Prized in Asia, South African abalone victim of illegal overfishing

The demand for abalone, this marine mollusc, pushed HIK Abalone to start farming it.

The South African company runs two farms where 13 million sea snails live. Here, they navigate quickly in tanks. Raised, fed and shipped, dried or canned, to Hong Kong, a few are exported live for high-end customers.

In Hawston, abalone is highly prized, almost every family here has a fishing boat. For three decades many fishing communities along this coast have survived thanks to this mollusc. Raphael Fisher was born into fishing. Over the years, he has seen his income collapse due to intensive fishing. The South African government completely banned abalone fishing before introducing quotas of 120 kilograms per year for smallholders.

If I don't succeed, there are no other jobs in Hawston, so what other option would be available to me? That's why I took a wetsuit and I dove, because I have a family to feed, my children have to be looked after and go to school, he explains.

Hong Kong imports between 2,000 and 3,000 tonnes of illegal South African abalone per year, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime report. This restaurant offers cooked South African abalone for $190. Abalone is more than a delicacy for millions of Chinese people.

This 2022 report found that the illegal abalone trade to central Hong Kong was worth nearly $1 billion between 2000 and 2016. Some abalone is moved to other major markets in China, Japan and Taiwan.

Mozambique: AI to track tuberculosis in prisons

In the courtyard of a maximum security prison in Maputo, Mozambique, a man with a shaved head, in an orange T-shirt crossed out with the word "inmate", waits patiently, his chest facing a large white tablet hung vertically.

Behind him, a nurse presses the button on the portable lungs.

AI makes it possible to read the radio precisely and instantly, without requiring the expertise of a doctor.

“It’s real time, we have the results in less than five minutes,” explains the caregiver.

The image soon appears on the screen of a technician, installed a few meters away, accompanied by a diagnosis: "Radiological signs suggestive of tuberculosis -- negative", displays the computer.

The test is part of a pilot project to examine inmates in three prisons in the Mozambican capital run by Stop TB, an organization supported by the United Nations.

Overcrowded prisons are a hotbed of tuberculosis, the second deadliest disease in the world, after Covid, and which infected more than ten million people in 2022 and killed 1.3 million, according to the WHO.

Nearly one in four people who contracted the disease last year were in Africa. Mozambique, which has a population of 32 million, has recorded around 120,000 cases.

Early diagnosis helps save lives and stop the spread, because while chronic cough is a hallmark of TB, some carriers show no symptoms.

This is particularly true in prison, where tuberculosis spreads through the air and crowded cells provide breeding ground.

According to the United Nations, Mozambique's prisons were approximately 50% over capacity in 2022.

- "Science fiction" -

The portable X-ray machine, aided by AI, improves traditional diagnosis because it is faster than skin or blood tests that must be analyzed in the laboratory. In addition, it does not require patients to travel and does without radiologists, who may be rare in rural areas or poor countries, explains Suvanand Sahu, deputy director of Stop TB.

“It’s a big technological step forward,” he enthuses.

At the provincial penitentiary in Maputo, Mozambique's capital, inmates who test positive are quarantined behind a rusty metal door.

Inside, a dozen men wearing masks sit on mattresses on the floor, while clothes, blankets and other personal belongings hang from a rope fixed between two faded blue pillars. Serious cases are taken to the infirmary.

"It's not easy to see your comrades stretch out, play, but you have to accept that I'm sick," confides Kennet Fortune, detained for ten years on a drug charge, pointing to the trees in the courtyard. the prison.

Testing positive for tuberculosis, he is currently undergoing treatment which may take months. “When the time comes, I will come out.”

Earlier this month, a WHO report found that the number of deaths from tuberculosis worldwide declined in 2022, a sign of progress in eradicating the disease.

And 7.5 million people were newly diagnosed over the same period, the highest figure since WHO began monitoring TB in 1995.

Stop TB's Mr Sahu hopes the success of pilot projects like Mozambique's will help secure funding to scale up the use of AI and wearable radios, and beat the disease.

"Just a few years ago, if I had said at a meeting that we could bring X-rays everywhere that would be read by a machine without the use of radiologists, I would have been told to go write a novel of science fiction,” he smiles.

Madagascar: Rajoelina wins the elections

Festive atmosphere among supporters of Andry Rajoelina, in Madagascar. The outgoing president won the vote held on November 16. 58.95% of the votes.

“The Malagasy people have chosen their president,” he declared on Saturday, congratulating voters in a grandiloquent tone for the “wisdom” of their choice, shortly after the announcement of the results of the electoral commission, which have yet to be validated by the High Constitutional Court.

A few days before the November 16 election, he bluntly stated, during an interview with AFP, that there would only be one round in this election. “There is only one man today capable of leading the country,” he said.

Beneath his smooth features as a first communicant, Rajoelina did not allow himself to be intimidated during the campaign either by the legal attacks or by the regular protests in the street at the call of his opponents, who include political heavyweights such as the former -presidents Marc Ravalomanana and Hery Rajaonarimampianina.

“There are always people who try to sow trouble in Madagascar,” he simply regretted, without losing his smile, as he went to drop off his ballot in an office in Antananarivo, accompanied by his wife and her three impeccable-looking children.

For several weeks and without respite, before the election, ten opposition candidates united as a collective demonstrated with hundreds of supporters in the streets of Antananarivo. They denounce Rajoelina's dual nationality, and they promised to continue.

In June, the press revealed that Andry Rajoelina had been naturalized French in 2014, discreetly. According to the opposition, this was to prevent him from running, but the courts refused to invalidate his candidacy.

He explains on public television and radio channels that he acted "out of love for his children", in order to facilitate their studies abroad. Not hesitating to invoke Barack Obama, of Kenyan origin through his father, or even Nelson Mandela, he minimizes the debate which is igniting the Indian Ocean island.

- “Megalo totalitarian” -

He continues to fly to the four corners of the country, by helicopter or private plane, to deliver speeches, carefully prepared and proofread with a highlighter, during meetings resembling a big show where stars of the local music scene are invited.

The crowds turn out, but critics are quick to point out that many of the thousands of fervent participants are paid to come. Some also question the origin of the candidate's significant financial resources and his proximity to rich and influential businessmen.

“He’s a totalitarian megalomaniac,” complains one of his old political enemies, on condition of anonymity.

No matter, Rajoelina continues to list every school, road or hospital built over the last five years, setting himself up as a "building president" in a country that lacks everything and is among the poorest on the planet.

Before entering politics, the ambitious young man from the middle class was better known for the evenings he hosted on the microphone or behind the turntables for the capital's golden youth.

He marries a woman from a wealthy background, Mialy, and becomes the boss of advertising companies. In his thirties, he earned his nickname "TGV", from the name of his party (Tanora Gasy Vonona, determined young Malagasy people) and because of his meteoric rise in politics.

In 2007, he created a surprise by taking the town hall of Antananarivo in the first round. And from the end of 2008, his supporters openly challenged the regime in the streets and ended up, with the implicit support of the military, driving the millionaire Marc Ravalomanana from power.