In his new book, “The Great African Society – A Plan for a Nation Gone Astray”, Hlumelo Biko, the son of late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, says that if nothing changes in South Africa, the country will become engulfed by corruption, crime, social decay, hopelessness and anger.
Mozambican farmers’ unions believe that soon land will become very scarce for locals as the government leases more and more of it to foreign agribusinesses – thus displacing thousands of rural communities and smallholder farmers with no official title deeds to their land.
African nations and other emerging countries are expected to soon outperform the developed world, and South Africa wants to take advantage.
A calamitous year in mining has left many wondering whether it should still have a part in South Africa’s future. Illegal strikes, including one that left 47 people dead near Marikana in the northwest of the country, soaring costs and depressed world commodity markets have left the industry in its worst crisis in years.
South Africa has denied that it is taking a protectionist stance to protect its own producers against foreign competition, but says it is justified in boosting tariffs where this is allowed under international trade agreements.
Innovative Ethiopian footwear manufacturer Sole Rebels will open its second retail outlet in Taiwan this year. With ambitions to open 30 more franchise stores across the world in countries like the United States, Australia, Italy and Japan, Sole Rebels, the largest African footwear brand, is now fast becoming a global competitive brand.
Over the years with the demise of cotton production, tobacco has become one of Uganda's key exports.
Six years after British American Tobacco set up regional headquarters in this East African nation, it has become a key tobacco producer for the company.
South Africa plans to boost links between Africa and its partners in the Brazil, Russia, India and China alliance at a landmark summit, which will be held in this country in March, Xavier Carim, deputy director general at the Department of Trade and Industry, told IPS.
A coastal city, Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, is an area where people have relied on the ocean for food and employment for as long as they have lived there.
Rising investments in Africa's service sector, the unlocking of its vast natural resources and the sound economic policies pursued by African countries in the last two decades are spurring the rise of the continent's middle class at a faster rate than population growth.
China’s presence in the leading developing nations alliance of Brazil, Russia, India and China has given the bloc an advantage that another developing nations club, India, Brazil and South Africa, has hitherto been lacking, according to Peter Draper, one of South Africa’s leading experts on international relations and trade.
Many of the fastest-growing countries in the world are in Africa, the poorest continent on the planet, but the potential for recently-discovered resources to generate broad-based inclusive development opportunities is massive and remains under-exploited.
The five leading developing nations grouped in the BRICS alliance – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are planning to intensify efforts to collect accurate trade data, so they can get a better picture of trade flows.
Politicians in the leading developing nations have been active in boosting mutual ties, as one way of counterbalancing the influence of the developed world. But the economic success of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and the India, Brazil, and South Africa groupings will depend on the extent to which businesses take advantage of the new opportunities which are being created.
South Africa has experienced a significant shift in trade with a new emphasis on links with developing nations, at the expense of traditional partners in the developed world, according to a leading South African economist.
As Somalia starts to emerge from its quagmire of instability and chaos, 20 years of relative peace and stability are starting to pay dividends for its close neighbour Somaliland, as this November it struck its first major oil deal since seceding from Somalia in 1991.
Caribbean governments have begun a quiet lobbying effort to convince Washington to rethink the subsidies it grants to the rum industry in U.S. territories, or face a formal complaint in the World Trade Organisation.
As South Sudan continues negotiations with Sudan regarding the resumption of oil production and transit, the South Sudanese government says that it is developing its own industry and will start producing fuel for domestic consumption within the next eight months in order to avoid continued reliance on its neighbour.
The latest proposals by the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to stop farming of the crop could potentially affect about two million livelihoods in Malawi and decide the fate of an entire nation struggling with a sputtering economy.
The Pacific Islands are making steady progress on reducing child mortality, but most are struggling to eradicate poverty and generate employment for young and rapidly growing populations.
Uganda is facing the unwelcome possibility of increased costs for building a projected 600-megawatt hydropower plant at the Karuma Falls, on the Victoria Nile, owing to construction delays.