Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Conceiving of development in this way gives rise, however, to a fundamental paradox. The poor are to be forced to partake in an economic system that is based upon their exploitation and oppression. The way neo liberal and statist thinking gets round this paradox is to conceive of these exploitative and oppressive relations as developmental opportunities rather than impositions.

Guinea's first democratically elected government since independence – led by Alpha Condé, a former doctor of law and professor at the Paris-Sorbonne University in France – is trying to reform and rebrand the country after decades of chronic mismanagement.

At the heart of efforts to attract investors are reforms to the mining code, and the creation of a committee to re-evaluate all 18 mining contracts and make recommendations for some to be renegotiated. "We are making an in-depth assessment of the contracts. If there are some imbalances, our mandate is to negotiate with the mining companies in order to regulate them," says Nava Touré, president of the committee.

Anti-corruption activists say the process lacks teeth and depends on the goodwill of companies to renegotiate the terms of mining deals, something the government admits.

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.

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.

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.

Another bias I must confess to is being heavily influenced by the book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson in which they advance the thesis that it is a combination of inclusive – as opposed to extractive – political and economic institutions that explains the success or failure of nations. For sure, though widely acclaimed, theirs is a hotly contested thesis, but arguments that more aid is central to the achievement of the MDGs do not stack up: it is hard to correlate aid levels with improvements in education or health.

To be blunt, poor countries need to improve their governance. The problem is that aid and global campaigns have a poor track record of improving governance. It is not just love that money can’t buy, good governance also. There is no escaping that good governance is endogenous.

A job opens up the prospect not just of economic security and wellbeing for the employed or self-employed person, it also offers dignity and hope of a better life, even if current conditions are far from ideal. Apart from putting money in the pockets of workers, who can then exercise more choice over their own lives – pay for housing, food, healthcare, school fees, clothing, leisure, and save for a rainy day – jobs are important means to the end of better governance in the places that lack them but need them most of all.

Dynamic African leaders such as Ft. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings of Ghana, Yoweri Musevini of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Isaias Aferworki of Eritrea and several others, followed in the footsteps of Africa’s founding fathers, and sought to reverse the decline of the continent and build progressive nations in which people’s rights are respected, in which different ethnic groups lived together in peace and harmony and a world in which Africans were respected on equal terms with others. ‘Developmentalism’ became the new ideology of the day. Future generations will judge them but for now, let us celebrate their good intentions.

It should be noted that Burkina Faso and its capital Ouagadougou is one of the most historic places in West Africa. It was the scene to intellectual and cultural renaissance before colonialism desecrated this land.

Relief agencies estimate that nearly 1.4 million Somalis have been displaced since the 1990s, and nearly half the country’s population – more than 3 million people – is still in need of relief aid and assistance. But this is the story of the Somalia that we all know. The less known story is that of a country that was systematically destroyed by international NGOs, UN agencies and donors who undermined the local economy by flooding Somalia with aid, especially since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991.

His main argument is that the aid industry undermined development in Somalia by stifling the local economy through relief supplies that killed industries, and which were routinely stolen by warlords, merchants and government officials.

A leaked UN report states that roughly half of the $485 million of aid provided to Somalia by the World Food Programme (WFP) in 2009 has gone to corrupt contractors, rebels and even UN staff members. This is not so unusual. A recent BBC report claims that more than 90 per cent of the money raised by Bob Geldof’s famous 1985 Live Aid concert for famine victims in Ethiopia was siphoned off by rebel fighters.

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.

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.

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.

Adedeji further disclosed that it is now widely acknowledged that the current global turbulence accentuated by the financial and banking turmoil which is reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 1920s and the 1930s, including the recent upheaval in Nigeria 's banking sector, "is the failure of corporate governance.."

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.

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.

"Banks are quick to penalise ordinary customers for minor infractions but seem to be less concerned about dirty money passing through their accounts,"

The antigovernment demonstrators think France still pulls the strings, and while French officials deny this, their actions often suggest otherwise. In Gabon, where the election of an autocrat’s son dashed hopes for ending 40 years of rule under the Bongo family, Mr. Sarkozy’s man in Africa, Alain Joyandet, showed up at Ali Bongo’s pomp-filled inauguration, telling reporters that Mr. Bongo “must be given time.”

recently noted persistent human rights abuses by Cameroon

French officials have discouraged scrutiny of African leaders’ corruption, the fruits of which often end up in Paris. A French good-government group’s campaign to expose and recover the “ill-gotten gains” of three of the most notorious leaders — the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Congo Republic and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea — has been opposed by the prosecutor of the French Republic on the grounds that the group has no standing to sue, and that the facts are “ill defined.”

We cannot forget that many people died and fought hard and with courage and determination to gain this freedom from apartheid. We honour those people all the time. Many of our members struggled in trade unions and in community organisations. We have members whose ancestors fought in the war fought from the Nkandla forest and in the rebellion on Nguza Hill. The struggle against apartheid is our struggle.

But we have a clear understanding of what that struggle was for and it was not just to replace white politicians with black politicians. That struggle was not just to force white business to take on some black partners. That struggle was to ensure that South Africa belongs, really belongs, to all who live in it.

seventeen years after the end of apartheid there are millions of people who are ‘forgotten’ and yet they are being told that they are free. They are being told that they must go to the stadiums on an empty stomach to listen to politicians tell them how far they have come and then go home to a shack.

this is not limited to the public sector. In the private sector, tribalism promotes the creation of self-sustaining and mutually supportive bubbles based on ethnicity. During the hiring process, tribalist bosses will preference people from their own social grouping for top jobs. In workplace disputes, they will not be impartial but will often favour their tribal comrade. During business deals, especially within corporates and multinationals, ethnic affiliation becomes a big factor in building trust between two parties and often in concluding mutually beneficial deals.

It’s shocking that in this day and age – in the so-called “new” South Africa – there are few public figures willing to call the actions and voting patterns of Afrikaans- and English-speaking white South Africans for what they are: narrow-minded tribalism.

The real tribalists (and racists) who Mbeki failed to mention are white South Africans, who effectively come together to vote as a bloc for only two political parties: the white-led Democratic Alliance and the smaller white nationalist Freedom Front Plus.

Compaoré is not alone in extending presidential term limits. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda disposed of them altogether when he amended the Ugandan constitution. Yet both these men deposed their predecessors on the grounds of incompetence, repression and corruption.

Despite what melancholic lyrics may suggest, they exist – the men and women who want to change things. In the months leading up to the 2006 elections in Uganda, there were demonstrations outside the Central Police Station and the High Court where an opposition presidential candidate, Dr Kiiza Besigye, was first detained and then brought to trial. The big open air Nakasero Market is located a mere 200 metres from there. On one of the trail days, I found the market deserted. Everyone was at court, I was told.

The West was willing to help with the rehabilitation. The only condition: that the leaders sign up for IMF economic structural adjustment programmes. Should someone who actually needs micro-finance really borrow a large development loan without hope of ever paying it off? Was there really a choice? For Sankara there was. He declined all offers. His disagreement with what he called “debt imperialism” became the centrepiece of many of his speeches. “We can produce enough food to feed ourselves….Malheureusment, for lack of organization we still need to beg for food aid. This type of assistance is counter-productive and has kept us thinking that we can only be beggars who need aid…I am asked ‘Where is imperialism?’ Just look at your plates, you see imported corn, rice or millet. C’est ça, c’est ça, l’ímperialism. Let’s not look any further [i].”

It is obvious that in the conceptual framework of the sub-imperialist theorists there is simply no room for regionalism in Africa or regional struggles against the imperialist countries of the US and Europe. I find this most disempowering. For the last almost 30 years some of us have been actively engaged in battling against Europe’s attempt to impose a totally iniquitous ‘Economic Partnership Agreements’ (EPas) on our countries – among them, for example, that our countries stop all domestic production and export subsidies. The latest deadline for signing the EPA is October 2014. If we fail to sign it, Europe will impose sanctions on Africa. Civil society organisations – such as the Southern and Eastern African Trade and Information Institute (SEATINI) and the human rights organisations in the region - have been carrying out a sustained struggle against the EPas and have so far succeeded in holding back their governments to signing the EPas. Should they stop doing their campaigns?

He forcibly removed blacks to native reserves through the 1894 Glen Grey Act, which presaged apartheid’s notorious Bantustan policies by half a century. Rhodes further pushed the Cape parliament to introduce hut and labour taxes on blacks to force them into the cash economy; packed over 11,000 black miners into inhumane, dog-patrolled, wire-protected barracks; and supported draconian labour laws (including the legal flogging of “disobedient” black labourers through the notorious “strop bill”) that facilitated the continued supply of human fodder to his mines, and impoverished the black population.

Price’s fifth claim was that Rhodes was a great philanthropist. aside from the difficulty of being generous with stolen booty, it is important to note that, though 7,688 Rhodes scholars have studied at Oxford University since 1903, the scholarship scheme excluded women until 1976 and had clearly been designed for a “heaven’s breed” of largely Anglo-Saxon white males. The Rhodes trustees themselves today remain mainly white men, while most of the scholarships still go disproportionately to white Americans, Canadians, Australians, and South Africans. Contrary to Price’s statement that Rhodes did not graduate from Oxford, the imperialist - not reputed to have been a particularly good student or a potential Rhodes scholar! – took eight years to achieve a “gentleman’s pass” in law from Oxford. The South African scholarships – from which Price himself benefitted - have been particularly controversial, since they have effectively served as a form of white “affirmative action” for over a century, disproportionately going to schools that did not admit blacks or girls until the 1980s. Only four of the first 80 scholars were black.