Ndiho Media,LLC.

By Paul Ndiho

April 10, 2012

A Ugandan Opposition politician is accusing the government for not declaring parts of Northern Uganda affected by the Nodding Disease as disaster areas. Several thousand Children in the North Uganda are afflicted by nodding syndrome, which affects the neurological system and has no known cure.
The World Health Organization says the mysterious Nodding disease in Uganda is afflicting over 4,000 children and has caused the death of more than 200 Children since it was first reported by the country’s ministry health in 2009. Victims tend to have seizure-like episodes and constant head nodding. Nancy Lamwaka is twelve years old, and suffers from a mysterious disease known as nodding syndrome.
Her father ties her to a tree outside their grass hut in Northern Uganda for her own protection.
The disease gives Nancy seizures and has diminished her mental capacity – She has lost the ability to talk and often wanders away. Nancy once went missing in the bush for three days.
“It hurts me so much. In our tradition it is a taboo, it is not something heard of that you would tie someone to a tree but because I want to save her life, I don’t want her to go to the bush and get burnt, I don’t want her to go and drown in the river nearby and I don’t want her to fall in fire. As you have seen, the wounds on her fingers are from falling in fire.”
Beatrice Atim, an opposition Member of Parliament (FDC – Party), from Kitgum, District in Northern Uganda accuses the government neglecting families coping with the disease and calls on the government to declare the affected area a disaster zone.

“If there’s a problem, a sickness of that magnitude, the government should be free to let it be examined and tested for a result. But you find children who are being brought from the villages to a National referral Hospital, being arrested, and the issue was that they are going to shame the government. We have asked the President to declare a disaster area. The government has refused. The suspicion you have among the communities is that during the war, probably the missiles which were used, and the war machinery which were used, could have been poisonous. Or even the same food items which were distributed could have had some chemicals or poison in it. And of course empirical evidence, the burden is upon the government to come out and prove that what the people are suspecting is not true.”
The Ugandan Government has dispatched a team of experts from nation’s ministry of health to the region, along with officials from World Health Organization W.H.O and the U.S Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C) to focus on finding a treatment for the disease. The group plans to conduct trials on several different types of seizure medication as well as supplements of vitamin B6.
A doctor at the regional World Health Organisation (W.H.O) says children are finding it difficult to eat because of the seizures, which are often triggered by food. Many children who have nodding syndrome become affected in many different ways.
“The issue is that there is a general effect in their neurological system to the extent that some can be impaired in vision, in eating even mere recognition of their immediate environment, so that is why we are calling it a syndrome, because not all are really manifesting in the same way, some may have just a few of these features.”
Researchers and experts from C-D-C have been examining and searching for the origins of the disease. They say there is a possible link between the Black-Fly borne parasite that causes River Blindness, and Nodding syndrome.
“We have done extensive laboratory investigations trying to find the cause for nodding syndrome, in fact we have ruled out three dozen different possible causes for nodding syndrome, including some of the most recent results looking for 18 different viral families encompassing literally hundreds of individual viruses all negative for nodding syndrome.”
While the effects of the disease – first documented in Tanzania in the 60’s – are well known, researchers are still confounded by nodding syndrome, and the search both for its origins and a cure continues.

By Paul Ndiho
April 5, 2012
The second annual international festival of drawing known as “pencil lead” brings together artists and cartoonists from Benin, France, Ivory Coast and Togo. The workshop aims to promote various forms of drawing and encourages young artists to use their work to help address social issues.
Emmanuelle Gabled, is working on her latest drawing at the French institute in Lome Togo. The 35-year-old is a cartoonist and designer who works for the country’s weekly ‘Pipo magazine’, and likes to use subjects around her to bring out ideas in her drawings and caricatures.

By Paul Ndiho
March 29, 2012
Hungry for information technology, but with a limited capacity to manufacture it, Africa has increasingly become the world’s latest destination for obsolete electronic equipment. Several African nations and a bevy of groups have agreed on a set of actions to better manage the electronic waste.
Old mobile phones, televisions, computers and refrigerators are among the most common kinds of e-waste worldwide– and in Africa the waste is piling up fast. Thousands of vendors are crowding into bustling markets across the continent where imported used electronics like computers, fax machines, cell phones are repaired and sold. But beyond the thriving storefronts and the mounds of refurbished wares, a darker picture is emerging. Up to 75 percent of the old electronics shipped to Africa are beyond repair.
Nigerian environmentalist Miranda Amachree says, Africans are increasingly responsible for a large amount of this waste, which can release harmful substances such as mercury and lead into the environment that damage human health.
“Electronic-waste is one of the highest volumes of waste streams we have in Nigeria because of the high use of telephone handsets, so many people have more than one handset.”

Many African countries also import e-waste. Together with rising domestic demand this means that the continent could generate more e-waste than Europe by 2017.
“Nigeria allows importation of used electrical and electronic equipment. Some of them they come and they are almost at the end of their life, so it becomes a problem for us in the country.”
To address the problems of e-waste, many experts and nations are focusing on the economic potential of e-waste to the African economy. Katharina Kummer Peiry, executive secretary of the Basel convention, UNEP observes that old electronics contain precious materials such as gold, silver and other rare earth metals.
“One tone of mobile phones, obsolete mobile phones that tone of mobile phones contains roughly 350 grams of gold… “If you consider the value of these materials, there you have the economic opportunities.”
During the first-ever pan-African forum on e-waste, held in Nairobi, Kenya last week, a call for action on Electronic-waste was issued underlining the possible economic benefits of e-waste.
“We at UNEP would like to see in this partnership that has been involving with more and more representatives from governments, but also from the private sector, from the manufacturers but also those who perhaps can be pioneers in bringing new technologies to processing that waste – really being a partnership that speaks to this notion of green economy where you turn a problem into an opportunity.”
The agreement also prioritized need to improve the collection, transport and storage of e-waste in Africa, since most it currently takes place informally at dumpsites or landfills.
A move towards a formalized sector, using international standards would limit risks to the environment and the health of people working at the dumpsites.
“Let’s start to see e-waste move away from informal recycling practices and to proper remanufacturing and to proper methodologies for recycling with the right kind of standards which is obviously protecting health and protecting the environment.”
Representatives from 18 African states, and multiple stakeholders issued a “call to action” that outlines 8 priority areas to improve the environmentally-sound management of this waste stream in Africa. They recognized that safe and sustainable recycling of e-waste provides an opportunity for green jobs and poverty reduction. Forum participants also noted the importance of having awareness-raising activities on environmental and health hazards linked to the unsound management of Electronic-waste.

By Paul Ndiho

March 19, 2012

Insecurity in Nigeria’s Oil-producing Niger Delta region has long dominated American concerns about the stability of the West African nation. Now, the emergence of the Al-Qaeda linked Islamic militant group Boko Haram, in the predominantly Muslim North, is sparking even more concern in Washington.
Since 2009, the Islamist sect known as Boko Haram has escalated its attacks across Nigeria, targeting the country’s security forces, politicians and civilians – both Muslims and Christians.
Initially, Boko Haram was not taken seriously by some in the international community even though U.S intelligence and the United Nations confirmed their links to Al-Qaeda. When Boko Haram bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja last august, Washington began to pay more attention to this emerging threat to U.S. national security. In November 2011, the sub-committee on counterterrorism and intelligence of the house homeland security committee, chaired by Congressman Patrick Meehan, released a report on Boko Haram’s threat to America.

“Boko Haram’s repeated displays of brutality, their intent to committee terror attacks against lists of targets and their expanding relationships with Al-Qaeda affiliates in the country are of strategic significance to the United States and are an enormous counter terrorism and intelligence challenge.”
Meehan says Boko Haram has evolved from a locally focused group with machetes– to a transitional and trans-national organization capable of conducting coordinated truck bombings against western targets.
“Their ambition, body counts, and targets continue to expand and I’m deeply concerned that Boko Haram maybe targeting American interests in Nigeria at some time in the near future.”
Over the last three years, areas in northern Nigeria have endured sustained attacks by Boko Haram– prompting the government to deploy its military– and institute curfews. Both critics and sympathizers have accused the Nigerian government of not doing enough to halt the violence and initiate a development strategy for the region. Ricardo Rene larémont, professor of political science and sociology, at the state university of new York-Binghamton, believes that the government needs to do more for the people in the north.

“The problem is that the north does not have any development whatsoever. Either educationally, or because of the luck of an electrical greed you know… when i was spending time in Kano, there was no power. You have the national power company called northern electric power administration (NEPA) – or locally known as (no electric power anytime). In the north everyone is off the electrical power greed. But there are parts of Nigeria that have particularly made considerable progress over the last ten years but the north has not been part of that.”
Some analysts say the bombing campaign has raised fears that Boko haram is trying to ignite a sectarian conflict in Nigeria– which is evenly divided between Christians and Muslims. Elders from Nigeria’s north met in Abuja earlier this month, to discuss the regional insecurity that has claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed property worth millions of dollars.

An international aid group called “Invisible Children” is defending a video it produced that vividly documents the crimes of Ugandan fugitive warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, responsible for decades of atrocities and the use of child soldiers. Will the “Kony 2012” campaign help or hurt efforts to improve life in Northern Uganda?
Paul Ndiho, VOA ‘s TV to Africa and Catherine Bond, a Nairobi based Journalist; Writing a book on the origins of the Lord’s Resistance Army analyze the plusses and minuses of “Kony 2012” style activism.