Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - On November 30, 2021 Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, appointed Rector of the "Saint Curé d'Ars" interdiocesan philosophical Seminary in the archdiocese of Bujumbura, rev. Fulgence Nshimirimana, of the diocesan clergy of Bururi. The new Rector was born on August 19, 1974 in Bururi. He was ordained a priest on August 9, 2003. After his high school studies in Bururi, he attended the preparatory Seminary in Burasira, then he obtained a baccalaureate in philosophy at the major Seminary of Bujumbura, and after a year of internship in the parish, the baccalaureate in theology at the major Seminary in Gitega. He continued his studies at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, obtaining a degree (2009-2011) and a doctorate in philosophy (2011-2018). Since his ordination he has been Assistant parish priest and parish priest in Burundi, then he carried out the ministry in some parishes in Italy. From 2018 to 2020 he was a formator at the major Seminary of Bujumbura, and since 2020 Rector ad interim. (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 25/3/2022, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License)
The Uganda Vision 2040 aspires to pursue economic development and socioeconomic transformation premised on the principles of a green economy such as equity, environment sustainability, resource efficiency, climate change adaptation and mitigation and inclusiveness. Accordingly, the National Planning Authority in partnership with the Climate Change Department of the Ministry of Water and Environment with financial support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is in the final stages of developing a Green Growth Development Strategy. A multi-sectoral committee comprised of state and non-state actors chaired by the National Planning Authority is drafting the strategy. The Uganda Green Growth Development strategy seeks to operationalize the tenets of a green economy as espoused in the Uganda Vision 2040 and the National Development Plan and covers a time horizon of fifteen years. An implementation roadmap/action plan of the strategy is also being developed by the Global Green Growth Institute to sequence interventions for the short term, medium term and long term.
In Uganda’s context, green growth is defined as a system or development paradigm that aims at catalyzing economic growth through the efficient use of the country’s natural, human, and physical capital in an inclusive manner along a low carbon emissions, climate resilient development pathway. It is important to note that the transition to green growth entails a number of tradeoffs for some investments which calls for a clear understanding of where to devote policy effort and priority.
The Objectives of the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy are to:
Enhance Uganda’s economic growth while creating new opportunities for decent employment.
Support a low-emissions economic growth pathway integrating resource use efficiency, climate resilience, disaster risk reduction and optimal use of natural capital;
Undertake a socially inclusive growth that improves food and nutritional security;
Put in place an enabling institutional, governance, financing framework to operationalize an optimal green growth development strategy
The Guiding Principles governing the strategy include:
wealth creation and social inclusiveness;
creation and promotion of green jobs
low carbon emission climate resilient growth;
science, innovations and compliance;
resource use efficiency; and,
creation of partnerships at global, national and sub-national levels.
Priorities for Investment in the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy include green planned cities development, agriculture with focus on solar powered irrigation and upgrading the agricultural value chain, sustainable energy and natural capital management.
An economic analysis of the potential impacts of green growth on Uganda’s economy indicated that if green growth interventions are fully implemented, they can boost economic activity, worth around 10 percent of GDP by 2040 compared to business as usual, deliver employment up to 4 million jobs and reduce future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 28 percent relative to a conventional growth pathway (Exceeding Uganda’s current commitments in the Nationally Determined Commitments.
Investment in the Above Areas is envisaged to generate the Following Outcomes for the Country:
Green Jobs
A Low emissions growth trajectory with focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation
Increased incomes and economic gains and opportunities for all
Sustainable Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management
Food and Nutritional Security
Resource Use Efficiency;
Social Inclusiveness
Financing of the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy
The envisaged sources of financing are; the Government of Uganda, the Private Sector and Development Partners. The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has committed to partner with government to develop a national green growth financing vehicle. Additionally, focus will be on development of bankable project proposals guided by the aforementioned investment areas identified under the strategy. This will among others target existing green growth financing windows under climate change and the various environment funds at global and regional levels. Integration of green growth in the sector plans, annual plans and budgets shall be the entry point for accessing the finance from the government of Uganda.
Another generation of women will have to wait for gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be felt, closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.
It makes a mockery of International Women’s Day, which in 1977 the United Nations General Assembly declared an annual event. Human rights are the basic minimum protections which every human being should be able to experience daily. Yet even today throughout Africa – and indeed the rest of the world – not all people are able to enjoy and exercise their rights in the same way.
Treating women’s rights as human rights and recognizing that women are equal humans with equal ability, has always been fundamental to African women’s movements. As part of our initiatives for International Women’s Day, we are looking at how women have fought to be put on an equal footing.
Women’s rights are human rights and almost nobody today will say they do not believe in human rights. The challenge I lay down to all of us is to change our bias that women’s rights are everyone's rights. With human rights there is no ‘us’ and them’ – we are all human beings.
If you believe in human rights, if you believe in human equality, if you believe that no one should be the property of another, that no one should be subject to violence just because, that everyone should freely make choices about their own bodies and life, then women’s rights should be your fight. If anyone does not believe women’s rights are their fight, then they actually do not believe in human rights.
Niyel is involved in a broad range of advocacy initiatives across the continent. Although not all of them directly address women’s rights, women’s rights are indirectly at the core of everything we do. For instance, access to water and sanitation is one such initiative.
Poor sanitation, no separate public toilet facilities for women and girls, and lack of on-tap water are factors which disproportionately affect women who in rural areas still bear the brunt of collecting water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Niyel for the past five years has been closely involved in influencing sanitation policy at government level particularly across West Africa, and that initiative is inclusive of women’s needs and rights, as well as men’s.
This year Niyel is launching an educational book series called ‘Sit with Me’ authored by women of all ages with experience in the struggle for women’s rights and which ‘speak’ to younger women and girls. It depicts their experiences and gives encouragement to continue the struggle.
As proud as we are of these initiatives, we are conscious that the issue goes deeper than the observation of a day or a month. As we all seek to break the bias in various sectors of our society, our focus must remain on understanding how and why these biases are being enforced as well as who is allowing them to dominate the mainstream media, social and otherwise.
We tend to underestimate the active and intentional anti-women agenda that is very active on the continent. We may think that it is just cultural norms and context but although some of that is true, there is an organized institutional and growing opposition to women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and sexual and reproductive rights of women in Africa.
For a few years, we have been studying these oppositions that increase barriers to women's rights and being intentional about how we tackle them in our work. As part of this study, and since, some alarming examples of gross bias against women’s rights have emerged in the media and entertainment industries. The same industries that are supposed to be breaking the bias, are some of the greatest perpetrators of bias.
One example, amongst many, is a television show host in Cote d’Ivoire in August 2021 that interviewed a rapist who proceeded to visually dramatise in unnecessarily explicit detail with a manikin doll how he raped women, to the merriment of a live audience and television crew. What was meant to be a denunciation of rape became a defence of it, with no consequences for the television channel other than an enforced apology by the presenter. Following a public outcry, and sustained pressure from women’s organizations in Cote d’Ivoire, the rapist was finally convicted but sentenced only to one year with parole and as such, served no jail time.
The impact of such shows is to entirely undermine what we’re trying to achieve, which is the change of bias and viewpoints towards women. The show was meant to forward women’s advocacy but actually trivialised rape and women’s rights and endorsed the normalising of abuse through degrading humour. There is an entire process which leads to the production of a television show, and this demonstrates how ingrained the culture of abuse of women is. Not one person in the chain of command saw fit to stop it before it was allowed to air.
Although there is progress in women’s rights, it sometimes feels like each step forward is met by ten steps back. And the voices that have millions of ears and eyes, have to check their ingrained biases with even greater scrutiny.
I am not free from biases, and I choose to acknowledge that I have blind spots and check myself. I invite you to do the same and pay attention to how your own biases might be rampant in the media you and your community consume. When you do, check them too.
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