Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or urlAs Global Wealth Spreads, the IMF Recedes - 0 views
-
Ghana had joined a long list of developing countries in Africa and beyond enjoying record periods of growth, with the robust economy leaving it no longer in need of more IMF cash.
-
The IMF, founded in 1944 to foster the reconstruction of the global economy in the wake of World War II, is entering its largest period of upheaval since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Over the next year, the Washington institution will slash its 2,900-person workforce by 13 percent through a combination of buyouts and some layoffs, reflecting a loan portfolio shrinking so fast that the IMF is seeking to sell off $6 billion in gold reserves to create a new long-term source of income.
-
The weakest nations in Africa remain the most subject to IMF policies because the fund represents one of their few financial lifelines. But even in better-off countries like Ghana -- a West African nation of 23 million -- the IMF still wields clout. Lenders including the World Bank and foreign-aid agencies in Europe and the United States continue to look to the fund to certify a nation as being fiscally responsible before offering grants or loans.
- ...2 more annotations...
t r u t h o u t | A Humanitarian Disaster in the Making Along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline - Who's Watching? - 0 views
-
The World Bank’s public sector lending arms (the IDA and IBRD) announced their withdrawal from the project in 2008 stating “Chad failed to comply with key requirements” of their participation, though the World Bank’s private sector lending arm (the IFC) had no problem staying on board to reap the benefits of its $200 million commercial loan.
-
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.
-
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.
- ...10 more annotations...
Pambazuka - Pollution: Africa's real resource curse? - 0 views
-
Currently, corporations subscribe to the standards of the voluntary International Cyanide Managament Code. Yet one aspect that the code fails to rigorously address is that of closure.
-
Kabwe’s rehabilitation is part of the broader Copperbelt Environment Project (CEP), largely funded by the World Bank.
-
Describing the Environmental Council of Zambia as ‘very weak’, the CEP revealed that: ‘Existing regulations are seldom enforced. The regulatory dispositions for the mining sector are currently so weak that they do not deter polluters…Identification and monitoring of environmental risks resulting from mining activities is often inadequate.’ Mining corporations operating in Zambia post-1994 were allowed to adhere to the Environmental Management Plan (EMP), taking precedence over national legislation, with little penalties save for on the spot fines of £17 and letters of warning. Like Tanzania, Zambia’s mining contracts remained secretive.
- ...2 more annotations...
Camerounlink actualité : ADB-World Bank Joint Review: Obstacles To Project Execution Identified - 0 views
-
According to the document, problems inhibiting the smooth execution of funded projects include the poor preparation of projects, poor quality of social and environmental impact assessment studies, delays in the disbursement of funds, low consideration for results-based management, poor monitoring and evaluation of projects, poor
-
implementation of the national contract award system and the poor management of public finances, amongst others.
Pambazuka - From 'how could' to 'how should': The possibility of trilateral cooperation - 0 views
-
According to the subject-title itself, the presumption is that there is a possibility for US–China cooperation in assistance to Africa. However, to turn that possibility into reality needs a lot of work. The reason is simple: how could two parties discuss an important issue concerning the third party without the third’s knowledge? How could the two parties carry out this kind of cooperation without the third party’s participation at the very beginning? How could we start the cooperation without much understanding, let alone agreement, of each other’s concept of the issue?
-
The status of China and Africa is equal, not a relation of superior and inferior. Although the relation is strategic, it is equal and friendly. Both China and Africa appreciate each other and cooperate with each other.
-
The principles guiding China–Africa relations can be summarised as equality and mutual respect, bilateralism and co-development, no-political strings attached and non-interference of domestic affairs, and stress on the capability of self-reliance.
- ...8 more annotations...
Pambazuka - Speaking truth to power: Africa and development - 0 views
-
He has headed the South Centre which is responsible for devising policies for the South by the South.
-
In essence, in political-economic terms, kleptocratic capitalism is a system of economic production and exchange based on fictitious wealth without going through production of real wealth and political governance controlled by “looters and daytime robbers”.
-
there are occasional reports from UN agencies that cannot hide the truth. In a recent paper-- “Governing development in Africa - the role of the state in economic transformation”, 22 March 2011-- the UN ECA argues that despite high growth rates in Africa there has been no improvement in employment and welfare of ordinary people.
- ...5 more annotations...
PZN - The G20, China and the implications for Africa - 0 views
-
Beijing has signed currency swap agreements with six central banks: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and most recently Argentina. These swaps permit those central banks to sell yuan to local importers in those countries who want to buy Chinese goods. This is particularly useful for importers struggling to obtain trade finance as a result of the financial crisis. As such, it's consistent with China's desire to participate in the Group of 20's efforts to support trade financing.'
Displacement, intimidation and abuse: land loyalties in Ethiopia | openDemocracy - 0 views
-
With the coming of industrial-size farms in Ethiopia, local people, villagers and pastoralists (deemed irrelevant to the Government’s economically-driven development plans) are being threatened, and intimidated by the military; forcibly displaced and herded into camps, their homes destroyed. Along with vast agricultural complexes, dams are planned and constructed, water supplies re-directed to irrigate crops, forests burnt, natural habitats destroyed. Dissenting voices are brutally silenced – men beaten, children frightened, women raped, so too the land.
-
Three quarters of all land deals take place in sub-Saharan Africa, in some of the most food-insecure, economically vulnerable, politically repressive countries in the world; precisely, some say, because of such advantageous commercial factors.
-
In Ethiopia, land sales are occurring in six key areas. Oromia and Gambella in the south, Amhara, Beneshangul, Gumuz, the Sidaama zone, or SNNP and the Lower Omo Valley – an area of outstanding natural beauty with acclaimed UNESCO World heritage status. The Ethiopian government’s conduct in Omo and Oromia, Genocide Watch (GW) considers “to have already reached stage 7 [of 8], genocidal massacres”.
- ...4 more annotations...
Pambazuka - The war on Africa: U.S. imperialism and the world economic crisis - 0 views
-
In the U.S. itself with the advent of Cold War ideology and political repression under McCarthyism, perspectives and political organizing around Africa became a highly contentious arena of struggle. The Council on African Affairs (CAA) and the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) during the early 1950s came under fierce attack by the U.S. government and were driven out of existence.
-
Later during the 1960s when the various national liberation movements and independent African states embarked upon the armed struggle as a necessity to fight the U.S. and NATO backed colonial and settler-colonial states in Africa, Pan-Africanist and socialist strategist Kwame Nkrumah identified U.S. imperialism as the major force in the movement for genuine territorial sovereignty on the continent. The U.S., although paying lip service to supporting the anti-colonial movements, sought to stifle and manipulate the national liberation movements for the benefit of Wall Street and the Pentagon.
-
The postponement of these internal crises has apparently run its course. Imperialist war no long delays the impact of the inherent failures of capitalism related to its incapacity to provide housing, jobs, medical services, education and municipal services to the majority of its people. Nonetheless, in its destructive character, imperialism continues on the path of endless war and pursuit of ever-rising rates of profit.
- ...5 more annotations...
Pambazuka - Evaluating the dual citizenship-state-building-nation-building nexus in Liberia - 0 views
-
Liberia Rising 2030, a national vision whose aim is to make Liberia a middle-income country by the year 2030. This vision, projected to replace the Lift Liberia Poverty Reduction Strategy, has as its core macro-economic policy reforms, as well as lofty goals aimed at strengthening social cohesion, democratic consolidation, and governance reform.
-
One of the problems with state-building as a post-conflict reconstruction agenda is its myopic focus on building state institutions, with the core assumption that no positive institutional practices existed before the ‘post-conflict moment’—a fallacy of terra nullius as articulated by Cliffe and Manning (Cliffe and Manning, 2008: 165).
-
In this analysis, the post-conflict state represents a ‘blank slate,’ a tabula rasa to be foisted upon by donors who function as social engineers, in which policy makers conflate the ‘state idea’ (our imaginations of what the state should be) with the ‘empirical state’ (how the state actually functions in practice) (Abrams, 1988).
- ...17 more annotations...
Pambazuka - Haïti, Africa, Aristide: The history of one humanity - 0 views
-
Some will say that there is no connection between the violence of Atlantic slavery and that which happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one as in the other, the objective was humanity. Those responsible for the decision to drop the atomic bombs might argue that they did not realise it, but violence as a means to control, to subject humankind to a system founded on its systematic violation is that which leads to slavery; from its alleged abolition to a slavery even more violent, modernised, and explained by the exculpatory arguments of its beneficiaries.
-
Aristide is not a dog. How many times must we remind the watchdogs of a system that continues to torture and to liquidate humanity, that the poor of Haiti (and elsewhere) are not dogs? Aristide is not a dog. Undoubtedly, these watchdogs would have liked Aristide to disappear like a dog that has been run over, without any newspapers ever writing about it, and without any grave marker, just like what happened to heroes such as Patrice Emery Lumumba, Osende Afana, Ruben Um Nyobe and so many others whose remains are scattered on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Now that Aristide is back in Haiti, the propaganda that had been used to get rid of him is happening once again. The accusations are the same: corruption, drug trafficking, etc. Some charges are no different from those that were made against, for example, the head of Hezbollah, Sayyid Nasrallah.
-
On the side of the accusers, the motivation remains the same: keep in place the system that made Saint Domingue the economic pearl of the French colonies, through the use of slavery.
Pambazuka - The revolution and the emancipation of women - 0 views
-
Sankara vehemently and publicly denounced odious debt and rallied African political leaders to do the same.
-
What distinguishes Sankara from many other revolutionary leaders was his confidence in the revolutionary capabilities of ordinary human beings. He did not see himself as a messiah or prophet, as he famously said before the United Nations General Assembly in October of 1984. It is worth quoting from Sankara at length, when before the delegation of 159 nations, he said: ‘I make no claim to lay out any doctrines here. I am neither a messiah nor a prophet. I possess no truths. My only aspiration is…to speak on behalf of my people…to speak on behalf of the “great disinherited people of the world”, those who belong to the world so ironically christened the Third World. And to state, though I may not succeed in making them understood, the reasons for our revolt’.
-
Meaningful social transformation cannot endure without the active support and participation of women. While it is true that women have been deeply involved in each of the great social revolutions of human history, their support and participation has historically often gone relatively unacknowledged by movement leaders.
- ...14 more annotations...
Nigeria News: Goodluck Jonathan's first year in office | GlobalPost - 0 views
-
When told of government plans to increase available power by at least 50 percent before the end of the year, Isah responded with derision. “I’m about 26 years old now. I have never seen power supply for a good two days without interruption,” he told GlobalPost. “I have never seen that in Nigeria. Two days!”
-
“He has spearheaded the fight against corruption and turned Nigeria into an example of good governance,” writes Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Time’s assessment of Jonathan. “With leaders like President Jonathan, Africa is sure to move toward prosperity, freedom and dignity for all of its people.”
-
He said some of Jonathan’s promises to fight corruption have been fulfilled. For instance, a program intended to provide farmers with fertilizer and other equipment has been cut because nearly 90 percent of the supplies were being sold to the farmers at a premium, rather than given to them for free or at a discount.
- ...2 more annotations...
IPS - Filling the Granaries in Burkina Faso | Inter Press Service - 0 views
-
New, high-yielding varieties of the staple crop have been developed at the country’s Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA) as part of a drive to improve food security in this landlocked West African country.
-
Both Kabré and Kaboré were introduced to Bondofa when they became members of Burkina Faso’s National Union of Seed Producers (UNPSB) two years ago. The UNPSB was established in 2006, and coordinates production and marketing activities as well as acting as an interface between its 4,000 members and the government.
The War in Mali » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - 0 views
-
The current crisis gripping northern Mali—an area about the size of France— has its origins in the early years of the Bush Administration, when the U.S. declared the Sahara desert a hotbed of “terrorism” and poured arms and Special Forces into the area as part of the Trans-Sahal Counter Terrorism Initiative. But, according to anthropologist Jeremy Keenan, who has done extensive fieldwork in Mali and the surrounding area, the “terrorism” label had no basis in fact, but was simply designed to “justify the militarization of Africa.”
-
When the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) was formed in 2008, it took over the Initiative and began working directly with countries in the region, including Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Niger, Mauretania, and Senegal. Indeed, the only country in the region that did not have a tie to AFRICOM was Libya.
-
For instance, the US supported the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia that overthrew the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government. Washington said the UIC was associated with al-Qaeda, but never produced any evidence of that.
- ...3 more annotations...
Pambazuka - Cameroon: Politics in an era of contradictions - 0 views
-
Of course, in that position, he was the chief organizer of electoral fraud in Cameroon. But I am not one of those who would want to use the past misdeeds of Marafa to detract from what he is saying in his letters. In his letters he has raised many important issues, including corruption related to compensation for the victims of the 1995 Camair plane crash and the incompetence of some of those appointed as government ministers.
-
This transformation had to be the work of politicians. Yet, many in the leadership of the SDF who were supposed to transform intentions to reality seemed to see politics more in the context of demagoguery, petty rivalry, and time-wasting. Politics was never taken for what it is: an art that provides an alternative to violence and bloodshed; an art that provides formulae that allow people to overcome past failures and provide solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.
-
That in Côte d’Ivoire left the people Mugabe’ed or Kibakied, whichever you like. Do not mind the motions of support trickling there from ‘social democratic’ and ‘leftwing’ groupings. The Biyas, Wades and others of the same feathers are chuckling in amusement at the fact that they are usually confronted by noises about commitment to values like social justice, democracy, liberty, mutual obligation, opportunity for all, responsibility… The ‘left-wingers’ may retort that it is precisely because of these values that they refuse to hand-over power on a platter of gold to the other side, whatever the decision of the people. Pity for those who thought that ‘leftwing’ politics could bring progress to Africa; pity for Africa and the prospect for continental peace and tranquility…”
- ...1 more annotation...
Burkina Faso: "Let us remain standing" | openDemocracy - 0 views
-
The government of Burkina Faso has adopted several new policies in an attempt to confront these crises. Yet unfortunately these have mainly been designed to respond to the imperatives of the dominant world powers and they have failed to take into account the realities on the ground. As a result, the main concerns of the large majority of the population have been ignored.
-
It is not that farmers are unable to produce a sufficient quantity of food, it is that they find themselves in a political system that will not allow them to fulfill their potential.
-
Made up of about 1,000 educated and non-educated women, it is a highly organised and active cooperative of women who are aware of their potential to affect change, and to secure greater access to means of production including land, equipment, training and material inputs. Groups of women like this have been able to obtain larger parcels of land through lobbying local leaders.
- ...2 more annotations...
-
The government of Burkina Faso has adopted several new policies in an attempt to confront these crises. Yet unfortunately these have mainly been designed to respond to the imperatives of the dominant world powers and they have failed to take into account the realities on the ground. As a result, the main concerns of the large majority of the population have been ignored.
Amilcar Cabral and the Pan-African Project | CODESRIA - 0 views
-
my paper will focus on the lessons we can draw from Cabral’s revolutionary thought for the successful implementation of the African national project.
-
Elsewhere, I have defined democratic governance as “the management of societal affairs in accordance with the universal principles of democracy as a system of rule that maximizes popular consent and participation, the legitimacy and accountability of rulers, and the responsiveness of the latter to the expressed interests and needs of the public.”
-
We are not interested in the preservation of any of the structures of the colonial state. It is our opinion that it is necessary to totally destroy, to break, to reduce to ash all aspects of the colonial state in our country in order to make everything possible for our people. … Some independent African states preserved the structures of the colonial state. In some countries they only replaced a white man with a black man, but for the people it is the same. … The nature of the state we have to create in our country is a very good question for it is a fundamental one. … It is the most important problem in the liberation movement. The problem of the nature of the state created after independence is perhaps the secret of the failure of African independence.
- ...8 more annotations...
‹ Previous
21 - 40 of 58
Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page