DAKAR, 16 November 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS:

BURKINA FASO: Producers reluctant to sell crops, market prices rising CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Settling Bakassi – interview with UN envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi – more than one place, more than one problem CAMEROON-NIGERIA: The Bakassi Zone – the twilight of a Nigerian enclave COTE D'IVOIRE: Awash in arms GUINEA-LIBERIA: Nathaniel Dorbor, "Blood comes from my ears and nose and my school paper gets red" MALI: Making pipe dreams come true MAURITANIA: High food prices spark protests MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Is Mauritania ready for its refugees? NIGERIA: Grain merchants price gouging, some officials say WEST AFRICA: Region's children worse off despite legislation

BURKINA FASO: Producers reluctant to sell crops, market prices rising

Even in a "good" year, around one million of the 12.8 million people who live in Burkina Faso do not get enough to eat every year, mostly due to poverty. This year, grain prices are rising sharply, putting more at risk.

Producers are accused of hoarding and merchants of price gouging. Despite government predictions of a national surplus overall, shortfalls are reported in key production areas – and internal markets and exports mean there may be shortages.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75331

CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Settling Bakassi – interview with UN envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah

After 43 years of border tensions and occasional violence, Nigeria and Cameroon appear to have resolved their border issues once and for all.

In October, the first of six UN observers arrived in Nigeria near the disputed Bakassi peninsula to monitor the final phase of Nigeria's pull out and transfer of authority to Cameroon. The handover, which began in August 2006, should be complete by June 2008.

The agreement on Bakassi is one of four that the two countries reached over their 2,300 km boundary from Lake Chad in the north to the coast.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75306

CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi – more than one place, more than one problem

Some 20 Cameroonian soldiers were reportedly killed on 13 November by men in military uniforms in the Bakassi peninsula, a territory won from Nigeria in the International Court of Justice in 2002.

A Nigeria analyst told IRIN that suspicion was focussing on militants from the nearby Niger Delta but observers also say locals may be involved.

In a recent visit to the peninsula many locals expressed a strong antipathy to Cameroonian rule. Most interviewed preferred to be under Nigerian sovereignty. Some said they would fight to be free from Cameroon.

Halfway through a two-year process of transferring the long-disputed region from Nigeria to Cameroon, there are three areas of Bakassi, each with its own issues. In all three areas, residents told IRIN of their anger and frustration with a transition process that began in August 2006 marked by the formal pullout of Nigerian civilian and military elements.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75287

CAMEROON-NIGERIA: The Bakassi Zone – the twilight of a Nigerian enclave

Nigeria handed day-to-day control of most of the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in June 2006, implementing a ruling by the International Court of Justice. However Nigerian police will remain in control of southern and western parts of the enclave until June 2008. This enclave, cut off from Nigeria proper by Cameroonian territory and the sea, is called the Bakassi Zone.

The twilight of Nigerian administration has left the zone in an administrative limbo, and much of the zone's population live in crowded and unsanitary conditions without basic services.

Local leaders blame the transitional process. "The health clinic no longer functions. The water pumps are broken and we have no teachers so the school has been abandoned," said a man who identified himself as Chief Cassidy and said he was a local leader in Abana, one of two car-less towns along a beach that overlooks Nigerian-controlled offshore oil rigs.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75330

COTE D'IVOIRE: Awash in arms

While Ivorian politicians and the international community lament a lack of progress in disarmament and other aspects of the country's peace accord, ordinary citizens are increasingly falling victim to violent crime in their daily activities.

In one incident in October, seven masked men, each carrying two AK-47s, held up market trucks in the northwest.

"They shot in the air and forced us off the trucks," a woman merchant in the regional capital, Odienne, told IRIN. "Among them they had 14 Kalashnikovs." As citizens face criminals armed with AKs and even rocket launchers, few weapons have been rounded up in a disarmament process called for in the peace agreement signed more than eight months ago.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75302

GUINEA-LIBERIA: Nathaniel Dorbor, Guinea: "Blood comes from my ears and nose and my school paper gets red"

At first it looks like a trendy haircut, but the shiny hairless strips across 12-year-old Nathaniel's head are scars from when a Liberian rebel attacked him with a knife.

He was about six months old when rebels invaded his village in Lofa County, Liberia. His mother, Hélène, wrapped his head and they fled, eventually making it to Guinea, where they have lived ever since.

Nathaniel is among a group of Liberian, Sierra Leonean and Ivorian men, women and children at a Conakry shelter for refugees needing medical treatment.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75329

MALI: Making pipe dreams come true

For years, women in the Malian village Sotuba squabbled over the two state-run standpipes, having walked two or three kilometres in search of water for their families.

Then, three years ago, a young entrepreneur, Bakary Koïta, contacted the national water provider, Energie du Mali (EDM), and drilled his own private standpipe. He recruited unemployed youths to fill jerry-cans with water and take them by cart to people's homes.

"Obviously, the price is a little higher, but the women no longer have to come all the way," Koïta told IRIN. "The conflicts, problems and little quarrels surrounding the water points are now limited."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75274

MAURITANIA: High food prices spark protests

Several towns and cities in Mauritania have been hit by protests against rising food prices, according to news reports.

On 12 November, in Zouérate in north central Mauritania the army was called in to disperse looters who vandalised and burned shops, according to the French news agency AFP. There has also been unrest in the towns Néma, Kiffa, Timbédra, Djiguenny, Kobeiny, Kankossa, Rosso and Ayoun, Radio France Internationale reported.

According to the Mauritanian statistics agency, annual inflation has reached 28 percent on some locally-grown foodstuffs.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75286

MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Is Mauritania ready for its refugees?

Mauritania, Senegal and the UN Refugee Agency recently signed an agreement that could turn the page on an ugly history in Mauritania, where 75,000 blacks were forcefully expelled from their country in 1989.

Some of the 30,000 Mauritanian refugees who remain exiled in Senegal and have now been invited to return home wonder if Mauritania is logistically ready to receive them.

"Everything remains to be redone," Amadou Ndiaye, spokesperson for the Collective of Mauritanian Refugees for Solidarity and Durable Solutions (CRMSSD), said at a press conference in Dakar on 15 November. "Some villages no longer exist. The roads, the hospitals, the schools, everything has to be reconstructed."

Mauritania's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, has shown the political will to welcome home the refugees, but many worry that infrastructure and organisation is lacking in some parts of the country.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75345

NIGERIA: Grain merchants price gouging, some officials say

With little information on this year's harvest in northern Nigeria available market traders are using rumours of imminent food shortages to push prices beyond most people's reach.

Traders at the Dawanau market in Kano, the largest food market in West Africa, told IRIN that over the last two months they have raised prices for a sack of maize – the most common staple food in the region – from US$20 to $31, a bag of millet from $19 to $28, and cowpeas to from $39 to $54. Rice has risen to $78 from $63.

Northern Nigeria includes many of the poorest provinces in the country and news of the cuts is causing worries among ordinary people who are struggling to buy food to eat.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75269

WEST AFRICA: Region's children worse off despite legislation

Children in West Africa are as likely to be raped, trafficked, beaten or abused and less likely to go to school, receive proper healthcare or be properly nourished, compared to 15 years ago, despite binding legislation meant to improve children's situation.

The findings were announced at a 6-8 November meeting to assess progress by governments towards implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The conference was held in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou.

"We went through the reports countries submit on their progress every year and realised quickly that nothing really has been done – very few things have improved in the region over the last 15 years," said Stefanie Conrad at the NGO Plan International in Dakar, which participated in the Ouagadougou meeting.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75285

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