Recurrent drought in Namibia, Southern Africa has undermined food security and farmers’ livelihoods. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Paula Fray
JOHANNESBURG, May 30 2017 (IPS)

Valuing water is more than simply assigning costs to a scare resource – it is an essential step for transforming water governance to meet the needs of a prosperous future.

This was a recurring view from participants at the first regional discussion on water organised in South Africa as part of the High Level Panel on Water (HLPW) dialogues.“There is an opportunity to meet the immediate needs within the SDGs and then to organise for the 10-billion world - not just to survive but also be prosperous.” --Dhesigen Naidoo

The May 30 meeting was attended by more than 100 representatives from a range of sectors including water, agribusiness, utilities and community groups from across the region, as well as representatives from around the globe.

Dr Patrick Vincent Verkooijen, World Bank special advisor, said their research had shown that if “there is no change in the way we manage water, then (global) economic growth will drop by 6 percent.”

Global Water Partnership chairperson Dr Oyun Sanjaasuren, a former Minister of Environment in Mongolia, stressed that the issue was not just about valuing water as a commodity but about water governance. “We have to recognise that water is valuable; it is not a free commodity. If we do business as usual then by 2025 the number of people who are affected by water scarcity will rise from 1.7 to 5 billion.”

This is the first of five regional discussions on valuing water initiated by the HLPW, which is made up of 11 sitting heads of state and government. The meetings will collate comments on draft principles of water ahead of an HLPW meeting in August.

CEO of the Water Research Commission, Dhesigen Naidoo, said the HLPW and its activities had “significantly” raised the global dialogue on water.

“But we must make sure we are having the right conversation. What is missing is the view of tomorrow. If we are simply talking about meeting the minimum requirements, then we are missing the opportunity to completely transform … in both our attitude to water and the way we manage water,” said Naidoo.

He noted that Africa would be the most populous continent in the world by 2050, with an expected 50 megacities.

“Only three of these 50 megacities exist at the moment. We can create water-wise cities right from the start,” he added.

This includes rethinking “how we use water, how we recycle water and what water we use”. For example, Naidoo questioned the efficacy of using quality potable water to flush toilets.

The costing of water was an ongoing issue, but participants also warned that the question of cost needed to be raised against the “point where price is an inhibitor to your basic right to water”.

The intersectional nature of water was stressed – hence the need for political engagement at the highest level.

Participants at the High Level Panel on Water in Johannesburg add their comments to the principles for water. Credit: Paula Fray/IPS

The May 30 discussion in Ekurhuleni near Johannesburg included ministers and deputy ministers from Water and Sanitation, Public Works and Energy.

“The vision and aspiration for water is the 17 SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] and these make clear that the world must transform the way it manages it water – it needs political head engagement as well as other key public, private and civil society stakeholders,” said Verkooijen.

“Success for the HLPW can be only be determined when it motivates transformational action. Secondly, success is determined by whether it can support mobilisation and advocacy for transformational finance and implementation.”

Various initiatives are already in place, including developing principles on valuing water which were discussed in South Africa.

“Valuing water is not a new concept. The challenge is to explicitly value water in its competing uses. Proper valuation simply provides a clearer picture of the trade-offs involved,” said Verkooijen,

Faith Muthambi, South African Minister of Public Service and Administration – standing in place of Water Minister Nomvula Mokonyane – reminded participants that South Africa’s constitution declared access to water as a human right. “The right to clean water is therefore an obligation for government to ensure access for people.

“We want to see water priced for sustainability,” she said. “Water infrastructure is very important as a solution. We need partnerships to close the gap between water demand and supply by 2030.”

Her colleague, Deputy Minister of Energy Thembisile Majola, noted that the energy sector was a bulk user of water.  “How do we improve our technology so that they use less water?” she asked, stressing the symbiotic relationship “We use water to create energy and we need energy to get water to where it needs to go.”

Delegates at the conference came from 14 of the 15 SADC countries, with only Seychelles not represented.

Dr Kenneth Msibi, SADC Water Division, a transboundary water policy expert, said the SADC was trying to unlock the potential for water as a catalyst for development.

“We cannot move forward if we think of it as business as usual,” he stressed.

“Unless we value the water, our ecosystems are going to degrade and cost so much more,” said Dr Sanjaasuren.

“We’re living on a planet with a population size that is growing rapidly. We will have more and more water tensions,” said Naidoo.

“There is an opportunity to first organise to meet the immediate needs within the SDGs and then to organise for the 10-billion world – not just to survive but also be prosperous.”

The catchment area of the Katse Dam in Lesotho, which flows into South Africa. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Paula Fray
JOHANNESBURG, May 29 2017 (IPS)

Amid the worst drought in a century, South Africans are kick-starting a global consultative process to agree on the values of water in a bid to ensure more equitable use of the finite resource.

On May 30, ministers, officials, civil society, business and local regional organisations will gather outside Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of a high-level consultation on water called the “Valuing Water Initiative”.“The distribution of water has always been a point of advocacy in relation to the land transformation debate. [There can be] no land reform without water reform.” --Herschelle Milford

The High Level Panel on Water – first convened by the World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and then UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon – consists of 11 sitting Heads of State and Government and one Special Adviser, to provide the leadership required to “champion a comprehensive, inclusive and collaborative way of developing and managing water resources, and improving water and sanitation related services”.

The HLPW’s core focus is to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, as well as to contribute to the achievement of the other SDGs that rely on the development and management of water resources.

The members of the panel are Heads of State from Australia, Bangladesh, Hungary, Jordan, Mauritius (co-chair), Mexico (co-chair), Netherlands, Peru, Senegal, South Africa, and Tajikistan.

The South African consultation takes place on May 30, followed by consultations in Mexico, Senegal, Tajikistan and Bangladesh ahead of a global presentation at the Stockholm World Water Week in August 2017.

Global Water Partnership’s (GWP) executive secretary Rudolph Cleveringa explained that, as the first in a series of consultations, the South Africa meeting was expected to “set the tone and pace”.

“South Africa is extremely committed to the water agenda. South Africa went from an Apartheid policy-driven water policy to a human rights approach. We are very keen to see the country lead not only from a South Africa view but also from a southern Africa perspective,” said Cleveringa.

When she presented her budget speech to South Africa’s Parliament on May 26, Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane – acknowledging her participation on the HLPW –  said “water knows no boundaries and water can be a social, security and economic catalyst, both nationally and internationally”

Announcing that South Africa, in partnership with GWP and working together with the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), was hosting the regional consultations, Mokonyane said the initiative would “support countries to enhance job creation through investments in water infrastructure and industrialisation”.

On the table will be the draft principles that note “making all the values of water explicit gives recognition and a voice to dimensions that are easily overlooked. This is more than a cost-benefit analysis and is necessary to make collective decisions and trade-offs. It is important to lead towards sustainable solutions that overcome inequalities and strengthen institutions and infrastructure.”

The meeting takes place as the Western Cape province of South Africa has been declared a disaster area as a result of the drought which has seen dam levels drop to crisis levels. The City recently said its feeder dam levels were at 20.7 percent, with only 10.7 percent left for consumption.

According to the minister, it is the “worst drought in the last 100 years and the severest for the Western Cape in the last 104 years.

“This drought has not only affected South Africa, but also the rest of the world because of global warming, climate change,” she said, adding that it would take at least two to three years for the Western Cape to recover.

Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille said the city would increase emergency water schemes in the coming months with programmes such as drilling boreholes and exploring desalinisation.

In a recent speech, De Lille emphasised the need for public-private partnerships.

“We need to be innovative and diversify our financing mechanisms and these efforts will require partnership with the private sector,” De Lille was quoted as saying.

The city council has introduced Level 4 restrictions – one level below emergency level.

Western Cape-based Surplus People Project CEO Herschelle Milford, whose organisation works to support agrarian transformation, said that the city had blamed migration as a reason for the water crisis in Cape Town.

“However, the biggest consumers of water is industry, then agriculture and then households,” she noted. This called for dialogue on how water could be shared equitably among all its users, noted Milford.

“The water crisis is a discussion point in the context of large-scale commercial farmers using irrigation with limited recourse amongst land and agrarian activists,” said Milford.

Water was much more than simply about access: “The distribution of water has always been a point of advocacy in relation to the land transformation debate. [There can be] no land reform without water reform.”

Cleveringa said the discussions were being generated from very high international dialogues to discussions at the local level. To this end, the draft principles offer a range of perspectives on how water can be valued.

Not only will the South African dialogue include a host of ministers but regional input will be provided by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Executive Secretary Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax, as well as various organisations such as Dr Oyun Sanjaasuren, Chair of the Global Water Partnership; and Dr Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank.

SADC head of water Phera Ramoeli said water valuation was a critical component of water resources management as it allowed “policy and planning across all the developmental spectrum”.

“The SADC region has 15 Shared Watercourses which accounts for over 70 percent of all the available renewable water resources in the region. If they are properly managed and adequately funded they will ensure the continued availability of these resources for the current and future generations for the various needs and uses that water is put to,” he said, noting that water was present in a large number of value chains including agro-processing, mineral processing, pharmaceuticals, energy production, even health.

“Valuing water is important as it will ensure that water resources management, development, conservation and monitoring receives an appropriate share of the national budget,” he added.

The water principles being discussed also emphasise the collaborative process to build water champions and ownership at all levels that allows users to meet all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

“We are moving away from valuing water in its fiscal interpretation only. We’re not just looking at it in terms of how much does water cost but going beyond this utilitarian approach. The Bellagio principles demonstrate that there is more than just a utilitarian approach to water and we hope that these consultations will draw out those discussions,” said Cleveringa.

“The value of water is basically about making choices,” he said, adding that this called for “not just a cross-sectoral approach but also all of society input into valuing water”.

It is in this discussion that the high level panels aim to provide leadership to champion a “comprehensive, inclusive, and collaborative way of developing and managing water resources, and improving water and sanitation related services”.

The dialogues need to generate an open debate on the values of water as well as get regional input to the Bellagio principles.

Over half of the consultations are happening in non-OECD settings that are being led by the global South.

“This sets the right tone for buy-in at multiple levels,” said Cleveringa.

Poet activist Myesha Jenkins’ voice reverberated through the hall: “Women are out in the night; we are cleaning the streets, some are walking the streets…”

One in three African women are beaten or coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetime: Africa UniTE is a fresh call to act to end this. Credit: B.Wolff/UN

Jenkins’s verse was echoed by fellow poets Zanele Faith Mavuso and Aura Zawanzaruwa who spoke of the pain of violence and the strength of women.

It was an unusual setting for the women poets performing their work: a May 11-12 gathering of government, civil society and U.N. agencies at a regional consultation for a Southern African strategy to support the Africa UNiTE Campaign to End Violence Against Women and Girls.

The UNiTE to End Violence Against Women campaign, a multi-year effort aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls, was launched in 2008 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. So far, the heads of states and ministers from 69 governments have added their names to the “Say NO” campaign.

Fresh commitment to act on pledges

It is a campaign that organisers hope will reverberate through the corridors of government and initiate action and implementation of the many laws, agreements and strategies already in place across the continent to end violence against women and girls.

These agreements include, among many others, international agreements such as CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of Discimination Against Women, ratified by 51 African countries), the Rome Statute, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and Protocols on Human Rights; and the Southern African Development Community Gender and Development Protocol.

The SADC protocol, in line with the campaign, aims to “halve gender violence by 2015”. It is yet to be signed by Mauritius and Botswana.

“The UNiTE campaign gives us an unique opportunity to revive multi-sector NAPs… it gives us an opportunity to harness a new wave of political will and commitment,” said Lowe Morna.

Morna urged that the regional strategy be proactive – putting an emphasis on prevention first. “Say NO puts prevention at the centre,” she noted.

Gender-based violence pervasive

When the African UNiTE campaign was launched at the African Union in Addis Ababa in January, 17 African countries committed themselves to closing the gap in implementation of various agreements and commitments of African countries to take action to eradicate violence against women.

The U.N. Declaration on Violence against Women defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring public or private life”.

There is a lack of reliable data on the extent of violence against women and girls in Africa but, in the words of Simone Ellis Oluoch-Olunya, UNIFEM deputy regional programme director, it is “pervasive”.

“In Africa, like all other regions, one in three women are beaten or coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetime,” noted Oluoch-Olunya.

The direct and indirect costs of violence is one few countries can afford.

This violence is exacerbated during times of conflict.

UNIFEM Southern Africa Regional director Nomcebo Manzini asked: “What have we done collectively for our sisters in the DRC; for our sisters in Somalia. How can we raise our activism to a higher level?”

Manzini also raised the issue of violence and culture.

“Cultural practices that violate human rights must be changed. This is an imperative,” she urged.

Distinguishing between culture and cultural practices, Manzini said: “We should not aim to change people’s cultures but seek to change harmful cultural practices. It is the practice that emanates from day to day behaviour that violates human rights.

“There is not a single culture that values violence against women and girls.”

Gabriella Rakotomanga, head of programmes at the Catholic Relief Services in Madagascar, warned that changing cultural practices would take time.

Participants at the consultation – drawn from justice ministries, national and regional gender units as well as civil society from 14 southern African countries – are seeking ways to raise awareness and advocacy around national commitments and initiatives.

The campaign intends to make positive changes in six focus areas: intra-family violence against women and girls (domestic violence, intimate partner violence, incest, etc); rape and other forms of sexual violence in the broader community; harmful practices including child marriage; violence against women in conflict-affected countries; linkages between violence against women and girls and HIV and AIDS; and, safety and security of women in public space.

And if the voices of those saying “No” are heard and acted on, then hopefully women will one day walk the streets without fear of violence.

By Paula Fray
NEW DELHI, Feb 9 2010 (IPS)

Women’s movements have played a critical role in creating political space for female participation in politics around the world. In fact, there are more women in government today than ever before.

Anne-Marie Goetz: 'The structural exclusion of women is striking, and does tell us that there are serious double standards.' Credit: Paula Fray/IPS

According to UNIFEM’s Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009 report “Who Answers to Women? Gender & Accountability”, women now hold an average of 18.4 percent of seats in national assemblies, though the rate of increase is still very slow.

Around the world, a number of countries are undergoing an extended process of democratic consolidation, in which legal systems are being amended to incorporate new constitutional rights and political systems are being tested for their capacity to tolerate opposition, says UNIFEM’s chief advisor for Governance, Peace and Security, Dr Anne-Marie Goetz.

But more needs to be done as women’s effectiveness in translaitng policies into action depends upon gender-responsive governance reforms. And the women’s movement can play a critical role in supporting such social change.

Paula Fray spoke with Dr Goetz, who has extensive experience in addressing the phenomenon of the use of sexual and gender-based violence as a method of warfare, supporting women’s engagement in peace processes, gender-sensitive security reform, and inclusive post-conflict peacebuilding. The following is an edited version of the interview.

In addition, women often lack the extended political apprenticeship that men have. This means that women may not have spent the time moving up the ranks in political parties that men have, and in consequence, they may lack the senior mentors, the support systems, and the built-up constituency base that men have.

Add to this that women running for office do not have a natural constituency amongst voting women, as women in patriarchal societies do not necessarily perceive their interests as linked to women’s leadership or a gender equality political agenda. In politics, women have many competing loyalties.

Q: Why is it necessary to have a specific focus on women when there remain many marginalised groups still excluded from political participation? A: There are many social groups excluded from or marginalised from public decision-making. What is so striking about women as a general category is that it is so socially enormous – half the population.

The structural exclusion of women is striking, and does tell us that there are serious double standards built into how democratic political competition works. What proves this is globalised tolerance of violence against women. If one in three men were subjected to violence, we would never accept that.

Another reason to focus on women when there other forms of marginality is because many types of exclusion are exacerbated by female gender. Address women’s rights, and we can also address some of the inequalities affecting other social groups.

Q: So what impact does women’s participation have on democracy and good governance? A: It is often said that women don’t make the difference that we think they would do. The difficulty is that we have too few cases from which to judge as there are too few countries that have too recently attained levels of women in politics high enough for us to expect to see a tangible impact. Women constitute a critical mass of 30 percent of national parliaments in only 27 out of 192 countries.

Where women are in a critical mass and have been there for long enough, and where state is supportive, we most certainly see changes in outcomes that favour women. In areas where women head local government, spending patterns change in favor of women and children. Particularly evident is higher local investment in water and poverty reduction for women.

Individual women in high places can also make a difference. In the case of investigations to the incidents of September 28, 2009 in Guinea, for example, there were two women on the international commission of inquiry and both were stalwarts on women’s rights. These women made sure that the issue of the high number of extremely brutal and public rapes of opponents of the regime was looked at. Would that have happened otherwise? I honestly don’t think so.

Similarly, in war crimes tribunals, women prosecutors make a difference – women prosecutors began insisting on indictments for war rape in the 1990s. Women make a difference to government: they offer women a role model, they feminise public space and make it more accessible to women and develop a constituency interested in gender equality.

Q: You have said that that delivery of public services is the most direct measure of government accountability to women. Can you elaborate on that? A: If women have no say in public life then they cannot provide instructions in or influence public priority setting and resource allocation. If women are not part of decision-making then how will public authorities know what their needs are or how to address their needs?

An accountable government is one that gets systems in place to encourage women to make input into making those decisions and that takes feedback from women. Truly accountable governments recognise constraints on women’s access to public decision-making and on their capacity to influence public priority setting because of gender discrimination and low human resource endowments.

Strong gender-sensitive public service provision can help women to make up for these deficits and empower women to become more effective leaders.

Q: Where should we be focusing our energies for reform if we are to improve women’s participation in governance? Which interventions have greatest effectiveness? AG: We need strong women’s movements everywhere. Around the world we have seen that we’ve lost ground where the women’s movement is not strong. Collective action has been the key to most gains made in women’s rights in the past century and remains the best means of amplifying women’s voice and leverage in public decision-making.

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By Paula Fray
PRETORIA, Apr 19 2009 (IPS)

African trade ministers who met in Addis Ababa at the African Union (AU) in March urged world leaders to “place African economic development at the centre of international efforts to build strategies towards the recovery of the global economy” ahead of the G20 summit in London.

Trevor Manuel - 'Africa's focus must be on intra-Africa trade.' Credit: Zahira Kharsany/IPS

At that summit, leaders pledged $1.1 trillion – including $100 billion that international development banks can lend to poorest countries – in measures to rescue the global economy.

The G20 agreed to increase the resources available to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by $750 billion and committed $250 billion to help counteract the contraction of world trade and fight protectionism. And the summit agreed to new measures to regulate financial institutions, including sanctions against tax havens that do not disclose information.

South Africa is the only African member of the G20 and Paula Fray spoke to the country’s finance minister Trevor Manuel to assess the impact of the G20 on Africa.

This is an edited version of the interview.

IPS: You went to G20 with certain hopes and expectations. Can you tell you what those were and whether they were, in fact, met? Trevor Manuel: For us, it is important to restate the fact that South Africa is a participant in the G20 and has been since its establishment. It’s an arrangement that works very well taking into the management of reserve bank issues. Its elevation to a heads of state meeting is still fairly new.

Because we are participants, we can’t go from the outside with expectation of other people delivering. Let me also say that African finance ministers and central bank governors met with the IMF in Dar es Salaam in March.

The one very strong message that came out of that meeting that, even as this very delegation comprising NEPAD, African Development Bank and African Union (AU) prepared to participate in G20 for the first time, was that the mandate we must give them is that Africans don’t go to the G20 as supplicants – it very important that we are equal and co-responsible in respect of the global economy. The issue of expectations needs that backdrop to it.

In respect of what we hoped for, there were short-term and long term objectives in at least two strands – the global economy and financial regulation.

In terms of financial regulation, the idea that there would be derivatives quite outside any supervision has always been abhorrent. The idea that we would get regulation dealing with the various issues is now a very important victory; the idea that all kinds of financial institutions – where-ever they are – will now be regulated, is a victory.

In respect of the global economy, one issue that is very necessary but also almost impossible to deal with in the short term is the global imbalances, that you will have these very active exporting countries with high trading called China and there would be wealthy consumer countries like the UK is unsustainable – it must be dealt with; there must be shifts in trade. But having said that, there are certain changes that must be made and one of those changes relates to attempts to mutual accountability.

IPS: What, in your view, is the most critical issue for Africa that emerged from this meeting? TM: In terms of financial regulations, the equity issue, we don’t have large financial markets in most countries in Africa but the equity issues are still important. Perhaps for Africa there are changes that we need to understand – a retooled IMF with greater political oversight, this is a great victory for Africa; ditto a larger pool of money and commitments made to the IMF… these are the $250 billion for trade and that number can be enlarged; thirdly, recapitalisation of the regional development banks and while the African Development Bank has not been mentioned in detail – simply because they have not yet looked at how much capital will be required – it would be that the African Development Bank will be recapitalised.

Then its also important to recognize that there have been other commitments to trade including an announcement to coincide with the meeting between the Standard Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank of $400 million in support of trade finance – that’s a big number – over and above the $250 billion for the IMF.

IPS: The G20 was a major meeting and at the end there was a sense that things were moving. $1.1 trillion is a big headline but what difference did this meeting make for people in Africa? TM: It’s a meeting; it’s not a light switch and you can’t flick the switch at a meeting. I’m saying that the more we go to meetings expecting a cataclysmic change at the meeting, the more we set ourselves up for failure. What these meetings are about are process issues…

The global economy is stuck, the banks aren’t lending; the banks aren’t lending and people aren’t buying; people aren’t buying and we can’t sell; jobs are being lost and all the big gains that are being made from a development perspective are then at risk.

Part of the decisions impact on the way that the markets behave and if the banks can loosen up and thaw out of this freeze and start doing what banks should do, then I think you’re on a promise to something different. But this meeting of leaders of state and government is not in a position to compel banks across the world to start to start behaving as banks should, so there is a signaling effect from a meeting like this which is extremely important.

I think the changes to the IMF are significant. They are significant for countries that have no access to capital markets like large countries. But you need to change rules … so the one thing that we are doing is making sure that the IMF has more money available.

The second thing, and there was an announcement days before the G20 meeting that the IMF will have a new instrument that will be far more flexible; the responses will be quicker and it will have no conditionalities. The measure was agreed to by the board … so it preceded the G20 and is part of the impetus around the G20. Those are big progress issues.

Similarly when we ask governments to meet their aid commitments, it might not be a terribly new point, but if we don’t allow governments to walk away from their Gleneagles commitments … holding them to account is always going to be good for Africa.

IPS: The communiqué isn’t very specific about the deadline for the Doha Round of talks or even the next ministerial meeting around that. Do you feel that this might have been a missed opportunity? TM: There’s a journalist who interviewed me just before the G20 finance ministers meeting who said ‘if the last line of your communiqué says “the ministers express their wishes for the speedy conclusion of the Doha Round”, I will know that you actually have nothing to say’. He’s dead right.

What does a speedy conclusion of the Doha Round mean for Africa? I don’t know. I don’t know what market access means. What would you be exporting?

IPS: There are lots of hopes that the conclusion of the Doha Round might actually… TM: Whose hopes?

IPS: Certainly civil society’s hopes… TM: What would they want out of it? It’s a cool thing to say: “yeah, we love Doha” but what does it actually bring, what are the changes?

If I was Brazil, and I am chasing agricultural markets, then the Doha Round makes a lot of sense. If I was China and chasing non-agricultural market access now, then I know it will bring it; if I was India and I was chasing hard trade and services; I know what its going to bring.

But if we’re Africa, it doesn’t quite have the same ring. I mean it will be wonderful to conclude the Round but I am not quite sure what it is going to bring; what food it puts on the table, what jobs it creates.

IPS: Certainly there is a perception, or maybe it is a false hope, that concluding the Doha Round with its original commitments would help redress trade imbalances. TM: How would it do that? What would we trade? If I were to pull up now the basket by value or volume of Africa’s exports, its commodities. And even some commodities like agriculture are quite low on the list … which is why we were so heavily impacted on by the food price changes – we aren’t big food producers.

IPS: So where should Africa’s focus be then? TM: Africa’s focus must be on intra-Africa trade. The opportunity that the current global economic situation presents to Africa, if we’re smart about it, we can deal with it quite differently … but we don’t trade with our neighbours. All of the infrastructure on the African continent is still shaped by colonial patterns. Mine, port, railway line; mine, onto train, out… that’s it.

IPS: Where to from here? What happens after this huge meeting? TM: We have this problem … people say what are you going to ask the G20. What is this G20 thing? Would you ask the G20 net of South Africa, India and Brazil? I think its very important because media have this responsibility that you can hype it and pretend that we can walk in there and walk out with a big bag of money.

But what we’re actually looking for is not that kind of engagement between the master and the petitioner; you’re looking for a sense of joint responsibility about decisions that will change the way in which the global economy functions. If that’s what you want … then the way in which you engage in this process is actually quite different.

*Not for publication in Italy

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