Pambazuka News 468: The new American imperialism in Africa
Pambazuka News 468: The new American imperialism in Africa
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a letter from 80 U.S. organizations to U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner calling for cancellation of Haiti's debt, a background paper on Haiti's debt by Jubilee USA, and a brief description by historian Alex von Tunzelmann on the historical origin of Haiti's debt.
Rights of Zimbabwean sexual minorities to HIV treatment and prevention could see light as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is currently coordinating a study that will characterise sexual minorities, their association to HIV and identify opportunities for intervention.
A documentary reflecting the issues of ‘Being gay in Kenya’ is in the pipeline and with it, producers say they want to break the myth that gays and lesbians do not exist in the country, as believed by some members of society. Comprising of first hand experiences of gay Kenyans, the documentary reveals issues of homophobia, stereotyping and stigma in a society in which the majority feel that homosexuality is unAfrican and unbiblical.
All eyes are on the February 5 court appearance of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, where the Malawian constitutional court is expected to consider the legality of the country’s anti-gay laws and the validity of their prosecution. Meanwhile gay rights groups are appealing against the human rights violations and laws criminalising homosexuality, to be repealed in Malawi and Uganda.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that around one-third of cancer deaths are preventable, through education programmes, better detection and treatment. As a result, the disease hits hardest in developing countries, where such programmes are rudimentary, if they exist at all.
The president of Malawi has been chosen to assume the rotating presidency of the African Union, Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader and the body's outgoing chairman, has said.
Women of Uganda Network with support from the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP – EU (CTA), holds a bi-annual event called the Lango Forum on e-agriculture. This event is held twice a year in Apac District, Northern Uganda. This year the third Lango forum on e–agriculture will be held on the 18th February 2010.
Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) invites young women aged between 21 - 25 years who completed their university or any tertiary institution and are interested in Leadership to apply for a Leadership Training Camp scheduled for March 2010. The camp runs for three weeks and is residential.
Join Ashoka's Changemakers, ExxonMobil, and The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) in this global Women | Tools | Technology: Building Opportunities & Economic Power challenge! Share your innovations which enable women to access and use the power of tools and technology to expand their opportunities for economic advancement. For more information, visit also ICRW's Bridging the Gender Divide in Technology.
The Gibe 3 Dam, now under construction on the Omo River in Ethiopia, is already fanning tensions over natural resources, all the way downstream to Kenya. By dramatically changing water flows in the river, the dam will wreak ecological and social havoc for half a million people living downstream of it, including Kenyan communities around Lake Turkana, which gets virtually all of its water flow from the Omo.
Communicating why biodiversity loss matters for people is essential for reversing it. The failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December could hardly have been a less promising prelude to the International Year of Biodiversity, which opened last month (January).
Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations: A Handbook of Good Practices is a timely, practical guide to help aid organisations deal with corruption in day-to-day operations. When people donate money to aid agencies they expect it to reach people in need.
The spirit in which Parliamentary Service Commissions in democratic countries exist is that of providing parliamentarians with the requisite support and resources to undertake their duty to citizens. The history of the Parliamentary Service Commission in Kenya is replete with impropriety in resource utilisation, reports Transparency International.
Net capital flows to developing countries fell to $780 billion in 2008, reversing an upward trend that began in 2003 and peaked at $1,222 billion in 2007, according to a new report from the World Bank. The report states that particularly hard hit were private capital flows, which fell by almost 40 percent, adding that all developing regions were affected, with emerging market economies in Europe and Central Asia experiencing the sharpest downturn.
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has completed the second review of Mali’s economic performance under a programme supported by the Extended Credit Facility (ECF). The decision also allows the government to request a further disbursement amounting to about US$3.1 million, which would bring total disbursements to Mali to SDR 21.99 million (about US$34.1 million).
Human Rights Watch has urged the Libyan authorities to stop blocking the internet sites. The country has blocked access to YouTube and at least seven independent websites claiming it was a disturbing step away from press freedom.
By age 15, Annonciata Nduwimana was an accomplished fighter for Burundi's opposition Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and knew how to kill in battle. "My father was killed, accused of sheltering rebels. We [her mother and two elder brothers] then fled to Bujumbura to seek safe haven," she said.
Kenya's coastal and southeastern regions will harvest a bumper maize crop from mid-February following El Nino-enhanced rains that fell in December, according to experts. "The most likely situation between January and March points to significant improvements in food security, especially in the southeastern marginal agricultural livelihood areas," the Kenya Food Security Steering Group (KFSSG) said in a report.
The fight against fake medicines requires a united public-private front to overcome people's resistance to health warnings and to dismantle increasingly sophisticated trafficking networks, medical professionals said at a meeting in the Togolese capital Lomé.
Too many obstacles still stand between women and safe childbirth in Burkina Faso, with discrimination against women at the heart of the problem, Amnesty International says. Females' low social status fuels maternal deaths, with early marriage and women's lack of control over family planning major contributors, Amnesty says in a report released on 27 January.
Rival ethnic communities in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo have clashed many times over the years, but most recently over fish, observers say. More than 200 people have died and another 150,000 have fled to the neighbouring Republic of Congo (ROC) since October 2009, when fighting erupted between the Lobala and Boba clans in Dongo, Equateur Province.
Scientists have finally discovered the structure of a key enzyme found in HIV and similar viruses, a breakthrough that has crucial implications for HIV treatment.
Colette Braeckman
As Macau marks the 10-year anniversary of its return to Chinese rule, Lucy Corkin discusses the 'special administrative region's' role in promoting stronger economic ties between Portuguese-speaking countries.
In the wake of the Haitian earthquake, ANC Youth League Deputy President Andile Lungisa calls for the disaster to be seen within its broader historical context. Discussing Haiti's history as a nation long oppressed by external interests, Lungisa underlines the country's new vulnerability to forces concerned solely for profit in the aftermath of its tragedy.
This is a call for the forthcoming South African Sociological Association (SASA) Congress, hosted by the University of Fort Hare, 13-16 June, in East London. Papers should be related to the theme is “Sport, Leisure, and Development in the 21st century: Opportunities and Challenges”; however, if you have a paper idea that doesn’t exactly fit, please go ahead and submit it to me or one of the other working group conveners. If your abstract is accepted we WILL find a space for it.
India has stepped up its efforts to gain an economic foothold in Africa in a new scramble with China for the continent's resources, signing energy deals with top oil producers Angola and Nigeria, writes Louise Redvers.
While economic growth in developed markets is only now starting to slowly recover from the battering it took during the global financial crisis (GFC), emerging markets have been powering ahead, writes Janice Mace.
South Africans are inclined to moan about so much…the fact that things don’t seem to function, the corruption, the crude avarice of the new elite, the poor performance of Bafana Bafana, the crime. Add to this Julius Malema, Jacob Zuma's polygamy and the scandal of the mismanagement of our parastatals and you have a picture that evokes images of imminent collapse for the chattering classes.
Ishani Duttagupta argues, with the support of an number of influential commentators, that India can indeed do a China in the continent of unlimited resources, with its deep diaspora giving her an edge.
Global apartheid refers to the divergence in the economic and social development of a white North, industrialised world and a brown South in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The author concludes that the same kind of worldwide solidarity that helped bring down apartheid is necessary to free the global South from economic domination.
In this article, Richard Lapper asserts that South African companies are making up for lost time in their own continent. Links with other emerging markets - themselves interested in Africa's resources and high-growth consumer markets - are growing quickly. The economic momentum is also giving substance to a foreign policy that since the end of apartheid has favoured links with Asia, Latin America and Africa in an effort to reduce a historical dependence on Europe and the US.
Marion Grammer acknowledges the significant contribution made to the liberation struggle by the teachers, writers and intellectuals behind the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), the first organisation in South Africa to adopt the principle of non-racialism, which debunked the myths about African ‘inferiority’ and administered ‘an antidote to the poisonous indoctrination of apartheid. It was ‘the politics of anti-imperialism and non-racialism learned from the Unity Movement’, says Grammer, that ‘provided the impetus that sent young people marching and protesting and fighting for democracy in the 1970s and 80s’.
Onyekachi Wambu reviews a ‘really useful’ new collection of essays that looks at how governments can integrate the contributions of their diaspora communities into national development programmes and policies, drawing on detailed examples from India, the Phillipines, Mali and Mexico. ‘Closing the Distance’ demonstrates what has always been clear in this area, writes Wambu – that ‘while countries can learn from each other, it is their own national priorities and understanding of the needs of their migrants and diasporas that should drive policy.’
A new ‘bling’ culture, pervasive among South Africa’s ruling political, business and public administration elite, which sees lavish lifestyles as the standard for achievement, is encouraging people to use shortcuts to get rich quickly rather than working or studying hard, writes William Gumede.
Khadija Sharife looks at how commercial and political interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral and natural resources have shaped the country’s history, with devastating consequences for its people, wildlife and environment. Will a new concession with China enable the Congolese to ‘really feel what all that copper, cobalt and nickel is good for’, as President Joseph Kabila says, or will the country continue to be seen as ‘a resource-rich bargain bin, open for business’?
'I was very happy to read "" by Hilary Beckles because it exposed a reality that the vast majority, and even African-Americans have no idea of,' writes Kwaku O. Kushindana.
While initiatives seeking to address ‘negative ethnicity’ in Kenya are ‘potentially useful and well meaning’, L. Muthoni Wanyeki believes that they fail to get to the core of the problem. There is, she argues, no real understanding of what equality and non-discrimination actually mean. Wanyeki deems there to be a misplaced focus on ‘whether or not we like each other’. She holds rather, that tensions in Kenya have arisen because there is an unhealthy cycle of discrimination and stereotyping that has become normalised. The focus in remedying this cannot then be on making Kenyans ‘like’ one another, Wanyeki argues, but on how to ‘regulate whether and how those feelings translate into actions; into discrimination’.
In this week's review of the African blogosphere, reports of a foiled coup plot in Burundi raise the spectre of instability and Cameroonians are seemingly overwhelmed by an influx of Chinese goods. There's also a response to Rajoelina's recent accusations of international interference, and 'sovereignty expenditures' by African states come under the spotlight.
This urges all to speak out against the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and all the men, women and children facing execution around the world. This ultimate form of punishment is unacceptable in a civilized society and undermines human dignity. (U.N. General Assembly, Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty, Resolution 62/149, Dec. 18, 2007; reaffirmed, Resolution 63/168, Dec. 18, 2008.)
The Urgent Action Fund-Africa, a Pan-African women’s human rights organisation, notes with great concern Uganda’s draconian Anti-homosexuality Bill 2009, the ongoing parliamentary debates and the suggested amendments to the Bill.
Jason Hickel asks whether ‘environmental determinism’ – the theory that Africa’s development has been hindered as a result of ‘the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit’ – accurately explains Africa’s poverty. While he commends its attempt to stop blaming underdevelopment 'on the presumed genetic inferiority of black people’, he finds the theory and motives behind environmental determinism to be seriously lacking. Hickel asserts that environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: ‘Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power.’ Furthermore, he argues that to tackle the real issues behind Africa’s slow development and poverty would mean to go against Western economic interests and to radically change the world system in which we exist. ‘The wealth of the West’, Hickel reminds us, ‘is intimately bound up with the poverty of Africa, and vice versa.’
A recent fatwa banning female genital mutilation/cutting in Mauritania will help reduce the practice only if religious leaders take the message to the people, scholars and anti-FGM/C activists say.
Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is pressing the world to end sanctions on his country as it climbs out of a political and economic abyss but wherever he goes the shadow of Robert Mugabe follows.
From 3 to 14 May 2010, the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) will organise a training course on the treaty monitoring bodies and the universal periodic review (UPR). The course will be conducted in parallel to the 44th sessions of the Committee against Torture (CAT), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and the 8th session of the UPR.
Howard Zinn, social activist, historian and playwright, passed away at the age of 87, on 27 January 2010. The Oakland Institute remembers him: ‘the world has not only lost a legendary historian but an individual, whose commitment to social and economic justice, peace and internationalism, and passion for telling the truth, can be matched by few others… Indeed the world has lost one of its best teachers.’
Mourad Bencheikh looks at why the Middle East question – with the Palestinian problem at its core – is in deadlock, as Western “silence” on Israeli policy towards the occupied territories engenders mistrust and suspicion in the Muslim world. The wisest approach, says Bencheikh, would be ‘for Israel to build bridges and not walls’ between the Jewish and Palestinian communities. ‘They both know what suffering means, they are gifted, well-educated, hard working and should work hand in hand towards the stability, development and integration of the whole region.’
In March 2010, the 54th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will undertake a fifteen-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly. Gender Links, the African Woman and Child Feature Service, Gender and Media Southern Africa and the Gender and Media Diversity Centre will be collaborating to produce a conference newspaper for the event.
11 February 2009 is the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison. Tell us about what this historical event meant to you and what it means for you today. Send a paragraph or more about your thoughts to . We'll publish a selection in the next issue of Pambazuka News.
Check out Gado's
Michael Schmidt reveals the alarming extent of American military expansion in Africa. This article was written four years ago, but still holds strong relevance today in the context of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM). Schmidt describes three avenues that the US is taking to increase its military foothold in Africa in pursuit of its ‘War on Terror’: ‘piggybacking’ off already strong French military presence, creating an unofficial ‘School of the Africas’ in the guise of the African Centre for Strategic Studies, and with its Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) programme ‘aimed at integrating African armed forces into US strategic (imperialist) objectives’. Schmidt places blame beyond the US, however, and uncovers the role that African countries, particularly South Africa, are playing in strengthening US military presence through ‘secret pacts’. In light of all this, Schmidt concludes with a warning: ‘It would be naïve to think that bourgeois democracy… will protect the working class, peasantry and poor from state terrorism.’
‘Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East,’ writes F. William Engdahl. Engdahl adds ‘oil’ to Haiti’s story, highlighting the increasing evidence that behind the rescue mission in Haiti, there perhaps lies a stark ulterior, but familiar, motive.
Howard Zinn, 87, an activist historian whose 'People's History of the United States' resurrected neglected stories of the country's past and became a surprise bestseller in the 1980s and beyond, died of a heart attack on 27 January in Santa Monica, California, where he was on a speaking tour.
Pambazuka News 467: Haiti: Microcosm of the crisis of development
Pambazuka News 467: Haiti: Microcosm of the crisis of development
The current football fervour resulting from the Africa Cup of Nations is just a small sample of what is to come when South Africa hosts the World Cup this coming June. Young footballers across the continent are watching and cheering on their local heroes. Some of the regions’ young women players are among the fans, even though they are often left out on the pitch.
OLPCorps is OLPC’s official field volunteer program. It is a worldwide community dedicated to transforming education for children who have had little or no access to modern information technology. OLPCorps gives young people the opportunity to contribute their minds, bodies, time and skills to delivering better education for children living in some of the world’s most disadvantaged communities.
A new guide to the African Union launched by the Africa Governance and Monitoring Project (AfriMAP) of the Open Society Institute and Oxfam International aims to ensure that Africa’s citizens can contribute more fully to the work of the
inter-governmental organisation.
In a large market in Juba, the regional capital of Southern Sudan, young women spend long afternoons lounging on beds in sweltering iron sheet rooms, waiting for men. One girl, no more than 17, wearing a tight tee-shirt with the words "I love beer" emblazoned on it, points us in the direction of a different set of rooms, with the really young girls.
As sports fans gear up for the NFL Super Bowl next week, the Halftime show sponsor, Bridgestone/Firestone, continues to exploit workers on its rubber plantation in Liberia. The majority of workers who labor as “rubber tappers” must carry two heavy buckets of raw latex weighing 75 pounds each on both ends of a stick on their back for miles.
The same kind of worldwide solidarity that helped bring down apartheid is necessary to free the global South from economic domination. "Global solidarity has proved to be the only sustainable mode of confronting global apartheid, as exemplified by the liberation struggles that were fought in the 20th century," says Dakarayi Matanga.
The Aquino de Bragança Social Studies Centre (CESAB) and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) co-organizes this International Conference in collaboration with DANIDA and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. It will bring together researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to engage in an open debate of the current state of justice provision and public safety in Mozambique.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the eighteenth competition under its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing. The grants are designed to contribute to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities through the funding of primary research conducted by post-graduate students and professionals.
Within the framework of its strategy for building comparative knowledge on Africa produced from within the African continent, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites proposals from researchers based in African universities and centres of research for the constitution of Comparative Research Networks (CRNs) to undertake studies on or around any of the themes identified as priority research themes within the framework of the CODESRIA strategic plan for the period 2007 – 2011.
Oxfam Novib wants to come to grips with the land issue – trying to understand the implications of the capital-rich countries and companies endeavouring to purchase or lease large tracts of agricultural land in resource-rich developing States. Some general questions that have come up in internal debates start even from the premises whether this is a good or a bad thing.
Activists and researchers in the United States are raising the alarm on what they call the “land grab” in Africa. Outside governments and foreign corporations have been turning increasingly to African countries to purchase large areas of land, to the dismay of activists, who say economic mistakes of the past should not be repeated.
Lumwana Mining Company has signed the first collective agreement with Mine Workers Union of Zambia (MUZ) and National Union of Miners and Allied Workers (NUMAW) and awarded a 21 per cent salary increase to its unionised employees across the grades.
The president of the World Bank group, Robert Zoellick, has begun a visit in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, with working sessions with the Ivorian government and civil society organisations. According to Mr. Zoellick, the aim of his visit to Côte d'Ivoire is to listen and learn.
France has asked the Central African authorities to shed light on the fate of the Central African ex-minister and rebel leader, Charles Massi, reported to be dead by his family of the torture he underwent in prison after having been handed over to Bangui.
Guinea's interim government should exclude key military officials suspected of involvement in the 28 September massacre of pro-democracy activists in the West African nation, an African Union lobby group has said.
The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has said Africa was slowly shaking off the effects of the global financial crisis, but warned the road to full recovery would still be painful and require adjustments to economic management.
Foreign ministers gathered for talks on the change of the African Union Commission into an Authority should focus on giving this proposed government real power, the Libyan Foreign Minister, Moussa Koussa, said.
The evidence of five years of peace is everywhere in Juba, regional capital of Southern Sudan - in the brisk trade in the city's markets, its packed bars and nightclubs, and in the relaxed gait of the soldiers of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
Fighting between Islamist insurgents and African Union peacekeepers that started late on Thursday and continued into Friday killed at least 12 people in Somalia's capital, health services and witnesses said.
Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said he believed the process that led to creation of a unity government last February is irreversible and that it is time for Western donors and investors to return to the country.
Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formation has called for urgent regional intervention to save the coalition government amid signs the country’s feuding parties are drifting further apart in efforts to resolve outstanding power-sharing issues.
Kenyan MPs have agreed to scrap the position of prime minister in a draft constitution being drawn up as part of a power-sharing deal. The role was created following post-election riots in 2007 to allow coalition partners to share power.
Nigeria's Senate and cabinet are at loggerheads over President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has spent two months in hospital in Saudi Arabia. The cabinet has declared that he is still capable of governing the country.
The US has suspended $7m of funding for free primary schools in Kenya until fraud allegations are investigated, the US ambassador in Nairobi has said. Michael Ranneberger says "credible action" must be taken on claims that 110m shillings (£900,000; $1.4m) were siphoned off a free-education fund.
The European Union should maintain its travel restrictions and asset freezes on President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle until Zimbabwe carries out the concrete human rights reforms set out in the 2008 Global Political Agreement, Human Rights Watch has said. The EU is currently reviewing its sanctions policy toward Zimbabwe.
In this week's emerging powers news, south-south cooperation is cemented in new partnerships, Africa seeks frameworks for managing new resource-driven weatlh, BRIC and South Africa commit to mitigating climate change, and the AU keen to forge closer ties with China.
Violations of civil and political rights by Sudanese security forces throughout the country are seriously undermining prospects for free, fair, and credible elections in April 2010, Human Rights Watch has said.
Integrated, comprehensive and inclusive armed violence reduction (AVR) programmes are an emerging and growing area of development practice around the world. This paper, published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, discusses the components of a multi-level AVR approach.
Nancy Alexander's new report finds several worrying trends in how the World Bank spends its money, namely that it is increasing its lending to middle income countries while loans and grants to low income countries stagnate, that DPOs with less stringent safeguards are outpacing project lending, and that the Gender Action Plan is not achieving its goals.
An epic collaboration involving one of the world's most popular social networking media, Twitter, and Malaria No More, an international body fighting against Malaria, is poised to save over 80, 000 lives from the deadly effect of malaria.
Djibouti has announced to send 450 troops to Somalia next month as to join the African Union peacekeepers mission in that country, the foreign ministry said.
Members of the Anglican Church are planning to hold a prayer meeting this Sunday in protest against ongoing persecution from an ousted bishop who is using the police to disrupt their services.
African countries must develop clear infrastructure improvement plans to tap soft finance available for investment in the transport and energy sectors, an African Union official said on Friday.
The West is ignoring a jailed Ethiopian opposition leader to keep the Horn of Africa stable despite her being this week named on a United Nations list of arbitrary detainees, her party said on Friday. Birtukan Mideksa, leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party (UDJ), was first jailed with other opposition leaders when the 2005 election turned violent. She was pardoned in 2007 but re-arrested last year accused of violating that pardon.
Millions in West Africa's arid Sahel belt could face famine this year unless the world acts quickly to help, the European Union's humanitarian aid arm has said. The warning came as Niger confirmed the veracity of a leaked government forecast that half its population will face food shortages this year after a dive in grain production, but said it had enough food stocks to care for the most needy.
The Security Council on Thursday sought to nudge Ivory Coast into holding much-delayed elections soon by extending the mandate of U.N. peacekeepers there by four months instead of the usual six. The West African nation that is the world's top cocoa producer has missed a series of deadlines for a presidential poll originally due in 2005 to resolve divisions that fueled a 2002-03 civil war that split the country in two.
Civil society organisations have expressed strong opposition to the imprisonment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple, in Malawi. More than 40 African civil society organisations have called for the immediate release of this couple, and for the repeal of discriminatory laws against same-sex relationships.
South Africa faces potentially huge cuts in donor support for its HIV/AIDS programme over the next five years, yet it needs an extra R2-billion a year to reach all those who need antiretroviral treatment. “US government funding is going to come down dramatically over the next five years,” warned Dr Roxana Rogers, USAID South Africa Health Team leader last week.
A Human Rights Watch report has revealed details of health care providers withholding care or engaging in treatment that intentionally inflicts pain on patients for no medical reason. World report 2010 details major human rights violations in more than 90 nations and territories worldwide. It is a record of investigative work carried out by the organisation in 2009.
An echo that turns itself into many voices, into a network of voices that, before the deafness of power, opts to speak to itself, knowing itself to be one and many, acknowledging itself to be equal in its desire to listen and be listened to, recognizing itself as different in the tonalities and levels of voices forming it. A network of voices that resist the war that power wages on them. – Words of the Zapatistas at the “First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism.”
After the 26th September 2009 attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo in Kennedy Road by the shebeen owners and the ANC the life of the people has changed into misery. Everything is out of their control and some people are even abandoning the area due to a high level of crime activities making it unsafe. These activities are being started in the shebeens which are operating right through the night again.
On Friday the 29th of January, over 260 women, men, children and elderly will be represented in court for our appeal trial against forceful relocation from Zille Raine Heights informal settlement in Grassy Park to Happy Valley, 35 kms away from Cape Town.
A new telecoms tax epidemic is sweeping across Africa adding to the already high tax levels imposed on operators on the continent. This time the tax is being levied on inbound international calls and will increase their costs by between 20-100%. This will make the cost of doing business with Africa rise significantly in a time of global economic downturn.
Ethiopia has become a market for owners of high bandwidth fibre optic cable systems; at least four foreign companies are aiming to get all or a slice of this vast potential market, reliable sources disclosed.
In any economy, a vibrant SME sector is essential for sustainable job creation, poverty reduction and private sector development. It plays a catalytic role in the development of any country. All accept that poverty-elimination in Africa can only come about through investment-driven economic growth.