The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Dec 09
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Institute for Policy Studies: Africa and the Economic Crisis - 0 views
www.ips-dc.org/...africa_and_the_economic_crisis
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The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
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The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
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The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
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a multi-stakeholder forum convened in Tunis at the end of November that brought together leading economists, government officials, and civil society representatives.
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The forum was the first high-profile event of the newly formed Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), chaired by Botswana's former President, Festus Mogae.
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CoDA is driven by African institutions and carves out greater space for civil society to set the agenda. At the forum, Professor Fantu Cheru of the Nordic Africa Institute urged support for "knowledge production on the continent." The establishment of CoDA is a big step in that direction.
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We must, as the Tunis Forum convener Abdoulaye Bathily, Senegalese academic and former minister of environment, urges "redefine Africa's development paradigm, and above all, support the emergence of new practices and citizen actions in Africa's public space."
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Pambazuka - Sudan and oil politics: A nation split by oil - 0 views
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Before we could settle to savour the change expected from the split, things took a different turn. The war drums sounded, and bullets began to fly. Streams of refugees flooded through our village and soon enough, we were on the move. I still recall seeing starving kids, rotting corpses by the roadside, and I can hear the screams of young ladies who were captured and forcibly married by rampaging troops.
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As aptly captured by a Sudanese academic in a recent Oilwatch Africa meeting, "Sudanese oil has been developed against the background of war, international sanctions, and political isolation. It has been developed at a time of imposing demand by emerging economies like India and China and a time of unprecedented soaring prices of both food and oil and the controversial use of agricultural crops as a source of bio-energy."
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The reality is that with the available infrastructure, the South cannot export its oil except through the North. In addition, as the date of possible separation drew nearer, new oil blocks that transverse northern and southern areas were being allocated.
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Surely, the companies operating here could not hope for a better space for reckless exploitation and incredibly high profit margins. Added to this is the fact that the regulatory regime is largely non-existent and even the conduct of environmental impact assessments are selective.
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Oil has certainly greased the engines of exploitation, oppression and war in Sudan. It is oiling the machines of separation today. What will it lubricate next?
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At a time when the continent should be coming together and erasing the arbitrary boundary lines drawn by colonialist adventurers, we continue to fragment. Certainly, this cannot be the only way to overcome poor and parasitic governance.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Mar 11
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British banks complicit in Nigerian corruption, court documents reveal | Global Witness - 0 views
www.globalwitness.org/...ruption-court-documents-reveal
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British high street banks have accepted millions of pounds in deposits from corrupt Nigerian politicians, raising serious questions about their commitment to tackling financial crime, warned Global Witness in a report published today. By taking money from corrupt Nigerian governors between 1999 and 2005, Barclays, NatWest, RBS, HSBC and UBS helped to fuel corruption and entrench poverty in Nigeria.
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What is so extraordinary about this story is that nearly all of these of these banks had previously fallen foul of the UK banking regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), in 2001 by reportedly helping the former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha funnel nearly a billion pounds through the UK. These banks were supposed to have tightened up their systems but as this report now shows, a few years later, they were accepting corrupt Nigerian money again.
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"Banks are quick to penalise ordinary customers for minor infractions but seem to be less concerned about dirty money passing through their accounts,"
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 10 Aug 14
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Quiet legacies and long shadows: the Obama era of counterterrorism in the Sahel-Sahara ... - 0 views
www.opendemocracy.net/...obama-era-of-counterterrorism-
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President Obama has been widely criticised for the late timing of this summit, 14 years after China started holding its regular Africa summits, and his failure to prioritise the continent earlier in his presidency. In the eyes of many commentators, this is Obama’s attempt to etch out a legacy in Africa.
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Indeed, as a recent report from Oxford Research Group and the Remote Control project shows, for all the talk of the US lacking engagement with Africa, military forces under the new US Africa Command (AFRICOM, a legacy of the late Bush administration) have been pursuing a quiet but sustained “pivot to Africa” under the Obama administration.
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September 11 is the key date for US engagement in the Sahel-Sahara, but 2012 not 2001. This was the date that jihadist militants stormed US diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing the US Ambassador and three other citizens.
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Its one drone base in Niamey, Niger can cover most of West Africa–and North Africa is covered by drones operating from Sicily–but there are gaps, notably around Senegal and Chad.
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AFRICOM and its allies are testing an open-ended, “light-touch” approach, with few boots-on-the-ground and a reliance on special forces, drones and private military companies.
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Increased ISR capabilities have also depended on use of private military and security contractors (PMSCs), who have run key elements of AFRICOM’s covert counter-terrorism operations in the region. Using unmarked, civilian-registered aircraft, they provide ISR operations, transport special operations forces, and provide medical evacuation and search and rescue capacities.
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But it is France–the old colonial power, Saharan gendarme or legionnaire–that has most at stake in the Sahel-Sahara and on which the US so-far depends. Last week, France formally redeployed its military forces under Opération Barkhane, which sees French land, air and special forces establish an indefinite regional presence at eight bases and several other forward operating locations across five or more Sahel states. US forces and aircraft have a presence at least three of these bases (Niamey, N’Djamena and Ouagadougou) and probably use several others for “contingencies”.
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Just as there is little mention of this rapidly expanding presence, so too is there little discussion of the effectiveness of this new approach to counterterrorism and the impact it will have on stability, governance, and accountability in a fragile region.
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The US has made sure this week not to be seen to engage with selected authoritarian African regimes, withholding invitations to Sudan’s ICC indicted Omar el Bashir, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Eritrea’s Somalia-meddling Isaias Afewerki. Yet, in a nod to similarly uncritical alliances of the Cold War era, its expanding military engagement across Africa has depended on relationships with similarly dubious governments. Djibouti, Uganda and Ethiopia, the increasingly undemocratic pillars of US campaigns against Somalia’s al-Qaida franchise, are the most blatant examples.
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Outside of the limits of this week’s summit, the trend towards covert or “plausibly deniable” counter-terrorism–PMSCs, drones, rapid reaction special forces–and barely restrained mandates to wage war is indicative of the real and increasing power over Africa policy exercised by Defense departments in both Washington and Paris.
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The elected Malian government seems to have interpreted its post-2013 French and UN guarantees of security enforcement as reason not to pursue a peace process with northern separatists. Similarly, Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara has shown no urgency in seeking reconciliation with supporters of the former regime since French and UN troops helped him to power in 2011. Governance, human rights and non-military solutions to existing conflict are thus considerably undermined by the securitisation of policy in the Sahel-Sahara.
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Pambazuka - BRICS and the tendency to sub-imperialism - 0 views
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Dating at least a half-century to when the idea of sub-imperialism was introduced, in Brazil, the concrete settings are vital because contingencies arise that may divert from the twin logics of capital and expanding territorial power relations.
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For rhetorical purposes the sub-imperial powers’ foreign, trade and even finance ministries may be less than flattering about global governance, and in the case of the BRICS in 2013-14, may even launch new multilateral initiatives with the stated aim of challenging power. But standing by the IMF even in times of crisis – e.g. the institution’s recapitalization in 2009 and 2012 occurred with notable BRICS support ($75 billion in coordinated aid in the latter case) – reflects the overall role that sub-imperial regimes play: to lubricate, legitimize and extend neoliberal political economy deeper into their regional hinterlands.
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In this context, what may emerge from the networking of the sub-imperialist elites, as witnessed in the BRICS bloc in its initial formation period, 2008-14, is an agenda that more systematically confirms super-exploitative practices within their hinterlands.
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However, it is also critical to concede that the forms of BRICS sub-imperialism are diverse, for as Moyo and Yeros (2011,19) remark, ‘Some are driven by private blocs of capital with strong state support (Brazil, India); others, like China, include the direct participation of state-owned enterprises; while in the case of South Africa, it is increasingly difficult to speak of an autonomous domestic bourgeoisie, given the extreme degree of de-nationalisation of its economy in the post-apartheid period. The degree of participation in the Western military project is also different from one case to the next although, one might say, there is a schizophrenia to all this, typical of sub-imperialism.’
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However, the most critical factor in making this debate real, not just a struggle over semantics between impotent leftist intellectuals, is a different process entirely, one not contingent upon rhetoric from above, but upon reality from below. Reality from below is increasingly tense in each of the main sub-imperialist powers currently seeking unity, the BRICS.
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