Amie Cherry, another Banjul – born female musician in the making, started music at a tender age endowed with fluid voice and exceptional stage presence.

Speaking in an interview with ‘Entertainment’ recently at the City Limits Radio Station, Amie Cherry said that she is involved in music and at the same time is an actress and a radio presenter. Some of the singles she has produced are presently enjoying prime airplay on local radio stations and television, prominent among them are president promotion, HIV and AIDS, and girl child education, respectively. Owing to lack of financial support, The Banjul-born musician has still not released an album.

Comparing Gambian artists with their Sensgalese counterparts, Amie Cherry calls on all Gambians to join hands and support their Gambian artists. Touching on the congress which was held at the Paradise Suites Hotel, the female musician said the aim of the congress is to bring all artists in the country together as one. She advised those artists who normally copy their own counterparts’ songs to desist from such practices and to create their own music. She however pointed out that all cannot be musicians but instead some can look to other things.

Amie Cherry went further to thank the Gambian leader for supporting Gambian artists noting that if others emulated the president, then the music industry would not face the difficulties it is now facing.

The United Democratic Party candidate for the upcoming Mayoral election in Banjul, Femi Peters, called on Banjulians to vote massively for him in the Local Government election schedule for 24th January. Mr Peters made the statement while addressing a political rally at the junction of Fitzgerald and Allen Streets on Sunday.

Mr Peters charged that Banjul is presently without a plan befitting a capital city, adding that the present ramshackle condition of the most part of the city is an indictment of the city council. He enthused that he has a strategic plan to implement with a passion for the city if elected, giving reassurance that he has the recipe to make Banjul a modern city.

He commended the Interim Management Committee of BCC for what he termed the impressive amount of revenue they collected in the period of three months.

He promised to deliver as expected of him if elected and vowed to treat everybody equal irrespective of party affiliation, adding that the council is meant for all the residents of Banjul. “What is important is to work as a team in order to bring about the desired result for the people of the city,” he stated.

Speaking earlier at the meeting, the UDP-sponsored councillor for Campama ward, Mrs Fatoumatta Darboe, said the problem of Banjul could only be solved Banjulians, maintaining that people should disabuse themselves of the hope that some body will come from outside to address the concerns of the city.

Mrs Darboe deplored the fact that the only structure put up by government in Tobacco Road is a bakery for the tapa-lapa bread, noting that the roads are in dilapidated condition.

Momodou Syngle Nyassi, National Youth President of UDP, called on Banjulians to vote for Mr Peters as Mayor of Banjul and their councillors in order to make Banjul a modern city.

Other Speakers at the meeting included Aji Yam Secka, Kemo Ceesay, Babucarr Jah and Kebba M. Nyang. 

When Nouhoum Sangaré left his wife, three children and village in southern Mali for the capital Bamako 240km away, he expected to find stable work and a comfortable life, and eventually have his family join him.

He found a different and unglamorous reality. He goes from small job to small job, barely making ends meet. He often comes home after a day’s work with 100 CFA francs (22 US cents).

“It’s not easy,” Sangaré told IRIN, “because I have to share the crumbs I earn with my parents and my family in the village.”

Sangaré is one of a growing number of young rural Malians who are leaving their homes to find work in the city.

Mali’s capital, Bamako, is the fastest growing city in Africa and the sixth-fastest growing city in the world, according to data compiled by the Mayor’s Association, a global network of city officials.

Urban areas are booming throughout West Africa. In Mali’s western neighbour Mauritania, more than 60 percent of the traditionally nomadic people there are estimated to have moved to towns and cities.

Analysts say most do not find what they are looking for and in some cases end up worse off.

Fleeing poverty

No national study has been conducted to gauge the magnitude of migration within Mali; but in the western region of Kayes - one of the hardest hit by migration - a non-governmental organisation (NGO) found that 40 percent of its population had left the region in the period 1993-2002 to move either to Bamako, elsewhere in West or North Africa, or to try to get to Europe.

Sangaré, 26, blames decline in his village for his decision to flee. “The fields don’t produce any more. The fruits rot because we don’t have the means to turn them into other products [for example, juice] or to take them into town,” where there is more of a market for them, he said.

“After the rainy season we have nothing to do but rub shoulders with poverty every day.”

Observers say the majority of the young men and women who move to Bamako and other urban areas do not fare much better there than they did in the countryside, because in the city they have to start from scratch and pay for things they used to just pull out of the ground.

Worries

“At first they are busy trying to find work. They do whatever work they can find - labourer, factory worker, hawker - and if they don’t find anything to provide for their immediate needs, they get into theft and robbery,” Drissa Guindo, national director of youth at the Ministry of Youth and Sport, told IRIN.

“It’s really only a handful that succeed.”

Sangaré has tried everything from selling sunglasses to building work, and shoe-shining. He is now a rickshaw driver by day and a security guard by night. He says his children are no better off since his move to the city: he gave his daughter up for adoption to his aunt, and none of his children are in school.

“In the village, we worry more about what we will feed our children than their education,” he said. “I’d like to put them in school, but our financial situation makes that impossible.” He hopes in two years to make enough money to enrol his youngest son.

Sanogo, unable to find work in Bamako, is now planning to go abroad. It is a choice that 70 percent of young migrants make after internal movement fails to produce results, the NGO Mali-Folkecenter said.

Working girls

The situation is worse for young girls, who are increasingly migrating because of poverty and in search money for a dowry. They find work as cooks, maids, nannies and in small businesses.

According to the Association d’aide aux aides ménagères, an agency that places girls looking for work with families, many girls are exploited because they are young, easily manipulated, unaware of their rights and afraid to expose their employers. In the worst of conditions, the association says, they work more than 15 hours a day, are beaten, badly fed, poorly paid and treated like quasi slaves.

“If we don’t go to work in a town to prepare our future as wives, who will? It’s the only way we can afford clothes, shoes and cooking utensils to take back to our village,” said 15-year-old servant Amina Coulibaly. “Our mothers and sisters did the same.”

“We have to give rural youth the means to stay in their communities,” said Soumana Satao, director-general of the government’s Agency for the Promotion of Youth Employment. “Otherwise, we will not be able to stop this rural exodus.”

Ismaila Sambou, Secretary of State for Local Government and Lands, has said that the reduction of the population of the city of Banjul is not due to the unavailability of dwelling houses but the fact that people are increasingly attracted to areas outside the city for a number of reasons including socio-cultural factors thereby leaving the dwelling houses unoccupied.

SoS Sambou made this remark at the National Assembly on Tuesday in response to a question posed by Abdoulie Saine, NAM for Banjul Central during the third meeting of the National Assembly in the third legislative session 2007. SoS Sambou revealed that it was for this reason that the Greater Banjul Land Use Plan designated some parts of the city (Banjul South, and parts of Banjul Central) as mixed use zones where the developments of stores are permitted.

According to him, this was deemed necessary taking into consideration the expansion of trade and commerce in the city, promotion of transit trade and also the proximity of these areas to the business part of Banjul.

Responding to a question from Lamin Ceesay, NAM for Sami as to what development project, Kuntaur Area Council have  undertaken in the last five years and what amount of tax was collected during this period, SoS Sambou revealed that the development projects that the Kuntaur Area Council have undertaken in the last five years are as follows:

The construction of a Court House at Tandikunda in the Sami districts, construction of a waiting shed at Bush Town, Sami district, construction of a pit latrine at Wassu Car Park, Kuntaur Wharf Town, and the construction of an open market at Wassu among others.

“The total amount of tax collected in the corresponding period are as follows: in 2003, D1,758,735.00; in 2004, D2,341,212.00; in 2005, D1,458,289.00, in 2006, D1,987,406.00 and in  2007, D1,233,977.00.

Also responding to Ebrima Jammeh, NAM for Bintang Karanai, on the plans  of Area Councils to work on improving cattle points in the rural areas because councils collect cattle  tax, SoS Sambou noted that all area councils are indeed concerned about cattle drinking points in their various jurisdictions and with their limited resources are trying to address this important issue.

“The councils all have plans to increase the allocation of funds to cattle drinking points plus all other essential services to their communities. It is hoped that this issue will be fully addressed in the not too distant future,” he added.

Other members who also joined the question and answer session included Essa Saidykhan, Member for Dankunku, Lamin Kebba Jammeh, Member for Illiassa, and Pa Jallow, Member for Jarra Central respectively.

South Africa's drought-stricken coastal city of Cape Town is forging ahead with a plan to tackle the effects of climate change, which could provide a blueprint for other urban centres.

The Cape Town municipality, at the southern tip of the country, has been identified by the government's Department of Water Affairs and Forestry as the first major urban area where the demand for water is expected to exceed supply and for the past few summers has already experienced rationing.

A South African Country Study on Climate Change, carried out in the late 1990's, projected that the Western Cape Province was at high risk of changing rainfall patterns, and was likely to become warmer and drier.

Cape Town, the provincial capital, aims to mitigate those effects through a Municipal Adaptation Plan (MAP) for climate change, a framework which has already been endorsed by local government.

The plan suggests steps that most residents could live with. Pierre Mukheibir and Gina Ziervogel, both researchers at the University of Cape Town who authored the MAP, have recommended the municipality should provide incentives in the form of rebates to taxpayers and businesses to install rainwater tanks, re-use their grey water and install low-flush toilets.

"We hope that the framework will serve as a blueprint for other municipalities," said Mukheibir.
Like California in the United States, the Cape Town municipality has been pioneering green policies in South Africa. Last year it launched a 10-point energy plan, which intends to ensure that 10 percent of the city's households install solar water heaters by 2020.

Power is a sore point in the city, where increased demand on the conventional grid has triggered a number of outages in the past three years, reportedly costing Cape Town businesses at least US $81 million in lost revenue

The city has already started buying some of its electricity from a wind farm on the Cape West Coast, said Shirene Rosenberg, manager of resource conservation at the municipality. The city is also contemplating the introduction of cleaner fossil fuels such as natural gas.

Speed bump
Cape Town already conserves water by re-using nine percent of its treated effluent, according to the MAP researchers. "There should be incentives to encourage industries and other wet-processing systems to recycle their wastewater," noted the framework plan, which urges the installation of rainwater tanks in homes and commercial buildings for use in gardens, swimming pools, and for sewerage.

But the city's grand schemes have hit a speed bump. Municipalities do not have a constitutional mandate to put such plans into practice, making it difficult for them to establish legal grounds to source funding either from its taxpayers or the national government, explained Rosenberg. "This is bound to affect other municipalities who consider similar plans".
However, while the municipality seeks clarity, it will press ahead with MAP, she added. The city is already investigating the feasibility of offering water conservation-linked tax rebates.

South Africa's carbon footprint is the largest on the continent and the country features among the top 15 greenhouse gas emitters in the world.

South Africa has made a commitment to reduce the percentage of coal in its energy mix by 10 percent by 2012, but more than 91 percent of the country's electricity is currently generated by coal-fired plants, according to the University of Cape Town-based Energy Research Centre. The government has argued that most of its coal power stations still have a life span of 20 years or more.