Africa NOW #125

Issued in April 2024, by Africa Japan Forum (AJF)«Contents»
pp. 2-13		
Special Topic: Crisis in Sudan as the civil war continues
In Sudan, President Bashir was ousted in April 2019 in a coup d’état by the national army amid protests by citizens, following
30 years of his autocratic military rule. Subsequently, despite calls for democratization and the establishment of a civilian
government, democratic forces were eliminated in a military coup in October 2021, and in April 2023, civil war broke out between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who together carried out this coup.
Since then, the civil war has been affecting large swathes of the country, including the capital Khartoum, continuing until
now, and the situation remains critical, with 10 million people becoming refugees and displaced persons. This issue of “AfricaNOW” presents a special feature titled ‘Crisis in Sudan as the civil war continues’, focusing on the current situation and historical background of the Sudanese civil war.
pp. 3-7		 Interview with Abdin Mohamed: Why the Sudanese civil war has not stopped
Interview with Abdin Mohamed, a researcher from Sudan who has lived in Japan for 26 years. We asked about the situation from the collapse of the Bashir regime to the civil war and the lives of the people under the civil war. He analyzed thehistory of military-led Sudanese politics that has led to the current civil war and the background to RSF’s growing power,
and why the fighting between SAF and RSF has not stopped. He also warns of the danger of civil war in Sudan threatening to destabilize the whole region from East to West Africa.
pp. 8-10		 Humanitarian crisis in Sudan: The impacts of conflict and assistance by various actors
by Nakasa Kaoi
Nakasa Kaoi, who was stationed in Khartoum as a staff of the Japan International Cooperation Agency ( JICA) Sudan
Office until just after the outbreak of the civil war, reported on the evacuation of her Sudanese friends and colleagues. She
describes how, even in the middle of the civil war, grassroots support networks of Sudanese people have been organized toprovide a variety of support activities based on an understanding of the needs of the local population
pp. 10-11		 The chronology of Sudan and commentary
pp. 12-13		 The story of the Sudanese restaurant “Shendi” in Osaka l by Elsayed Kaori
Elsayed Kaori, who is married to a Sudanese man, lived in Sudan with their children for seven years. Now she runs Sudanese Restaurant “Shendi” in Osaka. She hopes that through Sudanese cuisine, she will be able to create interest in Sudan and give people theopportunity to learn a little more about the wars that are happening in the world and to meet up each other on various occasions.
p. 13
Hibiscus tea in Sudan by Hakoyama Fumiko
AJF member Hakoyama Fumiko, who was in Sudan on UNICEF business, introduces Sudanese Karkade (hibiscus tea).
pp. 14-15
pp. 16-17

Interview with Lynette Mabote-Eyde: Realizing the right to health for all people(Japanese version)
Interview with Lynette Mabote-Eyde: Realizing the right to health for all people(English original version)

Interview with Lynette Mabote-Eyde, a South African-based consultant on access to affordable health care and other issues.
Currently, one in three HIV-positive persons in South Africa is seriously ill. Within this status quo, she continues to fight foraccess to one affordable, equitable and efficacious diagnostic tools, vaccines, therapeutics and drugs which has been restrictedby patent, IP, regulatory and procurement barriers. Lynette also introduced her own activities. She identified 18 women who
were forcibly sterilized because of their HIV status, and brought a legal action against the government of Namibia, and finallywon it. In addition, she had to prove that there was causality between the men working in the gold mines and having silicosis.
She took many goldmine companies to court through a class action.

Good bye TAAA and thank you South Africa by Kuga Yuko
pp. 18-19
The Together with Africa and Asia Association (TAAA) ended its 31 years of activity in South Africa and dissolved the association
at the end of December 2023. Looking back on TAAA’s activities, Kuga Yuko, TAAA’s former representative director, and Hirabayashi Kaoru, TAAA’s former South Africa Office project manager, contributed their reports to this issue of “Africa NOW”.
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Kuga explained TAAA’s 31 years of activities in three phases. From 1992 to 2001, TAAA indirectly supported school education in South Africa by connecting with NGOs and local governments across the country and sending educational supplies.
From 2002 to 2011, TAAA was directly involved with the schools and developed support activities. Particularly, three schoolbased projects, such as providing books, vegetable gardening and football were set up and promoted. In the last 12 years from2012 to 2023, TAAA has concentrated on consolidating its target areas and focusing on training local people.

My 20-years of work at TAAA, together with South Africa by Hirabayashi Kaoru
pp. 20-21
Hirabayashi began working with TAAA in Durban, South Africa, in 2003. She had been based in Hibberdene, Ugu district,southern KwaZulu-Natal province since 2010, where she worked on TAAA projects in rural areas. For the past 20 years, she
has been based in about 100 primary, secondary and high schools in KwaZulu-Natal, distributing books and focusing on
setting up a library in each school. She has also been involved in vegetable garden activities through organic farming and supported sport activities through the distribution of footballs.
Keeping my father’s memory alive by Ueda Yoshiki
pp. 22-23
This is the 18th installment of “African Kids Club’s Relay Essay.” Born in 1997 in Cape Town, South Africa, to a South African father and Japanese mother, Ueda Yoshiki has lived in Japan since the age of five. The death of his father, John James Issel,
an anti-apartheid leader, at the age of 13, prompted him to look at his roots as a South African and the character and talents
he inherited from his father. He is now involved in Palestine Solidarity and hopes that, like the South Africans who ended
apartheid, Palestinian children will realize that people around the world are speaking up to stop the genocide in Palestine
The sketches of Ghanaian naming ceremony in Japan by Akosua Yuki Osanopp. 24-25
Akosua Yuki Osano was an exchange student at the University of Ghana in 2018-19. Based on a fieldwork in Ghana on family
relationships, she wrote “The Ghanaian Way of Making a Family: A Life Journal of the Caring and the Cared for”. She described participants in the naming ceremony, an event held to celebrate the birth of a baby in the Ghanaian community near
Soka city in Saitama prefecture in Japan, referring to their nearest and dearest as ‘mother’, ‘grandfather’ or ‘sibling’, regardlessof whether they are related by blood or marriage. She stated that we have all, to a greater or lesser extent, grown up in diverseand complex relationships that cannot be divided into family or strangers.
Pandemic Agreement and International Health Regulations: Fact-based monitoring is crucial
p. 26by Inaba Masaki
The international community is currently making progress in revising the International Health Regulations and formulating aPandemic Agreement as international rules for dealing with pandemics. On the other hand, opposition to this has arisen in many
countries, saying that the treaty will make WHO a supranational entity and deprive countries of their sovereignty, and that thePandemic Agreement is a treaty to protect the interests of global pharmaceutical companies. Inaba Masaki, Africa Japan Forum(AJF)’s co-chair and program director for global health, pointed out that these objections are factually incorrect conspiracy theories. He states that the revised International Health Regulations and the Pandemic Agreement require global cooperation against
pandemics so that safe, equitable and rapid measures can be implemented.

Tools, methodologies and challenges for food situation analysis by Tsuchiya (Inoue) Yasukop. 27
This is the second installment of “The World Seen Through Food.” This issue reports on an online seminar on 15 December 2023,
featuring Tsumura Yasuhiro, head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Japan Office. Tsumura explained thetools used by WFP to analyze the food situation, such as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) and pointed outthat the IPC classifies the severity of food insecurity into five levels: Minimal/None, Stressed, Crisis, Emergency, Catastrophe/Famine. He also pointed to the challenges of analyzing the food situation, including difficulties in obtaining funding, lack of accuracy in data and gaps between the results of analytical studies and proposed actions.
Back cover2

Afterword (‘Hitotsu no musubime to shite’ in Japanese) and a record of AJF’s activities

Africa NOW 125

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