Solomon A.J Pratt’s ‘Jolliboy…’ will help you get detailed accounts of this role played by Sierras Leone. So attempts to discuss China’s presence in Africa today should always take into account this historical fact.
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in title, tags, annotations or url10.1111@dpr.12175_40d.pdf - 0 views
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China in Africa, a Sierra Leonean viewpoint - 0 views
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This is especially so with the last decade or so, following the establishment of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum .The creation of FOCAC came about in 2000 as a framework upon which to build on the friendly cooperation between China and Africa, cope with challenges that may come as a result of economic globalization and work towards promoting common development projects. (http://forum.eximbank.gov.cn/forum/channel/focac.shtml ).
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Wei Jianguo is former Vice Minister of Commerce and currently now Secretary-General of the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges. He wrote in his book, titled, ‘Africa A Lifetime of Memories…’ that “as China-Africa relations have progressed over the past half century and more, a special China-Africa cooperation model has taken shape. This China-Africa cooperation model derives from the process of China’s aid, investment and trading in Africa and it adopts practices different from those of Western countries. Its most notable characteristic is a focus on equality and mutual benefit with no political conditions attached.”
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There were five points’ action plan for cooperation between China and Africa announced by China. They include; opening up new prospects for the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership, in terms of working towards strengthening the political mutual trust between China and Africa; work towards expanding practical cooperation between China and Africa , increasing cultural and people-to-people exchanges ,increasing coordination and cooperation in international affairs and working towards making FOCAC more stronger.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 02 Feb 14
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Amilcar Cabral and the Pan-African Project | CODESRIA - 0 views
www.codesria.org/spip.php
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my paper will focus on the lessons we can draw from Cabral’s revolutionary thought for the successful implementation of the African national project.
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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.”
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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.
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Crawford Young points out, although the term “Buta Matari” was particular to the Belgian Congo, “its evocative imagery can be projected onto the much larger domain” of the African colonial state. By its nature and functions, the colonial state was the state as bula matari. Political repression was its underlying basis, as it operated through force and authoritarianism.
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he colonial bureaucracy ruled; as Louis XIV had proclaimed of himself, it was the state: though with this difference, that the administrator-kings of the colonial services were not even of the country; and for all their insistence that they were motivated not by political but by administrative needs, it was the needs and the politics of the metropolis which almost exclusively determined the fate of the colonial subject.
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Even before the fundamental law of Guinea-Bissau was adopted, the PAIGC program had already spelled out the key aspects of the democratic system to be established. It consisted of a republican, democratic and secular government; the organization of power based on free and general elections; and the total transformation of the inherited colonial administration into democratic structures for national and local administration. In liberated areas, village councils were already the embodiment of the practice of decentralization, with increased participation by women and young people (as each council consisted of three men and two women), and people having a say in decisions that affect their lives. Such a system of local administration was more consistent with Cabral’s notion of “cooperative democracy” than a system based on opportunism, clientelism, promotion of primordial ties, telling lies, etc., as in many African countries today.
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I have heard in my own country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and there are testimonies from elsewhere in Africa, of old people asking intellectuals when this “independence of yours” is going to end, so they could go back to the political order, economic stability, and social benefits of the 1950s. While this might be a minority position, it is nevertheless a strong indictment of the failure of the postcolonial state to provide at the very minimum the basic necessities of life; maternities, health centers and schools with adequate equipment, furniture and supplies; and good roads and transportation facilities to make it easier for peasant farmers to bring their produce to urban markets.
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For Cabral, liberation from colonial domination is meaningful only when it goes beyond the political realm to involve the development of “production, education, health facilities and trade.” With respect to property rights, four types of property were to be recognized: personal, private, co-operative, and state. Priority was to be given to the development, modernization and transformation of agriculture, with a view to ensuring prosperity and preventing agricultural crises, drought and famine. Here again, as in the political sphere, the liberated areas were to serve as a prefiguration of the postcolonial state. There, and later on in the postcolonial state, the ruling party was to focus on the following tasks:
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The transformative agenda of reconstruction and development outlined here is ambitious but doable. It is consistent with the view of Africa’s most prominent economist, Samir Amin, that the continent cannot develop without an industrialization strategy based on the modernization of agriculture and the production of capital goods in Africa. The greatest challenge for African countries is to be able to conceive and execute development strategies that are likely to satisfy the deepest aspirations of the popular masses for economic development and material prosperity. The question that Cabral raises is a simple one. Are African leaders going to make common cause with their people by opting for those policies likely to meet the latter’s needs, or are they going to side with the international bourgeoisie and accept the antisocial development strategies and policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank?
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Instead of establishing democratic developmental states, we are faced with the political economies of plunder, a subject on which Mbaya Kankwenda has published an excellent analysis with respect to the DRC.
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At the memorial service for Kwame Nkrumah on May 13, 1972 in Conakry, Cabral on behalf of the African liberation movements renewed their “pledge to the total liberation of Africa and the progress of African peoples.”
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 09 Mar 14
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The working class does the job - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition - 0 views
mondediplo.com/...13development
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To suggest that rising global wealth and global poverty are interrelated, and that the former is premised upon the latter, is not something that most players in international development want to do because it would reveal the sordid foundation of their vision of development.
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UN Millennium Project director Jeffrey Sachs defends sweated labour across the global South, saying the “sweatshops are the first rung on the ladder out of extreme poverty” (1).
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One of neoliberalism’s founding fathers, Friedrich Hayek, wrote: “I have not been able to find a single person even in much-maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under [deposed former president] Allende” (3).
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Far from a ladder of opportunity, workers in globalised production networks are incorporated into economic systems that reproduce their poverty to sustain corporation profits. Arguments by liberals and statists for further global integration are based upon the expectation (and requirement) of the continued subordination of the working classes to the objectives of capital accumulation.
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Is there a way of changing the relationship between poverty and rising global wealth? A labour-centred concept of development would recognise that global wealth is based upon the working classes.
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It would note that improvements to workers’ livelihoods come about not by working for global capital, but through their own struggles for better wages and conditions, gender equality, access to land, and for political and economic democracy. The significant human development gains of the European working classes after the second world war were due not to the generosity of capitalists and states, but to the threat of mass unrest from below: “If you don’t give the people social reform, they will give you social revolution,” Quintin Hogg, a leading light in the Tory party, told the British parliament in 1943.
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In many of these factories, productivity, employment and wages increased as workers enjoyed an unprecedented degree of workplace democracy and, for the first time, a real incentive to collaborate to enhance their labour, as they were its direct beneficiaries.
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In this elitist conception of development, innovating entrepreneurs, supported by benign states, generate wealth through participation in capitalist markets, which then trickles down to the population, who should be grateful for the enhancement of their lives. This view rests on a paradox. The process of wealth creation, whether through incorporation into “free” markets, or through state-led generation and allocation of resources, requires the subordination of the working masses to the elite’s objectives — low wages, long hours and subjection to strict management discipline, denial of trade union rights and suppression of workers’ political actions.
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Of liberation & betrayal | Frontline - 0 views
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White South African mining magnates, billionaires and businessmen were meanwhile meeting the exiled leaders of the ANC, such as Mbeki, in European capitals, to offer deals and hammer out the economic structure of post-apartheid South Africa; a favourite meeting place was a majestic mansion, Mells Park House, near Bath, in England.
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The white ruling elite had prepared for such outcomes with great deliberation. It had methodically nurtured a new black entrepreneurial and professional class through loans, subsidies, etc., whose interests predictably came into conflict with those of the black working classes and the poor who were the mass base of the anti-apartheid struggle in all its aspects. Like any typical national bourgeoisie in post-colonial Africa and Asia, members of this newly confected class aspired to little more than becoming intermediaries between global capital and the national market.
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Thabo Mbeki—once a member of the central committee of the SACP, trained in economics in England and in guerrilla warfare in the Soviet Union, an eminent leader of the ANC who criss-crossed continents during the 1970s and 1980s to connect the exiled political leadership with the externally based military units, Vice-President under Mandela and President of South Africa after him—could, in the fullness of time, gleefully say, “Just call me a Thatcherite.” Self-enrichment is at the heart of varieties of Thatcherism. Or, as Deng Xiaoping famously said: “It is glorious to be rich.”
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On July 11, 2013, John Pilger published a piece on his interview with Mandela after the ANC had taken hold of power, had abandoned the black working classes and the poor to their fate, and was launched upon a wave of brisk privatisations and deregulations, which led, among other things, to fabulous enrichment of the new ANC elite, Mandela’s close associates and Cabinet Ministers in particular. Pilger reports that when he said to Mandela that it was all contrary to what he had said in 1990, the latter shrugged him off with the remark, “For this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy.” Not only that! Mandela was frequently seen in the company of the most corrupt of his Ministers even after he relinquished power.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Jul 13
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NAI Forum - 0 views
naiforum.org/...rent-africa-optimism-%E2%80%95
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The prevailing optimism gives no true picture of Africa. Short-term exploitation and large-scale agriculture are neither socially nor environmentally sustainable. Economic and social inequalities are growing on the continent.
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The current overall African growth rate of about 5 per cent annually is largely based on natural resource exploitation for export, especially of oil, gas and minerals.
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A growing African elite and middle class in collaboration with foreign allies have also secured benefits for themselves. Therefore, economic inequality is growing rapidly in Africa, as in Asia.
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The weakness of the Afro-optimistic perspective is reinforced by recent research showing that foreign investments to a large extent are directed towards African agricultural land for the production of energy crops and food for export. Such investments often take place in interaction between foreign and domestic African interests, and with the support of international aid. Such projects are highly mechanized and require little labour. Large-scale agriculture focuses mainly on a single crop, thus undermining biodiversity. Irrigation is necessary but often leads to conflicts with local smallholder farmers, of whom the majority are women. In Africa, smallholders have weak water and land rights, despite their paramount importance of their production for food security – they produce 90 per cent of the food in Africa.
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This large-scale agriculture uses 75 per cent of the country’s farmland, but contributes only 60 per cent of the gross annual agricultural production. It employs only two people per 100 acres, while small-scale farming provides jobs for 15 people in the same area, accounting for the bulk of food production.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Nov 13
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South Africa's untold tragedy of neoliberal apartheid | ROAR Magazine - 0 views
roarmag.org/...south-africa-marikana-anc-poor
africa development international social movements south africa neoliberalism mandela
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All of this became painfully obvious in August last year when militarized police forces violently cracked down on a wildcat miners’ strike in the platinum town of Marikana. In the ensuing bloodbath, the most serious bout of state violence since the Sharpville massacre of 1960 and the end of apartheid in 1994, 34 workers were killed after being peppered with machine gun fire at close range.
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The story of South Africa over the last 20 years must qualify as one of the most authentic political tragedies of our era. Once upon a time, not very long ago, the country was held up as an example to the world. In 1994, when the apartheid regime finally came to an end and South Africans overwhelmingly elected Mandela as their first democratic President, the world looked to South Africa with a mix of hope and expectation.
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In this brave new world, Mandela was a former revolutionary turned philosopher-king; an elder of the global village who came to represent not only the suffering and aspirations of black Africans, but also the hopes and desires of Western progressives. Mandela mingled with world leaders, the European royalty and multi-billionaires; he hung out with popstars and sports legends, but he also maintained a close friendship with Fidel Castro and Muammar Khaddafi. Father Madiba, in a way, was above politics. Or was he?
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While a couple of pejoratively called “black diamonds” have made it to the top, crafting a small indigenous elite that slowly takes up residence in the old vestiges of white privilege, for the vast majority of South Africans nothing has really changed.
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Samir Amin once wrote that “the logic of this globalization trend consists in nothing other than that of organizing apartheid on a global scale.” Apartheid here is not meant as a metaphor; it is what a philosopher might call an ontological category of the neoliberal world order. As Slavoj Žižek has argued, “the explosive growth of slums in the last decades … is perhaps the crucial geopolitical event of our times.”
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First of all, the ANC decided to take over existing institutions — political and economic institutions that were based on systematic exclusion and massive inequality — and thereby ended up unwittingly reproducing these same oppressive structures with a new elite formation. Secondly, as Lawrence Hamilton explains in his book The Political Philosophy of Needs, the ANC leadership deliberately embraced a particular ideological vision of how to “transform” the country: a vision he refers to as the “political philosophy of rights”, in other words: liberalism. South Africa’s new constitution was the clearest manifestation of this: everything was put to work to secure the rights of individuals to vote and be represented, to own property, and to not be discriminated against in any way. Little attention, however, was given to questions of political participation, genuine popular sovereignty, and the satisfaction of basic human needs.
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Partly because of the reigning neoliberal ideology of the time, and partly out of fear of reproducing the Zimbabwean experience where Mugabe’s violent land expropriations had led to a white exodus and economic collapse, Mandela and the ANC opted for a gradualist approach that actually ended up turning the ANC into an agent of apartheid itself. Legally, the property rights of white landowners took priority over the human needs of local shackdwellers. Workers’ rights were increasingly hollowed out as the right to unionize gave way to the “right” to be “represented” by a corrupt and ANC co-opted union leadership. The state-oriented approach and the political philosophy of rights thus locked poor South Africans into a logic of representation and top-down decision-making whereby human needs, social autonomy and political participation came to be subordinated to the formation of a new political and corporate elite of former ANC revolutionaries.
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The so-called Abahlali baseMjondolo, or shackdwellers’ movement, has since spread to Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg.
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The action was just one more expression of the dawning realization around the world that, in these times of universal deceit, only an insistence on radical autonomy can take the revolution forward.
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Twenty years after apartheid, the old freedom fighters of the ANC have come to reproduce the same structures of oppression against which they once arose.
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A local slumdweller, probably somewhere in his thirties, lay dead on the side of the road, his body awkwardly twisted into an impossible position, his eyes still wide open. Some two hundred meters ahead, a car had pulled over on the curb, its driver casually leaning on the vehicle while talking to a policeman. No one had even bothered to cover up the body. This man just lay there like a dead animal — another road kill in endless wave of needlessly extinguished lives.
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This time, however, the policemen and politicians responsible for the massacre were mostly black and represented the same party that had once led the struggle against racial oppression: the ruling ANC of President Jacob Zuma and the iconic freedom fighter Nelson Mandela.
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Abahlali stresses its autonomy from state institutions, political parties, businesses and NGOs, and rejects both the ANC and its principal rivals in the opposition, drawing instead on self-organization and direct action to secure improvements in living conditions, to defend communities under threat of eviction, to reclaim urban land for social redistribution, and to democratize society from below.
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Pambazuka - Somalia's rough road to peace - 0 views
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Without Barre’s iron fist, the clan-based political rivalries which had been artificially repressed for two decades bloomed and a country swimming in foreign arms and local animosity was plunged into a vicious civil war.
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Where international peacekeepers and foreign soldiers had cut and run, the UIC, working with the local population, struggled to extract peace and order from chaos.
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By 2007, a weak Somali transitional government called for international military action to help destroy the Islamic courts. Ethiopian forces – bolstered by the United States’ blessing and with the support of some its arms – entered the fray to destroy an organisation supposedly linked to al-Qaeda. However, this same organisation had won the respect of many Somalis by rescuing parts of the country from chaos and random violence. Although Ethiopia’s military action in Somalia decimated the UIC, it also forever de-legitimised the Transitional Federal Government.
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The foremost ethnographer of Somalia, I.M. Lewis, penned a letter in 2007 criticising the European Union’s ‘astonishing, and imperialistic behavior … in completely ignoring Somali public opinion and its overwhelming rejection of [the TFG]’.[6]
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A recent International Crisis Group (ICG) report on al-Shabaab describes the Ethiopian invasion as the event that turned the loosely organised Islamic courts coalition into a much more centralised and extremist organisation.[8]
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the Kampala bombings must be seen as what they are, a baiting of the bear. By bringing the Somalian fight to the international community so crudely, al-Shabaab is counting on an aggressive international response. More civilian deaths at the hands of AMISOM soldiers will close off the renewed possibilities for moderate leadership to seize the reins from al-Shabaab and discredit the transitional government. Similarly, the rampant anti-Islamic rhetoric of the US war on terror will alienate the moderate elements of Somalia’s Islamist movements. Once bombs begin falling in earnest and fighting intensifies, the Somalian struggle will once again align with the script that poses national patriots against foreign aggressors, and the al-Shabaab will have already won the ideological struggle for the Somali people’s support.
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The United States and the African Union must leave off nation-building in Somalia. Effective solutions to the Somalian civil war will not be cooked up in Kampala, Washington DC or Addis Ababa. One of the key lessons of Somaliland’s experience is that effective government must come from within. In the words of the former Somaliland president Dahir Rayale Kahin, ‘you can’t be donated power… We built this state because we saw the problems here as our problems. Our brothers in the South are still waiting—till now—for others.’[9]
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Most importantly, Somaliland has secured a treasured peace on its own terms and by its own efforts. In the past 20 years Somaliland’s struggle has been for world recognition. Yet, ironically, it is precisely the country’s isolation from the international community that has allowed it to develop home-grown peace and stability. Without the dubious direction of international experts and unable to rely on international economic assistance, Somaliland has reconstructed itself with self-reliance, accountability and local investment as its touchstones.
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Persuasive argument. Somaliland developed because of, not in spite of, isolation from "international experts" and "international economic assistance." A useful project would compare Somaliland, Eritrea, Niger and Mali. All have in important ways separated themselves from the international development mainstream.
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[9] Jeffry Gettleman, ‘Somaliland is an overlooked African success story,’ The New York Time, March 6, 2007
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DEVELOPMENT: Economic Boom Worsened De-industrialisation of LDCs - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views
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"But higher commodity prices -- of mainly oil and gas -- have not solved the issues of price fluctuation and dependence on commodity export," he noted. This pattern of growth is "non-sustainable" and "non-inclusive".
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UNCTAD proposes a "New International Economic Architecture" that goes beyond aid and trade to include technology, commodities and climate change.
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"In NAMA (the non-agricultural market access negotiations) we have to be able to maintain the (original) developmental perspective of the Round to help countries diversify; get value addition; deal with tariff peaks and escalation; and eliminate all trade distortions. We should not add and add agendas in NAMA."
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There is a need for transaction tax on trade in commodity derivatives (financial instruments linked to future prices of underlying assets) and for more schemes to deal with the stabilisation of commodity prices. Panitchpakdi indicated concern over the excess of liquidity driving up the prices of maize and wheat in 2010.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 29 Jun 08
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Pambazuka News - 0 views
www.pambazuka.org/...48919
development government international mugabe oppression pambazuka panafrican progressive transition zimbabwe
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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A more nuanced yet still critical view of Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Particularly useful for critically evaluating the original liberation.
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Governance for Development in Africa Initiative launched at SOAS - 0 views
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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.
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Africa's Unnatural Disaster - 0 views
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AGRA’s assumptions – and those of the mainstream media – rest on the premise that the Africa’s hunger problem is one of production. While production may be part of the story, it’s far from the complete picture. The heart of the agriculture crisis that Africa and the world are currently experiencing lies in the failed policy paradigm promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, institutions that still have enormous control over economic policy in many African countries.
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The second concession that the 2008 WDR makes to reality (as opposed to market fundamentalist ideology) is an allowance for targeted subsidies.
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The recommendations of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the World Bank amount to insanity – recommending more of the same and expecting better results.
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The strategies of the World Bank and IMF have successfully applied shock doctrine methods to plunder the globe, causing widespread hardship and suffering, for the benefit of the few and creating millions of victims. They are the embodiment of psychopathy on a global scale, and from that perspective, they are not 'failed', but actually a devastating and horrific success.
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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
development africa international industry governance china news bank pambazuka world 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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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."
Pambazuka - The so-called 'Rwandan Economic miracle' is a mirage - 0 views
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 11 Nov 12
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Coal versus Communities in Mozambique: Exposing poor practices by VALE and Rio Tinto - 0 views
www.sarwatch.org/...ces-by-vale-and-rio-tinto.html
adjustment neoliberalism industries neoclassical extractive social stabilization structural mozambique coal
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This paper by Dr. Claude Kabemba and Camilo Nhancale for the Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW), entitled Coal versus Communities in Mozambique: Exposing poor practices by VALE and Rio Tinto, details many of the problems associated with the massive new coal mines from lack of contractual transparency to preference for expatriate workers and foreign suppliers to the unjust resettlement programme, which sparked protests in early January.
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Vale reportedly paid US$123 million dollars for the mining rights but the money has never been registered with state agents. If this is correct, Vale’s presence in Mozambique – far from benefiting citizens – is undermining revenue transparency and accountability.
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Vertical integration is undermining local entrepreneurshipThe two investments have provided a new lease of life to Tete Province. There are new economic activities opening up and an influx of people descending on the town. But beneficial links between the extractive companies and local communities do not really exist.
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A Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) research team visited three communities resettled by Vale and Rio Tinto – Mualadzi, a Rio Tinto resettlement compound located about 40km from the original Capanga village; Cateme village, a Vale resettlement compound with 720 families from the villages of Chipanga, Mitete, Malabue-Gombe and Bagamoyo; and 25 de Setembro, another Vale resettlement compound housing people from the same four villages. Vale deliberately divided the communities in two with employed villagers moving to 25 de Setembro since it is closer to Moatize and the mine. The unemployed were sent to Cateme, 40 km from the town.
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Vale has also used the resettlement process to divide communities into those with formal and those with no formal work. The impression that this model gives is that uneducated and unemployed members of a community can be dumped anywhere.
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Communities fear that if they continue to be relocated in small groups before all the construction work is done, their legitimate demands will never be met. As they have learned from the people who have already been resettled in Cateme and Mualadzi, the companies are reluctant to complete projects once communities have been relocated. Rio Tinto moved people to Mualadzi before it had finished building key infrastructure such as school and clinics – and they have still not been built.
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In short, Inoni’s new agenda was perceived as a storm in the ethnocentric teapot that Cameroon has become in this day. Let me be clear on this: I am not prescribing ruthlessness as a qualification for leadership in Cameroon. Far from it! What I am saying is that Cameroon is not beyond repair.
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The malaise that should incessantly haunt our leaders (but does not) is that they have betrayed irretrievably Cameroon’s destiny in the community of nations. The countless billions that a generous Providence has poured into our national coffers in the last three decades (1982-2012) would have been enough to launch Cameroon into the middle rank of developed nations and transformed the lives of our needy compatriots.
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Nothing in Cameroon’s politics captures her problem of aborted national integration more graphically than the mixed fortune of the word tribe.
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A Cameroonian child seeking admission into a state school, a student wishing to enter a university, a college graduate seeking employment in the public service, a businessman or woman tendering for a contract, a citizen applying for a national ID or passport, or seeking access to any of the avenues controlled by the state, will sooner or later fill out a form which requires him to confess his tribe (or less crudely and more hypocritically, his region of origin).
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to debar anyone from working anywhere in their country or from participating in the social, political and economic life of the community in which they choose to live on the basis of tribe is another matter altogether. Our constitution outlaws it. Yet prejudice against ‘outsiders’ or ‘strangers’ is an attitude one finds everywhere in Cameroon.
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Cameroon is not totally unredeemable. Our situation is critical but not hopeless. But we should not lose sight of the fact that every single day of neglect brings Cameroon closer to the brink of collapse. The task of pulling Cameroon back and turning it around is clearly beyond the contrivance of the mediocre leadership that we have today. It calls for greatness and selflessness, two qualities that our leaders sorely lack. Cameroonians are what they are today only because their leaders are not what they ought to be. Cameroon has been less than fortunate in its leadership. The young republic emerging out of a dual colonial contraption found Ahmadou Ahidjo, a benighted semi-illiterate, as their first president. The rest is history. Today, we have a sanctimonious megalomaniacal hypocrite, Paul Biya, as head of state. A basic element of this mishap is the conspicuous absence of intellectual rigor in the political thought of our leaders — a tendency to pious materialistic woolliness and self-centered pedestrianism.
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‘virtues’ like ‘patriotism’ and ‘unity’ are not absolute but conditional on their satisfaction of other purposes. As Achebe points out, ‘Their social validity depends on the willingness or the ability of citizens to ask the searching question’ (33) [5]. This calls for some degree of mental rigor, a quality for which Cameroonians, unfortunately, are not famous. In spite of much loose talk about patriotism from those at the helm there is no doubt that Cameroonians are among the world’s most unpatriotic people. This is not because Cameroonians are particularly evil. In fact, they are not. It is rather because patriotism, being part of an unwritten social contract between citizens and the state, cannot exist where the state or its leaders renege on the agreement (Achebe, 1983). It is indisputable that the ideal of patriotism is unattainable in a country as badly run as Cameroon is today.
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He grieves over the fact that Cameroon is a country where tribalism has been raised to the pedestal of a national culture that pervades every discourse, controls the way people think and defines what they oppose or support.
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During my recent stint in Burkina Faso, a country often touted as the poorest in the world, I noticed to my dismay that there was no power failure throughout my stay in the capital city Ouagadougou; the taps in the hotel room ran all the time with the kind of pressure one sees in Western hotels. My hotel room was modest but impeccably clean.
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Cameroon is a country with an eccentric minority who can restrain themselves and an overwhelming majority who just cannot. This leaves the minority of reasonable Cameroonian citizens feeling like a bunch of sane people trapped in a dangerously rowdy mental asylum. This conundrum is compounded by corrupt practices.
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Mr Biya condones corruption because his tribesmen are the biggest looters. Cameroonians have grown accustomed to his silly interrogation où sont les preuves? [13] This is the way the president dismisses cases of wanton looting of the national coffers brought to his attention.
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We are living witnesses to the failure of the executive branch of government to stem the tide of rampant corruption that now threatens to paralyze our nation in every sinew and limb. There is no question that it will take some time to correct this irksome situation that has built up over the years, assuming we want to correct it. But to initiate change the president of the Republic must take and be seen to take a decisive first step toward ridding his administration of all persons on whom the slightest whistle of corruption and scandal has been blown. If he would summon the courage to do that then it will dawn on him that he ought to be Cameroon’s leader; not just its president. More importantly, Biya must learn to deal fairly with all citizens, including the troublesome Anglophones.
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Some critics have compared the frictional co-habitation between the two distinct linguistic communities in Cameroon to the attitude of two travelers who met by chance in a roadside shelter and are merely waiting for the rain to cease before they continue their separate journeys in different directions. This metaphor captures the mutual distrust and animosity that distance Anglophone Cameroonians from their Francophone compatriots. All too often, the perpetrators of this malicious game of divide and conquer are the political leaders on the French-speaking side of the national divide who take delight in fishing in troubled waters. Francophone politicians love to stoke the flames of animosity, thereby whipping up sentiments of mutual hatred on both sides of the Mungo River at the expense of nation-building. Many Francophones make statements intended either to cow Anglophones into submission or incite them into open rebellion.
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Our inaction or cynical action constitute a serious betrayal of our education, of our historic mission and of succeeding generations who will have no future unless we do battle now to preserve it for them.