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Uganda and Tanzania signed a deal with Chinese and French oil companies this week finalizing terms of a $10 billion drilling and pipeline project. The project's backers say it will usher in economic development across the region. But Ugandan activists say complaints from communities affected by the project are not being heard.

Civil society organizations have raised red flags again, one day after Ugandan and Tanzanian officials put ink to paper for what they call the Final Investment Decision.

The move opens the way for construction and development of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline connecting future oilfields in Uganda to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga.

However, Ugandan civil society organizations, under their umbrella Stop EACOP, say the $3.5 billion project violates the rights of communities around Lake Albert where oil drilling will take place.

In 2021, the NGO Africa Institute for Energy Governance, which is providing legal support to the affected communities, was raided twice for allegedly operating without a license.

The NGO’s executive director, Dickens Kamugisha, says the attacks were meant to silence them for demanding to see key documents and raising issues such as people’s property rights.

Kamugisha tells VOA that locals may get compensated for the loss of their property but were not given much chance to negotiate.

“They are being forced to open bank accounts. But even those who have opened, they don’t receive the money," said Kamugisha. "Many people haven’t agreed on the compensation rates, but they are being told you have to receive whatever is available. So, the communities are still aggrieved. There are no grievance handling mechanisms. The courts are not functioning, so the people are helpless. People have been made to even become poorer, and more miserable and desperate.”

This week’s agreement was signed between Uganda, Tanzania, the French company Total Energies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

Total Energies faces a lawsuit in France for its failure to prevent human rights violations and environmental damage linked to the project.

The drilling and pipeline have been delayed for years, and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni noted that one reason for the delay was the pressure put on Total Energies by civil society groups.

Museveni has been dismissive of the groups, describing members as jobless people moving aimlessly.

‘They go and campaign. They say, Ugandans are not allowing NGO’s to inspect the petroleum operations in Lake Albert," said Museveni. "They are hiding something. So, I appeal to the Ugandans and to the local governments in Buliisa, Kikube, in Nwoya, let the NGO’s go and sleep in the bush if they want.”

When completed, the pipeline is expected to carry about 60,000 barrels of oil to Tanzania per day.

Tanzania’s Vice President Phillip Mpango expressed hope all parties will adhere to labor and environmental laws.

“I’m therefore looking forward to hear that they are committed to implement this project, in an exemplary manner," said Mpango. "Taking into consideration the ecology as well as local community rights.”

Uganda’s oil deposits were first discovered in 2006 and are estimated at 6.5 billion barrels. Assuming the drilling and pipeline go ahead, exports are expected to begin in 2025.

Source: Voice of America

In what is being described as another case of “debt trap” diplomacy, China’s Export-Import Bank appears poised to take over Uganda’s Entebbe Airport and other assets because the African nation is struggling to service a U.S. $207 million loan for local infrastructure projects.

China – which agreed to expand the airport in 2015 as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) global infrastructure-building program – has denied reports that it may grab control of Uganda’s international airport because of the country’s failure to pay off the debt.

The site gained infamy in 1976 as the location of the Israeli Defense Force’s daring hostage-rescue operation after Ugandan dictator Idi Amin allowed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to land a hijacked Air France jetliner there.

But it is Uganda’s only international airport, which raises questions about China’s domination of critical infrastructure – with very real implications for Southeast Asia.

If it takes place, the debt-for-equity swap in Uganda follows China’s 99-year takeover of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port and a nearby airfield in 2018, and the 2020 takeover of much of the Lao power grid by a Chinese state-owned firm.

According to a September 2021 report by the AidData project at the College of William and Mary in the United States, Uganda took on 144 Chinese-financed projects between 2000 and 2017, and its sovereign debt to China accounts for 8 percent of its gross domestic product.

But Uganda’s “hidden debt” to China accounted for zero percent of GDP. This is highly unusual.

‘Hidden debt’

Let me explain this in brief terms.

Roughly 70 percent of China’s BRI funding comes in the form of loans, not grants.

Sovereign debt is money that a country’s government owes to foreign and domestic lenders. It is almost never collateralized. But commercial lending from the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China and other BRI lenders almost always is.

That collateral can take many forms: sometimes China forces the borrower to have a certain amount of assets in a Chinese bank that can be frozen; other times, the recipient country puts up assets as collateral, meaning that it will forfeit those assets if it fails to repay its debt.

Very little of China’s BRI lending is favorable to the borrower. The interest rates average around 4 percent, nearly four times more than World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Japanese, European or American lending.

In addition, in the Philippines, BRI projects have dispute resolution mechanisms that are skewed toward China. This is likely the case in other Southeast Asian BRI agreements.

Another kind of lending – called Other Official Flows, or OOF – involves state-owned companies, state-owned banks, joint ventures, and private sector institutions, rather than central banks. As such, it is not always publicly reported.

The AidData project’s 2021 report found that due to this “hidden debt,” the average government “is under-reporting its actual and potential repayment obligations to China by an amount that is equivalent to 5.8 percent of its GDP.”

Uganda was the 19th largest recipient of Chinese grants and carried very little in the way of OOF loans, and yet it still seems unable to service its debts.

Now of course, China could renegotiate the terms of lending, or write off the debt, as a grant. But Beijing has shown little interest in doing so. Indeed, in March 2021, the Ugandan government sent a delegation to Beijing to renegotiate the loan terms, but returned empty-handed.

Beijing is refusing to budge for two reasons. First, the Chinese are legitimately afraid of creating a precedent. If one country gets to renegotiate the terms, all the others will clamor for the same.

Second, BRI lending really slowed in 2018-2019, which suggests that many of the loans were non-performing. If people aren’t paying back the loans, there’s less for the banks to lend out, unless Beijing injects a lot of new capital. It may be doing that now, as lending seems to be picking up.

How this plays out in Southeast Asia

According to the report from the AidData project, China provided $10.7 billion in grants to four Southeast Asian states between 2000 and 2017, and $87.7 billion in OOF loans to six states in the region.

In all countries with the exception of Singapore, which doesn’t borrow from Beijing, sovereign debt loads to China, as a percentage of GDP, range from 1 percent in Cambodia to a whopping 29 percent in Laos. Myanmar is second (5 percent), followed by Vietnam (3 percent). Several states have none. Not including Laos, which is such an outlier, the region’s sovereign debt load to China is a modest 1.4 percent of GDP, on average.

The hidden debt loads tell a different story. The highest amount is Laos at 35 percent of GDP, followed by Brunei (14 percent), Myanmar (7 percent), Vietnam (3 percent), Indonesia (2 percent), and Cambodia (1 percent). Again, excluding the outlier Laos, the average hidden debt to China in the region is 3.4 percent, over twice the amount of sovereign debt.

While 3.4 percent is not unusually high, remember that those loans are at commercial lending rates and are almost all collateralized. Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have public debt exposure to China over 10 percent of GDP. In July 2021, the World Bank estimated that Laos’ overall debt would increase to 68 percent of GDP, up from 59 percent in 2019.

It’s hard to imagine that Laos will be able to service its debt for a $6 billion railroad, especially because the Thai government has not completed a rail link that would connect the Chinese city of Kunming to Thai ports – the only economically viable reason for the Lao portion.

Laos has benefited from a recent Thai decision to buy more hydroelectricity, which should allow the Laotians to continue to service debts for their cascade of Chinese-funded dams. Vietnam had to begin servicing a $670 million debt for a Chinese-constructed rail line that still had not opened, after years of delays and a 57 percent cost overrun since the project began in 2011.

With economic slowdowns caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which is unlikely to end any time soon, the region’s hard-hit economies will see weaker recoveries than forecast.

The Asian Development Bank recently downgraded its 2021 growth estimates for every country in the region except for Singapore and the Philippines, and estimated that regional growth would be 3.1 percent in 2021, not 4.4 percent. Revenue will be down for all states, while the continued public health and stimulus costs are rising.

All of this will impact the ability of regional states to service their debt.

China may be willing to play harder ball with African countries than with neighboring Southeast Asia, where public perceptions about China are starting to sour. But China keeps pushing its BRI projects on the region, with new projects announced in Malaysia, and a determination to see projects completed in Myanmar despite the civil unrest since the Feb. 1 coup d’etat and an 18 percent contraction of the Burmese GDP.

The region’s high levels of public indebtedness – and fear of asset seizures by China – should raise a lot of concern, both among Southeast Asian governments and their citizens. And BRI’s heavy reliance on Chinese workers and managers who tend not to return home, shoddy construction, environmental degradation, and corruption should raise even more concern.

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A 4-billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists reported Thursday.

In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical, and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science's Andrew Steele.

Tiny samples from the meteorite show the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water — most likely salty, or briny, water — flowing over the rock for a prolonged period, Steele said. The findings appear in the journal Science.

During Mars' wet and early past, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the planet's surrounding surface, before a third impact bounced it off the red planet and into space millions of years ago. The 2-kilogram (4-pound) rock was found in Antarctica in 1984.

Groundwater moving through the cracks in the rock, while it was still on Mars, formed the tiny globs of carbon that are present, according to the researchers. The same thing can happen on Earth and could help explain the presence of methane in Mars' atmosphere, they said.

But two scientists who took part in the original study took issue with these latest findings, calling them disappointing. In a shared email, they said they stand by their 1996 observations.

"While the data presented incrementally adds to our knowledge of (the meteorite), the interpretation is hardly novel, nor is it supported by the research," wrote Kathie Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromaterial researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"Unsupported speculation does nothing to resolve the conundrum surrounding the origin of organic matter" in the meteorite, they added.

According to Steele, advances in technology made his team's new findings possible.

He commended the measurements by the original researchers and noted that their life-claiming hypothesis "was a reasonable interpretation" at the time. He said he and his team, which includes NASA, German and British scientists, took care to present their results "for what they are, which is a very exciting discovery about Mars and not a study to disprove" the original premise.

This finding "is huge for our understanding of how life started on this planet and helps refine the techniques we need to find life elsewhere on Mars, or Enceladus and Europa," Steele said in an email, referring to Saturn and Jupiter's moons with subsurface oceans.

The only way to prove whether Mars ever had or still has microbial life, according to Steele, is to bring samples to Earth for analysis. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has collected six samples for return to Earth in a decade or so; three dozen samples are desired.

Millions of years after drifting through space, the meteorite landed on an icefield in Antarctica thousands of years ago. The small gray-green fragment got its name — Allan Hills 84001 — from the hills where it was found.

Source: Voice of America

As part of implementing TVET Policy 2019 reforms, UBTEB has embarked on the process of conducting modular assessments for TVET programmes. On the 14th December 2021, the Board held a consultative workshop for the principals of Uganda Community Polytechnics, the world of work and officials from the TVET Operations and Management Department. As part of stakeholder involvement in the implementation of reforms, Executive Secretary Oyesigye Onesmus called upon the stakeholders to collaborate with the Board in enabling effective and successful implementation of the reforms. “The Board is grateful to the stakeholders who submitted their input in the development of the modular assessment syllabi namely, the Department of TVET-O&M, the world of work, Lecturers/instructors from TVET Institutions, professional bodies among others. We are glad to inform you that your input was so constructive and we were able to adopt it in this draft syllabi before you”. Oyesigye stated.

In his remarks, Mr David Mubiru who represented the Commissioner TVET Operations and management called upon the Heads of Centres to be flexible and adjust in order to implement the TVET reforms in TVET training, delivery and assessment. He thanked UBTEB for fast-tracking the implementation of the TVET reforms.

The Executive Secretary UBTEB highlighted the benefits of the TVET reforms in line with the national development agenda. “Competencies, flexibility in learning and employability are the main emphases in this modularized TVET assessment syllabus which are also echoed in the NDP III, the TVET 2019, UBTEB Strategic Plan and demands from potential employers”. Oyesigye emphasized.

Oyesigye thanked the partners from the world work whose contribution is vital in implementing the reforms in TVET assessment. He informed the participants that the Board is already implementing tripartite assessment in order to realise the goals of producing competent TVET graduates.

Source: Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board

The Report also gives specific in-depth analysis of the;

1. Legal Environment,

2. Organisational Capacity,

3. Financial Viability,

4. Advocacy,

5. Service Provision,

6. Sectoral Infrastructure, and

7. Public Image.

The overall sustainability of the Ugandan CSO sector was unchanged in 2020. The legal environment deteriorated moderately as the government clamped down on civic space by selectively applying laws and threatening closures and deregistration. At the same time, CSOs’ organisational capacity improved slightly as CSOs adapted effectively to constraints imposed by the pandemic. Advocacy also improved slightly as organisations sought to protect human rights during the pandemic. CSOs’ contribution to the pandemic response strengthened their service provision slightly. The sectoral infrastructure was slightly improved by new local grantmaking initiatives and CSOs’ more intentional efforts to collaborate. CSOs’ financial viability and public image were unchanged.

The CSO Sustainability Index Report was developed by the United States Agency for International Development, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance and Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance. The Uganda National NGO Forum is the local partner involved in the preparation of this Report, while project managers were FHI 360 and the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL).

Source: Uganda National Ngo Forum

Someday soon, drivers entering downtown Manhattan can expect to pay for the pollution and traffic jams they cause.

Congestion pricing is a way that places such as Stockholm and Singapore are trying to unclog streets and clean up their air by making it more expensive for drivers to bring dirty vehicles into town.

With traffic bringing many cities to a standstill, air pollution killing an estimated 4 million people per year, and concerns about climate change growing, interest in finding ways to clean up transportation is increasing worldwide.

Economists love congestion pricing. Drivers? Not so much.

But voters in cities that have tried it have come to accept it.

The policy typically works by drawing a border around a city's downtown business district and charging vehicles to cross the border. Some cities have gone beyond congestion charges and impose extra fees based on the vehicle model's pollution levels.

London keeps track of vehicles with a network of cameras that photograph license plates. In other cities, cars carry electronic tags. Some cities, rather than identifying individual vehicles, simply bar vehicles on certain days based on license plate numbers.

Free roads aren't free

New York City has begun holding public meetings to work out its congestion pricing plan, the first in the United States.

Under current proposals, drivers would pay between $9 and $23 to drive passenger vehicles south of Central Park, with some exceptions.

The money raised would go toward improving the city's public transit system.

The idea behind congestion pricing is to make people pay for something that they generally think of as free but isn't, said Williams College economist Matthew Gibson.

"When I decide to travel a mile on an unpriced public road, I'm not thinking about the cost I'm imposing on other members of society in the form of accident risk, air pollution and congestion," he said.

Congestion pricing imposes that cost. If the cost is high enough, drivers will look for alternatives such as public transportation, carpooling, biking or walking.

Studies have found that congestion pricing does work for the most part. But it needs to evolve.

For example, in 2008, Milan started charging high-pollution vehicles a fee to enter the city's central business district. It worked. Traffic cleared up — for a while.

Drivers did what the policy intended for them to do: They replaced their old, dirty vehicles with newer, cleaner ones. And they hit the roads again. Traffic came back.

So, in 2012, the city imposed a congestion fee on all vehicles.

A glimpse at how effective the policy was came when an Italian court put it on hold temporarily in the middle of 2012.

Traffic spiked immediately.

Researchers found that the congestion fee was reducing traffic by 14.5% and lowering air pollution between 6% and 17% — a big drop, considering the pollution fee had already cleaned up vehicle emissions.

Congestion and pollution fees don't always do much to clear the air, experts say. Sometimes other pollution sources, such as coal-fired power plants or heavy industries, cause more pollution than vehicles, for example. And sometimes other measures, such as increasing vehicle efficiency standards, may make the impact of the fees less obvious.

Winning over voters

What is obvious, studies have found, is how congestion and pollution fees clear the roads.

In Milan, for example, "the immediate result was the reduction of traffic congestion," said Bocconi University economist Edoardo Croci. "It is an immediate and evident impact that people notice."

That impact has persuaded voters to keep these policies, even though most were opposed to them at first.

Milan's pollution fee was not popular when officials proposed it. But voters agreed to expand the fee to all vehicles in 2012 after they saw how the pollution fee had cleared the streets.

The same thing happened in Stockholm. Solid majorities opposed a congestion fee when the city launched a six-month pilot program in 2006. But voters approved it permanently after the pilot ended.

"The initial opposition was only because of the fear of something new," Croci said. "But once the advantages were evident, most people were in favor of the charge."

Both cities invested heavily in public transit before the fees kicked in.

That's critical, experts say. The policy won't work if people don't have another option besides driving.

A hard sell in U.S.?

While New York City has an extensive public transit system, congestion pricing "might be a much harder pitch to make for other large U.S. cities," said economics Ph.D. candidate Matt Tarduno at the University of California, Berkeley.

In sprawling cities such as Los Angeles or Phoenix, he said, "people would say, 'Well, I don't want to pay this toll, and if I don't pay the toll and can't drive, what else am I going to do?'"

Without good alternatives, congestion fees can hit the poor disproportionately. Critics note that rich people can afford to drive polluting cars downtown if they want.

New York City plans to exempt people earning less than $60,000 per year.

It's a balancing act, Tarduno said. Lower-income drivers tend to drive older and less efficient cars, which can make the policy less effective.

New York is planning a lengthy public review process, followed by months more to roll out the program. It may be another two years before Manhattan drivers start paying for their pollution and congestion.

Source: Voice of America

Severe storms brought suspected tornadoes and baseball-sized hail to parts of Oklahoma, but there were no reports Monday of deaths or injuries.

The severe weather system that hit Oklahoma late Sunday also brought heavy rain, lightning and wind to parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, and more stormy weather is predicted later this week in parts of the central United States.

Severe weather is not unusual in the Southern Plains in October, said Chuck Hodges, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tulsa. But Sunday's storm "was kind of more of a spring setup," he said.

"We had unusually high moisture and a very, very strong weather system that came through," he said.

Tornado warnings and reports of damage popped up across Oklahoma beginning Sunday afternoon, and survey crews with the weather service will head out Monday to determine how many tornadoes struck, Hodges said.

A possible tornado hit the Tulsa suburb of Coweta late Sunday, causing significant damage to a high school, homes and a gas station, news outlets reported, and Coweta Public Schools classes were canceled Monday.

Building damage was also reported in Anadarko, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Oklahoma City.

Earlier, baseball-sized hail shattered windows and dented cars in Norman, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City.

The National Weather Service confirmed two small tornadoes touched down in rural areas of southwestern Missouri — an EF-1 twister in Newton County around 1 a.m. and an EF-0 in Jasper County around 4:45 a.m. KYTV-TV reported that a mobile home, a couple of barns and an irrigation system were damaged, but no one was hurt.

Lightning that appeared to be from the same line of storms delayed an NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Chiefs in Kansas City, Missouri, for about an hour Sunday night.

On Monday, severe storms were possible in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, while another round of storms is predicted Tuesday in Kansas and Oklahoma, the Storm Prediction Center said.

Source: Voice of America

Three years ago, nearly every country in Africa agreed to be part of a continental free trade area intended to lower tariffs and boost economies. But the agreement has yet to be fully implemented because of restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The World Bank says the Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement set up the largest free trade bloc in the world, and has the potential to pull 30 million people out of poverty.

The agreement reduces tariffs between African countries and, the World Bank says, could boost Africa’s combined GDP by $450 billion by 2035.

But those prospects may not materialize because many countries in Africa have yet to fully open their economies due to health restrictions to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Kennedy Adede, founder of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), which works in poor neighborhoods in Nairobi, says the lack of employment opportunities has to be addressed.

"People are going through a lot of hardship, people are more scared of dying from hunger than dying from this virus and that has become a challenge. How do we solve that? That’s why this is not just about the vaccine alone," Adede said. "It needs a multi-angle [approach] to fight this economically to ensure that we drive more jobs. If you think in Africa right now, the population of young people is scary and if they don’t trust what we are saying, then we are gone.”

Speaking at a recent webinar, John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that if Africa was better prepared to combat the pandemic, the free trade area would be flourishing.

“It’s really for us in public health to continue to make sure that we place the public health agenda at the center of political dialogues, at the center of the economic dialogue. Look at the damage the pandemic has caused to our continental aspiration for the continental free trade area. I will argue that without this pandemic, that whole aspiration, the developmental agenda would have been at a very different level today in the continent,” Nkengasong said.

Nearly 18 months into the pandemic, just 2.5% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people are vaccinated. The African CDC wants to vaccinate 60% of the population by the end of 2022.

The agency says Africa had received 123.5 million vaccine doses by mid-August. The continent secured the vaccine through bilateral agreements and COVAX, a global initiative that seeks to provide vaccine to developing countries.

African countries will also share some 400 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses, which are being manufactured in South Africa.

But Nkengasong says Africa is still not receiving enough vaccine.

“When COVID just started, it was very difficult for anyone in Africa to know somebody who has died of COVID but now is a common thing we know, and that is pushing that you see lines of people out there. So the first doses of vaccines that we supplied in the continent, some of those ended up in wastage because we were dealing with misinformation. The challenge we have now is that people are saying here we are with open arms, ready to get the jab, but the jabs are not there,” Nkengasong said.

Africa’s economy is still expected to grow 3.4% this year, but that’s of little consequence to the tens of millions who are struggling to find a steady income as the virus takes away jobs and lives.

Source: Voice of America