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Tuesday, August 18, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Trade and poverty: Facts beyond theory
TRADE: 'EU Stands Between Poor and Poor'
Caribbean governments have alleged that the European Union is trying to prevent them from signing trade deals with other poor countries on their own terms.AFRICA: EPAs Clashing With Everything-But-Arms Trade Scheme?
The proposed economic partnership agreements (EPAs), which are due to come into force beginning next year, may undermine the benefits of another European Union trade initiative, called Everything-But-Arms, for the sugar industry.TRADE-UGANDA: Coffee Producers Are the Biggest Losers
Coffee producers in Uganda suffer from an unfair trade relationship with Europe, even though their beans produce some of the best quality coffee in the world, says the Ugandan coffee industry's governing body.TRADE: African Countries Stand Up to EU
Concern over getting too little in return for what they are being asked to give up has led some African nations to say "no" to some proposals for new trade relations with Europe next year.TRADE-CAMEROON: New Study to Bridge Finance Gap of Small Business
Caught in a limbo between larger firms with access to traditional banking-sector finance and micro-credit initiatives designed to help the small enterprises of the very poor, African businesses in the middle have historically been on the wrong side of both extremes when it comes to accessing finance.TRADE-SENEGAL: Finding Opportunities Through Cheap Chinese Goods
Allées du Centenaire, a neighbourhood in the heart of Senegal’s capital Dakar, may be lacking the trademark red lanterns but in the eyes of locals it is fast becoming the city’s unofficial Chinatown.UGANDA: Good Labour Practices Bloom in Flower Industry
A highly profitable industry has blossomed in "the Pearl of Africa", yielding not only exceptional returns on investment but helping raise labour standards. Rising from nearly zero production ten years ago, Uganda has emerged as a global power in the floricultural world and is now Africa's fifth largest exporter of cut flowers.TRADE-MALAWI: Government Joins Chorus of Concern about EPA
Manufacturers, exporters and even government officials in Malawi are jittery about January 1, 2008. On that day the economic partnership agreements (EPAs), currently being negotiated between the European Union (EU) and six groupings of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, will come into force.TRADE-EAST AFRICA: Learning From Past Glories
East African scholars are delving into history for clues on cultivating economic ties and dealing with challenges in a new era of expanding trade with China and India.TRADE: Greek Energy Agenda Promises Business to Egypt
Greece and Egypt are now making good on a two-year-old cooperation agreement to diversify trade relations that could reduce Greece's dependence on traditional - but tenuous - energy supplies from European suppliers like Russia.MALAWI: Informal Trade Crucial For Job Creation
Every day a bus, usually packed to capacity, leaves Malawi for South Africa. Most of the passengers are traders, off to sell wooden curios in the main South African cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.ZIMBABWE: Traders Are Now Importing Basic Foodstuffs
Sithabile Khuzwayo is one of many women who bring groceries and clothing from across the borders of neighbouring Botswana and South Africa to sell at the flourishing flea markets of Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo.TRADE-EGYPT: Out With ‘‘The Pyramids’’, In With Liberalisation
Earlier this year, a group of prominent Egyptian business leaders had gathered at a downtown Cairo hotel to discuss building a successful export industry. A presenter opened the discussion by asking for a show of hands to indicate who was wearing Egyptian-made shirts or shoes.TRADE-ZIMBABWE: Multilateral Still Better Than Bilateral Talks
Kumbirai Katsande, the managing director of a top Zimbabwean horticultural company, is in a buoyant mood. He hopes that his firm, Ariston Holdings, will make a big break in the lucrative European horticultural market where it sells its products.TRADE: Italian Delegation Finds More Than Big Five in S. Africa
‘‘Italians used to think of Africa in terms of safari and animals, especially the Big Five. Now they are realising that there’s business potential in South Africa,’’ says Giovanna Roma, secretary general of the Italian South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Northern, Eastern and Western Cape.TRADE: Hope, Concern Greet China's Growing Prominence in Africa
While China's growing trade and investment flows to Africa have sparked a sometimes contentious debate with the United States and Europe over who has the continent's best interests at heart, a closer look at the dynamic developing reveals a political landscape where the rhetoric is rarely in line with the reality, observers say.DEVELOPMENT: ‘Aid for Trade’ May Cut Health, Education Funds
African governments are worried that funds from the European Union (EU) to help them increase their countries' share of world trade could be at the expense of other forms of development aid.TRADE: EPAs May Stifle Uganda's Struggling Flower Industry
Uganda's flower industry needs government incentives and preferential European Union (EU) access to succeed, say members of the east African nation's floricultural sector.TRADE-KENYA: ”Creating Designs for Chinese Traders to Copy”
‘‘We are crying,’’ laments Millicent Otok, as I take a seat next to her at her stall. ‘‘Why are you crying?’’ I enquire. ‘‘They come and copy our items,’’ she says, in reference to Chinese traders in the Kenyan market.TRADE-SENEGAL: Africa ''Will Not Be the Winner'' of the EPAs
''I do not know if a winner will emerge from the signing of the economic partnership agreement under the current conditions but I know for sure that Africa cannot be the winner,'' says Amadou Ba, who heads the international negotiations division at Senegal’s ministry of commerce.TRADE: Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa
While oil profits have flooded into countries such as Angola and Nigeria in recent decades, some African observers see new potential for the continent in the form of increasingly in-demand biofuels.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Trade has historically been a geopolitical tool, creating significant economic imbalances in developing countries. However, many countries in East Asia and Latin America have been able to alleviate poverty due to increasing trade. Tackling poverty has proven to be much harder in low income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, and their dismal trade performance is one important reason for that. They remain at the margins of world trade and indeed of the world economy. These articles are aimed at informing readers about the complexities of trade and its varying effects on development, with a special focus on the consequences of the global economic crisis, the potential of fair trade and the gender implications of trade policies.
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