Health & Environ

The recent pronouncements about a plan to conduct feasibility studies on the defunct Jonglei Canal Project by the South Sudanese Vice President for Infrastructure. H.E. Taban Deng Gai, with the backing of South Sudan’s Minister for Water Resources and Irrigation, Hon. Manawa Peter Gatkouth, has raised eyebrows and risked opening the old wounds between Sudan and Egypt that were thought to have long been healed and forgotten. 

The year 2021 ended with the loss of some prominent people, one of whom  was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a significant figure in the struggle against apartheid, who passed on December 26. A note like this will not do justice to his remarkable life. Suffice it to say that he will remain an excellent role model  of humility and moral courage.

President Joe Biden has many challenges to confront in his foreign policy. One of which is the seemingly forgotten United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that remains unratified by the US, the only major country not to do so. Yet, UNCLOS serves the interests of both sea-every country because what happens in, under and on the sea affects the food, water, and air that every living thing depends on. 

Before the development of a market economy, Ugandans used bags, strings, pots, and baskets made from local materials such as palm leaves, papyrus, banana leaves and fibers, grass, fibrous shrubs (jute and sisal), or clay for packaging, storage, and transporting of goods. Other than baked clay pots, all these materials are biodegradable, and they pose little danger to the environment. However, plastics rapidly replaced most natural fibers because they more convenient, but they pose tremendous threat to the environment.

Almost forgotten in the story about the Coronavirus is the story of AIDS. The drive to deal with it, the search to find medicine to cure it, and the self-discipline by homosexuals only began in 1981, when the disease was discovered, and its causes understood.

Vaccines have been around for years and it is no secret that they have saved millions of humans from death, debilitation, and disfigurement. Thanks to vaccinations, young people today may not even know about diseases such as tetanus, polio, smallpox, measles, and yellow fever.

History will judge the stewards of Tanzania’s Fifth Republic harshly for their imprudent response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Dar-es-Salam announced its first confirmed case of coronavirus on March 16, 2020, its leadership has stridently walked a populist path.

Like a creeping thief in the night, it finally knocked at my door, unannounced, un-welcomed.