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Africa
Resource Centre |
| CUTS-ARC SOUNDS |
| Promoting South-South Civil Society Cooperation Issue
No. 8, June 2005 |
| CONTENTS
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2005: Spotlight on Africa The year 2005 is going to be a decisive one for Africa. The Commission for Africa (CfA) released the final report on 11th March 2005, which will be presented to the Group of 8 (G8) wealthy nations summit in Scotland in July 2005. (For details: www.commissionforafrica.org). The document’s brainchild and Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair, will host both the G8 summit and will hold the rotating presidency of the 25 member countries of the European Union. Surely, the CfA document which declares the living conditions for most Africans to be "intolerable and an affront to the dignity of all mankind," will be tabled as an agenda item. The US President, who recently entered a second term in office, also declared that addressing Africa’s poverty would be the centrepiece of his agenda. Further, starting with the G8 summit, the series of major international events will focus on Africa’s poverty-related challenges. In September 2005 a United Nations (UN) Special Summit will review progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which aims to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. In December 2005 the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) sixth ministerial conference in Hong Kong will reveal whether the Doha round of global trade talks have secured new deals to benefit the world’s most impoverished countries. The report could not be more lucid in describing African poverty and stagnation as “the greatest tragedy of our time.” Editor
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The 7Up3 Project Launched in Africa On 22-23 March 2005 Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) organised a Launch Meeting in Kampala, Uganda of the project, entitled “Capacity Building on Competition Policy in Select Countries of Eastern and Southern Africa” (7Up3 Project). Consumer Unity and Trust Society-Africa Resource Centre (CUTS-ARC), being a vital link and a sub-regional resource centre, which would ensure smooth coordination among partners in this project, attended this strategic meeting. The 7Up3 project which is being executed by the CUTS Centre for Competition, Investment and Economic Regulation (CUTS C-CIER) in seven countries of the region: Botswana, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Uganda, is supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Norway and the Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom. The project aims to develop the capacity of national stakeholders including the policy makers, regulators, civil society organisations, especially consumer associations and groups, academicians and the media in the project countries, through a participatory process to understand and appreciate prevailing competition concerns from the national, regional and international perspective, and enable them to respond appropriately. This would be achieved through intensive research by leading research institutions in each of the project countries covering evaluation of the competition concerns in the project countries, including their regional dimensions and implications. (For details: www.cuts-international.org)
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New Indian Law Drives Up Africa's Cost of AIDS Drugs The Indian government's recent moves to curtail the copying of patented medicines have received a mixed response in Southern Africa. Critics warn this threatens the future supply of cheap drugs, but manufacturers hope that India's new patent laws will boost their prospects. India amended its 1970 Patent Act to bring it in line with WTO obligations. The amendments extend the scope of patentable inventions to include products; previously the law only allowed "process patents", which enabled drug makers to copy other firms' products by making small changes in manufacturing. The amendment has brought fears that the flourishing India's generic AIDS drug industry that supplies drugs to about half of the 700,000 people receiving cheap, high-quality Indian generics for HIV treatment in developing countries may no longer be able to afford them. (http://www.allafrica.com, 29.03.05) Anti-Poverty Funds Come With Strings Attached The
World Bank's soft loan arm, the International Development Association
(IDA), will get a funding increase of 34 billion dollars from rich nations
from 2005 to 2007 representing a 25 percent increase, the largest increase
in two years. IDA is the World Bank affiliate that provides assistance
to the world's 81 poorest countries, where the vast majority of people
live on less than two dollars a day. The money will be used in part
to foster what industrialised nations call ”a better climate in poor
countries for private investment,” ”entrepreneurship” and ”domestic
private sector growth.” These are the same targets that have attracted
widespread criticism for the World Bank and its sister institution,
the International Monetary Fund. Africa Commission: World Bank and IMF "Increasingly Irrelevant" The report of the Commission for Africa, launched on 11th March 2005, has pointed the finger at the Bretton Woods Institutions for their role in African underdevelopment and has called for sweeping reforms. Controversially, the Commission has proposed the establishment of "decision-making councils" for each institution made up of member countries' political representatives. In its analysis of the reasons for African economic woes, the Commission has singled out the IMF for forcing African governments to slash budgets for clinics and schools at a time when Asian countries were investing. "Evidence shows that IMF and World Bank economic policy in the 1980s and early 1990s took little account of how these policies would potentially impact on poor people in Africa." (http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org News, 11.03.05) SADC to Have Intelligence Unit The Southern African Development Community (SADC) secretariat based in Gaborone, Botswana will establish a regional early warning system - an intelligence information gathering unit – that will collect information from intelligence organs of the member states about indications to threats of security in the region such as the trafficking of illicit drugs and movement of arms as well as food security. However, the unit’s critics have warned that its effectiveness will be undermined, as countries are likely to starve the unit of information and only give what they want the unit to know. (http://www.allafrica.com, 04.03.05) Business Report Shows Increased U.S.-Africa Trade A report released by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on "US Trade and Investment with sub- Saharan Africa" shows that trade between the US and sub-Saharan Africa increased appreciably in 2003, partly as a result of benefits offered under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). US imports from sub-Saharan African countries eligible for AGOA benefits increased 36.3 percent to US$14bn in 2003. The largest share came from Nigeria, which interestingly received the largest amounts of US foreign direct investment flows (US$823mn) out of the US$7.8bn total FDI coming to Africa largely due to the rise in AGOA imports from US purchases of energy-related products. However, the report shows that there was also an overall decline from 2002 on imports in textiles, apparel, and transportation equipment. (http://www.statedepartment.org, 21.01.05) COMESA Plans for Intellectual Property Rights Programme A team of researchers from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) are going to conduct an assessment of the member countries' intellectual property rights enforcement regimes, as a background to evolving stronger rules. The COMESA Secretariat is currently in the process of developing programmes that will foster the generation, protection and commercial use of Intellectual Property Rights as a means of stimulating economic growth in the region. COMESA is being supported in this exercise by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, which is committed to supporting developing countries to prepare national strategic plans to promote the generation and commercial use of intellectual property assets. The Research will cover 15 countries including Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. (http://www.allfrica.com, 09.03.05)
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The CfA: Picking Africa as an Agenda Item Repeatedly, Africa as a development agenda item has been falling off the table. It is the only continent to register negative growth in the last 25 years. It is clear that the continent has fallen dramatically behind other developing regions, with declining growth rates, increasing infant and maternal mortality, high HIV/AIDS prevalence, increasing poverty where more than 315 million live on less than US$1 a day, and continuously falling life expectancy. Meanwhile, declining aid from rich countries and closed markets for African goods have made things worse. Sympathetic and forward thinking world leaders have offered to help. One such latest initiative is the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa (CfA). However, this initiative is not the antecedent of its kind as there have been other well-intentioned ideas focused on Africa. Please read about this and other recent news items evoking debate in Southern and Eastern Africa. (For details:
cutsarc@zamnet.zm
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Contact Us: Africa
Resource Centre
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