development - Arabica Robusta on Diigo

03 Dec 09

t r u t h o u t | A Humanitarian Disaster in the Making Along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline - Who's Watching?

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Despite receiving minimal “transit revenues” from Chad’s oil, the pipeline’s social and environmental impacts are just a harsh for Cameroonians living along the pipeline route. 248 villages are directly impacted by the pipe and dozens more by roads, operations centers, and employee living bases all built expressly for the project. Unlike in neighboring Chad, no oil revenues have been set aside for development spending in the affected villages. The Cameroonian government claims it only receives $25 million per year and some of that money returns to impacted villages via increased social spending in the national budget. But the truth is no one knows where the $25 million is spent (or if that’s the true amount) and there is no accountability for the use of the revenues.
Mongotsoe Akam is a quiet and awkward grandfather living in the small village of Ebaka in Cameroon’s East Province. He has been a farmer his whole life and seems content to continue living the traditional village life. During the pipeline’s construction, multiple subcontractors of the oil consortium were constantly buzzing around his home and farm. They were looking for laterite, a type of rock used to surface the unpaved roads the consortium built to transport materials and heavy machinery. Mr. Mongotsoe showed them the exact location of his laterite and negotiated a price for its extraction. Not only was he never paid for the use of his laterite, but he also was never compensated for the $50,000 worth of crops that were bulldozed to access the quarry.
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- The Chief of Dompta signed a contract with Exxon for the construction of a health clinic as “community compensation.” When the health clinic wasn’t built, he wrote to the oil consortium demanding they follow through on their written agreement. One of Exxon’s directors cordially replied that the health center would be built and the village could use health clinics in neighboring villages until then. Dompta’s chief died in 2007 and was replaced by his son as tradition requires. The new Dompta chief claims Exxon built a health center in Dompla (notice the difference in spelling), a village about 30 kilometers away and even proudly posted a sign that read “Dompta Health Clinic.” We will never know if this is a cruel joke or corporate idiocy because no one from the oil consortium has yet to comment on the issue. For the people of Dompta, it doesn’t really matter.

28 Nov 09

Pambazuka - Paving the way for the next stage in China-Africa relations

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27 Nov 09

Pambazuka - Land grabs: Africa's new ‘resource curse’?

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Studies by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) revealed, ‘Many countries do not have sufficient mechanisms to protect local rights and take account of local interests, livelihoods, and welfare. Moreover, local communities are rarely adequately informed about the land concessions that are made to private companies. Insecure local land rights, inaccessible registration procedures, vaguely defined productive use requirements, legislative gaps, and other factors all too often undermine the position of local people vis-à-vis international actors.’[1]
In Madagascar, a 99-year lease on 3.2 million acres of land – 50 per cent of Madagascar’s arable land, granted to multinational Daewoo ‘ensuring food security’ for South Korea, lead to a coup. ‘In the constitution, it is stipulated that Madagascar’s land is neither for sale nor for rent, so the agreement with Daewoo is cancelled,’ said current president Andry Rajoelina, a baby-faced former DJ, backed by the army – and allegedly, the majority of Malagasys, 70 per cent of whom depend on farmland for income. ‘One of the biggest problems for farmers in Madagascar is land ownership, and we think it’s unfair for the government to be selling or leasing land to foreigners when local farmers do not have enough land,’ an official from Madagascar’s Farmer’s Confederation revealed to Reuters.
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- The mentality of ‘grabbers’ could not be more different. ‘We are not farmers…’ stated an official from SLC Agricola, Brazil’s largest ‘farm’ corporation. ‘The same way you have shoemakers and computer manufacturers, we produce agricultural commodities.’
- But with Africa losing an estimated US$148 billion in development finance each year, 60 per cent as a result of multinational mispricing, in addition to the direct servicing of odious debts – (amounting to a global figure of US$560 billion per annum of an outstanding US$2.9 trillion), little or no rents derived from the liquidation of exhaustible resources is redistributed in intangible capital. This is precisely because across Africa citizens are not required to finance the state budget – as occurs in high-income countries through intangible capital – they lack the political representation necessary to influence policies and usurped power structures.
- The terms differ from country to country, with the bulk of Ghana’s leased land allocated for export, in contrast to Ethiopia’s mixed status, but the issue remains one of control and exploitation, whether it is over local food monopolies or exported crops.
- over 100 known specialised land funds and investments firms have embarked on ‘private sector’ land grabs, including well-known entities such as Morgan Stanley. Facilitating this process is the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank group, ensuring for investors the ‘enabling environments’ and positive ‘investment climates’ required for the extractive industries, such as repatriation of profits and tax ‘competition’. From 1991-2002, deregulation proposed by IFIs composed 95 per cent of changes implemented in host countries.
- development finance siphoned from Africa, whether through the extractive industries, or land grabs, are unlikely to be revealed as the IMF scrapped mandatory information exchange. Global watchdogs, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) remained beholden to high-income nations as a ‘subsidiary’ unit in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Meanwhile, the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB), founded and finance by the ‘big four’ accounting firms – maintaining units in secrecy jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands – prefers multinationals to self-regulate trade via arms length transfer. What this effectively does is enable multinationals, conducting 60 per cent of global trade within rather than between corporations, to determine the future of entire continents such as Africa, where primary commodities – extracted by corporations, account for 80 per cent of exports.

22 Nov 09

FACTBOX-How countries have coped with the oil "curse" | Reuters

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China-Africa Development Fund

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21 Nov 09

World Bank announces landmark policy | Banking/Finance | Peacefmonline.com

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The new policy represents a fundamental shift in the Bank's approach to disclosure of information - moving from an approach that spells out what documents it can disclose to one under which the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions. The policy statement will be finalized in December 2009 and become effective on July 1, 2010. A progress report will be presented to the Board by the end of 2011.
The new policy represents a fundamental shift in the Bank's approach to disclosure of information - moving from an approach that spells out what documents it can disclose to one under which the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions. The policy statement will be finalized in December 2009 and become effective on July 1, 2010. A progress report will be presented to the Board by the end of 2011.
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- The new policy represents a fundamental shift in the Bank's approach to disclosure of information - moving from an approach that spells out what documents it can disclose to one under which the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions. The policy statement will be finalized in December 2009 and become effective on July 1, 2010. A progress report will be presented to the Board by the end of 2011.

14 Nov 09

Angola: Chinese violence and murders, protest or criminality? - Afrik.com : Africa news, Maghreb news - The african daily newspaper

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Who are driving these attacks? Media? Organized gangs? How spontaneous are they? - pickinjava on 2009-11-14

07 Nov 09

Pambazuka - Profits before people: The great African liquidation sale

"it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa’s genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them."

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it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa’s genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them.
These monetarist schemes have helped to make Africa poorer and even more dependent on foreign donors and capital, and thus more vulnerable to still more of the big plans, so that now, even as Africans struggle to confront the perfect storm of the global food crisis, financial crisis and climate change – all of which are the offspring of the unfettered free-market financial system – the same big planners are at it again with more sweeping solutions (profitable ones) for the problems they themselves caused.
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- So what do the world’s great investors have their eyes on in Africa, in addition to the usual natural resources – minerals, petroleum and timber – that they’ve always coveted? In a word, land. Lots of it. The land-grabbing 'investors' are purchasing or leasing large chunks of African land to produce food crops or agrofuels or both, or just scooping up farmland as an investment,
- At the moment, the grabbing of Africa’s land is shrouded in secrecy and proceeding at an unprecedented rate, spurred on by the global food and financial crises. GRAIN, a non-profit organisation that supports farm families in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, works daily to try to keep up with the deals on its farmlandgrab.org website.[vi]
- Apart from the African governments and chiefs who are happily and quietly selling or leasing the land right out from under their own citizens, those who are promoting the new wave of rapacious investment include the World Bank, its International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and many other powerful nations and institutions. The US Millennium Challenge Corporation is helping to reform new land ownership laws – privatising land – in some of its member countries. The imported idea that user rights are not sufficient, that land must be privately owned, will efface traditional approaches to land use in Africa, and make the selling off of Africa even easier. GRAIN notes the complicity of African elites and says some African 'barons' are also snapping up land.
- another big plan is buffeting Africa’s farmers. It’s the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which claims it is working in smallholder farmers’ interests by 'catalysing' a Green Revolution in Africa. Green Revolution Number Two.

Pambazuka - Counterterrorism's blindness: Mali and the US

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26 Oct 09

Pambazuka - African view: China's new long march

Sixty years of communism in the People's Republic has lulled some people into forgetting just what committed businessmen the Chinese have been for 3,000 years.

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Sixty years of communism in the People's Republic has lulled some people into forgetting just what committed businessmen the Chinese have been for 3,000 years.
The Chinese are here and everywhere else to make money and let no-one forget that - ever.

25 Oct 09

allAfrica.com: Africa: Continent Must Engage China With Win-Win Strategies - Expert (Page 1 of 1)

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24 Oct 09

Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa

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Pambazuka - Ending aid dependence: Asserting national autonomy

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‘Aid can be placed in a continuum from left to right, starting with Purple Aid (based on the provision of global public goods), Yellow Aid (based on the principle of geopolitical strategic and security interests), Orange Aid (based on the commercial principle), and Red Aid (based on an ideological principle).’
‘Aid can be placed in a continuum from left to right, starting with Purple Aid (based on the provision of global public goods), Yellow Aid (based on the principle of geopolitical strategic and security interests), Orange Aid (based on the commercial principle), and Red Aid (based on an ideological principle).’
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- ‘Aid can be placed in a continuum from left to right, starting with Purple Aid (based on the provision of global public goods), Yellow Aid (based on the principle of geopolitical strategic and security interests), Orange Aid (based on the commercial principle), and Red Aid (based on an ideological principle).’
- ‘Aid can be placed in a continuum from left to right, starting with Purple Aid (based on the provision of global public goods), Yellow Aid (based on the principle of geopolitical strategic and security interests), Orange Aid (based on the commercial principle), and Red Aid (based on an ideological principle).’

Welcome to Kabissa | Kabissa

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18 Oct 09

Mwalimu Nyerere’s ideas on land

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Vandana Shiva, who dismisses the Western conception of property which respects only capital investment and not the fact that conception of non-western indigenous communities and cultures recognise that investment can also be of labour and nurturance“ (Shiva 2001: 44). Although Nyerere held this view, in practice his government acted to the contrary. Like the colonial state before him, more and more land, especially of the pastoralist communities was alienated.
his views are in many ways similar to those of Karl Polanyi on what he calls fictitious commodities.
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- under the neoliberal era even money itself becomes a commodity, as Polanyi alludes to. Originally money (M) in possession of a capitalist would be used to buy capital goods (C) and at the end of a cycle of production process the capitalist would have earned more money than originally invested (M1) and hence Marxist formulation of M – C – M1 where M1 is greater than M. Under neoliberalism, because of the shift from economics of production to economics of speculation, money buys money and hence the formulation M – M – M1. This has been part of the gambling (casino capitalism) economies dominating the neo- liberal economic practices.
- It is correct that the system of land tenure the colonial government wanted to promote was alien to a non-capitalist society, which, as Walter Rodney would say, was following an independent path of development. But obviously the system was not alien to capitalism and its imperial interests in the colonies.
- It was thus not just an attitude of mind of capitalism, as Nyerere tries to suggest, but a historical outcome of the process which brought into being private property, commodification, and expropriation
- of the masses within the capitalists countries and overseas.
- The misconception that pastoralists wander randomly gives rise to the belief that pastoral claims to particular land are fluid and temporary. This and the supposition that land not grazed at any one time is ‘free’, have resulted in the pastoralists losing a great deal of land without receiving compensation (Lane 1998: 155).
  - Relate pastoralists issue to the idea that crops are fenced in rather than livestock. This occurs often in Central Africa rural areas - on 2009-10-18
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- such dependence upon others would endanger our independence and our ability to choose our own political policies” (Ibid, p. 25). There is no doubt about this but to really be able to address this question it was not enough to disqualify the need for foreign aid without addressing and restructuring the dependent economy, a survival of the colonial economy, designed to serve imperial interests. It is partly because of failure to address structural dependency that Tanzania was brought to its knees by the World Bank and the IMF
  - One of the most interesting aspects of this article is the argument that Nyerere's land policies failed in large part because colonial structures were not confronted or their influence accounted for. - on 2009-10-18
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- Agriculture is difficult to socialize.

17 Oct 09

Breaking News, Kenya, Africa, Politics, Business, Sports, Blogs, Photos, Videos - Kenya begins drilling for oil in two weeks

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FINANCE: IMF Rebuts Critical Report on Lending - IPS ipsnews.net

The IMF responded to the report by the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with a lengthy rebuttal asserting that it "reaches seriously misleading conclusions about the pro-cyclicality of policies in IMF-supported programs, relying on faulty analysis and often inaccurate information."

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