poverty, the regimes have had tense ties with ECOWAS since coups took place in Niger last July, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Mali in 2020.

All three — founding members of the bloc in 1975 — were suspended from ECOWAS with Niger and Mali facing heavy sanctions as the bloc tried to push for the early return of civilian governments with elections.

The sanctions were an “irrational and unacceptable posture” at a time when the three “have decided to take their destiny in hand” — a reference to the coups that removed civilian administrations.

The three nations have hardened their positions in recent months and joined forces in an “Alliance of Sahel States.”

The leaders’ joint statement added that 15-member ECOWAS, “under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, has become a threat to member states and peoples”.

They accused the grouping of failing to help them tackle the jihadists who swept into Mali from 2012 and then on to Burkina and Niger.

But leaving ECOWAS could make trade more difficult for the three land-locked nations, making goods more expensive, and could also see visa requirements re-imposed for travel.

Under pressure from the military regimes, former colonial power France has removed ambassadors and troops and watched Russia fill the void militarily and politically.

The French army’s withdrawal from the Sahel — the region along the Sahara desert across Africa — has heightened concerns over the conflicts spreading southward to Gulf of Guinea states Ghana, Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast.

‘Bad faith’ 

The prime minister appointed by Niger’s regime on Thursday blasted ECOWAS for “bad faith” after the bloc largely shunned a planned meeting in Niamey.

Niger had hoped for an opportunity to talk through differences with fellow states of ECOWAS which has cold-shouldered Niamey, imposing heavy economic and financial sanctions following the military coup that overthrew elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

Niger’s military leaders, wrestling with high food prices and a scarcity of medicines, have said they want up to three years for a transition back to civilian rule.

In Mali, the ruling officers under Colonel Assimi Goita had pledged to hold elections in February this year, but that has now been pushed back to an unknown date.

Burkina Faso, which has not been put under sanctions although Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power in September 2022, has set elections for this summer, but says the fight against the insurgents remains the top priority.   

 
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NAIROBI, Kenya — Thousands of people marched in cities and towns in Kenya during protests Saturday over the recent slayings of more than a dozen women. The anti-femicide demonstration was the largest event ever held in the country against sexual and gender-based violence.

In the nation’s capital, Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. The crowd, mostly women, brought traffic to a standstill.

“Stop killing us!” the demonstrators shouted as they waved signs with messages such as “There is no justification to kill women.”

The crowd in Nairobi was hostile to attempts by the parliamentary representative for women, Esther Passaris, to address them. Accusing Passaris of remaining silent during the latest wave of killings, protesters shouted her down with chants of “Where were you?” and “Go home!”

“A country is judged by not how well it treats its rich people but how well it takes care of the weak and vulnerable,” said Law Society of Kenya President Eric Theuri, who was among the demonstrators.

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year, according to Patricia Andago, a data journalist at media and research firm Odipo Dev who also took part in the march.

Odipo Dev reported this week that news accounts showed at least 500 women were killed in acts of femicide from January 2016 to December 2023. Many more cases go unreported, Andago said.

Two cases that gripped Kenya this month involved two women who were killed at Airbnb accommodations. The second victim was a university student who was dismembered and decapitated after she reportedly was kidnapped for ransom.

The Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology student’s head was found in a dam on Monday, a week after her dismembered body was found in a trash can at the rented home. Two Nigerian men were arrested in connection with her death.

A week earlier, the body of another young woman was found in an apartment with several stab wounds after she went there with a man she met online. Police are holding a suspect identified as John Matara. Several women have come forward to say they had previously told police about alleged acts of torture by Matara but he was never charged.

Theuri, the president of the Law Society, said cases of gender-based violence take too long to be heard in court, which he thinks emboldens perpetrators to commit crimes against women.

“As we speak right now, we have a shortage of about 100 judges. We have a shortage of 200 magistrates and adjudicators, and so that means that the wheel of justice grinds slowly as a result of inadequate provisions of resources,” he said.
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Kinshasa, Congo — Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has promised to use $7 billion from a renegotiated Chinese mining deal to build roads and infrastructure but his critics say the new agreement lacks transparency and is unfavorable towards Congo.

In a surprise announcement last weekend, Tshisekedi said that talks between his government and a consortium of Chinese investors over rebalancing the so-called Sicomines mining agreement would bring in $7 billion to the Congolese treasury.

The sum represents a huge and possibly transformative opportunity in the impoverished central African country of about 100 million people, where the national budget this year is set to reach $16 billion.

The deal was first made public last Saturday, when Tshisekedi referenced the Sicomines deal during his inauguration speech for a second term in office in front of tens of thousands of people.

“There is the thorny issue of the opening up of our regions, for which a solution in terms of financing has just been made possible,” he said.

Negotiations over Sicomines had been underway since last year after Tshisekedi — as well as numerous analysts — described the original 2008 deal as deeply unfair to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Under the original accord, a group of Chinese investors, including state-owned Chinese firms such as Sinohydro and China Railway Engineering Corporation, entered a $6.2-billion joint venture with Congo’s state mining company to run the Sicomines copper and cobalt mine, in Kolwezi in southeastern DRC.

In return, the Chinese investors were supposed to build $3 billion worth of infrastructure across the country, using the proceeds from the mine.

This innovative minerals-for-infrastructure deal was a response to Congo’s pressing development needs. The country is roughly the size of continental western Europe, but has a grossly inadequate road system due to endemic poverty, corruption and conflict.

According to many observers, the Chinese consortium failed to uphold its end of the bargain. A lack of transparency over spending also plagued the project and raised suspicions of corruption.

The U.S.-based NGO Carter Center found in a 2017 report, for example, that Sicomines consortium was unable to account for $685 million out of about $1.16 billion that had been allocated for infrastructure spending by that time.

In February 2023, Congo’s state auditor, the Inspectorate General of Finances (IGF), also released a report raising numerous problems with the Sicomines deal.

It said that the mine had likely been undervalued, for example, and demanded that the consortium raise its infrastructure investments to $20 billion to reflect the mine’s worth.

The IGF also found that only $822 million had been invested in infrastructure since 2008 — a sum it called “glaringly low.”

‘Unprecedented’ renegotiation

Tshisekedi made renegotiating the deal one of his priorities towards the end of his first presidential term, even visiting Beijing in May in an attempt to get better terms.

The push for rebalancing mining deals also targeted another Chinese company, CMOC, which in July last year agreed to pay the Congolese government $2 billion to settle a dispute over declared mineral reserves at its Tenke Fungurume copper-cobalt mine.

At present, no details about the renegotiated Sicomines deal have been released to the public beyond what the president announced recently.

China’s embassy in Congo’s capital Kinshasa refused to comment. A spokesman for the Congolese presidency said he was unable to comment for the time being.

The Congolese government is nevertheless keen to stress that the renegotiated deal is a boon for its people. Interviewed on French radio on Tuesday, government spokesman Patrick Muyaya hailed the new Sicomines deal as “unprecedented.”

‘In China’s favor’

However, mining sector analysts in the DRC say that a host of questions surround the new $7-billion deal, the details of which remain murky.

Emmanuel Umpula, the executive director of the DRC-based NGO African Natural Resources Watch, said the whole renegotiation took place in secret.

“We asked that this happen in a transparent way, we should know the terms of reference of the renegotiation,” he said, explaining that Tshisekedi’s announcement had come as a surprise.

Umpula said there were many questions left to answer, such as, critically, how the negotiating parties arrived at the figure of $7 billion.

He also expressed concern that this money would come in the form of interest-bearing loans to the Congolese government, which would ultimately cause headaches for the treasury.

Sicomines has also continued operating and generating profits despite a lack of infrastructure spending, Umpula said, adding that “a simple way” of resolving the issue would have been to halt the mine’s operations until the Chinese investors started construction.

Another expert who was briefed on the negotiations between the Congolese government and Chinese investors, said that the final deal was “largely in China’s favor.”

The expert, who declined to be named so he could speak freely with VOA, explained that few of the original problems had been resolved.

There has been no new study of the mine’s reserves, he said, meaning that it was difficult to independently assess the value of the mine. It is also unclear where the money Sicomines had earmarked for investments ended up.

“Where did they go, what did they finance?” he said, referring to Sicomines. “It’s on this basis that we should negotiate an agreement.”

The expert said his understanding was that the $7 billion would be paid out over 10 to 15 years, in a deal he said appeared highly unfavorable.

“We’re losing out on the Sicomines project,” he said. “For the Congo, this is catastrophic.” 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has wrapped up a four-country tour of democracy-supporting countries in Africa, meeting with Angolan leaders to highlight increasing cooperation on a railway infrastructure project. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwean health authorities — battling a cholera outbreak that has infected about 20,000 people and killed more than 370 — say they hope donated vaccines will ease the spread of waterborne disease now affecting 60 of the country’s 64 districts.  

 

Zimbabwean Health Minister Douglas Mombeshora told reporters in Harare on Wednesday that the country had recorded 20,121 suspected cholera cases and 376 deaths — six of them since Tuesday. He said the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund had secured 2.3 million cholera vaccine doses for the country, with nearly 900,000 of them to be administered next week.

 

“The vaccination campaign is expected to start from the 29th of January in [a] phased approach to the hot spots,” he said. “This is because the doses are not enough to cover the whole country. And then roll on to the other affected districts as we receive more vaccines. The challenge is that there is a shortage of vaccine in the world because cholera is not in Zimbabwe alone. So, all other countries that have reported cholera are also getting the same vaccine from the same source. So, it’s now controlled by the WHO. Otherwise only the rich countries will wipe out the vaccines before others get them.”    

 

Mombeshora said 37 African countries had confirmed cases of cholera. The WHO’s Africa office did not confirm the number Wednesday.

In a statement to VOA, Dr. Paul Ngwakum, regional health adviser for UNICEF in eastern and southern Africa, said the cholera outbreak “remains a serious public health concern and continues to impact children’s lives in the region. An unprecedented surge in cholera cases is being recorded in the region due to many factors, including extreme climatic events such as droughts, cyclones and flooding … With porous borders and high population movements, cholera is spreading fast.”

 

Mombeshora is urging Zimbabweans to accept the cholera vaccine.

 

“This is not a new vaccine and it has been used all over the world,” he said. “The only reason why we do not have it enough is because it is only manufactured on demand. Therefore, it’s the same vaccine and it’s very, very safe. We did not receive an adverse report in our past use of it. I have had a cholera vaccine before, years ago, nothing to worry about.”  

 

Dr. Prosper Chonzi, Harare’s director of health services, says now that there is vaccine, people must not ease up on hygienic practices. Chonzi said he was not happy that Harare is still full of vendors selling uninspected fruits and vegetables.

“I think the general economy is playing against us,” he said. “We have been doing these hide-and-seek games, chase after vendors, it has not been working. At least if we clean up for now, then we come up with medium- to long-term plans to maintain the clean environment that is there. As the director of health, I am not happy with the vending situation in the city. It is playing against what we want to achieve as we try to contain the outbreak. If you buy food from uninspected premises, the chances of you contracting not only cholera, but typhoid, dysentery and other diarrhea, are very high.”

 

Zimbabwe’s moribund economy is forcing citizens to venture into vending as a source of income as jobs are hard to come by, with some estimates putting unemployment at about 85%. Experts say that is making the fight against a cholera outbreak difficult with the country recording 1,000 new cases every week since the beginning of the year, according to the United Nations.
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