While a number of African countries signed interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union late last year, African policy makers are coming under increasing pressure from a variety of stakeholders to revoke and annul the interim framework agreements. At the continental level, the International Trade Union Confederation-Africa called “for the nullification of the interim EPAs and for appropriate time to be given for negotiating new trade relations between Africa and Europe that take account of Africa’s genuine needs for development and regional integration”. Similarly, the East African Community (EAC) signed, without parliamentary debate, an interim agreement “ostensibly to avoid disruption of exports to the latter bloc [the EU] following the World Trade Organisation-mandated expiry of the Cotonou pact”. Parliamentarians called this week on Uganda to revoke the partial EPA, said to entrench “unfair treatment” of the five-member EAC which Uganda currently chairs. The ninth ordinary session of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) is being held from May 5 - 16, 2008 in South Africa. Included in the programme will be a debate on the EPAs and their impact on integration in Africa as well as a broader debate on the EU-Africa Strategy and the report of the Second EU-Africa Summit.
Meanwhile the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have signed an agreement to establish markets in China and ECOWAS aimed at enhancing trade and investment activities between respective business sectors as the first step towards promoting economic and trade cooperation envisioned under the ECOWAS-China Economic and Trade Forum scheduled for September, 2008. Also in September, the Ghana High Level Forum on aid effectiveness will be held in Accra. A preparatory meeting was held in Kigali, Rwanda, this week, with the aim of creating a unified African “negotiating position to firmly abide with during the upcoming Ghana aid effectiveness summit”. Participants at the workshop in Kigali called on donors to commit to providing aid according to the national priorities of recipient countries.
Cuba and the ECOWAS Commission have agreed to implement a regional programme on renewable energy that will promote energy efficiency. “The programme involves the donation of one million compact fluorescent lamps to match the purchase of a similar number by ECOWAS under a two-phased pilot project”. Further, Cuba is providing an energy consultant to provide technical support and training for the project. In Southern Africa, "energy trading" initiatives between Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states have been established in order to offer more secure and adequate power supplies throughout the region. “This form of trading in energy supplies allows countries to buy and sell surplus power through an ever-widening network of electrical lines and relay substations”, writes Richard Nyamanhindi. “However, if energy trading is going to continue benefiting the region, there is need for a follow-up on international pledges made to finance regional infrastructure projects under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)”.
The African Development Bank will hold its annual meeting seminars under the theme of “Fostering shared Growth: Urbanization, Inequalities and Poverty in Africa” in Mozambique on May 14-15, 2008. The seminars will explore the opportunity provided by urbanization to foster economic growth and to achieve national development. In addition to the ministerial roundtable and the high-level seminars, a seminar will be held on May 12th to exchange experiences of rural finance reform and financial innovation between China and African countries and discuss the role of finance in rural economic development. Meanwhile, as the “Imagining the Future of East Africa” scenarios report is launched in Kigali, Charles Onyango-Obbo determines that unity of the region will be driven in part by new technologies, underscoring two important developments over the last year: the first being the announcement that Rwanda would no longer require work permits for EAC professionals; and the second being the decision by Kenya’s Safaricom to open its initial public offering of stocks to all east Africans.
As the new leadership is sworn in at the African Union Commission (AUC), the Pan-African Parliament will this week debate the report of the audit of the African Union concluded in January 2008, within which many of the recommendations focus on the AUC and are intended to rationalise, strengthen and improve continental integration. The PAP will also consider the reports of its election observer missions to Kenya and Zimbabwe. As the crisis in Zimbabwe continues, civil society participants at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) issued a resolution calling on the Commission to send a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe to investigate alleged abuses of human and peoples’ rights as well as to issue a statement on the “impact of the delay by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) in announcing the results of the presidential election”. The resolution further elaborates minimum requirements that must be adhered to in the event that the two contesting parties agree to hold a second election so as “to contribute to a credible, free and fair election”. Meanwhile a SADC delegation held crisis talks in Harare this week, while foreign ministers from the African Union (AU) discussed the Zimbabwe situation in Arusha, Tanzania. In addition, the new AU chairman Jean Ping met Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission and South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating between the parties under the auspices of SADC this weekend. Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya has stated that “we are going to ask the African Union to be more proactive when dealing with this issue. The fact that elections can be held in an independent country and it takes more than a month for the results to be announced is sad. That is not really how you want to run a democracy. The rest of Africa is silent and this is not good for democracy. We must speak when an injustice is being done”.