By Farai Shawn Matiashe
BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE, Aug 4 2023 – When Nelson Mudzingwa arrived in the Shashe farming area in Mashava in Masvingo, about 294 kilometres from the capital Harare, in the early 2000s, the land was barren, with no hope that the soils could be suitable for farming.

The area used for cattle ranching had turned into a semi-arid.

Livestock was dying due to hunger while trees succumbed to deforestation, and water levels in the nearby Shashe River had decreased because of siltation.

More than two decades later Shashe farming area has transformed into a reputable farming hub.

This was done by employing agroecology techniques, including using locally available resources such as growing traditional grains, rehabilitating the area by planting trees, water harvesting to conserve water and venturing into poultry to get manure to improve soil fertility.

“When I harvest crops in the fields, I make sure that I put aside seed in preparation for the next season,” says Mudzingwa, the 53-year-old small-holder farmer who was born in Chiwundura in Midlands Province, a central part of Zimbabwe.

“By digging contours that channel water in our fields, we have improved the chances of receiving rainfall in Shashe. Even during the dry season, we receive rainfall which was not common when we first arrived.”

Peter Mudzingwa looking at harvested groundnuts at his father Nelson Mudzingwa’s farm in Shashe, Mashava. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

Shashe farming area has evolved into a learning area where farmers around Zimbabwe and beyond the borders come to learn agroecology at Shashe Agroecology School, a centre of agroecology, of which Mudzingwa is one of the founders.

Zimbabwe, just like the rest of the southern African region, has been experiencing climate change-induced prolonged droughts and incessant rainfall resulting in floods.

Climate change does not discriminate.

Every living being must pay.

The majority of Zimbabweans live in rural areas, and climate change, caused by human activities, is a major threat to their livelihood.

They rely on agriculture to feed their families as well as earn a living by selling some of the produce.

Government and non-governmental organisations have been working hand in hand to introduce measures that reduce the impacts of climate change.

In Shashe, agroecology farming is basically conserving the land and environment.

This concept involves strengthening the resilience of smallholder farmers through the diversification of agroecosystems.

That is organic soil management and water harvesting for conservation.

In the Shashe farming area, smallholder farmers like Mudzingwa grow a variety of food crops, including grains, cereals, legumes, vegetables, fruit trees and medicinal plants.

They also rear livestock, including cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens.

The grains such as sorghum, millet and rapoko are drought-resistant crops meaning smallholder farmers can still have a bumper harvest even during droughts.

Everything on the Mudzingwa’s farm is recycled.

“Livestock are our biggest source of manure. We collect crop residues from the fields and feed the cattle. Then we collect waste and make organic manure in compost,” says Mudzingwa, who is an agriculturist by profession.

The smallholder farmers in this area have fish ponds where they farm different species like catfish and breams.

Mudzingwa says fish farming, poultry, and crops depend on each other for survival.

“We feed fish with chicken droppings and worms. We keep worms in the composts we make for manure. The water from the fish ponds after harvesting is channelled to the garden because it is highly nutritious,” he says.

Another smallholder farmer is Elizabeth Mpofu, who has fed and clothed her three children and one grandchild using proceeds from her agroecology venture in the Shashe farming area.

She turned to sustainable farming after realising that rainfed agriculture was no longer viable in this area; she was resettled following the Land Reform Programme in the early 2000s.

The chaotic Land Reform Programme implemented under President Robert Mugabe saw black farmers taking back their land from the few minority white farmers two decades after Zimbabwe gained its independence from the British colonialists.

Just like Mudzingwa, Mpofu is into fish farming, growing drought-resistant crops like millet and sorghum, poultry and water harvesting to conserve moisture in the fields.

Mpofu keeps seeds for the next agriculture season to ensure that traditional grains critical in providing high yields amid climate change do not run into extinction.

Mudzingwa and Mpofu supply other farmers in Shashe and around the country with seeds and pass agroecology knowledge and skills to them.

Mpofu has planted trees and maintained indigenous trees near her plot as part of her reforestation efforts.

Mpofu’s family relies on agroecology.

She keeps some produce for her family after harvesting and sells the excess to other residents in Mashava or Masvingo, the province’s city.

“Agroecology is the way to go. As a woman, I have been able to look after myself and my family,” Mpofu, a widower, tells IPS.

The agroecology initiative in Mashava and Bikita has reached about 500 smallholder farmers, says Simba Guzha, a regional project manager for Voluntary Service Overseas, a charity supporting farmers like Mpofu and Mudzingwa.

Guzha tells IPS that affordable and less resource-input farming practices like agroecology are important to enhance agricultural production and increase food security at the household level.

“In Zimbabwe, agriculture production is mainly rainfed, and smallholder farmers in marginalized areas contribute more than 70 percent of food production in the country, yet they lack they do not have the financial capacity to purchase synthetic inputs.”

“In Mashava, most soils are loamy sands to sandy which are prone to acidification, leaching and poor structure and can barely support plant life, the use of organic fertilisers and green cover crops that bind the soil help to replenish such soils and enhance microbial activity that supports plant life while sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

Guzha says agroecology in Mashava has empowered women and the youth, who are usually marginalised and vulnerable.

“It has enhanced their productive capacity as well as empowered them to have diversified food sources and income-generating activities,” he says.

“Agroecology promotes growing of indigenous or orphan crops and diversity that are well suited to low rainfall areas like Mashava, hence, farmers are guaranteed of getting something in case of severe droughts. It has promoted local diets and culturally acceptable foods that are nutritious and healthy for the local people.”

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By Jemimah Njuki and Jocelyn Chu
NEW YORK, Aug 4 2023 – Last week, there was uproar in Kenya when a report about one of the largest banks, Equity Bank, revealed a 52 percent gender pay gap between their female and male employees working in similar positions. This difference is neither okay nor acceptable. However, documenting the gap is laudable because that is the first step in trying to fix it.

Of course, the gender pay gap is not unique to Kenya nor to the banking sector. Worldwide, on average, women only make 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. No country has successfully closed the gender pay gap. As a result of this gap, there’s a lifetime of income inequality between men and women. This has many consequences, including that more women are retiring into poverty than men.

Worldwide, on average, women only make 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. No country has successfully closed the gender pay gap. As a result of this gap, there’s a lifetime of income inequality between men and women. This has many consequences, including that more women are retiring into poverty than men

The gender pay gap is even worse for some demographics of women, such as women of color and women raising children. In the United States Black women are paid only 69.5% of white men’s wages while Hispanic women are paid only 64.1% of white men’s wages. In sub–Saharan Africa, women with children are paid 37% less than men, and in South Asia, they are paid 35% less.

Women’s educational gains have not ended the gap. For example, in the U.S., despite gains in educational attainment, women still face a significant wage gap. While women are more likely to graduate from college than men, at every education level, they are paid less than men.

The wage gap actually widens with higher levels of educational attainment. Among workers who have only a high school diploma, women are paid 78.6% of what men are paid. Among workers who have a college degree, the share is 70.2%, and among workers who have an advanced degree, it is 69.8%. The gender pay gap also increases with age.

Many reasons have been advanced for the gender pay gap – some of them structural including occupational and sectoral segregation, devaluation of “women’s work”, societal norms, and discrimination, all of which took root well before women entered the labor market.

Within all sectors and both formal and informal economies, there is striking occupational segregation, with women typically occupying the lowest occupational categories, earning less, and having fewer entitlements to social security and pensions.

Women are overrepresented in sectors that are underpaid and undervalued, such as in social work and health care. They are still woefully underrepresented in leadership positions, even in industries where women constitute the majority of workers.

If women take time off due to unpaid care work responsibilities and then go back to a job market where pay histories are used to determine job entry bands, their pay ends up lower than their male counterparts. Discrimination and gender stereotypes also give rise to biased judgments and decisions, impeding women’s advancement and pay.

Pay audits and pay transparency measures can help expose pay differences between men and women and identify the underlying causes. This is because addressing the gender pay gap requires knowing that it exists and what is causing it, which is why the Equity Bank sustainability report, while heavily criticized, is important.

A study in Finland found that 73% of human resource representatives found equal pay audits, in line with national legislation on pay transparency, to be useful in promoting workplace equality.

In fact, about 55% of enterprises surveyed reviewed job descriptions and/or altered wages, continued examining their gender pay gap or reformed their remuneration framework, because of information discovered from audits.

Pay transparency can also provide women, unions and other employees with the information and evidence they require to negotiate pay rates and provide as well as provide them with the means to challenge potential pay discrimination.

Other actions that can help close the pay gap are laws that require reporting of pay by gender, race, and ethnicity, and that prohibit employers from asking about pay history. Requiring employers to post pay bands when hiring has also been shown to have impact.

While this is positive, further action is required from governments and employers to address the gender pay gap. The Equal Pay International Coalition, convened by UN Women, the International Labour Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is a mechanism to bring together stakeholders to commit to pay transparency and to closing the gender pay gap. But while many countries have adopted pay transparency legislation, more time is needed to assess the impact and effectiveness of the measures adopted.

There is also need for policies that lift wages for most workers while also reducing gender and racial/ethnic pay gaps. Minimum wages and strengthening workers’ rights to bargain collectively for higher wages and benefits is critical for closing the gender pay gap.

Women, who tend to occupy lower-paying jobs, have been shown to benefit the most from increases in minimum wages. An analysis of the increase of minimum wages in Poland between 2008-2009 concluded that higher minimum wages contributed to a lower gender wage gap among young workers.

Deeper changes in societal and cultural norms, especially those on care for children and interventions that seek the equal sharing of responsibilities in caregiving and domestic work by men and boys are needed.

The inequalities between women and men in the world of work will persist unless we act. And we need to act together.

For Equity Bank, this transparency is the first step in taking action to close this gender pay gap. A lot, however, depends on what they do next.

Jemimah Njuki is the Chief, Economic Empowerment at UN Women, and an Aspen New Voices Fellow

Jocelyn Chu is a Programme Specialist at UN Women

By John R. Bryson
BIRMINGHAM, UK, Aug 4 2023 – Russia’s special military or colonization operation in Ukraine continues to surprise. These surprises come from a decided absence of strategic thinking by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

Fundamentally, a paradox sits behind Putin’s war with Ukraine. This paradox reflects the tension between Putin’s desire to demonstrate that Russia is still a major power on the world stage and actions that continue to undermine Russia’s economy and international standing.

Central to this tension are differences between Russia and Ukraine regarding the value of human life. A recent battlefield incident highlights this difference.

Serhiy had been wounded and separated from his Ukrainian unit. He was spotted by a Ukrainian drone operator who reacted rapidly to save him. The drone operator from the 15th National Guard stated that they did not want to leave Serhiy as “every life is important to us”.

Putin and the Kremlin place no value on life. Whilst Serhiy was been rescued a Russian priest from the orthodox church proclaimed on Russian state television that Russian forces “came to war not to kill but to die” as a form of sacrifice.

This type of statement reflects the value placed by the Russian establishment on the life of Russian citizens. This then reflects Putin’s paradox as his war with Ukraine has made matters much worse for nearly all Russian citizens.

Putin’s decision to leave the UN-brokered grain export arrangement is another indicator of the value that the Kremlin places on human life. This is another paradoxical decision.

On the one hand, Russia is now deliberately targeting Ukraine’s grain storage and export infrastructure. This is civilian infrastructure, and moreover it is infrastructure that plays a critical role in world food markets and in feeding some of the most vulnerable people living on this planet.

There is a form of madness here as Putin has decided to weaponise food and perhaps his plan is to create a global food crisis. On Wednesday 2 August, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that “Moscow is waging a battle for a global catastrophe. In their madness, they need world food markets to collapse, they need a price crisis, they need disruptions in supplies”.

On the other hand, it is important to explore which countries benefited the most from the Black Sea grain deal. The answer is perhaps surprising – China. Ukraine exported 7.9 million tonnes of grain or just under a quarter of the grain involved in the Black Sea initiative to China.

Putin’s decision to prevent grain from being exported from Ukraine to China raises some interesting questions regarding the special relationship that is supposed to exist between these countries.

Putin’s war with Ukraine has led to Russia’s on-going isolation from international affairs. Putin is trying to address this isolation by trying to make friends. This process includes his intention that Russia “will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea with 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain each in the next three to four months”.

There is a problem here in that Putin’s offer of between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of grain does not compensate for the 750,000 tonnes of Ukrainian grain that was purchased by the World Food Programme (WFP) and shipped immediately to countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan.

The WFP is the largest humanitarian organization in the world and importantly this is not controlled by a single nation but was established by the United Nations.

There are rather too many Putin paradoxes. This includes his proclamation regarding the end of “neo-colonialism” and the emergence of a multi-polar global order.

There is the obvious tension here in that Putin states that he is against the application of power and influence to subjugate other countries, but then offers ‘free food’ to some countries and yet free food always comes with strings attached.

Evidently, Putin favours colonialism but also practices neo-colonialism.

Putin’s rhetoric regarding his vision of a new multipolar world must be treated with caution. Putin’s imaginary new world has much in common with George Orwell’s novel ‘Animal Farm’ in that all nations would be equal, but Russia would be more equal than others.

A truly multi-polar world would be one in which initiatives led by organisations like the UN take priority over any initiatives led by any one country. It is time to shift away from one nation trying to dominate global affairs to a world in which effective supranational organisations try to ensure that all living on planet earth are treated equably.

Of course, this is a utopian vision. The realty will be a continued struggle between competing politicians/nations, and this will result in negative outcomes for all.

John R. Bryson is Professor of Enterprise and Economic Geography – University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions, and its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 4 2023 – The title shouldn’t fool you: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is one of the world’s longest-ruling autocrats. A political survivor, this former military commander had been bolted to his chair since 1985, presiding over what he turned into a de facto one-party system – and now apparently a dynastic regime.

On 23 July, running virtually unopposed, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) took 82 per cent of the vote, winning almost all seats. The only party that could have offered a challenge, the Candlelight Party, had been banned on a technicality in May.

Following the proclamation of his ‘landslide victory‘, Hun Sen finally announced his retirement, handing over his position to his eldest son, Hun Manet. Manet had already been endorsed by the CPP. Winning a parliamentary seat, which he just did, was all he had to do to become eligible. To ensure dynastic succession faced no obstacle, a constitutional amendment passed in August 2022 allows the ruling party to appoint the prime minister without parliamentary approval.

Hun Sen isn’t going away: he’ll remain CPP chair and a member of parliament, be appointed to other positions and stay at the helm of his family’s extensive business empire.

A slippery slope towards autocracy

Hun Sen came to power in a world that no longer exists. He managed to cling onto power as everything around him changed.

He fought as a soldier in the Cambodian Civil War before defecting to Vietnam, taking several government positions under the 1980s Vietnamese government of occupation. He was appointed prime minister in 1985, and when 1993 elections resulted in a hung parliament, Hun Sen refused to concede defeat. Negotiations resulted in a coalition government in which he served as joint prime minister, until he orchestrated a coup to take sole control in 1997. At the head of the CPP, he has won every election since.

In 2013 his power was threatened. A new opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), offered a credible challenge. The CPP got its lowest share of votes and seats since 1998. Despite obvious fraud, the CNRP came dangerously close to defeating Hun Sen.

In the years that followed, Hun Sen made sure no one would challenge him again. In 2015, the CNRP’s leader Sam Rainsy was summarily ousted from the National Assembly and stripped of parliamentary immunity. A warrant was issued for his arrest, pushing him into exile. He was then barred from returning to Cambodia, and in 2017 convicted for ‘defaming’ Hun Sen. His successor at the head of the CNRP, Kem Sokha, soon faced persecution too.

In November 2017, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the CNRP and imposed a five-year political ban on 118 opposition members.

As a result, the only parties that eventually ran on a supposedly opposition platform in 2018 were small parties manufactured by government allies to give the impression of competition. In the run-up to the vote, the CPP-dominated National Election Committee (NEC) threatened to prosecute anybody who urged a boycott and warned voters that criticising the CPP wasn’t allowed. What resulted was a parliament without a single dissenting voice.

There was no let off after the election, with mass arrests and mass trials of former CNRP members and civil society activists becoming commonplace. Rainsy was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment, and Sokha was given 27 years for ‘treason’. At least 39 opposition politicians are behind bars, and many more have left Cambodia.

But as the CNRP faded, the torch passed to the Candlelight Party. In June 2022 local elections, Candlelight proved that Hun Sen was right to be afraid: in an extremely repressive context, it still took over 20 per cent of the vote. And sure enough, in May 2023 the NEC disqualified Candlelight from the July election.

Civic space under assault

Political repression has been accompanied by tightening civic space restrictions.

The crackdown on independent media, underway since 2017, intensified in the run-up to the latest electoral farce. In March 2022, the government stripped three digital media outlets of their licences after they published stories on government corruption. In February 2023, Hun Sen ordered the closure of Voice of Democracy, one of the few remaining independent media outlets, after it published a story about Manet. Severe restrictions weigh on foreign media groups, some of which have been forced out of the country.

In contrast, government-owned and pro-government media organisations are able to operate freely. Major media groups are run by magnates close to the ruling family. One media conglomerate is headed by Hun Sen’s eldest daughter. As a result, most information available to Cambodians comes through the filter of power. Most media work to disseminate state-issued disinformation and discredit independent voices as agents of propaganda.

The right to protest is heavily restricted. Gatherings by banned opposition parties are prohibited and demonstrations by political groups, labour unions, social movements and essentially anyone mobilising on issues the government doesn’t want raised are routinely dispersed by security forces, often violently. Protesters are subjected to threats, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detention, and further criminalisation.

As if leaving people with no choice wasn’t enough, Hun Sen also mounted a scare campaign to force them to vote, since a low turnout would undermine the credibility of the outcome. People were threatened with repercussions if they attempted to boycott the election or spoil ballot papers. The election law was hastily amended to make this a crime.

Experience gives little ground to hope that repression will let up rather than intensify following the election. There’s also no reason to expect that Manet, long groomed for succession, will take a different path from his still-powerful predecessor. The very least the international community should do is to call out the charade of an election for what it was and refuse to buy the Cambodian regime’s whitewashing attempt.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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