Monitoring and Evaluating for Social Impact

This webinar will expand on lessons learned from the first M&E webinar and take a look at M&E through a social impact lens. Students will learn why M&E matters for commitment makers, how to navigate the different phases of the project cycle, and how to apply M&E basic concepts to their Commitments to Action.

Key Themes
• Monitoring & Evaluation: What It Is and Why It Matters
• Myth Busting: Debunking the Misconceptions Around M&E
• The Four Phases of the Project Cycle

ISTANBUL-LUANDA ROUTE OPENS NEXT OCTOBER

Luanda - Turkish Airlines' operations on the Istanbul-Luanda route will officially open in October this year, Transport Minister Ricardo de Abreu announced in Ankara on Wednesday.

The operator intends, initially, to carry out weekly flights on the Istanbul-Luanda route, aiming at boosting cooperation between the two states and peoples.

According to the minister, who was speaking to the press on the sidelines of the Angola/Turkey Business Forum, the initiative is part of a memorandum to be signed between Turkish Airlines and Angolan Airline (TAAG), on a code-sharing basis.

The Angolan official said that this sharing will make it possible for passengers, from Luanda, to have access in a single mode or single ticket to the connection to Istanbul or to the Turkish Arlines route network and vice-versa, benefiting from a connection to the Angolan capital.

"We think that it is a very positive agreement for the two countries and for the two airlines, but, above all, because it is the first step for us to open the paths of this strategic cooperation announced here by the two Presidents," he expressed.

In relation to ticket costs, the Minister said that it is up to his ministry only to ensure the existence of a high level of competitiveness for the country.

 

Indonesia’s Sinabung volcano spews ash, hot clouds

MEDAN, Indonesia (AP) — A rumbling volcano on Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday shot billowing columns of ash and hot clouds down its slopes.

The ash released by Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province reached more than 4,500 meters (14,760 feet) into the atmosphere, and an avalanche of searing gas clouds blew 1 kilometers (0.62 mile) to the east and southeast, Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center said.

 

There were no casualties from the afternoon eruption, said Armen Putra, an official at the Sinabung monitoring post, and an alert has been maintained at the second-highest level.

 

The 2,600-meter (8,530-foot) mountain has been rumbling since last year and villagers were advised to stay 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the crater’s mouth. They’ve been warned about lava while authorities were closely monitoring sensors that picked up increasing activity in recent weeks.

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Floods make thousands homeless in Bangladesh Rohingya camps

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Days of heavy rainfall have pounded Rohingya refugee camps in southern Bangladesh, destroying dwellings and sending thousands of people to live with extended families or in communal shelters.

In the 24 hours until Wednesday afternoon, more than 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) of rain fell on the camps in Cox’s Bazar district hosting more than 800,000 Rohingya, the U.N. refugee agency said. That’s nearly half the average July rainfall in one day, and more heavy downpours are expected in the next few days and the monsoon season stretches over the next three months.

“The situation is further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. There is currently a strict national lockdown in response to rising cases across the country,” the agency said.

It said six people died in the camps earlier this week — five people in a landslide caused by the rains and a child swept away by floodwaters.

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Africa outlook ‘encouraging’ amid dose shortage

NAIROBI, Kenya — The World Health Organization’s Africa director says the continent of 1.3 billion people is entering an “encouraging phase after a bleak June” as supplies of COVID-19 vaccines increase.

But Matshidiso Moeti told reporters on Thursday that just 10% of the doses needed to vaccinate 30% of Africa’s population by the end of 2021 have arrived. Some 82 million doses have gotten to Africa so far, while some 820 million are needed.

And the year-end vaccination target is just half the 60% population coverage that African health officials seek to achieve so-called herd immunity. The African continent is far behind on vaccinations as richer countries keep doses for their citizens.

Less than 2% of Africa’s population has been fully vaccinated, and the more infectious delta variant is driving a deadly resurgence of cases. The WHO says nearly 4 million vaccine doses arrived in Africa last week from the global COVAX facility, compared to less than 250,000 in all of June.

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across Africa in five minutes

RWANDA

Military-grade spyware leased by the Israeli firm NSO Group to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and the two women closest to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners led by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories. Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, a human rights group, had access to a list of more than 50,000 numbers and shared it with the news organizations, which did further research and analysis. Amnesty’s Security Lab did forensic examination of the phones.

LESOTHO

Lesotho has finalized a new tax treaty with Mauritius, alleviating fears in the southern African nation that multinational corporations were dodging taxes through shell companies. The new agreement, which sets out the taxation rules for companies that run Lesotho businesses from Mauritius, came into effect earlier this month. It replaces a 1997 treaty that, in recent years, the Lesotho authorities complained was unfair. “The process for renegotiating the treaty was initiated by Lesotho in recognition that the old treaty was compromising Lesotho’s interests and because some of the key elements of a modern tax treaty were missing,” according to a brief provided to ICIJ by the Lesotho Revenue Authority.

BURKINA FASO

President Roch Kabore has fired Cherif Sy in the wake of widespread protests against insecurity on June 26, 2021. At the beginning of June, Burkina Faso saw its worst terror attack on civilians since the conflict with armed groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) began in 2015. Sy was at the helm of the defence ministry since then. At least 138 people were killed in the village of Solhan. The attack triggered a wave of protests against insecurity.

NIGERIA

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Tuesday, announced the cessation of forex sales to Bureau De Change (BDCs) operators. CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who disclosed the new policy after the July 2021, Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, said the apex bank was funneling $5.7 billion (about N2.346 trillion) annually through the BDCs. He said the $5.7bn allocated to BDCs has become unsustainable as $20,000 is allocated to over 5,500 BDCs in the country, amounting to $110 million per week.

ZIMBABWE

Embattled Chief Justice Luke Malaba is back at work, defying a High Court ruling which said he ceased to be a judge on May 15, 2021 after he reached the retirement age of 70 years. This comes after Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi and Attorney General Prince Machaya separately filed their notices of appeal against an urgent High Court judgment made on May 15. The government says the noting of an appeal to the Supreme Court effectively suspends the order of the High Court paving way for Chief Justice Malaba to be back in the revered judicial office by operation of law.

TANZANIA

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan has received her COVID-19 vaccine in public, kicking off a nationwide inoculation campaign in one of the world’s last countries to embrace jabs in the fight against the disease. Hassan’s vaccination on Wednesday was the most decisive signal yet of a break from the policies of her late predecessor who repeatedly dismissed the threat of the pandemic.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

France’s highest appeal court has upheld a guilty verdict against the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president for embezzlement, paving the way for the potential return of tens of millions of dollars to the country’s people. Wednesday’s ruling on Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who is also the vice president of the Gulf of Guinea nation, came after he was handed a three-year suspended sentence and a 30 million euros ($35m) fine at the end of his trial in absentia in 2020.

SUDAN

Hundreds of women displaced by recent inter-communal fighting in the Al Geneina town of West Darfur are suffering from anxiety and depression as they shoulder the responsibility of caring for their families without husbands, say women’s rights activists in Sudan’s western region. The fighting that erupted in April, 2021 left more than 200 people dead and more than 200 others wounded. Thousands of families have been sheltering in government buildings, schools and mosques in overcrowded conditions with limited access to proper sanitation, according to Sumeya Musa, a women’s advocate with the local NGO, Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa.

SOUTH SUDAN

The government and opposition are closing ranks, after a group that opposed monitoring and verification mechanisms, agreed to a ceasefire. The Community of Sant’ Egidio, based in Rome, initiated talks in 2020 to incorporate the holdout groups into the September 2018 peace agreement, but progress has been slowed by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The groups led by former Chief of General Staff General Paul Malong and former SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum, have agreed to join the Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring and Verification Mechanism.

SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa is on the brink of allowing pharmacists holding the required permits to prescribe and initiate HIV medicines without people first having to get scripts from doctors or nurses, Catherine Tomlinson reports for Spotlight. The initiative, known as Pharmacist-Initiated Management of ART or PIMART, seeks to improve linkage to HIV treatment and prevention therapy among under-reached and underserved groups and communities. South Africa’s PIMART programme will be the first of its kind globally – potentially paving the way for other countries to follow suit. South Africa has the largest HIV antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme in the world. Over seven million people in the country are living with HIV – over five million of whom are on ART.

KENYA

President Uhuru Kenyatta and former prime minister Raila Odinga are still clinging to the hope of successfully pushing through constitutional changes which are currently bogged down in the courts, through a referendum before the 2022 elections. President Kenyatta stated that the referendum was inevitable, saying the proposed constitutional changes popularly known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) would ensure the devolution of more resources to the counties and fair representation in parliament.

UGANDA

The rising political temperatures in Kenya over President Uhuru Kenyatta’s successor, is likely to take a toll on the country’s trade with its East and Central African partners as  importers and transporters on the northern corridor already exploring new routes for their cargo. Since July 19, 2021 Uganda began a trial delivery of petroleum products from Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port through to Lake Victoria, after a 16-year break. This move spells doom to the Port of Mombasa, which accounts for three-quarters of the transit cargo headed for Uganda.

GHANA

The Ghana International Investment Trade and Finance Conference (GITFiC) has advocated the urgent implementation of harmonised trade finance policy reforms across the Continent for effective implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Mr Selasi Koffi Ackom, the Chief Executive Officer of GITFiC, said an increase in trade finance would ease cross border trade, enable capital and information flow, attract greater foreign and intra-continental investments and provide larger customer base for financial institutions to serve.

LIBYA

Amnesty International has published fresh evidence of appalling human right abuses against people detained in Libya’s notorious migrant detention centres as it called on European countries to suspend border control cooperation with Libya ahead of a debate by the Italian parliament on the issue. in a 52-page report, former detainees at Tripoli’s Shara’ al-Zawiya centre disclosed how guards raped women, while others were coerced into sex in exchange for their release, or for essentials like clean water.

NAMIBIA

The Roads Authority (RA) announced that the temporary suspension of bookings for learner’s license testing will be extended to next week Friday. In a media statement released yesterday, RA’s corporate communications manager Hileni Fillemon said clients whose learner licences have expired during the period 1 July 2021 – 06 August 2021 will be allowed to book for driving license tests after the suspension of bookings has been lifted. “The temporary suspension of bookings for driving license testing is also extended until Friday, 6 August 2021. Only applicants with prior confirmed bookings will be assisted

DNT News

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Mandela was pressured to abandon key elements of ANC’s Freedom Charter as president

Nelson Mandel fought for his people and consequently sacrificed 27 years of his life behind bars. Upon his release, he was still undeterred as he continued to make the same pro-people pronouncements.

But as president, Mandela came under pressure to abandon key elements of the Freedom Charter that his party The African National Congress had crafted to truly liberate Africans in South Africa from the effects of Apartheid.

These observations are part of several made from an illuminating Diaspora Weekly interview on DNT with Dr. Bheki N. Mfeka, Economic Advisor and Strategist for the City of Johannesburg.

When Mandela “came out of prison, he still maintained those (radical ideological) beliefs, but he shifted” when he became president, said Mfeka citing his attendance in January 1992 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he had to shake the hands of F. W. de Klerk who threw him in jail, as a key turning point.

Mandela was leaned on by “leaders of the commanding heights of the global economy” to depart from stances such as nationalization of mines and banks, which were key pillars of the ANC Freedom Charter.

After Davos, “he was observed to have changed,” said Mfeka.

But even before Davos, Mandela was thought of as having been “captured,” a term used by the ANC to describe elements of their members who are suspected as having been compromised by the establishment.

For example Mandela, after his release from jail, was catered for by the Oppenheimer family who controls a large portion of the South African economy. “Remember when he had nothing when he came out of prison,” Mfeka pointed out.

Furthermore, Mandela needed the same Oppenheimer family and other similar wealthy families to even run the country. Not to mention that the ANC had to concede more than it wanted to at the 1994 negotiations that paved the way to end Apartheid.

Thus according to Mfeka, all four African leaders, Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma, and Ramaphosa have had to lead South Africa constitutionally handicapped. Incidentally, Zuma, the only one of the four to have pushed harder for reforms in favor of Africans happen to be the one who finds himself in legal trouble and currently in prison.

More of the Highly Illuminating interview with Dr. Bekhi Mfeka, which will air on DNT this Saturday at 9am to follow.

DNT News.

 

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