By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2006 (IPS)

When Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir was told about a proposed peacekeeping force to stop the ongoing killings in Darfur, he was quoted as saying that U.N. troops will be permitted into his country “only over my dead body.”

“These are colonial forces,” he said of the proposed U.N. peacekeeping mission. “We will not allow colonial forces into the country.”

Asked for his comments last week by reporters covering the African Union (AU) summit in Gambia, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan responded diplomatically: “In the world of politics things change. We hear ‘never’, ‘forever’ – and yet it does come around, and so I am expecting that, in time, there will be a U.N. peacekeeping force deployed to Darfur.”

At a pledging conference for Sudan held in Brussels Tuesday, Annan allayed the Sudanese president’s fears: “No hidden agenda drives us; only the urgent need for Darfur’s people.”

Annan also said that U.N. peacekeeping forces – “which will come primarily from Africa and Asia, with some additional and much needed support from developed countries – will come to Darfur not as occupiers, but as helpers.”

The United Nations wants the current 7,000-strong, ill-equipped AU force – the African Union Mission in Darfur (AMIS) – to be transformed into a larger 12,700-strong U.N. force comprising 10,500 military personnel and 2,200 civilian police personnel.

The pledging conference was primarily to fund a heavily under-sourced AMIS, whose financial resources may run out by September.

But Annan wants AMIS to continue at least through December, by which time he hopes the Sudanese government will come round to cooperating with the new U.N. peacekeeping force.

Alun McDonald of Oxfam, who is based in Sudan, said the amounts pledged at the Brussels conference fell short of expectations.

The total amount of money pledged by donors Tuesday was around 215 million dollars: 116 million dollars from the United States; 36 million dollars from Britain; 31.2 million dollars from the European Union (plus an extra 50 million dollars for humanitarian work – not for AMIS); 25-30 million dollars from the Netherlands; 2.5 million dollars from France; and 1.0 million dollars from Belgium.

The amount pledged “is only enough to sustain AMIS until the end of September even though it is supposed to be here until the end of December – it is basically about half of what we (and the AU) were asking for,” McDonald told IPS.

The AU has said it is confident more money will eventually come through to last until December, but nothing has even been pledged yet for this – and of course what is pledged isn’t always guaranteed to be delivered, he added.

“What AMIS needs is real financial security to last right through its time, rather than having to keep asking for a bit more every couple of months. Otherwise its just going to be working on a day-to-day basis rather than being able to do any real long-term planning – which is what is needed to address the crisis and protect people,” McDonald said.

“As you can see”, he said, “most of the money came from a very small number of nations – others need to provide support as well.”

Ann-Louise Colgan of the Washington-based Africa Action said that pledges of money in Brussels to support the AU operation in Darfur amount to only a portion of what the AU needs to sustain even its current mission, which is clearly inadequate to the protection needs on the ground.

“A U.N. peacekeeping force is needed to reinforce the AU operation and to stop the violence and protect civilians and humanitarian efforts in Darfur,” Colgan told IPS.

The United States and other powers must do everything necessary to overcome the Sudanese government’s objections, and must act quickly to authorise and deploy a U.N. force for Darfur, she added.

She said the Sudanese government had said earlier this year that it would allow a U.N. force in Darfur once a peace agreement had been reached in Abuja.

In the two months that have passed since this agreement, Colgan pointed out, violence against civilians in Darfur has increased, and Khartoum has now asserted strong objections to a U.N. mission.

“But nothing short of a U.N. peacekeeping force can supplement the AU and meet the protection needs in Darfur, and the international community must move beyond pledges to find the political will to take new action to achieve such an intervention now,” she added.

Colgan also said that as the situation in Darfur worsens by the day, this week’s pledging conference in Brussels revealed a broad international consensus on the need for a U.N. peacekeeping force to protect civilians and humanitarian operations on the ground.

“But the international community’s failure to overcome Khartoum’s objections to such a U.N. force, and to take new action to initiate such a force, leaves the Sudanese government to dictate the pace and the extent of the response to this crisis,” she added.

The most immediate priority for the people of Darfur is protection, and yet world powers are failing to offer this protection or to articulate a plan to achieve this on an urgent basis, she added.

According to published figures, nearly 200,000 have died in the fighting in Darfur, with about two million displaced in camps in Darfur and neighbouring Chad.

Meanwhile a group of eight leading aid agencies – CARE International, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, International Rescue Committee, Islamic Relief, Oxfam International and Tearfund – has combined forces to call for urgent action to end the continued violence and suffering in Darfur.

“While an enormous amount of energy is being spent debating what will happen in six months time, no one seems to have noticed that people are still being killed today,” says Denis Caillaux, secretary general of CARE International, in a statement released Tuesday.

“Many countries have still not given enough money to support the troops already on the ground. This lack of funding means patrols in and around camps are impossible or have been scaled back and we are seeing people attacked, killed or raped as a result,” he added.

The eight agencies have warned that the security situation on the ground continues to deteriorate despite the recent peace agreement.

This peace agreement, the agencies said, gave the AU Force more responsibilities requiring more resources, despite the fact that it was already chronically under-funded and failing to protect civilians.

“The African Union force is being set up to fail. It simply cannot be expected to fulfill its mandate without proper support. The current scenario is a recipe for disaster. Donor governments must now put their hands in their pockets and fully fund the African Union force,” said Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
KHARTOUM, Jan 22 2006 (IPS)

The annual summit of the African Union (AU) begins in Sudan’s dusty capital of Khartoum, Monday, amidst a political crisis in the Ivory Coast, famine in East Africa and conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

Although the themes of this year’s summit are education and culture, other issues – such as whether Sudan should assume the rotating chairmanship of the AU – are likely to overshadow the Jan. 23 to 24 gathering.

Already Chad has downgraded its delegation by sending Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmad Allami to represent it at the AU. President Idriss Deby had refused to attend the summit, accusing Khartoum of backing rebels seeking to overthrow his government. Sudan denies the charge.

Human rights groups say there is evidence that government-backed militants from Sudan known as the janjaweed (“men on horseback”) are active in Chad. “Our reports say janjaweed are attacking across the border where civilians are (taking refuge),” Reed Brody of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told IPS in Khartoum.

The janjaweed have been accused of involvement in the deaths of more than 300,000 people in Darfur and the displacement of over two million others, including 200,000 civilians who fled to Chad. They are said to have played a key role in a campaign against members of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups which are suspected of providing support to two rebel movements that took up arms against government in 2003.

Authorities in N’Djamena tried in vain to have this week’s summit relocated to Nigeria and its president, Olusegun Obasanjo, continue in his role as chair of the AU.

Rights groups also fear that allowing Sudan to preside over the AU would give the appearance of condoning government-sponsored abuses in Darfur.

“(This) will be very sad for Africa, sad for human rights and sad for Sudan – particularly for the people of Darfur,” said Brody. “Africa needs a credible leader who can negotiate on behalf of Africa. Bashir is not somebody who can sit down with world leaders and talk about debt reducing, about peacekeeping.”

“For the people of Darfur, it would be like handing the key to the people who have been killing them,” he added.

But Sudanese Foreign Affairs Minister Lam Akol said no other country had put itself forward for the AU chairmanship.

On Jan. 19, Alpha Konare, chair of the AU commission, told African foreign affairs ministers ahead of the Khartoum summit that it was critical for the various conflicts around the continent to be resolved.

“The people of Africa are fed up, I repeat, fed up with conflicts,” he noted, urging Sudanese belligerents to address the situation in Darfur.

“I would like to invite all the protagonists of the conflict to redouble their efforts and transcend their differences so that the Abuja talks succeed and create the conditions for a definitive political settlement of the crisis,” he said. Negotiations to end the fighting in Darfur began in the in the Nigerian capital of Abuja last year.

“Africa has played its part; it has mobilised its sons and daughters and enlisted the support of our partners. In this collective effort we expect our Sudanese brothers – both from the government and the rebel movements – to play their part also…We are waiting,” Konare added.

Speaking to African leaders on the eve of the summit Sunday, Bashir said his country was tackling the situation in Darfur: “We are very keen on restoring stability in Darfur. We back the AU in mediating the conflict in Darfur.”

However, he rejected a recent call by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to let the world body take over from the cash-strapped AU in Darfur. “We instead invite the international community to assist the AU in restoring peace and security in Darfur,” he said.

Civil society groups have warned that these debates should not be allowed to distract attention from other issues affecting the world’s poorest continent.

“The AU has still to articulate a strong humanitarian strategy about the famine in Niger (and) the famine in Kenya, where five million people require food aid from January to March this year,” Irungu Houghton of Oxfam, a leading international charity, told IPS in Khartoum. “This is the area where the AU needs to strengthen capacity to resolve its problems.”

Houghton added that while many promises of aid had been made last year, 2006 had to be the year of delivery.

“For example, the G8 committed to doubling financial assistance to Africa,” he said. (The Group of Eight leading industrialised countries – or G8 – comprises the United States, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Canada, France and Britain.)

“The World Bank and the IMF (the International Monetary Fund) have pledged to cancel the debts of the 13 poorest African countries and Nigeria; the latter would enjoy bilateral debt cancellation through the Paris Club,” said Houghton.

The 53-member AU, formed in 2002, is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Dec 24 2004 (IPS)

As 2004 draws to a close, the people in Sudan’s western province of Darfur have no reason to celebrate but flee the violence that has continued to spread in the volatile region, despite a ceasefire signed between the government and rebels in November.

Fighting has erupted in Labado, south of Darfur over the past few days, forcing thousands of civilians to flee their villages, according to Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), an international aid agency.

‘’The first people who fled the fighting are arriving on foot in the towns of Shariya (50 km north of Labado) and Kalma (100 km west of Labado),’’ noted a statement from the organisation Dec. 22. Labado, with a population of 27,000, is now empty and destroyed, according to the MSF.

The majority of the people, who have fled Labado, were refugees from other areas in Darfur.

The latest fighting in Darfur is taking place in the face of a ceasefire signed Nov. 9 between the government and rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in Abuja, Nigeria. The talks have been taking place in Nigeria since August 2004.

The negotiations, brokered by the African Union (AU), have been marred by breakdowns caused by the rebels who have accused the government, among others, of launching an offensive against their positions. The latest talks collapsed last week.

To the chagrin of the rebels, the 53-member African Union has sent less than 1,000 peacekeepers, out of the proposed 3,200, to Darfur. Even with the arrival of 99 more troops from Gambia this week, the number is still considered so low to monitor the peace in Darfur, a territory the size of France or Iraq.

Concerned about the increasing violence, the UN Security Council has called upon Khartoum to double its efforts to restore law and order in Darfur. Meeting in Kenya’s capital Nairobi last month, the council urged both government and Darfur rebels to make peace by Dec. 31. This was the third resolution passed after similar ones in July and September.

The Darfur conflict erupted in Feb. 2003 when the SLM and JEM took up arms against Khartoum, accusing the Arab-dominated government of marginalising and persecuting black African tribes in the region.

The government reacted by arming Arab militia (known as janjaweed or men on horseback) who have been attacking the black Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The janjaweed have murdered and raped and uprooted more than 1.6 million civilians from their villages, according to the United Nations.

The conflict has left more than 70,000 people dead since it erupted 22 months ago, aid agencies say.

‘’It’s one of the worst humanitarian crises with an unpredictable situation on the ground,’’ Roshan Khadivi, UN Children Fund’s external public relations officer in Darfur, told IPS in a telephone interview Dec. 22.

‘’About two and a half million people, mostly children under the age of 18, have been affected by the conflict that has hampered delivery of humanitarian goods,’’ she said. ‘’The situation is fluid and there is an influx of people in the camps in Darfur.’’

According to her, the situation in Darfur will only improve if security is beefed up and access is increased to the displaced persons.

‘’Parties must commit to a peaceful agreement to guarantee safety of aid workers and ensure that humanitarian aid reaches all camps,’’ Khadivi said.

Darfur is becoming a dangerous place for aid workers. Four workers of Save the Children, a British charity, had been killed in Darfur, prompting the organisation to pull out on Dec. 21.

An MSF worker was also murdered Dec. 17, the second in three months.

Political analysts say the warring parties must implement what they have signed in the presence of the international community. ‘’The international community should have laid down punitive repercussions should parties fail to live up to their commitments, particularly the government,’’ David Mozersky, a Sudan analyst with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, told IPS.

The United Nations is now trying to get tough on Sudan. ‘’There comes a time when you have to make a reassessment as to whether the approach you’ve taken is working or not,’’ Kofi Annan, the UN secretary General, told journalists at the UN headquarters in New York Dec. 21.

To end the conflict, Sudanese opposition groups believe that the underlying root of the Darfur problem should be addressed first. ‘’The fundamentals have to be addressed. Arabs in the north want to see Darfur depopulated so that they can settle in the farming-rich Darfur,’’ Rev. Haruun Runn, Executive Director of the New Sudan Council of Churches, said recently.

The blacks in Darfur are Muslims who have adopted some form of Arab cultures.

‘’The Darfur crisis cannot be solved by the quick-fix approach, that’s why it will extend to next year,’’ Runn said.

Some experts believe that the Darfur conflict cannot be addressed in isolation. It has to be addressed within the framework of the larger north-south peace deal, which is expected to be signed in Nairobi by Dec. 31. ‘’As long as Darfur continues to burn, implementation of the south-north agreement will be very difficult,’’ Mozersky observed.

The conflict between the north and the south has been ragging since 1955, save for an interlude of peace from 1972 to 1983.

The current civil war, which erupted in 1983, has killed more than two million people and displaced over four million others. The peace talks, which opened in Kenya in 2002, have led to signing of six protocols on key issues including one on wealth and another on power sharing.

What remains now is for the Sudan government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to agree on a comprehensive ceasefire and modalities for the implementation of the six protocols.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
OUAGADOUGOU, Oct 9 2004 (IPS)

Government and civil society representatives from around the world met in Kenya recently to debate how best to end female genital mutilation – a laudable effort. However, a case in Burkina Faso has exposed the limitations of their campaign.

About 700 delegates gathered in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, last month to discuss ways of eradicating female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa.

Strongly-worded statements were made and speeches delivered about the evils of this practice, and participants left the conference venue with renewed determination to push for entry into force of the Maputo Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. This protocol outlaws female genital mutilation – also known as female circumcision.

Scarcely had the meeting wrapped up, however, than a court case in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, provided a striking illustration of the gulf between activism and reality in the matter of FGM.

On Sep. 21, Adama Barry was sentenced to a maximum jail term of three years for having mutilated sixteen girls between the ages of two and ten on Aug. 15 (FGM is banned in Burkina Faso). Prior to the trial, she had received four other prison sentences of between four and six months for carrying out circumcisions.

Hortense Palm, permanent secretary of the National Committee for the Fight Against Excision (Comité national de lutte contre la pratique de l’excision, CNLPE) says the case has left her baffled.

“I extremely shocked and indignant to hear about this. You wonder, after all that’s been done, why there continues to be a problem and what could have possibly pushed these parents to subject their daughters to this practice,” she told IPS. The campaign against FGM got underway in Burkina Faso more than a decade ago, in 1992.

“We’re going to try to understand why, in spite of all the work we’ve done on this issue, pockets of resistance remain,” Palm said.

During an interview with members of the press prior to her trial, Barry insisted she had been coerced into performing the circumcisions.

“I’m not guilty. It was Aoua Sanfo (an accomplice) and the others who forced it on me,” she said. “I told them I had already gone to prison and that the practice was illegal. They insisted that I would not run into any problems.”

Nonetheless, Barry accepted payment for the procedures – although she told reporters that she had only asked for half her normal rate of 94 cents per child.

In its most severe form, FGM involves the removal of a girl’s clitoris and other genitalia – notably the folds of skin surrounding the openings of the urethra and vagina. However, the practice varies widely in different communities, and less tissue may also be cut away.

The wounds created by the excisions are stitched up, and a small opening left to allow for urine and menstrual blood to be passed.

This sets the stage for a host of complications, such as pain during sexual intercourse, eventual sexual dysfunction – and difficulties in childbirth. Circumcised girls and women may also develop an inability to control urination.

In addition, girls who are cut with the same instruments risk contracting the AIDS virus from each other. Infections or haemorrhaging may ensue – both of which can cause death. At the very least, the procedure – often carried out without anaesthetic – can prove traumatic for young girls and women.

The 16 girls circumcised by Barry were taken to hospital after the procedure, where one was diagnosed as having serious injuries.

Speaking to reporters, Barry said she no longer owned the equipment needed to conduct circumcisions: “It’s the parents’ responsibility to buy the blades themselves. With these tools, I just cut a little off the top and leave the rest. I learned how to do it from my aunt.”

Inasmuch as FGM traditions are passed on at community-level, grass roots involvement will play a critical role in eliminating the practice, says Palm: “I think that this incident with the 16 little girls means that provincial anti-genital mutilation committees need to be doubly vigilant and develop initiatives to create neighborhood surveillance committees.”

Adds Ramata Ouedraogo – a resident of Tanghin, the suburb where Barry lived, “It’s the parents themselves who are mainly responsible and they should receive the same sentence as Barry.”

“Having your daughter mutilated right in the middle of Ouagadougou should no longer be possible. It’s great that Barry is going to prison, but it would be a better lesson if the parents went too,” she said.

Ouedraogo would doubtless have been pleased to hear that 12 women – all mothers of the girls mutilated by Barry – received prison sentences of three months for their part in the crime.

More resources are also needed to bolster the anti-FGM campaign.

“What we’re lacking is financial support and training follow-up,” notes Mariam Koala, secretary general of the Wend-Panga (‘Power of God’) non-governmental organisation.

But, she adds “We have no intention of giving up. We’ve already seen some progress and we’re not going to stop because there continue to be a few pockets of resistance.”

Since FGM was banned in Burkina Faso in 1996, those who practice circumcision risk a maximum sentence of three years imprisonment and a fine of about 1,700 dollars. If the victim dies, the maximum sentence increases to 10 years.

In addition, anyone who knows of circumcisions but fails to report them is also liable under the law, and may be fined up to about 190 dollars. In a country where more than 46 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, this is no small matter.

About 100 FGM practitioners and their accomplices were arrested, tried and sentenced last year.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), genital mutilation is practiced for a variety of reasons. These include the belief that removing a girl’s genitalia will reduce sexual desire, and help ensure that she remains virginal until marriage – and faithful thereafter.

The practice is also viewed as providing an initiation into adulthood, or as being necessary for hygiene purposes. Certain Muslim communities believe their religion requires circumcision – although the practice “predates” Islam, according to the WHO.

The New York-based No Peace Without Justice organisation says that about two million girls and women are circumcised annually, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and countries in the Arab peninsula.

The Maputo Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, adopted by heads of state of the African Union (AU) at a summit in Mozambique last year, needs to be ratified by 15 AU member states before it can enter into force.

But to date, only three countries have ratified the document: the Comoros, Libya and Rwanda.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Sep 2 2004 (IPS)

The crisis in the Sudan’s western region of Darfur has overshadowed the peace process in the south of the country, where more than 2 million people have been killed since 1983.

‘’(Darfur) is receiving a lot of attention and it’s like the peace process (in the south) has been forgotten,’’ Samson Kwaje, spokesperson for the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SPLA), fighting government forces in the south, told IPS in an interview this week.

‘’Darfur has overshadowed the current peace process (in the south),’’ he said, adding: ‘’The peace process (in the south) is equally important and the two should be given equal treatment. They should run simultaneously.’’

Talks to end the 21-year conflict, between the black Christian south and the Arab Muslim north, kicked off in neighbouring Kenya in 2002, under the auspices of the seven-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). IGAD comprises Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

During the initial stages of the talks, there were a lot of optimisms as the United States, Britain, Italy and Norway exerted pressure on the belligerents to reach a peaceful settlement. Six protocols, including on wealth sharing, power sharing and security arrangement, were signed by the two sides. What was left was discussing details of the implementation of the agreement and compiling the six protocols into a single document.

But the talks adjourned on July 28 without an agreement on a permanent ceasefire.

Kenyan mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, IGAD’s special envoy to the talks, told IPS, ‘’The situation is still quiet. And, as of now, the government is awaiting a decision of the United Nations Security Council, before it can proceed with the peace negotiations.’’

The UN Security Council issued a 30-day deadline to the Sudan government to rein in the marauding Arab militias, known as Janjaweed (or men on horseback), terrorising the Darfur region, or face sanctions. The deadline expired Aug. 30. And UN special envoy Jan Pronk was expected to brief the 15-member UN Security Council on Sep. 2.

As it anxiously awaits news from the UN headquarters in New York, the government of President Omar al Bashir says it has complied with most of the UN requirements.

‘’The government is in the process of demilitarising the troublesome militia. It has, so far, deployed 7,000 troops to the area. Besides, it has set up a court for trying the militias who have been accused of violating human rights there,’’ Neimat Bilal, spokeswoman at the Sudanese Embassy in Kenya, told IPS in an interview on Sep.1.

‘’This shows there is progress and effort on the part of the government to restore peace in Darfur,’’ she added.

The conflict in Darfur erupted 18 months ago when two black rebel factions, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), took up arms to demand autonomy.

The Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed on the rebels. Since then, the Janjaweed have been accused of widespread killings, raping, abductions, torching villages and crops, as well as looting cattle of black Muslims in Darfur.

Aid agencies say up to 50,000 people have died from the conflict, while more than 1.4 million have been displaced internally. About 170,000 of these have fled into neighbouring Chad for fear of being attacked by the Janjaweed.

African Union (AU) chairman, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria has written to Sudan’s president al Bashir urging him to put an end to all attacks on civilians by government forces and Janjaweed to avoid jeopardising Darfur peace talks currently underway in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said Wednesday Sudan has failed to rein in the Janjaweed and that a large international force was required in Darfur as soon as possible.

In his monthly briefing, John Ashworth of the South Africa-based ‘Sudan Focal Point’, a Catholic church agency, said: ‘’The southern peace process appears to be completely stalled as international and local attention focuses on Darfur. This lack of progress, indeed lack of even any process towards progress, is a cause for concern.’’

Khalil Ibrahim, the exiled JEM chairman, told journalists recently that Darfur would not accept a bilateral peace agreement between Khartoum and the southern rebels.

‘’Such a deal will not bring peace to Sudan,’’ he said.

Recently, the SPLA leader John Garang ruled out sending troops to fight the Darfur rebels if southern rebels signed a comprehensive peace deal with Khartoum. And, last month Garang offered to deploy 10,000 SPLA troops in Darfur as part of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force.

Rwanda and Nigeria have each sent 150 troops to Darfur. But Khartoum has refused the deployment of a larger peacekeeping force of 2,500 as requested by the African Union.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 10 2004 (IPS)

“If you see a set of bright, shining lights at night, it’s not a vehicle but a giraffe that got stuck in a pothole in the middle of the road. So, watch out,” Zambians used to joke about the state of their roads a few years ago.

Doubts about NEPAD: these activists were present at the 2002 OAU summit. (Photo: Obed Zilwa) Credit: PictureNET Africa

With a good regional road network, Zambia could also export more maize, a staple food, to neighbouring countries.

But a considerable number of repairs need to be done to the roads that link this Southern African country to Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The slow and erratic railway service between Zambia and Tanzania, Tanzam, also needs a facelift.

Zambia and Tanzania are too poor to shoulder this burden, however. For now then, the responsibility of doing repairs is falling on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a blueprint designed by African leaders to pull the continent out of poverty.

NEPAD founders, who include South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki and his Nigerian counterpart, Olusegun Obasanjo, have committed themselves to setting up and improving infrastructure across the continent.

They have also identified needs in the transport, energy, communication technology, water and sanitation sectors which should receive attention first, in this regard.

“I think the priority should be roads, railways and ports, which are crucial to Africa’s development. Without them you can’t move goods,” Kurt Shillinger of the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of International Affairs, told IPS on Wednesday, Jul. 7. Shillinger specialises in NEPAD-related issues.

But he warned that even improved roads would not accelerate Africa’s development if the continent’s customs and immigration regimes remained out of kilter.

“You can have good roads, (but) if you can’t move goods around the region, then the roads become useless,” he argued.

Efforts to harmonise the customs regimes in the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) are underway. But, so far, only South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia have aligned their regulations.

Since it was adopted in 2001 by the former Organisation of African Unity (OAU) (now the African Union, AU), NEPAD’s biggest challenge has been raising the money to finance its ambitions.

The partnership is seeking 64 billion dollars a year from the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations and other foreign investors to rebuild Africa – this in return for good governance.

But the G8, which comprises Japan, Russia, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Britain and the United States, seems to be dragging its feet over funding.

This led a visibly frustrated Obasanjo to tell delegates to the AU’s annual summit held in Ethiopia, Jul. 6 to 8: “The list of unfulfilled promises by our partners is growing longer.”

But, says Shillinger, “I don’t think NEPAD is doing enough to attract investment to Africa. Business people always feel reluctant to invest where there is corruption, no good governance and no property rights.”

Observers say the seizure of land in Zimbabwe from 4,500 white commercial farmers since 2000 has dented Africa’s image as a continent where property rights are respected.

While Harare claims the seizures form part of efforts to end racial imbalances in land ownership that date back to the colonial era, critics allege that relatively little of this land has been given to blacks.

“Whenever foreigners want to invest they first look at the conditions of court, the independence of the judiciary – and property rights,” says Shillinger.

On Jun. 30, South African Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel told a gathering in the capital, Pretoria, that increased pressure should be brought on the G8 to meet its commitments to Africa. The meeting focused on the Commission for Africa, recently created by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to advise him on the continent.

The Chairman of the Commission, Nick Stern, warned that it would “want action plans with specifics, a plan that generates political will” in order to provide increased assistance.

On its website, NEPAD says that certain projects financed by the African Development Bank have nonetheless gotten underway.

The bank, based in the Ivorian commercial hub of Abidjan, has funded programmes worth 372.5 million dollars – while the World Bank has spent 570 million dollars since 2001 on NEPAD-related work. The total budget required to fund 16 or so infrastructure projects that have been given priority by NEPAD amounts to 8.1 billion dollars.

These projects include the West Africa Gas Pipeline project and the West Africa Power project. The latter will serve Benin, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo.

In East Africa, NEPAD has embarked on setting up a road network measuring 5,102 kilometres, which the World Bank has agreed to fund to the tune of about 500 million dollars – this over a three-year period. The European Union will also plough 375 million dollars into the project over a five-year period, according to NEPAD.

In SADC, the DRC, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa have formed a company to develop the Western Power Corridor Interconnection project. The five countries have agreed an equity contribution of 20 percent to enable the project, based in the DRC, to get underway.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
ADDIS ABABA, Jul 9 2004 (IPS)

It was billed as a summit where a new future for Africa would be unveiled. African Union chief Alpha Oumar Konare laid out a 1.7 billion dollar plan that would help revitalise the troubled and marginalized continent.

But as the annual summit of the Africa Union (AU) closed in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Thursday, Jul. 8, it was conflict, stalled peace deals, atrocities and instability that had once again dominated the agenda. In the last 40 years, conflicts have cost Africa seven million lives and 250 billion dollars, according to the AU.

Leaders agreed that as long as wars continued to plague the world’s poorest continent, development would remain a pipe dream. So when Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current AU chairman, officially brought the summit to an end, it was the fringe meetings on conflict that he chose to focus on.

Obasanjo said the AU had taken a tough stance in addressing hotspots like Sudan, the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“These issues demonstrate our determination to be proactive,” he told journalists, Thursday. “Without peace there is no development.”

The fringe meetings saw leaders agree to send an armed protection force into the troubled Darfur region of western Sudan to try and stabilise the area and restore confidence among civilians. “We are seriously concerned about the situation in Darfur,” Obasanjo noted.

While the main task of the 300-strong force will be to protect 60 AU officials who are monitoring a ceasefire between government and two loosely-allied rebel groups, Obasanjo indicated that it would not remain passive in the face of attacks on civilians.

“It will not be a protection force if it is there.where it should protect life and property, and it just stands and stares while life and property are being destroyed,” he said. The exact mandate of the force has still not been decided on, however, nor the date when it will be sent in.

The Darfur rebel groups took up arms against Khartoum last year, accusing it of supporting Arab militia known as the Janjaweed (or “men on horseback”) who have been accused of conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa: three black tribes.

This has sparked a humanitarian crisis that the United Nations describes as the world’s worst. Up to a million people have been displaced in Darfur, while more than 120,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad. The Sudanese government has said it will disarm the militia, but violence in the region has continued, the UN said earlier this week.

Sudan faces the threat of UN sanctions if it fails to disarm the Janjaweed and prevent further attacks.

Darfur, which featured heavily at the three-day summit, is seen as a critical test for the AU, created two years ago to replace the largely toothless Organisation of African Unity.

“Clearly the responsibility for the Darfur crisis is on the AU and the government of Sudan working together,” Obasanjo said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Konare also brokered plans for fresh talks between government and rebel forces in the Ivory Coast at the end of the month.

“We have a clear roadmap to solving the difficulties,” Annan told journalists after he emerged from the talks, also attended by Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.

Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, has been split into a rebel-held north and government-controlled south since Sep. 2002.

In addition, a plan was drawn up to try and prevent further abuses in eastern DRC.

Although a peace deal was signed by government and the country’s main rebel groups in Dec. 2002, instability continues to plague various parts of the DRC. Last month saw a failed coup attempt in the capital, Kinshasa, while rebels seized control of the eastern town of Bukavu for about a week.

Heads of state also won plaudits for their first-ever debate on gender, which culminated in an 11-point action plan setting out a strategy for improving the rights of women on the continent.

An African Trust Fund for Women will be established to provide skills training for women, with a special focus on improving the lives of those in rural areas.

The leaders also pledged to ensure that new laws to protect women would come into force by the end of the year. A campaign is to be launched in 2005 that will highlight the particular abuses women suffer during conflict, while the plight of child brides and women who are sold into sexual slavery will also receive attention.

Even as leaders prepared to jet out of Addis Ababa, however, the pressing question of who was to finance the AU’s good intentions remained

The Darfur operation alone will cost 26 million dollars. AU member states have so far contributed just 13 million dollars to the pan-African body’s 43-million-dollar budget for this year.

While the 38 leaders attending the summit endorsed Konare’s ambitious and costly three-year strategic plan to launch Africa into the 21st century, they stopped short of committing themselves to deliver the financial resources that it will require.

Instead, they agreed that a special AU session should be held later this year so that members could choose which programmes to implement first. Attention would then be given to raising funds for these programmes.

Konare had proposed that the AU’s 53 members pledge 0.5 percent of their national budgets to the organisation.

Key AU institutions that will require substantial funding include a standby force to intervene in humanitarian and natural disasters, and a pan-African parliament that will sit in South Africa. The price tag for the intervention force is put at 200 million dollars, while the parliament will cost 30 million dollars. Three million dollars have been budgeted for an African court of justice.

In addition, 600 million dollars would be ploughed over three years into the much-heralded New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD): an anti-poverty blueprint that seeks to attract more investment to the continent through improved governance.

But, Obasanjo argues that part of the problem facing the continent is the “unfulfilled commitments” of rich nations to provide the resources they have already committed themselves to.

“The list of unfulfilled commitments by our development partners is growing long,” he said at a progress report on NEPAD, on Wednesday.

“Turning around the continent will not happen overnight. As we take each step, let us ensure that each brick we lay is in the right place if we are to build a strong foundation for the future,” he added.

Konare, formerly the president of Mali, also wants to double the number of staff at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa to make the commission a more effective body. This would raise the commission’s running costs to around 130 million dollars a year, the AU says.

But Desmond Orjiako, spokesman for the AU, rejected claims that a failure to secure funding would sound the death-knell for Konare’s bold agenda.

“The amount should not scare anybody,” he said. “Everybody in principle has accepted the vision, mission and strategic plan. Now our problem is how do we raise the resources?”

“Any scepticism this time, no matter who it comes from, may not work – because we are determined,” he added.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 5 2004 (IPS)

Conflict resolution and poverty reduction will dominate the annual summit of the African Union (AU), to be held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, this week from Jul. 6 to 8.

According to certain analysts, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, his Nigerian counterpart – Olusegun Obasanjo – and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal are spearheading the drive to clean up Africa’s image. The continent has long been perceived as one plagued by wars, disease and corruption.

“There seems to be a new group of African leaders who want to make the African Union credible,” Grant Masterson of the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute of Southern Africa told IPS on Monday, Jul. 5. “This group is led by President Mbeki and others like Obasanjo of Nigeria.”

Last month the AU passed its Peace and Security Council protocol, which creates a body to address wars on the continent.

The AU heads of state and government summit will this week receive recommendations from the council on developments in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, and conflicts in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Cote d’Ivoire, according to a statement from Mbeki’s office on Jul. 5.

“These countries have serious issues that need to be addressed,” Masterson said.

In addition, a resolution concerning an African Standby Force will be tabled at the meeting.

The AU’s 15-member Peace and Security Council says the proposed 15,000-strong peacekeeping force will be deployed to prevent wars, disarm and demobilise fighters, ensure that cease-fires are honored, distribute relief aid and perform other peace-building functions in Africa’s hot spots.

AU members have set 2010 as the date for creating the force, which will initially comprise troops from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt.

Unfortunately, the establishment of this force will come too late to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded in Darfur.

At present, the AU has only 23 observers on the ground and another 60 on the way to the troubled region, according to Alpha Konare, Chairman of the AU Commission. Konare traveled to Darfur on Jul. 3 to try to negotiate peace between rebels and pro-government Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.

More than 10,000 people have been killed and one million displaced in Darfur since rebels launched a bush war against the Arab-dominated Islamic regime in Khartoum two years ago.

The Janjaweed are accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against three black African tribes from which the two rebel movements allegedly draw their support. The militias are also said to have the backing of Sudanese officials.

In his report, Konare said the observers would need a budget of 26 million dollars to operate in Darfur. But even with adequate financing it remains unclear whether this relatively small team of observers could effectively monitor events in the region, which is about the size of France.

Konare’s trip to Sudan followed that of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and American Secretary of State Colin Powell, last week. Both Annan and Powell urged the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed or face sanctions.

The other challenge facing the AU is poverty. More than 350 million people, or half of Africa’s population, live below the poverty line of a dollar a day, according to the World Bank.

During the UN’s millennium summit, held in Sep. 2000, global leaders set eight millennium development goals in a bid to reduce poverty, maternal mortality, environmental degradation and other ills by 2015.

But, analysts doubt whether Africa will meet the target of halving poverty by 2015.

“Over the past 25 years, our continent has grown poorer – not richer – and only four countries are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. On present trends, Africa as a whole will only achieve the universal education targets in 2029, halving poverty will require another 100 years, and meeting the child mortality rates will only happen in 2169,” Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s Minister of Finance, told a seminar in the capital, Pretoria, last week.

In 2002, the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations, which groups some of the world’s most powerful economies, committed itself to increasing development aid by 12 billion dollars a month – half of which would be allocated to Africa.

Even as the AU struggles to revitalize Africa, however, some of its member states appear less then supportive of its efforts.

Libya’s Muammar Ghadaffi, for example, has been critical of AU demands for multi-party democracy in member states, and for administrations to have their standards of governance reviewed by a group of leading Africans. (This “peer review mechanism” was first envisaged under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, which seeks to attract more investment to Africa through improving governance on the continent.)

“Ghadaffi is undermining the credibility of the African Union,” Masterson says.

Pretoria will also be bidding this week for the newly-created Pan-African Parliament to have its seat in South Africa. So far, Egypt is South Africa’s strongest rival in this regard.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BULAWAYO, Jul 2 2004 (IPS)

As the third annual summit of the African Union (AU) draws closer, the spotlight is falling on the organisation’s newest branch: the Peace and Security Council, and its proposed standby force.

Inaugurated in May at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia, the 15-member council will be advised by a panel comprising five Africans of repute. Analysts hope the council – which still has to be ratified by a majority of AU members – will prove a more powerful and efficient agency than other bodies set up to resolve the continent’s woes.

The council aims to provide a “timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situations” on the continent, such as unconstitutional changes of government, humanitarian and natural disasters.

Inevitably, questions have been raised about funding for the standby force that will give council the muscle it needs to contain such situations.

According to Kondwane Chirambo of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), trans-continental peace-keeping operations have shown themselves to be financially demanding and politically delicate. And, some have fallen short of the demands placed on them. (Idasa is a think tank based in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.)

He says that while the United Nations has provided back-up for certain operations, this has not always met “the demands of conflict situations in quantitative terms”.

As an example, he gives the global body’s decision to send an 11,000-strong peace-keeping force to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This was hardly adequate, he observes, when one considers that the DRC is almost a quarter the size of the United States.

Currently, there are six UN peace-keeping missions in Africa. The largest – consisting of 13,000 officers – has been deployed in Liberia. Others are located in Sierra Leone, the DRC, the Ivory Coast and Burundi. Ethiopia and Eritrea have 4,000 peacekeepers stationed between them.

African countries do contribute to some of these operations. Of the UN’s 12,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, for example, a third is African.

The protocol establishing the Peace and Security Council says that a Peace Fund which receives allocations from the AU budget will finance interventions in Africa. Voluntary contributions can also be made by AU member states and “other sources” such as the private sector or individuals.

But, Chirambo notes that most African states are short of money without the added burden of footing the bill for a standby force.

“In theory, this is a laudable move,” he says. “But we should be under no illusions that this is by any means a straightforward adventure. Peace building and security operations are extremely costly.”

As a result, Africa may find itself turning to wealthy countries again to raise money for aircraft carriers, helicopter gunships – and the salaries of troops. It’s a prospect that alarms political analyst Thomas Deve. “Africans will never progress by relying on handouts from the West,” he told IPS.

At last month’s Group of Eight summit in the American state of Georgia, U.S. President George Bush proposed a scheme under which the body would train up to 75,000 African peace keepers. These troops would be ready for deployment by 2010.

Bush pledged to ask Congress for 660 million dollars to kick-start the programme.

A new standby force would also have to grapple with the threat posed by the AIDS pandemic. The levels of HIV prevalence are known to be high amongst African troops, many of whom have contracted and transmitted the virus while serving in foreign countries.

Furthermore, some of the lustre has been taken off the proposal for the standby force by claims that the initiative is not home grown. Various observers say it is simply the result of increased pressure by Western powers for Africa to shoulder the burden of resolving its conflicts.

But despite these problems, there is hope that the Peace and Security Council signals the birth of a new era in African conflict resolution.

The AU is keen to distance itself from its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was unable to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide. About 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in this massacre.

“In so far as the union moves away from the position of the OAU on the non-interference of states, then the AU is on a new footing,” says Horace Campbell, a Professor of African-American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University in the U.S.

Previous peace-keeping missions launched by African countries include the intervention in Liberia, following the outbreak of civil war there in 1989. The Economic Community of West African States dispatched forces to the country.

Four years later the UN Security Council followed suit by establishing the UN Observer Mission in Liberia. This became the first UN peace-keeping initiative undertaken in cooperation with an existing intervention launched by another body.

Campbell also points to the work of the South African government and others in bringing peace to Burundi. “This has not succeeded completely, but it has prevented a near genocide,” he says.

The AU summit will be held in Addis Ababa from Jul. 6 to 8.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 11 2004 (IPS)

Kenyan civil society activist Edward Oyugi says Africa’s relations with the developed world amount to the continent holding out a begging bowl. But, African leaders insist they have a partnership with wealthy nations – one based on investment in return for good governance.

The claim came under discussion again this week during a meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) – an association of the world’s most powerful economies. The group includes the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Canada, Japan and Russia.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, along with five colleagues from other parts of the continent, were also included in the talks – held at the luxurious resort of Sea Island, which lies off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia.

What they brought home from the gathering was a plan for the G8 to help train and equip some 75,000 peacekeepers and police by 2010 – officers who will be deployed to meet security needs in Africa.

They also emerged with an appeal by G8 leaders for the United Nations to stem the carnage in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where pro-government Arab militias are carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans.

“We look to the United Nations to lead the international effort to avert a major disaster and will work together to achieve this end,” said the leaders in a statement.

However, the Islamic regime in Sudan claims the West is to blame for Darfur’s agony.

Addressing about 300 Sudanese and Egyptian intellectuals in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, on Thursday (Jun. 10), First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha said millions of dollars had been kept from Sudan by economic sanctions. This block on funding, he added, had prevented the development of Darfur, thereby disposing the region to conflict.

The sanctions were imposed after President Omar Bashir, who seized power from the elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi in 1989, allowed Sudan to become a haven for Islamic terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.

The European Union agreed Thursday to give 12 million dollars to support the quick deployment of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Sudan.

The AU has also announced plans to send 90 monitors to Darfur, while Mbeki is dispatching 10 high-ranking army officers to the region. But, “It is not clear how effective 90 monitors – 60 military and 30 civilians – will be in an area the size of France, where daily killings and rapes are still being reported,” Amnesty International said in a statement last week.

The AU already has peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire and Burundi.

The G8 leaders also said they would extend the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC), which was due to end this year, until the end of 2006.

In addition, they called on scientists to hasten the development of an AIDS vaccine. Australian researchers are currently testing a vaccine which controls the amount of HIV in people living with the virus, by boosting their immune systems. Washington has promised to give 500 million dollars to fund this research.

That’s good news for a continent where an estimated 26.6 million people have contracted HIV – and where about 3.2 million new infections occurred last year alone, according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS.

However, the amount of attention accorded to Africa became clearer when Mbeki told journalists that African leaders had spent only two hours with their G8 counterparts. Time constraints prevented them from discussing other issues of importance, he added.

All in all, the Middle East seems to have stolen the show. During the summit, U.S. President George W. Bush met Iraq’s new leader – Ghazi al-Yawar – and King Abdullah Hussein of Jordan. In the course of their talks, Bush again put forward his vision of exporting democracy to the Middle East, using Iraq as a stepping stone.

Mbeki was invited to Sea Island along with Presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, John Kufour of Ghana, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

This is the fourth year in a row that African leaders have been invited to the high-powered gathering, in the context of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

African academics and civil society activists have questioned the West’s commitment to NEPAD, which proposes good governance on the part of African states in return for investment. Instead, they say the continent should improve its tax collection system to raise the 64 billion dollars a year that NEPAD is seeking from the G8.

Others have also criticised African leaders for not engaging their fellow citizens sufficiently on NEPAD.

“It’s a dream by African leaders that they refused to share with African people. Instead, they rushed to share it with outsiders who do not wish Africa well,” Oyugi, told a workshop organised by the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, late last month.

In May, a group of African business representatives meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, complained about the lack of information on NEPAD. They also highlighted the fact that not a single firm had invested in any of the 20 projects identified by NEPAD to jump start the continent’s growth.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, May 8 2004 (IPS)

The Commission for Africa appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair met for the first time this week to look for solutions to the many problems of the continent. Instead, it seemed only to invite questions about itself.

Blair has appointed several commissioners that include himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown and secretary of the Department for International Development Hilary Benn.

Commissioners from Africa include Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zanawi, Tanzanian President Ben Mkapa and South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Among other members are actor and singer Bob Geldof who led the Band Aid concert for Africa 20 years ago, Canadian finance minister Ralph Goodale and former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Michel Camdessus.

The commission set up in February this year has the declared aim of producing a set of recommendations in advance of the G8 summit to be hosted by Britain next year.

G8 comprises the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

If there is one thing Africa does not lack, it is reports and recommendations. There are several by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), besides volumes generated by independent institutions.

Effective action over the recommendations was envisaged through the “vision and strategic framework” of The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Why does Africa need a Commission set up by Britain?

“I will ask you, why preach us every Sunday, preach, in spite of the fact that the Bible has been with us for 2,000 years,” Mkapa said in defence of the commission after its first meeting Tuesday. “It is as simple as that.”

But going by other views offered after the inaugural meeting, it is not as simple as that. Blair said “it is actually an attempt to get an agenda that we can agree as a Commission, that we can then take out, that we can mobilise public and civic support behind and eventually get action from governments in both the developed and the developing world in Africa in order to affect change.”

Meles acknowledged that “most of the solutions that we are likely to come up with are going to be there already on the table.” The issue, he said, is “to put them together in a new way, in an effective way and to create a political will.”

Geldof hoped the “end conclusion might be some sort of Marshall-type plan (to rebuild Europe after World War II).”

Benn said the commission will seek to recognise Africa’s potential, to “talk about that potential, and to demonstrate in the end this is going to be about Africa solving its own problems and Africa determining its own future, and the question is how can the rest of the world help that process to happen.”

But ominously as a civil society group sees it, Goodale has spoken of the Commission as a platform to push privatisation in Africa. “We have seen the consequences of failed new market policies over the past 20 years, and this may become essentially a plan for more privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation,” Peter Hardstaff from the World Development Movement told IPS.

Any more money that the Commission manages to raise from the meeting of the G8 “will be wasted if the failures of structural adjustment are not recognised,” Hardstaff said. “Extra funds will not help if basic policies are more of the same.”

The Commission would have more credibility “if it were actually doing what it should do like raising aid to 0.7 percent (of gross national income, GNI), supporting WTO (World Trade Organisation) reforms and regulating British arms dealers,” Hardstaff said.

These are among a list of 15 things WDM has said Britain could do usefully for Africa without setting up a Commission – and which it is not doing.

Others include finding the two billion dollars needed to cancel Britain’s share of all remaining Third World debt, withdrawing support for European Union moves to force a free market in water services on many African countries, and passing legislation to make British multinationals accountable to British courts for their activities in African countries.

WDM called the Commission an “unnecessary diversion from real action for Africa” and accused the British government of “sidelining genuinely African initiatives and ignoring African governments when their demands conflict with those of big business.”

The group says that “the discredited G8 Action Plan for Africa sets out a blueprint for the continent which is free-market, free-trade, privatised, deregulated and genetically modified.”

WDM says “this is the exact opposite of the consensus that is developing in Africa, the latest symptom of which was the brave refusal of African countries to give way to EU demands for a raft of new free trade agreements at the WTO ministerial in Cancun, Mexico last September.”

The Commission will be served by a secretariat staffed by British civil servants. It will seek to work on issues around finance and trade, health, education, governance, conflict, culture and environment.

One of the Commissioners from Africa may be made responsible for overseeing liaison with African civil society.

Excerpt:

By James Hall
MBABANE, Apr 6 2004 (IPS)

The sacks of maize that are keeping Mbali Mthembu’s family alive bear the stamp “United States of America”. The 25- year-old mother of three collects her monthly food stipend from a distribution point near the village of Siphofaneni in Swaziland’s eastern Lubombo region, which has been hard hit by three years of drought.

“This was grown in America. It says so right here,” Mthembu notes, pointing to the inscription on the bulging maize sack. “It is a gift from Americans who don’t want to see us starve. I have never held a job, and I cannot manage our field since my husband died.” Between a quarter and a third of Swazis are said to be in need of food aid.

A charity with links to the Lutheran Church administers the distribution centre near Siphofaneni, while food shipments are managed by the United Nations World Food Programme. But, the smooth functioning of this aid operation belies tensions amongst donor nations and aid groups over Swaziland’s human rights record and government spending on behalf of the royal family.

At present, two thirds of people in Swaziland live in poverty, while about 40 percent of adults are infected with HIV – the highest prevalence rate in the world. AIDS has added to the state’s food crisis by incapacitating many family breadwinners, and also brought about a burgeoning number of orphans.

In the face of these overwhelming social needs, King Mswati the Third has ordered nine palaces to be built for his wives, at an estimated cost of about 15 million dollars. Expensive cars have been bought for Swazi royalty, and a proposal was put forward in 2002 for a private jet to be acquired for the king. Parliament ultimately rejected this proposal.

Multi-party politics are also banned in Swaziland, while the constitution was repealed in 1973 by Mswati’s father – King Sobhuza the Second. The current monarch rules by decree, although a new constitution is under discussion.

Concerns about standards of governance in the country were raised by Stephen Lewis, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, during a recent visit to Swaziland.

“Swaziland is a monarchy that has yet to experience significant constitutional reform. Some of the policies and practices of the king are highly contentious, from polygamy to proposed extravagant expenditures,” said Lewis.

He added that he had had a “private and very frank conversation” with King Mswati. “It’s not for me to reveal the contents, except to say that I think the king understands that the donors are restive about Swaziland’s political and economic priorities, particularly in the face of a pandemic that feels like armageddon,” Lewis said.

For the moment, however, humanitarian concerns are conspiring with political developments elsewhere in the region to give Swaziland a reprieve from calls for democratization.

“There is no question that unfavourable reports about the country are making Swaziland a harder sell, but the world will not let down a population in need,” said an official with a food distribution organisation.

Pressure for reform might have been expected from neighbouring South Africa, which has been one of the driving forces behind the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), an initiative that seeks to attract more investment to Africa through improving standards of governance on the continent.

As South Africa is Swaziland’s economic lifeline, it is uniquely placed to influence Mbabane: at present, South Africa absorbs 60 percent of Swazi exports, and provides 80 percent of the country’s imported goods and services, including most electricity and all petroleum products.

However, the incoming South African High Commissioner made a point of using his first public statement to indicate that Pretoria was not considering sanctions against the kingdom.

Privately, a diplomat from another Southern African country told IPS, “Mbeki could hardly sanction Mswati when he isn’t sanctioning (Zimbabwean President Robert) Mugabe, but that’s not the point. There isn’t the degree of abuses committed in Swaziland that would warrant that type of extreme action.”

Zimbabwe is currently in the grip of an economic and political crisis which is largely blamed on Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party.

The support of various other countries also shows no signs of waning. Japan is helping to build a highway system in northern Swaziland to facilitate commercial traffic through areas that are currently inaccessible, while Italy has granted a loan to rehabilitate one of the country’s main railway lines. In addition, the Republic of China (ROC) remains a principal investor and grant-giver: nearly all of the new factories turning out garments at the Matsapha and other industrial estates are Taiwanese-owned.

The ROC’s presence in Swaziland stems largely from the fact that the kingdom enjoys preferential access to the United States’ market under two trade treaties, the Generalised System of Preferences and the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) – something the Taiwanese companies are using to their advantage.

In theory, countries which want to benefit from AGOA are required to observe democratic norms.

But, despite periodic local reports claiming that the U.S. is soon to drop Swaziland from AGOA because of alleged human rights violations and governance issues, the kingdom continues to benefit from the act. Diplomatic sources told IPS there was no immediate threat of Swaziland’s ejection as long as dialogue on governance issues was continuing between Washington and Lozitha Palace.

The question now is just how long this dialogue can continue before the U.S. – along with other countries – feels compelled to take some form of action.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
GABORONE, Mar 22 2004 (IPS)

The World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) has begun its biennial World Assembly with strong words from Botswana President Festus Mogae about the relocation of members of his country’s San community. The assembly is being held in Botswana’s capital, Gaborone.

A non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Britain, Survival International, claims that Mogae’s government has evicted the San – or Basarwa – from lands they had traditionally occupied in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to make way for mineral exploitation.

In his address to delegates at the opening ceremony Sunday (Mar. 21), Mogae described the relocation as being part of a plan to bring schools, clinics and other services to all people in Botswana – even those living in remote, rural areas.

“People belong in settlements and not game parks. In this respect, this government shall continue to vigorously maintain that rural poverty, no matter how it is romanticized, is a condition – not a culture,” he said.

“Like our brothers and sisters elsewhere in this region, we shall also continue to reject the old colonial apartheid myth that insists that some black communities are more indigenous than others,” Mogae told delegates.

According to the chairman of the Botswana Council of Non-Governmental Organisations, Phillip Makgalemele, plans to mine diamonds in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve could be seen in a positive light, as the operation would bring benefits to all communities – including the Basarwa.

However, in a document entitled the “Importance of rights to development” (issued this month), Survival International argues that the Basarwa have not been “willingly and meaningfully” involved in efforts to move them – and that the relocations constitute an abuse of their right to self-determination.

The document says there is ample evidence to show that this abuse of human rights ultimately undermines development, as it deepens the “powerlessness” and “social exclusion” which lead to poverty.

Survival International also claims that the experiences of indigenous people in Canada, Tasmania, Bangladesh and other countries prove it is “disastrous” to try to settle hunter-gatherer groups like the San into fixed communities.

The events of the opening ceremonies aside, CIVICUS does not appear to have made provision for any further discussion of this sensitive topic at the assembly. A conference organiser who wished to remain anonymous said the matter did not feature in the official line-up as CIVICUS did not want it to overshadow other important developmental issues.

This statement contradicts earlier promises that the relocations would be debated. In an interview given to IPS in February, CIVICUS Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo said, “We can’t hold a big conference in Botswana while ignoring the plight of the Basarwa.”

Certain delegates believe the topic will still resurface during conference discussions. A meeting was also held last week in Gaborone between government, Survival International and other NGOs to help resolve the controversy surrounding the relocation of Basarwa members.

Organisers of the World Assembly, which is being held under the theme “Acting Together for a Just World”, say they are using the fact that the meeting is being held in Africa to draw attention to some of the key issues affecting the continent.

These include the AIDS pandemic, conflicts in various parts of Africa, and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). This is a plan for African renewal that aims to use improved standards of governance across the continent to attract investment from developed countries.

A variety of workshops will also be held on helping civic groups to play a more active role in society – notably in conflict situations – and on assisting them to improve their own levels of organisational management.

CIVICUS – a Johannesburg-based NGO – is an alliance that works to give all citizens a say in how their countries are governed, particularly those who live in undemocratic states.

About 700 delegates from over 100 countries are attending the five-day meeting. They will be addressed by speakers that include former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community – Prega Ramsamy – and Graca Machel, a lobbyist for children’s rights.

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By IPS Correspondents
BLANTYRE, Mar 22 2004 (IPS)

It’s a tale of delays, missed deadlines and the grinding problems that can dog large-scale infrastructure projects. Work to connect electricity lines between Malawi and neighbouring Mozambique was scheduled to have been completed by 2002. The deadline has now been shifted to 2005, however – and officials aren’t ruling out 2006.

The project involves laying high voltage cables over a distance of 220 kilometres from the Matambo power station in Mozambique’s north-western Tete province to Phalula, 60 kilometres north of Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre.

It is aimed at ending the frequent power failures in Malawi that are caused by prolonged environmental degradation along the Shire river – site of the hydro-electric plants that form Malawi’s main source of power.

As a report issued in January of this year underscored, the power cuts aren’t just inconvenient – they are also undermining capital flows into the country.

The document, issued by the National Statistical Office, the Reserve Bank of Malawi and the Malawi Investment Promotion Agency, said that electricity problems were one of the major factors behind a decline in foreign investment during recent years.

Private sector experts agree.

“All parties lose from the current supply situation. Businesses are incurring extra costs from back-up generation; lower profits, forex earnings and investment,” says Jason Agar, Coordinator of the National Action Group, a forum for business, government and donors.

“ESCOM (the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi) loses revenue – and government loses taxes,” he adds.

But, this self-evident need for reliable power hasn’t enabled officials to circumvent red tape.

Having completed a variety of studies on how the new cable will affect the environment – and whether villagers will have to be resettled to accommodate it – Malawi says it is ready to recruit a contractor to start building the line. Mozambican officials, however, are still trying to assess possible environmental impacts on their side of the border.

“The work is obviously behind schedule and we wish we had done better, because the initial deadline has been missed,” says Lameck Mchembe, Projects Manager for ESCOM.

He blames the delays on protracted negotiations about the project – and the donor community’s general unwillingness to dig into its pockets. The cost of the scheme is in the region of 154 million dollars.

“Money has not been forthcoming and this has not kept pace with the other corresponding activities,” Mchembe told IPS.

To date, the World Bank has pledged a loan of 84 million dollars for project activities in Malawi, and put strict procurement procedures in place. The two countries have also approached the Norwegian government and the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA).

“Mozambique has requested us to consider funding their section of the project as part of the NEPAD programme,” Mwafonjo Muwila, the DBSA Programme Manager for African Partnerships, told IPS from Johannesburg.

“We expect to co-finance the investment phase with other financiers,” he said, adding that Malawi could also get project funding from the bank.

NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, is a plan which seeks to attract investment to the continent through improving governance in African countries. Muwila said the DBSA had set up a special unit to deal with the investment and development needs in Africa that have been highlighted by NEPAD.

While work on the Malawi-Mozambique connection inches along, disruptions at the Shire hydro-electric plants are costing Lilongwe dearly.

In 2003, ESCOM lost more than half of its generating capacity after Nkula station, one of four generation sites on the Shire, was flooded. The power utility has borrowed four million dollars from the World Bank to carry out repairs to the plants, while a further six million dollars are in the pipeline.

“The interconnection (between Malawi and Mozambique) will relieve ESCOM from the current environmental problems, since they would be able to switch off generation stations for repairs during the rainy season and supply customers with the power from Mozambique,” George Mkondiwa, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Affairs told IPS.

Once the new cables are in place, they will also allow Malawi to start selling power to other countries in the region.

“Plans are already underway to set up a trading department modeled on the stock exchange to sell our power to the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region,” said ESCOM’s Chief Executive, Allexon Chiwaya.

Mozambique is already connected to other SADC countries, which it supplies with power from the Cahora Bassa dam. The Hydroelectrica de Cahora Bassa company exports 2,000 megawatts of electricity to Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

It is hoped that the Malawi-Mozambique project will ultimately form part of a larger “power corridor” linking Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Grand Inga hydro-electric project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has the potential to generate 40,000 megawatts of power, will form a key part of this corridor.

Inga’s capacity surpasses that of China’s controversial Three Gorges dam – and could even meet the needs of the entire continent.

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By IPS Correspondents
BERLIN, Mar 16 2004 (IPS)

Water management is set to play a crucial role in the development of travel and tourism industry in Africa in the coming years, according to experts.

The United Nations specialised agency World Tourism Organisation estimates that some 77 million tourists – three times the number recorded in 1995 – will visit Africa in 2020.

“These expectations will be fulfilled only if the right conditions are created,” says Karl Wolfgang Menck from Hamburg Institute of International Economy (HWWA).

In a paper presented at the world tourism fair ITB in Berlin, Menck says, if this aspect has not been given adequate attention up to now, it is because “the preferred destinations of visitors to Africa are presently not afflicted by bottlenecks in water supply.”

North Africa, which attracts about 40 percent of all travellers to Africa, “has comparatively good water supplies”.

But the water supply situation in Southern Africa that attracts one-third of the global tourists to the continent is far from satisfactory. Water required for public use has to be pumped over long distances from rivers and lakes, and this involves enormous costs.

The situation is aggravated by the fact floods follow on the heels of droughts – underlining the need for adequate water management, says Menck.

East Africa that is expected to share 30 percent of travellers to the continent is no better off. Equally precarious is the water supply situation in West Africa that has not yet drawn a significant tourist attention.

Menck’s concern is shared by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi.

According to Africa Environment Outlook published by UNEP ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development late August 2002 in Johannesburg, the continent’s share of global freshwater resources is about 9 per cent.

These freshwater resources are distributed unevenly across Africa, with western Africa and central Africa having significantly greater precipitation than northern Africa, the Horn of Africa and southern Africa.

The wettest country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has nearly 25 per cent of average annual internal renewable water resources in Africa. By contrast, the driest country, Mauritania, has just 0.01 per cent of Africa’s total.

Average water availability per person in Africa is 5,720 cubic metres per capita per year compared to a global average of 7,600 cubic metres, but there are large disparities between sub-regions

Giulia Carbone, UNEP’s programme officer for sustainable tourism, points out that presently, some 206 million Africans live in water stressed or water scarce countries. By 2025 the number will rise to about 700 million as population continues to grow.

Of these, roughly 440 million will live in countries with acute water scarcity – less than 1,000 cubic metres per person per year.

Fifty years ago, there was four times more water for each African than today. “Now there are acute water shortages for crops and for livestock, for industry and sanitation in the cities, and almost everywhere drinking water is increasingly scarce,” says the UNEP.

Caught between growing demand for freshwater and limited and increasingly polluted supplies, many African countries face difficult choices. Finding solutions requires responses at local, national and international levels.

These include community level initiatives to manage water resources better, national water management policies that help not only to improve supply but also manage demand international cooperation. After all, water knows no national boundaries.

UNEP expects increasing tourism in Africa to increase pressure on natural resources. “Therefore the need for responsible and sustainable water use habits and policies is vital to ensure viable growth of one of Africa’s most exciting growth-industries.”

Although tourism, especially eco-tourism, is not the heaviest water use sector, it has a responsibility and a unique need in Africa to strive towards becoming the continent’s flagship water management industry.

Menck says: “Efficient and sustainable use of water resources should be part of all tourism developers’ strategies. This includes incentives for all hotel guests, staff and local population to minimise water use through comprehensive education and awareness programmes.”

But he has also words of praise for African states that have agreed to improve the water management situation with a view to attracting tourists and protect the environment.

Within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), African governments have voted in favour of tourism that is ecology friendly. And this is inevitably linked to adequate water management, says Menck in his paper.

Menck submitted his paper at the Africa Forum organised by ITB Berlin.

The five-day fair that ended Tuesday was joined by travel and tourism operators from 178 countries. African participants included those from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Gambia, Eritrea and Mauritius.

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By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Mar 3 2004 (IPS)

Member states of the East African Community have signed a protocol for establishing a customs union that is expected to boost growth in the region.

The agreement was initialled Tuesday (Mar. 2) in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha by the Presidents of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It will take effect in July this year.

Negotiators had been locked in discussions until the last minute about how goods flowing between the three countries should be taxed – a delicate issue that has derailed previous efforts to establish the union. Since last November, the signing of the protocol has been postponed four times – this after four years of discussion.

Tanzania and Uganda have long claimed that they cannot compete on equal grounds with Kenya, seen as the economic hub of the region.

According to the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the country exported up to 184.2 million dollars worth of goods to Tanzania between 1999 and 2002. Imports during the same period amounted to only 12,236 dollars.

Similarly, goods exported to Uganda for the same period were valued at between 276.3 and 407.9 million dollars, while imports ranged between 4,039 and 9,078 dollars. Both Tanzania and Uganda feared that a common tariff on goods circulating in the East African Community (EAC) would exacerbate these trade imbalances.

As a result, the protocol stipulates that products from Tanzania and Uganda which are sold in the EAC will not be taxed – while those from Kenya will be, for a period of five years.

Goods from countries outside the customs union will be taxed under a common external tariff that divides imports into three categories. Raw materials will be allowed to enter the EAC tax free, while semi-processed and -finished goods will be taxed at 10 percent. Finished products are to have a 25 percent tax imposed on them.

“A customs union is advantageous because it means trade within a wider market, increased competition among traders and efficiency in terms of production,” said John Ochola of the Nairobi-based Institute of Economic Affairs.

The EAC presently offers a market of about 90 million people. According to the community’s secretariat, the combined gross domestic product of EAC member states stands at 25 billion dollars.

However, Ochola believes that simply taxing Kenyan goods might not be sufficient to make Tanzania and Uganda equal players in the region.

“It is important to have in place more compensation mechanisms.to encourage investors to invest also in the two countries, and not only to concentrate on Kenya,” he told IPS.

The customs union is seen as the first step in a process that will culminate in a common market, a common currency – and political federation for EAC states.

“As we move from (conducting affairs as a single state), we begin to move towards expanding our markets – we look further to creating a single market to serve the region. This is good for the stability of the region,” says Peter Ondeng, Chief Executive Officer at the Kenya Secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

NEPAD is a programme spearheaded by five African leaders which aims to improve governance across the continent in return for increased aid and investment from developed countries.

For Kenyans like Caroline Alinda, however, Tuesday’s protocol is less important than a simple guarantee of free movement between EAC member states. Although the three countries signed an agreement in 2002 to allow their nationals to move freely in the region, people who have tried to do so complain of harassment at border posts.

Alinda, a trader who shuttles between Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam, says “If the EAC adheres to the spirit of looking at the interests of the small man, such as ensuring total free movement of citizens, it will not collapse again.”

The community was initially formed in 1967, but dissolved ten years later because of a variety of reasons – including disputes over the merits of capitalist and socialist economies.

Victor Umbricht, a former World Bank staffer who was appointed to oversee the division of EAC assets following the collapse, recalls that it had “serious consequences” for the region.

A 1987 interview drawn from the bank’s archives quotes him as saying: “It was not only a collapse in form, it was one of substance. The borders were closed. You could not cross the border any more from Kenya to Tanzania. There were no inter-country railways, no trade, no airways. We had no post and telecommunications services any more, no joint navigation.”

“We even had a war in 1978-79 between Tanzania and Uganda when Idi Amin was thrown out, so everything was in a shambles. It was chaotic,” he adds.

In 1999 the EAC was re-established with a treaty that envisages economic and political union between member states.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 26 2004 (IPS)

With less than a month to go before the first session of the African parliament, interest in the new legislature appears to be at a low in various parts of the continent.

In a message posted on its website, the Addis Ababa-based African Union (AU) has urged member states which have not done so to speed up the submission of names of representatives to the Pan-African Parliament. Each country is required to nominate five members from its national parliament to the continental legislature.

The AU also requested member states to get formal approval from national legislatures as soon as possible for participation in the African parliament, and to send notification of this approval to the AU Commission.

By Thursday (Feb. 26), only 32 of the AU’s 53 members had submitted the names of representatives to attend the first session of the parliament – scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa on Mar. 18-20.

Claude Kabemba, an analyst at the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA), told IPS that those countries which were dragging their feet might be doing so because they feared greater accountability: “Some are reluctant to be subjected to the rule of law and transparency.”

The Pan-African Parliament, which is modeled on the European Parliament, was launched in the Libyan town of Sirte in March 2001.

President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, who is the current chairman of the AU, will lead the first session of the legislature before handing over to the parliamentary speaker and their four deputies as soon as these officials are elected.

In its first five years of existence, the parliament will play an advisory role. After that, it will start to legislate on issues that affect Africa.

Kabemba believes that the varying pace of democracy on the continent would prevent the parliament from taking an active role any sooner. “African countries are at different levels of development and democracy. Some are advanced and others are ruled by autocrats like Togo,” he said.

Togo’s General Gnassingbe Eyadema, the longest serving head of state in sub-Saharan Africa, has been in power since 1967. He has never permitted free and fair elections to be held in the country.

Some of his political opponents have disappeared under mysterious circumstances – while others have fled the former French colony.

“We should move slowly and make sure that we get all the AU members aboard,” Kabemba added. “Some countries like the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) have not yet even started thinking about joining the Pan-African Parliament.”

War and decades of mismanagement have destroyed the DRC’s political institutions and infrastructure. “Even if the DRC sends representatives, their input will be minimal,” Kabemba observed.

Another challenge facing the AU is where to locate the parliament. Egypt, Libya and South Africa have all expressed interest in hosting it.

Frene Ginwala, Speaker of the South African parliament, told journalists in Cape Town last week that South Africa’s bid to host the continental legislature had received support from several countries (most of which are said to be part of the Southern African Development Community).

She said President Thabo Mbeki has written to African governments seeking their endorsement of the bid.

Not to be outdone, Libyan leader Muammar Ghadaffi is reportedly building a palatial meeting hall in Tripoli to house the parliament.

But concern has been expressed about Libya’s lack of democratic credentials.

“Libya has no functioning democracy. It has been ruled by decree since Ghaddafi seized power through a military coup in 1969. It will be a mockery to allow Libya to host the Pan-African Parliament,” said Stephen Narola, a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

“Unless Libya opens up,” he added, “Africa should not even think of it hosting any of the AU organs.”

A lack of resources may, however, force Africa to do exactly that. Apart from the African parliament, the African Court of Justice and the African Central Bank are also in search of homes.

Ghaddaffi has been generous to the AU, which inherited a debt of 40 million dollars from its predecessor, the Organisation of African Union (OAU), in 2002. Between 2001 and 2002, Libya paid about 2.3 million dollars to the AU on behalf of 11 African states which were in arrears to the OAU.

But, Kabemba does not believe that there is shortage of money in Africa. “All these countries have money. The problem is, their heart is not close to the African Union,” he said.

Libya’s relationship with the AU is also complicated by the fact that it has expressed doubts about the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD): a programme that seeks to improve the lives of the continent’s 811 million people within the context of the union. In 2002 Ghaddafi described NEPAD as a neo-colonial instrument. “We have our own type of democracy. We accept assistance but we refuse conditions,” he told African leaders.

NEPAD is based on the premise that African countries that adhere to principles of good governance should qualify for increased investment from the developed world – notably in infrastructure. African leaders say they need 64 billion dollars in aid and investment annually to combat poverty and disease, and to rebuild the continent.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
HELSINKI, Feb 12 2004 (IPS)

Mao Tsetung once told former World Bank president Robert McNamara that “we plan to quadruple our GNP even without help from you.” Africans are now being told to do as Mao said.

“African countries should not wait for foreign aid,” says chairman of the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of industrialised nations.

Insufficient aid flow and lack of foreign investment are not entirely to blame if African countries fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Manning said at the launch of a report he submitted to the OECD in Helsinki this week.

“If Africans prefer to invest their monies in property in offshore and Swiss accounts, they shouldn’t expect foreign investment to salvage them,” he said. Manning has spent several years working on development cooperation in Africa and Asia.

But while calling on African countries to reduce aid dependency, Manning also called on donors to take into account the development dimension of aid.

If they fail to do that, “much of our spending will be merely offsetting the costs imposed on our partners by other policies of our own governments,” he said. “This is undesirable in principle and certainly should not be allowed to happen by inattention.”

The OECD countries need to pursue policies “as if development matters”, he emphasised.

The prime goal among the eight MDGs set out at the Millennium summit in 2000 is to halve the proportion of people living in absolute poverty by 2015, in relation to 1990. By United Nations estimates 1.2 billion people live in absolute poverty, on less than one dollar a day that is. Achieving the set target would bring that number down to 890 million.

Current indicators suggest that this goal can be met, but due largely to the good performance by Asian and South East Asian countries who have the largest population of people still living in poverty.

“Africa remains the test case for the donor community,” Manning told IPS later. Benin, Uganda, and Mozambique that have recorded strong economic growth are well on track to hit the poverty reduction target by the set date, he said. But Africa as a whole has slipped far behind.

Growth in Africa is slow because of small markets in small countries, he said. “Serious regional economic integration is part of the answer.”

The other part is assistance, he said. Estimates by the World Bank and other institutions suggest that 100 billion dollars in aid is needed to meet the MDGs. But current aid flows stand at 58 billion dollars.

If all the pledges made by the developed countries at the Monterrey conference on financing for development in Mexico in 2002 are met, that would bring in about 75 billion dollars, still leaving a shortfall of 25 billion dollars, Manning said.

Kalle Laaksonen from the Pellervo Economic Research Institute, a Finnish think-tank, said the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) provides the basis for more African self-sufficiency. He said closer regional integration in Africa would increase the size of African markets and attract more foreign investors.

But reaching self-sufficiency “essentially involves a change of attitude and mentality,” he told IPS. “Africans have to reach a stage where the predominant thinking becomes ‘we Africans can do it by ourselves’.”

But solutions are not that simple, says Prof Pertti Haaparanta from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. Regional integration can mean closing off African countries in other regions and hurting them economically, he said.

“African countries cannot succeed by trading with each other alone,” Haaparanta told IPS. Only unimpeded access to markets in developed countries can be a key to their success, he said.

“Irrespective of the level of success in regional integration, African markets would still not provide sufficient revenue because of low purchasing power of their populations and the lower prices of goods,” he said. “But the rich northern markets would provide higher prices.”

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By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 26 2004 (IPS)

With people still left guessing as to whether he intends holding formal talks with his country’s opposition, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe added a new dimension to the drama this weekend when he was allegedly rushed to South Africa after collapsing at his home in Harare.

On Sunday the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported that Mugabe was in South Africa, saying the duration and purpose of the trip was unclear. South Africa’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to confirm the visit, however.

Spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa was quoted as saying: “If President Mugabe is here in South Africa, it stands to reason that he would be on a private visit. If he was here on an official visit, we would not hesitate to inform the public.”

This is not the first time Mugabe’s health has been in the spotlight. In October last year there were unconfirmed reports that that he had been secretly flown to South Africa for treatment after suffering either a stroke or a bad fall.

The speculation about the Zimbabwean leader comes at the tail end of a week of debate about South Africa’s role in helping to resolve the political situation in Zimbabwe.

On Thursday South African President Thabo Mbeki said Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party had agreed to enter into formal talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on resolving Zimbabwe’s long-running political crisis.

“I’m happy to say that they have agreed now that they will go into formal negotiations. I am saying that I am quite certain that they will negotiate and reach an agreement,” Mbeki told a joint news conference with visiting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Mbeki’s comments were echoed by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday.

But the MDC’s Secretary for Information and Publicity, Paul Themba Nyathi, told IPS that his party was extremely sceptical about “the nature of Mugabe’s commitment to a process of dialogue”.

According to Nyathi, Mugabe and ZANU-PF have – to date – taken no steps that would indicate a commitment to formal dialogue for ending the political problems that have dogged the country since the start of 2000.

“There have been no approaches to the MDC whatsoever. In fact it has been business as usual with court orders being ignored and political violence carrying on relentlessly,” said Nyathi.

He added that if Mugabe had given Mbeki renewed undertakings that he was prepared to begin negotiations, then Mugabe himself should have announced this to the Zimbabwean people.

A ZANU-PF member of parliament, who asked not to be named of fear of harassment, told IPS that talks between government and the opposition were not likely to occur in the near future.

“There are no plans within ZANU-PF to hold formal talks with the MDC. Why should we be talking to them? We do not recognise them as anything – let alone an opposition. We have no idea what Mbeki is going on about,” he said.

Didymus Mutasa, the ruling party’s Secretary for Administration, confirmed in a statement issued after Mbeki’s Thursday announcement that no talks with the MDC were being contemplated.

In the past, Mugabe has indicated a willingness to enter into talks with the MDC – provided the party dropped its legal challenge to his controversial re-election in 2002.

The MDC accuses the president and his party of electoral fraud and has refused to drop its court challenge. Meanwhile MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai is on trial for treason following government claims that he plotted to assassinate Mugabe and stage a coup – charges that Tsvangirai has denied.

So if both parties are adamant that there is no sign of formal talks in the horizon, why is Mbeki insisting that discussions are afoot? Political analysts ascribe it to the fact he is coming under a great deal of pressure to bring some resolution to the Zimbabwean crisis before the next meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries, scheduled to take place in the United States in June. (The G8 includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the U.S.) It is hoped that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a development blueprint drawn up by African leaders, will still remain high on the G8’s agenda.

However, sources in the NEPAD secretariat told IPS that at the last G8 held in France, the Bush administration made it clear that unless certain issues were tackled – Zimbabwe being one of them – NEPAD would receive little attention at the U.S. meeting.

John Stremlau, Head of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says Mbeki is in a corner. “Zimbabwe has repeatedly embarrassed him. He is opposed to sanctions, he can’t use force, he does not want to use megaphone diplomacy – so what does he do now?” Whatever happens, Zimbabweans living in South Africa are listening with bated breath to every piece of news about Mugabe’s health.

“Each time we hear that he is ill or has collapsed we all pray that he will die and that the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe will stop – and we can go home,” says Blessing Mutasa, a refugee trying to eke out a living in South Africa.

In addition to its political problems, Zimbabwe’s economy is also in crisis – with inflation standing at about 619.5 percent towards the end of last year.

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By IPS Correspondents
PRETORIA, Dec 4 2003 (IPS)

Africa and other parts of the developing world are preparing to negotiate better access to the markets of wealthy countries at the next ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation, Ugandan Agriculture Minister Wilberforce Kisamba-Mugerwa said in Pretoria this week.

The minister was interviewed after closing an international conference on successes in African agriculture, held in the South African capital from Dec. 1 to 3. The meeting brought together representatives of government, business, academia and civil society.

“It is unfortunate that negotiations in Cancun (collapsed) the way they did,” he added, referring to unsuccessful talks held by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Mexico, three months ago. “We are regrouping to persevere the next time.”

Kisamba-Mugerwa observed that “If globalisation and trade liberalisation are to work, then the developing world must have access to global markets. This is vital if we are to sustain productivity, reduce poverty and improve the lives of the people.” The next WTO ministerial meeting is scheduled to take place this month.

A statement issued after the conference declared that significant poverty reduction would not be possible in Africa without rapid agricultural growth.

“Only improved agricultural productivity can simultaneously improve welfare among the two-thirds of all Africans who work primarily in agriculture as well as the urban poor, who spend over 60 percent of their budget on food staples,” said the document.

According to delegates, past performance had been inadequate. “Africa remains the only region of the developing world where per capita agricultural production has fallen over the past 40 years,” the final statement noted.

“To stem deepening poverty, social inequity and political instability, African farmers, governments, international partners and the private sector must all do better in the future.”

Heads of state agreed at the African Union summit in July this year to make agriculture a priority. The summit also called for agricultural budget allocations to be raised to a minimum of 10 percent of public spending within five years.

The Pretoria meeting steered clear of complete pessimism, noting that “Africa’s sluggish performance…masks a rich historical record of substantial agricultural successes.”

“Though these episodic and scattered booms have proven insufficient to sustain aggregate per capita growth in agriculture, they do prove informative in pointing to promising areas for effective intervention for the future.”

The conference identified good governance and sustained public funding for research as the two fundamental prerequisites for agricultural development.

Case studies examined by delegates included the combating of cassava mosaic virus in Uganda, cotton farming in West Africa, and horticulture exports from Kenya.

“We believe that with renewed commitment to building partnerships between governments, farmers’ organisations, international partners and the private sector, significant gains are achievable in African agriculture,” the statement for the meeting concluded.

The conference was sponsored by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, the German government’s agency for human resource development and the New Programme for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). The European Union’s Technical Centre for Agricultural Rural Cooperation also helped fund the meeting.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PRETORIA, Nov 20 2003 (IPS)

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s state visit to France this week was his fourth trip to that country this year.

South Africa acknowledges that its increasingly influential role in Africa notwithstanding it cannot operate successfully without France.

“We know that one cannot deal with the challenges and problems of Africa without having the closest cooperation with France,” Mbeki’s Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad said in advance of the three-day trip.

Addressing a state dinner for his South African guest, President Jacques Chirac underlined his interest in the continent with an assertion that: “France wants to be your best friend in the new struggle that you have undertaken – the African Renaissance. The peoples of Africa must find their place in a globalised world from which they feel excluded.”

The African rescue plan known as the New Programme for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was the pivotal issue under discussion during the visit that came a week after France hosted a high level meeting trying to create a forum for supporting NEPAD.

There was a meeting of the minds between Mbeki and Chirac on issues as diverse as the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people and the peace process in Cote d’Ivoire. “Only a swift transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people will provide a solution to this problem,” Chirac told a joint press conference after meeting Mbeki. “We must make sure that it doesn’t happen too late.”

Chirac recalled that both he and Mbeki had fiercely opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, had “shared the same analysis since the beginning of the conflict”.

Mbeki in turn welcomed U.S. moves to accelerate the process of establishing self-rule in Iraq, saying: “The sooner the matter of Iraq is left in the hands of the Iraqis, the better”.

On Cote d’Ivoire, Mbeki illustrated the South African high-pressure methodology in successfully brokering peace deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi in the past year.

“It’s really a matter of sustaining the pressure to make sure that there is movement inside Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire),” Mbeki said.

Although they are at one on the need for multilateral solutions to world problems, Chirac was cautious on the issue of United Nations reform.

South Africa, like most developing countries, believes that the composition of the world organisation – and most particularly the Security Council – does not reflect international realities.

Chirac who leads one of the five permanent members of the council – together with Britain, Russia, China and the United States – was forthright on African aspirations to get a permanent seat.

“It’s up to our African partners to define their priorities,” he said at the press conference with Mbeki. “But it’s clear that in one way or another, Africa must be better represented on the Security Council, among the permanent and non-permanent members,” the French leader said.

Chirac voiced his support for the eventual enlargement of the UN body, voicing support for Germany and Japan to become permanent veto-wielding members.

Mbeki said he and Chirac had not discussed the issue and explained that African nations were still deciding how to approach the question. “There will be a view that comes out of the continent,” he said.

South Africa has not declared its candidacy for an African permanent seat on the council, hoping to be accepted by acclaim if and when reforms are agreed.

The one thorny issue was the South African bid for the 2010 Football World Cup. Mbeki has been positively brazen in seeking political support for South Africa to become the first country on the continent to host this premier sporting event.

South Africa was beaten by Germany by a single vote to host the cup in 2006. On a state visit to Pretoria earlier this month, Brazilian president Lula da Silva, representing arguably the world’s football giant, gave the South African bid his support. Chirac, however, has given the nod to Morocco.

He admitted that Mbeki had vigorously tried to swing his view on it but showed no signs of wavering.

One subject that was not mentioned was allegations that South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma tried to solicit bribes from French arms maker Thales to shield it from a corruption probe over a multi-billion-dollar arms deal.

Mbeki met French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin for lunch before addressing France’s National Assembly and meeting with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

France was South Africa’s ninth-largest export market in 2002, selling more than one billion dollars in goods and services.

France’s 448 million dollars worth of investments in South Africa made it the ninth biggest foreign investor in South Africa last year.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Nov 14 2003 (IPS)

The growing illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons is undermining efforts to protect the ozone layer, campaigners have warned.

The ozone layer, which prevents harmful radiation from the sun reaching the earth, is located between the troposphere and the stratosphere, around 15 to 20 kilometres above the earth’s surface.

Scientists believe that the ozone layer is being damaged by the use of certain chemicals. This concern heightened after discovering holes in the ozone layer.

The harmful chemicals include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS). Delegates to the ‘Fifteenth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol’ in Nairobi on Nov. 10-14 heard how the illicit trade in the harmful chemicals was booming in developing countries and the United States. South Africa and Singapore have been singled out as notorious smugglers of the CFC compound. Dubai has been cited as one of the major transit points due to its free port characteristic.

“The role of transit countries in the global illegal trade in ODS is of particular concern. (These) countries facilitate ODS smuggling by confusing the trail of the material and providing a jump-off point into illegal markets,” senior campaigner, Ezra Clark said during the launch of a new report on Nov. 10.

Clark works for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a Washington-based watchdog, which authored the report, ‘Lost in Transit, Global CFC Smuggling Trends and the Need for a Faster Phase-out’.

EIA sent a fact-finding mission to Singapore to establish how the CFC trading trickles down to other parts of the world.

“Our Singaporean investigations eventually led us to CFC smugglers in South Africa who use goldmines as a cover for a complex scam culminating in the scale of CFCs falsely claimed as ‘recovered’ on the lucrative U.S. market,” said Clark.

The illegal trade in CFCs is undermining the ‘Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer’, according to the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) Deputy Executive Director, Shafqat Kakakhel, who is based in Nairobi.

The protocol has managed to reduce global production and consumption of ozone depleting substances to about 90 percent since its adoption in 1987.

To phase out chemicals that are injurious to the ozone layer, the 162 countries that have ratified the protocol must stick to it. “Failure to comply would delay or could even prevent the recovery of the ozone layer,” warned Kakakhel.

EIA statistics shows that full recovery of the ozone layer is expected by 2050.

Some of the developing countries are intensifying efforts to protect the ozone and the environment. Kenya, for example, has enacted the National Environmental Act of 1999, which sets out a comprehensive mechanism for protection of the environment.

However, resources to phase out ODS including Methyl Bromide are insufficient, according to Kenya’s vice-president Moody Awori. “Effective phasing out will require adequate resources, enhanced national capacities, awareness creation and exchange of information if the developing countries are to achieve the 20 percent reduction in consumption of Methyl Bromide by 1st January 2005,” remarked Awori Thursday.

Kenya has been using Methyl Bromide in floriculture, but technologies of growing cut flowers without use of the chemical “have continued to be developed and are gradually being adopted by the growers,” said environment minister Newton Kulundu.

Kenya hopes to phase out harmful substances from its backyard by 2005.

Environmentalists in Kenya say shortage of funds has paralysed the fight against elimination of ozone depleting chemicals.

“Donors are not interested in funding CFC proposals anymore. They have now shifted to projects like the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and poverty reduction,” Grace Akumu, Executive Director of Climate Network Africa, a regional environmental organisation based in Nairobi, told IPS in an interview.

Akumu’s organisation dumped CFC programmes five years ago due to lack of donor funding. “If not adequately addressed, these chemicals are a time bomb waiting to explode,” she warned.

The World Health Organisation and UNEP have warned that, as ozone depletion increases and people become more exposed to the sun, ultraviolet (UV) radiation will become a more serious health risk.

Effects of radiation are more severe to the eye than ever imagined. In 1998, an estimated 135 million people in the world were visually impaired and 45 million fell blind, with cataracts as the major cause, according to the EIA report.

“Increased exposure to UV radiation due to depleted ozone is set to cause around 90 million additional cases of skin cancer by 2060 and 25 additional cases of cataracts by 2050, the report warned.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 14 2003 (IPS)

A ground-breaking study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has sought to predict what life in Africa could be like by 2025.

Contributions to the study came from over 1,000 thinkers across the continent. Their prognosis: four scenarios ranging from imminent doom or stagnation, to rapid modernisation and heightened prosperity.

The report – “Africa 2025” – was coordinated by the African Futures project of the UNDP, and edited by Alioune Sall. “Over one thousand persons spread over 54 African countries, at one time or another participated in this exercise, which resembled an intellectual odyssey – and that began in South Africa,” he writes.

As an architect of, and lobbyist for the pan-African dream inherent in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – South African President Thabo Mbeki has been a supporter of the African Futures project.

Writing in the foreword of “Africa 2025”, he notes that the continent “does not have a divine right to succeed in her endeavours in the current age. Nor is there a supernatural force that can will us to fail. How events unfold over the next 20 years or so depends in large measure on what we as Africans do.”

The continent’s researchers started by drawing up a situation report of key trends that have come to define the continent. The first is the population boom currently being experienced. Contributors believe this is not exceptional, but that “Africa is catching up to its former proportion of the world’s population.”

But, this boom is also fuelling low economic growth and developmental stagnation – more so than AIDS, environmental problems, corruption or bad governance. Record numbers of young people are presenting African governments with a hefty education bill. The continent also has the highest earner-dependent ratio in the world.

Urbanisation is another important trend. In 1950, about 10 percent of populations across the continent lived in towns and cities. This figure has since tripled.

A vital challenge concerns the way in which most African economies are structured. The study says that “Africa on the whole remains a rent economy,” – one where there has been little foreign investment in sectors other than those relating to commodity exports.

The “process of accumulation has not yet truly begun” in the continent, says the report. Sub-Saharan Africa remains locked in a pattern of high indebtedness, is marginal to international trade and investment flows – and has a huge informal economy.

What will our fortunes be in 22 years? Sall employs various metaphors of a lion to portray the possible realities. These are called “the lions are hungry”, “the lions are trapped”, “the lions come out of their den” and the “lions mark their territory”.

An Africa in which the lions are hungry is the doomsday scenario. “It is to be feared that Africa will increasingly teeter on the brink in the next 25 years. Several factors will contribute to the increasing fragility of regimes that cause the economy to stagnate,” observes the report

This will be caused by a steep drop in foreign aid, the stripping of the environment and by conflict. “We cannot forget that sub-Saharan Africa will have the highest proportion of young men aged 15 to 29. Worldwide, this is the age bracket most prone to violence,” said contributors.

In a “trapped lion” scenario, Africa will remain marginal in the global community, the NEPAD projection of seven percent annual growth “far from having been achieved”. This reality will see “Africans go on living or surviving. But their standard of living (will not improve) as significantly as on other continents.”

The set of Millennium Development Goals – a United Nations plan to stimulate development by 2015 – has not been met in the trapped lion scenario. This is also because “people are reluctant to contribute to government’s coffers. They still see government as picking people’s pockets, rather than providing expected services.”

The study then considers the final two alternatives, in which the lions come out of their den and mark their territory. These are the renaissance scenarios in which a generation of entrepreneurs comes to the fore, driving growth, and where strong leadership evolves: “There emerges a new generation of politicians who break away from the previous generations.”

For these things to become a reality, a series of preconditions must be met. These include the achievement of universal education and health, better infrastructure and a more equitable international architecture.

“African governments will probably have to make themselves heard, loud and clear, to obtain the new exemptions they need to protect their fledgling industries,” says the study.

And what of NEPAD in 23 years time? “NEPAD certainly did not bring about all of the radical changes that its promoters expected. But it was the starting point for an ‘African Renaissance’.”

Pockets of hope in various parts of the continent suggest that this final scenario could come to pass, says Sall, pointing to the entrenchment of multi-party democracies in various states, some stability and stronger economies.

He adds that the jury is still out on Africa 2025 – which was launched at the end of last month.

But, he believes the UNDP’s willingness to undertake the project bodes well for the future: “After having fallen out of favour and been relegated to the rank of shibboleths…the long-term view has now found its rightful place in development circles,” says Sall.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 10 2003 (IPS)

South Africa and Brazil came out guns blazing against global trade protectionism and also against the continued administration of Iraq by U.S. forces when Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ended a visit here at the weekend.

“The Presidents indicated the unacceptability of developing countries being subjected to protectionist policies by developed countries,” said a South African Foreign Affairs official. They also said it was imperative that “the Iraqi people be able to assume control of their own affairs as soon as possible”. They called for multilateralism through the United Nations to prevail in resolving conflict.

Analysts say that Lula’s tour to five African nations – Sao Tome and Principe, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Namibia – last week was a symbol of Brazil’s nascent Africa policy and its growing alliance of the South with South Africa and India.

The India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) formed in June has become known as the G3.

The three countries will meet again next year to assess progress on joint development efforts including co-operation in the fight against HIV/AIDS and skills sharing to combat hunger and a lack of sanitation and infrastructure.

Ending his visit on Sunday, Lula said that southern nations also had to learn to play a wily trade game: his visit has given impetus to negotiations for a trade accord between the Southern African Customs Union countries and Mercosur, as well as increased bilateral trade between South Africa and Brazil.

To oil the trade, the countries signed two agreements: one on taxation and another on science and technology co-operation, bringing to ten the number of diplomatic agreements between them, with another eight set for signing in the short term.

Brazil, whose trade with Africa now totals five billion U.S. dollars, enjoys a trade surplus with South Africa garnered by growing imports of meat, mineral, fuel, machinery and mechanical appliances. In turn, Brazil is an important feeder country for South Africa’s growing tourism economy with five weekly flights between the two capitals already bursting at the wings.

In addition to strengthening trade ties with South Africa, a business delegation – comprising 160 persons – travelling with the Brazilian president also made contacts in Angola and Mozambique, two Lusophone nations which are among the fastest growing in Africa.

Brazil plans to invest 100 million U.S. dollars to improve Angola’s sugar cane industry, Brazil’s trade and development minister, Luis Fernando Furlan, said on Nov. 3.

“South Africa and Brazil are following the right track in a globalised world where the developed countries already have the way to play the game,” said Lula. Two aspects of multilateral governance came under particular scrutiny: the need to change both the international financial architecture and the representation to the UN Security Council.

Both nations have felt the turbulence of currency fluctuation and called for the “reform of the existing international financial architecture in order to achieve greater efficiency in addressing regional and national financial crises”.

A media release issued after their meeting also revealed that “Both Presidents consider that Africa and Latin America should have a permanent seat in the Security Council”, but diplomatic nicety prevented either from directly supporting the other’s bid.

South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are all keen on a Security Council seat, whose current members are China, Britain, France, the United States and Russia. With the biggest population of Africans (and African descendants) outside of Nigeria (the continent’s most populous state), Brazil’s expanded foreign policy on the continent is vital, said Foreign Affairs minister Nkosazana Zuma.

To be precise, 70 million of Brazil’s 180 million inhabitants are of African descent.

A crucial aspect of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is the support of the African diaspora, both politically and financially. After last week’s visit, Lula has now been drawn into the circle of key NEPAD sponsors and ambassadors. It is hoped that this will enable support from the diaspora in Brazil.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 18 2003 (IPS)

This week South African president Thabo Mbeki paid a high-profile state visit to India when he took along 11 cabinet ministers to bolster a relationship increasingly important for the country’s South-South diplomacy.

Together with Brazil, the two countries belong to the India Brazil South Africa (IBSA) dialogue forum which was launched in June this year.

The key topics of this inter-continental forum were high on the agenda in New Delhi this week, where Mbeki and his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, discussed globalisation, multilateralism and the reform of the United Nations. In this, South Africa’s relationship with India has moved beyond a pure bilateral one to a more multi-dimensional and strategic engagement.

“In the past few years, the importance and necessity of a process of dialogue amongst developing nations and countries of the South has emerged,” the South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs said in a briefing paper.

India has also pledged 200 million U.S. dollars worth of grants, credits and loans for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a programme to kick-start the economic development of the continent.

The uneven impact of globalisation was a core theme of Mbeki’s visit: “large parts of the world have not benefited from globalisation. (The leaders) have agreed that globalisation must become a positive force for change for all peoples, and must benefit the largest number of countries,” said the briefing document.

The three countries which form the IBSA Dialogue were all part of the G20 Plus developing countries group which exercised its muscle to abort the trade talks at Cancun, Mexico, last month.

Globalisation and trade go hand in hand and the talks fell apart because the promised developmental focus of the Doha Round has not come to fruition.

The success of the developing countries in Cancun is likely to give impetus to another item on the agenda of Mbeki’s visit: the representativity of the Security Council. South Africa’s foreign affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa confirmed the leaders had “stressed the need for an equitable balance in the composition of an expanded Security Council to provide a constructive voice to the aspirations of the developing countries.

“They believe that piecemeal and discriminatory approaches to such expansion will be inconsistent with the objectives of that world body,” he said. While the four-day visit which ends on Sunday was primarily political and part of the network of South-South relations the country is crocheting around the globe, it was also a trade mission.

India was a noted foe of apartheid and imposed political and trade sanctions against South Africa. Indian nationals with stamps of the apartheid era South Africa in their passport were censured. And the country also supported the then banned liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), both financially and through military training.

In 1993, it was among the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with a democratic South Africa and in the past 10 years, most diplomatic energy has gone into knitting together a political relationship. The range of agreements span the areas of defence, culture, health-care and medicine, science and technology and of late, even taxation.

“The excellent political relationship that has always existed between the two countries has fostered commercial and economic co-operation as well. Bilateral trade has risen exponentially since 1993, when India lifted the comprehensive sanctions that it had imposed on the apartheid regime in 1948,” said the Indian deputy high commissioner to South Africa, Banashri Bose Harrison.

Trade has blossomed from an anaemic 43 million U.S. dollars in 1993 to 870 million U.S. dollars last year, with the trade balance nominally in South Africa’s favour. While India ostracised South Africa during apartheid, trade between the two countries dates back centuries. In the 18th century, the first Indian indentured labourers were brought to work in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and merchants followed in their wake, plying the traditional sari and spice route.

Today, the trade relationship is more sophisticated and has expanded to include two-way foreign direct investment. The countries trade in Information Technology (IT), human resources, pharmaceuticals, processed fruit, minerals and mineral beneficiation, among other areas of commerce.

Harrison said that South African businesses have invested 26.1 million U.S. dollars in his country, while Indian business activity in South Africa is also building, notably in brewing, tourism and the ferrochrome industry.

“However, looking at the complementarities and comparative advantages of the two economies, there is still considerable untapped potential for further co-operation,” said Harrison.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2003 (IPS)

A major homegrown economic plan aimed at lifting Africa out of poverty is being stifled by a rash of unresolved political and economic problems, including new military conflicts, the United Nations heard this week.

”Without peace and stability, the fight against poverty (in Africa) would fail,” warned Ambassador Johan Lovad of Norway, addressing the 191-member General Assembly late Wednesday as it took stock of the successes and failures of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

The Assembly, which gave its unanimous blessings to NEPAD exactly one year ago, has appealed to Western donors for financial assistance to ensure the success of the ambitious plan for the continent’s economic recovery and good governance.

Described as ”the most promising African-led development initiative in a generation”, NEPAD has made little progress as countries there continue to fight a losing battle against rising debts, increasing trade barriers and the spread of the deadly disease AIDS, according to delegates and senior U.N. officials.

But the deteriorating social and economic situation has been aggravated by seemingly unending conflicts, forcing the United Nations to field more peacekeeping missions in Africa than on any other continent, including in Sierra Leone, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Western Sahara.

”The challenges of poverty reduction in Africa, especially in conflict and post-conflict countries, are enormous,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday.

Alarmed by the number of conflicts ravaging their continent, African leaders met last February at the first extraordinary summit of heads of state of the African Union (AU) to ”invigorate their efforts to end the conflicts in the region”.

But a proposal to create a peace and security council within the newly-established 52-member AU – a successor to the now-defunct Organisation of Africa Unity – has made little progress despite a three-day, sparsely attended summit meeting in Mozambique in July.

The proposed council would be empowered to intervene militarily based on the principle that Africa is best qualified to resolve its own political and military problems.

Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. special adviser on Africa, told reporters Tuesday that ”on the plus side”, many conflicts in Africa were now being or had been resolved.

In Angola, he said, peace was irreversible. Progress could be seen in the DRC, as well as in Burundi, he added. Gambari also pointed out that an interim government had just been installed in Liberia, and that peace now reigns in Sudan.

”But despite all those positive developments,” he cautioned, ”the bigger challenge was maintaining the peace in countries emerging from conflict”.

What is new, Gambari added, is that African countries want to take ownership of their problems. ”They are taking steps to implement development programmes and urging the international community to assist them in that effort.”

Those include establishing a peer review mechanism so that states could volunteer to have their economic and political performance monitored by other African nations, Gambari said.

NEPAD’s ultimate success, he predicted, depends largely on two factors: concrete actions from African governments on the political and economic fronts, and a more positive role by the international donor community.

In their original estimates for NEPAD, African leaders sought about 64 billion dollars a year in investments and aid to fight poverty in the continent.

Leaders of the industrial world, who met in Canada in June last year, announced that one-half of an international aid increase already agreed – about 12 billion dollars by 2006 – would go to Africa. But the offer was dismissed as ”peanuts” by Phil Twyford of Oxfam, a development aid organisation based in London.

But all Western aid to Africa is also conditional: new funds will be provided only in return for good governance, including multi-party democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights.

In a report submitted to the General Assembly on Wednesday, Annan noted that official development assistance (ODA) to Africa over the last two years has improved slightly after a decline in the latter part of the 1990s.

In 2000, ODA to Africa was 16.4 billion dollars, rising to 17.7 billion dollars in 2001 and 18.6 billion dollars in 2002.

The urgency for increased development assistance to poor countries – particularly those in Africa – echoed at recent international conferences, has in no small way rekindled the renewed commitment of donors, Annan adds.

But Gambari says that despite ”the modest increase” in ODA, the chances of meeting the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ”appear to be slim”. These goals, which were spelled out at a special session of the General Assembly in 1990, include reducing by half the proportion of the world’s people who suffer from hunger by 2015.

In its annual report released in July, the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) said the performance of African economies last year fell short of expectations.

The overall growth rate for Africa declined from 4.3 percent in 2001 to 3.2 percent in 2002, largely due to sluggish growth of the global economy and the sharp downturn in international trade.

Only five African countries – Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique and Rwanda – achieved 7.0 percent growth, the level needed to achieve the U.N. target for reducing poverty. Another five – Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe – recorded negative growth in 2002.

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Oct 1 2003 (IPS)

Against a backdrop of donor fatigue and a deadlock on trade between rich and poor countries, African leaders at a summit here renewed a pledge to keep the world’s attention on a continent that is grappling with wars and famine, but also faces new opportunities ahead.

While the African leaders said that the three-day conference that ended here Wednesday did not produce magic solutions, they agreed that it helps focus attention on the region’s needs with the help of a key global donor like Japan.

”Five years from now, we should be able to access more aid and boast of increased trade with Japan, steps to achieving the millennium goals to reduce poverty in Africa,” South African President Thabo Mbeki said. ”That should be the yardstick of success” of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).

”Africans have not got everything we wanted, but these conferences still play a very important role to gain firm support from the international community for our future,” summed up Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. undersecretary general and special adviser to Africa, one of the co-hosts of the conference.

”Statistics point to a dark future in Africa,” President of Gabon Omar Bongo said, one of 23 African leaders at the summit. ”Against this reality, TICAD in Tokyo has given us a new impetus.”

African ownership of its development and partnership with the international community was a focus of the declaration issued at the end of the meeting.

This philosophy, according to the declaration, has outlined the role of TICAD on its tenth anniversary as a venue to foster an African-led initiative of self-reliance called the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

”The recognition of NEPAD has defined the future of African development. TICAD throws its support behind NEPAD with the donor community’s role outlined as a partner, extending the best support it can,” said Yoshiro Mori, former prime minister and representative of Japan.

TICAD, which was initiated by Tokyo in 1983, has been the largest diplomatic conference hosted by Japan and its other partners, which include the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme and the Global Coalition of Africa.

This year’s meeting was attended by 50 African countries, including 23 heads of state, 39 donors and representatives of multilateral organisations and the private sector.

In Tokyo, TICAD also brought cooperation between Asian and African countries in a special session held Tuesday along the concept of South-South cooperation.

The strategy, according to diplomats here, is a means to combat donor fatigue, especially from the west. Asian input, whether through technology or investment, is expected to ease the burden on Western donors who have been slashing bilateral aid to Africa. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that Africa received 851 million dollars in aid in 2001, down from 969 million dollars the previous year.

Aid from Japan, the world’s second largest donor, however, shows a slight increase – from 10.1 in 2000 to 11.4 percent during 2001. Asia receives more than 50 percent of Japan’s aid.

According to a World Bank study, exports from the sub-Saharan Africa to Asia grew by an average of 11.06 percent annually between 1990 and 2001, while exports to Europe, rose as average of 1.24 percent. Exports from the region ranged from food to livestock to mineral and raw materials.

African delegates pointed out that Africa has a special affinity with Asia given the similar challenges both regions face, among them colonisation and reliance on raw materials for exports.

”Our Asian brothers can help in setting effective systems and facilitating investment,” said Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Monday.

A special plenary session on Tuesday brought Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand, China, and Pakistan, to discuss trade and investment with their African counterparts.

Japan, which pledged one billion dollars in aid over five years on Monday, has set aside 300 million dollars for investment in Africa and for a conference on African investment in 2004.

Nitya Pibulsonggram, special envoy of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said NEPAD will also play a role in facilitating Asian investment. He announced that Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra would visit Africa early next year.

On agricultural development, officials at TICAD announced that they will be moving ahead with talks in the World Trade Organisation that broke down in Mexico last month, when developed countries refused to open their markets to agricultural products from developing countries.

”The issue of helping farmers is critical,” pointed out Mohamed Beavogui, director at the International Fund for Agricultural Development. ”The empowerment of our farmers have to be recognised as they comprise 70 percent of our population who live in the rural areas.”

In line with NEPAD’s goals, TICAD also committed support for human security, conflict resolution, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

In a special section for civil society – for the first time 10 non-government groups each from Africa and Japan were invited- delegates acknowledged that activists have had in helping in the search for solutions to Africa’s ills.

Still, Nuno Miguel of KULIMA, a group involved in rural development in Mozambique, said that there was not enough discussion on the real issues such as empowering women farmers, providing them with markets, dealing with famine, refugees, and other pressing issues.

The World Food Programme has warned that millions of people in southern Africa will face massive food shortages as early as next month and has appealed for funds.

Still, despite high-profile conferences like TICAD, maintaining political will in both Africa and the donor community for the continent’s development remains a challenge.

Thus far, even the Japanese government has not yet revealed a schedule for TICAD 4 in 2008. The conference has been held every five years.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Aug 25 2003 (IPS)

The European Union is taking advantage of Africa’s weak bargaining power to bloat the list of conditions – attached to development aid – with further demands.

Washington Akumu, a senior economic writer and columnist with a Kenyan newspaper, says most of the EU conditions border on tokenism and “the urge to be perceived as politically-correct among the community of nations”.

“Time and again, the West and the EU in particular has supported and traded with African states not on the basis of their adherence to good governance, but in the pursuit of their own overbearing self-interest,” he observes.

“Nothing can become of these conditionalities unless the EU assists African institutions like the AU (Africa Union) and NEPAD (New Partnerships for Africa’s Development) to develop monitoring mechanisms that work. In any case, they are nearer to the ground and have relatively cleaner hands,” remarks Akumu.

Job Ogolla, of the Nairobi-based Africa Economic Research and Development Consortium, contends that some of EU’s terms, such as involving civil society and faith groups in projects proposal writing, are welcome, since they are meant to guard against corruption by governments.

“The government is placed on check right from conceptualisation of ideas to proposal writing. When the proposals are approved and money sent, other parties, apart from the government, will be aware of it and chances of squandering it are therefore reduced,” he says.

“But some of the EU terms require change of legislation and establishment of new institutions. This might not be an easy task for recipient countries,” notes Ogolla

EU has often demanded privatisation, procurement laws and civil service restructuring as conditions for providing aid to developing countries.

The EU has maintained that economic and institutional reforms are necessary to attract international funding, and has been asking recipients to intensify the reforms to boost investor confidence.

More than 50 percent of EU’s support in Africa targets the creation of a favourable and sustainable environment for private sector participation to revitalise economy, complains local development officials.

Road infrastructure, tourism and trade are some of the key areas the union looks at in regard to boosting economy.

Ogolla has accused the European Union of manipulating Africa when it comes to trade. “They tell us that we will enjoy non-tariff rate for our raw materials getting into the European market. When you look at this critically, Africa is condemned to remain a raw material economy, because it supplies the west with raw goods, the west manufactures and exports the goods back to Africa, which is not right,” he says.

Some African countries have disagreed with EU officials over aid sanctions. Last year, Kenya fell out with European Union, one of her key development partners, over contents of a draft copy of a “country strategy paper”, which spelled out aid terms.

The paper, prepared by the local EU delegation, spelled out unattainable conditions in exchange for aid.

Government officials insisted that the terms were humiliating and touched on sovereignty.

The disagreement happened after ten years of “donor boycott” but Kenya never went on bended knees. During that period, the plunder of the country’s economy by its leadership was at its best. “We suffered an economic melt-down but survived because of the resilience of the people,” Ogolla says.

EU has frozen aid to countries accused of human rights abuses and some African nations have fallen prey.

Donor funds to Zimbabwe, for example, have been frozen due to, among other things, its policy on land, where farms owned by 4,500 white commercial farmers have been parceled out to landless black people. In July, the European Union froze development aid, running into ‘hundreds of millions of euros”, to Africa over the insistence that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attend meetings between EU and Africa.

Mugabe has been banned from traveling to Europe in accordance with EU sanctions, but African leaders say Europe could not dictate who should attend meetings.

The first EU-Africa meeting was held in Cairo, Egypt two years ago. This year’s meeting was supposed to take place in Lisbon, Portugal.

EU spokesperson Michael Curtis indicated that despite the cancellation of the meeting, dialogue will continue between the union and African countries, most of which share a lucrative multi-billion Euro aid and trade deal with the union.

The EU work with Africa through the Cotonou Agreement, whose main objective is to alleviate poverty through increased and better-targeted aid, a new trade partnerships and political dialogue.

The agreement was signed in Benin’s capital, Cotonou, in Jun. 2000, and links 77 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) with the 15 EU member states. The agreement, which provides the framework for EU’s cooperation with the ACP countries, also seeks to liberalise trade between the two blocs.

This year the European Union responded to calls from the United States and civil society to step-up its humanitarian aid to Africa by pledging more than 2 million euros in financial help to the troubled continent.

France and Germany, two of largest countries in the 15-member EU followed in the Union’s footsteps by increasing the financial assistance they give to Africa.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has granted an additional 215 million euros to fight HIV/AIDS on the continent, in addition to 300 million euros it has already pledged to international health funds operating in Africa.

French President Jacques Chirac said Paris would also triple its contribution from 50 million euros to 150 million euros. He was confident that the European Union would in the future also be prepared to pledge one million dollars to the cause.

Aid to sub-Saharan Africa fell from 16 billion U.S. dollars in 1996 to 12.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2000.

Oxfam, the largest British charity, says aid spending in Africa needs to increase at least 25 billion U.S. dollars a year if the region is to meet the intended target of halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015.

Excerpt:

By James Hall
MBABANE, Aug 23 2003 (IPS)

If Africa is to advance economically and socially, sincere dialoguing must replace armed conflict, strikes and dirty politics, delegates at a heads of state summit held in Swaziland this week agreed.

“Let us talk, talk, talk, instead of fight, fight, fight,” submitted Mozambique president Joachim Chissano.

Chissano was joined by Botswana President Festus Mogae, the presidents of Sudan and Malaysia, summit host King Mswati of Swaziland, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose domestic critics say must be more open to dialoguing with opponents.

Global 2003, as the British Commonwealth Heads of State SMART Partnership Dialogue Summit was billed, brought together 400 delegates and government officials for a three-day event. The group was isolated from the outside world as they debated ways to find government-private sector solutions to national and international challenges.

SMART means Simple/Measurable/Action-oriented objectives/Respect/Trust.

Critics complained about the expense, over 10 million U.S. dollars for the cash-strapped Swazi government alone, and derided the summit as a “talk shop”.

“It may seem naive to think that something substantive is going to come out of a roomful of people talking to each other. At the end of the day, no treaty or even agreement was hammered out. There was no accord that everyone signed on to. But some solutions were found through brainstorming,” said delegate Thab’sile Motau of South Africa.

“This was about networking. We met people in the public and private sector who shared our problems, and had expertise we could tap into,” said another delegate, Sandra Babalobi of Nigeria.

But what was accomplished, beyond the exchange of business cards, to justify the attendance of the heads of state, the summit expense, and the media attention? Delegates said that despite the absence of a closing summit accord, points raised for the record carried the weight of recommendations.

A look at the resolutions provides a snapshot of African thinking on some key contemporary issues.

Africa was on the sidelines of the recent U.S. and British-led war in Iraq, and the conflict raised concerns at the summit about America’s role as international policeman. “No single country can solve the issues of global security alone,” resolved delegates debating the issue “Enhancing Global Cooperative Security.”

“Let us be confident in our own values, and realistic about our own strengths, but developing countries need to act collectively. The moral authority and legitimacy of any foreign policy actions should derive from an agreed multilateral international order,” the group resolved.

Delegates suggested a philosophical shift in African security concerns away from a focus on conflict resolution and toward a pre-emptive focus on conflict prevention.

“We have to see trouble brewing on the horizon, and handle it before it explodes into a crisis. Usually, the warning signs are there,” said Musa Matsebula, a Swazi delegate.

Currently armed conflict rages in the Sudan, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea.

Much of the summit’s attention was focused on economic advancement of developing countries. Although all heads of state belonging to the British Commonwealth were invited to attend, only those from developing nations arrived. The emphasis was on the particular needs of the world’s poor.

“The unpopular geo-political system is mirrored in the distorted architecture of the international economic system which does not serve the interests of developing countries,” said a report issued by delegates debating the topic “Making Economic Engagement Work for Developing Countries.”

The resolution did not say with whom the current “geo-political system,” which was not defined, was unpopular, but delegates made no secret their view that developing countries are disadvantaged in world trade.

“There is a need for developing countries to pursue collective options in order to address the imbalance,” a communique stated.

Collective approaches to regional advancement already exist in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which the summit hailed as an important African project to mobilise resources for specific projects.

NEPAD, a blueprint to kick-start Africa’s development, is seeking 64 billion U.S. dollars from investors and donors each year.

Spatial development initiatives like those between Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland to develop shared regional assets, like rivers and mountain ranges, have proved successful, and should be emulated throughout Africa, summiteers proposed.

“To complement big infrastructure/communications/energy projects such as those witnessed in the Spatial Development Initiatives, governments, developmental agencies and the private sector should encourage ‘micro projects’ which often command fewer resources, but respond to important specific needs,” said Musa Fakudze, principal secretary for the Swaziland’s Ministry of Finance.

While some of the developmental suggestions raised were vague, offering no blueprint for implementation or specifics to guide policy makers, other submissions came wrapped in detail.

“To promote the development of local institutional saving institutions, pension, insurance and mutual (unit trust) funds must be promoted and made understandable to small investors. These money market commodities when widely purchased would raise domestic savings levels, which should in turn contribute substantially to investments standing at 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), thereby providing medium to long-term capital for development,” submitted one economist.

Clement Thindwa, a Malawian delegate, told IPS, “We want to promote micro-enterprises, those small mom and pop businesses like poultry farms and fruit orchards, not only to cut unemployment and create a new business class, but because these type of businesses are so suitable to African culture and values.”

“Development in Africa must come from the grass roots, we have learned,” he said. The summit’s purpose, Thindwa believed, was to bring together people with ideas, whether they have titles, impressive resumes, high status or not.

“There is a lot to be said for networking, and the new ideas shared will be disseminated through many countries. On international issues, we have also demonstrated there is a unified African voice that must be heard,” he said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 19 2003 (IPS)

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa could earn about two billion U.S. dollars more every year if industrialised countries dropped their trade-distorting agricultural policies and opened their markets to goods from the developing world, says the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Eighty percent of people living in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than two dollars a day.

Farmers from all developing countries could boost their income by as much as 26 billion U.S. dollars a year if industrialised countries effectively opened their markets to free trade in agricultural goods. Almost three billion people live in rural areas in developing countries, says the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in a statement.

“These trade figures are ideal if all trade-distorting policies are dropped,” IFPRI economist David Orden told IPS. “We’re far away from that but it’s useful to know what is possible.”

Trade distorting policies are essentially agricultural subsidies which allow farmers in industrialised countries to sell their goods at abnormally low prices, and tariff barriers that make goods imported from the developing world prohibitively expensive in the markets of the wealthy countries.

The countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are estimated to have spent 311 billion U.S. dollars in subsidies to their farmers in 2001.

The IFPRI figures were released ahead of the 25th Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists which is being held in the South African port city of Durban, from Aug. 17 to Aug. 22.

The theme of the conference is “Reshaping Agriculture’s Contributions to Society”. Key items on the agenda are: strategies for reducing poverty; efficiency in food and farming systems; environmental stewardship and food safety and security. Because it is a professional conference, it is not expected to have a direct effect on the policies of the countries of the roughly 800 delegates attending the meeting.

The conference is being held at a time when industrialised countries and the developing world are scrambling to reach some kind of agreement on rules for trade in agricultural goods, among others.

The present round of world trade talks – called the Doha round – are meant to kick-start the economic development of the developing world. However, the talks have stalled because of differences between the developing world and the industrialised countries over trade in agricultural goods.

The developing world is demanding that industrialised countries remove subsidies to their farmers and make access to their markets easier. Under pressure from their domestic agricultural interest groups, who are politically powerful, industrialised countries have not been able to remove the subsidies and tariffs, which form barriers to entry to their markets, fast enough to satisfy the developing world.

In an interview in the weekly, Sunday Times, South Africa’s chief director for trade negotiations at the Department of Trade and Industry Xavier Carim, said: “Agriculture is probably the single most significant issue on the agenda. It is clear that the European Union (EU), Japan and others are not prepared to open up their markets to the extent that is necessary.”

Carim added: “Agriculture in Africa has been constrained by the lack of market access competing against highly subsidised . . . exports into third markets.”

However, Orden points out that some developing countries are also reluctant to give-up tariffs and subsidies which protect their farmers from competition from international goods.

In addition, those developing countries which import most of their agricultural goods are quite happy for the costs of farmers in industrialised countries to be subsidised by their local taxpayers, as this reduces the price of their produce on international markets.

World trade ministers are scheduled to meet in Cancun, Mexico on Sep. 10-14, to see if they can find a way out of the impasse.

Although there seems to be no immediate way around the deadlock, Orden says never before has world trade in agricultural goods been this high on the international and local political agenda of both developing and industrialised countries. And, for now, the developing world needs to keep up the pressure on industrialised countries in the hope that a breakthrough will come.

Carim believes the most likely outcome from Cancun round of the world trade talks will be a shift in the deadlines and the negotiators will have to keep plugging away until they can reach a deal.

Ahead of the conference, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – a programme to kick-start the social and economic development of the continent – and IFPRI signed an agreement this week to collaborate on a new initiative to reduce poverty and hunger by improving policies concerning agriculture and food security.

“IFPRI will serve as a focal point to develop comprehensive programmes to undertake policy research, capacity strengthening, and communications in African countries,” says a senior research fellow at IFPRI, Suresh Babu.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 11 2003 (IPS)

Embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor ceded power to his deputy, Moses Blah, on Monday and flew into exile in Nigeria, 14 years after leading a rebellion that triggered a bloody civil war which spilled over into Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire.

Rebels, seeking to overthrow his government, had threatened to resume violence if 55-year-old former guerrilla leader reneged on his promise to leave Liberia immediately.

Taylor, who won 1997 elections after emerging as the strongest warlord during seven years of civil war, handed power to Blah in a colourful ceremony in Monrovia, the capital, witnessed by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, John Kufuor of Ghana and Joachim Chissano of Mozambique.

In a defiant speech, Taylor said: “I am stepping down from this office of my own volition. No one can take credit for asking me to step down. I did not want to leave this country. I can say I have been forced by the world’s superpower”.

In a similar farewell speech on Sunday, he said: “I have decided to leave because for the first time in history, almost, of the world, the United States is using food and other things as a weapon against Liberian people.

“As President (George W) Bush says, (American peacekeepers) will not step on this soil . as long as I’m here. This further threatens your survival as a people and as I have said I can no longer see you suffer.”

An American ship, carrying 2,300 marines, is waiting off the Liberian coast for orders from Washington to intervene in Liberia.

African leaders, especially Mbeki, played a major role in persuading Taylor to step down. In what is seen as a top-heavy African-inspired move to assert the relevance of the African Union, the presence of Mbeki has not only raised expectations of Taylor stepping down, but it has also raised the stakes of home-grown African solutions to the continent’s conflicts.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo is Taylor’s neighbour and has offered the former Liberian warlord political asylum once he stepped down. Kufuor in June ignored the request to arrest Taylor, who has been charged with war crimes by a special tribunal for Sierra Leone. And Mbeki has been deafeningly silent on whether Taylor should go or not.

After U.S. President Bush’s African safari in June, the continent’s two economic powerhouses, Nigeria and South Africa, have been vying for the top position of “honest broker” to conflicts in Burundi, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the brainchild of Mbeki and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, needs an estimated 60 billion U.S. dollars to get off the ground. Mbeki and Obasanjo, while running the richest states in Africa, are not in a position to bankroll this Marshall Plan, which is designed to wrench Africa out of its devastating levels of poverty and secure good governance.

Mbeki, Obasanjo and Wade need the buy-in from the United States, Britain and other G-8 members – Italy, Germany, France, Japan, Canada and Russia – if they are to pull off the partnerships needed to get NEPAD up and running. Liberia needs the political approval of Mbeki and Obasanjo for the country to receive the financial and infrastructural support from the United States once Taylor had left. Mbeki, for his part, needs to be seen to be at the forefront of sorting out the multiple crises in Africa.

Liberia has a population of 3.3 million and its main exports are diamonds, iron ore, rubber, timber, coffee and cocoa. It is also the only country in Africa that was “colonised” by black Americans who returned to Africa, and hence the accents, the appeals for U.S. help and the overtly consumerist and vicious culture of money, arms and deals that grips the West African state.

Taylor was educated in the United States, returned to Liberia and got a top job with Samuel Doe, the former president. He fell out with Doe, started a civil war that got Doe assassinated in 1990, militarily outmanoeuvred Doe’s army and other factions, and was elected the country’s president in 1997.

Six years later, the people of Liberia continue to reel under the jackboot of state terror, rebel terror and a leadership that has pushed the self-destruct button.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, appears less-than-generous in his approach to Taylor. While acknowledging Nigeria’s offer of asylum, the UN head has insisted that international law – for what it is worth now that the United States has taken the law into its own hands through its invasion of Iraq – must take its course and if Taylor is to be tried for war crimes, then so be it.

Taylor’s government, for its part, had requested the International Court of Justice in The Hague to intervene over the indictment.

The United States’ lacklustre commitment of seven marines sent to Liberia has been described by Obasanjo as sending a fire engine to the scene of the fire but only promising to help once the fire is out. The problem is that Taylor, together with Obasanjo, Kufuor, Wade and Mbeki, seems to need Bush and his buy-in into Africa’s future more than he needs them.

Liberia needs to be more comprehensively understood. The roles of the United States, its Central Intelligence Agency, Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, in the making of West Africa have to feature in Taylor’s departure deal. If not, Africa will not know why he has been forced out of his country. Already, people are asking whether Taylor is the first of many “regime changes” in Africa, under the jackboot of the United States.

Excerpt:

The big men of Africa, its heads of state, dominated Mozambique’s port city of Maputo last week as their cavalcades careened through the small city’s roads.

The convoys of between seven and 15 cars apiece – the size depended on the importance of the man inside the Mercedes Benz at the centre of the convoy – scattered ordinary citizens in their wake, filling the sleepy seaside air with their blaring horns.

They raced not only to the official sessions, but also between meetings to lobby for the top executives who will take the helm of the union from Sep. 2003 in its commission.

The African Union and its development initiative, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is Africa’s 14th attempt at a political and economic programme to pull the continent from its quagmire at the bottom of the development pile – and to bridge the massive wealth gaps between the rulers and the ruled on the continent.

The United Nations Development Programme’s annual human development index report released in Maputo last week concluded that the continent is unlikely to meet the set of basic human development indicators called the Millennium Development Goals by its slated date of 2015. Thirty-four of the world’s least developed countries are in Africa.

Alpha Oumar Konare, the former Malian president, was elected unopposed this week as the chairperson of the AU commission. As his name Alpha indicates, he is now one of Africa’s first men and was sworn in on Saturday when the meeting ended.

As the equivalent of the chief executive, Konare’s position will be vital to ensure the union does not go the way of all the other plans which were well-intentioned but moved little beyond their paper versions.

”He is a committed pan-Africanist and a great son of Africa,” said Mozambican president Joachim Chissano at Konare’s induction. Konare will work with nine commissioners, five of whom are women. It is the first time that a governing body on the continent achieves gender parity in its top structure.

The five women also elected at the AU meeting are Julia Dolly Joiner of the Gambia who takes charge of political affairs; Gawanas Bience Philomena, the social affairs commissioner from Namibia; Saida Agrebe, the human resources, science and technology commissioner from Tunisia; Elisabeth Tankeu, trade and industry commissioner from the Cameroon and Rosebud Kurwijila, the rural economy and agriculture commissioner from Tanzania.

A South African diplomat described Konare as ”very charismatic”. Added another, ”He’s highly respected as an influential political figure.”

The former secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Amara Essy who also served as interim chairperson of the African Union from its formation in June last year, dropped out of the race when his home country, Cote d’Ivoire withdrew its support for his candidature.

Sources in the African Union said the heads of state wanted to elevate the position of commission chair to that of a head of state to give the Union gravitas. Essy was a former foreign minister.

Each of the nine commissioners are high-ranking public figures drawn from public life, the academe or the civil society sector. ”We wanted to lift the profile of the organisation. (World) Leaders will have no problem meeting Konare and we ensured that he will not be palmed off to co-operation and development ministers,” said a former UN envoy.

In his acceptance speech, Konare showed that his would have to be an outward-looking office to secure support. ”Africa cannot survive without a partnership with the rest of the world. Africa needs the support of the international community, the political and material support,” he said.

While his lobbyists are effusive about Konare, other reviews of the 57-year-old are mixed, with analysts pointing out that the former professor of history and archaeology failed to kick-start a discernible development programme in his native Mali. A BBC profile of him last year painted Konare as a ”master of spin”.

Konare was president from 1992 until June last year and previously served as sports and arts ministers from 1978. Between 1999 and 2000, he was chairperson of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African state (ECOWAS).

An ardent anthropologist, he is credited with being an energetic protector of Mali’s ample archaeological, academic and cultural histories. He takes up his post at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia in September. Konare is married to Adame Konare and has three sons and a daughter.

In addition to serving as chairperson of the African Union, he is also a member of the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger and chairperson of the e-Africa Commission on New technologies.

His immediate tasks will be to ensure the Commission’s new structures start working properly quickly and to collect renewed funding for the African Union. Eight member countries are in arrears to the union.

The protocols or laws that will set the supranational standards for the union must also still be ratified by the required number of countries. These include the peace and security council, as well as a Pan-African parliament and the African peer review mechanism.

By IPS Correspondents
MAPUTO, Jul 12 2003 (IPS)

While the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe is one of the conflicts that captured the attention of United States President George Bush during his trip to Africa, the African Union (AU) is officially silent on that country.

But while President Robert Mugabe’s presence in Maputo has been kept low-key, the rapidly unfolding endgame in his country is the subject of extensive behind the scenes talks at the gathering of heads of state and government, say officials.

Ahead of his tour to Africa, Bush tried to turn up the heat on African countries – and specifically South Africa – to get them to put increased public pressure on Mugabe to leave government. His secretary of state, Colin Powell, leveled criticism at South Africa for its’ softly-softly approach to Zimbabwe. For over two years now, South Africa has stuck steadfastly to its "quiet diplomacy" with Zimbabwe believing that negotiations between the ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are the only way out of the stalemate.

Mbeki, by all accounts, managed to persuade Bush that his way was correct. By the end of this week’s meeting between the two leaders, Bush had toned down his approach. "The President [Mbeki] is the person most involved; he represents a mighty country in the neighbourhood who, because of his position and his responsibility, is working the issue. And I’ve not any intention of second-guessing his tactics. We share the same outcome." Mbeki is said to have promised Bush that there would be a settlement in Zimbabwe in the next 12 months.

But the American president also reserved the right to "speak out when we see a situation where somebody’s freedoms have been taken away from them and they’re suffering".

On Thursday, during a stop-over in Botswana, he underlined his demand for "democracy" in Zimbabwe and blamed the effective collapse of the country’s economy on bad governance. There are also plans for a meeting, on the sides of the summit, between AU and European Union (EU) representatives to try and find a way around a political impasse between the two organizations over Zimbabwe.

The EU and US are insisting the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe illegally hung onto power in the county’s last parliamentary and presidential elections by intimidation and poll-rigging. Consequently, the EU has refused to meet representatives of the Mugabe government and imposed targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe’s rulers.

AU observers at the elections endorsed the results of the elections. As a result, the AU and the EU have not been able to hold a summit to discuss development assistance because the African leaders insist that the Europeans cannot be allowed to determine if Zimbabwe should be allowed to be part of the continent’s delegation. One of the AU principles is continental sovereignty. Despite extensive negotiations between the two organizations, for now the stalemate remains.

Two other common areas linked the Bush visit with the AU meeting: these were the unfolding war in Liberia and HIV/Aids. The US has pledged 15 billion dollars over five years to fight HIV/Aids globally, while the AU determined on Thursday that it alone would require three billion dollars a year to fight HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.

South African officials said in private talks with Bush that they had stressed that any funds for the country would be spent according to its own policies and needs – earlier reports said that the US planned to earmark its funds for treatment projects in South Africa. Mbeki has controversially questioned the effectiveness and safety of anti-retrovirals drugs, used to ease the effects of the disease and reduce the rate of infection of the virus. While health experts acknowledge the dangers of the drugs, they insist they are presently the most effective way to try and bring the disease under control.

An official from the Mbeki presidency said the US funds would probably be used to boost the infrastructure – clinics, staff, equipment – necessary to put in place a national Aids drug treatment programme. South African and US officials will meet soon to work out the framework for the HIV/Aids-related aid.

Officials also said South Africa supported a "positive" US response to ECOWAS requests for American soldiers to be deployed in the fractured West African nation. "Africa must take responsibility, through ECOWAS, on the ground in Liberia, but the truth of the matter is that it does not have the resources to do it alone," said a South African official.

Bush was non-committal on deploying his troops. In Pretoria this week, he said: "We do have assessment teams [in Liberia] to assess what is necessary to help with the transition. He [Mbeki] asked whether or not we’d be involved and I said ‘yes’ we’ll be involved. And now we’re determining the extent of our involvement."

Speaking at a press briefing at the AU summit on Thursday, Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, confirmed that his country would be leading a multi-national military intervention force to Liberia. It would include troops from Ghana and Mali. He said that while the US had said it would contribute to the force, he had no idea of exactly what its commitment would be.

Asked why he had offered asylum to a leader facing war crime charges, Obasanjo pointed out that if Liberian leader Charles Taylor was not offered a way out of his country, he would either fight until his last drop of blood, or take his men back into the bush. In either case, thousands more Liberians were likely die. "What we are doing is more for the ordinary people of Liberia, than Charles Taylor himself." (ENDS/IPS/AF/NA/AU/IP/PS/SM/03)

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Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MAPUTO, Jul 11 2003 (IPS)

Almost as common as national flags at the African Union summit in Maputo, Mozambique, is the red ribbon symbol of the anti-HIV/AIDS campaign.

Messages warning about the threat HIV/AIDS poses to the future development of the continent are all over convention centre where 53 African heads of state are meeting this week.

One of them warns: ”Vertical transmission threatens the leadership of the continent.” But African leaders were taking the danger HIV/AIDS poses to the future of the continent very seriously, before this warning.

Part of the official programme of the summit was the first-ever international, open public forum with African heads of state on HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis – the Global Forum on Health and Development – using the latest communications technologies.

”It is an attempt to bring together African heads of state and their international partners to seal a joint commitment in scaling up action against diseases that are major health, economic and social problems throughout Africa,” said the organisers in a statement.

The meeting took place worldwide Thursday, from sites in Africa, Europe and the United States.

The session, the brainchild of Pascoal Mocumbi, Prime Minister of Mozambique, was organised by the Interactive Health Network (IHN) and Exchange, both British-based bodies active in health communication.

Speakers included the President of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano; children’s rights activist, Graca Machel; the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan; and the UNAIDS Executive Director, Peter Piot.

The Mozambican minister for foreign affairs, Leonardo Santo Simao, said the session was not about securing additional funds or to come up with another programme to fight HIV/AIDS, but to allow the participants to share their ideas and experiences of tackling the disease.

In his address to African leaders, Annan said: ”Just as Africa seeks to focus on the future, some of it can barely hang onto the present. Africa’s efforts are being systematically undermined by a virus so cruel that it strikes young adults as they are poised to enter their most productive years and assume the mantle of leadership.”

He called on them to take the lead in the fight against the disease. ”It requires all of you to show the way by example, by breaking the wall of silence that continues to surround the pandemic and making the fight against AIDS a priority second to none. I have made it mine and I know several among you have made it yours,” Annan said.

”Sixty million Africans have been touched by AIDS in the most immediate way,” said UNAIDS executive director, Piot. He said, ”They are either living with HIV, have died of AIDS or they have lost their parents to AIDS.”

Fifty-eight percent of those infected with the disease in sub-Saharan Africa are women, he added.

Piot warned that fewer that one in five people at risk of infection are targeted by an HIV/AIDS prevention programme.

He pointed out that although the price at which anti-retrovirals – drugs which ease the impact of the disease on people living with HIV/AIDS and help reduce the rate of infection with the virus – are available to developing countries, access to technical facilities and sustainable financing are still major barriers to their effective use.

Annan called on African governments and donors to double their budgets to fight the disease, every year, for the ”foreseeable future”.

During his five-nation tour of Africa, which ended this week, U.S. President George W. Bush had been promoting his 15-billion-U.S.-dollar package – over the next five years – to fight HIV/AIDS globally.

Excerpt:

Through the centuries, Africa’s story has been one of outward migration – from the era of slavery to the present era of migration where hardship and a lack of opportunity have seen many people from the continent seek their better lives elsewhere.

Migration officials doubt whether this net brain drain can be reversed to a brain gain, but the leaders of the African Union (AU) want to harness the energy of the African diaspora to help the continent.

This week, African leaders, who have gathered in the port city of Maputo in Mozambique for the second summit of the African Union, have called on Africans across the world to invest their time, skills and capital in the reconstruction and development of their motherland.

”We must speed-up our work of strengthening our relations of co-operation and solidarity with the African Diaspora,” said South African President and outgoing chair of the African Union, Thabo Mbeki.

The African diaspora is a substantial and influential body of people. The World Bank estimates that the continent lost one third of its executives between 1960 and 1987 because its private and public sectors shrunk, leaving them with few opportunities for jobs and development.

The brain drain is costing the continent 4 billion U.S. dollars a year to replace them with expatriates from the west, according to a recent study by the University of Natal in South Africa.

It says about 23,000 qualified academic professionals from Africa emigrate each year in search of better working conditions.

The diaspora refers to Africans who have left the continent to settle in other parts of the world. The term is used both historically and to describe contemporary migrants.

President Mbeki revealed efforts were underway to bring the Caribbean diaspora into the African fold.

For Mbeki, diaspora links are also an attempt to fix the bonds that slavery and colonialism rent asunder: he extended an invitation to the AU leaders to join Haiti’s bicentenary celebrations of the end of slavery in Jan. 2004.

”In 1804, Haiti became the first black republic in the world, having defeated the armies of Napoleon that sought to maintain Haiti as a slave colony,” he said.

But diaspora links are increasingly vital financial relationships for developing economies. India and China have pioneered emigrant links with their homelands to encourage their ancestral and contemporary migrants to invest both time and money in the two countries.

Despite reservations on the part of some intellectuals living in Africa – who believe those Africans living in other parts of the world have lost touch with the realities of the continent – its leaders are determined to tap the skills and resources of the diaspora.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – a programme to kick-start the social and economic development of the continent – details an initiative to ”enlist the support of Africans in Diaspora (AID) in the effective mobilisation of resources by way of investment.

The programme’s architects see the diaspora as an essential part of the partnership: there are significant numbers of migrants and people who claim ancestral links to Africa in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.

”NEPAD will put in place adequate incentives for regular and substantial transfers by the diaspora, especially as a means of boosting the volume of private investment in Africa. Furthermore, Africans abroad can and should be encouraged to play a significant role in terms of advocacy for their countries and the continent at large,” says a NEPAD policy document.

Primarily, this involves marketing that which is good in Africa to counter the continent’s ubiquitously dark image in the North, where major investment, aid and trade decisions are still made.

It is also about material assistance. Already, remittances (the term for migrant payments) to Africa accounts for more than donor aid flows to the continent.

In Eritrea, for example, remittances account for 83 percent of exports. In Mali, payments from migrants account for a staggering 20 percent of gross national product.

For several years, the Institute of Migration, a United Nations agency, has studied ways in which the diaspora can become a more formal development partner by linking migrants more formally with projects in their communities.

The institute also says remittances should be reflected in the national accounts. Currently, transfers are largely unchecked and no exhaustive studies have been carried out to determine their macro-economic value.

One part of the diaspora programme is to get Africans to come back home. Vincent Williams of the Southern African Migration Project in Cape Town says African leaders will have to study ways to get skilled people back.

Africa’s first task, he says, is to draw up databases to get an accurate sense of the number of people in the diaspora. ”It requires an understanding of why people leave and often it is not just about money. If you understand why people leave, you can address those issues,” he says.

To get migrants to come back requires a huge marketing drive, says Williams. And it should be complemented by incentives. ”(Calling on) their patriotism alone is not enough. There must be practical programmes and the potential to do better,” he says.