BY TEWODROS KASSA
She is a lawyer by profession. She has won an award from the World Health Organization (WHO) for her achievement in campaigning for tobacco free society in Kenya. She has been working in the tobacco control for the last twenty years in Kenya where she led advocacy for the country’s tobacco legislation since 2004-2007. And then, she served as a training enforcement officer and advocated actively in creating public awareness through the media and helping the government to defend court cases. In 2010, she moved to the African Tobacco Control Alliance as a founding chair and set up the African Tobacco Control Consortium together with other tobacco control alliances.
In the consortium she provides various supports to Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in ten African countries; including Ethiopia, to build their capacities to do tobacco control. She offered these services for three years; especially engaged with countries like Benin, Sierra Leone, Botswana, among others. She facilitated the CSOs coalition and gave them the funding they needed to lobby the tobacco control legislations in these countries. She believes that the African Tobacco Control Consortium did lay the groundwork for a lot of work that is going on now in the continent.
In 2014, she left the African Tobacco Control Consortium and joined another organization that advocates for tobacco control. Currently, she is working at the Development Gateway (DG) and developing dashboards for different African countries, including Ethiopia. Recently, the Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) Ethiopia website was launched seeking to advance the country’s efforts of controlling tobacco use. The Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority (EFDA), in partnership with the Development Gateway (DG), an IREX Venture, commenced the TCDI.
During the inauguration of the website, EFDA General Director Heran Gerba said that the website will have significant contributions to disseminate timely and verified information regarding the tobacco use in the country and its negative impacts. The website is a one-stop shop to access the relevant data that Ethiopia’s policymakers need to advance tobacco control legislation and is one of several country-specific platforms Development Gateway (DG) designed in collaboration with University of Cape Town’s Research Unit on Economics and Excisable Products (REEP).
Regarding this, The Ethiopian Herald held an exclusive interview with Development Gateway (DG) TCDI Senior Tobacco Advisor and TCDI Kenya Country Lead as well as World No Tobacco Day award winner Rachel Kitonyo Devotsu to provide further information about TCDI Ethiopia website, the need to control tobacco use, among others. According to her, the tobacco industry is a huge industry with a lot of money in Kenya and able to influence the politicians and parliamentarians not to vote for the tobacco control legislation in the country. Rather than fulfilling their corporate social responsibilities, the tobacco industry runners gave donation to the politicians to compromise them.
She realized that the opponent in the other side was really big while thinking about tobacco control legislation in the country. At that time, there were not any lawyer working in tobacco control in the country; and she struggled more to the legislation of the tobacco control in Kenya. “I am still fighting with the tobacco industry to raise taxation. Even though there are progresses, there are still more assignments left ahead to be done,” she said.
“Currently, there are a significant number of tobacco farmers that exceeds 55,000 spreading in three counties of Kenya. The tobacco industry tries to pretend that tobacco is a cash crop in the country. However, the life of the farmers is still from hand to mouth. The slummy houses of the farmers clearly show that growing tobacco contributed nothing to change their life. You can also look at the impact on their children. The farmers’ children do not go to school because they carry on the tobacco farming activities with their parents as tobacco is a fairly labour intensive crop.”
As to her, a farmer who operates on 100 tobacco leaves has the same amount of nicotine as if he smoked 50 cigarettes per day. The tobacco farmers observe nicotine through their skin when touching the leaf. They will face the same sickness as the smokers face or other tobacco related illnesses. Thus, the health and socio-economic impact of tobacco is undeniable. The main reason why some farmers grow tobacco in Kenya is the tobacco industry provides them with inputs like seeds, fertilizers, among others. Once, the tobacco industry stepped in and brought own agricultural extension officers to provide farmers advice and sign a contract with them to only grow tobacco.
Then, the farmers are left now with that kind of contract of selling their tobacco crop only to them where the industry alone decides the price. When the farmers deliver their crop to the factory, the industry tells them that their crop is the worst grade. Thus, the farmers cannot argue with them because of their contract. Then, the industry deducts the amount of money that is going to be paid to the farmers. Currently, there is a project in one county of Kenya being done by the World Health Organization (WHO) in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) that recruited 1,400 tobacco farmers. These organizations are supporting the farmers to switch to growing beans. This project is on the way to replicate to the other tobacco growing counties and shift more farmers from growing tobacco to other crops.
The major lesson for Ethiopia is that it is better to switch tobacco farmers to other alternative crops before the time runs out. Unless, things are not done timely, it might lead toward a sophisticated socio-economic challenge, she noted. “As part of the TCDI project, recently we have been doing a study in Kenya to check the morbidity and mortality from tobacco use and found that patients who suffer from cancer, heart diseases, stroke, pneumonia, and tuberculosis; almost 20 percent of them were either current smokers or former smokers. This tells us that the substantial levels of burdens of diseases in hospitals are coming from tobacco use.”
The highest population growth, lack of effective enforcements, and low public awareness, among others are the major reasons behind the growing number of tobacco users in the African continent. Therefore, sustainable funding for tobacco control, capacity building of government enforcement agencies, increase tobacco taxation to WHO’s recommended standard of 70 percent of the retail price of the cigarette, promoting public awareness, among others are the possible ways to control tobacco use in the continent. Tobacco products are extremely affordable in Africa while compared with other continents.
Moreover, the TCDI websites exist for South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria and will soon launch for Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Accordingly, each country-specific TCDI website addresses barriers to data use in tobacco control by consolidating available and trusted tobacco control data, identifying and filling data gaps, and creating an online resource for policymakers to access relevant data needed to pass and monitor tobacco control legislation.
Currently, tobacco usage rates are on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, including within sub-Saharan Africa. Over 8 million deaths are caused annually by tobacco use, including 1.2 million deaths of non-smokers who die from second-hand smoke. In sum, switching tobacco farms to other cash crops is important to cultivate a productive and healthy generation. As 70 percent of Ethiopia’s population is the youth, it is important to give due priority to control tobacco use towards ensuring societal health and maintaining productive manpower
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 9 MARCH 2023
