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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News

Though a new grouping of G5, countries, including India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, are being co-opted in to the periphery of the G8 Summits. The G5 Countries too have failed to influence the agenda or outcome of the G8 process. So it is high time for the G5 countries to ponder the very validity of being in the periphery of the G8 Summit- legitimizing the agenda setting role of the rich and powerful countries. Instead of playing the second fiddle to the rich American- European axis and a co-opted Japan, it is high time for G5 to explore the option of reviving the G20 process as an alternate option to discuss and to adopt collective measures to address the issues that confront humanity and the world. This requires a fresh imagination and political will from the part of the G5 leaders.

Tags: africa, g8, hokkaido, actionaid, pambazuka, john, samuel on 2008-07-12 -All Annotations (0) -About

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African writing in our time

in the xenophobic killings we find the paradox that allows the new generation of South African writers and Kunene’s generation to have a dialogue. In the same way that Mugabe’s one-man show and the recent Kenya crisis allows the older and younger generation of writers to have a conversation. If such a national crisis is seen as an occasion to blame, then an opportunity to move history and literature forward is lost. If it is used to build on the past and if we understand history as a process then the stage for the next generation of writers is set.

Tags: africa, literature, south, liberation, history, pambazuka on 2008-07-12 -All Annotations (2) -About

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Arabica Robusta

IMF to study Congo's China deal before any accord

Tags: congo, china, imf, pambazuka on 2008-07-06 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Matthew Bennett

A new Philanthro-Capitalist Alliance in Africa?

Bill Gates's creative capitalism

Tags: economics, corporate social responsibility on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The Paris Declaration and aid effectiveness

Yash Tandon dissects the Paris Declaration in relation to aid effectiveness and reaches the conclusion that "under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness project is a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors of those Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it at the Accra conference in September." But all is not lost and he also offers a way out.

Tags: paris, agenda, declaration, international, development, pambazuka, united, nations, cooperation, forum on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The Paris Declaration and the debate on aid effectiveness must first be placed in its proper conceptual and historical context. The origins of the debate lie in the concept of ‘failed states’ that in the 1990s became a common explanation for ‘crisis’ in large parts of the South. Theorists, largely in the US and Europe, argued that failed states were at the root of global instability and terrorism. They had lost their legitimacy and credibility, giving the North the right to intervene in order to reshape them as democratic states that would no longer pose a threat to the rest of the civilised world.
Robert Cooper, for example, described a zone of the ‘pre-modern world, the pre-state’, which was in a condition of ‘post-imperial chaos’: ‘
Cooper, an English version of the American neo-Conservatives, might have been ignored had not some of his ideas been given a boost a year later by Martin Wolf, a respected columnist for the Financial Times. In an article entitled ‘The need for a new imperialism’ [2], Wolf argued that Afghanistan was but an extreme example of a ‘failed state’.
Many in the South condemned the idea of failed states as a Northern pretext for intervention [3]. In the North, too, some were alarmed at this new-found justification for imperial or neo-imperial intervention in their name. Others were sceptical about Bush and Blair’s grandiose plans to ‘save Africa’. As a rejoinder to the idea that accelerated aid would (or could) make Africa’s poverty history, William Easterly, formerly of the World Bank, argued that top-down, donor-driven aid does not work [4], and that aid can only play a supportive role to essentially domestic efforts. Stephen Browne emphasised aid’s inadequate market signals and the way in which donor domination distorts supply and demand [5]. Roger Riddell showed how short-term political interests distort aid [6], and argued that the aid industry must change radically to become the effective force for good that it is often claimed to be.
Perhaps Bono and Sachs are honest advocates of aid, believing that the rich have a responsibility to help the poor. They do not ask if the rich had anything to do with creating poverty in the first place, but their good faith is best not questioned; they are artists and academics, not politicians, spreading the good word about humanity and humanitarianism. Bush and Blair, however, are in another camp altogether. They are in the category of people that Roger Riddell argues distort the purpose of aid because they have a political agenda, whether hidden or explicit. Their political track record suggests that they share Robert Cooper and Martin Wolf’s belief in defensive imperialism. Like their 19th century ancestors Bush and Blair are driven by a kind of missionary zeal to civilise the South and reorder it, to make it safe for democracy and ‘more like us’. Both soft and hard power are needed. Aid, from this perspective, becomes another weapon in their arsenal to discipline chaotic parts of the world. It follows that it would be irresponsible to give aid without conditions.
The OECD took the lead to reform the aid architecture. In 2003, at an intergovernmental High Level Forum (HLF) in Rome convened by the OECD’s Development Cooperation Directorate, Northern donors discussed how to make aid more effective. In March 2005, at the second High Level Forum, the OECD adopted the so-called Paris Declaration, which aims to take ‘far-reaching and monitorable actions to reform the ways we deliver and manage aid’.
On its website the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) gives three reasons why the Paris Declaration will improve aid effectiveness. First, it goes beyond a statement of general principles; it lays down a ‘practical, action-orientated roadmap to improve the quality of aid and its impact on development’. Second, it sets out 12 indicators for monitoring and ‘encouraging progress’ against partnership commitments. Third, it promotes a model of partnership that will improve transparency and accountability in the use of development resources. At international level it provides a mechanism for donors and recipients of aid to hold each other mutually accountable and publicly monitor compliance. At country level it encourages joint assessment of progress by donors and partners using local instruments.
The most critical analysis of the Paris Declaration has come from a study by Roberto Bissio of Social Watch for the UN Human Rights Council's High-Level Task Force on the Implementation of the Right to Development. Bissio argues that relatively minor gains in efficiency and the reduction of some transaction costs are overridden by the asymmetrical conditions under which negotiations between donors and recipients take place. He adds that the Paris Declaration ‘creates a new level of supranational economic governance above the World Bank and the regional development banks’[8].
the OECD has now sought to bring the UN into the Paris Declaration process. Why should this be a matter for concern? The UN`s early involvement could have been a positive step in reforming the global aid architecture, but the OECD apparently preferred to place its trust in the Bretton Woods Institutions. It now seems that the OECD’s directorate has belatedly become aware of the World Bank and IMF’s democratic deficit, and of the need to involve the UN to provide a veneer of legitimacy.
the OECD-DAC has embraced the UN’s Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) initiative.
There is a shift from project lending to programme-based lending, which involves the pooling of donor resources and the injection of these funds into the national budget through direct budget support.
Recent World Bank documents show that in Poverty Reduction Strategy assessments undertaken by the World Bank, ‘few of them provide the level of operational detail that specifies how objectives are to be achieved through policy actions’. [12] Growth is apparently much lower than expected by the donor community. If this is still the case in 2010, the implication is that donors will demand better performance from recipient countries or they might stop aid.
The conclusion is unavoidable. Under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness project is a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors of those Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it at the Accra conference in September.
Can the Paris Declaration be salvaged? Yes, it can. In order to give it legitimacy and credibility, the following steps are necessary.
1. The Paris Declaration must be properly embedded in the UN system.
2. Meanwhile, there must be a moratorium on the Accra process and the proposed Accra Action Agenda.
3. The Paris Declaration must distance itself from the Bretton Woods institutions or it will suffer the same credibility and legitimacy gap.
4. The principle of mutual accountability must be properly structured and monitored by a UN body.
5. Finally, aid is not the route to development. It creates dependency and erodes self-reliance.

Arabica Robusta 6Expand

Pambazuka News

the unprecedented success of Obama’s campaign and the ground it has broke as it relates to a “Black” candidate appealing to white voters on a national level revels that something qualitative has changed in this country. The question is what is it? I argue that the source of the qualitative change lies in the changing composition of class throughout the US settler-colonial project. The advance of global capital and its transformation of production and accumulation throughout the capitalist world-system generated this compositional shift. I posit that the process of transformation popularly called “globalization” has created a trans-national bourgeoisie and growing multi-national or “cosmopolitan” trans-national service and working classes. It is my position that Barack Obama is a member of and represents the political and economic interests of the trans-national bourgeoisie and the social interests of the growing trans-national classes. More specifically, Barack Obama is a product of the New Afrikan trans-national bourgeoisie, which emerged in the main from the comprador or neo-colonial sector of the New Afrikan bourgeois class between the 1970’s to the present.

Tags: obama, barack, us, globalization, capitalism, structural, world, systems, pambazuka, malcolm, x on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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the unprecedented success of Obama’s campaign and the ground it has broke as it relates to a “Black” candidate appealing to white voters on a national level revels that something qualitative has changed in this country. The question is what is it?

I argue that the source of the qualitative change lies in the changing composition of class throughout the US settler-colonial project. The advance of global capital and its transformation of production and accumulation throughout the capitalist world-system generated this compositional shift. I posit that the process of transformation popularly called “globalization” has created a trans-national bourgeoisie and growing multi-national or “cosmopolitan” trans-national service and working classes. It is my position that Barack Obama is a member of and represents the political and economic interests of the trans-national bourgeoisie and the social interests of the growing trans-national classes. More specifically, Barack Obama is a product of the New Afrikan trans-national bourgeoisie, which emerged in the main from the comprador or neo-colonial sector of the New Afrikan bourgeois class between the 1970’s to the present.
What I think progressives and revolutionaries have to be clear on in relating to these popular forces is that a clamoring for a change of management does not equate to a clamoring for a fundamental change of program. It is on the question of program that I would argue that the national question strongly reenters the fry and could perhaps fracture the broad multi-national, multi-class alliance thus far mobilized by the Obama campaign.
This is an extremely unique moment in human history, one that should not be slept on by progressives and revolutionaries anywhere, let alone in the US.

There are three general things that make this moment particularly unique:

- The rapid collapse of the ecological systems that support human civilization as a direct consequence of the capitalist world-systems need for constant growth and expansion and its dependence on a petro-chemical driven system of mass industrial production to stimulate and sustain this growth.

- The declining hegemony (in both its geo-political and Gramscian connotations) of the US imperial state and the shift to a multi-polar geo-political world order.

- The comparative weakening of the US national economy and the deepening of trans-national production and accumulation.
One of the first priorities of engagement is theoretical development. One of the principle things the New Afrikan and multi-national left movements must figure out is how to engage to the trans-national bourgeoisie. As stated earlier, as of now, our movements do not have a general, let alone united, perspective on this question. In fact, I would argue that most of our forces are still utilizing the traditional united or national liberation front theory to determine their positions and courses of action.
I argue that thinking strategically, these forces should concentrate their energy on building autonomous political movements and institutions (like the Reconstruction Party) within the US national-state that seek to build a broad multi-national united front of oppressed peoples and workers that makes a principle of building strategic links and alliances with the autonomous national liberation, international working class, global justice, and environmental movements throughout the world. As the trans-national bourgeoisie thinks and acts globally, we must also think and act globally to advance our own interests.
To these ends, a hard-pressed counter campaign against Obama I would argue is not the most effective or productive way to engage these popular forces from this point forward. Rather, I think the multi-national left must seek to highlight the contradictions of Obama’s campaign and program through a combined “outside-inside” strategy that seeks to advance a coherent set of principle demands and push him and the forces he has mobilized sharply to the left. Again, I think the formation of an autonomous “outside” political force should be primary. However, what is perhaps most tactically critical is that both the “outside” and “inside” forces aggressively promote and propagate these common demands; vigorously dialogue and debate in a principled, non-sectarian manner; and openly communicate and collaborate whenever and wherever possible.

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Pambazuka News

Tags: eritrea, politics, ethiopia on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Pambazuka News

In Africa, the Russian state seems far more ‘upfront’ about pursuing its grand geopolitical projects than the more cautious and patient Chinese. Russia’s private sector too is prepared on occasion to operate with an unashamed directness where others might be more diplomatic." While all eyes are on China's growing influence in Africa, Stephen Marks argues that Russia's Russia's bear is quitely [sic] intensifying its hug.

Tags: russia, china, africa, intervention, development, pambazuka, international on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News

Tags: eritrea, politics, government, pambazuka on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Pambazuka News - Ghana: Why the North Matters

Unequal and uneven development inherited from British colonialism by present day Ghana continues to divide the North from the South. For Samuel Zan Akologo and Rinus van Klinken "Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Togo are gory reminders" should serve as warning to the Ghanian leadership that it must change course.

Tags: ghana, development, international, colonialism, structural, adjustment, hipc, news on 2008-07-03 -All Annotations (0) -About

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With the introduction of structural adjustment, projects and activities depending on the government were scaled down. While the idea of privatisation could somehow work in the South, as there was an elite and foreign companies to take over these activities, such conditions did not apply in the North. The factories ground one by one to a halt. Commercial farms went into receivership. Employment and income collapsed. The market players, who were to exploit the opportunities afforded by the withdrawal of the government, simply were not ready for it. Whatever economic elite had started to develop either sank back into obscurity or joined their brethren in the south.
National policies, ostensibly designed so as not to favour specific parts of the country, end up disadvantaging the North. The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) was originally conceived as a programme focusing on ‘Hunger Hotspots’, and was therefore targeted at the North. For obvious political reasons, the government decided instead to make it a national policy benefiting all districts equally. But with programme management using its discretionary powers, individual districts were able to lobby for additional schools. Inevitably, such districts were politically well connected and close to the physical and political centre. With as end result that Greater Accra, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions receive a whopping 70 % of the total funding for school feeding (leaving the other 7 Regions to fight over the remaining 30 % of the funds). The three northern Regions, home to 30 % of the total poor in Ghana, receive a paltry 7 % of the funding!
The distribution of HIPC funding tells a similar story. The Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative was an attempt by the World Bank and IMF to reduce the debt burden of the world poorest countries. One of the first major policy initiatives of the new NPP government when it attained power in 2001 was to apply for HIPC status. A special account was opened, whereby the money which otherwise would have been used for debt re-payment would be channelled to special spending targeted at the poor. But once again the reality was different. While the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy 2003-2005 planned that almost half of the HIPC funds would be used in northern Ghana, in reality this was only 17 %, just about one third of what was planned! The remaining 83 % of the projects went to southern Ghana, for which only 52 % had been planned.
It cannot be denied that northern Ghana has recorded considerable progress since independence.

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Pan-Africanists: Our collective duty to Zimbabwe

Victory for us must mean reconciliation of divided populations. Reconciliation will fail utterly if it is imposed; or allows free rein to corruption, militarism or if it ignores the choices of the people in valid elections. We have responsibility as progressives and Pan-Africanists to Zimbabwe.

Tags: zimbabwe, Mugabe, government, transition, oppression, progressive, panafrican, pambazuka, international, development, horacecampbell, kwayana on 2008-06-29 -All Annotations (0) -About

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ZIMBABWE AND THE QUESTION OF IMPERIALISM

First, there should be an attempt to clear the landscape of certain obstacles. Zimbabwe was in growing trouble before the sanctions imposed by the governments of Britain and the United States. Still, the attempt to bully a small country’s ruler who was in turn bullying his compatriots draped Robert Mugabe in the role of a hero against imperialism. The attempt encouraged a blundering ruler to stay on course. The ZANU-PF forces and sympathizers have blamed the disastrous economic situation on the sanctions. Yet, the political leaders have accumulated wealth in such a conspicuous manner that their consumption of luxury goods stands out in a country where more than 80 per cent of the eligible workers are unemployed. Millions more Zimbabweans have been rendered as economic refugees in Africa and beyond.
Zimbabwe‘s situation has some striking parallels with that of the recent history of Guyana in the Caribbean, where rivalry between anti-colonial forces started long before independence and was only draped in flags at the moment of Uhuru, without serious attempts at a deep resolution of the difficulties. Once in power the Burnham regime did nothing to resolve the ethnic conflict but superimposed on it a parliamentary dictatorship.
In 1987 the fusion of ZANU with the Patriotic Front led by Joshua Nkomo was done in such a way that the post-colonial world knew little about it, except that it led to the virtual silencing of the section of the liberation front that had been led by Joshua Nkomo.
Of late the western media and certain forces within the United Nations have been reporting the possibility of talks of power sharing, and the arrangement of some form of a transitional authority. While the spirit of these discussions may be guided by the search for social peace, it is urgent that these discussions between the various elements are not carried out behind the backs of the people and do nothing to undermine the political will of the people. But above all there must be an engagement by all to ensure that the elections and its aftermath does not deteriorate into the kind of violence and destruction that was witnessed in Kenya after the elections of December 27, 2007. At all costs, war must be avoided. The present leadership cannot expect to be supported when it terrorizes its own people and unleashes the very same Rhodesian military apparatus (the Joint Operation Command) against the opposition and unarmed civilians.
President Robert Mugabe has been a heroic figure in the continent of Africa, the Diaspora, among African observers and well-wishers. And he would have remained so, if the Pan African world had assisted Zimbabweans with friendly criticism of the government when the flaws began to show. Instead, the whole movement and the international left, including us, remained silent, some longer than others, hoping that such a well-resourced government would correct its own shortcomings. Earlier we had special cause to be partisan to Robert Mugabe, who had extended solidarity to our colleague Walter Rodney when he was being persecuted by the Guyana government.
We want to go on record in saying that neither the government of Britain nor the government of the United States has the moral authority to oppose the present government of Zimbabwe. Imperialists and neo- conservatives have their own agenda when imposing sanctions and we are against sanctions in Zimbabwe. Progressive Pan Africanists must remain vigilant so that brutal oppression of the Zimbabwean peoples is not countenanced in the name of anti-imperialism.
Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF may be against imperialism but this group is not against capitalism or the looting of the assets of the society.
Those who support the working peoples of Zimbabwe must insist on transparency in dealing with transnational corporations and the integrity of the ruling personnel in their day-to-day activities. This call for accountability is especially important in so far as though we are opposed to the threat of war coming from ZANU PF we are not encouraged by the policies and posture of the leadership of the MDC. These elements have displayed an amazing level of intellectual subservience to the West and to the ideas of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Zimbabwe needs leaders who place the interest of the working people first. It is proper that all progressives support the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative of the United Nations so that corrupt leaders cannot stash away funds when the people suffer.
Experiences in Guyana, in Kenya and in Zimbabwe have taught us that it is a mistake to adopt western standards of victory as our own. Victory for us must mean reconciliation of divided populations. This in each case may best be approached through widespread national conversation spelling out its purpose. Reconciliation will fail utterly if it is imposed; or allows free rein to corruption, militarism or if it ignores the choices of the people in valid elections.

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Pambazuka News

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.

Tags: africa, multinational, corporations, niger, delta, mosop, shell, petroleum, industry, nigeria, hegemony, petro-capitalism, mend, pambazuka, codesria, european, union, EPAs on 2008-06-29 -All Annotations (0) -About

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In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.
In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil – one of Rodney’s targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France’s Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
Although it was six months ago that the European Union’s ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships -- including crisis-ridden Cote d’Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries -- into the trap of signing interim “Economic Partnership Agreements” (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.
“We can’t continue to deal with incompetent, weak, corrupt, supine governments,” explained Dot Keet of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. “But these are not factors of the same order of magnitude. The domination of African countries by neocolonialism and the subordinate stance by African governments are not the same. We must be clear where the main driving force comes from: outside Africa. We have to tackle the source.”
Since 2002, the EPAs have supplanted the agenda of the gridlocked World Trade Organisation, just as bilateral trade deals with the US, China and Brazil are also now commonplace.

A united Europe deals with individual African countries in an especially pernicious way, because aside from free trade in goods, Mandelson last October hinted at other invasive EPA conditions that will decimate national sovereignty: “Our objective remains to conclude comprehensive, full economic partnership agreements. These agreements have a WTO-compatible goods agreement at their core, but also cover other issues.”

Those other “Singapore” issues (named after the site of a 1996 WTO summit) include investment protection (so future policies don’t hamper corporate profits), competition policy (to break local large firms up) and government procurement (to end programmes like South Africa’s affirmative action).
As Walter Rodney observed, “It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not -- or are not allowed to -- concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other.”
African countries face unreliable provision of public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run down roads and railways); rapidly fluctuating exchange rates and high inflation; labour productivity problems arising from poor education, health and housing provision; vulnerable market institutions (such as immature financial systems); and poorly-functioning legal frameworks. The EU has no interest in reversing such fundamental structural economic challenges.
From early on, African civil society movements – especially the African Trade Network - called on elites to halt the negotiations.

But it has not been easy to develop a strong coalition, as Third World Network director Yao Graham concedes: “Unions have been too syndicalist, while our justice movements have been exhausted fighting structural adjustment. The local private sector has been absent. But in some regions, like West Africa, agricultural producers have been well organised and opposed to EPAs. Links to the Caribbean are weak. But we are working behind enemy lines with progressive allies in Europe, including within the Brussels parliament.”
because Mandelson is squeezing so hard, he may be single-handedly breaking the links between elites. Led by Senegalese and Malian politicians, most of the African officials at the conference agreed with the left intelligentsia that dangers now arise of: - regional disintegration (due to EU bilateral negotiations and subregional blocs) and internecine race-to-the-bottom competition:

Arabica Robusta

The oil crisis in global context

the context is dramatically different from that of the economic crisis of the '70s. Today, there is no crisis of balance of payment (so far) and there is lots of foreign exchange reserves. There are vibrant domestic markets in India and China. In fact, the growth is sustained by the economic growth in Asia.

Tags: oil, petroleum, crisis, international, development, globalization, pambazuka on 2008-06-28 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Pambazuka News

there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy.

Tags: food, pambazuka, security, crisis, sovereignty on 2008-06-28 -All Annotations (2) -About

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there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy.
The Principle of food sovereignty.
The Principle of priority of food over export crops produced by small farms sustained by state provision of the necessary infrastructure of financial credit, water, energy, extension service, transport, storage, marketing, and insurance against crop failures due to climate changes or other unforeseen circumstances.
The Principle of self-reliance and national ownership and control over the main resources for food production.
The Principle of food safety reserves.
The Principle of a fair and equitable distribution of “reserve foods” among the population during emergencies.
the above quite commonsensical and, we believe, reasonable principles have not been followed by many governments in the South. They have been grossly violated through five main reasons,
Distorted state policies on production and trade (e.g. removal of tariffs that made local producers vulnerable to imported food
and grab by the rich commercial farmers
Effective loss of control over resources of food production,
Donor aid dependence
Disruption of the infrastructure of food production (as described above) that came as a consequence of the above four factors.
Just 10 corporations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80% of the $28 billion global pesticide market.
In an increasingly liberalizing (globalizing) world, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have increased their control over the supply of water, especially in the South. In many cases, private sector participation in water services has been one of the “aid conditionalities” of the so-called “donor assistance” (ODAs) from donor countries and the IMF and the World Bank. Just three companies, Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Bechtel (USA), control a majority of private water concessions globally..
- Privatized water.
  posted by pickinjava on 2008-06-28 10:19:48
The Social Enterprise Development (SEND) Foundation in Ghana have criticised multi-national companies that are trying, using the “opportunity” of “food crisis”, to capture African agriculture through the so-called “Green Revolution” for Africa. FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) said that peasants have been evicted in several African countries so that palm oil can be produced from forests.

Pambazuka News : Issue 219

Justice Africa Summary

Tags: Africa on 2008-05-22 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News

An absolute priority has to be given to domestic food production in order to decrease dependency on the international market. Peasants and small farmers should be encouraged through better prices for their farm products and stable markets to produce food for themselves and their communities. Landless families from rural and urban areas have to get access to land, seeds and water to produce their own food. This means increased investment in peasant and farmer-based food production for domestic markets.

Tags: food, security, sovereignty, agribusiness, agriculture, biofuels, social, movement, pambazuka on 2008-05-04 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Giorgio Guzzetta

Pambazuka News

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Arabica Robusta

Governance for Development in Africa Initiative launched at SOAS

The Centre of African Studies at SOAS has received a tremendous boost with a donation to fund an initiative on Governance for Development in Africa, which will create a dedicated environment to support Africans to study both the legal aspects of governance and the links between economic development and governance.

Tags: governance, development, pambazuka, moibrahim, africa on 2008-04-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Arabica Robusta

Zimbabwe's political watershed

Paul T Zeleza looks at the long road that might yet see Mugabe's downfall and calls for a democracy that ultimately serves the Zimbabwean people through political and economic enfranchisement

Tags: zeleza, zimbabwe, democracy, mugabe, pambazuka on 2008-04-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Is Bill Gates good for Africa?

Tags: agra, africa, agriculture, development, international, pambazuka, gmos, billgates, foundation on 2008-04-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

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