Craig Eisele on …..

December 4, 2007

Angola’s DRC Peace Effort to be Helped by Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda

Filed under: Africa,African,responsibility,Trans Africa,Uncategorized — Mr. Craig @ 11:41 pm

Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda Assist With Angola’s DRC Peace Effort
Angola Press Agency (Luanda)

NEWS
29 November 2007
Posted to the web 29 November 2007
Luanda
The heads of State of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have pledged to add their efforts to those of Angola towards peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a source with the Foreign Ministry said.

This was said by the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, George Chicoti, who travelled to those countries, as an envoy of the acting chairman of the Political, Defence and Cooperation organ of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Meanwhile, the presidents of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, Rwanda, Paul Kagame, and Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, welcomed president Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s initiative, and his engagement in seeking peace and stability to the eastern DRC and the Great Lakes regions.

The three heads of State expressed their readiness to aid Angolan presidency in helping pacify the DRC, and put forward some proposals for the head of the mission to convey to the acting chairman of the SADC organ, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

According to the source, the SADC troika mission “has been much welcomed here in region for the dynamics of Angola, in order to spur peace and stability in the Great Lakes region”.

Before leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Troika members will meet with president Joseph Kabila, to brief him on the results of these meetings and thank that country for its aid to the military mission that worked in the east of the DRC.

In this mission, George Chicoti was accompanied by his colleague of Tanzania and the standing secretary of Swaziland Foreign Ministry. The team includes defence and security experts.

The tour of those countries ended Wednesday and is in its way back to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it will draft a report to be submitted to the chairman of the mentioned organ for approval.

Koffi Annan Claims that Global Partnerships are Critical in Curbing Climate Change

Global Partnerships Critical in Curbing Climate Change
Southern African News Features (Harare)

NEWS
29 November 2007
Posted to the web 29 November 2007

By Clever Mafuta
“Climate change is not a northern issue, neither is it a southern issue. It is not an issue for just the developed world nor is it an issue for only the developing world. It is a global issue,” said Koffi Annan in his special address to the European Development Days held recently in Lisbon, Portugal.

Annan, who is the former Secretary General of the United Nations, warned that the world has been complacent for a long time.

“For far too long we have considered climate change as a problem for the future. But we must remember that climate change is an all encompassing threat. It is not an issue of rich versus poor. It’s a global issue and we are seeing its effects everywhere,” said Annan.

Annan’s statement was echoed by Saleem Huq, the International Institute for Environment and Development’s Head of Climate Change Group, when he told the delegates to the European Development Days that “Today is not time to seek personal or national interests, nor is it time to seek to be elected or re-elected into office by politicians. Now is the time to place global interests high on the agenda in dealing with climate change”.

While the specifics of climate change are unclear, two general trends in southern Africa are discernable.

Firstly, heavy rainfalls and droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe, but an accurate prediction of these events remains difficult.

Secondly, in the longer term, rises in temperature are expected to have negative impacts on crop yield and areas of cultivable land.

Nearly all future scenarios indicate that Africa is expected to be worst hit. Some models predict up to a nine percent decrease in potential agricultural land by the 2080s and reductions in yield of up to 10 percent and 18 percent for cereals and maize, respectively by 2050.

Climate change is real. It is a global issue with catastrophic consequences. Therefore, the interests and livelihoods of present and future generations should be placed high on the global agenda, as the world inches closer to the Bali meeting where the climate change debate will once again be on centre stage.

It is hoped that the Bali discussions in December 2007 will result in the revision of the Kyoto Protocol so as to address new challenges brought about by climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It shares the objective and institutions of the Convention. The major distinction between the two, however, is that while the Convention encouraged developed countries to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so

“The climate change situation will sink humanity. The difference is only when this will happen. Some will sink earlier than others,” Huq warned.

The present climate change situation is a result of the quest to develop. While most assessments have pointed blame on climate change to the unsustainable development paths by the developed world, recent findings also point to the fact that even developing countries are becoming major players in the generation of greenhouse gases.

Speaking at the same meeting in Lisbon, Achim Steiner, the UN Environment Programme Executive Director, highlighted that of the top five countries in the generating most of the greenhouse gases, three are developing countries. These are Brazil, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their contribution comes from unsustainable practices, which include deforestation and land degradation.

Steiner warned that not much of the Kyoto provisions are being followed. For example, despite commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, emissions have actually increased by as much as 35 percent.

Such trends in greenhouse gas generation point to the need for global partnerships, whereby individuals and countries should move away from apportioning blame but to work in concerted efforts to manage climate change.

Both the developed and developing countries must ensure that they use clean technologies. Developing countries must not emulate consumption patterns followed by the developed world as these have been proven to be damaging to the environment.

The European Development Days is an annual event which seeks to enhance public awareness about development cooperation between the European Union and partners across the world.

The 2007 edition of the European Development Days came against the background of rising concerns and debates about the urgent need to address the challenges posed by climate change to Europe’s development cooperation strategies and activities worldwide.

In his welcoming remarks to delegates, Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for development and humanitarian assistance, applauded the event as it provides an opportunity for inclusive dialogues.

“We are convinced that bringing together all actors from Europe and its partners involved in development helps to improve our ideas, working methods and delivery. The informal and open nature of the event is intended to demonstrate our ability to promote inclusive multi-stakeholder dialogues. As such, the European Development Days serve as a natural platform for launching new initiatives to enhance the synergies we experience in our everyday work”.

The 2008 European Development Days will focus on “Decentralisation: the role of local authority organisations”.

Giving Africa A Chance

Give Africa a Chance

The Voice (Francistown)
NEWS
27 November 2007
Posted to the web 27 November 2007

By Chedza Simon

The chairman of Mo Ibrahim Foundation has called on European investor to stop using prevalence of corruption and economic challenges in some African states as an excuse to invest in the continent.

Speaking at the Renaissance Group Sub Sahara Africa Investment Conference in London on Monday, Mo Ibrahim said perception by investors that Africa is entrenched in poverty and that there is a high rate of corruption needs to be stop. “There is a lot of opportunities that exist in Africa today. Perception that there is corruption and therefore investors should not come to Africa should stop. In the 1990s a lot of people thought investing in Africa was crazy and a waste of money. Some thought because of high levels of corruption and unruliness, they would not invest in Africa,” he said.

Ibrahim, the founder of Celtel International, one of the leading mobile telephone company, told investors that while they think corruption is high in Africa, they forget that they, the investors, are equally corrupt.

“Corruption is a two way street. Nobody can corrupt himself, there is always another person who has to encourage corruption. Perception that Africa is corrupt should come to an end. Europeans like talking about corruption when they are the very people who keep laundered money from Africa in their banks. How many African businessmen have been prosecuted for corruption? Zero,” he quipped rhetorically.

The renowned entrepreneur explained that for any business to prosper, there has to be good governance. “Guidelines against corruption or bribery are not enough. Good governance is the guiding principle to good business.”

According to Ibrahim, Celtel managed to have 16 companies under its umbrella in Sub Saharan Africa of which 10 are tax generators of economies Celtel operates in. “We did it without taking bribes,” he said, adding, “due to this culture, we are creating employment in countries we operate in and we cannot take that away.”

He added that political leadership in Africa is important as it will create an open society. With efforts to encourage good governance in Africa states, Ibrahim said the foundation awarded Joaquim Chissano, the former President of Mozambique, an inaugural Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership.

ABOUT THE FOUNDATION

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is the vision of Dr Mo Ibrahim, founder of the African telecommunications company Celtel International and one of Africa’s most successful business leaders. It was has been established to support the attainment of good governance in Africa. A non-profit making organisation, the Foundation is governed by a board of trustees that includes Dr Mo Ibrahim (founder, Celtel International); Lalla Ben Barka (Deputy Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa); Lord Cairns (Chairman, Charities Aid Foundation); Dr Mamphela Ramphele (former Managing Director, World Bank); Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights); Salim Ahmed Salim (former Secretary-General, Organisation of African Unity), and Nicholas Ulanov (Managing Director, The Ulanov Partnership)

Poorest Farmers Ignored By UK Govt.’s Overseas Agricultural Policy

Poorest Farmers Ignored By UK Govt.’s Overseas Agricultural Policy

Concern Worldwide UK (Dublin)
PRESS RELEASE
27 November 2007
Posted to the web 27 November 2007

The agricultural policy of the UK government’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) is ignoring the needs of the poorest farmers and prioritising economic growth over tackling hunger and improving food security, according to a report published tomorrow by Concern Worldwide.

The report – Unheard Voices – The case for supporting marginal farmers - asserts that the failure of DFID’s agricultural policy to specifically address the needs of the poorest farmers in developing countries is particularly concerning given the fact that more than 75% of the world’s hungry and malnourished live in rural areas and depend directly or indirectly on farming for their survival.

“Whilst marginal farmers should be at the centre of DFID’s efforts to defeat poverty and reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) they are instead being ignored in favour of farmers who produce surplus for markets and are therefore considered able to contribute to the growth of the economy” says Ruchi Tripathi, Head of Policy for Concern Worldwide and co-author of the report.

The report reveals that the shift towards economic growth and away from pro-poor policies in agriculture by donors such as DFID has led to a decline in aid to agriculture overall and a weaker demand for assistance from developing country governments. This decline and the way in which aid to agriculture has been allocated means that poor farmers are excluded and unable to access the support they desperately need for low-cost technologies that would help them increase their food output and tackle hunger and spiralling poverty in the rural areas.

The report provides clear examples of the way in which poor farmers, including those with whom Concern Worldwide works, have shown that with the right kind of assistance such as simple low-cost technologies, training in new farming practices and the provision of tools and seeds, they have the potential to significantly increase their output, make themselves more food secure and improve their livelihoods.” This is why donors such as DFID should take into account their specific needs when reviewing their agricultural policy instead of pursuing a ‘one size-fits all’ approach which further marginalises the poorest farmers” says Ruchi Tripathi.

Mahlathi Moyo, Concern Partner and Chairperson of the Mongu District Farmers’ Association in Zambia adds: “Poor farmers are facing many challenges that affect their ability to grow enough to feed their families, but these challenges can be overcome. Good agricultural policies that are appropriate to specific geographical areas must be put in place, and the people responsible for developing those policies must listen to the voices of the poorest farmers to ensure that their circumstances are taken in to account”.

The report forms part of Concern Worldwide’s campaign ‘Unheard Voices’, which calls on DFID to ensure that when reviewing its agricultural policy in 2008 that the role of poor farmers in defeating rural poverty is acknowledged and that their needs are prioritised instead of focusing only on farmers that already produce for markets.

Read the full report.

Concern Worldwide is an international, non-governmental, humanitarian organisation dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the elimination of extreme poverty in the worlds poorest countries.

China to Help Africa Breed Fish

China to Help Continent Breed Fish

The New Times (Kigali)
NEWS
14 November 2007
Posted to the web 14 November 2007

By Kabona Esiara And Agencies
Kigali
China has promised to work with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) to develop the fishing industry in Africa.

Through the Chinese Academy of Fisheries Sciences (CAFS) and the WorldFish Centre, Chinese agreed to work on a scientific research programme on aquaculture-fish growing.

They particularly focus on fish breeding and to co-host future Forums on Fisheries Science and Technology, according to a Nepad Dialogue, a monthly online publication.

The development comes at a time when fresh water fish stocks in African are dwindling but the local and international markets for the fish are steadily growing.

To mitigate against the shortages, Rwanda government is encouraging the private sector to invests in fish farming. The country mostly depends on fish supplies from Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania to feed her population.

According to The Nepad Dialogue, an online publication, the agreement was announced at a luncheon hosted for the Nepad and WorldFish Centre delegations by the president of CAFS, Prof. Zhang Hecheng.

This was during the 2007 Chinese Forum for Fisheries Science and Technology held in Qingdao, the capital city of Shandong province.

Nepad was represented by Dr. Sloans Chimatiro, Nepad fisheries advisor, and WorldFish by Dr. Raul Ponzoni. Under the agreement, WorldFish will mobilise international scientists, particularly fisheries scientists from Africa to give them an opportunity for wider scientific exposure.

In addition, the Chinese Academy of Fisheries Sciences, through its cooperation with the WorldFish Centre will explore opportunities to collaborate with African partners in fisheries and aquaculture research and technology development under Nepad.

The National Fisheries Technology and Extension Centre in the Ministry of Agriculture also pledged to work with Nepad to assist African partners in the field of fisheries and aquaculture.

The Forum was co-sponsored by Shanghai Fisheries University, WorldFish Centre, Fisheries Research Agency of Japan, National Fisheries Research and Development Institute of Korea, Ocean University of China and Institute of Oceanography and Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Fisheries Sciences.

It is reported that during the Forum, Dr. Chimatiro presented a paper entitled “NEPAD action plan for the development of African fisheries and aquaculture: seeking new partnerships in fisheries and aquaculture science”.

Improving China’s Image

Improving China’s Image
Business Daily (Nairobi)

OPINION

28 November 2007
Posted to the web 28 November 2007
By Calestous Juma

China’s ability to respond rapidly to requests for investment in new areas such as infrastructure has emboldened many African leaders who are under pressure to meet their electoral promises.

But such rapid responses have seen China establish its presence in many African countries and made it vulnerable to unfavourable diplomatic exposure.

In Darfur, for example, rebels are demanding that China be excluded from peacekeeping efforts. They argue that China’s role is compromised by the fact that its oil revenues are supporting the Sudanese government.

China needs to rethink its image in Africa so that it can be an effective player in a broader international alliance for Africa’s development. New diplomatic efforts that involve partnerships with other nations around the world would make China’s interest in Africa better. In other words, Africa’s development interests should be seen as the basis for defining China’s diplomatic policy on Africa.

Africa’s capacity to develop and become a major player in the global economy will depend largely on the extent to which it is able to train a large section of its population in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

China could make significant contributions to Africa if it joined other nations around the world to help Africa build up its scientific and technical competence. Much of this is going to involve creating a new generation of technical and entrepreneurial universities.

There is considerable disquiet over China’s economic relations with countries that have poor governance records. Most of the governance challenges are a result of weak democratic institutions as well as access to opportunities for professional training.

China could contribute to improvements in the situation by supporting the establishment of training programmes in development management in particular and governance in general.

In addition, China could work with African countries in expanding and in responding to their needs to move into emerging technological fields such as information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology.

Many of these technologies can be used to promote alternative development approaches that reduce ecological damage.

For example, China’s experience in biotechnology could be used to promote sustainable agriculture in Africa as recommended in Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa’s Development, the report of the High Level African Panel on Biotechnology prepared for the African Union.

Other fields could include expanding critical infrastructure such a wireless broadband which can help to extend communications capabilities on the continent. Finally, emerging fields such as nanotechnology could be used to develop ecologically-sound products that can enable Africa to pursue sustainable development paths.

Chinese enterprises will continue to be a visible part of the African landscape. It will be critically important for them to cultivate a good image of corporate citizenship and to work closely with local communities. If the enterprises do not adopt an outlook of good citizenship, they attract local resentment.

The work to build a positive image must start now and China’s presence in Africa will need to go beyond the current connections with governments and more engagement with the public, including support to non-governmental development efforts.

Many of the transactions between China and Africa are kept confidential and little is known about their terms. Promoting greater transparency and mutual learning from those arrangements will help to improve the image of Chinese businesses in Africa.

Prof Juma teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government

Anyim-Osigwe Gives Lecture on “Can Europe Aid Continent’s Development? “

Anyim-Osigwe Lecture – Can Europe Aid Continent’s Development?
Vanguard (Lagos)

NEWS
26 November 2007
Posted to the web 26 November 2007

By Bolade Omonijo

What has Europe to do with the level of poverty ravaging the African continent?

There is a big debate about the part played by the Europeans, both in keeping Africa down and thus facilitating the development of their continent.

The seminal work by the late Dr. Walter Rodney traced the underdevelopment of Africa to the slave trade and the consequent and subsequent colonialism during which, he contended, African development was not only arrested but deliberately reversed.

Africa remains the poorest of all the continents.

Tony Blair: Advocates funds for Africa’s development

Poverty remains at grinding level and the future for most of the people remains bleak. Many of the children are out of school, extreme or grinding poverty, including squalor, starvation, diseases and malnutrition is increasingly on the increase.

The only thing that sustains the poor and helps many keep their sanity is the hope of a better tomorrow. But, the statistics are quite frightening and, as many scholars have observed, poverty is a trap.

These, according to Mr. Michael Anyiam-Osigwe, Coordinator-General of the Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation, informed the choice of the theme and speaker for this year’s Anyiam Osigwe Lecture. At a press briefing organized in October to unveil the lecture, Mr. Michael Anyiam-Osigwe said: “This year, the central theme of the 9th lecture series, harnessing

Africa capital that the people may have life and live it more abundantly. The President of the Czech Republic, His Excellency, Professor Vaclav Klaus, is the keynote speaker. His topic, which derives from the central theme, is titled, “Europe as a Strategic Partner in Harnessing African Capital.”

Explaining further the rationale for the choice of both theme and topic, Mr. Anyiam-Osigwe said: “On the central theme of the lecture, “Harnessing African Capital That The People May Have Life and Live It More Abundantly”, various views, theories and measures have been put forward in an effort to unravel the complexity of Africa ‘s poverty problem. Anyiam-Osigwe’s perspectives on this critical subject, premised on his fundamental principle of a holistic approach to human existence and development, penetrates the heart and essence of the problem.

He holds the views that the key to unravelling the crisis of poverty in Africa resides in articulating, identifying and effectively harnessing African capital in all its ramifications. In this connection, the ninth session focuses on the Anyiam-Osigwe’s espousal on the need to harness what he identifies as Africa’s meta-physical capital alongside the conventional ones, as only such a mix could provide the selfless and disciplined leadership for controlling and optimally utilising resources for development in the interest of the people.

Given our present circumstances, I must underline that the objective of the session is to encourage identification and adoption of value-guided conduct among some of the ruling elite who harness our common-weal in the name of the people for development but misappropriate it for themselves, their families, friends and cronies.

In this regard, we wish to emphasise that one of the aims of the Foundation is the entrenchment of principle-centred leadership and good citizenship in the continent. We are, therefore, delighted and gratified by the personal example demonstrated through the unprecedented determination and willingness at the highest level of our present administration to enthrone value-guided leadership in our national life.”

Why was President Klaus of Czech Republic chosen to deliver the lecture? The Foundation pointed out: “In inviting President Vacalav Klaus, a renowned intellectual, an accomplished economist and former professor of finance at the Prague School of Economics, the Foundation is maintaining its tradition which ensures that the principal participants at its lecture series are, indeed, esteemed authorities whose invaluable perspectives and vast knowledge would lend profound insights into and deepen understanding on the subject under discussion.

“The presence of the President of the Czech Republic at the 9th Session of the Foundation’s lecture series, reflects the Foundation’s continuing efforts to seek international goodwill for our country and also establish meaningful bridges with organisations and citizens across countries and continents.”

What is at the heart of the underdevelopment of Africa? As the Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation has pointed out, the debate continues to rage. Is Africa’s development almost five decades after most of the countries had been set free from the strangle-hold of colonialism to be blamed on the colonial powers of Europe or on the quality of leadership that has been the lot of most of the countries?

Why have the countries failed, so far, to turn their natural endowment to wealth? Is there a conspiracy by the West to keep Africa down and her people reserved the role of hewers of wood and drawers of water? How are the experiences of the Asian tigers and India to be explained?

These are questions begging for answers. At a conference on African development challenges in the new millennium held in Accra in April 2002 under the aegis of the Third World Network and CODESTRIA, it was observed that, “the uneven progress of democratization and in particular of the expansion of space for citizen expression and participation.

The conference also acknowledged the contribution of citizens’ struggles and activism to this expansion of the political space and for putting critical issues of development on the public agenda.

“The meeting noted that the challenges confronting Africa’s development come from two inter-related sources: (a) constraints imposed by the hostile international economic and political order within which our economies operate; and (b) domestic weaknesses deriving from socio-economic and political structures and neo-liberal structural adjustment policies.”

On the new global order and its deleterious effect on African development, the conference observed that, “the main elements of the hostile global order include, first, the fact that African economies are integrated into the global economy as exporters of primary commodities and importers of manufactured products, lead-ing to terms-of-trade losses. Reinforcing this, secondly, have been the policies of liberalization, privatization and deregulation as well as an unsound package of macro-economic policies imposed through structural adjustment conditionality by the World Bank and the IMF. These have now been institutionalized within the WTO through rules, agreements and procedures which are biased against our countries.

“Finally, the just-mentioned external and internal policies and structures have combined to generate an unsustainable and unjustifiable debt.”

The debate has assumed a new significance following the initiative of the immediate past Prime Minister of Britain Mr. Tony Blair, to rally support and capital needed for the development of Africa. Nigeria’s President, Umaru Yar’Adua, too, at a recent meeting in Germany, called on the rich countries of Europe and America to pump the needed capital for the development of the African continent through an initiative akin to the Marshal Plan by which the United States of America resuscitated after the European countries’ eco-nomies had been crippled by the Second World War.

This year’s Anyiam-Osigwe lecture is the ninth in the series. Last year, the lecturer was Mr. Kwasniewski of Poland who spoke on “Synthesis for Africa’s socio-political and economic development”. Others who had spoken at the usually well attended lecture series in the past eight years include Nigeria’s professor Bolanle Awe, South Africa’s Mr. Fredrick De Klerk, former British Prime Minister, John Major, former German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl and America’s former Vice Presi-dent Al Gore, among others.

It is expected that this year’s lecture, being delivered by a serving President, would promote greater understanding between Europe and Africa and present both continents as partners.

Africa’s Human Capital

Human Capital – Continent’s Development Albatross

Leadership (Abuja)
ANALYSIS
27 November 2007
Posted to the web 27 November 2007

By Kunle Somorin

No nation becomes great when majority of her nationals are mainly idle, semi-skilled or outrightly unskilled.

Good health, natural resources and infrastructure serve to complement the human resources. Thriving in an information age depends largely on the development of this God-given endowments. That, in the main, is the bane of Africa’s development.

Sustained growth and elimination of poverty will for a long time remain elusive in sub-Saharan Africa until the region succeed in building, retaining and nurturing the required human and institutional capacity vital for grooming the successor generation and interfacing with other developmental partners and process. And to date, it remains the most constraining factor in Africa’s development.

A non governmental organisation, devoted to intervening in this onerous assignment, the African Capacity Building Foundation, ACBF, based in Harare, Zimbabwe, came into existence to address this deficit area. It reckons that although 35 percent of the official development assistance committed to this goal by developmental partners amounting to US$4 billion every year, go down the drain because it could not redress the imbalance between the sending countries and their receiving counterparts. The conundrum ends up being an annual pipedream. The requisite skills have not been delivered because the programmes financed are largely externalised. While externalising Africa’s human development crisis may be instructive, the plausible way seems to seek a genuinely African actualisation to the dream.

Improving Africa’s rating in the United Nations Human Development Index therefore is not only a challenge, but transforming the natural resources to refined products, the only way to prosperity and part to Africa’s renaissance. This nexus can only be achieved from a clearly African perspective to the issue, with focused leadership and an enlightened citizenry that could compete in a world that is divided, but still considered a global village.

By Human Development Index, attention is focused on the population vis-à-vis the living standard, the nature of growth and the quality of life and living. There is no gainsaying the fact that Africa’s population has been on the increase. By 1960, Africa was about 280million, which was 9 percent of the world’s population. By 1977, the population had shot up to 758million, approximately 13 percent of the world’s population. It is estimated that with its steady growth at 2.5percent annual rate, Africa will account for 20 percent of humanity by 2025. Its population has been estimated would, then, have risen to at least 1.5 billion.

Of its present population, five of its largest countries, accounts for one-thirds. These are Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Congo and South Africa. More than 30 of the 52 African countries have less than 20 million inhabitants, over 60 percent that are illiterate rural dwellers.

One important snag about the people of Africa is that largeness of arable land, preponderance of farming families, excessive deposit of mineral and natural resources, and being ancestral homes to pockets of distinguished scholars, scattered around the globe have not translated to development. Most of the people still live on less than one dollar per day. The few privileged ones that live in obscene opulence make their monies through dubious means, government patronage, contract scams, outright stealing from public treasuries, drug peddling and such prebendal acquisitiveness. The result is that corruption is at the base of every activity and there seems to be no end in sight for the monster to quit the landscape. An undisciplined population is a curse to human capital development.

It is only in Africa that population seems to outstrip economic growth four times and over. Africa’s contribution to world GDP was 7 percent in the 1960s, with agriculture accounting for most of its input, but by the close of the millennium it had stagnated at 2 percent. A continent that used to produce its own food and raw materials for its industries and still had enough to export before 1970s fell into miserable poverty and terrible dependency in the late 1970s, became a net importer of 30 percent of food items from other continents. More than half of the industries that came with self-government and the competition by early nationalists had either totally collapsed or were producing below installation capacity by the beginning of 1990s. While other continents continue to experience growth in socio-economic spheres, the dividends of decolonization and self-rule in Africa have been robbed by human capital depletion agents, like internecine wars, conflicts of attrition, intellectual atrophy, military despotism, hunger, diseases, debts, brain drain, civil, but undemocratic rule and backwardness.

The multilateral agencies have not helped much. By 1960, when sovereign nationhood became a fad in Africa, the new leaders met a cumulative debt profile of less than 100million dollars. Under two decades of self rule, the continent has amassed a crippling portfolio in excess of 100billion dollars. Africa through the treadmill of these institutions commit between 20 to 40 percent of her total earnings to debt payment, servicing or rescheduling. The import of this is that there is a correlation between Africa population growth rate and foreign debt. And it lacks the formidable team of economists to bail it out. It is therefore not surprising that when under two years as Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, negotiated $18billion off her country’s debt, she was not only deified, her singular contribution was made a historical discourse as the country had to engage three firms of multinational consulting firms, less than two months after she left office to help negotiate with creditors on debt relief and forgiveness issues.

The human capital crises are further compounded by the absurd manner of leadership recruitment in the continent. From the respected club of intellectual leaders of the 1950s and 60s that produced the Kwame Nkrumahs, the Julius Nyereres, the Nnamdi Azikwes, the Haile Sailesses, the Obafemi Awolowos, the Sekou Toures, the Jomo Kenyattas and the Leopold Sedar Senghors, Africa descended to the valley of trench-combatants where the Mobutu Sese Sekos, Idi Amin Dadas, Charles Taylors, Samuel Does, and their civilian collaborators hold sway. Indeed, Africa has since independence not been lucky to be governed by ideas men. Most of the leaders are bare-faced thieves, who lack the conceptual understanding of the nuances and praxis of development and so they only leave the continent at the mercy of nature and other elements.

Africa’s Achilles heels are clearly, in her not being able to appreciate the most critical factor in development: human beings. Human beings are the major creator and sustainers of development and only through humans can the manipulations that put nature and material resources make meaning. Material resources are supporters and facilitators of development and that’s why abundance of these resources has not brought prosperity and higher living standards to Africa.

Prof. Dayton who teaches extra-European studies in Oxford has noted in how Africa developed Europe that ‘the most resourceless countries are the most developed in the world’. History of development in the last 500 years has shown that human development is more critical than material resources. Most of the countries in Western Europe and North America are resource poor, but have been able to develop because they have found solution to how to subjugate and dominate the environment, especially the resource rich countries through their human capital in manipulating knowledge. Colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism and globalisation are innocuously shaped and marketed to the resource rich countries, which lack the cohesive capacity to organise themselves and tap their God-given resources to their own advantages. There lies nexus between global politics and global economy.

Even in non-Western countries where development has taken place, South East Asia: Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, India and China, it would be misleading to attribute such to availability of better material resources than what obtains in the Dark Continent. The Asians understands the need for investment in human capital. Indeed lack of natural and material resources tend to stimulate and excite challenges to maximise energy in order to harness the gains from people’s limitation. A comparative analysis is here inevitable. Ethiopia which shares the same kind of population and natural resource with Korea as at 1960 was poles apart in outlook at the close of the last decade. By 1996, Ethiopia students in Medical, Engineering and Medical science numbered less than 2,000, whereas Koreans in similar fields had 454,000. A similar conclusion can be gleaned from the comparison between Nigeria and Indonesia. UNESCO reports that as at 1960, while Nigeria had 41, 504 in tertiary schools, Indonesia had 25,124; but by 1996, the table had turned with Nigeria having 22,080 in engineering faculties as against Indonesia’s 293,946. In Medicine, Nigeria had 22,121 students against Indonesia’s 44,678.

By the close of the 1980, the most highly skilled professionals had fled Africa due to different frustrating circumstances. The United Nations Development Programme at some point concluded that “the best African professionals prefer to work abroad”. For instance, the exodus of doctors has been most striking in the past two decades. More than 21,000 Nigerian doctors are said to be practising in the United States, 60 percent of Ghanaian doctors have left the country. The crisis prone Sudan had since 17% of her doctors’ leave in 1998, 20% of the university lecturers also left, 35% of the engineers joined the brain drain train as well as 45% of surveyors.

The league leader in arable land and energy reserves is Africa. It shares the same developmental pathology with Middle East, which with its energy reserves and agriculture potential is also the second poorest region on earth. The little development witnessed comes in from activities of transnational corporations prospecting for oil or involved in tapping resources from these resource-rich countries. What African leaders fail to appreciate is that material resources are exhaustible, while human resources are sustainable and infinite; and it takes much longer time to produce material resources than human capital.

Interestingly, the new arsenal for international development is anchored on a labour force that is healthy, skilful, knowledgeable and incorruptible. These are rare commodities in Africa. While it would be unfair to say nothing has been achieved in terms of manpower development, education and research, what is also not in doubt, is that the critical mass in terms of volume, quality and competence is grossly insufficient to power the challenges of economic transformation.

Earnest Harsch in his Can Africa Claim the 21st Century underscored Africa’s developmental dilemma in terms of the globalisation process when he called for the bridging of the information gap that keeps widening between North America and Europe on one side and African countries on the other side.

Record available at the beginning of the decade shows that “…whereas Africa has 739 million people, it has a mere 14 million phone line, fewer than in Manhattan or Tokyo…in 1999, only 1 million Africans have access to the internet, compared with 15 million in the United Kingdom; and Africa generate only 0.4 percent of internet content; excluding South Africa, a mere 0.02 percent.”

Much as the situation is improving with increased telephony through the Global System of Mobile Telecommunications, Africa is yet to understand the nexus between Information and Communications Technology, ICT, and economic development through cost saving for industry and increased transport efficiency.

For the poor, largely semi-literate, populace, ICT prospects are enormous. Although GSM provides jobs for the hitherto unemployed youths who sell recharge cards, handsets and accessories as well as operate business centres, ICT is still largely under-utilised. Conversely, unlike in Africa, Asians and Southern Americans use internet to facilitate firm, farm and other economic activities. In villages in Central Peru, people use internet to market organically grown oranges. Small manufacturers of traditional handicraft are already discovering how ICT can be a tool for marketing and distributing their wares across the world.

A recent survey on universities in the world ranked the best university in Nigeria, as the world’s 6001st. Africa’s best university in the ranking was university of Witwatersrand in South Africa and it ranks 2000th. Scientific research that generates knowledge has dwindled in the continent; this has exacerbated the asymmetry between Africa and the rest of the world. A report of Economic Commission for Africa said Africa’s expenditure on research, development, number of science and technology personnel, scientific publications and registered patent widen the hiatus between the ‘connected’ world and Africa. It reveals that the continent accounts for only 0.9percent of the world’s budget for such endeavour, with South Africa accounting for more than half of the continent’s profile.

Even at its highest in 2002, Africa’s share of world’s scientific publication was less than 1.5% and sub-Saharan Africa was 0.8%. For registered patents, sub-Saharan Africa share was a mere 0.2% in Europe and only 0.1% in the United States.

The crisis of human capital is aggravated by lack of access to tertiary education, the highest level where scientific and technical knowledge can be generated. Since that is also the sphere for expertise that can transform the continent’s potential in agriculture, mineral and natural resources, nothing gets done.

A UNESCO report notes that only 10 percent of school leavers are able to gain university admission. Only four countries in the continent achieved over 10 percent of higher institution transition among high school leavers. These are Egypt, South Africa, Tunisia and Algeria. Countries like Ethiopia and Burkina Faso could only achieved 0.06 and 0.08 percent respectively.

In terms of the relevance of even courses offered in these universities there still much to be desired. The major feature of courses reveals a preponderance of liberal arts and paucity of science and technical scholarship. Where they are found, laboratory facilities, qualified staff proved to be major challenges.

Poverty and disease, especially HIV-AIDS and the resurgence of tuberculosis and malaria also contribute to budgetary constraints. These, in part, made Stephen O’Connell and Charles Soludo in their Aid Intensity in Africa argue that since debt dominate Africa’s development, official development assistance must be based on economic criteria that will support human resources development.

Developed Countries Must Cut Emissions, Invest in Adaptation to Prevent Human Development Reversals

Developed Countries Must Cut Emissions, Invest in Adaptation to Prevent Human Development Reversals

United Nations Development Programme (New York)
PRESS RELEASE
27 November 2007
Posted to the web 27 November 2007
Brasilia
The heavy carbon footprint of developed countries threatens to stamp out and then reverse advances in health, education and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa unless critical steps are taken to cut emissions and invest in “climate-proofing” the livelihoods of the poor, according to the 2007/2008 Human Development Report (HDR) on climate change launched here today.

Building on the recently-released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) HDR, entitled Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world, sets out a pathway for climate change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, and stresses that a narrow 10-year window of opportunity remains to put it into practice.

If that window is missed, temperature rises of above two degrees Celsius could see an extra 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa go hungry, new and more frequent epidemics of mosquito-born diseases like Rift Valley Fever and malaria and agricultural losses of up to US$26 billion by 2060 in the region, a figure higher than total bilateral aid received by sub-Saharan Africa in 2005.

“The carbon budget of the 21st Century—the amount of carbon that can be absorbed creating an even probability that temperatures will not rise above two degrees—is being overspent and threatens to run out entirely by 2032,” says Kevin Watkins, lead author of the Report and Director of UNDP’s HDR Office, “and the poor—those with the lightest carbon footprint and the least means to protect themselves—are the first victims of developed countries’ energy-rich lifestyle”.

A “nine-planet” lifestyle

Nearly 550 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to energy. Families are left in the dark to cook with vegetation and animal dung over smoky stone fires, while their rich counterparts in developed countries run up the energy bills. Respiratory disease, in part caused by breathing in such smokey fumes, is the biggest killer of children in the world today.

Fighting climate change notes that if each poor person on the planet had the same energy-rich lifestyle as an American or Canadian, nine planets would be needed to safely cope with the pollution. In fact, the US state of Texas, with 23 million residents, emits more CO2 than all of the 720 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa put together, says the Report.

Faced with these stark differences, the authors note that critical global emission cuts should not undermine efforts to get basic energy services to the poor. The world’s richest countries have a historic responsibility to take the lead in balancing the carbon budget by cutting emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, says the Report, in addition to supporting a new $86 billion annual global investment in substantial international adaptation efforts to protect the world’s poor.

“Africa is entering a new century. There is promise. Growth and development are accelerating and peace is being consolidated in many parts of the Continent,” said UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervi, “Getting the fight against climate change right would in turn catalyze significant human development advances across the board. But if we don’t act on climate change, the hope of Africa—the continent with the lightest carbon footprint—could be stamped out.”

Human development “traps”

Current evidence points to a direct linkage between climate change and increased risk of climate disasters, like floods and droughts, and the overwhelming majority of people affected live in developing countries, says Fighting climate change. The authors note that on average between 2000 and 2004, one in 19 people living in the developing world was affected by a climate disaster each year, compared to one person in 1,500 for OECD countries.

In the aftermath of a flood or drought, it is impossible to capture in images the depth of damage inflicted on poor people in Africa. With limited access to insurance, savings or assets, poor households are faced with stark choices in the face of climate shocks that can wipe out crops, reduce job opportunities, push up food prices and destroy property.

In the 1999 drought in Malawi, most poor people coped by eating less, says Fighting climate change. They also used up their savings or borrowed money and sold their livestock, poultry or household items. Then in 2002, when drought hit again, nearly five million people were in need of emergency food aid. It did not arrive immediately, says the Report, and households coped by turning to extreme survival measures such as theft and prostitution.

The Report illustrates how climate shocks can lock people into a downward cycle of poverty. The authors found children born during a drought, for example, were much more likely to be malnourished and stunted. In Ethiopia and Kenya, two of the world’s most drought-prone countries, children aged five or less born during a drought are respectively 36 and 50 percent more likely to be malnourished that children not born during a drought. For Ethiopia, that meant two million additional malnourished children in 2005. In Niger, children aged two or less born in a drought year were 72 percent more likely to be stunted, according to the Report.

Fighting “adaptation apartheid”

The authors emphasize that while carbon dioxide emissions know no borders—one tonne of emissions from Texas does the same damage as one tonne emitted by Niamey, Niger—the capacity of the residents in these locations to cope with the effects of climate change varies dramatically.

As global warming changes weather patterns in large parts of Africa, crops fail and people go hungry, says Fighting climate change. By contrast, “in rich countries, coping with climate change to date has largely been a matter of adjusting thermostats, dealing with longer, hotter summers, and observing seasonal shifts.”

In California, for example, rising winter temperatures are expected to reduce snow-fall in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which acts as a water storage system for the State. As this threatens the availability of water throughout the year, California has developed an extensive system of reservoirs and water channels to maintain flows of water to the dry areas, while also investing heavily in recycling water.

In northern Kenya, by comparison, increased frequency of droughts means that women are walking greater distances to fetch water, often ranging from 10 to 15 kilometres a day, says the Report. This confronts women with personal security risks, keeps young girls out of school and imposes an immense physical burden—a plastic container filled with 20 litres of water weighs around 20 kilograms.

“Leaving the world’s poor to sink or swim with their own meagre resources in the face of the threat posed by climate change is morally wrong,” writes Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, in the Report, “[but] this is precisely what is happening. We are drifting into a world of ‘adaptation apartheid’.”

Current spending through multilateral mechanisms on adaptation in developing countries has amounted to $26 million to date—roughly one week’s worth of spending on United Kingdom flood defences. This is nowhere near sufficient, says the Report, and it calls on the developed countries to support a new global investment of at least $86 billion annually, or 0.2 percent of OECD countries’ combined gross domestic product (GDP), in adaptation efforts to climate-proof infrastructure and build the resilience of the poor to the effects of climate change.

A pathway for Bali and beyond

Fighting climate change stresses that unless dramatic changes happen both at the national and international levels, climate change will stall and then reverse efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Existing aid investments will be put at risk because of climate-related events and an increasing portion of development money will be diverted to tackling climate disasters rather than long-term development.

With these challenges in mind, the Report lays out two sets of recommendations. The first set relates to the foundations for successful adaptation planning:

  • Expand the continent’s meteorological monitoring network, so that farmers can get better information faster about climate patterns in the region. Currently the continent has one weather station for every 25,460 square kilometres. The Netherlands, by contrast has one site for every 716 square kilometres.
  • Invest in climate proofing infrastructure such as water-storage or “water harvesting” facilities in countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania with high levels of rainfall concentrated in a few weeks of the year.
  • Improve national social insurance programmes build resilience while protecting farmers and poor urban residents from the worst effects of climate-related disasters. The Kalomo pilot project in Zambia, providing $6 a month to families in the bottom 10 percent of the economy, is a promising example of one such programme.
  • Invest in early-warning systems. Mozambique’s creation of early warning and rapid-response mechanisms following devastating floods in the year 2000 is one such example referred to by the Report’s authors.

The second set of recommendations lays out a definitive checklist for all political leaders meeting in Bali in December—a pathway for a binding and enforceable post 2012 multilateral agreement that the authors stress will be essential to buttress our planet and its poorest people against the worst impacts of climate change:

  • Cut emissions from developing countries by a total of at least 20 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, and for developed countries by 30 percent by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
  • Create a Climate Change Mitigation Facility to finance the incremental low-carbon energy investment in developing countries to give developing countries both the means to switch to low emission pathways and the incentive to commit to binding international emission cuts. This would need an investment $25-50 billion annually.
  • Put a proper price on carbon through a combination of carbon taxation and an ambitions global expansion of cap-and-trade schemes.
  • Increase the capacity of developing countries to participate in the carbon market.
  • Strengthen regulatory standards by adopting and enforcing tougher efficiency standards on vehicle, building and electrical appliance emissions.
  • Support the development of low carbon energy provision, recognizing unexploited potential for an increase in the share of renewable energy used and the need for urgent investment in breakthrough technologies such as carbon capture and storage, while supporting growth and promoting access to energy.
  • Allocate $86 billion annually, or 0.2 percent of northern countries’ combined GDP to adaptation to climate proof infrastructure and build the resilience of the poor to the effects of climate change.
  • Make adaptation part of all plans to reduce poverty and extreme inequality, including poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs).
  • Recognize carbon sequestration on forests and land as essential parts of a future global agreement and back international finance transfer plans on deforestation as advocated by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil among others.

Fighting climate change concludes that “one of the hardest lessons taught by climate change is that the economic model which drives growth and the profligate consumption in rich nations that goes with it, is ecologically unsustainable.” But the authors argue, “with the right reforms, it is not too late to cut greenhouse gas emissions to sustainable levels without sacrificing economic growth: that rising prosperity and climate security are not conflicting objectives.”

* * * *

ABOUT THIS REPORT: The Human Development Report continues to frame debates on some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. It is an independent report commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Kevin Watkins is the Lead Author of the 2007/2008 report, which includes special contributions from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Mayor of the City of New York Michael R. Bloomberg, Advocate for Arctic climate change Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair of the World Commission on Sustainable Development and former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, and the Director of the Centre for Science and Environment Sunita Narain. The Report is translated into more than a dozen languages and launched in more than 100 countries annually. Further information can be found at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-2008/

The 2007/2008 Human Development Report is published in English by Palgrave Macmillan.

ABOUT UNDP: UNDP is the UN’s global network to help people meet their development needs and build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working as a trusted partner with governments, civil society and the private sector to help them build their own solutions to global and national development challenges. Further information can be found at http://www.undp.org

The UK Doubles Contribution to the 11th replenishment of the African Development Fund

UK Doubles Contribution to Development Fund
African Development Bank (Tunis)

NEWS
17 November 2007
Posted to the web 29 November 2007
Tunis
The United Kingdom announced on Tuesday, 27 November 2007 that it is doubling its contribution to the 11th replenishment of the African Development Fund (ADF XI), the first shareholder to do so.

The UK contribution will be £417 million, approximately US$ 863 million, and effectively twice the amount of its contribution from the previous replenishment.

Douglas Alexander the UK International Development Secretary made the announcement whilst on a visit to Tanzania.

“This is the biggest contribution that the UK has made to the African Development Fund”, he said. “It demonstrates our commitment to help build African institutions, our confidence in the reform process being undertaken by the African Development Bank, and our belief that the Fund can effectively support development in Africa’s poorest countries. I’m calling for all donors to increase their support for the Africa Development Fund at the final replenishment meeting in London in December.”

In his reaction to the announcement, the African Development Bank Group President, Donald Kaberuka, welcomed the announcement describing it as a concretization of commitments to double aid to Africa, a major boost to the concessional window of the Bank’s capacity to support low income countries in Africa over the period 2008-2010. He expressed his hope and expectations that other donors will follow suit to raise the ambitions of the ADF XI.

“I greatly welcome this announcement and applaud the continuing leadership shown by the UK in its support to Africa and in implementing the commitments made by the G8. I value the confidence shown in the Bank as an African institution. I know this announcement is based on an expectation of improved performance by the Bank. That is no less than Africa itself expects from us, and we are determined to deliver,” he added.

Going forward, Mr. Kaberuka underscored the determination of the Bank to make a major contribution to poverty reduction and the MDGs through growth by improving the productive capacity in Africa, promoting economic integration, investing in infrastructure, private sector development, developing the skills needed to be competitive, as well as stepping up engagement in fragile states.

He said the Bank aims at continuously changing into an organisation which is dynamic, flexible, and able to better respond to the diverse needs of African countries. “We are making progress in restructuring the Bank so that there is a greater focus on results, strengthening country focus, decentralization and synergy with other stakeholders. The reform programme will continue,” he further said.

He said the Bank has the capacity to channel effectively additional resources to Africa, adding that the final replenishment meeting in London on 10/11 December will agree on a comprehensive action plan and results framework. “We are ready to be judged on our results,” he emphasized.

“I very much hope that other shareholders will raise the ambitions and also pledge contributions to the replenishment consistent with the needs of Africa today and with the growing capacity of the Bank to deliver,” Mr. Kaberuka said.

The African Development Bank is a major source of development finance in Africa. It is crucial in helping African countries work towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. In recent years the Bank has made significant reforms to become more effective. The amount committed to ADF-10 was US$ 5.40 billion (2004-2007).

Is Democracy An Effective Antidote to Extremism?

Democracy As an Antidote to Extremism
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

NEWS
29 November 2007
Posted to the web 29 November 2007

By Francis Kokutse
Dar Es Salaam
The director of Panorama — the Palestinian Center for the Dissemination of Democracy and Community Development — has condemned those who carry out terrorist acts in the name of Islam, saying they are not representative of the global Muslim community.

Walid Salem made the comments in an interview with IPS on the sidelines of the third conference to be held under the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy. This joint initiative by Finland and Tanzania, which began in 2003, has tried to provide a new forum for North-South dialogue.

The Jerusalem-based Panorama is a non-governmental organisation set up in 1991 with a view to creating “a pluralistic Palestinian civil society”, according to the group’s website.

“Groups like al Qaeda are just a minority of Muslims and do not represent the broader peace loving Muslims around the world,” said Salem. “There is nothing like extremism in Islam. Rather, the religion stands for peace — and anyone who goes against the peace should not be seen to be working for all Muslims These groups only use Islam to justify their extremist activities.”

He added that Islamic extremism was rooted in political developments in the Middle East, namely the emergence of political tyrants that had resulted in “oriental despotism”.

“With no chance of engaging those who led them, some of the people took to extremist activities and hid behind religion. When leaders deny the people participation in government and supervise a system of oppression as well as extreme poverty among the people, the people are bound to find a way to express their frustrations.”

Salem said the solution to these problems lay in improved governance. “Democracy must be created with justice assured to all, so that they can live their lives without fear of oppression.”

He also highlighted the need for Islam to be brought into step with modern life.

“During Mohammed’s time, limbs were cut off of those who stole, but now there are scholars who are calling for other forms of punishment for those who steal,” Salem said. “The issue of extremism has arisen because there are those who want to bring the past into the present. But times have changed, and no one is going round fighting ‘infidels’ as happened in the past.”

The Nov. 27-29 conference in Dar es Salaam is being held under the theme ‘Inclusive Governance — Bridging Global Divides’. Discussions have focused, in part, on the role that civil society has to play in promoting peace and security.

The meeting also marks the end of the second phase of the Helsinki Process (2005-2007), and is reviewing that has been achieved over the past two years.

The first phase of the process lasted from 2003 to 2005; its aims included developing extensive co-operation to address global problems. The second leg of the initiative (2005-2007) has tried to push for certain proposals made during the first phase to be implemented. Continuation of broad consultation on the difficulties facing the international community was also amongst the objectives of the second phase.

Commonwealth Countries Plan on Improving Internet Connectivity for Rural Communities

Improving Internet Connectivity for Rural Communities
Commonwealth News and Information Service (London)

NEWS
30 November 2007
Posted to the web 30 November 2007

Promoting faster telephone and internet connectivity for rural communities in the 18 Commonwealth African countries – that is the aim of a Commonwealth Connects project known as the Commonwealth African Rural Connectivity Initiative (COMARCI).

The £1.2 million project was launched in Kampala, Uganda, on 22 November 2007 on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, with a £50,000 seed funding from the Government of Malta through the Commonwealth Connects programme. It involves collaboration with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) and the International Telecommunications Union.

The Chief Executive of the CTO, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah said: “There is no longer debate about the role information and communication technology (ICT) plays in the development process, and especially how mobile phones and the internet are helping to transform Africa’s economies. However, if Africa is to achieve the majority of its Millennium Development Goals, it must address quickly and creatively the special challenges posed by poor, illiterate, marginalized, disadvantaged rural populations.

“This COMARCI project will eliminate the digital marginalisation of rural societies. It will enhance education, employment and empowerment in Commonwealth Africa. It will enable the people in Africa to become stronger participants in development by providing access to improved literacy, innovation, entrepreneurship and e-commerce, as well as e-governance.”

COMARCI will involve research, consultations and workshops to mobilise investment, funding and technology partnerships to assemble a body of knowledge to develop a connectivity roadmap for Commonwealth Africa which would benefit the ICT sector, the business community and citizens.

Uganda’s ICT Minister Dr Ham-Mukasa Mulira underscored the importance of ICT in national development and global integration, saying: “In the information age, the true wealth of nations lies in the people’s ability to create, to communicate and to innovate. As such, ICTs have been key enablers of globalization, facilitating worldwide flows of information, capital, ideas, people and products. It is sad to note that about one-half of the world’s population have not realised the benefits enabled by ICTs.

“We each have a role to play in order to transform this digital divide into digital opportunity for national development and enhancement of regional and international integration such as the Commonwealth family,” added Dr Mulira.

UN’s FAO Warns that African Livestock Production Threatened By HIV/Aids

Livestock Production Threatened By HIV/Aids
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome)

PRESS RELEASE
30 November 2007
Posted to the web 30 November 2007
Rome
Not only is AIDS taking a dramatic toll on human lives but livestock production, a main income earner for rural households, is also being threatened in the most affected countries, FAO warned today.

With more than 60 percent of all people aged between 15 and 49 years living with HIV to be found in sub-Saharan Africa of whom 11.4 million are children orphaned by AIDS, the effect on the all important livestock sector has become a real concern.

Livestock make a substantial contribution to the incomes and nutrition of some 70 percent of rural households in developing countries, and in East and Southern Africa, for example, contribute as much as 13 percent to GNP, but proportionately much more to the food security of individual households.

Livestock provide income and food in the form of meat, milk and eggs; they also serve other important roles on the farm including draught power, and manure for fertilizer and as a source of fuel. However, with more and more of the working age population affected by HIV/AIDs fewer people are available to tend livestock.

Selling animals to pay bills

Household surveys in sub-Saharan Africa indicate that once family savings are exhausted, animals are usually the main asset sold to cover medical expenses or to meet funeral costs. The slaughter or sale of animals reduces herd size, resulting in less livestock products such as milk, eggs, meat, and hides being available for food or sale. Smaller herds can reduce the available breeding stock with a resulting negative impact on animal genetic resources within a community or area.

“In Zambia, an FAO study showed that in the past it was rare for HIV-affected households to sell a heifer or milking cow, where now it is commonplace. The short and long-term effects of this on family incomes and food security can be devastating”, said Simon Mack, Senior Officer in the Livestock Production Group.

At the same time, “in areas of high HIV incidence, veterinary services also no longer function properly because of the impact to the disease on staffing and skills levels”, said Simon Mack.

Women and children worst hit

Men are usually responsible for land cultivation using draught animals and in overall farm management in sub-Saharan Africa. Where men have become sick or have died due to AIDS, women and children may lack the skills, experience, time or resources to perform the same roles. Children may also be withdrawn from schools to help in the farm and household. The loss or transfer of cattle and other livestock following the death of an adult male, due to property inheritance or cultural traditions, can result in women and children losing these resources completely.

What is certain is that more research is needed on how the AIDS pandemic is impacting on livestock production and its consequences for affected communities, in order to develop strategies to minimize the negative consequences on both vulnerable households and populations and on the livestock sector itself.

Livestock as part of the solution

Livestock can however play a key role in lessening the impact of HIV/AIDS in affected communities. Poultry, sheep and goats can provide affected households with renewable assets, income and the possibility to improve the household diet. These species are easily managed, affordable, prolific and have short reproduction cycles. Moreover, most women in rural areas are experienced in keeping them. Small stock are also more appropriate for elderly and orphan-headed households.

Simple, low-cost projects can increase the productivity of small ruminants through improved housing, feeding and animal health care. What is still required is for the development community to fully appreciate the contribution that livestock can make.

Senegals’ Wade Tells West to Lift Sanctions against Zimbabwe

Filed under: Africa,African,African Union,AU,Uncategorized — Mr. Craig @ 4:01 pm

Lift Sanctions Against Zim, Wade Tells West
The Herald (Harare)

NEWS
30 November 2007
Posted to the web 30 November 2007

By Peter Matambanadzo And Zvamaida Murwira
Harare
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has urged Western countries to lift the illegal sanctions they imposed against Zimbabwe and called on fellow African countries to solidly support the southern African State.

Addressing journalists through an interpreter after laying a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National Heroes Acre yesterday, Mr Wade said Britain, France and their allies should lift the sanctions forthwith. “When I go back home, I will ask for the sanctions to be lifted. They are not fair on the Zimbabwean people. They are infringing the people,” he said.

At a State banquet hosted in his honour by President Mugabe on Wednesday night, the Senegalese leader said he would lobby other African countries at the EU-Africa Summit in Portugal next week to press for the removal of the embargo. “I think it is not right because the sanctions against Zimbabwe seem to be very arbitrary. We should find a way to see that these sanctions are alleviated,” he said. Yesterday, Mr Wade expressed confidence in Zimbabwe saying its future was bright and with the support of fellow African countries, it would prosper. “I am optimistic in the future of Zimbabwe. There are a lot of things about Zimbabwe . . . I am going back home with a feeling, we as African people should help the people of Zimbabwe.

“Zimbabwe deserves more support from African countries. We should rally behind Zimbabwe,” he said. Mr Wade said the Zimbabwean problem was an African problem, which should be collectively addressed by Africans. He said the ongoing talks between Zanu-PF and two factions of the opposition MDC showed that democracy was alive in Zimbabwe. Mr Wade took a swipe at the Western media for mis-

leading the world and distorting the true situation in Zimbabwe. “The Western media has distorted what has been happening in Zimbabwe. What’s in the media is not true because they describe Zimbabwe as a country where there is permanent uprising of people. They say President Mugabe is weak and has no support when President Mugabe does have support,” he said. The Senegalese leader described his visit as an eye opener and added that the information he had been supplied by the British Ambassador in Senegal and from the Internet on the situation in Zimbabwe had turned out to be false.

Mr Wade toured the national shrine led by the National Museums and Monuments curator Mr Lovemore Mandima. Mr Mandima explained to Mr Wade the significance of the national shrine and gave a synopsis of the liberation struggle. Mr Wade described his tour of the shrine as emotional. He visited the graves of the late First Lady Amai Sally Mugabe and Vice Presidents Joshua Nkomo and Simon Muzenda.

Mr Wade said he knew Cde Nkomo and had met him and other Zimbabwean and several fellow African nationalists in 1959 when he was in London. He saluted the nationalists who fought for Zimbabwe’s independence.

Mr Wade returned home yesterday and was seen off at Harare International Airport by President Mugabe, Cabinet ministers and senior Government officials.

Malaria Research Reveals New Findings

Filed under: Africa,African,Trans Africa,Uncategorized — Mr. Craig @ 4:01 pm

Research Sheds New Light On Malaria Parasite

SciDev.Net (London)
NEWS
29 November 2007
Posted to the web 30 November 2007

By Carol Campbell
Researchers have provided the first evidence that malaria parasite development in the always-changing environment of a human host is strikingly different to how it develops in the more consistent surroundings of a laboratory.

The results of their study, published online in Nature today (29 November), may help explain why some patients suffer more extreme symptoms than others.

Researchers from Senegal and the United States screened a number of patients at Velingara Hospital in east Senegal, where malaria is particularly endemic, collecting blood samples from 43 children of varying ages and symptoms.

Subsequent genetic analysis of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, found in their blood, revealed that each human host had influenced the parasite’s physiology and may have had an impact on its virulence, said co-author Daouda Ndiaye, from the Le Dantec teaching hospital in Dakar, Senegal.

The researchers write that there is a “previously unknown physiological diversity” in the biology of malaria in a living organism.

“This is a real advance,” Ndiaye said. “Although only 43 patient samples were studied, we identified two new biological states of the parasite.” They found that parasites can be actively growing, starving or stressed — with only the first of these apparent when studied in culture.

Co-author Elizabeth Winzeler, from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in California, United States, said scientists had been making assumptions about the malaria parasite’s metabolism based on laboratory observations, which do not correspond to fluctuating circumstances inside a human host.

“This study shows that we should probably not make such assumptions and that the physiology of parasites inside of people may be different than their physiology inside of laboratory flasks. The work may point to why some drugs do not work as expected in curing disease,” she told SciDev.Net.

The study will aid malaria drug development and improves the chance of developing a malaria vaccine, Winzeler added. “This could result in more effective drug combinations, which target both physiological states [in human hosts and laboratory conditions] simultaneously. Better drug combinations would reduce the threat of drug resistance emerging.”

The Disaster Awaiting Africa

The Disaster Awaiting Africa
Daily Trust (Abuja)

COLUMN
25 November 2007
Posted to the web 26 November 2007

By Dr. Aliyu Tilde
Abuja
Africa is described by many historians as a passive continent. At least in the last millennium, the continent has been at the receiving end of history. While it has benefited from the values of other civilizations, it has suffered immensely from their atrocities.

Slave trade was the most horrendous to remember, when Arabs and, later, Europeans in collaboration with African leaders freely depleted the continent of millions of its most able manpower. No compensation is contemplated. Then colonialism depleted it of its resources, after subduing any resistance from its sons, sometimes using the most gruesome means. Neocolonialism, and now globalization, continued with our subjugation to the West through multinational companies and surrogate political regimes. AIDS, another product of the West, has so far killed millions and even according to the revised estimate of infected persons released last week, Africa accounts for 68% of the 33 million infected persons and 75% of the dead. There sits our mother continent, immersed in its agony and watching helplessly.

The next disaster awaiting the continent would come as a result of global warming, another product of the West. There is a consensus that the continent will be one of the worst hit. In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that “Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability, a situation aggravated by the interaction of ‘multiple stresses’, occurring at various levels, and low adaptive capacity.” Scientists are forecasting a doom of acute food and water shortages, war, floods, etc. The most pathetic thing is both people and governments of Africa are neither prepared for it nor do they possess the adaptive capacity to endure the situation. “African farmers have developed several adaptation options to cope with current climate variability, but such adaptations may not be sufficient for future changes of climate”, the IPCC report said. Over 75% of Africans live on subsistence farming, something that will be impossible in most part of the continent when temperature rise reaches 20C by 2050. The IPCC envisages an increase of 5.8oC by 2100, during the lifetime of our immediate grandchildren. It is important that we make a survey of the impact before anything else.

In its May 10, 2007, The Economist summarized the latest IPCC regional report, saying, “The IPCC’s most recent regional report certainly raises the specter of rising mortality.” It predicts a minimum 2.5°C increase in temperature in Africa by 2030; drylands bordering the deserts may get drier, wetlands bordering the rainforest’s may get wetter (see map). The panel suggests the supply of food in Africa will be “severely compromised” by climate change, with crop yields in danger of collapsing in some countries.

“In the dry lands, water may become a critical issue. Soaring temperatures and erratic rainfall may dry up surface water. Between 75m and 250m Africans, out of the 800m or so now living in sub-Saharan Africa, may be short of water. The soil will hold less moisture, bore-holes will become contaminated, and women and girls will have to walk ever greater distances to fetch water. Vegetative cover will recede. The IPCC guesses that 600,000 square kilometres (232,000 square miles) of cultivable land may be ruined.

“Warming may also hurt animal habitats and biodiversity. More algae in freshwater lakes will hit fishing. The glaciers of Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains of Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro and of Kenya’s eponymous mountain may disappear; only seven of the 18 glaciers recorded on Mount Kenya in 1900 still remain. At the same time, a likely rise in sea levels may threaten the coastal infrastructure of Northern Egypt, the Gambia, the Gulf of Guinea and Senegal.

“There are two caveats to this gloomy scenario. The first is that some parts of Africa may benefit from climate change. Increased rainfall in highland areas in eastern Africa could, for example, be beneficial. Second, though climate-change models have improved, they have been unreliable in Africa. The broad outline is plain but the detail is guesswork.”

Let us not fold our arms and think that the danger is farfetched. It is right here. A conglomeration of six environmental groups made the following report: Cairo recorded its warmest August (41oC) in 1998; in South Africa, the warmest and driest decade in recorded history was between 1985 and 1995; in Senegal there is a sea level rise at Rufisque; the Lewis Glaciers on Mount Kenya have already melted by 92%; the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro is projected to disappear by 2020 – 82% has disappeared already, of which one third disappeared in just the last 12 years; in Uganda, glaciers have decreased by 75% in just the last 15 years.

Rains seem to be our main concern in Nigeria and the news is not encouraging at all. Readers will recall that in Food Shortage Ahead, we discussed the problem of reduced rainfall experienced this year in many parts of Northern Nigeria. Scientists are linking such observations with global warming. The National Geographic of March 3, 2006 reported that “less rains will fall annually in parts of Africa within 50 years due to global warming.” There will be a 10 – 20% drop in North-western and Southern Africa according to experts, reported National Geographic. A 10% drop, the report said, “will leave Botswana with only 23% of its present rainfall; with 20% (drop), Botswana will completely dry up.”

Our main concern in Nigeria is what effect reduced rainfall would have on our food security. According to the map published by the Economists (inset) all states in the arid and semi-arid North will be drastically affected, in addition to our neighbour, Niger. The states are Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe and Borno. These states are almost exclusive areas for the production of millet, guinea corn, cotton, groundnut, vegetables and beef. Within three years, they have experienced drought in twice. Though in that article, we placed our hope in the assumption that if droughts are part of a cyclic phenomenon, we can no longer close our eyes to the possibility that global warming may be involved especially if the frequency of droughts continue to rise.

If the rains in these states continue drop, not only will food become unaffordable, the level of poverty which is already reported by the Central Bank of Nigeria to be 75% (in some places 95%) will further deteriorate, thereby precipitating social crisis that can only be imagined. In addition, Lake Chad is counted among the African lakes that will dry up drastically, reducing irrigation farming and fishing in the Chad Basin.

Poverty on its part will bring about other problems. Health will be the first to queue up behind hunger. The vulnerability of African nations to diseases like malaria, meningitis, cholera and even AIDS, will increase, according to the IPCC report. Then conflicts will ensue resulting from sharing scarce resources (especially water) and population shift from the most Northern states Southward into the Middle and Southern states. The demography of Nigeria will never be the same. And so on.

We better brace up. As at now, our preparation is nil. Simple. The Economist of May 10, 2007, gave this apt summary of the situation. “Few African leaders have grasped the scale of the challenge posed by climate change. Most oil-producers have squandered their bonanza. Nigeria has failed to plan for how to stem the dreadful pollution in its oil-producing Delta region or to prevent desertification tearing at the fabric of its dry Muslim North. South Africa is only just beginning to own up to its coal addiction. Uganda’s Mr Museveni is fighting off a rare insurrection from his supporters against plans to turn a piece of Ugandan rainforest over to farming. The World Meteorological Organisation says that weather-data collection in Africa has recently got worse, just as the need for accurate figures has grown; many of the automatic weather stations it helped set up have fallen into disrepair. The African Union has done little to sound the climate-change alarm.” In fact, “at a recent African Union summit,” said The Economist, “Uganda’s combustible president, Yoweri Museveni, declared climate change an act of aggression by the rich world against the poor one-and demanded compensation.” The magazine agreed: “The contrast,” it honestly noted, “between poverty in Africa and carbon gluttony elsewhere is sharp. Why should the poorest die for the continued excesses of the richest?”

We must note that the continent can do very little to stop carbon emissions from rich industrialized countries. On the contrary, many African countries would wish to join the league of the culprits. President Yar’Adua is working hard to see that this country is among the industrialized nations of the world by 2020. So we are working towards aggravating the situation than alleviating it. Do you blame Yar’Adua? Even the Kyoto Agreement has foreseen the inevitability that “the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs.”

Right now we are not a substantial part of the cause (except through deforestation), so we can hardly be part of the solution. A survey covering the last 200 years published in Wikipedia indicated that by 2000 Africa produced only 200million metric tons (mt) of carbon annually, compared with 400mt each for Middle East and Central and South America; 700mt for Australia, Japan and Pacific states; 800mt for Eastern Europe and former Soviet States; 820mt for Communist East Asia; 900mt for Western Europe; and 1,620mt for United States and Canada. Seeing these figures, I concluded that our case is hopeless. The bad news is that the US refused to ratify the Kyoto Agreement, which itself is a mediocre attempt in the face of the threat since by 2015, it is hoping to reduce emissions by 5% only from its 1990 level. China, India and Brazil, the emerging industrial giants, are not ready to decelerate their carbon emissions either.

If we cannot stop it, can we mitigate its effect? Causes of greenhouse emissions in Africa like deforestation and bush burning could be stopped were the continent blessed with competent leaders. But what can Africa do with the most incompetent of its sons at the helm of its affairs? These guys believe in war, theft and gluttony only, amidst the pervasive poverty that is precipitated by bad governance, corruption, illiteracy, communal conflicts, etc. In place of what would the common African give up his firewood and coal then?

If we were blessed with good leaders they could have for decades now tried to stop desert encroachment. In the face of global warming, they would set up panels to monitor our climate and come up with mitigating solutions that would reduce the severity of the foreseen catastrophe. But… but…

Candidly, I have never written an article with a hopeless conclusion like this. Mother Africa will remain in its characteristic agony, watching the disaster approach by the day. What a passive continent!

Ayittey Points to Missing Money in Africa as a Problem

Region’s Leaky Begging Bowl
Ghanaian Chronicle (Accra)

NEWS
30 November 2007
Posted to the web 30 November 2007

By George B.N. Ayittey
Accra
Even Nigeria’s Senate is riddled with scams and inflated contracts, with proceeds pocketed by sitting senators.

According to the president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, Chief Jaiye K. Randle, that individual Nigerians are currently lodging far more in foreign banks, which he estimated at $170 billion, than Nigeria’s foreign debt of $35 billion.

Even when the loot is recovered, it is quickly re-looted! In Nigeria, about $709 million and another $144 million were recovered from the loot former president, General Sani Abacha, and his henchmen stashed abroad. But the Senate Public Accounts Committee found only $6.8 million and _2.8 million of the recovered booty in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) (The Post Express (July 10, 2000).

In Kenya, constitutional reform has stalled under the watchful eyes of the “Mount Kenya mafia,” as the ruling elite are called. Widespread government corruption has caused international donors to withhold money allocated to fight AIDS. The disease has killed about 1.5 million in Kenya since 1984. The government estimates that about 1.4 million Kenyans are still infected. Kenya’s Health Ministry is riddled with graft. A recent audit revealed the existence of “ghost workers” with their annual $6.5 million salaries collected by living workers. In June 20, 2004, the same Health Ministry paid KSh140 million ($1.8 million) for a radiography machine for Kenyatta National Hospital that was never delivered.

In the past year, Kenya has been rocked by corruption scandals in various ministries but in case after case, no action was taken and ministers involved were merely sacked, not prosecuted to recover the loot. Africa’s begging bowl

Africa’s begging bowl leaks horribly. In August 2004, an African Union report claimed that Africa loses an estimated $148 billion annually to corrupt practices, a figure which represents 25 percent of the continent’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Two years earlier at an African civic groups meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nigeria’s President, Olusegun Obasanjo, claimed that “corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (£95 billion) from their people in the decades since independence” (The London Independent, June 14, 2002. Web posted at http://www.independent.co.uk). But these are gross underestimates. According to one UN estimate, $200 billion or 90 percent of the sub-Saharan part of the continent’s gross domestic product was shipped to foreign banks in 1991 alone.

Civil wars continue to wreak devastation on African economies, costing at least $15 billion annually in lost output, wreckage of infrastructure, and refugee crises. The civil wars are over power, not redrawing artificial colonial borders, and are caused by the adamant refusal of African leaders to relinquish or share political power. The crisis in Zimbabwe, for example, has exacted an enormous toll on Africa. Foreign investors have fled the region and more than 4 million Zimbabweans have left the country along with 60,000 physicians and other professionals. The Observer [London] (Sept 30, 2001) estimated that Zimbabwe’s economic collapse had caused $37 billion worth of damage to South Africa and other neighboring countries.

Civil wars

Africa can’t feed itself because senseless civil wars, preference for industry, misguided statist policies of price controls and marketing boards have devastated its agriculture. By 2000, Africa’s food imports had reached $18.7 billion, slightly more than donor assistance of $18.6 billion to Africa.

Clearly, the resources Africa needs to develop can be found in Africa itself – only if its leaders were willing to reform their abominable economic and political systems, re-orient their development policies toward agriculture, curb corruption and invest their wealth -B legitimate or ill-gotten C in Africa. But the leadership, wedded to the old “blame colonialism” paradigm, is not interested. It is programmed to look outside Africa and badger the West for resources. And to compound the problem, the West obliges them.

Burdened with excessive racial sensitivity and guilt over the iniquities of the slave trade and colonialism, the West has been reluctant to speak candidly about Africa. Unable to distinguish between African leaders and the African people, Westerners shy away from criticizing African leaders for fear of being labeled “racist” or accused of “blaming the victim.” This overt racial sensitivity shields African leaders from criticism and inadvertently helps perpetuate misguided policies and wrong choices.

Worse, Western policies toward Africa has been leader-centered. Naïve Westerners think that the best way of helping the African people is by handing money over to their corrupt despots or forming “partnerships” with them. Italy, for example, pumped so much aid into Somalia that it became known as the “Graveyard of Aid.” Between 1981 and 1990, Italy sponsored 114 projects in Somalia, costing more than $1 billion. According to Wolfgang Achtner, an Italian journalist, “with few exceptions (such as vaccination programs carried out by NGOs [nongovernmental organizations]), the Italian ventures were absurd and wasteful” (The Washington Post, 24 January 1993, C3). One example was for the $250 million spent on the Garoe-Bosaso road that stretched 450 kilometers across barren desert but crossed only by nomads on foot.

Effects

Piero Ugolini, a Florentine agronomist who worked for the technical unit of the Italian Embassy in Mogadishu from 1986 to 1990, revealed that most of Italian cooperation projects were carried out without considering their effects on the local population. “Italian aid program was used to exploit the pastoral populations and to support a regime that did nothing to promote internal development and was responsible for the death of many of its people,” he said (cited in The Washington Post, 24 January 1993, C3). In 1993, Somali imploded.

There are better ways of helping Africa – by empowering its people. The leader-centered approach needs to be demolished and replaced with an institution-based approach. The following six institutions are critical:

  • An independent central bank: to assure monetary and economic stability, as well as stanch capital flight out of Africa. The World Bank, for example, should desist from dealing with African countries without an independent central bank. Central banks have been the linchpin in the transmission of loot by the ruling bandits.
  • An independent judiciary – essential for the rule of law. Supreme Court judges may also be rotated within a region. In December 2001, Mokhtar Yahyaoui, president of the Centre de Tunis pour l’independence de la Justice (CIJ), was dismissed as a judge in Tunisia after calling for the constitutional principle of the independence of the judiciary to be respected (Index on Censorship, July 2003; p.161). Independent media
  • A free and independent media to ensure free flow of information. The first step is solving a social problem is to expose it, which is the business of news practitioners. State-controlled or state-owned media do not expose corruption, repression, human rights violations and other crimes against humanity. In fact, it is far easier to plunder and repress people when they are kept in the dark. The media needs to be taken out of the hands of government and ought to be the first strategic enterprise the state should divest itself from before any foreign aid is given.
  • An independent Electoral Commission to avoid situations where African despots write electoral rules, appoint a fawning coterie of sycophants as electoral commissioners, throw opposition leaders in jail and hold “coconut” (farcical) elections to return themselves to power.
  • An efficient and professional civil service, which will deliver essential social services to the people on the basis of need and not on the basis of ethnicity or political affiliation.
  • The establishment of a neutral and professional armed and security forces.

Give the African people these six institutions and they themselves would solve more than 80 percent of Africa’s problems by instigating change from within. These institutions cannot be established by the leaders or the ruling elites as there is a conflict of interest involved. They must be established by civil society.

For example, last December, while Ukrainians had camped outside parliament and government buildings to protest a fraudulent election, Ghanaians went to vote in one of the most peaceful and calm in Ghana’s – indeed Africa’s – recent history. The international news media missed it probably because there were no street protests or violence. Why the difference?

In Ukraine, the electoral commission and the media were state-controlled, except for a few private internet bloggers. The result was a stolen election that drove irate citizens into the streets to mount an Orange Revolution. Fortunately for the protesters, the security forces acted professionally and withheld fire. A fairly independent Supreme Court invalidated the fraudulent results, setting the state for their eventual overturn.

contrast

In Ghana, by contrast, the electoral commission was independent and the private media fiercely and raucously free — especially the private FM radio stations and independent newspapers.

They played such a stupendous role during Ghana’s 2000 elections, sending swarms of reporters to keep vigilance at polling stations. Any electoral irregularity was instantly reported on the air, causing teams of election officers to rush to the scene and fix the problem. Prior to the elections, the FM stations had, through their call-in shows, empowered the people with unfiltered information, urging them to exercise their right to vote. After observing Ghana’s 2000 elections, New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, remarked: “Let’s make all aid, all I.M.F.-World Bank loans, and all debt relief conditional on African governments’ permitting free FM radio stations. Africans will do the rest.” (NYT, May 4, 2001; p.A21).They haven’t in many other African countries because their leaders control the key institutions and have formed “partnerships of death” with Western donors.

Said Mercy Muigai, an unemployed Kenyan woman, when African leaders trekked to Kananaski, Alberta (Canada) on June 26, 2002, to present NEPAD to the G-8 Summit for funding:

“All these people [African leaders and elites] do is talk, talk, talk. Then if they do get any money from the wazungu [white men], they just steal it for themselves. And what about us? We have no food. We have no schools. We have no future. We are just left to die@ (The Washington Times, June 28, 2002; p.A17).

The writer, a native of Ghana, is a Distinguished Economist at American University and President of the Free Africa Foundation. His new book is Africa Unchained .

EU-Africa Summit – British PM Brown Could Be Vindicated

EU-Africa Summit – Brown Could Be Vindicated

Financial Gazette (Harare)
EDITORIAL
15 November 2007
Posted to the web 15 November 2007

By Mavis Makuni Own Correspondent
Harare
The controversy over the presence of President Robert Mugabe at the Europe/Africa summit to be held in Lisbon on December 8 and 9 seems set to rage on right up to the day of the conference.

The row, which was sparked by new British prime minister, Gordon Brown’s threat to boycott the summit if the Zimbabwean head of state was invited, has taken many turns during which threats and counter-threats to boycott the event have been made by the different blocs. In response to Brown’s threat, both African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders threatened to stay away from Lisbon unless their Zimbabwean counterpart was invited.

European and African ministers met in Accra, Ghana, towards the end of last month to decide whether to risk sparking a diplomatic storm by insisting that the Zimbabwean leader should be invited. In the end the meeting, which was attended by Portugal’s foreign minister, Luis Amado, decided that President Mugabe should be invited to attend the summit. Portugal has insisted that a bilateral dispute between Zimbabwe and its former colonizer should not be allowed to derail next month’s summit. The last Europe/Africa summit was held in Cairo in 2000. The next one, which was scheduled to be held in 2003 was cancelled because of disagreements over the Zimbabwean leader’s attendance.

Member countries of the European Union have adopted different positions with regard to President Mugabe’s presence in Lisbon . Some Nordic countries including Sweden have opposed the President’s participation but indicated they would not boycott the summit if he attended. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted from the outset that the Zimbabwean leader should be allowed to attend so that his peers could engage him openly over the persistent allegations of undemocratic governance and human rights abuses levelled against his government. “Criticism of Mr Mugabe can be levelled at him when he is there”, she said in a press interview last month. Merkel said Africa was too important for her country to boycott the summit because of squabbling over Zimbabwe’s presence.

A headline in yesterday’s issue of the state daily, The Herald, which announced in bold letters; “Zimbabwe prepared for showdown” proved the diplomatic row was far from over. The headline was over a story in which government officials accuse Britain and some Nordic countries of plotting to have Zimbabwe placed on the agenda of the Lisbon summit and stress that President Mugabe’s government is “prepared for any showdown.” In the report, the Swedish Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Sten Rylander is accused of spearheading a “plot” with other Nordic diplomats to “build up” allegations that the government perpetrates violence against its opponents .The press story says the plot also involves reviving calls for the prosecution by international courts of those responsible for atrocities in the 1980s when 20 000 civilians are believed to have been killed in Matabeleland and the Midlands.

Rylander is accused of having embarked on an anti-Zimbabwe campaign while on holiday in Europe in July and to have continued his onslaught at a meeting of the Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Fund in Nyanga last month.The Swedish envoy is slammed for making political allegations against the government at a development forum. “For him to throw his salvo at the government of Zimbabwe in a development forum is not only discourteous but also undiplomatic,” the Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Misheck Sibanda, is quoted as saying.

Another government official is quoted as saying Zimbabwe was not afraid to defend its sovereignty and reputation and would not shy away from a fight, especially where it is right. “If they dare play Britain’s cat pawl, they are likely to get one outcome, namely a repeat of the 2002 Johannesburg World Earth Summit”. This is where the Zimbabwean leader told then British prime minister Tony Blair to ” keep your Britain and I will keep my Zimbabwe.” The irony of this continuing war of words is that it could prove Brown’s fears that Zimbabwe’s presence in Lisbon could turn the Europe/Africa summit into a media circus and detract from the main agenda to be valid after all.

Zimbabwe’s combative mood and its dark warning about a repeat of the spectacle in South Africa in 2002 when President Mugabe was joined by former Namibian president Sam Nujoma in blasting and ridiculing Blair from the podium cannot be re-assuring to the organizers of the Lisbon summit. The vitriolic tirades against Rylander show that Zimbabwe is spoiling for a fight. Observers will have noted that Zimbabwe is threatening to fight so as to avoid defending its governance and human rights record, and ensuring that these issues are off limits during the summit. Why?

Questions will be asked why, if it has nothing to hide, the Zimbabwean government is not keen to seize the opportunity afforded by the summit to prove convincingly once and for all that the allegations of human rights abuses and repressive governance persistently levelled against it are baseless.This is the ideal platform from which to prove Rylander, his alleged co-conspirators and any other detractors wrong. It would be a contradiction for Zimbabwe, which has fought so relentlessly to assert its right to go to Lisbon as an equal partner , to then flinch at the prospect of facing scrutiny and criticism from its peers. It is Zimbabwe’s insistence on attending international gatherings only to defend its sovereignty and blast other countries while insisting that discussion of its own shortcomings is taboo that has won the country notoriety as a rabble-rouser.

Surely, if the Zimbabwean government is prepared to use international gatherings to defend its sovereignty and to attack the leaders of other countries, it should be willing to face criticism of its track record at the same fora. After all, according to an EU-Africa Strategic Partnership document titled “From Cairo to Lisbon”, democratic governance is expected to be one of the issues on the agenda. The others are climate change, energy, migration, mobility and employment. The African Union Executive is reported to have insisted that the agenda of the summit should take into account “Africa’s development needs including agriculture and food security.”

The first EU-Africa summit held in Cairo in 2000 resulted in the formulation of the Declaration of Cairo and a joint EU-Africa Cairo Plan of Action. Both address political and peace building issues, debt, conflict prevention and development.

OXFAM Warns Africa about Pending EU EPA Deals

EU Deal Will Hurt East Africa, Oxfam Warns
The New Times (Kigali)

NEWS
30 November 2007
Posted to the web 30 November 2007

By James Munyaneza
Kigali
A British international organisation has warned that the recent free trade agreement between the East African Community (EAC) and the European Union (EU) could result in unemployment and loss of revenue for countries in the African economic bloc.

Oxfam International urged in a statement sent to The New Times yesterday that other developing countries should ‘take heed of the range of voices raised against these deals and continue to ask the (European) Commission for more time to negotiate a pro-development deal, and for feasible alternatives to be considered.’

Luis Morago, Head of Oxfam International’s EU Office said in the statement: ‘Developing countries have been placed under enormous pressure to sign. Despite concerns raised by many, including the IMF, African civil society, trade unions, and academics, the Commission has ignored possible alternatives and insisted on the deadline.

‘They have essentially forced the East Africans to choose between guaranteeing markets for their agricultural exports today, and maintaining a degree of protection to promote future industrial growth – which all developed countries have done in the past.’

He said that the deal signed in Kampala, Uganda on Tuesday will oblige the ‘East African region to remove 80% of its tariffs on EU goods over 15 years, possibly more quickly, which could lead to unemployment and loss of vital government revenue that might otherwise be spent on health and education.’

‘It suits the Commission to spread the impression that regions are falling into line and the rest should do so too. But we would urge other countries to take heed of the range of voices raised against these deals and continue to ask the Commission for more time to negotiate a pro-development deal, and for feasible alternatives to be considered,’ he was quoted as saying.

The Goods-only trade agreement covers mainly industrial inputs and capital goods.

About one fifth of EAC trade will be completely excluded from any market liberalisation requirements.

The deal is seen as an interim step towards agreeing a full Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) by mid-2009.

The EAC signed the agreement with the EAC to proceed with negotiations on EPAs beyond the initial deadline on December 31. A number of international and national groups have discouraged a rushed signed on the EPAs.

State Minister for Industry and Investment Promotion Vincent Karega represented Rwanda at the ceremony. The other EAC member states are Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

There are worries that waiving tariffs on imports from EU would seriously hurt the already struggling economies of developing countries, adding to the already existing unfairness on the world market due to the highly subsidised western products.

World Grows Jealous as China Courts Africa

China Courts Africa – Who is Jealous Now?

The New Times (Kigali)
EDITORIAL
5 November 2007
Posted to the web 5 November 2007
Kigali
The Chinese Acting Ambassador to Rwanda, His Excellency Wang Xinm Li, has said that China’s increasing interest in Africa is not motivated by wanting to exploit the continent’s resources, but mostly to lend sincere support to the struggling African population.

He took a swipe at Western countries that have expressed concern at the great speed at which China is getting involved in Africa, and declared that nobody will stop them.

As this most interesting development plays out, Africa is watching the old colonial masters and current development partners, and the new entrants in the struggle for Africa’s improperly exploited and sometimes virgin natural resources, with a bit of amusement.

On the one hand, there is the age-old political game that has been played in Africa and might be playing out now. This is the pegging of development aid to whatever whim the givers may want, but mostly attaching it to the parameters of democracy as the Western world knows it. Any African leader wants aid but does not play ball, fails to meet the standards set for that aid support and therefore no aid.

In fact, the fast developing China, long isolated from the mainstream world politics, has also been threatened with a boycott of its 2008 Beijing Olympics if it does step up bettering its human rights record. At last, the west seems to say to China, we have them where we want them. China wants the 2008 Olympics to be a smashing success, so one might expect it to be bending over with the desire to impress. But wait

The economic success that has placed China at the adventuring end of world economics, has made it a direct competitor with the west for any resources that will make it grow even stronger. So it looks around, sees an Africa that is rich but still tottering, and decides to go the whole way. Right now China has just completed an investment deal in South Africa, buying 20 percent of Standard Bank, which translates into $5.5 billion. And this, without first demanding that South Africa should, say, increase its efforts to fight HIV/ Aids first before any deal is concluded.

Where does Africa stand in all this? Investments leading to economic emancipation, what else? Regardless where it is coming from. South Africa has taken the lead.

The Western Nations Concerns Over China’s Role in Africa is Starting to Show!!

West’s Concern Over China’s Role on Continent Starts to Show

The Nation (Nairobi)
OPINION
11 November 2007
Posted to the web 12 November 2007
Nairobi

Give it to Robert Mugabe: he has this remarkable ability to make Europe tie itself in knots. The upcoming Africa-European Union summit of Heads of Government hosted by Portugal is already steeped in controversy after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned he would not attend if the Zimbabwean leader were invited.

This has put everybody in a bind, no less the Europeans themselves.

But in an unusual reversal for Mr Brown, key European states from Germany to Portugal have intimated they don’t agree with the British government’s reasoning on this matter. Of course, the issue is being argued along the familiar and patronising line that one man should not jeopardise a vital discussion on trade and investment that is to be in Africa’s benefit.

If truth be told, it is Europe that needs the summit more than Africa does. The European Union bloc has traditionally been Africa’s most important and valuable trading partner. But in recent years, China booming economy has seen her rise to be the number two foreign economic player on our continent.

A year ago China organised the first Sino-Africa summit in Beijing, which was highly successful. Europe, as did many of Africa’s other would-be suitors, watched the event with keen interest.

Equal note has been taken of the fact that China has the largest number of embassies and consulates on the African continent, and that includes all the British and the French missions as well.

Actually the whole charade is about Africa’s vast, untapped resources. Everybody is fighting for a share of these under the polite guise of discussing investment at well-appointed summits.

Outside her interests in oil imports from Nigeria, Angola and other oil-producing African countries, the United States has been a comparatively lesser economic player in the continent despite her global omnipotence.

But America is certainly not keeping aloof from this intensifying competition for Africa’s enormous resources. And as is the case with Europe, it is China’s commercial inroads on the continent that have put the superpower on full alert.

Earlier this year Washington announced the creation of a new American military command it is calling Africom (for Africa Command).

It has been shopping around on the continent for a permanent headquarters for this command, so far unsuccessfully. For understandable reasons, hardly any African country would be comfortable offering this Africom a base, though Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf looks like she could succumb to George W. Bush’s recent charm offensive that saw her receive America’s highest decoration, the Congressional Medal of Honour.

The rationale advanced for Africom is, ostensibly, to network with African countries in matters of counter-terrorism, which means stalking terrorists from the Indian Ocean seaboard and the Horn of Africa up to the Sahel.

But those familiar with geopolitical strategies have no illusion that the time will come when, assuming China manages to crowd out the others from Africa’s resource pie, Africom will abruptly cease to be the benign force it is being purported to be.

Mr Brown’s stubborn insistence on the old British vendetta against Mr Mugabe has irritated other European countries who think he is failing to see the bigger picture. And it is not as if the Brits (or for that matter the French) are any longer the last word on matters African.

Ghanaian President John Kuffuor, who rarely reacts emotionally, has complained of countries introducing matters that are “extraneous” to the Lisbon summit. Mr Kuffuor’s remarks have been widely digested because he is not just any African. He is the serving Africa Union chairman, and hence our global voice. Mr Mugabe’s neighbour, Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa, who currently chairs the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has gone a step further and made it clear that he (and certainly others) will not be in Lisbon if the Zimbabwean leader is not invited.

Mr Brown is first and foremost playing to a gallery. The British have turned Mr Mugabe into such an ogre that they themselves have become hostage to their own propaganda.

The Prime Minister is already lagging behind in the polls to the opposition Conservative Party, and much as he can understand that his fellow Europeans are talking sense, he has already put himself in a political bind. That is Western “democracy” for you.

There was this interesting encounter last week between Mr Kalonzo Musyoka and the CEO of the Steadman Group, Mr George Waititu. Reportedly, the presidential aspirant was demanding to know Steadman’s polling methodology.

This is the same fellow who said he didn’t care about Steadman and that they could give him zero for all it mattered.

I don’t know what transpired, but (tongue in cheek!) I happily note that Mr Musyoka has gained three more points in the latest Steadman poll.

Commemorating 1st Anniversary of China-Africa Summit

Commemorating China -Africa Summit 1st Anniversary

The Times of Zambia (Ndola)
NEWS
15 November 2007
Posted to the web 15 November 2007

By Cecilia Lubumbashi-Mulenga

THE first ever China-Africa summit was held from November, 1 to 4, 2006 in the Chinese capital Beijing.

It is now one year since that landmark summit where, at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao, 48 African heads of state and government, among them President Mwanawasa, converged to draw up a blue-print for the development of Sino-Africa relations and adopted the Beijing Declaration and Action Plan for 2007 to 2009.

The Chinese government through its embassy in Lusaka on November 2, 2007, commemorated the first anniversary of the summit to underscore the strong and cordial relations existing between that country and Africa.

Present at the function was first Republican president Kenneth Kaunda whose successful visit to China in September was also being commemorated. Dr Kaunda was at the event to authenticate the Zambia-China relations. As the man who pioneered ties between Zambia and China since the country’s political independence, ‘KK’ knows too well what a friend Zambia and Africa has in China.

During the celebrations, Dr Kaunda added colour to the occasion with his popular song, Tiyende Pamodzi a legendary tune composed in the early days of Zambia’s independence which urges unity among people regardless of colour, tribe, creed or station in life.

“China has been our all-weather friend for time immemorial. She supported our struggle for self determination and independence. Today, we can look back with a deep sense of satisfaction that our relations with China have been and continue to be on solid ground. Indeed these relations are continuing to grow from strength to strength,” said Dr Kaunda.

“From the time of our independence in 1964, we adopted a one China policy, a decision we based on principle as Taiwan is a province of China. That is why we campaigned vigorously for the readmission of China into the United Nations, an issue which was resolved in 1971,” he said.

Addressing a gathering which included Chinese ambassador to Zambia, Li Qiangmin, Foreign Affairs Minister Kabinga Pande, Information and Broadcasting Services Minister and chief government spokesperson Mike Mulongoti among others, Dr Kaunda noted that the China-Africa relations should be nurtured and preserved at all costs.

“Today the countries of Africa are free of colonialism and apartheid. We have achieved political independence which in some cases came at a very high price. We are now engaged in another struggle for economic and social development. China is already playing a very important role to enhance our efforts. China is therefore our valued partner in development. Let us do everything possible to enhance these relations in the interest of our future generations,” said Dr Kaunda.

Others in attendance at the ceremony were opposition United National Development Party (UNDP) President Hakainde Hichilema, Education Minister Geoffrey Lungwangwa, other senior Government officials, freedom fighters and business men and women.

Chinese Ambasador to Zambia Li Quiangmin echoed KK’s sentiments noting that China and Zambia enjoyed a long standing traditional friendship. He was happy to note that the relations have continued to grow from strength to strength much to the disappointment and shame of some critics who have accused China of having a hidden and selfish agenda on Zambia and Africa at large.

The Chinese envoy was glad that the Zambian Government under the leadership of President Mwanawasa has consistently and roundly condemned such critics.

Said ambassador Quiangmin: “the politician who is attacking the Chinese investment and economic cooperation between China and Zambia, is only a ‘hired gun’ working to defame China for the purpose of getting money from Taiwan authorities”.

The ambassador vindicated China’s name by pointing out that its relations with Zambia had nothing to do with looting of local resources.

“For example, in 2006, Zambia’s total output of copper was 400,000 cubic tonnes out of which the total output from the Chinese mining companies in Zambia was less than 40,000 cubic tonnes and almost all the products from the Chinese mining companies were sold to the London Metal Exchange and China buys copper from the international market”.

The ambassador added that investment in Zambia stood at US$650 million (about K2.6 billion), accounting for over 12,000 job opportunities. He refuted claims that 80,000 Chinese nationals were in Zambia saying the correct figure was 3, 000.

During the China-Africa summit in Beijing, an eight point cocktail of measures was announced by Chinese president Hu Jintao aimed at enhancing cooperation between China and Africa. These included doubling China’s assistance to Africa, setting up the China-Africa Development Fund worth about US$5 billion (about K20 trillion) to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa and provide support to them and establish trade and economic cooperation zones in Africa in the next three years.

President Jintao followed up the China-Africa summit with a visit to a number of African countries last year top among them Zambia during which time he held one-on-one talks with President Mwanawasa on a wide range of issues of mutual interest.

Mr Pande who represented the Zambian Government at the commemoration, said Zambia was extremely pleased to note that the Beijing Plan of Action has not been empty words.

The minister recalled that shortly after the summit in November 2006, His Excellency President Hu Jintao paid a state visit to Zambia in February 2007. During the visit, President Jintao outlined concrete actions to be undertaken in Zambia under the spirit of the Beijing Plan of Action.

The plan entailed among other measures partially cancellation of Zambia’s debt owed to China, establishment of a Chinese economic and trade zone in the country, construction of a sports stadium and provision of 800 million yuan between 2007 to 2009 for projects mutually by Zambia and China.

Recounting progress so far made in establishing the Chambeshi Multi-Facility Economic Zone,, MFEZ, Mr Pande said a number of deliverables have been achieved including the investment in the west ore body which will create 1,500 jobs. The masterplan of the MFEZ itself has been finalised. In the meantime, the two governments have been speaking to potential investors from China to invest in the Zone.

The minister added that construction of houses for workers in the MFEZ is scheduled to start next year and the Zambian government has already provided land for the project.

On the ultra-modern stadium to be constructed in Ndola off the Ndola-Kitwe carriageway on the Copperbelt, Mr Pande said design works had reached an advanced stage. Recently, a local company won a tender to clear the area where the modern stadium will stand and work has since commenced.

Mr Pande expressed gratitude to the Chinese government for its responsiveness to Zambia’s development needs and the impressive speed with which action is being taken on issues agreed upon.

“I wish to re-assure your Excellency that Chinese investors, as any other investor from any other part of the world, are free to invest in Zambia. This is an open country that hosts people from Europe, America, the Middle East, Asia and even neighbouring African states,” said Mr Pande.

Mr Pande however, advised investors to obey the laws of the land even though some of them bearing in may not be conducive to the modern day business environment.

“As government, we are aware that some of our laws and regulations may not be conducive to the modern investor, but we are continuously upgrading and updating them with a view to making Zambia an attractive and conducive investment destination,” said Mr pande.

Mr Pande cautioned Zambians against falling prey to some people who are bent on painting a negative picture about the Chinese investors in preference to the Taiwanese investors saying the impact and benefits of the Chinese investment was there for all to see.

And acknowledging Dr Kaunda’s presence at the event, Mr Pande observed that the former Head of State occupies a special place in the Zambia – China relations as he and his Chinese counterpart the late late Chairman Mao and others like Zhou Enlai, were architects of the friendship which has continued to flourish over the over the years.

“This required courage then because Zambia had just attained its political independence and also because of the cold war politics of the day when friendship communist China was frowned upon. As we intensify cooperation between China and Zambia, it is important that we bear in mind that the economic benefits which Zambia is reaping today is largely because of the political dialogue established by our founding father KK,” said Mr Pande.

Zimbabwe’s High Commissioner to Zambia Lovemore Mazemo also hailed the longstanding relations between China and Africa.

“China has stood with Africa in its political liberation and it has continued to stand with the continent in its efforts in economic liberation,” said High Commissioner Mazemo.

In its quest for economic emancipation, Zambia needs genuine and all-weather friends like China who are keen and ready to assist the country and the continent at large to develop with no strings attached.

Over the years, China has demonstrated its commitment to help Zambia develop as can be seen in many investments the country has devoted to Zambia such as the Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority, TAZARA and other infrastructure littered all over the country too numerous count.

During his visit to China, President Mwanawasa when asked by journalists why he valued Chinese investment, replied jokingly: “refusing Chinese investment ‘ukakana no buchi,’ meaning to refuse Chinese investment, is to refuse honey.

As the old adage goes, ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed. Zambia and China are friends indeed.-ZANIS

China Signals a New Day for Africa

China Signals a New Day for Continent

BuaNews (Tshwane)
NEWS
11 November 2007
Posted to the web 12 November 2007

By John Battersby
Johannesburg
The recent acquisition by China’s largest bank of 20 percent of South Africa’s Standard Bank is a watershed event in the growing relationship between China and the development of the African continent.

China is an emerging global power and the sheer scale of its economy is already beginning to dwarf anything that has come before it, reports Southafrica.info.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which made the move on Standard Bank, recently overtook Citigroup as the world’s largest bank, with a market capitalisation of $254 billion (R1.4 trillion).

Its $5.5 billion (R36.7 billion) stake in Standard Bank, the bank with the largest presence in Africa, is the largest ever inward investment in South Africa, as well as the biggest Chinese financial acquisition ever.

It further consolidates the uniquely strategic relationship between China and South Africa, its major partner on the African continent, and marks the moment at which South Africa can look to the new “BRIC” global economic powers – Brazil, Russia, India and China – as the source of foreign direct investment which has fallen short of expectations in the case of traditional trading partners Britain, France, the United States and Japan.

China has in the past decade or so become the fastest growing investor in African infrastructure, one of the major source of soft loans to African states, one of the largest consumers of African oil and steel and the largest exporter of cheap manufactured goods to the continent.

Bilateral trade between China and African nations has increased a staggering tenfold to $55.5 billion (R350 billion) in less than a decade. In the six years from 2000 to 2006, China pumped $6.6 billion (R43 billion) in foreign direct investment into Africa.

China’s state financial institutions, such as the Chinese Export-Import Bank, are advancing soft loans for developing African infrastructure, which run into $25 billion (R152 billion) over the next three years or so in four countries alone: Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

China’s strategic approach in building a long-term relationship with Africa to serve its own economic interests has opened up opportunities for African countries which were unthinkable even a decade ago.

The Chinese approach of doing business without preconditions based on human rights and good governance has presented the continent’s traditional trading partners, and multilateral bodies such as the World Bank, with a major challenge.

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