The partners’ collaboration will help expand or scale up AGRA’s existing innovative financing projects to reach more countries and key stakeholders in the African agricultural value chain. AGRA and IFC both pursue practical solutions to help alleviate poverty. Specifically, the partnership between IFC and AGRA focuses on developing market-based incentives and tools to increase agricultural productivity. For example, IFC and AGRA will work together in various ways to scale up AGRA’s partnerships with investors and national commercial banks to make loans available to farmers and agribusinesses Smaller seed companies will also be assisted to expand and finance agro-dealer networks to increase availability of farm inputs and expertise in rural areas, and support ‘fertiliser value chain’ financing, including regional procurement of fertiliser. “AGRA’s partnership with IFC will harness the strengths of both organisations to scale up AGRA’s innovative programs across the agricultural value chain. We will improve the livelihoods of many more small-scale farmers and be able to do it sooner,” said Namanga Ngongi, AGRA’s President. “The growth of the agricultural sector will strengthen the continent’s food security as well as create employment and raise living standards for millions of smallholder African farmers,” he added. “The challenges to growing Africa’s agribusiness are great. But so are the opportunities. IFC is committed to helping Africa capitalise on these opportunities by playing a catalytic role of bringing a wide range of partners together to deliver practical market based solutions. Our alliance with AGRA is a very important step in this direction,” said Lars Thunell, Executive Vice President and CEO of IFC. AGRA AGRA has responded to the lack of access to credit for farmers and smaller agribusinesses in sub-Saharan Africa by working with financial institutions and investors to make low-interest loans available to key operators along the agricultural value chain—agro-dealers, fertiliser wholesalers, and seed companies – and to make financing available for warehouse receipt systems, farmer groups and agro-processing facilities. AGRA’s work to increase farm productivity and incomes complements IFC’s support for private sector development through mobilising private capital and providing advisory and risk mitigation services to businesses and governments.
In a statement, the government said the official had broken public-service rules and humiliated the teachers. 19 teachers were caned in front of their pupils after an inquiry into poor examination results at three schools, BBC news reported. The inquiry blamed teachers for being late or not showing up for work and not teaching the official syllabus. The official who ordered the canings in the northern town of Bukoba, district commissioner Albert Mnali, told AFP news agency that it had been the right way to treat the teachers. "These teachers often report late for duty and some of them are fond of being absent for several days," he told the agency on Friday. "They deserved to get corporal punishment." But Deputy Education Minister Mwantumu Bakari Mahiza called the incident "unfortunate and utterly absurd". The government asked Mnali to explain his actions and later issued a statement confirming the commissioner had been sacked. "The government has followed up the issue and heard the explanation from the commissioner," the statement said. "It has been concluded that Mnali's decision is unacceptable and humiliating to teachers, contrary to public-service regulations." One of the caned teachers, Ativus Leonard, 33, told the BBC he was now too ashamed to meet his pupils. Leonard said he had been kicked by a police officer to make him lie down before being beaten. "He hit me everywhere - my legs, my chest, my arms, my hands. When it was over, I went to the hospital for treatment. I was given medicine but I still have a lot of pain in my chest," he said. The case comes at a time when parents and human-rights groups in Tanzania have been calling for a ban on flogging of schoolchildren throughout the country.
Johnson-Sirleaf apologized for her actions at a truth and reconciliation commission over her backing for ex-rebel Charles Taylor. "If there is anything that I need to apologize for to this nation is to apologize for being fooled by Mr Taylor in giving any kind of support to him," she said. "I feel it in my conscience. I feel it every day," she said, regretting her support to Taylor, BBC news website reported. The Liberian leader said she had paid him a visit in May 1990 at his base in the north-eastern Liberian town of Gborplay, on the border with Ivory Coast. "I will admit to you that I was one of those who did agree that the rebellion was necessary," she told the commission. "But I was never a member of the NPFL (National Patriotic Front of Liberia)." Taylor led rebels who toppled President Samuel Doe in a 14-year civil war that left the West African nation shattered. Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf was imprisoned in the 1980s for criticizing the military regime of President Doe and then backed Charles Taylor's rebellion before falling out with him and being charged with treason after he became president. She took an oath on Thursday in the capital Monrovia from truth commission chairman Jerome Verdier and then sat before the flag of Liberia. The 70-year-old Liberian leader faced the seven-member commission as she narrated her own involvement in the Liberian crisis that began on the eve of Christmas in 1989. In a separate case, Mr Taylor became the first African ex-head of state to face an international war crimes court last year. He is accused of responsibility for the actions of Revolutionary United Front rebels during the 1991-2001 civil war in Sierra Leone, which included unlawful killings, sexual slavery, use of child soldiers and looting.
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwean police no longer plan treason charges against a longtime opposition politician appointed to the unity government, the lawmaker's party said Sunday. The Movement for Democratic Change party reported earlier that police said Roy Bennett, the party's nominee to be deputy agriculture minister, would be accused of treason, which carries the death penalty. The party said police revised that Sunday, saying Bennett faces a weapons charge instead. Police have been unavailable for comment since Bennett's arrest on Friday. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader and Zimbabwe's new prime minister, called Bennett's arrest an attempt by factions in President Robert Mugabe's party to derail the country's unity government. The power-sharing deal — created to end months of political deadlock after disputed elections last year — aims to have rival politicians work together to address Zimbabwe's severe economic meltdown. It also keeps Mugabe as president after three decades in power. Bennett, a well-known white lawmaker, had his coffee farm in eastern Zimbabwe seized years ago by Mugabe's ruling party supporters. Party lawyers saw Bennett in custody late Saturday and released a statement from him. "Whatever these challenges, if we remain unwaveringly dedicated, we will achieve peace, freedom and democracy in our lifetime — believe me," Bennett said in the statement. Critics say Mugabe has engineered Zimbabwe's economic collapse and trampled on democratic rights. Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate, a hunger crisis that has left most of its people dependent on foreign handouts and a cholera epidemic that has killed over 3,500 people since August.
The affected ministers are Richard Msowaya (Education, Science and Technology for Higher Education), Olive Masanza, deputy minister of education responsible for primary education, Gift Mwamondwe, deputy minister of mines and energy, Roy Chizimba, deputy minister of economic planning, Billy Kaunda, deputy minister of Tourism, Wildlife and Culture and Patricia Mwafulirwa, deputy minister of Women and Child Development. “In exercise of the powers conferred upon him under Section 65(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi, the president has directed that the six ministers are no longer members of the cabinet with immediate effect,” said the statement. DPP held primary elections across the country where some seating MPs including these sacked ministers lost and decided to stand as independent. But Mutharika and his DPP recently said those who had failed to pass through as candidates should not stand as independents but support those elected. Six candidates are contesting the presidency in the forthcoming elections in the southern African country. Mutharika is seeking another term of office after a first term of office. He came to power in 2004 under the United Democratic Front (UDF) ticket, the party which he later dumped in 2005.