After the Nigerian parliament threw out a bid to change the constitution and enable President Olusegun Obasanjo to stay in office for a third consecutive term, uncertainty is growing over who may succeed him in less than 12 months.

President Hosni Mubarak should immediately order an independent judicial investigation into last Thursday’s severe beatings by security agents of political activists Karim al-Sha`ir and Mohamed al-Sharqawi, Human Rights Watch says. Police also sexually assaulted al-Sharqawi, according to a written statement he smuggled out of prison.

International soccer has been plagued for years by violence among fans, including racial incidents. But FIFA, soccer's world governing body, which is based in Zurich, said there had been a recent surge in discriminatory behavior toward blacks by fans and other players, an escalation that has dovetailed with the signing of more players from Africa and Latin America by elite European clubs.

Three journalists, Pa Modou Faal of the national television GRTS, Musa Sheriff of Gambia News & Report Magazine and Malick Mboob, Communication Officer of Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital were arrested last Friday by the Gambia security forces. Lamin Cham, the BBC stringer in the Gambia was equally arrested today by security forces.

"In South Africa the issue of grand corruption under apartheid has been the source of comparatively little public debate," says a new report, 'Apartheid Grand Corruption: Assessing the scale of crimes of profit in South Africa from 1976 to 1994', which attempts to document and describe instances of corruption that took place during apartheid and in particular, during the period 1976–1994. "Since the advent of democratic rule scant attention has been paid to the possibility that leading apartheid-era functionaries (in government and business) may have used the cover of authoritarian rule to illegally acquire vast sums of wealth in defiance even of the legal 'norms' of that time," the report says.

Compared to 20 years ago in Kenya, people live for ten years less on average, more children die in infancy and a greater proportion of those who survive face stunting. Why? Soren Ambrose makes a case for holding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) responsible, arguing that the institution's obsession with low inflation rates - one of the foundations of trade liberalization - starves economies and hurts the poor.

On March 6, Kenya's Assistant Minister for Health, Enock Kibunguchy, told the press that Kenya urgently needs to hire 10,000 additional professionals in the public health sector, blurting out: “We have to put our foot down and employ. We can tell the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to go to hell.” [1]

These are strong words for a high-ranking government official to put on record regarding the most powerful international financial institutions (IFIs), and in particular the IMF, a body whose power extends to being able to call for the withdrawal of virtually all external assistance to a country.

Minister of Health Charity Ngilu had in fact been rumored to have made similar accusations in meetings with IMF officials and civil society representatives; since Kibunguchy's declaration she has confirmed she shares his view. Similar allegations have also been made by several civil society organizations focused on the IMF and on health rights. Indeed, in the last two years a number of organizations have identified IMF restrictions as a serious disincentive to hiring desperately-needed health professionals not only in Kenya, but in many other African and Global South countries as well.

Specific IMF policies, in particular the low ceilings it sets for inflation rates and wage expenditures in borrowing countries, are demonstrably illogical and detrimental. Together with the dubious defense the IMF mounts for maintaining such restrictions, cases like Kenya's provide a strong argument that those controlling the IMF should re-examine the restrictions it places on borrowing governments. The logic of demanding continual decreases in public wage bills is likewise suspect, as are the IMF's routine inflation targets. With increased funding from new sources, improved standards of living are within reach of even the most impoverished countries, if only the IMF would allow it.

The Health Care Crisis

Kenya's health care crisis has been 20 years in the making. Its dimensions are spelled out in the 2004 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) - a government document written in consultation with the IMF and World Bank and approved by both bodies' boards. Life expectancy declined from 57 in 1986 to 47 in 2000; infant mortality increased from 62 per thousand in 1993 to 78 per thousand in 2003; and under-five mortality rose from 96 per thousand births to 114 per thousand in the same period. The percentage of children with stunted growth increased from 29% in 1993 to 31% in 2003, and the percentage of Kenya's children who are fully-vaccinated dropped from 79% in 1993 to 52% in 2003.[2]

Why this deterioration? As in most African countries, Kenya's health care system was hit hard by the “structural adjustment” policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank as conditions on loans and as prerequisites for getting IFI approval of the country's economic policies. Those policies were introduced in the 1980s, and have left a lasting mark on Kenya's health. As usual with such programs, the emphasis was on cutting budget expenditures. As a result, local health clinics and dispensaries had fewer supplies and medicines, and user fees became more common. The public hospitals saw their standard of care deteriorate, increasing pressure on the largest public facility, Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi. As a consequence, that hospital, once the leading health facility in East Africa, began, like so many other African hospitals, to ask patients' families to provide outside food, medicine, and medical supplies. Most beds at Kenyatta and the regional and local hospitals accommodated two patients. Professional staff have taken jobs - some part-time, some full-time, at private healthcare facilities, or migrated to Europe or North America in search of better pay.

An October 2005 communication from an NGO coalition to the November 2005 “High Level Forum on Health MDGs (Millennium Development Goals)” notes that “between 1991 and 2003, the [Kenyan] government reduced its work force by 30%” - cuts that hit the health sector particularly hard.[3] For the period between 2000 and 2002 alone, the government was scheduled to lay off 5,300 health staff.

Those requirements were externally imposed. A World Bank Group document from November 2003, written to justify waiving a loan condition calling for a workforce reduction, notes: “This condition required retrenching 32,000 personnel from civil service over a period of two years. In practice, 23,448 civil servants were retrenched in 2000/01 before the program was interrupted by lawsuits. […] A specific commitment in the updated [agreement] is to reduce the size of the civil service by 5,000 per year through natural attrition.” [4] The very same document supports Assistant Minister Kibunguchy's assessment of the sector's current needs - “the health sector currently experiences a staff shortage of about 10,000 health workers.” The document, however, draws no connection between the shortage and the insistence on cutting more workers.

The impact of the layoffs and budget slashing in the health sector over the last 15 years was cited recently by Member of Parliament Alfred Nderitu as the primary motivation for his motion of censure against the IMF and World Bank in the Kenyan Parliament. His initiative would insist that any future loans from the institutions get Parliamentary approval. [5]

Clinics Without Nurses

Many African countries have shortages of medical staff because of lack of training capacity; in Kenya this is not the case. Thousands are unemployed or underemployed, eager to take up full time positions.

Both the Kenyan government and the IFIs regularly announce that health spending will increase substantially. [6, 7] With all these promises of increased resources for health care, with the World Bank's acknowledgement of a staff shortage, and with all those unemployed nurses, one might expect that the government would waste no time in hiring the thousands of nurses Kenya so desperately needs. And indeed, frequent promises are made by government officials to that effect. But the promises are almost never kept.

According to the Chief Economist in the Ministry of Health, S.N. Muchiri, the reason is that while the IFIs support increased expenditures on health, they forbid spending that money to pay staff wages. This is accomplished through insisting on a ceiling on wage expenditures; in Kenya, the targets are 8.5% of GDP in 2006 and 7.2% by 2008. [8] The IMF doesn't specify that hiring in the health sector specifically must be limited, but when the entire wage bill must be suppressed, the chances of hiring the personnel needed are slim indeed.

So when IFI staffers call for more funding for clinics, as they do in their critique of the government's draft PRSP, they mean buildings, equipment, and medicine. [9] Unfortunately, personnel are required to run the clinics. It is the choice by those institutions to prioritize targets for reduced spending on public salaries and on inflation, says Muchiri, that prevents Kenya from hiring health workers. [10]

Muchiri provides valuable “inside” confirmation of charges made with increasing intensity by civil society organizations over the last two years. Advocates point out that while recent funding initiatives like the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria and PEPFAR have made stemming the most critical health crises in Africa more possible, the IMF's power over borrowers' economic policy and its narrow focus on keeping inflation and payrolls as low as possible is actively discouraging governments from putting the available funds to use.

Numbers, Not People

On one level, it seems like commonsense for an organization like the IMF to seek out ways in which governments can reduce the amount spent on salaries, especially in countries like Kenya, which have had troubles with “ghost employees” on public payrolls in the past. But the self-defeating nature of this quest quickly becomes apparent. If the government were simply expected to identify and eliminate ghost employees, that would obviously lighten the government's burden and enable it to target its resources more wisely.

But the IMF's conditions deal with bottom-line expenditures, not with going to the root of the problem. Kenya's PRSP spells out the implications: “…achieving the 8.5 percent target by 2005/06 will require that any awards to be provided to the civil servants or any additional awards […] will be matched by a proportionate downsizing of the civil service.” [11] Any hiring of nurses, for example, would require that some other public employees be eliminated - regardless of how much the nurses may be needed, or how vital the other positions may be. Indiscriminate targeting like this only demonstrates the prioritizing of abstract economic statistical standards over real-life outcomes, including those most likely to have a positive material impact on poverty and on contributing to the overall health of both Kenya's population and the economy.

So if the health budget is to rise - as both the IFIs and the government repeat often - then the PRSP must remind us that: “The fiscal strategy assumes that these health expenditures will be focused on non-wage non-transfer expenditures and will thus enable the rapid increase in basic health services.” [12] Indeed, Muchiri reports that funds are often available for facilities or supplies, but not for staff. The result is that more people may seek out health services, but the ministry will actually be less able to provide them because of lack of personnel to administer the drugs or operate the machinery.

Inflation, Inflation, Inflation

But why does the IMF, with its power to exclude a country from the global economy by declaring it “off-track,” insist on reducing government payrolls? Adding employees to the government payroll, especially if accomplished with aid money, is considered by orthodox economists like those at the IMF to increase inflationary pressures in a developing country. And an increase in inflation is anathema to the IMF.

The IMF quite openly prioritizes inflation targeting over almost any other factor in the countries where it works. Pressed on the question, as they have been in the debate over health spending, its officials will invariably respond that inflation is a “tax” that hits the poor the hardest.

But is that true? Anis Chowdhury points out that:

“The poor have very limited financial assets; they are largely net financial debtors. Thus inflation can benefit the poor by reducing the real value of their financial debt. Meanwhile, the IMF's cure for inflation - raising interest rates - can actually harm the poor because this increases the servicing costs of their current debts. […] The poor fare worse when unemployment rises and persists, especially when there is no adequate safety net or social security system. At the same time, the real value of their household debt rises with falling inflation rates. Hence the poor have more reason to be averse to unemployment and less averse to inflation than the elite in society." [13]

After this seemingly obvious point is made, it seems only too easy to point out that those who stand to lose the most from inflation are those who hold large amounts of money - financiers, investors, bankers. Yes, there are risks to the poor in high and/or persistent inflation, but increases in inflation below a certain point are far more likely to cause pain to those whose incomes depend on relatively minor fluctuations in currency values. For the impoverished, as Chowdhury explains, such increases in inflation are likely to be more beneficial than harmful.

As is so often the case, it is easiest to discern the interests of policy-makers not from their rhetoric, but from whose interests are most vigorously protected by their policies - by who “wins” as a result. The IMF's longtime prioritization of inflation over all else lends weight to those who accuse it of using its powers to protect the interests of the wealthy over those of the impoverished, regardless of their rhetoric that maintains the reverse.

IMF official Andy Berg recently admitted as much: “Higher inflation […] tax[es] people who hold cash or whose nominal incomes are fixed.” But Berg's next sentence restores IMF ideology, and at the same time exposes its flimsiness: “And this tax discourages private investment and tends to fall on those least able to adapt - in other words the poor.” [14] Berg relocates the pain from the rich to the poor, but offers no logic for that move.

Drawing a Reasonable Line on Inflation

To challenge the IMF, the question must be where to draw the line - at what point, to use Berg's phrase, is “inflation out of control,” or at risk of spinning out of control? Berg says “in poor countries the danger point is somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.” The good news is that this figure is actually less conservative than the standard used in most IMF programs. In most countries with IMF loans, the conditions call for inflation to decline and stay below five percent. [15]

Few economists outside the IMF opt for a level as low even as 10% in defining a healthy rate of inflation for a growing economy in a developing country. Terry McKinley, an economist with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), declares: “As long as current revenue covers current expenditures, governments can usefully borrow to finance [social] investment. […] Fiscal deficits should remain sustainable as ensuing growth boosts revenue collection. The resultant growth of productive capacities will keep inflation moderate - namely, within a 15 percent rate per year.” [16]

There is no room for neutrality in this debate. Adhering to IMF standards in order to avoid trouble will, according to McKinley, likely sabotage any hope of genuine development:

“Moderate inflation can, in fact, be compatible with growth. But low inflation can be as harmful as high inflation. When low-inflation policies keep the economy mired in stagnation or drive it into recession, the poor lose out, often for years thereafter, as their meager stocks of wealth are wiped out or their human capabilities seriously impaired. […] Without jobs and income, people cannot benefit from price stability.” [17]

Tactfully avoiding mentioning the IMF by name, McKinley argues: “The new 'politically correct' justification for minimizing inflation is that it hurts the poor. However, this misreads the facts: very high, destabilizing inflation (above 40 per cent) definitely hurts the poor; and very low inflation (below 5 per cent) can also harm their interests when it impedes growth and employment.” [18]

Rick Rowden points out that Latin American countries and “East Asian tigers” like South Korea grew rapidly despite inflation rates of around 20%. [19] But that was before the IMF moved into the development world in the 1980s, and re-wrote the rules - without any definitive evidence to support their claim that doing so was advantageous to the poor.

The IMF appears to be caught in a classic case of “fighting the last battle.” When the IMF started lending to developing countries in the early 1980s, they were afflicted with astronomical, runaway inflation. It still apparently believes that hyperinflation is the most dangerous threat. But hyperinflation has been eliminated almost everywhere (apart from crisis or pariah countries like Zimbabwe); indeed most developing countries now have inflation rates well below 10%, and many below 5%. [20] This is largely as a result of the IMF's hyper-vigilance over the last 25 years. The problem today is not hyperinflation, but IMF-induced stagnation.

More and more economists - outside the IMF - are taking a more complex view of growth and inflation. Rather than insisting that a country have a demonstrated “absorptive capacity” before increasing the flow of revenues, they look at the likely impact of increased flows. In the case of increased spending on health care, not only is employment created (if wage ceilings are set aside), but the population's overall economic capacity improves, and private-sector activity, rather than being discouraged by public funds, is spurred by the increasing availability of resources.

Muchiri, in Kenya's Health Ministry, concurs with McKinley's positions on inflation targeting, and with the view that public spending, especially on healthcare, will encourage growth. He acknowledges that his government has committed to a low inflation target - its “Letter of Intent” to the IMF states: “The monetary program for 2004/05 is designed to reduce underlying inflation to 3.5 percent.” [21] And thus far Kenya seems to be meeting that goal.

But, says Muchiri: “3.5 percent is too low for an economy that is supposed to grow by 5 percent. A certain level of inflation is healthy - you can't grow otherwise.” This recognition moves Muchiri to criticize officials of a nearby country who have told him they must limit expenditures on health care - even refusing funds from the GFTAM - in order to prevent any risk of inflation rising. That line of thinking is clearly reflected in the recent statements by Kibunguchy and Ngilu.

But Finance Ministers who have committed to the IMF's inflation targets, and in many cases made those targets the centerpiece of their macroeconomic policy, are deeply reluctant to do anything that might raise that rate. Not only would doing so risk IMF disapproval and blacklisting, but it would also be seen as reversing a position they have publicly, and politically, committed to. Until this logjam is broken, a higher quality of life - even life itself - will continue to elude many thousands.

Muchiri counts as a significant victory the recent concession made by the IMF, after substantial negotiations, that Kenya could hire more health professionals if it could find donors willing to provide extra funds who themselves were comfortable with the impacts - economic and otherwise - that hiring additional health staff might have. It is this concession that recently allowed Kenya to announce that it will use funds from the Clinton Foundation, PEPFAR, and the GFATM to hire upwards of two thousand new nurses and other health professionals. [22] Unlike with previous pledges, advertisements for the positions are now appearing in newspapers.

But the very existence of these policies, and the fact that he must invest so much in winning exceptions to them, cause Muchiri to reflect on his experiences of watching mothers and children die in hospitals for lack of surgeons or a lack of capacity to offer preventive care, and speculate that the IMF and World Bank could reasonably be charged with genocide. “The only difference from what happened in Rwanda is they don't use pangas [machetes]. They use policies.”

* Soren Ambrose is Coordinator, Solidarity Africa Network, Nairobi, Kenya. He is also associated with the Washington-based 50 Years Is Enough Network, which in April convened a meeting to launch an international campaign to shrink or eliminate the IMF (for more information write [email][email protected]; see related commentary, by Ambrose and Walden Bello, at [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References:

[1] Elizabeth Mwai, “Ignore the World Bank on health, says minister,” The Standard (Nairobi), March 7, 2006.

[2] Republic of Kenya, “Investment Programme for the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation, 2003-2007 - March 12, 2004 - Revised.” Published by International Monetary Fund as “Kenya: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper,” IMF Country Report #05/11 - January 2005, p. 9. Subsequent citations as “PRSP.”

[3] “A joint NGO statement to the High Level Forum on Health MDGs,” October 2005, p. 3.

[4] International Development Association (World Bank Group), “Kenya - Economic and Public Sector Reform Credit - Release of Second Tranche - Waiver of Two Conditions and Amendment of Development Credit Agreement,” November 20, 2003, para. 33, p. 10.

[5] “Plans to Censure WB, IMF,” Kenya Times, March 14, 2006.

[6] PRSP, p. 18

[7] PRSP, p. 21

[8] PRSP, p. 19.

[9] International Monetary Fund, “Kenya: Joint Staff Assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper,” Country Report #05/10, January 2005, para. 33, p. 10.

[10] S.N. Muchiri, Chief Economist, Ministry of Health, Republic of Kenya: Interview with author, March 21, 2006, Nairobi, Kenya. All of Muchiri's quote come from this interview.

[11] PRSP, p. 20.

[12] PRSP, p. 21.

[13] Chowdhury, Anis. “Poverty Reduction and the 'Stabilisation Trap' - The Role of Monetary Policy,” University of Western Sydney draft available from [email][email protected] Cited in Rick Rowden, “Changing Course: Alternative Approaches to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals and Fight HIV/AIDS,” ActionAid International USA, September 2005, p. 30. www.actionaidusa.org/pdf/Changing%20Course%20Report.pdf

[14] Berg, Andy. “An interview with Andy Berg on the macroeconomics of managing increased aid inflows,” IMF Civil Society Newsletter, February 2006.

[15] Rowden, p. 30.

[16] Terry McKinley, “MDG-Based PRSPs Need More Ambitious Economic Policies,” United Nations Development Programme - Policy Discussion Paper, p. 4.

[17] McKinley, pp. 14-15.

[18] McKinley, p. 16.

[19] Rowden, p. 31.

[20] Rowden, p. 21.

[21] Republic of Kenya, letter to Rodrigo de Rato, Managing Director of the IMF, December 6, 2004. Published by the IMF as “Kenya-Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies and Technical Memorandum of Understanding.”

[22] See Lucas Barasa, “2,210 jobs lined up for nurses,” Daily Nation, August 9, 2005, and Francis Openda, “State to Hire 1,420 More Health Workers,” The Standard (Nairobi), October 12, 2005 - http://allafrica.com/stories/200510110915.html

Negotiations about international trade tend to have relevance for large firms or formal enterprises. But, asks Winnie Mitullah, what about the rights of the large number of workers in African cities involved in informal trade?

When one hears the word trade what comes to mind is the large-scale formal traders, and international trade organizations such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and regional organizations such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). While such traders and institutions are important, street vendors and informal trade, which provides employment and incomes to a significant percentage of people in Africa, in particular within the urban areas, hardly comes to mind.

Street and informal traders fall within the informal economy sector. The sector comprises one half to three quarters of non-agricultural employment in developing countries. Specifically, these figures amount to 48% of non agricultural employment in Africa, 51% in Latin America, 65% in Asia, and 72% in Sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. Employment in this sector operates without contracts, worker benefits or social protection, and most employees and individuals have no rights to organize and be represented.

The theme of the UN-HABITAT Global Campaign on good urban governance is the 'Inclusive City'. The campaign advances the position that an inclusive approach must be used for balancing, reconciling and trading off competing interests and priorities. In most cities the interests of micro and small enterprises such as street and informal traders are competing with those of medium and large-scale enterprises, with the former being disadvantaged. All types of enterprises in urban areas, whether micro, small, medium or large, should have the right not only to the Central Business District (CBD) but to all urban goods and services. The global campaign has noted that the notion of inclusion has different resonances in each region with exclusion of specific groups being most significant in some regions and exclusion of the poor majority more important in others. The campaign urges actors to discuss the question of 'who' in a particular city is excluded from 'what' and 'how'. This article demonstrates how street and informal traders are not integrated in urban planning and development.

Concepts such as participation, empowerment, and social inclusion have become buzzwords, and yet to the poor who are engaged in informal economic activities the concepts do not make much sense. In the usage of these concepts, emphasis is often placed on participatory development, and participatory political processes, rather than participatory market processes. Further, the proponents of democratic practices tend to focus on political democracy to the neglect of economic democracy, while the proponents of empowerment and voice tend to focus on individuals rather than collectivities. Street and informal traders are still to fully adopt joint action in dealing with urban authorities.

The human rights organizations responsible for the clamour for rights are still to adequately specify what they mean by economic rights or adequately strategise about how to claim or enforce worker rights. Even the micro financial institutions, whose clients work mainly within the informal economy, have focused on financial services to the neglect of other business services and of how the wider policy and regulatory environment affects their clients. Most vendors rely on money-lenders or informal sources of credit in order to buy their merchandise. As a result, they pay exorbitant interest rates, and their businesses rarely grow beyond subsistence levels.

The Bellagio International Declaration of Street Vendors of November 1995 urged governments to develop national policies for hawkers and vendors by making them a part of the broader structural policies aimed at improving their standards of living by giving them legal status, issuing licenses and providing appropriate hawking zones in urban areas. The declaration further called on governments to integrate vendors into urban development plans. Since then, a number of global, regional and local associations have been established to protect the rights of street and informal traders. The global networks include the Women in Informal Employment Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) with a secretariat at the Harvard University, MA USA and StreetNet International with headquarters in Durban, South Africa. StreetNet has regional and local networks which have begun engaging urban authorities in policy dialogues, including issues relating to the right to trade in urban space.

Location of Trade

Street vending and informal trade is rampant in most developing country cities, and is a source of employment and income to a large percentage of urban households. The trade takes place at strategic points with heavy human traffic - along main roads, streets, parks, pavements, within shopping centers, and at prominent corners of streets and roads where traders are visible to pedestrians and motorists. The traders use different structures, including mats, gunny bags, tables, racks, wheel barrows, handcarts, and bicycle seats to display their goods. Some traders simply carry their commodities on their hands, heads and shoulders, while others hang their commodities on walls, trees and fences. An advanced but insignificant group of the traders construct temporary shades with stands for displaying their goods.

Challenges of Trade

The greatest challenge facing street and informal traders is with regards to site of operation and right to trading space. Most of the spaces traders occupy are considered illegal since the spaces have not been set aside for trade. In cases where they are allowed to operate, the spaces are considered temporary and eviction occurs at the will of urban authorities. There are various conflicts relating to their sites of operation. A major conflict often arises when the vendors are required to move in order to give way for planned development. This brings them into direct confrontation with urban authorities and land developers. Most of the spaces the traders occupy have no tenure, and are not allocated and sanctioned by urban authorities. At the same time, the traders are also in conflict with formal shop owners and landlords who contend that the traders infringe on their businesses and/or premises.

The spaces occupied by traders are open and expose traders to harsh environmental conditions. Most commodities of trade such as fruits, vegetables and clothes are affected by the harsh environmental conditions, consequently resulting in loss of earnings to the traders. Overall, street vendors and informal traders have been noted to be perhaps the most regulated and least protected. They trade illegally due to lack of recognition and licenses. The traders are known to identify trading sites on their own, leaving the urban authorities with few options, which include eviction, tolerating traders or charging a daily fee without providing any legal protection.

In cases of eviction, the traders are often provided with an option outside the (CBD) where there are hardly any customers. This option is based on an exclusion framework which reserves the CBD to large scale traders and businesses which urban authorities argue pay taxes as opposed to the street vendors and informal traders. This argument is false, and research has shown that when both daily fees and bribes to urban authorities are taken into consideration, the urban authorities collect more from traders than required. Research has further shown that daily fee charges are more expensive than lump sum payment for a license. However, the street and informal traders make minimal profit and are not able to make lump sum payments.

Lack of a street trading licenses exposes traders to harassment and punitive measures, including confiscation of goods. During harassment, traders lose their commodities, with some closing their businesses after losing their capital goods. Research from a number of African cities reveals that having a license does not guarantee safety and recognition by urban authorities. In most cases, vendors are not issued with any identification showing that they have a legitimate right to sell their goods in urban streets. This exposes them to harassment, including confiscation of goods, assault and demands for bribes.

Until the dawn of governance reform programmes in Africa, licenses were largely commodities of trade peddled by either urban authority officials or those who had access to the urban authorities. This outcome is attributed to planning laws, which do not take into account the existence of street vendors and informal traders. In most cases, such planning laws locate the traders on the peripheral areas of the city where there is no business, without any consultation. The experience across Africa shows that traders never stick to such areas. They drift back to the centre, resulting in punitive measures from the city authorities. Most of the policies and regulations being enforced on street and market traders owe their origin to colonial policies, which were retrogressive with regards to small scale local enterprises. Street and informal traders require laws that recognize their economic activities as an important component of the urban economy, and ensure their right to trading space.

Apart from the right to trading space, street and informal traders are also disadvantaged in the area of security, transport and municipal services. A secure working environment is a pre-requisite for any type of business. Security is a major concern for many people engaged in economic activities on streets. Municipal authorities have been the major source of insecurity for these traders. The authorities harass, beat and confiscate goods of street vendors without any warning. This does not only threaten the security of vendors but also their customers. A study of cities in South Africa has noted that an insecure environment results in loss of customers, frightens tourists, cripples business, reduces incomes, and generally interferes with trading.

The insecurity in the streets is sometimes used as an excuse for evicting street traders. In many cities in Africa, trading spaces of street and informal traders are viewed by urban authorities as dens for thugs and robbers. In 2001 Kampala Municipal Authority used an increase in city theft and insecurity as grounds for evicting vendors from streets. While it may be true that criminals mingle with traders, an assumption that street vendors and informal traders are criminals is part of a scheme by urban elites to exclude street and informal traders from the development benefits of cities. A rights perspective requires urban authorities to identify and deal with culprits as opposed to condemning a whole sector of an urban economy.

Most vendors find it difficult to transport their commodities from their homes and markets to their trading sites. This is because most transport systems do not service the areas where vendors live, and in cases where they do, the vendors can hardly afford the service. In some cases, there are restrictions on what an individual can take on the bus, mini-bus or train. This forces vendors to carry their goods on their backs or to hire handcarts or human carriers to transport their goods. This is complicated further by lack of storage facilities, which makes the traders carry back to their homes unsold commodities.

Other services such as water and sanitation are also not available to vendors and consumers. Apart from a few cities in South Africa, street and informal traders operate without access to water and sanitation. A few of them rely on services from the neighbouring formal markets, hotels and bars; while the majority of vendors rely on unsafe water sources, unsanitary methods of refuse disposal and use of open spaces as sanitary facilities. Others obtain services from their homes or nearby residential areas. Cleansing services provided by urban authorities are inadequate and do not cover trading areas of street and informal traders, nor do the urban authorities facilitate the provision of services by traders and other stakeholders. In cases where traders are organized, they clean their sites of operation or hire people to collect and dispose garbage.

The poor, in particular street and informal traders, are disadvantaged in trade at global, regional and local levels. Under pressure from rich countries, the barriers to international trade in goods and financial services and investment flows have been lowered to the advantage of capital over labour and of large firms over small and micro firms. The negative trade and policy processes largely disadvantage the wage workers and own account producers in the informal economy, and yet they are the majority poor who are the focus of current policies and development processes. The neglect of the micro and small traders has to be reversed if African countries are to change existing poverty trends.

* Dr. Winnie Mitullah is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Genetically Modified (GM) crops are touted by some as the answer to world hunger; by others as a dangerous intervention by multi-national agri-business that will have far reaching impacts on all aspects of human life. Pambazuka News asked Mariam Mayet from the African Centre for Biodiversity for her views on the implications of GM crops for Africa.

Pambazuka News: What are the implications of GM crops for human life generally, including the human rights of populations and farmers?

Mariam Mayet: The risks posed by GM food are extremely contentious in current scientific discourse, primarily because the GM industry has failed, to date, to provide conclusive evidence that GM foods are safe. Amidst the enthusiasm for genetic engineering, there has been little space for critical reflection. Leaping into genetic engineering brings with it a wide range of biosafety issues including health and environmental risks, and broader socio-economic impacts. It requires the acceptance of intellectual property rights on living organisms, the privatisation of public research, and expensive research and development at the expense of farmer-based innovation. Amid all the complexities of the legal and scientific arguments, decisions must be made in Africa about the measures to be taken, to protect human health, agricultural biodiversity, and farming systems.

Pambazuka News: So what decisions are being taken? Have governments introduced laws to govern this area?

Mariam Mayet: Very recently, the African Centre for Biodiversity did an analysis of the draft Biosafety law of Mozambique, which is interesting to consider in answering this question. Mozambique views genetic engineering as having a role to play in agriculture, food security and human health care, but believes that the risks have to be managed by the creation of an enabling legislative environment, to this end. In other words, Mozambique will follow the route taken by South Africa and permit the entry of GM crops into its agriculture systems, after an evaluation of the risk assessment data provided by an applicant.

Currently, Mozambique's seed law prohibits the import and planting of GM seed. But Mozambique does accept genetically modified (GM) food aid, including and especially from the United States. USAID's Food for Progress (FFP) has provided 15.500 MT of PL480 (A US law relating to food aid) Title II emergency food assistance valued at $11.6 million to Mozambique through the World Food Programme. (USAID, Southern Africa-Food Insecurity, February 3 2006).

Without dwelling on the politics of hunger and food aid, it's worth pointing out that the opening or maintaining of markets is a key objective of Public Law 480 (PL 480). PL 480 clearly asserts that the purpose of US food aid programmes is to “develop and expand export markets for United States agricultural commodities”. [1] A position repeatedly pronounced by US government officials is that the opening of new markets is immensely important for the future of US agriculture. [2] Moreover, US agribusiness have been the main beneficiaries of US food aid programmes.

Therefore, in considering the Mozambique law, its worth warning that countries should not be pushed into believing that GM food aid is the only alternative to consider during emergencies and that countries should be careful when developing legislation that their laws will not be used as a conduit to push GM food aid into the rest of Africa.

Pambazuka News: So there's definitely some vested interests operating in the trade in GM crops. What role does the World Trade Organisation (WTO) play?

Mariam Mayet: The United States, the world's largest producer of GM crops, has effectively used the threat of WTO sanctions against developing countries such as Sri Lanka, Bolivia, South Korea and Thailand when these countries tried to ban or restrict imports of GM crops in adopting biosafety measures.

Countries in Africa have also been the target of US style pressure: one of the main reasons given for Egypt's initial support of the US, Argentina and Canada WTO complaint against the EU (On May 13, 2003 the US, along with Canada, Argentina and Egypt, filed a complaint in the WTO against the EU's de facto moratorium on GMOs.), was that Egypt would be rewarded with a Free Trade Agreement in 2004; an offer retracted with indecent speed when Egypt subsequently withdrew from the complaint, stating that their decision was in recognition of “the need to preserve adequate and effective consumer and environmental protection.” [3]

Similarly, in May 2003, when Sudan banned the import of GM food aid, it was forced to issue a series of temporary waivers enabling food aid shipments to the country to continue while alternatives were found. The US response was to suspend food aid shipments to Sudan and exert enormous pressure on the government to rescind the ban. The government relented, and ended up extending the waiver for six months, allowing the distribution of GM food aid to continue.

Hence, the extent to which African countries and indeed, developing countries, will be given opportunities to take biosafety measures aimed at banning or severely restricting the trade in GM crops will be greatly influenced by the outcome of the complaint submitted during May 2003, by the United States, Canada and Argentina to the WTO against the European Union's Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products (EC-Biotech) [4]. For those of us in Africa, reliant on trade and aid from the US, the WTO challenge most certainly has conveyed a lasting message that either we open our markets for GM food and seeds, or face reprisals.

Pambazuka News: You mention GM food aid. Shouldn't food aid be welcomed?

Mariam Mayet: The most frequent criticism of food aid is that it impacts on local food security. Food aid acts as a disincentive to local production by driving down domestic prices. Local farmers may withdraw from producing a surplus, forcing governments to import the growing deficit. Alternatively, it may lead a government to neglect its own agricultural sector, relying on aid or imports rather than facilitating local agricultural development. It may also introduce a taste for a particular food, which is not produced locally, therefore undermining the long-term potential for self-sufficiency. Crucially, the provision of food aid is intimately tied to the disposal of highly subsidised surplus food on the planet's poorest and most vulnerable people.

Already, controversy over the shipment of GM food aid has erupted twice in Africa. During the Southern African food crisis in 2001/2002, Zambia imposed a ban on the acceptance of GM food aid, and several other Southern African countries imposed various restrictions. Last year, Angola and Sudan introduced restrictions on GM food aid. These countries are almost always presented with a false choice between accepting GM food or facing dire consequences, whereas non-GM alternatives almost always exist at the national, regional and international level.

Pambazuka News: What has been the role of civil society in Africa - do they have a say in any parts of the decision making process about GM crops? Has civil society been active in opposing GM crops coming into Africa?

Mariam Mayet: Civil society in Africa is active - alive and kicking - quietly. The fact that Africa (except for South Africa) has not taken any decisions on biosafety grounds, to permit the commercial import and growing of GMOs, is a huge victory for us. Whereas in the rest of Africa, over the last five years, only eight other countries have conducted field trials of GM crops: Burkina Faso, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, on small plots of land.

The key target countries for USAID, the World Bank and the gene giants are the cotton markets in West Africa. However, already the farmers have rejected GM crops. Recently, in an unprecedented move, farmers in Mali voted not to grow GM crops on their land. In a "farmers' jury", cotton growers and other farmers debated the issue and came to the conclusion that their government should reject GM crops. The citizens' jury was hosted by the regional government (Assemblee Regionale de Sikasso) and was designed and facilitated by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development and RIBios, the University of Geneva's Biosafety Interdisciplinary Network, together with a wide range of local partners in Mali.

* Interview conducted by email. Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References

[1] United States Department of Agriculture, US Food Aid Programs Description: Public Law 480, Food For Progress And Section 416(B) http://www.fas.usda.gov/excredits/pl480/pl480brief.html

[2] Hembree Brandon, 'Veneman says more farm aid likely', Southwest Farm Press, Jun 21, 2001 http://southwestfarmpress.com/ar/farming_veneman_says_farm/

[3] Letter by the Egyptian Ambassador to the EU, Suleiman Awaad, Cited in Al Amrani.: Egypt follows EU line on GM, Middle East Times, June 6, 2003.

[4] European Communities-Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products (EC-Biotech), WT/DS291

Steve Ouma Akoth discuses the notion of corporate responsibility, introducing two notions of human dignity - individualistic and choice oriented vs. communal and substance oriented - that reflect two different world views. In discussing these views, he argues that the choice is for a thicker or broader notion of the moral self.

Corporate Responsibility or Citizenship has evolved in a time of increased economic and social globalization. As part of this evolution, the debate has moved beyond responsibilities and accountability [1] of the Corporate Citizens [2] to that of respective roles that the non-state actors can play in the governance of global and national societies. In building this understanding, attention has invariably been focused on how the concept and process has evolved from the paternalistic philanthropic [3] focus to the current talk of accountability.

It is apparent from the scholarly materials and information available in this area that most pundits more so those focusing on accountability of business enterprises, have looked at this issue from the perspective of the Western system of knowledge and its confrontation with neo-liberalism. This “singular focus” has thus missed a major thrust and leverage factor from other cultures and jurisdictions which would otherwise significantly influence the clarity of this discourse.

From the various view points [4], one must also note that there has been no significant challenge to the economic system within which the business enterprises which are being called to be more accountable operate. Milton Friedman laid down corporate law in the mid 20th Century when he said that business' only role was to make business, which has been ignored in this debate [5].

Jerry Mander & Edward Goldsmith have taken this debate further by exposing the spirit of Miltons argument by stating that:

“The essence of the capitalism system is the accumulation of capital, the making of profits in order to invest and to make still more profits. The first law of capitalism is; And the best way to accumulate capital is not to work hard but to get others to work hard for you. Private gains, not social needs, are the central rule for the capitalist system.”

As an erstwhile chairman of Castle Cooke put it: “We are in the business of making profit. We are not in business primarily to satisfy society. We are not going to satisfy society very long if we go out of business. So profits are the number one consideration.”[6]

This is why I think that any efforts to promote ethical business practices and encourage respect for and fulfillment of human rights, must question the framework of profit making. The response to this kind of mind set in my opinion can not simply be the business case or the legal frameworks which have been touted as the major contours and impetus for Corporate Accountability. In my opinion this is about what is good and what is bad. It is about ethics and morals.

Although ordinarily the debate on ethics and morals is seen as a fragile and delicate landmine, [7] this is where the Corporate Citizenship discourse can benefit from the African Context. Because at the very minimum, business has a moral obligation to ensure it does not undermine human dignity and progress. To this, African Context through both economic system and value system gives an unwavered response.

The Traditional African Economic System.

The African Economic system was widely anchored in the principles of economic democracy. The basic premise of this notion is to view economics as 'culture'. In other words, importance is given to the study of economic processes in relation to the social and cultural contexts in which they occur To strengthen this understanding Anthropologists [8] have decided to create a distinction between this economic system - which they have called the 'substantivist' economy - and the now dominant neo-liberal economic system which they refer to as the formalist [9] economy.

The 'substantivist' economic system is anchored in the principles of egalitarians. This school of thought is closely associated with Karl Polanyi who is remembered today as the originator of a 'substantivist' approach to economics, which emphasized the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This thinking appreciates the fact that economic systems have three interrelated aspects;

- Patterns of subsistence - the means by which environmental resources are converted for human use
- Systems of distribution - the means by which goods and services are made available to members of a particular group
- Patterns of consumption

Polanyi isolates four institutions as crucial to the economic and political order that had characterized most native economies : a balance of political power, the international gold standard,
a self-regulating market system, and the liberal state. The SRM (Self-Regulating Market) was "the fount and matrix of the system," the "innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization". [10]

Most African societies were organized in a system that Polanyi describes here as the SRM (Self-Regulating Market). Polanyi differentiated between economic systems in which there were markets and the "starkly utopian" SRM of the nineteenth century. Markets are places or networks in which goods are bought and sold; they are human interactions organized by price, quality, and quantity of traded goods and services. The SRM was a society-wide system of markets in which all inputs into the substantive processes of production and distribution were for sale and in which output was distributed solely in exchange for earnings from sales of inputs.

The SRM was a society-wide system of markets in which all inputs into the substantive processes of production and distribution were for sale and in which output was distributed [11] solely in exchange for earnings from sales of inputs. Society is vital to humans as social animals, and the SRM [12] was consistent with a sustainable society. This argument represents the character of most pre-colonial African economies.

There exists substantial evidence that organization of production and distribution in many societies had been accomplished through social relationships of kin or community obligations and counter obligations (reciprocity). The same system of relation with business enterprises can be found in the Agrarian and pastoralist [13] societies. This framework seems to be in great resonance to the modern concept of Corporate Citizenship. It implies that business can not survive unless it is in articulation with the societal values and operates in a conscientious manner to the expectation and aspirations of the society.

African Ethics for Business: Ubuntu

There is a very diverse set of ethical and customary frameworks throughout Africa. However, to illustrate how some of these concepts or terms may be applicable to business ethics and Corporate Citizenship, a deeper focus on the world view of most African societies would be useful.

This is very well represented in the philosophy of ubuntu which is based on the proverb “Umntu Ngumntu Ngabantu,” which can be translated as “a person is a person through other people” or “I am what I am because of you”. The following extract is from a book by Desmond Tutu called No tomorrow without forgiveness and it gives a good impression of ubuntu:

“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks to the very essence of being human. When you want to give high praise to someone we say, 'Yu, u nobuntu', he or she has ubuntu. This means that they are generous, hospitable friendly, caring and compassionate. They share what they have. It also means that my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in theirs. We belong in a bundle of life. We say, 'a person is a person through other people' (in Xhosa Ubuntu Ungamntu ngabanye abantu and in Zulu Umuntu Ngumnutu ngabanye). I am human because I belong, I participate, I share. A person with ubunti is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good; for he or she has proper self-assurance that comes with knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were no less than who they are.” [14]

The term “Ubuntu” emphasizes that we all live and work in community [15]. Hence ubuntu can apply to the inside of a company and we could see company employees and management as a community, where one looks after the interest of others. Ubuntu also applies to a company as part of the broader community, where the company looks after other members of the community so that it can thrive. It is therefore apparent that ubuntu has important implications for corporate citizenship. Linking this with the economic system postulated above, essence of Ubuntu (humanity) cuts across Africa.

It is pertinent to take account of the African world view and culture in the context of governance of companies and the moral power that they imply. This high standards of morality are based on historical precedent. These are bolstered by the close kinship observed through totem or clan names and the extended family system [16]. This notion of co-existence with other people which is highly valued can inform the way we conceptualize and design the responses to Corporate Accountability and Responsibility today.

Two notions of human dignity

The outcome of the above discussion is two very different notions of self dignity: A classical libertarian understanding which (when pushed) reduces human dignity to individual free choice, and a broader, social (egalitarian as illustrated by the African cosmological context) perception of humanity which insists that human dignity involves more than free choice. Precisely what the latter means in any particular society is determined not merely by ideological theory (whether of Kant, John Stuart Mill or Karl Marx) but by values inherent to the historical and social context (with all the political, economic, cultural and religious dimensions) that influence any particular society at a given time. Within this context theories, doctrines and traditions (the theoretical apparatus we bring to a situation) usually need to be reshaped, reconceived and rewritten. As suggested in the introduction, the exercise of thinking through and developing the Social Responsibility standard must thus involve an intellectual and theoretical renewal which responds to the conflicts within the current economic system. The two notions of human dignity - individualistic and choice oriented vs. communal and substance oriented - reflect two different world views.

It is apparent that this African cosmological context presents a major tension that challenges and haunts liberal politics. These are challenges that confront all politic. Its is the tension between how to allow the maximization of individual freedom of choice while at the same time addressing the corporate responsibilities that are part of any social union. If individual [17] liberty is the primary value, then equality may have to be sacrificed. If equality is the primary value, there will be violations of liberty [18]. The quest must thus contribute to resolving this apparent contradiction [19] which resides at the heart of democratic-liberalism. An illustration using the African context affirmations of individual freedom alone constitutes a one-sided view of a fragmented tradition [20]. As such it provides a useful basis on which to address the political issues central to the required reconstruction. The concern is to balance individual and common values, rather than to propose a compromise within which neither is adequately addressed. [21] The goal is the establishment of a social theory and morality, which 'rests on a view of ourselves as co-members of a common world'. It involves a morality within which each individual is necessarily seen as 'one of us', requiring co-existence based on mutual respect and co-operation by a community of individuals who consciously locate themselves within their social context rather than seek (in a Kantain way) to abstract themselves out of it. The quest is for a thicker or broader notion of the moral self. [22]

* The Author is the Programmes Coordinatotor and Deputy Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Member of the Advisory Board of Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and a Student of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Governance at University of South Africa Contact address Valley Arcade, Gitanga Road, P.O. Box 41079, 00100 Nairobi - GPO, Kenya Tel. 254-2-3874998/9, 38776065, 0733-629034, 0722-264497, Fax: 254-2-3874997E-mail: [email][email protected]

[1] The discourse of accountability implies obligation by the law and a framework that can be used to hold the actor to responsible for their actions.

[2] These are artificial persons created by the law.

[3] The history of involvement of Corporations in societal issues has an origin in welfare and charity work at that time not much linked to the strategic operations.

[4]Here we are only referring to the view points that have been taken on Corporate Accountability and Responsibility

[5]Jerry Mander & Edward Goldsmith, eds., The Case Against the Global Economy and For a Turn Toward the Local (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996); Ed., Kevin Danaher, 50 years is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Boston: South End Press, 1994).

[6] Chairman of Castle and Cooke of Dole Standards Fruits CO., interview in the documentary film Controlling interests, (San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1978).

[7] This is mainly due to relativity of the term.

[8] Classic economic anthropology has been concerned with the logic of exchange systems, with peasant economies, and with livelihood systems. An anthropological approach to economics will enable a critical analysis of some of the cultural biases in the 'universal' principles of mainstream economics, e.g. the concepts of work and leisure, poverty and wealth, gifts and commodities, and money and markets.

[9] This formal neoclassical theory cannot be used to explain economic activities in non-western societies

[10] Polanyi, Karl. 1944, 1957. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press by arrangement with Rinehart & Company, Inc.

[11] One must however note that the strongest and most long lasting criticism of The Great Transformation has been directed at the passages where he argues that reciprocative and redistributive forms of integration have been much more common in human history than self-regulating market systems.

[12] In his further works, Polanyi's argues that the SRM could not survive -- not because of the distributional consequences that play the major role in Marx's explanation of the inevitable collapse of capitalism -- but because the starkly utopian nature of the SRM gave rise to a spontaneous counter movement, even among those enjoying increased material prosperity.

[13] In pastoralist societies for instance the concept of “cattle complex” which implies the deep intrinsic values that are inherent in pastoralism , do explain how social responsibility and sustainable models of economies and social relations inform business.

[14] See the Introduction to Corporate Citizenship, UNISA, Centre for Corporate Citizenship.

[15] This is almost some spirituality of Collectiveness and Humility. This Perpetual optimism is due to strong belief in the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent superior being in the form of the creator of mankind.

[16] As a result, there is an inherent trust and belief in fairness of all human beings. This manifests itself in the predisposition towards universal brotherhood, even shared by African-Americans.

[17] The individual here refer to both natural and legal persons.

[18] Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice, p 65.

[19] As I have mentioned in other discussions, I doubt if the ISO system has either the capacity or the willingness to confront this challenge. See Steve Ouma Akoth; Comments on the Guidance on Social submitted on 19th April 2006.

[20] Pinkard, Democratic Liberalism, pp. 51; 101f.

[21] Pinkard views Duncan Kennedy's classification of 'individualism' and 'altruism' as two competing theories and a fragmentation of liberalism. This concern is to transcend rather than choose or reduce the two into compromise. Pp. 100f

[22] Pinkard, DemocraticLiberalism, p, 15.

"The sad reality [is] that those, within the alliance, who purport to have the interests of the working class at heart, while being at the forefront of the 'Zuma for presidency' campaign have been, ironically, absent from militant working class struggles for better living conditions and affordable basic services." writes Percy Ngonyama, a social-movement activist based in Durban in discussing the furore over the succession struggle in South Africa.

They say free trade is the answer to world poverty, but all too often it benefits the richest and deprives the poorest. In this, the second of four Pambazuka News special issues during 2006 discussing issues of trade and justice, a series of articles examines the point where trade meets the rights of people and communities. If free trade is the answer, these articles seem to ask, why is health care a luxury for millions in Kenya? Why does the oil trade wreak havoc in the Niger Delta? How is it that informal traders have virtually no rights? Why are local communities excluded from development projects driven by multi-national companies? Why is it that cotton farmers in West Africa suffer because of a grossly unfair subsidy racket? The last article in this edition asks how trade and business can be conducted in a more humane way. Please send comments on these articles to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

FEATURED: Soren Ambrose makes a case for holding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) responsible for poor health care in Kenya
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- The crude oil trade in the Niger Delta remains anything but sweet for local communities, writes Nnimmo Bassey
- Winnie Mitullah asks when the rights of informal traders in African cities are going to be considered in trade policy
- We visit the Yala Swamp region of Kenya with Patrick Ochieng, who asks if Foreign Direct Investment is really the answer
- Question and Answers on genetically modified crops, access to food and land
- Cotton farmers in West Africa have yet to experience the concept of trade justice, writes Tope Akinwande
- Steve Ouma Akoth discusses corporate responsibility, arguing for a broader notion of the moral self
- Karoline Kemp looks at five examples where communities are claiming their rights in the face of unfair trade polices and practices
LETTERS: Readers respond to Tajudeen Abdul Raheem's article 'Slavery then and now', published last week
BLOGGING AFRICA: Sokari Ekine rounds up the week's debates in the blogosphere
BOOKS AND ARTS:
- Rene Loewenson reviews 'The African Aids Epidemic: A History' by John iliffe
- Shailja Patel discusses plagiarism and the African arts
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: News about events taking place at the June African Union meet in Banjul
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Concerns about Darfur; Violence continues in Mogadishu
HUMAN RIGHTS: Egyptian police accused of torture
WOMEN AND GENDER: Women's rights activists under siege in Zimbabwe
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Mogadishu fighting displaces Somalis to Yemen
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Obasanjo reshuffles cabinet
DEVELOPMENT: Film puts World Bank and IMF on trial
CORRUPTION: Apartheid corruption revealed in new report
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: New UNAIDS report shows slowdown, but increase in sub-Saharan Africa
RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA: Racism fears dog world cup
ENVIRONMENT: The danger of Abacha “coal pots” in Nigeria
LAND AND LAND RIGHTS: Securing land rights in Africa
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Media crackdown in The Gambia
PLUS: Advocacy and Campaigns, e-Newsletters and Mailing Lists, Fundraising and Useful Resources, Courses, Seminars and Workshops, Jobs

Statement by African Civil Society Colaition on AIDS

Three weeks after the African Union - the highest decision-making regional authority in Africa - endorsed a Common Position on HIV and AIDS, African delegates in New York are reneging on the strong commitments they made to providing access to services for HIV prevention, care and treatment to all those who need them in Africa.

The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, in collaboration with the Open Society Justice Initiative, AfriMAP, and Partnership Africa Canada, will be holding a civil society event entitled Strengthening Civil Society: Ensuring Compliance with African and International Standards on Human Rights and Good Governance, prior to the African Union Summit in Banjul, Gambia from June 26 – 28, 2006. Strengthening Civil Society will focus on civil society participation in monitoring compliance with African standards on human rights and good governance, in particular civil society participation in the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). Panelists from different countries that have undergone peer review will present their experiences, from both the official and civil society perspective. The workshop will also examine reports generated by AfriMAP, the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project, which has looked in-depth at the compliance of five African governments that have signed up for peer review with African and international standards in relation to the justice sector and rule of law, political participation and democracy, and effective delivery of public services. Finally, the workshop will discuss barriers to political participation in the form of discrimination in access to citizenship and documentation, bringing in case studies identified through a recent comparative study on discrimination and citizenship carried out by the Open Society Justice Initiative.

Yea, we need to know our African value system and what Africa is. Thank you Amy, great article.

A fantastic piece indeed. Slavery was never abolished, it was modernized, with everyone helping along the way. The piece could be the basis for anyone interested in making a film or writing a play. In this day and age, it seems, only art (theatre in this case) could render not just the actual facts as described by Tajudeen, but also the thinking, the emotions going on in the heads of those who traveled on that famous plane (it would be good to actually have the flight number, departure and destination). As scholars (historians in particular), we are trained to only look for facts in archives, or on any palpable concrete evidence, but what about the archives of our collective mind, emotions which are supposed to be off limits, and yet, have survived for generations.

The screams, the crying, the protest of the person on that plane sounded to me like echoes of those who were kidnapped centuries ago, in their fields, on their way to a funeral, to a wedding, or simply resting at home after a hard day's work. Back then, mercenaries appeared out of nowhere in search of slaves. There are no archives I know of where the screams, the pain, the suffering have been registered so that we can prove that, indeed long before the Holocaust, other genocides took place and create the conditions for the unthinkable to happen to people to whom such treatment was not supposed to happen.

Why should one not be outraged, "emotional" at such barbarity? Is it not because we have not been sufficiently outraged collectively that such acts continue? Is it not because one rationalizes one's silence that things which were supposed to have been abolished long ago continue to happen under a different name?

Taj, thank you for bringing to the surface one little illustration of what took place centuries before and continues today unabated. On the image of the slave ship mentioned toward the end of your piece, I would suggest the following: why not have our billionaires who might still have a bit of conscience, get about a dozen or so (or more) slave ships built exactly as they were when the slave trade was in full swing, and have a sample moored at all the ports (of departure and destination) so that, at least visually, all those who do want to see the instruments of killing the person and making a slave can be seen. However painful such replicas might be, at least they would have the shocking value that Maidanek, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, etc. continue to carry today.

Today is the African Day. How many Africans are aware of the significance of the day's event? How many governments organised any public rally to mark the day? Does it really matter to our so-called political leaders and policy makers what citizens in their countries go through each day. They are all busy with how to either maintain themselves in power or install their stooges as successors to an already depressed economy, leaving a legacy of social decay and zero level infrastructures. The story is the same across Africa from Cape to Cairo. Today, the lot of mother Africa and millions of her citizens is deferred dreams and broken promises from the leaders. Last month in Abuja Nigeria, our leaders from across the continent came and made mouth watering promises on how to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. But, what happened to the promises made five years ago on the same issue? Can the leopard change the spots on its skin? It is heat-rendering that African youth are caught in this web and now run to Europe for succor, nay second slavery, willingly. Today, lets think about mother Africa and her millions of citizens.

From the 31st of May to the 4th of June, Heads of State and Civil Society will be attending the UNGASS Review Conference in New York. In order to maximize media coverage, SAfAIDS has created a Weblog to post relevant information about the event as well as to enable civil society to participate and comment on the progress and outcomes of the conference. The blog will offer up-to-date and current analysis of the UNGASS meeting and comments from relevant stakeholders from Southern Africa. It will also enable those who are attending the review meeting to post their updates, comments and opinions on the conference events and outcomes. Interestingly, the blog is an open platform for everyone to comment or post opinions on UNGASS. SAfAIDS will post latest articles and issues around UNGASS and open them for discussion. Among the issues to be discussed are civil society participation, involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWAs), leadership, accountability and transparency, trade, debt and access to treatment, gender and special or vulnerable population, prevention and testing, health systems and brain drain.

East African countries are leading the African continent in the growth of Internet connections, with Tanzania recording a 150 per cent rise in users in the past year, a new report says. In Kenya, this figure is 200 per cent with the number of Internet users having now hit the 1.5 million mark, up from 500,000 users just a year ago. Uganda's are well over 200,000. Tanzania's Internet connections now stand at 300,000. Across Africa, Internet penetration has now reached 4 per cent, up from just 2.6 per cent in 2005.

The Sexual Offences Bill in Kenya has come closer to enactment after sailing through the second reading in Parliament. The Bill, sponsored by Nominated MP Njoki Ndung'u, will now go to the committee of the whole House where members will scrutinise it clause-by-clause. In this stage, members are allowed to amend it on the floor of the House. Once members agree on the amendments, the Bill goes to the third stage, for presidential assent.

Applications are invited for the Regional Master’s in Women’s Law which will be offered by the Southern and Eastern African Regional Centre for Women’s Law (SEARCWL), University of Zimbabwe, in January 2007. The Master’s will consist of three semesters over a period of 18 months.

Women's unpaid housework may be of critical importance in the determination of household wellbeing, but unfortunately it does not get as much recognition as paid work does. In order to get such recognition, many recent studies are advocating an inclusion of the imputed value of women's unpaid work in the construction of national accounts.

In the wake of terrorism and a rise in fear of the unknown, a tide of repressive immigration policies is passing through Europe. Discrimination is common, according to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). Skin colour is a reason to deny access to accommodation. Public authorities are too passive, or even complicit in the daily discrimination immigrants experience.

An international organisation that launched on Sunday (21 May) in China will create a multi-dimensional 'Digital Earth' to aid research into global issues such as climate change. The Beijing-based International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) will combine geographical, geological and other information into a single database that will encompass all of the Earth's natural systems.

The Namibian government is considering ways to improve its land-reform programme, which has not only been slow, but has also had a negative impact on agricultural production.

The leaders of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) have failed to resolve their disagreements on the implementation of the January 2005 peace agreement which ended the country's 21-year civil war. Despite the difficulties, President Umar al-Bashir and the First Vice-President Salva Kiir Mayardit affirmed their determination to fully implement the provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which was signed in Nairobi, Kenya.

The constitutional council confirmed Idriss Deby's victory in presidential elections early this month. Deby won a third successive five-year mandate with 64.67 percent of the vote, the council said, which although a substantial majority, was below the provisional victory figure of 77.6 percent initially released by the country's national election commission.

Amnesty International released the first-ever satellite images of the wholesale destruction of a large community in Zimbabwe - providing the clearest possible evidence to date of the devastating impact of the Zimbabwean government's policy of house demolitions. "These satellite images are irrefutable evidence - if further evidence is even needed - that the Zimbabwean government has obliterated entire communities - completely erased them from the map, as if they never existed," said Kolawole Olaniyan, Director of Amnesty International's Africa programme.

Transparency International Kenya (TI) released the 2006 Kenya Bribery Index amid criticism for leaking the report to one media house before the launch. The report summarizes the findings of Transparency International(TI)-Kenya’s fifth national bribery survey. The survey is part of TI Kenya’s effort to inform the fight against corruption with rigorous and objective research and analysis. The survey captures corruption as experienced by ordinary citizens in their interaction with officials of both public and private organisations.

Land is one of the most important assets for millions of poor people in Africa. Equally critical are their rights to this land, which provide social and economic security and an incentive to use natural resources in a sustainable manner.

Land redistribution is often seen as a powerful tool in the fight against poverty in areas where a majority of people are rural-based and make a living mostly, if not entirely, off the land. Although some poor people have had their lives transformed by access to more land in the short term, there is no systematic linkage between the programmes for land reform in the region and poverty reduction.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday urged Nigerians never to compromise on good governance and to shun corruption, in a speech to the nation marking the return of democracy seven years earlier.

According to a report prepared by members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), violations of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association and other basic human rights are still rampant following the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunisia in November 2005.

Patrice Booto, the editor of the tri-weekly Le Journal and its supplement Pool Malebo, has been sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of 500 dollars that must be paid within a week or his prison term will be extended by three months. The sentence was passed by a lower court in Assossa after it found him guilty of insulting the president and government.

According to new data in the UNAIDS 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic the AIDS epidemic appears to be slowing down globally, but new infections are continuing to increase in certain regions and countries. The report also shows that important progress has been made in country AIDS responses, including increases in funding and access to treatment, and decreases in HIV prevalence among young people in some countries over the past five years.
Related Link:
* Campaigners demand action on G8 AIDS pledge at UN meeting

Structural adjustment policies in the late 1980s and early 1990s have significantly contributed towards a rapid growth of the informal economy in many African countries. These policies encouraged governments to liberalise trade, to privatise state-owned enterprises and to reduce the size of the public sector. This led to a sharp decrease in employment in the formal sector and forced many to survive in highly precarious and insecure conditions in the informal economy.

"Livelihood insecurity in Manica is growing both in terms of the number of people affected and in its impact, particularly in certain areas where erratic rainfall and ill health and deaths from AIDS have occurred. Growing numbers of people are taking up ever more risky livelihood strategies such as unsustainable livestock sales or the removal of children from school in order to release them for household duties requiring labour or to relieve costs associated with school attendance."

The Government has released Sh1.3 billion for the free education programme to meet general expenditure in schools. This is the equivalent of Sh185 a pupil in all the 18,000 public primary schools in the country, acting Education minister Noah Wekesa said at the ministry headquarters.

Zambian authorities have confirmed that the repatriation of thousands of Angolan refugees had been stalled owing to a cholera outbreak in the western neighbouring country that has killed more than 1 400 people. Home affairs permanent secretary Peter Mumba said the cholera situation in Angola was "worrisome" and there was need to be cautious in the repatriation exercise.

Every week in SA, police target black people whom they perceive to be foreigners for harassment. The practice has become so prevalent that it has become the subject of a number of studies by various human rights bodies.

South African Diaspora (http://www.southafricandiaspora.org/archives/2006/05/30/take-take-take/) raises some interesting points about Africans leaving to work abroad in the West. He goes into considerable detail about skilled and unskilled labour and the cost for Africa to educate it’s skilled workforce who then leave.

“So taking this from America’s point of view, they can basically pick and chose who they want from Africa’s talent pool, not have to pay a cent for their education and training, and have no trouble getting them to immigrate. What a great system. Africa, why are you so poor and stupid?”

He asks what would happen if all the educated Africans came home to work? For example many Indians who left to study IT in the US are now returning home. He makes one challenging suggestion of the US:

“I would like to see America paying $1 million for every immigrant that they take. Or even better, if for every skilled worker that they took, they took 20 unskilled workers. Or maybe a moratorium on permanent immigrations, only 5 years maximum allowed – go overseas, work a bit, get cash and experience, bring it home and make it better…”

African Gadget (http://www.afrigadget.com) is a new group blog created with the aim of showcasing African alternative technologies and ways of utilising every day objects to solving local problems. One of the first pieces on show is:

“Handcrafted, locally made bikes using wood and rubber for the tires. Yes, they do have brakes, which are much needed in the mountainous areas of Uganda, Zaire/Congo, and Western Kenya.”

African Gadget is looking for more people in Africa to join their team. “No matter where you are located, you’ll see (and hopefully take pictures of) some interesting gadgets or mechanical wizardry. Even if you don’t have your own blog, or have never done anything like this before, you can easily get started here."

AfriGadget will cover these categories: Gadgets (of course), How-to’s, Books, Energy, Communication, Transportation, Water, Wood and Metal projects that are different from the norm.

Sub-ZeroBlue (http://www.subzeroblue.com/archives/2006/05/homosexuality_in_the.html) discusses homosexuality in the Arab world by commenting on it’s existence and asking what should be done.

“First of all, let's start with the general fact: Homosexuality exists. It has existed for ages and ages, and will continue to exist for ages to come…The Arab and Muslim world is no exception. Homosexuality exists in our societies and is a lot more widespread than we think it is…We and our governments choose to ignore that fact, we choose not to face it, and just act as if it’s not there, even though we know we’re lying to ourselves; it’s because we simply don’t know how to handle it.”

He goes on to say that on the basis of basic human anatomy homosexuality cannot be regarded as natural but since it exists, the Arab world needs to find a way to deal with it. He asks:

“So, is the Arab world’s policy of just ignoring the existence of homosexuality, and leaving it for the Arab society to deal with, as something that is both illegal by law and forbidden by religion, the best solution we have?”

The Arabist (http://arabist.net/archives/2006/05/28/a-letter-from-sharqawi) publishes a letter from Mohamed el-Sharqawi, a protestor who was detained by the police whilst protesting in support of the pro-reform judges. Sharqawi was sexually assaulted during his detention:

“Activist Mohammed el-Sharqawi, 24, was sodomized ‘using a rolled up piece of cardboard for nearly 15 minutes,’ his lawyer Gamal Eid told The Associated Press. ‘Almost all of el-Sharkawi’s body is bruised, swollen, or cut,’ Eid said. ‘I haven’t seen such brutality and sadism since 1995,’ he added, referring to a period when the state mounted a crackdown on Islamic militants.”

In this post, Sharqawi describes his ordeal from being kidnapped, beaten and assaulted over an 8 hour period by Egyptian security forces:

“I went through many moments of fear and horror in my life, but nothing was like those I went through after I left the Press Syndicate on 25 May, 2006, around 6pm. I got into one of my colleagues’ car, to take a ride to the train station, so as to catch the train to Alexandria. I wanted to see my family, after a period by no means short - 30 days -behind bars in Tora Prison.”

Diary of a Mad Kenyan Woman (http://madkenyanwoman.blogspot.com/2006/05/nambrangelina-africa-in-hock....) comments on the Brad Pitt/Angelina Joli saga in which they have gone to have their baby in Namibia. The government is providing them with protection from paparazzi during their stay and the couple have donated $175,000. The couple have a joint worth of literally millions of dollars. The child will have Namibian citizenship. MKW comments:

“However, we Africans have now reached new depths of depravity and shame. Or perhaps that should be heights, since it is somehow rather ineffable that an entire country can be turned into a private maternity ward. An. Entire. Sovereign. Country. Namibia has granted Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt the rights of ownership (or lease?) over its borders and its airspace, so that this couple, who are accomplished enough to have arranged their genetics so as to have the requisite good looks—if one likes that sort of thing—to subsequently make unthinkable amounts of money for occasionally pretending to be someone else on film, can determine who enters or flies over Namibia. I repeat. Namibia, THE COUNTRY.”

MKW (as are many other African bloggers) is disgusted with this arrangement or rather agreement by the Namibian government. MKW concludes that it would be best to stop pretending and just bring back colonialism:

“This time, we have ourselves agreed to slavery and to colonialism. This time, we have invited and reveled in them. This time, we have no excuse. I have never been so ashamed to be an African.”

Acoustic Motorbike (http://ggernst.blogeasy.com/article.view.run?articleID=316558) reviews a new book, an Anthology on lesbian writings from South Africa – Sometimes X Sometimes Y.

“It is a beautiful, moving anthology of personal stories of South African lesbians. There is poetry, stories, letters and autobiography. The anthology deals with issues of coming out, family and peer acceptance and rejection, love and loss, abuse and death.”

Black Looks (http://www.blacklooks.org/2006/05/blocking_blogs_monitoring_mobiles_-_.html) comments on the new trend emerging in African countries with governments increasingly attacking internet sites, blocking blogs and arresting bloggers and journalists. The Ethiopian government continues to block Ethiopian blogs in Ethiopia. The government is still denying responsibility but who else could be doing it. Apart from the blocking of blogs in Ethiopia, arrest of bloggers in Tunisia and Egypt, the Gambian government has hacked into the site of exiled journalist, Pa Nderry Mbai, who runs the Freedom Newspaper. His own content was removed and replaced by a false statement plus the publication of the names and emails of all registered users of the site all of whom were later ordered to report to the police station to be detained.

In addition the South African and Zimbabwean government are planning to enact legislation that will require mobile phone users to produce employment records and addresses. Providers will be forced to disclose and monitor usage.

"…from a user perspective the Bill has implications for both privacy and access or use of mobile phones. As always it is the poor that will mostly be affected by this legislation. If you don’t have an address, do not work in the formal economy or are an illegal immigrant then under the Bills regulations you will no longer be able to use a mobile phone. The second hand sale of SIM cards which again is used by mostly poor and rural people will be criminalised as failure to report the sale or exchange will result in a prison sentence of up to 12 months.”

Afrikan Eye (http://afrikaneye.blogspot.com/2006/05/slavery-and-colonisation.html) has an excellent essay on Slavery & Colonisation in Africa. She beings by saying:

“This blog is by an Afrikan for Afrikans...and those who are interested in the continent. May we have the courage to engage in our healing...I mean REALLY do the work required for us to heal...and of course a critical step in that process is learning how we were wounded...so here we go...this is PART of the story.”

She discusses the slave trade, resistance amongst captured slaves, colonisation and its impact on political and cultural underdevelopment, and Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. The piece is quite detailed and includes photos and graphics.

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks,

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

The 6th edition of the Arab Film Festival is being held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands from May 30 to June 4th. In addition to the screenings of films from the Arab world or from Arab filmmakers, there will be discussions, debates and the opportunity to meet filmmakers, actors, artists, journalists etc.

Ruth First was a journalist, activist and intellectual killed by the apartheid government while in exile. To commemorate her contribution to critical, independent, socially-engaged writing, the Wits University Journalism Programme, in conjunction with the Ruth First Trust and supported by the Heinrich Boll Foundation, has established a 3-6 month fellowship.

This is South Africa's premier site dedicated to serving Non Profit Organisations in the broadest possible way. If you are in any way connected to/involved in the development sector in South Africa - this site can assist you.

A new resources section on the Civil Society Partnerships Programme website gives useful information on funding opportunities, lessons and approaches from other programmes and details of other organisations that work directly or indirectly in the same field.

An African Union peacekeeper in Sudan's Darfur region has been killed in an ambush by unknown men. A peacekeeping base was later attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. One peacekeeper was badly injured; five had less serious wounds. An AU spokesman said peacekeepers were being targeted by groups opposed to a peace deal signed earlier this month.

Clashes between militias in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, have left 13 people dead, days after some of the heaviest fighting seen in the city for years. The latest violence has been centred in the Daynile and Galgalato districts. Some 200 people have died in clashes this year between militias loyal to Mogadishu's Islamic courts and an alliance of warlords. The fighting is the worst the city has seen for more than a decade.

Peace talks between the government of Burundi and the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), the country's remaining rebel group, have began in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. Burundi is emerging from over a decade of civil war, which erupted in 1993 following the assassination of the country's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was from the ethnic Hutu majority. Paratroopers of the then-minority, Tutsi-dominated army allegedly killed Ndadaye.

Following several months of research in and around Maridi, southern Sudan, Jake Phelan and Graham Wood explore the impact of return and reintegration in Western Equatoria. At the southern tip of Sudan, Western Equatoria borders Uganda, CAR and the DRC and represents a cross roads for many of the refugees returning “home” from these countries.

Nine EU nations have pledged to provide aircraft and patrol boats to support Spain in its effort to stem the flood of illegal migrants from Africa. Spain says it needs additional five patrol boats, five helicopters and a surveillance plane to track refugees arriving to the Canary Islands. Some 7,500 migrants have arrived in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic in 2005.