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IGAD Center in Somalia Aims to Reduce Climate Change Impact

Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has opened a research center in Somalia to combat climate change. Severe drought and flooding displaced nearly half-a-million Somalis last year.

The new center, located in the Somali capital, will conduct research, collect data and analyze and disseminate new information on climate change in the Horn of Africa.

Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, popularly known as Farmajo, opened the new center at a ceremony Thursday. He said it will play a key role in helping Somalia tackle climate change-related challenges.

“The center will focus on ways and means to utilize research, data and scientific knowledge to help the region cope with climate change and achieve environmental sustain inability…. We have set aside a strategically located facility and we will take a leading role in resource mobilization,” he expressed.

In recent years, Somalia has faced severe drought and famine, which is attributed to climate change.

IGAD Secretary General Workneh Gebeyehu says the famine has hurt economic activity across the region.

“The extreme weather has wider implications from the regional economy especially in the agriculture and livestock sectors. IGAD region is home of 520 million heads of livestock, two animals for every one of us, most of which are breed in fragile arid and semi-arid environment that are fronted to climate change,” Gebeyehu noted.

The establishment of the new IGAD center in Somalia comes at a time when the country is experiencing the ravages of drought, floods and locust infestations, which are linked to patterns of climate change.

Source: Voice of America

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Nigeria Hits New COVID-19 Infections Record

Nigeria’s number of confirmed COVID-19 infections nearly doubled on Wednesday, to a record of more than 4,000 — the most since the start of the pandemic. Nigerian officials say the jump raises serious concerns and are urging people to stay away from gatherings.The figures were announced as Nigeria destroyed a million doses of coronavirus vaccine that had passed the expiration date.

The latest tally of COVID-19 infections, released early Thursday, nearly doubled the 2,123 cases reported the day before.

Authorities say the spike signals a fourth wave is in full swing and that the omicron variant is responsible.

“The whole genetic makeup of that part of the virus has changed in such a way that has conferred on the virus some advantages,” says Ifedayo Adetifa, the head of the Nigeria Centers for Disease Control. “The advantage that has been confirmed so far is that this new variant as a result of those changes is highly transmissible.”

Nigeria has reported over 230,000 cases of the coronavirus since February 2020.

Officials are highly concerned about the current wave. This week, Nigeria’s CDC advised citizens against non-essential travel during the holidays in order to curb the disease’s spread.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday Nigerian authorities destroyed over one million doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccine at a public gathering in Abuja. The expired vaccine is the most to be destroyed by any nation.

At the event, the director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, said Nigeria had used about 60% of the vaccine from the expired batch before it went bad.

He said even though Nigeria’s vaccination campaign has gained traction in the past two weeks, the country needs to move past myths and disinformation to protect more people from the new variant.

“Now that we have over 10 million Nigerians that have been vaccinated, there is ample evidence that these vaccines do not cause you die immediately after you take them. These vaccines don’t make you magnetic, these vaccines don’t make you become a robot, these vaccines do not do all of the crazy things they say happen to you because you have taken the vaccines,” said Shuaib.

In early December, Nigerian authorities began administering booster shots to stem the spread of the omicron variant.

This week, President Muhammadu Buhari received a booster shot during a televised session in order to encourage citizens to participate in the exercise.

Source: Voice of America

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Reports: Blasts Kill 5 in Nigeria’s Maiduguri as President Visits

Nigerian media report explosions went off in the northeastern city of Maiduguri Thursday just as President Mohamadu Buhari arrived for an official visit. Local media say five people have been killed.

Local reports say the five fatalities include a 16-year-old girl, while at least eight others were injured in the explosions. Buhari was unharmed.

No one has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Maiduguri residents say they suspect the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Initial reports say the attackers fired projectiles of some kind. Residents quoted by local news media say one bomb dropped on a mosque, and another hit near Maiduguri airport, where the president landed Thursday.

Nigerian authorities have yet to make a statement.

While in Borno state, Buhari is scheduled to commission projects at the University of Maiduguri and elsewhere in the city. For now, no one knows if the president’s schedule was affected by the attack.

Nigeria has been battling the Boko Haram insurgency for 12 years, with Borno state as the epicenter of the fighting.

Source: Voice of America

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Africa CDC Concerned with New Wave of COVID Infections

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expressing concern at the latest wave of COVID infections as the continent enters the holiday season.Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong says they are pushing African countries to consider vaccine mandates.

Africa is seeing an increase in COVID infections, according to the figures released by the Africa CDC Thursday.

The continent recorded 253,000 positive cases over the past week, a 21% increase from the previous week and a 14% death increase.

Addressing journalists online, Africa CDC head John Nkengasong said they are concerned with the rising COVID cases.

“We continue to see this wave come and go but the very concerning element here is that the fourth wave and potentially the fifth wave is starting just before we go into the holiday season and that’s very concerning to me. Last year we saw the wave coming up after the holiday seasons and not before the holiday seasons, so we should just keep that in mind,” he said.

Since the omicron coronavirus variant was identified in South Africa last month, 22 countries have reported its presence in their communities.

More Africans are getting vaccinated, 325 million in all, but the large majority of people have not received the first jab.

Nkengasong says every country needs to launch a vaccination effort.

“We have a long way to go, at least we are making progress, we need a massive campaign, a massive campaign at every country level, so everyone should get out there especially with what we now know with new variants coming. You cannot talk of even a booster if people have not received their first doses of vaccine. Our campaign should be pushing people who have not received their first dose to receive the first dose,” he said.

Some countries like Kenya are banning unvaccinated people from accessing government services and public places, in order to push more people to get vaccinated.

Source: Voice of America

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Hitachi Energy wins major contract for the first-of-its-kind sub-sea power transmission network in the MENA region advancing a sustainable energy future for Abu Dhabi

HVDC Light® will connect low-carbon power from the mainland grid to ADNOC’s production operations as a strategic project to enable a sustainable, flexible and secure power supply.

Zurich, Switzerland, Dec. 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hitachi Energy today announced it has won a major order from Samsung C&T Corporation, one of the world’s largest engineering and construction companies, to connect ADNOC’s offshore operations to the onshore power grid in the United Arab Emirates owned and operated by Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA).

Hitachi Energy’s HVDC Light® technology and MACHTM digital control platform1 will enable the transfer of cleaner and more efficient power from the mainland to power ADNOC’s offshore production operations, enabling a carbon footprint reduction of ADNOC’s offshore operations by more than thirty percent.

This innovative solution reinforces Hitachi Energy’s commitment to helping customers and countries to transition towards a carbon-neutral future and help enable the ‘2050 Net-Zero  Initiative’ of the UAE.

With a capacity of 3,200 megawatts (MW), the two HVDC links will be by far the most powerful power-from-shore solution in the Middle East and North America (MENA) region to date. It is also the first HVDC power-from-shore solution outside Norwegian waters. This innovative solution reflects how Hitachi Energy continues to pioneer technology to address the growing interest from national and independent oil and gas companies to power their offshore production facilities with carbon-free energy from onshore power grids.

“We are proud to be enabling Abu Dhabi and ADNOC to make significant progress on their pathway toward achieving the United Arab Emirates’ ambition to be carbon-neutral by 2050,” said Claudio Facchin, CEO of Hitachi Energy. He continued, “At Hitachi Energy we are championing the urgency of the clean energy transition, and this major order is further evidence that we are a ‘go to’ partner for developing and deploying technologies and solutions that are advancing the world’s energy system to be more sustainable, flexible and secure.”

Mr. SH Kim, Procurement Manager at Samsung C&T Corporation, commented, “In Hitachi Energy, we have selected a trusted partner who brings deep global competence and a strong mindset of collaboration and innovation.” SH Kim continued, “Together, we will serve ADNOC with pioneering technologies that are proven to deliver for such a large HVDC project.”

The entire power-from-shore project will comprise two HVDC power links, which will connect two clusters of offshore oil and gas production facilities to the mainland power grid, a distance of up to 140 kilometers for each cluster.

Hitachi Energy is supplying four converter stations, which convert AC power to DC for transmission in the subsea cables, then reconvert it to AC from DC for use in the offshore power systems. The HVDC technology will be supplied from Hitachi Energy’s global competence centers. Also included in the order are system studies, design and engineering, supply, installation supervision and commissioning. Hitachi Energy will support the customers with a long-term life-cycle service agreement leveraging digital technologies to ensure system availability and reliability over the HVDC links’ long operating life.

HVDC Light is a voltage source converter technology that was pioneered by Hitachi Energy. It is the preferred technology for many grid applications, including interconnecting national power grids, integrating offshore wind parks with mainland transmission systems, feeding more power into congested city centers, interconnecting asynchronous networks that operate at different frequencies, and power from shore.

HVDC Light’s defining features include uniquely compact converter stations (which is extremely important in space-critical applications like offshore wind, offshore production facilities and city-center infeeds), exceptionally low electrical losses, and black-start capability to restore power after a grid outage.

Hitachi Energy pioneered commercial HVDC technology almost 70 years ago and has delivered more than half of the world’s HVDC Classic projects and more than 70 percent of the world’s voltage source conversion HVDC projects.

Notes:

  1. Modular Advanced Control for HVDC (MACH™)
  2. The estimated reduction in carbon footprint is based on Hitachi Energy’s own calculations.

About Hitachi Energy

Hitachi Energy is a global technology leader that is advancing a sustainable energy future for all. We serve customers in the utility, industry and infrastructure sectors with innovative solutions and services across the value chain. Together with customers and partners, we pioneer technologies and enable the digital transformation required to accelerate the energy transition towards a carbon-neutral future. We are advancing the world’s energy system to become more sustainable, flexible and secure whilst balancing social, environmental and economic value. Hitachi Energy has a proven track record and unparalleled installed base in more than 140 countries. Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ around 38,000 people in 90 countries and generate business volumes of approximately $10 billion USD.

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Rebecca Bleasdale
Hitachi Energy Ltd.
+41 78643 2613
rebecca.bleasdale@hitachienergy.com
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HPTN Studies Inform FDA’s Approval of ViiV Healthcare’s Long-Acting Cabotegravir Injections for HIV Prevention

DURHAM, N.C., Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Data from the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) studies HPTN 083 and HPTN 084 helped provide important information for yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve ViiV Healthcare’s long-acting cabotegravir (CAB-LA) injections for the prevention of HIV. Sponsored and co-funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), these studies showed that CAB-LA injected once every eight weeks was superior to daily oral tenofovir/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) for HIV prevention among cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men (HPTN 083) and cisgender women (HPTN 084). Both studies also demonstrated that CAB-LA was well-tolerated, offering a new and important pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) option for individuals at risk for HIV infection. ViiV Healthcare will market CAB-LA for PrEP under the brand name Apretude.

“This is a truly critical milestone for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis providing a safe and effective alternative to daily pills,” said Dr. Myron Cohen, HPTN co-principal investigator, and director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “Until we have a cure or vaccine, more prevention options that meet the needs of individuals at risk for HIV around the world are essential.”

HPTN 083 was co-funded by NIAID and ViiV Healthcare. HPTN 084 was co-funded by NIAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and ViiV Healthcare. Study product was provided by ViiV Healthcare and Gilead Sciences, Inc. Three other NIH institutes also collaborated on HPTN 083 and HPTN 084: the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

HPTN 083 enrolled 4,570 cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men at research sites in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, the U.S., and Vietnam. In the study, 52 HIV infections occurred, with 12 new infections in the CAB arm and 39 new infections in the TDF/FTC arm. These findings translate to a 69 percent reduction in incident HIV infections in study participants given CAB-LA compared to TDF/FTC.

HPTN 084 enrolled 3,223 cisgender women at research sites in Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. There were three new infections in the CAB arm and 36 new infections in the TDF/FTC arm, a 92 percent reduction in incident HIV infections in study participants given CAB-LA compared to TDF/FTC.

“HIV continues to disproportionately impact specific populations who need new HIV prevention options that are not only convenient but also highly effective,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, HPTN co-principal investigator, director of ICAP, and professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University in New York. “CAB-LA is a long-awaited and welcomed addition to the HIV prevention toolkit, offering a potentially convenient option for so many around the world.”

About the HPTN

The HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) is a worldwide collaborative clinical trials network that brings together investigators, ethicists, community members, and other partners to develop and test the safety and efficacy of interventions designed to prevent the acquisition and transmission of HIV. The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, Office of The Director, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, all part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, co-fund the HPTN. The HPTN has collaborated with more than 85 clinical research sites in 19 countries to evaluate new HIV prevention interventions and strategies in populations with a disproportionate HIV burden. The HPTN research agenda – more than 50 trials ongoing or completed with over 161,000 participants enrolled and evaluated – is focused primarily on discovering new HIV prevention tools and evaluating integrated strategies, including biomedical interventions combined with behavioral risk reduction interventions and structural interventions. For more information, visit hptn.org.

Media inquiries: Eric Miller, +1.919.384.6465; emiller@fhi360.org

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CUAMBA SOLAR PV et ENERGY STORAGE ONT ATTEINT LA CLÔTURE FINANCIÈRE

MAPUTO, Mozambique, 21 décembre 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Globeleq, la principale société indépendante d’électricité en Afrique, et ses partenaires de projet, Source Energia, un développeur d’énergie en Afrique lusophone, et Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), la société nationale d’électricité du Mozambique, ont atteint la clôture financière de la centrale solaire photovoltaïque de 19 MWp (15 MWac) de Cuamba avec un système de stockage d’énergie de 2 MW (7 MWh).

Globeleq - Powering Africa's Growth

Le projet de 36 millions de dollars, situé dans le district de Cuamba, dans la province de Niassa (à environ 550 km à l’ouest de la ville côtière de Nacala), fournira de l’électricité dans le cadre d’un contrat d’achat d’électricité de 25 ans conclu avec EDM. Le projet est le premier IPP au Mozambique à intégrer un système de stockage d’énergie à l’échelle des services publics et comprend une mise à niveau de la sous-station existante de Cuamba.

Une fois opérationnelle, la centrale solaire de Cuamba fournira suffisamment d’électricité pour 21 800 consommateurs et, pendant toute la durée du projet, elle devrait permettre d’éviter l’émission de plus de 172 000 tonnes de CO2. La centrale devrait commencer à produire de l’électricité au cours du deuxième semestre de 2022.

L’Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (« EAIF »), société membre du Private Infrastructure Development Group (« PIDG »), a fourni 19 millions de dollars de financement par emprunt, tandis que le mécanisme de subvention Viability Gap Funding (VGF) du PIDG a fourni 7 millions de dollars pour garantir un tarif abordable, financer les améliorations essentielles du réseau et un système de stockage d’énergie pour EDM. CDC Plus, le mécanisme d’assistance technique du groupe CDC, a apporté une subvention de 1 million de dollars pour le système de stockage d’énergie par batterie.

Olivia Carballo, une directrice de Ninety One Ltd, les gestionnaires de l’EAIF, a commenté : « C’est un projet pionnier pour l’EAIF et le PIDG. Nous félicitons Globeleq, Source Energia, EDM et le Mozambique d’avoir atteint une étape clé dans le déploiement de plus de technologie solaire sur le réseau du nord, et d’avoir installé le premier système de stockage d’énergie par batterie à l’échelle du réseau du Mozambique. »

Sarah Marchand, directrice de CDC Plus, a déclaré : « Nous sommes ravis de soutenir l’un des premiers systèmes de stockage d’énergie par batterie à l’échelle du réseau en Afrique subsaharienne, grâce à cette subvention pour le système de stockage par batterie. En accord avec l’ambition de CDC de catalyser davantage de solutions de stockage sur le continent, CDC Plus offrira également un soutien pour acquérir et diffuser les apprentissages concernant l’impact opérationnel, économique et de développement du composant batterie.

« Face aux difficultés persistantes dues à la pandémie, je me félicite du fait que notre équipe ait atteint la clôture financière, et que nous puissions commencer à construire la première installation solaire et de stockage d’énergie du pays. Nous soutenons sans réserve le gouvernement mozambicain dans ses initiatives visant à soutenir l’Accord de Paris et à fournir à ses citoyens des options d’énergie alternative fiables et propres », a ajouté Mike Scholey, PDG de Globeleq.

Marcelino Gildo Alberto, président d’EDM, a affirmé : « Ce projet est une démonstration de l’engagement d’EDM à fournir des solutions durables pour accélérer l’accès de la population mozambicaine à l’énergie. Conformément au plan quinquennal du gouvernement visant à introduire 200MW d’énergie renouvelable, EDM est à l’avant-garde de la transition énergétique en accord avec l’Accord de Paris. »

« Nous sommes très heureux d’apporter une nouvelle contribution au secteur de l’énergie au Mozambique et nous sommes impatients de soutenir la croissance future de l’industrie dans le pays. Nous remercions nos partenaires de projet et nos bailleurs de fonds pour leur patience et leur engagement inégalés pendant la phase de développement », a déclaré Pedro Coutinho, PDG de Source Energia

Le projet nécessitera environ 100 travailleurs pendant la phase de construction, dont beaucoup seront recrutés au sein de la communauté locale. La société espagnole Grupo TSK a été désignée comme entrepreneur EPC du projet et va immédiatement commencer à mobiliser son équipe de construction. E22, qui fait partie du groupe espagnol Gransolar, fournira le système complet de stockage d’énergie par batterie. Globeleq supervisera la construction et l’exploitation de la centrale, avec le soutien de Source Energia.

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