South Africa’s membership of the bloc of leading emerging economies and its unique position in Africa heralded the country’s role as a gateway into the African continent. However, trade experts question whether it can live up to this position as investors begin to increasingly look towards other African markets.
Sahara Bibi, a 47-year-old poor Muslim woman living on one of the climate- impacted islands of Eastern India’s fragile Sundarbans archipelago in West Bengal state, was forced to pull her two young sons out of school and send one of them to the Southern state of Kerala to earn a decent income.
Trade envoys of India, Brazil, and South Africa have warned industrialised countries not to hijack the Doha multilateral trade negotiations by adopting the controversial plurilateral approach to liberalise trade in services.
Opinions are divided in Brazil over the prosecution of U.S. oil giant Chevron for two oil spills. While some argue that the legal action is an over-reaction triggered by nationalism, others say it is necessary to show that Brazil is serious about protecting the environment.
By allowing a generic manufacturer to produce a patented cancer drug at a fraction of its current cost, India has declared that it is not about to abandon its role as the ‘pharmacy of the world’s poor'.
India’s proposal to set up a bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will top the agenda at the summit of the group in New Delhi Mar. 28.
India, Brazil, and South Africa, the international grouping for promoting international cooperation among the three countries known as IBSA, along with China and several other developing countries, have denounced the ongoing attempts to craft an exclusive, plurilateral agreement to liberalise trade in services without concluding the multilateral trade negotiations of the World Trade Organization.
Agriculture experts blame the crisis faced by India’s small farmers on a highly inefficient supply chain for perishable farm produce, a situation exploited by traders and middlemen.
As donors struggle to meet their aid commitments, and the number of people around the world in need of direct humanitarian and development assistance skyrockets, many experts and activists are asking the tough question: are donors being effective?
The Brazilian government is stepping up South-South aid, to strengthen the South American giant’s status as a donor country and its international clout. It now provides assistance to 65 countries, and its financial aid has grown threefold in the last seven years.
China is looking to Latin America to experiment with the yuan, or renminbi, to replace the dollar, taking advantage of the growth in Chinese trade and investment in this region. But because the volume is still insignificant, it is not yet clear what impact the currency will have on economies in the region.
Kashmir is missing out on a ‘demographic dividend’ and unable to cash in on its youthful population for lack of initiatives from a state government bogged down by a two-decade-old separatist insurgency.
The 146-kilometre railway line to be established between South Africa and Swaziland will help reduce the cost of doing business between the two countries.
When Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin briefed reporters recently, he offered some biting criticisms of the growing political manipulation of the most powerful body at the United Nations: the 15-member Security Council.
Emerging economies China, South Africa and Brazil have indicated their openness to legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets from 2020 during the United Nations climate change summit in Durban, South Africa.
With no meaningful proposals, and in the face of internal setbacks and an adverse international context, Brazil is largely unprepared to assume the leadership role expected of an environmental power at the Durban climate change conference.
Cuba will be attending the next round of climate change negotiations after a year that has seen a growing consensus in the developing South to put pressure on rich nations to take on firmer commitments within an international governance regime for climate stability.
The convergence of leading countries from the global South - China, India, Brazil and South Africa, among others - to assist the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere constitutes a new "dynamic" in the emerging global economic partnerships, says the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
South African health experts are calling on governments to use legally available mechanisms to promote the production or import of generic drugs in their countries.
While experts are hopeful that blocs of emerging market economies like BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – will play a major role in the upcoming aid effectiveness conference in Busan, South Korea, others fear that the new players do not yet have the fiscal power to make a serious intervention in fora generally dominated by rich donor states.
Representatives of the Brazilian federal and municipal governments and of indigenous, black and riverbank communities and other groups that make the population of this country so diverse assumed a commitment to fight for "the human right to an adequate diet."