Kingsley S Orievulu

The article assesses the legal and policy frameworks that have an impact on adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health rights (ASRHR) in East and Southern Africa (ESA), confirming the interconnectedness of the ages of consent to sexual activity, marriage, and services and its influence on adolescents’ human rights. It reviews international, continental and national legal instruments used to identify relevant provisions on ASRHR in the ESA region. The region demonstrates substantial disparities between realities of sexual debut among adolescents, national (statutory and customary) laws and policies on ages of consent to sex, marriage and medical services, and international standards around these SRHR issues. These disparities constitute negative consequences: criminalising adolescents, entrenching child marriage, and excluding adolescents from accessing medical services required to secure and promote ASRHR. While some ESA countries lack clear laws and policies on the three issues, cases of internal contradictions and disharmony with international standards abound. This impacts on the full realization of sexual and reproductive health rights of adolescents and young people in the region. (Afr J Reprod Health 2021; 25[2]: 94-102).

In 2015, South Africa experienced one of the worst (El Niño-induced) droughts in 35 years. This affected economic activities, individual and community livelihoods and wellbeing especially in rural communities in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Drought’s direct and indirect impacts on public health require urgent institutional responses, especially in South Africa’s stride to eliminate HIV as a public health threat by 2030 in line with the UNAIDS goals. This paper draws on qualitative data from interviews and policy documents to discuss how the devastating effect of the 2015 drought experience in the rural Hlabisa sub-district of uMkhanyakude, a high HIV prevalence area, imposes an imperative for more proactive institutional responses to drought and other climate-related events capable of derailing progress made in South Africa’s HIV/AIDS response. We found that drought had a negative impact on individual and community livelihoods and made it more difficult for people living with HIV to cons...

ABSTRACT Have the World Bank’s avowed inclusive strategies metamorphosed into renewed forms of ‘tyranny’ over local beneficiaries of development interventions? This article’s qualitative analysis of Fadama’s local beneficiaries’ experience reveals how rules, procedures, strategies and processes designed for results can culminate in difficulties for the intended beneficiaries, stifling social, economic and political empowerment. The research found that a form of depoliticisation was implicit within Fadama’s participatory implementation strategies and processes, which, in the view of this author, is not accidental. Participation here, as James Ferguson contends, serves an ‘anti-politics’ machinery role designed to remove politics from development planning agendas and to keep them strictly technocratic and problems-based, thus limiting beneficiaries’ possible critique, even of the project’s governance structure or broader public institutions. This article contributes to on-going discussions about enhancing meaningful participation in development planning as a prelude to improving the prospects of advancing social change.

Climate change is directly and indirectly linked to human health, including through access to treatment and care. Our systematic review presents a ‘systems’ understanding of the nexus between drought and antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence in HIV-positive individuals in the African setting. Narrative synthesis of 111 studies retrieved from Web of Science, PubMed/Medline, and PsycINFO suggests that economic and livelihoods conditions, comorbidities and ART regimens, human mobility, and psycho-behavioural dispositions and support systems interact in complex ways in the drought-ART adherence nexus in Africa. Economic and livelihood-related challenges appear to impose the strongest impact on human interactions, actions and systems that culminate in non-adherence. Indeed, the complex pathways identified by our systems approach emphasise the need for more integrated research approaches to understanding this phenomenon and develop interventions.

Climate change is directly and indirectly linked to human health, including through access to treatment and care. Our systematic review presents a systems understanding of the nexus between drought and antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence in HIV-positive individuals in the African setting. Narrative synthesis of 111 studies retrieved from Web of Science, PubMed/Medline, and PsycINFO suggests that economic and livelihoods conditions, comorbidities and ART regimens, human mobility, and psycho-behavioural dispositions and support systems interact in complex ways in the drought-ART adherence nexus in Africa. Economic and livelihood-related challenges appear to impose the strongest impact on human interactions, actions and systems that culminate in non-adherence. Indeed, the complex pathways identified by our systems approach emphasise the need for more integrated research approaches to understanding this phenomenon and develop interventions.

The Fadama project in Nigeria has improved the income of many beneficiaries; also giving them a voice. It shows prospects for improved political governance through citizens' participation. Thus I explore the roles of the World Bank and Government in actualising these prospects based on its perceived successes. However, data collected from Nigeria through interviews and observation currently shows that: the project's focus is too business-driven/economic-centric and beneficiaries perceive themselves less as partners. I suggest among other things, that: citizenship training be incorporated to address political empowerment issues; drastic reduction, or even total removal of the beneficiary contribution, be considered to reduce its burden on the poor; and the World Bank should provide complaint hotlines for adequate grassroots reporting. These will enhance the possibility to transform the economic gains of the project into political capital by facilitating people's grasp of their place in the society and how their communities could become adequate mechanisms in the quest to enhance political governance in Nigeria. Introduction The Fadama project started in 1993; continued through the early 2000s and has currently been extended to 2015. It has become the largest donor funded agricultural development project in Nigeria. Currently, it has successfully improved beneficiaries " income, country-level availability of food and agricultural produce, and enhanced rural infrastructure. It has empowered different communities and Economic Interest Groups (EIGs) by transferring capital and technical knowhow to them to facilitate their business ventures. It also appears to have prospects for impacting political empowerment because of its potentials for social cohesion and collective action among beneficiaries and their communities through its Community-Driven Development (CDD) implementation approach. This brief explores these prospects against the backdrop of realities within the project and its implementation. It examines the role of the World Bank (hereafter, the Bank) and Government in this process, and argues that their approach to this project should transcend a narrow focus on economic growth issues (which the research study has found to be the major target of this project). For political governance to be improved by means of citizens " participation in such development projects, these institutions must factor in important political economy issues that will facilitate citizens " grasp of their place as effective members of the polity, whose voices count.

This paper draws upon the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice as the most effective regional human rights mechanism in Africa, especially in relation to its accessibility and jurisdiction over human rights issues. The SADC must focus on the enabling of existing human rights mechanisms, as well as the domestication of the instruments designed internationally, regionally and sub-regionally so as to enhance the culture of respect for human rights within the region.

On the 27th Day of April 1994, South African went out in throngs to exercise their franchise in the first democratic elections since the dark days of Apartheid – there was a tumultuous wind of change which swept through the nation envisioning a transition to majority rule epitomized by the ANC-led government. This change was long overdue; it was bitterly fought for; its achievement and actualization meant the sacrifice of many lives, dreams as well as ambitions; and it was a change which came about through rigorous collective interventions from within and outside the continent – friends of the oppressed majority. Many well-read South Africans believe that the country deserves something of a change in governance (styles), but there seems to be the issue of changeophobia which drives people to continuously stick with the devil they know instead of availing the angel that they do not know the opportunity to steer the ship of the South African state. South Africans can learn from these events and strive for change if they are truly angling for true democracy within this socio-political domain. This is what this 21st commemoration of the freedom day in South Africa means with regards to South African politics.

Donor assistance designated as community-driven development projects can improve beneficiaries’ income, but these projects tend not to sufficiently affect some important sociopolitical aspects of people’s lives, because they are taken for granted. In Nigeria, where citizens have been systematically excluded from decision-making processes by government, such projects’ capacity to boost social cohesion is expected to herald change through their ability to empower communities. Field research involving the National Fadama Development Project, however, suggests that the focus on economic gains characteristic of these types of projects and the frenetic pursuit
of deadlines, among other things, are among the factors impeding success. Thus, although optimism about such projects should not be dismissed, the realities suggest that the Fadama project fails to filter through certain aspects of beneficiaries’ lives as they struggle to grasp and deal with other conceptually important issues relating to power and social change.

After decades of different levels of non-state centred politicking in Nigeria linked to colonial, military, ethno-centric and clientele/patronage interests, it is imperative to remodel and rethink the tenets of Nigerian politics. Since elections represent the most important means to gain power (especially) in Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan " s plan to retain power in 2015 seems to be accompanied by serious political upheaval. There appears to be two major standpoints in this crisis – the pro-Jonathan 2015 agenda and pro-Northern agenda. 2015 is thus a year pregnant with a lot of uncertainty, and the height of this uncertainty is reflected in the political hiatus – mirroring the bigger within Nigerian politics and governance. This policy brief is an attempt to develop a framework wherein the will of the people and the interest of the state becomes the focus of political endeavours, not the interest of a few political elites, especially in the days and months leading up to the 2015 elections. The focus here is on political parties as the fulcrum of power struggles, the political elite class who manoeuvre politics in their interest, the electoral process which is responsible for the emergence of leaders, the electorate who are mostly disenfranchised by flawed electoral processes and also disempowered and marginalised through by and through the political system, and finally the donor community in the drive to consolidate democracy and the will of the people in governance. The Problems with Nigerian politics After the experiences of the past – colonialism and the ever presence of the military in the political affairs of Nigeria – one would expect the fourth republic to be more tilted towards a people centred form of governance. However, the fact is that politics since 1999 has been driven more by selfish interests, the overall good of the state and those of the people tends to be neglected abysmally. It has been characterised by the almost non-existence of ideology among political parties and the leaders they produce. Lack of accountability towards the electorate, and the socio-political and economic choices made by leaders are pointers to the fact that there are no effective mechanisms for citizens to demand accountability from leaders. In fact the only one with which they would more easily have resorted to have been denied them for over half a century now – elections. 2 When leaders fail to deliver based on the requirements of the electorate, elections create a room for change as citizens decide to place their future in the hands