Month: August 2018

A lorry which struck the underside of a low bridge could have caused chaos on the A14, were it not for the swift recovery work of Highways England traffic officers and their partners.

The vehicle hit the underside of the Huntingdon Railway Viaduct, which carries the A14 over the rail line and through the town, at 1.15am last Wednesday (22 August). The bridge has a 4.4 metre (14ft 6in) height restriction in place on it, with the HGV too big to pass beneath.

A lane was closed on Brampton Road following the crash, which could have seen the bridge beams damaged and made the viaduct unable to support its weight, let alone the 77,000 drivers who cross it daily on the A14, closing both the road and railway beneath it too. Such damage would have seen the bridge need assessments which could lake six months, with the repair and inspection work likely costing around £2 million.

Fortunately the damage was only superficial, and Highways England traffic officers, along with contractors Kier, Cambridgeshire Police and Cambridgeshire County Council, were quick to act at the scene, minimising disruption before the morning rush hour hit prevent the town centre road being closed fully. With the lorry trapped beneath the steel beams of the bridge, they released air from the tyres to move it back.

Highways England service manager Austin Adkins said:

Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to drivers of tall vehicles that they need to take extra care on their journeys, particularly with low bridges, as hitting them can easily be avoided yet have a far reaching impact. I want to thank our operatives and partners who worked together to swiftly resolve what could have been a hugely disruptive incident, even with the damage being minimal.

The Huntingdon Railway Viaduct will be demolished after the new £1.5 billion A14 link between Cambridge and Huntingdon opens in December 2021, with new link roads making it easier to travel to, from and around the town.

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With the help of the British Army who are working closely with their Kenyan partners to combat terrorism and save lives in East Africa, the facility is expanding into a regional centre of excellence.

Training will be offered to Kenyan security forces and other African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troop-contributing nations in the region. Continued UK support will also include £2.3 million a year from the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) and mentoring from the British Army.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said:

“From supporting counter-terrorist operations in Mali to improvised explosive device disposal training in Kenya, our Armed Forces are helping to build a more secure Africa. By tackling the terrorist threat abroad we are helping to keep our streets safe at home.”

Since 2015, 1,000 military and police personnel from East Africa have been trained by the British Army in identifying and destroying IEDs. Yet, in the same period the use of IEDs has increased by around 300 per cent in Somalia, where casualties are often civilians.

By November 2020, the wing is expected to have developed into a fully-functioning, independent centre of excellence where East African instructors will provide specialised IED disposal training.

The expansion forms part of a new UK-Kenya security agreement which is allowing both countries to keep pace with the changing nature of threats and to renew our cooperation on counter-terrorism, child protection, and regional security. The Prime Minister also announced over £7 million of new UK funding to support AMISOM, as she called on international donors to contribute more to the peacekeeping mission.

Her visit reaffirms that the UK will support the project until it operates independently as a regional and continental centre of excellence.

• UK support will help tackle killer cattle diseases and grow smaller scale farms into major commercial operations
• Investment in farming is vital as Africa is facing unprecedented population growth

UK aid will transform the agricultural sector in African countries, including research and technology projects to tackle killer cattle diseases and create better paid jobs for farmers.

A profitable agricultural sector is essential to African countries, contributing half of the continent’s total export value. The World Bank estimates the sector accounts for 20% of the continent’s entire GDP.

And over the next 30 years, Africa will face unprecedented population growth and producing enough food for that increased number of people will be crucial in reducing poverty.

UK aid, through the Department for International Development (DFID), is supporting a number of separate transformative projects to protect the continent’s agricultural sector and its small farmers, including:

• new support to the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed), helping to develop seven new vaccines for major neglected tropical diseases and widening their availability across Africa to benefit eight million smallholder farmers. This transformative UK aid research will not only stop diseases from destroying the livelihoods of African farmers, it could also help control livestock diseases on British farms;
• using investor AgDevCo to help small agricultural companies in Africa, including Kenya, attract long-term commercial finance to become profitable operations – allowing them to create jobs, support economic transformation and help countries move out of poverty;
• working with the Gates Foundation to launch a Food Trade and Resilience programme, to support companies who source, process and trade food across African borders, to benefit local farmers and improve countries’ resilience to famine and climate shocks;
• attracting more investment into firms that trade with smallholders, UK aid will help bring smaller farmers into commercial supply chains. The Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) Programme will increase the income of over 130,000 farmers by helping SMEs that trade with smallholders to expand and attract third party investment; and
• new research, led by UK-African partnerships across business and science, to develop new technology and innovations that will help to avoid food shortages and make food more nutritious, affordable, and resistant to climate change. The Agri-Tech Catalyst is a UK programme that awards funding for research projects looking to improve food production in the developing world.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said:

With over three quarters of people living in extreme poverty in rural areas and two thirds of those, mainly women, earning a living from agriculture we know that a healthy and prosperous agricultural sector in African countries is vital not only to ending hunger, but also reducing poverty and growing businesses.

This UK aid support will tackle killer livestock diseases and support innovations to deliver sustainable, nutritious food and create more jobs for farmers, as well as supporting global research efforts and fostering breakthroughs with the potential to benefit UK agriculture and consumers too. This is a win for African countries and a win the UK as well.

By 2050, 1 in 4 people on the planet will be African. Producing enough food for the growing population is a both a huge challenge and a very important opportunity for inclusive economic growth, investment and poverty reduction.

UK aid support to the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed) will save an estimated £400 million by averting the deaths of livestock and improve the distribution network to widen the availability of the vaccine.

Through the CASA Programme UK aid will help bring small farmers into commercial supply chains by attracting more investment into firms that trade with smallholders. The programme will create new jobs by helping SME firms that trade with smallholders expand and attract third party investment.

As new information, evidence and research is shared with business, governments and other donors other smallholders will benefit with these groups upping their investment in smallholder farming.

UK investor AgDevCo will help early stage agricultural businesses to expand and become fully commercial, allowing them to create jobs, support economic transformation and help countries move out of poverty. The non-profit company operates in Sub Saharan Africa, including in Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and Ghana. The new UK aid support will allow it to expand into Kenya. Its investment objective is to build profitable businesses that contribute to food security, drive economic growth and create jobs.

AgDevCo has already helped 1.6 million people across Africa increase their incomes by working with and developing agribusinesses. By 2025, UK aid support will allow 3.9 million people benefit from greater food security, higher incomes and more jobs.

The Food Trade and Resilience Programme will make it easier for commercial companies to buy from smallholder African farmers, helping to boost the income of 1.8 million farming families by 30%. This will make the lives of poorer communities dependent on agriculture more secure and prosperous.

As Africa has become urbanised, there has been a shift to low-nutrition diets which has a negative impact on health and wellbeing, including educational achievement for children. At the same time, additional steps in the ‘from field to fork’ process (harvesting, collecting and transporting, processing and packaging) have increased the risk of food shortages and price rises, which are likely to disproportionally affect the poor. This risk is made worse by the growing threat of climate change to crops, such as the higher risk of drought, flooding and erratic rainfall.

Innovations funded by UK aid through the Agri-Tech Catalyst will seek to tackle these challenges, ultimately helping to prevent food shortages, price rises and diet-related illnesses, and end hunger around the world.

Notes for Editors

• DFID is providing £12.6m to the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed) to develop seven new livestock vaccines for major neglected tropical diseases. Our support will also help establish five distribution networks across Africa and Asia, widening the availability of the vaccines to farmers and increasing their uptake . The diseases targeted by this project have been selected on the basis of which have the most significant economic impact and the lack of alternative suitable products.
• UK investor AgDevCo will enable early stage agricultural businesses to expand and become fully commercial, allowing them to create jobs, support economic transformation and help countries move out of poverty. The UK will provide it with a further £55 million in funding, allowing it to extend its programme. By 2025, this will allow 3.9 million people benefit from greater food security, higher incomes and more jobs.
• The UK is investing £20 million pounds to co-fund the Food Trade and Resilience Programme with the Gates Foundation. The project will provide expertise and advice to make it more profitable for commercial companies to buy from smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will increase the income of 1.8 million farming families, while helping to build resilience against rising food demand and climate shocks.
• The UK is funding crucial research, led by UK-African partnerships across business and science, to develop new technology and innovations that will help to avoid food shortages and make food more nutritious, affordable, and resistant to climate change.
• The Agri-Tech Catalyst is a UK programme that awards funding for research projects looking to improve food production in the developing world. The UK is providing £10m of additional investment for research projects seeking to tackle the most pressing challenges facing food production systems in Africa, such as low-nutrition diets, the risk of food shortages and the threat of climate change.

• UK aid to help 5,000 young Kenyan girls who have dropped out of school due to early marriage, motherhood and gender-based violence get back into education
• UK will also improve affordability and accessibility to voluntary family planning and vocational skills training for millions across Africa
• This will save girls’ lives and allow young people to plan their families, stay in education and get better jobs to support Africa’s future prosperity

UK aid will help millions more young people across Africa to access vital family planning services, receive a quality education and help them get better-paid jobs, it was announced as the Prime Minister was in Kenya today (30 August 2018).

This will empower young people to have better control of their health and futures, allowing them to choose whether to have children and when, while tackling inequality and improving youth education and employment for a strong and prosperous continent.

New UK aid programmes through the Department for International Development will:

• support up to 5,000 girls to start or get back into school for a brighter future – including girls who have dropped out due to early marriage or motherhood, or being the victim of gender-based violence – through UK aid’s new Leave No Girl Behind programme in Kenya;
• help hundreds of thousands more Kenyans access to safe, voluntary modern contraception over the next five years – particularly young people who want but currently struggle to access family planning services;
• help to create much needed, high quality jobs for young Kenyans by providing advice and grants to innovative start-ups or technology ventures that have most potential to create high numbers of jobs through the new Kenya Catalytic Jobs Fund;
• launch the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) programme that will ensure six million couples can use voluntary contraception every year of the programme, and prevent the deaths of around 20 women every day; and
• launch a global Skills for Prosperity programme, including major investment to help young Africans access skills training and vocational courses focused on getting them into better paid, future-proof jobs in industries struggling with skills gaps.

Minister for Africa Harriett Baldwin said:

It is a tragedy that so many young girls are needlessly robbed of their education and career aspirations. We will only lift people out of poverty by ensuring that every child can access quality education, healthcare and employment regardless of circumstance or gender.

By tackling these issues together, UK aid will save countless girls’ lives, while allowing young people to plan their families, stay in education and get better jobs, building better lives for millions of young Africans for now and the future.

In Kenya, 18% of girls have had or are pregnant with their first child by the age of 19. Improved access to family planning services will empower girls and women to plan when or whether to have a child, giving them the opportunity to complete their education and pursue a career, while contributing to sustainable economic growth in Kenya. It will also save thousands of lives by averting preventable maternal deaths.

Leave No Girl Behind will tackle other common barriers to girls’ education by helping girls that cannot afford to go to school due to poverty or poor accessibility for girls with disabilities. Up to 1,000 of the girls supported through the programme in Kenya will have a disability.

Skills for Prosperity will not only improve employment rates among young people, including in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt, it will also strengthen core industries in those countries and allow them to trade more prosperously with the UK.

Kenya’s young tell us they want opportunities, choices and jobs; we want to empower them with the means to ensure greater prosperity for themselves, their families and their country. The Kenya Catalytic Job Fund will support better paid, sustainable employment for Kenya’s youth by providing technical advice and grants to innovative business ideas with high potential to create a large numbers of jobs. This will give the country’s young people opportunities to leave poverty behind and stimulate economic growth and investments that will benefit the UK too.

A huge number of African women want to use contraception but do not have access to it, with 58 million women in sub-Saharan Africa wanting to avoid or delay pregnancies. WISH will prioritise the poorest and most in need, particularly young and marginalised women, increasing the number of ways and places they can access the vital family planning services they need, and helping to avert tens of thousands of maternal deaths.

This will empower millions of women with control over their bodies and support the future prosperity of young people in some of the world’s poorest countries by allowing them to plan when to have children, stay in education and get better jobs, to contribute to their country’s economic development.

This is why, as part of the UK’s new and distinctive offer to work alongside, invest in and partner with African nations, we will be bringing in more specialist health advisers to work with African governments and civil societies to enable women and girls to access the voluntary family planning that is right for them.

Notes to editors

Leave No Girl Behind

• Leave No Girl Behind is a UK aid project (up to £6.6 million) that will support up to 5,000 out-of-school girls get the vital education they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty – and to play a transformational role in their communities and societies.
• It will help an estimated 2,000 girls get back into mainstream primary or secondary school, and help give a further 3,000 girls education and training opportunities. Up to 1,000 of the girls supported by the project in Kenya will have disabilities.
• The UK is also strengthening Kenya’s education system, through support to the Global Partnership for Education. This will make Kenya less dependent on aid, as it moves towards a modern partnership with the UK.
• This is part of the UK’s commitment to ensure every girl across the globe can receive 12 years of quality education.
• Getting girls into school, and then into good employment, allows them to play a transformational role lifting their communities out of poverty, growing their economies and shaping the future of their countries. Globally, if all women had a quality primary education we could:
• Reduce maternal deaths by 2/3, saving 98,000 lives
• Reduce the number of child deaths by 15%
• Save 1.7 million children from stunting
• Avert 14% of child marriages

Family Planning in Kenya

• By the age of 19, 18% of girls in Kenya have had or are pregnant with their first child. Early pregnancy carries significant health risks and limits girls’ life choices and their ability to fulfil their potential.
• The Government of Kenya recognises family planning as an essential tool in reducing poverty, particularly by stabilising population growth and allowing young people to choose when to finish school and get a job, which will help to stimulate economic growth and prosperity in Kenya.
• The UK will provide £36 million between January 2019 and January 2024 to support the Government of Kenya to increase access to modern family planning services in 19 counties (out of 47) where fewer than 45% of women use any modern contraceptive. This will support at least 320,000 additional users of safe, voluntary, modern contraception in Kenya.

Kenya Catalytic Job Fund

• Africa’s young people tell us exactly what they want: opportunities, choices and jobs. We want to empower them with the means to ensure greater prosperity for themselves, their families and their country.
• The Kenya Catalytic Job Fund will invest £5 million over the next four years with a focus on creating jobs for young people in agriculture and manufacturing; for the most marginalised such as youth with disabilities; and those outside of the formal economy, such as in small-scale farming and microenterprises.
• The programme will provide technical assistance and grants to test innovative business ideas with the most potential to create jobs at scale and remove barriers to growth, such as start-ups providing new solutions to unmet problems or technologies that will overcome current barriers to growth.

Skills for Prosperity

• Countries with growing economies are often frustrated by a lack of skilled workers. Young people in these economies are at risk of being left disenfranchised and unemployed because they cannot access the skills they need to get quality jobs.
• The UK is investing up to £75 million in the Global Skills programme to support nine countries to tackle the key skills gaps in their most important areas, which are holding back growth and prosperity. These countries will include Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
• The programme will look to improve the affordability, quality, relevance and equity of Higher Education (HE) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

WISH

• The UK is investing £200 million in a new flagship programme ‘WISH’ which will ensure three million extra girls, women and men, to consistently gain access to life-saving voluntary contraception in some of the world’s poorest countries.
• Globally there are an estimated 214 million women who want to delay or prevent pregnancy but who are not able to access or use contraception. Unintended and early pregnancy is a key cause of high maternal death rates in Africa. Having access to contraception is critical for women continuing their education and being able to take up employment opportunities.
• The programme will operate across at least 18 countries in Africa and Asia, to ensure previously unreached people, especially young and poorer women, are able to access contraception and have the choice on whether, when and how often to have children. This includes more accessible sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) sites, mobile clinics into rural and poorer areas, community outreach services and family planning commodities.
• To ensure sustainability beyond the life of the programme, WISH will work with national governments to bolster their own capacity to provide longer-term services.
• Voluntary family planning – with women’s choice at the centre – contributes to wider development by bringing down fertility rates. This could enable African countries to unlock economic growth and prosperity.

The international community must do more to help the African Union lead the fight against al-Shabaab as Somalia takes on greater responsibility for its own security, Theresa May will say today.

The UK has a strong track record both in supporting the African Union and helping Somalia rebuild its police and military forces after decades of insecurity.

On a visit to a UK-backed Counter-IED training centre in Nairobi the Prime Minister will see British troops helping prepare soldiers from Kenya and the region to deploy as part of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

British instructors and their Kenyan counterparts are training troops in the tactics and techniques needed to identify and destroy the home-made bombs which are increasingly the weapon of choice for terrorists in the region.

Announcing over £7 million of new UK funding to support the AU’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia, she will call on international donors to contribute more, setting out that an unstable Somalia has a knock-on effect on stability across the region and further afield.

Prime Minister Theresa May said:

Somalia is at a critical juncture and sustainable, predictable funding and support for the troops who are building stability in the region is vital to support a transition to Somali-led security, when the conditions for a handover are right.

Last year the UK contributed £385 million towards international efforts to help the Somali people build an increasingly secure, stable and prosperous country.

The Prime Minister hosted the London Somalia Conference in 2017 which agreed the international community’s new partnership with the Federal Government of Somalia.

While in Kenya, she will announce further funding to support Somalia in a range of areas, including:

• more than £60 million to help over a million people cope with and recover from the impact of conflict and drought. Lifesaving food, clean water and medicine, along with support to find stable jobs, will help Somalis to look after themselves and their families in the long-term, reducing their dependence on humanitarian aid
• more than £25 million to support Somalia as it works to establish a stable and democratic political system. This will include advice to help develop rules on resource and power-sharing, and to prepare for landmark elections, including through support for voter and political party registration

Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns will join 5,000 fans at Rodney Parade to support the Welsh women in their crucial World Cup qualification match against England.

The Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns will join the record-breaking crowd at Rodney Parade on Friday to cheer on the Welsh women’s team who have enjoyed an unprecedented World Cup qualifying campaign which has seen the team maintain an undefeated run and are yet to concede a goal.

Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns said:

The Welsh women, who are on the brink of earning their place in history, are an inspiration to girls and boys all over the country. With a record breaking crowd in attendance, and thousands watching on screens all over the country, there is no doubt that the whole of Wales is behind the team/ I wish them every success as their epic campaign continues.

The game comes as the Football Association of Wales (FAW) confirmed talks were underway on a potential home nations bid for the 2030 football World Cup. The UK Government has already confirmed that it would support such a bid, after the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales secured Home Office funding for the unsuccessful Euro 2020 bid in 2017.

Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns said:

With Wales enjoying a wave of sporting success there is no better time to start thinking about how we as a country can attract more global sporting events to Wales. That is why I am committed to once again supporting the FAW on a potential bid for the 2030 football World Cup.

An event of this size and calibre would not only provide a boost to the Welsh economy and inspire people all over Wales to get involved in sport, but would also cement Wales’ reputation as a first-class destination for major sporting events. After just missing out on Euro 2020, I very much hope to see a bid from the home nations and will continue to work with partners in Wales to champion Welsh sport.