In order to measure progress on achievement of the Paris Declaration, the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness called on developing countries to partner with donor communities to ensure good statistics are produced to facilitate development results.

Congo's eastern borderlands risk plunging back into all-out war between the army and Tutsi rebels after the heaviest clashes in months, the U.N. peacekeeping mission chief said. The enemies fought heavy battles last week in North Kivu province, where violence fuelled by simmering ethnic tensions has raged despite the official end of Congo's broader 1998-2003 war, a regional free-for-all over the country's mineral wealth.

The government of the Peoples’ Republic of China says it has resolved to build 100 primary schools across Africa, with Liberia considered as one of the favorites to benefit from the gesture. The special envoy on African Affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mr. Liu Guijin, said in addition to the construction of these schools, his government has planned to build 13 hospitals across the continent to assist with the medical needs of the countries that would benefit.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists are calling for a new strategy to remove harsh media laws that have been used to intimidate and stifle independent journalism. The IFJ says the government has indicated its willingness to have a full review of the extensive legal regulations that have been put in place over the past five years.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has dismissed an appeal by prosecutors against its earlier decision to suspend the trial of the Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, accused of recruiting child soldiers to serve in his militia. The court announced the decision in a statement, noting that judges with the ICC’s trial chamber had made the ruling.

United Nations humanitarian agencies are expanding their relief efforts across West Africa, where rising flood waters have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in seven countries, damaged major infrastructure and sparked the threat of widespread outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Zimbabwe’s power sharing talks looked set to completely collapse on Thursday after Mugabe issued an ultimatum to the MDC to join a proposed unity government or be left out. The ZANU PF leader threatened to appoint a new cabinet if the MDC did not sign up. “If after tomorrow (Thursday), Tsvangirai does not want to sign, we will certainly put together a cabinet. We feel frozen at the moment,” Mugabe told the state owned Herald newspaper.

Textbooks may soon be available online if a pilot project yields results. The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has entered into an agreement with the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) meant to provide learning materials to schools in soft copies as well as online. According to the deal, the CCK will fund digitalisation of 11 Form One subjects at an initial cost of Sh15.2 million.

The Kenyan human rights organisation Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) released its final report today on the gross human rights violations conducted both by the so-called Sabot Land Defence Forces (SLDF) and a joint police and military operation in the Mt Elgon area of Western Kenya. The report documents murder, rape, arbitrary and mass arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, destruction of property, and cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment of civilians.

South Africans who believe in a conspiracy theory that HIV was introduced by white people as a way of controlling the black population are significantly less likely to have had an HIV test, according to a study published in the September 1st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. For the South African government to restore the public’s faith in their response to HIV, they need to “present a consistent and strong prevention platform about the importance of testing”, argue the investigators.

HIV prevalence and incidence in rural Uganda appear to be increasing, researchers report in a study published in the August 20th edition of AIDS. Coinciding with these increases, the investigators observed changes in HIV sexual risk behaviours in certain groups. The study was conducted in villages in rural Uganda and the trends it revealed mirror other evidence from Uganda pointing to increases in HIV prevalence and incidence.

Leaving Algeria illegally is now considered a criminal offence. In the new Penal Code, approved Sunday (August 31st) by the Council of Ministers, harragas (illegal immigrants) may receive prison sentences of up to six months. Penalties are harsher for the traffickers who co-ordinate the migration networks, allowing sentences up to ten years in the worst cases.

Growing numbers of Congolese refugees like Kashindi Iddi are opting to head home from Tanzania as the situation eases in their home province of South Kivu across Lake Tanganyika. "In 1998, I fled my home town of Matongo because of the war in South Kivu. Today, I'm returning with my wife and three children," Iddi, holding his two-year-old son by the hand, said as he waited to board a UNHCR-charted ferry at the port of Kigoma.

What happens to a nation whose people depend on the largesse of international donor agencies for their existence, once support is withdrawn? If forecasts for the small landlocked African nation of Swaziland are an indication, the granting of temporary relief may be followed by a new humanitarian emergency.

Rapid urbanisation is a fact of life even in the least developed countries where the lion’s share of the population presently lives in rural areas and will continue to do so for decades to come. This paper examines the causes, consequences and policy implications of the ongoing urbanisation in the African less developed countries (LDCs). The authors find that the employment opportunities in either rural or the urban sector are not growing adequately.

In South Africa non-nationals, refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants are often excluded from the services, welfare, and dignity they are guaranteed by South African law and constitutional commitments. Issued annually in commemoration of World Refugee Day (20 June), this report represents research by members of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), a national network of service providers and research bodies in South Africa.

Locked iron gates, entry by invitation, absence of the media and controlled noise behind one of Gaborone’s town houses appeared to be an illustration of innate fear by Batswana lesbians, gay and bisexuals to be outed and recognised as homosexuals during a pride party hosted by the Lesbians, Gay and Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo) recently.

Reporters Without Borders has hailed the decision by the National Press and Publications Council (NPPC) to allow the English-language Sudan Tribune daily to resume publishing after being suspended since 1 September. “This is a very satisfactory decision,” the press freedom organisation said. “The NPPC is sending a positive signal at a difficult time for the Sudanese press.”

Reporters Without Borders is saddened and dismayed by the murder of Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, a reporter for the privately-owned daily Thisday and a member of its editorial board. He was gunned down in Lagos on 17 August, less than two years after Godwin Agbroko, the chairman of its editorial board, was killed in similar circumstances.

A meeting of the members of the Indian Ocean Commission in Addis Ababa has decided to give the go-ahead to connect their island-members by fibre to each other and the rest of the world. The connecting cable would be available on non-discriminatory terms and under a low-cost, high volume regime

A cabinet reshuffle in Burkina Faso saw the appointment of six new ministers and shifting of ministerial portfolios. In a presidential decree, President Blaisse Compaore has retained all officials of the 34-sized cabinet headed by prime minister Tertius Zongo.

The release of detainees suspected to be members of the Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation (FNL), Burundi's last rebel group, would remove a major impediment to the ceasefire between the group and the government, sources said. The FNL has repeatedly demanded the release of its detained members as a pre-condition for implementing a ceasefire with the government, according to local observers in the capital, Bujumbura.

Uganda's rising HIV prevalence is forcing policy makers to look for inventive ways of educating people about the virus. Their latest tool is mobile phone technology, whose rapid growth has provided an avenue that could potentially reach millions with messages.

Fighting resumed on Friday between government troops and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in a new breach of a truce agreement, sources on both sides said. The governor of Nord-Kivu province, Julien Pakulu, said forces of renegade general Laurent Nkunda had attacked positions of the government's Seventh Brigade at Katsiru, about 100km north-west of the provincial capital, Goma.

Nigeria and South Africa are the main emitters of greenhouse gases in Africa, accounting for almost 90% of the emissions in the continent, environmental experts have said. "Nigeria produces almost 45% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Africa from its gas flaring by oil firms in the Niger Delta while South Africa produces as much from industrial pollution," said Stefan Cramer.

The Open Society Institute’s (OSI) Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP) seeks to appoint an Advocacy and Communications Officer, who will be based at the offices of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Closing Date for applications is 12th September 2008

In September 2008, ministers from over 100 countries, heads of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, donor organisations, and civil society organisations from around the world will gather in Accra for the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (2-4 September 2008). This meeting has been promoted as helping “developing countries and marginalised people in their fight against poverty by making aid more transparent, accountable and results-oriented.” The agenda for ‘Aid Effectiveness’ has, however, come under heavy criticism from many quarters. This timely book cautions developing countries against endorsing the agenda proposed at this meeting. If adopted, it would subject the recipients to a discipline of collective control by the donors right down to the village level.

This latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, points out that disarmament has barely started, and no consensus has been reached on integrating former rebels into state and security institutions. Burundi cannot afford to have wasted three years in legislative gridlock and then move directly towards the preparation of the 2010 elections without delivering peace dividends.

Ecobank, the African regional banking group, has announced plans for the continent's biggest rights issue outside South Africa as rising wealth in the world's poorest continent spurs demand for banking services. The bank is seeking to raise $2.5bn on three west African exchanges - Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast - to expand its branch network across the continent in the first African rights issue in more than one country.

As comrades and compatriots, gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, August 14-16, 2008, from all parts of the world, at the African Conference on Participatory Democracy, hosted by the South African Communist Party and the Swedish Left Party under the auspices of the International Left Forum declare the following...

Here is a review of some of the issues that were discussed in the African blogosphere during the break.

Zimreview, African Aspects, Larry Backer, Reinventing Africa, Sami Ben Gharbia’s Blog, Scribbles from the Den

‘Equality and mutual benefit’ are reflected today in Chinese leaders’ frequent emphasis on aid as a partnership, not a one way transfer of charity, -quoted in Deborah Brautigam’s, China’s African Aid: Transatlantic Challenges\

India intends to be a partner in Africa’s resurgence- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh address to the Nigerian National Assembly in 2007

The rise of China and India has indeed created a new set of impulses in the international system. Not only are these two emerging giants making notable waves in the way that international finance, trade and investments are being shaped but also in the way that the rules, which govern the global governance regime are being influenced. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of the international architecture on aid effectiveness. While the debate rages on around whether China and India are new or reemerging donors in the world today, their behaviour as development partners is certainly changing the global aid picture and most importantly in Africa.

Over the past several years, the politics of aid has been an overarching issue in Africa’s development debate. Since 2000 the Group of Eight industrialised rich states (G8) have been promising to double aid to Africa. Unfortunately these promises have largely been unfulfilled with the G8 countries opining that aid money has been misused by African recipients, or that African governments are not conforming to the conditionality of good governance and democratic reform. From the African side the prescriptive nature of the aid policy of traditional donors, their inertia and shifting of the goal posts around what constitutes this doubling of aid has been equally frustrating.

While the G8 and the DAC members are stumbling to find practical ways to ensure that aid is being effectively used to promote sustainable development across the continent, subtle changes are beginning to show with the increasing and deepening footprint of China and India across the continent. Their use of soft power coupled with generous financial packages, and notwithstanding the rhetoric of South-South cooperation has found traction amongst African leaders. But what really makes China and India attractive as development partners for many African governments is the parochial view that Beijing and New Delhi understand Africa’s development needs and are not preoccupied with setting high governance benchmarks that could undermine the delivery of aid, prolong the implementation of projects and emasculate development.

The issue of development cooperation especially aid can be traced back to the United Nations resolution 2626 of 1970 on the international development strategy for the second United Nations development decade where rich countries pledged to give 0.7% of their gross national products as development assistance after recognising the role that aid could play in fostering development in developing countries. The next 30 years that followed saw aid being manipulated and used to meet political ends such as recruiting and rewarding southern allies during the Cold War. The question of aid for development seems to have taken a lull in this period and only surfaced again after the signing of the Millennium Declaration.

The financing for development conference held in Monterrey in 2002 that followed sought to examine the internationally agreed development goals adopted during the past development decade, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that originated from the 2000 Millennium declaration, for their financial implications and to indicate ways of mobilising the financial resources needed to achieve them. The outcome of the conference on financing for development was a turning point in international economic cooperation. The adoption of the Monterrey consensus at the summit level on 22 March 2002 not only signalled a new partnership in international economic relations but also reaffirmed the advantages of the new approach toward consensus building taken by the international community.

In February 2003, leaders of the major multilateral development banks and international and bilateral organisations, donor and recipient country representatives gathered in Rome for the high level forum on harmonisation. They committed to take action to improve the management and effectiveness of aid and to take stock of concrete progress, before meeting again in early 2005. The high level forum concluding statement, the Rome declaration on harmonisation, sets out an ambitious programme of activities, which includes among other things agreements to streamline donor procedures and practices, ensure that donor assistance is aligned with the development recipient's priorities and most importantly to implement the good practices principles and standards formulated by the development community as the foundation for harmonisation.

The Paris Declaration of March 2005 represents a landmark achievement that brings together a number of key principles and commitments in a coherent way. It also includes a framework for mutual accountability, and identifies a number of indicators for tracking progress. There is a general recognition that the Paris declaration is a crucial component of a larger aid effectiveness agenda that could engage parliament, gender groups, civil society actors, new lenders, global funds and foundations in a more direct manner. In the Paris declaration, donors and partners committed themselves to monitoring their progress in improving aid effectiveness against 56 specific actions, from which 12 indicators were established and targets set for 2010 (OECD 2007).

Although the international post Paris process has represented a significant amount of work (in terms of surveys, analysis, consultation process, evaluation of the Paris declaration etc), there still remains the need to ensure that the Accra agenda for action is more ambitious, securing strong input and impact, reaffirming the Paris commitments, reflect on the midterm review of the Paris commitments, and include guidance on areas where further progress is needed.

THE PARIS DECLARATION

The purpose of the 2005 Paris declaration on aid effectiveness is to improve aid delivery in a way that best supports the achievement of the MDGs by 2015.

African countries and donors share the belief that aid has the potential to contribute to economic growth, reduce poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, the way both donors and recipient countries are performing for delivery and use of aid undermine this potential. Some of the conditionalities imposed to aid recipient countries to access aid reduce the extent to which it can contribute to poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs by forcing governments to implement policies that lead to unemployment, bad quality of public services and reduced capacity by citizens to access basic services. Privatisations, cuts in government expenditures in public services such as education and health and adjustment of prices of essential goods like water, electricity and transport to reflect market prices result in unemployment, shortage and lack of motivation of civil servants as well as incapacity of poor people to access these essential services are some examples of such conditions.

On the other hand, recipient countries still face challenges in ensuring good governance, adequate institutional capacity and coordination of activities at different levels. Corruption practices without an appropriate mechanism of imputing responsibilities, lack of coordination across sectors and weak institutions and systems combined with the absence or weak donors’ coordination and harmonisation practices undermine the full potential of aid.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/394/Tandon_l_and_tmb.jpgThe following is the foreword to Yash Tandon's new book, Ending Aid Dependence, published by Fahamu Books, September 2008. For more information please visit, .

The primary and long-term objective of this monograph is to initiate a debate on development aid, and to lay out a doable strategy for ending aid dependence. An exit strategy from aid dependence requires a radical shift both in the mindset and in the development strategy of countries dependent on aid, and a deeper and direct involvement of people in their own development. It also requires a radical and fundamental restructuring of the institutional aid architecture at the global level.

A more immediate objective is to start a dialogue with the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which forms the basis of a high level meeting in September 2008 in Accra, and to caution the developing countries against endorsing the Accra Action Agenda (the ‘Triple A’) offered by the OECD. If adopted, it could subject the recipients to a discipline of collective control by the donors right down to the village level. And this will especially affect the present donor-dependent countries, in particular the poorer and more vulnerable countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. A simple schema (Table 1) at the end of this Foreword illustrates the differences between the strategy of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the South Centre’s aid exit strategy. Beyond the Paris Declaration, there is still the question: What then? There has to be a strategy for ending aid dependence, to exit from it.

There are countries in the South that have more or less graduated out of aid, such as India, China, Brazil and Malaysia, and there are others which will soon self-propel themselves out of aid dependence. In fact, aid was never a strong component in the development of either India or China. They have been reliant on their own domestic savings and the development of a domes- tic market through the protection of local enterprises and local innovation. They have opened themselves up in recent years to the challenge of globalisation and foreign competition only after ensuring that their own markets were strong enough. Brazil, on the other hand, was an aid-dependent country until only recently. Both Brazil and Malaysia have succeeded in ending their aid dependence through strong nationally oriented investment and trade policies. These included supporting and protecting the domestic market and export promotion, as well as the currency, fiscal and monetary policies that go with them.

In an earlier period, during the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called tiger economies of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan-China and Hong Kong ended their aid dependence mainly in the context of the Cold War. These countries were able to use the opportunity provided by the Cold War not only to draw substantial capital from the West, mainly the US, but also to build their production, infra- structural facilities (banking, finance, transport, communications, etc) and export capacity. They took advantage of the relatively open US market to export the products of their early manufacturing growth. They benefited from the fact that the US needed them to fight communism in that part of the world. This enabled them to initiate state-supported industrialisation without having to account to institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, to import technology without having to pay huge fees for intellectual property rights, and to build strong reserve funds.

This book is not about them, although valuable lessons can be learnt from them. We are now living in a different period of history. This book is about countries that were neither able to take advantage of the Cold War period, nor had the benefit of a large domestic market and entrepreneurial class to develop an endogenous development strategy. We are therefore talking largely about the hundred or so countries that fall within the classification of least developed countries (LDCs), the middle-income countries that are not LDCs but are still struggling to become economically independent from foreign aid, and the vulnerable, small and island economies. Geographically, these countries occupy the huge land mass of Africa, large parts of Asia and Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific islands.

The message of this book needs to be seriously considered and debated by all those that are interested in the development of the countries of the South. If this means the rethinking of old concepts and methods of work, then let it be so.

*Benjamin W. Mkapa, President of Tanzania 1995-2005 was President of Tanzania 1995-2005.

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Wambui Mwangi's is an articulate and well researched article that has touched the core. We are too quick to identify with heroes only when they are away and despise/ignore them when they are home. We only remember them when they die or leave for other lands and become victorious. Our mediocrity doms us to baselessness and unabashed revelry in pseudo victories which lead to no real growth. Why is liberation only felt away from home? Are we afraid to take the bull by the horns and the attendant responsibility imposed to see it through to the end. Is that why we elect substanadrd leaders over and over again who lead us to ruin? Thank you for the article. Am glad to know that it's a view held by many.

Events marking the one-year anniversary of the abduction and disappearance of Haitian human rights activist took place in several major cities in August, 2008. Demonstrations and vigils were held in Port au Prince, Haiti where several hundred supporters marched to the Palace of Justice to demand that the government of President Rene Preval and the United Nations release a report on their investigations into his disappearance. Similar actions took place in London, Oakland and Los Angeles.

Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine was last seen in Haiti after leaving a meeting with a human rights delegation from the United States and Canada on August 12, 2007. His abandoned vehicle was found the next morning and he has not been heard from since. Although his alleged abductors contacted friends and family two days later demanding a $300,000 ransom, most people including Amnesty International, believe this was a ruse to cover up what was actually a political abduction aimed at silencing Mr. Pierre-Antoine. They point to the fact that most kidnappers maintain contact in an effort to negotiate and arrange for payment. Amnesty International issued an appeal last January where they stated, "Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine's abduction was reportedly made to look like a kidnapping for ransom. On Tuesday 14 August, the alleged abductors called Pierre-Antoine's family asking for a ransom of USD 300,000. However there has been no further contact from the abductors."

So nobody really knows what the guy is gonna do - see . Obama might be a bit better than McCain - but he might even be worse. Remember the right wing Charles de Gaulle granting independance to Algeria, something the Socialist Party would not do being scared to be regarded as unpatriotic and weak.

At the end it may well be that Osama will pursue the same line as MacCain both serving US-corporate interests but that he will disguise this by grosser human rights propaganda.

A new study finds that international project financiers, including the leading international banks and the International Finance Corporation, do not have a robust framework for minimizing the social risks posed by their projects. The study—"The International Finance Corporation's Performance Standards and the Equator Principles: Respecting Human Rights and Remedying Violations?"—notes that recently-adopted standards are not likely to reduce potential human rights-related conflicts that may arise in projects.

The United Nations refugee agency is assisting foreigners – mostly Zimbabweans – forced to flee their homes in South Africa by xenophobic violence, as the deadline looms for tomorrow’s closure by the Gauteng provincial government of all six temporary shelters, housing 6,000 people. Gloria, a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker who spoke on the condition that her real name not be used, has made her home for the past two months in a Johannesburg facility that will be shut down tomorrow.

Five Ivorian ministers will be interviewed as witnesses as part of an anti-corruption crackdown in the world's biggest cocoa grower, the government said Thursday. More than a dozen top industry officials, including the then head of the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse (BCC), were arrested in June in a crackdown on graft ordered by President Laurent Gbagbo.

Men are at much higher risk of becoming lost from HIV care programmes according to an analysis of clients attending USAID-AMPATH partnership’s HIV clinics in Western Kenya. This study, which also identified reasons why both men and women may be at risk of loss to follow-up (LTFU), was presented on Tuesday at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

Governments, international bodies and civil society renewed their commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS at the 17th International AIDS Conference, but they will have to work hard in order for this commitment to be reflected in concrete policies, especially on prevention.

Assumptions of relating sexual abuse of same sex to homosexuality abound lately in South Africa where the public could not draw the difference. This comes in the wake of Tiny Virginia Makopo’s case of 29 July – recently postponed to Sebokeng Magistrates Court for October hearing this year – where the former dormitory matron at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy pleaded not guilty on fourteen charges including assault, indecent assault, crimen injuria and indecent acts against young girls whom she had to fend for at the academy.

Gambian police have captured the head of Guinea-Bissau's navy, who had escaped house arrest and had fled his country by boat after he was accused of trying to stage a coup. Maria da Conceicao Nobre Cabral, Guinea-Bissau's foreign minister, flew to Gambia on Thursday, following the capture of Rear Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchute.

Biz Stone let the world know that Twitter’s SMS service is no longer active in Africa - or anywhere outside of the US, Canada and India. To most people in Africa this means absolutely nothing, as the penetration rate for the service never moved beyond the few fringe users amongst the technology elite.