Monday 18 June 2018
Nigeria to transform to major driver of global growth – Lai Mohammed
Children in UK exceed annual sugar intake limit in 6 months
Children in the UK have consumed more than a year’ s worth of sugar in less than six months, public health figures showed.
While four-to-ten-year-olds should not have more than the equivalent of five to six sugar cubes per day, they are consuming 13 on average, according to data from the latest National Diet and Nutrition Survey.
This means children will have around 4,760 cubes of sugar by the end of the year— more than double the maximum recommendation. Too much sugar is blamed for high obesity rates in children and dental decay.
The British Department for Health agency is urging parents to try to cut back on sugary drinks, cakes and biscuits.
“ We’ re barely halfway through the year and already children have consumed far
Diaspora remittances to developing countries to exceed $ 6.5trn between 2015-2030
International Fund for Agricultural Development( IFAD) has estimated that remittances sent to developing countries could cross $ 6.5 trillion between 2015 and 2030, involving over 1 billion senders and receivers.
IFAD said in 2017, 200 million migrants sent $ 481 billion to remittances-reliant countries of which $ 466 billion went to developing countries, helping sustain about 800 million people across the world.
This amounts to more than three times the annual official development assistance that countries give in aid, the rural development agency said.
Close to half of remittances will go to rural areas where poverty and hunger are the highest, according to IFAD.
“ Remittances are vital for mildent Muhammadu Buhari was implementing the right policies to maximise the projection for national development.
“ To some, this is a ticking time bomb. What if there is no opportunity? What will youths without jobs do, mobilise, destabilise? True in Africa, urbanisation has not correlated with poverty reduction as it has in other regions. However, where some see looming clouds, I see a concentration of energy,’’ he said.
The minister added:“ The number of people reaching working age will be larger than the rest of the world combined by 2035. And they will be young.
“ This great pool of vibrant and energetic labour has the potential to transform the continent’ s development. If there is one country that is emblematic of this, it is perhaps Nigeria. Indeed, it will be largest contributor to this surge.
“ We shall move from being the 7th largest nation on earth to
Minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, says Nigeria will transform to major driver of global growth with its pool of vibrant, energetic youths and government’ s repositioning policies.
The minister said this in a keynote address he delivered at the 2018‘ Africa Together Conference’ at the University of Cambridge in the UK on Saturday.
A text of the minister’ s address was made available to newsmen on Sunday in Abuja by his special adviser, Segun Adeyemi.
The minister was speaking on the global projection of Africa’ s population, which is said to double by 2050.
According to Mohammed, the anticipated development will not be a threat to the continent and the member states if proper things are done.
Mohammed specifically said the administration of Presimore sugar than is healthy— it’ s no surprise this is contributing to an obesity crisis,” said Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at PHE.
“ Snacks and drinks are adding unnecessary sugar to children’ s diets without us even noticing. Swapping to lower- or no-added-sugar alternatives is something all parents can work towards,” Tedstone said.
In spite of the publicity around the sugar levy, which began in April, sugary drinks such as colas, lemonades and juices are still one of the biggest sources of sugar in children’ s diets.
They account for 10 percent of sugar consumed by children, as do buns, cakes, pastries and fruit pies.
Biscuits are almost as big a problem, making up 9 percent of children’ s intake, with spreads, jams and table sugar also contributing 9 percent.
lions of families, helping them to address their own development goals, but we can help them do more and build their longerterm future,” Gilbert Houngbo, President of IFAD said.
According to IFAD analysis, families spend about 75 percent of their remittances on basic needs such as food, housing, education and health.
“ Remittances help reduce hunger and malnutrition, improve education and health levels, and lift people out of poverty. By doing so, remittances contribute directly to the Sustainable Development Goals set by the international community in 2015.
“ Not only are remittances a critical lifeline for millions globally, the direct benefits of money sent home by migrant workers touch the lives of one in every the 3rd. And among the ten largest nations on earth, Nigeria will be the fastest growing,’’ he said.
The minister said the Buhari administration was steadily transforming Nigeria through innovative measures that were yielding positive results and repositioning the country for greatness.
He listed investment in people, changing the business environment and building national infrastructure as some of the areas in which the administration had made a great impact.
According to him, by focusing on education and skills acquisition, the administration is addressing the need to create opportunities for the country’ s teeming youth population.
To address the challenge of school enrolment and high number of out-of- school children, he said 8.2 million are being fed daily free meals in 45,000 schools.
He said the Home-Grown School Feeding programme had
Other big sources of sugar include breakfast cereals( 8 %), chocolate confectionery( 7 %), and yoghurts, from age frais and other dairy desserts( 6 %).
Fruit juice and smoothies can count as one of the five fruits and vegetables everybody is encouraged to eat per day, but they contain a lot of natural sugar.
PHE said that one serving a day of no more than 150ml is enough, which should be drunk with a meal not as a snack. PHE suggests parents should swap their children’ s sugary drinks for water, lower fat plain milks, sugar-free or no-added-sugar drinks.
It also offered ideas on its Change4Life website. It said that lower sugar snacks include fruit, plain rice cakes, toast, fruit teacakes, malted loaf or bagels with lower-fat spread.
The Obesity Health Alliance said PHE’ s figures were alarming.
seven persons on the planet,” IFAD said.
According to IFAD, after spending remittances on basic needs such as food, housing, education and health, a sizable amount – over 100 billion dollars, still remains.
“ This presents a large pool of resources, which can then be invested in financial and tangible assets such as savings or small business development that help families build their future.
“ These productive activities can also create jobs and transform economies, in particular in rural areas.
“ Given appropriate investment options, customised to their circumstances and goals, remittance families will invest more and become agents of change in their communities,” IFAD said. yielded other results, including the employment of more than 80,000 cooks and a ready-made market for food crop farmers.
The minister said skills shortages in the labour pool were being addressed through several measures, including the fourpronged N-Power programme.
He said the administration was also changing the business environment for good, focusing especially on removing the red tape that makes it cumbersome for business and stifles innovation.
The minister noted that the challenge of access to credit was also being frontally addressed by making it possible for MSMEs to register their movable assets, such as vehicles and equipment for collateral, to raise loans and finance.
Mohammed told his audience that the two most critical impediments against business, decent transport connections and a reliable power supply, were also being tackled.
“ For instance, Nigeria earmarks 30 per cent of its annual national budgets for capital expenditure. That means N2.7 trillion has gone toward our infrastructure in the last two years-unprecedented in our history,’’ he said.
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SEYI JOHN SALAU
BUSINESS DAY
A7 NEWS
NGOs want sickle cell disorder treated as major public health challenge
As part of efforts to deepen the awareness for sickle cell disorder, the Coalition of NGOs in Lagos has called on the government to pay more attention to the disorder by treating cases of sickle cell disorder as a major public health challenge in Nigeria.
This call was made as the coalition commemorates this year’ s awareness campaign with a charity walk on the theme“ SCD: A Walk for Hope.”
Toyin Adesola, chairperson, Coalition of Sickle Cell Disorder NGOs, Lagos State / executive director, Sickle Cell Advocacy and Management Initiatives( SAMI), said,“ The coalition is working to sensitive Nigerians to recognise the disorder as a major public health problem.”
According to Adesola, about 1-in-4 persons in Nigeria are healthy carriers of the sickle cell gene and over 150,000 children are born annually with symptomatic sickle cell anaemia.
“ Our goal is to improve the quality of life of people with sickle cell disorder in Nigeria and increase their average life expectancy from less than 20 years to what obtains among affected persons in the US – 60 years – and even surpass it.“ This can only happen if all hands are on deck, with governments working in concert alongside the private sector, NGOs and communities across the country,” she said.
Annette Akinsete, national director / CEO, Sickle Cell Foundation of Nigeria, said the walk was to create awareness to the public and also to get active participation from the government and private organisations.
“ The World sickle Cell Day is to spread accurate information about sickle cell because there is so much misinformation in the public,” Akinsete said.
Akinsete added that Red Umbrella Walk was to mobilise everyone including the government to pay attention and fund projects on sickle cell disorder.“ The coalition of NGOs is to strengthen our campaigns and we believe that this will make our voices to be louder to attract the attention of the government and corporate organisations,” she said.
The Red Umbrella Charity Walk is an annual event that helps to deepen awareness about Sickle Cell Disorder. Through the campaign, people are given proper education on how to identify individuals with the disorder as well as tips on how to manage the conditions and crisis that occur to them.
The event tagged‘ Red Umbrella Charity Walk’ sponsored by Fidelity Bank Plc. is to commemorate the World Sickle Cell Day. Nigeria joined the rest of the world to commemorate the 2018 World Sickle Cell Day on June 19 as designated by the United Nations to draw attention and create necessary awareness to the problems posed by sickle cell disorder.