AfricaDigest 9/15/10

[AfricaDigest Manager]

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan to contest poll

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has ended months of speculation
and confirmed he will contest January's elections.
He made the announcement on his Facebook site, saying the decision had
been taken "after wide and thorough consultations".
Mr Jonathan, a southerner, became president in February after the
death of Umaru Yar'Adua.

The governing party has previously said its candidate should be a
northerner.
The president's Facebook statement said he would make a formal
declaration of his intention to stand for election on Saturday.
His aides were not immediately available for comment.
Several heavyweight politicians, including former military leader Gen
Ibrahim Babangida, have already said they would seek to become the
governing

People's Democratic Party's presidential candidate.

The PDP has a tradition of alternating power between northerners and
southerners for two terms each.
Under this unwritten rule, its candidate in 2011 should be from the
largely Muslim north, rather than the mainly Christian and animist
south, which would favour Gen Babangida.
Nigeria's recent elections have been tarnished by fraud and violence.

Mr Jonathan has promised to introduce electoral reforms but
correspondents say it will be difficult to implement radical changes
before January.
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Guinea military ruler Konate 'committed' to election

Guinea's military ruler Gen Sekouba Konate has said he is committed to
holding an election following calls for Sunday's run-off to be
postponed.
Gen Konate is to meet the two candidates in the presidential vote
later.
He is then expected to announce whether the poll will go ahead as
planned.

The preparations have been thrown into doubt by violence, sparked by
the fraud conviction of two senior election officials.
The first round was seen as Guinea's first democratic vote since
independence in 1958, raising hopes of an end to military and
authoritarian rule in the mineral-rich country.

The BBC's Alhassan Sillah, who is in the capital, Conakry, says it is
difficult to see how the elections can be held on Sunday, as a lot of
logistical work still has to be done, such as transporting election
materials to remote areas.

The head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (Ceni), Ben
Sekou Sylla - who was one of those sentenced to a year in jail - died
on Tuesday after an unspecified long illness.
Our reporter says Gen Konate is expected to make a broadcast to the
nation on Wednesday night.
But all campaigning has been suspended following the weekend violence
in which at least one person died.

Prime minister accused
Interim Prime Minister Jean Marie Dore said on Monday that public
order was more important than holding the elections as planned.
Those remarks led to accusations by the party of one of the candidates
- former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo - that Mr Dore was
biased.
Mr Diallo's Union of Democratic Forces in Guinea (UDFG) has called on
Mr Dore to resign "in the interests of a trouble-free election".
Mr Diallo is seen as the favourite, but his rival, veteran opposition
leader Alpha Conde, says he was defrauded of some 600,000 votes in the
first round.
His complaint led to the conviction of Mr Sylla and one of his senior
officials.

Mr Sylla died in France, where he had been undergoing medical
treatment for several months. He went back to Guinea for the first
round of voting before continuing his treatment in Paris.
Ahead of the run-off poll, tension is reported to be growing between
ethnic Peul and Malinke - the two largest communities in the country.
Mr Diallo, a Peul, gained 44% of the first round votes, compared with
18% for Mr Conde, a Malinke.
A member of the Peul ethnic group has never been president and many
feel it is their turn after previous elections were rigged.

The Malinke are heavily represented in the ruling military junta,
which seized power after the death in 2008 of autocratic President
Lansana Conte, who had ruled the country for 24 years.
Guinea is the world's largest exporter of the aluminium ore bauxite
and also has important deposits of iron ore.
But despite its mineral wealth, most of its people languish in
poverty.
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UK scientists devise 'one-hour test' for TB

By Neil Bowdler
Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists in the UK say they have devised a new ultra-sensitive test
which can diagnose the presence of the tuberculosis bacterium in one
hour.
The test has been developed by the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
Its developers claim the test can spot all strains of the disease and
could reduce both the incidence and the consequences of the disease
worldwide.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2008, an estimated 1.3
million people died from TB worldwide.
Genetic signature

The standard identification test for TB involves taking mucus coughed
up from the lungs and growing a bacterial culture in the laboratory.
But it can take up to eight weeks to reach a diagnosis, by which time
the individual might have infected many more people.
Other more rapid tests exist which scan for an antigen found in many
TB strains, but they may not detect all infections, say the HPA.
The new test focuses on a particular DNA region within the bacterium
which the researchers says is present in all strains of the disease.
Once a sample is taken, a scientific technique know as a "polymerase
chain reaction" is used to amplify the volume of DNA available so that
the genetic signature can be identified.

"This is a new test," says the HPA's Dr Cath Arnold, who led the
study. "We're looking for a genetic marker which is present in all
strains of TB we've seen so far."
We're confident that it will pick up very small amounts and tests so
far have show that it seems to be as sensitive as the gold standard of
using culture, but there are various aspects which we need to develop
further before we can offer it as an off-the-shelf product."
Details of the work are being presented at the HPA's annual conference
at the University of Warwick.

The HPA test comes just weeks after details of a rival project were
published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The rival test is called "Xpert MTB/RIF" and its developers claim it
can deliver a diagnosis in under two hours. They say their automated
cartridge machine can also identify resistance to drugs used to treat
TB.

Difficult diagnosis
Dr Mario Raviglione, director of the World Heath Organization's Stop
TB department, says these new generation tests could potentially
revolutionise TB treatment.

"The diagnoses of TB is extremely difficult today. If you had a test
which rapidly and at the point of care could detect TB immediately you
would gain weeks or months in treating that person and avoid them
going around for another five to eight weeks infecting others."
The WHO estimates that a third of the world's population carry TB
bacteria. Only 5-10% of people who are infected become sick or
infectious at some time during their life.

People with HIV and who carry TB bacteria are much more likely to
develop the disease.
Recent years have seen a resurgence in TB infections in developed
countries, and have seen the rise of strains resistant to medication.
Last year in the UK, the number of cases rose by more than 5% to
9,153, according to provisional figures from the HPA. More than a
third of the cases were in London.
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Mozambique 'blocked texts' during food riots

The BBC has seen a letter apparently sent by Mozambique's authorities
ordering mobile phone companies to block some text messages during
recent food riots.
The protests were fuelled by text messages urging people to join in.
The letter, received by the newsletter Mediafax, is from the National
Communications Institute or INCM.
The INCM has not commented, while the communications minister has
denied any knowledge of such an order.

The country's two mobile phone companies - M-Cel and Vodacom - have
also not reacted to the reports.
The BBC's Jose Tembe in the capital, Maputo, says the letter bears the
INCM's logo, as well as an official signature and stamp.
He says Mediafax is a respected publication, originally set up by
investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, who was murdered in 2000.
The apparent ban only applied to pre-paid subscribers, not those on
monthly contracts.
Those using pre-paid vouchers are generally poorer and so more likely
to take part in protest over the cost of food, our reporter says.

At least 13 people died and 400 were arrested during the protests over
a hike in the price of bread, as well as other basic goods.
The riots led the government to perform a U-turn and promise to
subsidise the price of wheat.
The subsidy in effect reverses a 20% hike caused by rising global
wheat prices and a drop in the value of the Mozambican currency
against the South African rand.
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Global hunger 'unacceptably high', UN report says

Global hunger has fallen this year but remains "unacceptably high", a
report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said.
The FAO estimates there are 925 million undernourished people in 2010,
compared with 1.02 billion in 2009.
But it warned that the fight to reduce hunger would face additional
obstacles if food prices continue to rise.
A separate report from Action Aid estimates that hunger costs
developing countries $450bn (£292bn) a year.
The report says that 90% of these costs stem from lost productivity as
a result of malnutrition, while the other 10% is due to higher health
system costs.

Action Aid says this is more than 10 times the amount of funding
needed to halve hunger by 2015. This is one of the eight United
Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs represent a global commitment by members of the UN to reduce
poverty and improve lives by 2015.
Targets under threat
Food prices have risen sharply recently, with the price of wheat
hitting a two-year high last month after a severe drought and fires in
Russia devastated crops there.
Higher wheat prices are also believed to have increased demand for
other relatively cheaper foodstuffs, particularly other grains.
And higher grain prices are pushing up the price of meat and dairy
products as the cost of feeding livestock increases.

The FAO also warns that the ability to achieve the international
hunger targets in the Millennium Development Goals is at risk.
It says the total number of undernourished people is still higher than
before the economic crisis of 2008-09.
The FAO says that analysing hunger during crisis and recovery "brings
to the fore the insufficient resilience to economic shocks" of many
poor countries.

"Lack of appropriate mechanisms to deal with the shocks or to protect
the most vulnerable populations from their effects result in large
swings in hunger following crises," the report says.
"Moreover, it should not be assumed that all the effects of crises on
hunger disappear when the crisis is over."
Action Aid's head of policy Meredith Alexander said: "This is hardly
time for celebration. Hunger is still no better than it was before the
global food crisis and the goal to halve hunger is decades off track."

The FAO measure of undernourishment refers to an inadequate intake of
calories. On average, this is considered to be less than 1,800
calories a day.
Action Aid uses the term malnutrition in a broad, not technical,
sense, to cover both undernourishment (not enough calories) and also a
nutritionally poor diet.
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For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live
in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure
corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100
billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we
inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. -Carl Sagan,
astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

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