DAKAR, 15 June 2007 (IRIN) - AFRICA: Critic of Africa's dependency on aid dies NIGER: UN says education sector ready for more donor attention NIGER-NIGERIA: Nigeria's malnourished throng to Niger's feeding centres

AFRICA: Critic of Africa's dependency on aid dies

DAKAR, 11 June 2007 (IRIN) - Senegal's leading film maker and author Ousmane Sembène, who was a staunch critic of Africans taking aid from the West, is dead. His films and books often touched on issues of colonialism and Western racism but his subject always focused on what Africans need to do for themselves. "The one theme running through all his work was that Africans need to stand up and take responsibility for their actions," Gnilan Ndiaye an authority on Senegalese culture told IRIN on Monday. Sembène's most outspoken film about Africa's dependency on western aid, 'Guelwaar' (1992) equates it with prostitution. In one scene in the film African leaders are seen applauding Western donors for giving them free food aid until the protagonist embarrasses them by saying, "You are applauding your own shame."

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NIGER: UN says education sector ready for more donor attention

NIAMEY, 12 June 2007 (IRIN) - Niger's government along with two United Nations agencies have called on donors and NGOs to restart assistance for education in Niger following a corruption scandal last year which led to the freezing of most funds. "[We] call on all development partners to pool their resources to improve access to quality education in Niger," Niger's ministry of education said in a joint statement which was released on Monday with the World Food Programme and the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF). With just 54 percent of the 2.1 million children between six and 12 in Niger currently going to school, the country ranks last in the world for access to education, according to the UN Human Development Report. Only three girls out of every ten go to school.

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NIGER-NIGERIA: Nigeria's malnourished throng to Niger's feeding centres

KANO, 13 June 2007 (IRIN) - Emergency feeding centres for malnourished children in Niger, the poorest country in the world, are drawing a growing numbers of mothers with malnourished children from oil-rich Nigeria who cross the border in search of medical help not available at home. "In Nigeria, the government health infrastructure has completely collapsed in rural areas," said Ben Foot, Nigeria programme manager for Save the Children. "Even when there are drugs and equipment available people have to pay and they can't afford them." At least 10 percent of children being treated in some of Save the Children's feeding centres in southern Niger's Maradi Region, across the border from northern Nigeria, are Nigerian. Other aid agencies in Niger said that close to the Niger-Nigeria border up to 90 percent of children being given nutritional supplements, vaccinations and free healthcare come from Nigeria. Northern Nigeria and neighbouring Niger share the same semi-arid climate and reliance on rain-fed subsistence agriculture.

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