{jcomments on}OMAR, BXL, AGNEWS, le 23 juillet 2010 — Chad has accused the International Criminal Court of only targeting African leaders, as it justifies its decision not to arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir.

 

BURUNDI :

EAC election observer mission for legislative elections in Burundi
Source: East African Community (EAC)/pr-usa.net/Friday, 23 July 2010

An EAC Election Observer Mission is in the Republic of Burundi for the Legislative elections in the country, slated for 23 July 2010. 

The Mission seeks to assess whether conditions exist for the conduct of elections that allow the people of Burundi to freely express their will and determine whether elections are conducted in accordance with the legal framework for elections in Burundi. 

Its other objectives are to determine whether the final results of the electoral process as a whole reflect the wishes of the people of Burundi; and to assess whether the elections meet the benchmarks set out in the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the AU Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa, the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 

Hon. Lydia Wanyoto Mutende, a Member of East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) heads the 25-member Mission which comprises EALA members; Members of National Assemblies from the Republic of Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and United Republic of Tanzania; Members from the EAC Partner States’ Electoral Commissions; Members from the Partner States Human Rights Commissions; Membership from the Private Sector; and officials from the EAC Secretariat. 

In carrying out its work, the Mission will be guided by the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, the Code of Conduct for International Election Observers and the draft EAC Guidelines for Elections Observation, Monitoring and Evaluation. The principles require that the Observers should understand and respect the law governing the elections, the social, cultural and historic back ground of the society in which the Elections are being conducted. 

The EAC Election Observer Mission is in Burundi at the invitation of National Independent Electoral Commission of Burundi (CENI). A similar mission was in the country last month to monitor the presidential elections held on 28 June. 

Additional information 

The deployment of the Mission is in line with Articles 3 (b), 6 (d) and 7 (2) of the Treaty for the Establishment of the EAC (Treaty) which requires ‘…adherence to universally acceptable principles of good governance, democracy, the rule of law, observance of human rights and social justice’. 

To this end, the EAC Partner States have agreed under Article 123 to cooperate in the areas stated for the purpose of achieving the objectives of the Community under Article 5 of the Treaty. The EAC has the mandate under Article 5 (3) to ensure that these stated objectives are realised. 

Deployment and Activities: 

Members arrived on 17 July 2010 and will remain in the country until 26 July 2010, and will: 

• Attend meetings with as many relevant stakeholders as possible 

• Cover the following Provinces; Bujumbura Mairie and Bujumbura Rural, Bubanza; Ngozi; Makamba; Kayanza; Muyinga; Gitega; Bururi; Muranvya and Rutana 

• Visit as many polling stations as possible 

• Interact with CENI officials, Polling agents, Civil Society Organizations, Political Parties, other Election Observers, voters and other relevant stakeholders on matters of the electoral process 

Pending submission of a final report at a later stage, the EAC Observer Mission will issue a preliminary report shortly after the conclusion of the Legislative elections. 

As the EAC moves deeper in the integration process with the ultimate goal of attaining a political federation, standardising governance frameworks and proactively taking interest in political and electoral processes of Partner States in particular, has become an imperative. This is why the EAC is in the process of developing Guidelines for Elections Observation, Monitoring and Evaluation. 

The EAC Observer Mission highly commends the Government and the people of Burundi for the peaceful communal and presidential elections recently held and it is our wish that the Legislative and subsequent elections will also be peaceful. 

Burundi ‘most corrupt country in East Africa’
July 23 2010/- Sapa / m.iol.co.za 

Burundi is the most corrupt country in East Africa, according to a Transparency International (TI) survey released on Thursday.

Burundi had taken over the top position from Kenya in the latest East African Bribery Index with a rating of 36.7, TI Kenya said in a statement.

Kenya had registered a slight improvement in the perception of the prevalence of corruption, from a rating of 45 in 2009, to 31.9 this year, it said.

Rwanda was the least corrupt country in the region with a rating of 6.6.

Uganda was second most corrupt with a rating of 33, Kenya third, and Tanzania was fourth with 28.6.

The index measures perception of bribery levels in the private and public sectors in East Africa.

The survey was conducted among 10 505 randomly selected respondents in the five countries between January and March 2010, said TI Kenya.

The organisation said corruption was an “impediment to responsive public service delivery in the region”.

“Key governance and enforcement institutions such as the police, judiciary, and defence featured prominently in the index, as did institutions offering key services like health, education, housing and finance.”

The index also highlighted that the reporting of corruption cases was still very low in the region.

TI Kenya executive director Samuel Kimeu said: “East African countries need to scrutinise their service delivery mechanisms with the objective of rooting out practices such as corruption that are impeding the accessibility of basic services.

“This will promote equality, development and the reduction of poverty in the region.”

The organisation said that Kenya would put a proposed constitution containing stronger accountability safeguards to vote on August 4.

“If passed, it will serve as the gateway for much needed institutional reforms aimed at curbing corruption incidents in the public sector,” it said.

Burundi Parliamentary Vote Begins Friday
Peter Clottey/ www1.voanews.com/23 July 2010

A leading member of Burundi’s opposition Forces for National Liberation (FNL) has called on supporters of his party as well as other opposition parties to boycott the parliamentary election scheduled to begin Friday.

Jean-Bosco Habyarimana, spokesman for the FNL accused both President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government and the Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) of undermining the credibility of the parliamentary vote.

“It was known that we will not participate in this election. You remember we rejected the results of the (local) election because of the fraud that characterized those elections. We requested for a dialogue in which we could maybe correct the problems and then try to get a solution but the government refused,” he said.

Burundi’s opposition groups rejected the results of the 24th May local elections, saying it was fraught with irregularities and voter intimidation. They demanded a re-run of the vote. But, the electoral commission refused, saying the election was transparent and credible.

Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, chairman of the electoral body said the parliamentary vote will continue as planned despite the opposition boycott.

But, opposition leader Habyarimana said his party will not participate in an election in which the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) is pre-determined to win.

“The one who refused us is the one who refused the dialogue so that we can correct the faults that characterized the community elections. He is the one who (prevented) us from continuing in the electoral process,” Habyarimana said.

He also described Friday’s vote as illegal.

“All what is being done is against the law” he said.

Habyarimana said despite the boycott his party will continue to offer stiff opposition to President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government.

Al Qaida-linked militants gaining foothold in central Africa
Burundi security officials consider sending away Muslim minorities unless they give information about extremists.
By Cnaan Liphshiz /www.haaretz.com/ 23.07.10

BUJUMBURA, Burundi – Faced with concrete Jihadist threats for the first time, the East African nation of Burundi is considering sending away Muslim minorities unless they give information about extremists, Burundi’s defense minister has told Haaretz. 

Lieutenant General Germain Niyoyankana said on Monday that Somali refugees staying in Burundi “will have to return” to their land unless they help Burundi’s security forces fight terrorists. He said this in response to a deadly July 11 attack in nearby Uganda which claimed 73 lives and is attributed to a fundamentalist Muslim group from Somalia. The same group has said it will carry out similar attacks in Burundi.

“We are working with our Somali population and have requested their help in preventing attacks,” Niyoyankana said in an interview, the first by a Burundi minister for Israeli media. “If the Somali refugees don’t help us protect ourselves they will be obligated to return to where they came from. They chose to take refuge in Burundi and they should help protect us with any information possible.” 

Al-Shabaab, which is linked to Al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for twin explosions at a crowded restaurant and a rugby club in Uganda’s capital Kampala during the last moments of the World Cup final on July 11. The insurgent group has threatened more attacks against Uganda and Burundi unless they withdraw their peacekeepers from Somalia, where Al-Shabaab is fighting the government and controls large sections of the chaotic country. 

Niyoyankana said he did not know how many refugees from predominantly Muslim Somalia live in Burundi, “but there aren’t many.” He added that security forces have taken “a series of measures” which “cannot be specified” to foil plans to carry out attacks in the republic. 

Burundi’s population is 67 percent Christian and 23 percent traditionalist. Only 10 percent of its population of approximately nine million are Muslims. It is ranked as one of the world’s 10 poorest countries. 

“If you look around at what is happening in the city of Bujumbura and around it you will see there are things that are taking place,” he said, in an apparent reference to roadblocks and increased military and police presence in the capital. However, he said that Burundi has not declared a state of emergency. He said Burundi army forces will remain in Somalia. 

Al-Shabaab’s techniques make it possible for the group to strike inside Burundi, the minister said, “but our armed forces are capable of defending the country, and Shabaab cannot operate here freely.” 

Nonetheless, Niyoyankana urged “Israel and other countries” to support Burundi increase its involvement in Somalia, “because Somalia, by its nature and location, is an issue that affects the whole world and not only Africa.” 

Last Saturday Burundi security forces arrested a local journalist, Jean Claude Kavumbagu for “disseminating libel” against the army. Kavumbagu, according to Niyoyankana, wrote in a July 12 article that if Somali Islamists “had to try something in Burundi, it would be easy since our defense and security forces are much better at looting and killing innocent people than defending the nation.” 

Niyoyankana said Kavumbagu had disseminated “false, undignified and irresponsible” information. “These claims encourage terrorism while damaging moral,” he said. 

Burundi has no military ties with Israel, “but would like to see more cooperation with Israel,” Niyoyankana said.

RWANDA

Rwanda’s opposition silenced
SUSAN THOMSON | LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM /www.mg.co.za/Guardian News & Media 2010 / Jul 23 2010 

In five weeks, Rwandans go to the polls to elect a president. But the incumbent, Paul Kagame, continues to exert total control over the country’s electoral processes. 

Kagame, who came to power as the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel army that ended the 1994 genocide, legitimised his rule in 2003 when he won the presidential elections with 95% of the vote. Such a result would suggest that he was not elected in a free and fair poll.

But even though Amnesty International, the European Union, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations found serious irregularities and widespread repression during the elections, Kagame has won praise from major donors such as the United States and the United Kingdom for his leadership of Rwanda’s rebirth.

Many in the international community have remained supportive of Rwanda’s “democratic transition”. They ignore the widespread arrest of journalists and opposition politicians, the closure of independent newspapers, the ejection of a Human Rights Watch researcher, the attempted assassination of exiled General Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had a falling out with Kagame, and the killing of pressman Jean-Leonard Rugambage, who tried to report on the assassination bid in the online version of a Rwandan newspaper whose print edition had been closed by the state.

Although diplomats and policymakers in some countries, including Sweden and The Netherlands, have cut aid, the US and UK publicly continue to support Kagame.

In Rwanda, politics is the preserve of elite actors who represent about 10% of the population. The rest has almost no say in the political process. In November last year a group of farmers in southern Rwanda sought to register a new political party and put up their own presidential candidate. Several were arrested without charge — the organisers either remain in prison or have fled to neighbouring Burundi. Anyone who questions RPF policies or its treatment of the opposition and its critics risks being beaten or harassed. Those perceived as sympathetic to the opposition are often arrested or die mysteriously.

This has prompted Human Rights Watch to report that the stifling of political freedom is an RPF strategy to “silence critical voices before the elections”. None of the three main opposition parties — the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, FDU-Inkingi and PS-Imberakuri — can take part and even distant family members of opposition politicians and critical journalists find themselves under surveillance.

As an aide to the minister of local government put it: “In 2010, the people will also vote as we instruct them. This means that those who vote against us understand that they can be left behind. To embrace democracy is to embrace the development ideas of President Kagame.”

Rwandans are sceptical about the government’s commitment to democracy. A male university student, who asked not to be named, told me: “Voting is not something done freely. Since the middle of 2009, students have been told to take an oath of loyalty to the RPF. If we don’t join the party, we have no opportunities to get a job, get married or have any kind of life. In Rwanda, democracy means understanding that the power of the RPF is absolute.”

A rural woman who lost her husband in the 1994 genocide and who also asked to remain nameless said: “Democracy is something the government says we need when they fear losing their power. We heard this before the genocide and we hear it now. Democracy would be OK if ordinary people like me could participate rather than being told who to vote for and when.”

Behind the elections looms the spectre of renewed violence. “Anyone who has the means to do so is getting out of the country,” said an academic, who chose not to speak in his own name. “For those of us who can’t, we just hope the elections are without violence.” — Guardian News & Media 2010

Susan Thomson is a US academic who has been researching state-society relations in Rwanda since 1996

Another Critic Murdered

A senior member of an opposition Rwandan political party has been murdered in the third attack on a government critic in a month.
The body of Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, vice-president of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, which was unable to gain registration to contest next month’s poll, was found near a river in southern Rwanda. 

He had been reported missing on July 13.

“His head was almost completely removed from his body. His brother, Antoine Haguma, confirms seeing the dead body,” said Frank Habineza, the party president.

Police said a machete had been found near the victim, who had also suffered chest wounds.

Eric Kayiranga, a police spokesperson, said Rwisereka had reportedly been carrying a lot of money and robbery might have been the 
motive.

The murder follows the killing in Rwanda on June 24 of Jean Leonard Rugambage, acting editor of the Umuvugizi newspaper.

The government suspended the paper for six months in April for “inciting insubordination in the army and police” and publishing “information that endangers public order”. 

Five days earlier, the former Rwandan army chief, Lieutenant General Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had fallen out with President Paul Kagame, was shot in the stomach in South Africa.

Both the exiled Umuvugizi editor and Nyamwasa’s wife accused the Rwandan government of being behind the attacks. 
The government has vigorously denied this. But human rights groups have accused Kagame’s regime of clamping down on political opponents and the independent media in recent months.

The press watchdog Reporters Without Borders has called on the European Union and other donors to suspend financial support for the election because of “a series of grave press freedom violations”.

“How much longer will the international community continue to endorse this repressive regime?” the organisation asked. — Guardian News & Media 2010 

Rwanda: Annual Tea Revenues Up By 17 Percent
Alex Ngarambe/The New Times/23 July 2010

Kigali — Rwanda’s tea revenues for the financial year 2009/2010, has ended with an increase in revenues of 17 percent from $48.9million last year to $56 million due to better weather that was experienced.

According to Anthony Butera, the Director General of Rwanda tea authority, the general production for the year ended with an increase from 20.5 million kilograms to 22.5 million.

“Last year was good in terms of production and revenue to the extent that we surpassed our initial target of $54 million to achieve $56 million,” said Butera.

Rwanda has adapted to the East African Community financial year that runs from June of one year to July of the following year.

However, Butera said that Rwanda’s tea prices on the international market have sharply fallen from $2.8 at the beginning of the year to $2.1 that it sales currently.

The OCIR-THE boss attributes the decline in prices on international market to the border problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan who are the biggest buyers for Rwanda’s tea.

OCIR-THE has recently raised the farm gate prices for the farmers f
rom Rwf86 to Rwf96.6 that they earn per kilogram sold.

Tea is among the country’s top exports together with coffee and minerals and it exports it to Europe and mostly to Asia.

DAY FOUR: RPF heads to Habyarimana home area
Friday, 23 July 2010/ by RNA Reporters 

Kigali: The battle for votes heats up Friday as the four presidential contenders head to new grounds and the campaign has remained largely restrained – with no specific criticism of each other.

The Rwanda Patriotic Front takes its flag-bearer Paul Kagame to Rambura in Nyabuhu district – the birth place and home area of former President Juvenal Habyarimana. There are no visible signs of the Habyarimana era present at this area, and Mr. Kagame is expected to attract as many supporters as has been through the past days.

For the afternoon, the RPF is expected to bring Gisenyi to a stand-still as its candidate holds another rally at Nyundo in Rubavu – bordering DR Congo. President Kagame was in this same area about two months ago – where he forced the mayor to resign, blaming him for the dirty border town. The mood in the general public was of relief over the sacking as people felt the President was in constant touch with the ground.

The Liberal Party (PL) goes to Nyagatare district (Eastern province) with a rally at Rwimiyaga. It is unlikely that PL candidate Prosper Higiro has any support in this area because it is RPF territory. 

Before 1994, Nyagarate town was almost non-existent, but with a large part of the country’s elite establishing there in the east, development in the area has been fast. The area even now has university. 

For the afternoon, PL moves its flag-bearer to Gatsibo district (same province) – with a planned rally at Kiramuruzi. Like Nyagatare, Gatsibo can be considered ruling party stronghold.

The country’s second biggest party, Social Democratic Party (PSD), will be in deep rural south in Nyaruguru district – bordering Burundi. Dr. Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo has a rally at Ndago. 

Nyaruguru has been in the news over the past years as a place which has changed leadership more than any other in the country. Mayors there barely spend a year in office. Nyaruguru is incidentally the only place which has been food insecure among the 30 districts, but recent reports suggest things have changes following massive government intervention. People in this same area are always fleeing to Burundi – and at times forced back.

In the late afternoon, Ntawukuriryayo goes to neighbouring Gisagara district – another very rural area. The PSD candidate will hold a rally at the district’s only public grounds – where most of the major activities are often held.

The only female candidates Alvera Mukabarama takes her campaign messages to is also in the South but her campaign stops have largely been small. Some have attracted as few as 100 people. 

Rwanda: AU Hails Nation for Empowering Women
Eric Kabeera/The New Times/23 July 2010

Kigali — The African Union (AU) has recognised efforts by the Rwandan government to empower women by giving them access to decision-making positions in the country’s political landscape.

In an exclusive interview with The New Times, the Director of Women, Gender and Development Directorate at the AU, Litha Musyimi-Igana, said that some African countries have ignored women’s services which have slowed the developing processes on the continent.

“Rwanda is the leading country in Africa which has discovered the role and significance of women as far as development in Africa is concerned. If you see their participation, especially domination of women in parliament, it makes us proud as women since we were anciently taken as inferiors,” she said.

Musyimi-Igana urged Rwandan women to lay strategies and mechanisms consolidating themselves in important positions as well as sustaining the achievements they have realized in Rwanda and African as a continent.

“They must fight as women to strengthen their ability and lay mechanisms to make sure they sustain the good achievement they have made”.

She called upon all African women to take the lead from their Rwandan counterparts if they are to make the set goals like the MGDs in their respective countries a reality.

“African women will remain lagging behind if they don’t come out to fight for their rights through indulging in their self development and their countries,” she said adding that in achieving this, Rwandan women have to be taken as role models.

Meanwhile in the same interview, Litha also thanked the incredible work that First lady Jeannette Kagame has done in fighting malaria, AIDS and the well being of women and children in Rwanda.

“I really appreciate and commend the outstanding performance that Madam Jeannette Kagame has dedicated to women and child health in her country; this justifies her commitment of developing women in Africa and world at large.”

UGANDA

Uganda Army Chief: 4 Nations Plan To Send Peacekeepers To Somalia
www.nasdaq.com/Jul 23, 2010

KAMPALA, Uganda -(Dow Jones)- Four more African nations are planning to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia in a bid to restore order in the lawless country, a Ugandan army chief has said.

General Katumba Wamala, the commander of Ugandan land forces, Thursday told lawmakers on the defense committee that Nigeria, Zambia, Senegal and Ghana had already sent officers to study the situation in Somalia before troops are despatched to boost the Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers already there.

“We think very soon we’ll see infantry troops because now those officers have been there, they have worked with us more than six months now,” he said.

Uganda and Burundi have at least 6,000 troops in Somalia, however, in recent months they have come under heavy attack from the shebab militants.

In recent years, Somalia has attracted al Qaeda-linked fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The shebab, who have close links to al Qaeda, have claimed responsibility for three bomb attacks July 11 in Kampala which killed some 76 people. Since those attacks Uganda has been pushing for the mandate of its troops in Somalia to be changed from peacekeeping to peace-enforcing in order to confront the militants.

According to the general, investigators have also established that Ugandan rebel dissidents of the Allied Democratic Forces, the Shebab and al Qaeda worked together and co-ordinated the July 11 attacks in Kampala, given the type of bombs used.

“There’s a link between the al-Qaeda cells, the al-Shebab and the ADF and if we think we can dismiss the situation in Somalia and get back home here and sit and be safe then we’re deceiving ourselves,” he said.

The Ugandan government has also expressed readiness to send an extra 2,000 troops to Somalia by September to bolster the peacekeeping mission.

The African Union heads of state summit which opens in Kampala this weekend is expected to broaden the mandate of the peacekeepers to enable them confront the shebab, according to Ramtane Lamamra, the AU peace and security commissioner.

-By Nicholas Bariyo, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires

Ugandan farmers on road to ‘remarkable’ recovery after rebel war
UN-funded field schools bring hope, supplies and training to Ugandan farmers after years of war
Richard M Kavuma guardian.co.uk/ Friday 23 July 2010

Florence Ogwal is grateful for her “gift”. Since a ceasefire between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army more than two years ago, Ogwal’s village in northern Uganda has received agricultural training, seeds and tools from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) to revive farming in an area previously devastated by rebel attacks.

“We are most pleased that we got threshers for handling our rice harvest and we have also got an irrigation system,” says Ogwal, a resident of Agebo village in the Dokolo district, where she is treasurer of Acan Pi Ocan (Poorest of the Poor) farmer field school. The FAO support has been channelled through the school, which comprises one family member from each of the 30 households in the village.

The UN’s work in the Lango and Acholi sub-regions, just north of Katine, combines both emergency and rehabilitation assistance and regular agricultural development support. The emergency and rehabilitation work is worth $2.75m over 17 months, targeting 15,000 vulnerable households organised in 500 farmer field schools (FFS). The regular development support, worth $1.499m, promotes upland rice growing among 2,160 households in 72 field schools.

The FAO initiative offers parallels with work being done by Farm Africa, Amref’s partner in the Katine development project, funded by Guardian readers and Barclays in Katine sub-county. It shows that challenges facing local farmers, and the possible solutions, differ little from those elsewhere in the region. Like Farm-Africa in Katine, the FAO is also helping with the construction of produce stores in the sub-counties and encouraging farmers to move towards collective marketing.

Emergency aid
When the FAO regional field office opened in Lira town in 2006, its main aim was to offer emergency assistance to farmers, mainly living in displacement camps, to produce crops to supplement food aid. But as more people have returned to their homes since 2007, focus has shifted to supporting recovery and agro-economic development delivered through the farmer field schools.

The field schools partly resemble the farmers’ groups that Farm-Africa is using in Katine to improve food security and household incomes. But the field school model seems to have a higher potential for disseminating skills and supplies – each school member represents a household, whereas some groups in Katine can have two members from the same household.

Using experienced trainers and working with the Ministry of Agriculture and local non-governmental organisations, the FAO supports each farmer field school using a single training site to discuss agricultural best practices, such as crop rotation and row-planting. Members of the group then apply the knowledge and skills from the study site to a commercial plot, proceeds from which generate income for the group. When they are not studying or working on their commercial plots, they work on their individual family farms, using knowledge from the farmer field school and tools from the FAO.

The benefits have been remarkable. According to the FAO, household members earned an average of UShs 402,000 from crop sales, twice the average for non-field school households. It also found members had cultivated an average of 4.5 acres of vegetables, compared to 1.4 acres for non-field school households.

A major part of the FAO’s work in northern Uganda is promoting improved farming systems to produce improved, high-yielding rice varieties, particularly Nerica (New Rice for Africa). Out of 528 field school groups formed in the last four years, 72 have are specifically for Nerica production. The FAO has also provided farmers with certified seeds, herbicides, fertilisers, oxen and ploughs, rice threshers and a rice mill for each of the nine districts in the project area. Now not only is the region producing more rice grain but also more seeds, which can be sold all over a country where upland rice is arguably the fastest-growing cash crop.

Last year, Julius Okello Awany, chairman of Acan Pi Ocan farmer field school, produced 6.9 tonnes of Nerica seed from which he earned UShs 15m ($6,800). He is one of 27 rice farmers who received extra FAO support – in this case an irrigation system – specifically to produce quality seeds.

“In 2009, farmers planted more than 450 hectares of Nerica rice varieties, and 900 hectares have been planted in 2010,” Emmanuel Niyibigira, a FAO national project officer, told journalists visiting the project area.

The farmer field school approach has also been used to promote other developmental ideas, such as village savings and loan associations (VSLA) – which have been introduced in Katine – and energy-saving cooking ideas. One beneficiary is Eunice Odok, a mother of two from Ayer sub-county in Apac district, who has simply used mud to mould fireplaces that use less firewood and take less time to cook her meals – and are healthier for the family.

“The smoke from our traditional, three-stone fireplace used to make us sick, but this fireplace produces far less smoke which is also less pungent,” says Odok, whose home hosts the study site for Obanga Enomio farmer field school. Using half of a $500 development grant from the FAO, Obanga Enomio has also set up a garden of onions, from which the group expect sales worth $1,350.

Supporting these commercial enterprises is part of the FAO’s exit strategy: if the groups are making money together, chances are high they will continue working together even after the agency has pulled out. Again, as n Katine’s case, Obanga Enomio members have established a one-acre plot of a disease-resistant variety of cassava – a major food security crop in Uganda. Stems will be distributed to members for planting.

But Eunice Odok takes greatest pride in her two-acre family garden of sunflowers, planted with gardening skills she learnt from the farmer field school and with VSLA seed money. “I borrowed UShs 80,000 [$36] from the VSLA to buy seeds and hire labour for planting and weeding; now I expect to earn about UShs 700,000 [$318] from this garden,” says Odok, rightly proud in a country where a third of the 32 million people survives on barely a dollar a day. Vegetable oil is produced from sunflowers.

Climate challenges

Optimism can, however, be tempered by challenges – such as the changing weather. Last year, for example, Florence Ogwal planted 10kg of rice seed in her one-acre garden. She had expected to harvest at least 500kg of grain. She got 30kg.

“The rains did not come and my entire crop perished,” she says, describing an event that mirrored what happened in Katine, when much of the farmers’ crops withered during last year’s drought. This year, the rains have been regular and Ogwal’s family is preparing land for planting rice in August. She is confident the rains will not disappoint. 

Yet another problem has been the death, this January, of one of the two oxen given to Ogwal’s group by the FAO. This has meant members have not been able to open up as much land as they would have wanted. The group has yet to decide what to do – one option would be to buy a replacement ox but they do not yet have the money (about $160).

The FAO’s Emmanuel Niyibigira admits that climate change is a major hurdle. Farmers used to know exactly when to expect the rains and when to plant. But not any more. Which is
why the FAO gave sprinkler irrigation systems (each worth about $6,800) to a few seed producers like Okello Awany. Despite all the FAO’s training and support, the fate of ordinary farmer field school members like Ogwal, who can’t afford a water dam or an irrigation system, still depends on one thing – the weather.

Nigerian President leaves for AU summit in Uganda
www.apanews.net/2010-07-23 

APA, Abuja (Nigeria) Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan leaves Friday for the 15th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State for the African Union (AU) in Kampala, Uganda.

The summit will be held on July 25 and 27 at Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort near Lake Victoria outside the Ugandan capital.

This year’s summit which has as theme “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa”, is expected to focus on an action plan to reduce mother and child mortality in the continent.

The Nigeria High Commissioner to Uganda, Mr Fidel Ayogu, said in a statement issued here Thursday that Jonathan would address members of the Nigerian community in Uganda on the activities of the government at home among other issues on Saturday.

Jonathan would also participate in a tripartite meeting involving presidents Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola.

2 Uganda soldiers killed in Somalia
23 July, 2010/By Swalley Kenyi /www.newvision.co.ug

TWO Ugandan soldiers were killed on Wednesday in the fresh fighting in Mogadishu between Somali government forces and al-Shabaab Islamist militants. 

Army spokesman Felix Kulayigye yesterday said the two peacekeepers were killed while defending the presidential palace. 

Independent sources in Mogadishu said the dead included 27-year-old private Ismael (second name withheld). The New Vision could not immediately establish the identity of the other soldier. 

The Ugandan soldiers were serving with the AMISOM, the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. 

“The soldiers were blown up in a bomb during a brief exchange with the Somali militants at 4:00pm,” the source narrated yesterday. 

Kulayigye said the bodies were expected in the country last night. “We have been clashing with the militants since Monday when al-Shabaab attacked State House. Our soldiers were killed in defence,” he explained. 

This latest attack comes just days after al-Shabaab attacked Somali government positions and other establishments guarded by AMISOM. 

Ismael hails from a soldiering family in Lima village, Ludara county in Koboko district. His father (name withheld) served in different armies, including the Uganda Army and the National Resistance Army, now UPDF, before he retired at the rank of a sergeant in 1993. 

Lima is survived by two wives and three children. He married both wives while on short leave from the peacekeeping mission. His first wife, who bore two children, hails from Bundibugyo district. 

Ismael was last at home in 2008 when he married his second wife before returning to Somalia. 

“It is a big blow to our family. The last time he came here there was merry-making in the family,” his brother, Ayimani, said on phone yesterday. Ismael was one of the 16 children in his family and the first-born of his mother. 

“This boy shared everything he had with his family. When he came on leave from Somalia, he gave some of his earnings to his siblings to start up small businesses and farms,” Ayimani added. 

Uganda and Burundi are the only countries which have contributed troops to the African Union peacekeeping mission in the war-torn Somalia. 

Fighting in Somalia has killed at least 18,000 people since 2007 and sent hundreds of thousands more fleeing from their homes. Al-Shabaab, believed to have links with al-Qaeda, is fighting to overthrow the newly-established transitional government headed by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. 

On Tuesday, the US promised to step up assistance to the AU forces. The US warned of a growing threat from militants linked to al-Qaeda in Somalia and nearby Yemen. 

The US military assistance is expected to include additional equipment, training, logistical support and information-sharing, said Gen. William Ward, the commander of the US Africa Command. 

There are about 6,300 Ugandan and Burundian troops protecting key sites in Mogadishu. There have been calls for their mandate to be widened to include enforcing the peace. The African Union Summit starting in Kampala soon is expected to discuss the issue. 

Ward played down the impact of the recent bombings in Uganda on the resolve of the US to help and African states to send more forces to Somalia. 

“At this point, they (troop-contributing nations) remain committed to it. So we take them at their word and we’re hopeful that will be the case.”

TANZANIA:

A progressive declining in the burden of malaria in north-eastern Tanzania
7thspace.com/2010-07-23

The planning and assessment of malaria interventions is complicated due to fluctuations in the burden of malaria over time. Recently, it has been reported that the burden of malaria in some parts of Africa has declined.

However, community-based longitudinal data are sparse and the reasons for the apparent decline are not well understood.

Methods: Malaria prevalence and morbidity have been monitored in two villages in north-eastern Tanzania; a lowland village and a highland village from 2003 to 2008. Trained village health workers treated presumptive malaria with the Tanzanian first-line anti-malarial drug and collected blood smears that were examined later.

The prevalence of malaria parasitaemia across years was monitored through cross-sectional surveys.

Results: The prevalence of malaria parasitaemia in the lowland village decreased from 78.4 % in 2003 to 13.0 % in 2008, whereas in the highland village, the prevalence of parasitaemia dropped from 24.7% to 3.1% in the same period. Similarly, the incidence of febrile malaria episodes in the two villages dropped by almost 85% during the same period and there was a marked reduction in the number of young children who suffered from anaemia in the lowlandvillage.

Conclusion: There has been a marked decline in malaria in the study villages during the past few years.

This decline is likely to be due to a combination of factors that include improved access to malaria treatment provided by the trained village helpers, protection from mosquitoes by increased availability of insecticide-impregnated bed nets and a reduced vector density. If this decline in malaria morbidity is sustained, it will have a marked effect on the disease burden in this part of Tanzania.

Author: Bruno MmbandoLasse VestergaardAndrew KituaMartha LemngeThor TheanderJohn Lusingu
Credits/Source: Malaria Journal

FDI flow to Dar declined 5pc
Friday, 23 July 2010 /By Samuel Kamndaya/thecitizen.co.tz

The value of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) plunged by a moderate five per cent last year, the World Investment Report (WIR) 2010 shows.

But, at the same time Tanzania has enhanced linkages between Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to buffer FDI inflows amid the global economic crisis.

FDI inflows reached $645 million (about Sh903 billion) last year from $679 million (about 950 billion) in 2008, the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) executive director Mr Emmanuel Ole Naiko said at the launch of WIR in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

The country had envisaged a ten per cent plunge in FDI last year due to the global financial and economic crisis. Reducing the impact to just five per cent is seen as the outcome of pursuing new investment promotion measures. 

“Tanzania, just like Costa Rica has introduced business linkage programmes to promote links between TNCs and our SMEs in terms of supply of goods and services amid growing competition for FDI,” said Mr Ole Naiko.

The country also initiated a Sh1.7 trillion economic stimulus package last year as the crisis threatened to tear apart, the country’s hard-earned economic achievements.

Regionally, Tanzania was only second from Uganda which saw its FDI increasing from $787 million to $799 million in 2008 and 2009 respectively, thanks to new found oil deposits.

Kenya came third with FDI worth just $141 million in 2009. It was closely followed by Rwanda which recorded FDIs worth $119 million while Burundi recorded just $10 million in foreign investments.

With new measures being undertaken, Tanzania envisages attracting FDI worth $750 million (Sh1.05 trillion) by the end of this year.

“With extensive campaigns, targeting specific sectors of agro processing, agriculture, infrastructure and tourism, we will surely make it,” he said.

Mr Ole Naiko, who doubles as vice president of the 250 member-World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (Waipa), also banked his hopes on ongoing efforts to improve Tanzania’s ranking on World Bank’s Doing Business Report for 2011. 

Having performed poorly for two consecutive years in WB’s doing business reports, Tanzania initiated a team of permanent secretaries to work on issues that are highlighted in the report.

And Mr Ole Naiko said yesterday that the team has already compiled their findings, noting that the cabinet has duly adopted the findings.

The government has also reintroduced the system of giving tax exemptions on deemed capital goods. The same was outlawed in 2009/2010 budget.

“Investors are very happy with the decision but I should make it clear that those abusing the offer will be dealt with according to the laws of the country,” he said at a function that was also attended by the United Nations (UN) deputy country director, Ms Louise Chamberlaine and her UN Industrial Development Organization (Unido) counterpart, Mr Emmanuel Kalenzi.

In his remarks, Mr Kalenzi urged Tanzanians to wipe out a feeling that investment incentives are meant to benefit foreign investors.

“The thriving of domestic investments is viewed as a benchmark of the country’s investment climate by foreign investors…people should see the incentives as meant for both domestic and foreign investors,” he said.

Globally, FDI inflows plunged to $1.1 trillion dollars in 2009 from $1.8 trillion in 2008, the WIR 2010 shows.
It is envisaged that inflows will reach $1.2 trillion in 2010 and will reach the 2008 level in 2012.

“This level should be realized due to some mergers and acquisitions as well as with restricting of some industries including those that were rescued during 2008/2009 through privatization and rescue packages,” the WIR 2010 notes.

The United States of America emerged the number-one recipient of global FDI, with inflows worth $136 billion. Other top nine recipients included China, France, China’s Hong Kong Province, the UK, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India and Belgium.

The USA was also the number-one source of global FDI, with outflows worth $246 billion. Other top sources included France, Japan, Germany, China’s Hong Kong Province, China, Russia, Italy, Canada and Norway.

In Africa, Angola received the highest inflows, valued at $13 billion. Others on top ten included Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Congo Brazzaville, Tunisia and Ghana.

The five top sources of FDI in Africa were South Africa, Libya, Egypt, Morocco and Liberia.

ACBF boosts East African private sector
BY CORRESPONDENT/www.capitalfm.co.ke/23072010

DAR ES SALAAM, Jul 23 – The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) will on Friday sign two Grant Agreements with the East African Business Council (EABC) and with the Tanzania Global Development Learning Centre (TGDLC). 

The USD 1.8 million four-year Grant to EABC will support the Council in delivering its ambitious work program, envisaged to help build the capacities of the private sector in the East Africa region. 

The project, entitled, “Deepening Private Sector Participation in East Africa’s Economic Integration” will augment the on-going regional economic integration efforts and the role this plays in fostering stronger growth and alleviating poverty. The $500,000 three-year grant to TGDLC is for the implementation of the Tanzania Country Level Knowledge Network (TZ CLK-NET) project. 

The signing of the EABC Grant comes at an opportune time when the East Africa Community (EAC) Common Market has been launched. The free movement of capital, labour, goods and services will create a heavier demand on the private sector to produce quality goods and services. Regional integration is one of Africa’s priorities in overcoming fragmentation across the Continent and reducing Africa’s economic marginalisation. 

In a statement, prior to the signing ceremony, ACBF Executive Secretary, Dr Frannie Léautier said: “The Grant being made by ACBF is in recognition of the important and successful role that EABC has played in demonstrating its potential in representing the interests of its private sector members. This not only influences the development of private sector policies, but also engages with the political leadership within the East Africa region. As a Foundation, we are cognisant of the fact that the East Africa Treaty places emphasis on private sector development as critical for the success of the integration process in Eastern Africa. The East Africa Community Private Sector Development Strategy (EAC-PSDS) provides an incentive framework for facilitating and promoting private sector development. It pays great emphasis on improving the business environment, and on the institutional and human capacity development necessary for increased trade and investment.” 

Over the next four years, EABC will strive to develop both human and institutional capacities, by supporting the harmonisation of business related policies, laws and regulations; creating trade negotiation capacities among EABC members; enhancing corporate governance principles and practices, as well as participation in business and regional trade related fora. The four-year project aims to strengthen EABC’s institutional capacity, policy studies and business surveys; promote networking and information sharing and enhance membership capacity development and support.

As the role of private sector institutions in Africa keeps evolving, it must be recognised that the private sector is a force for growth and therefore contributes towards poverty reduction. African countries, governments and stakeholders all play a part in building a conducive environment for the investment and promotion of regulatory frameworks and legal business frameworks. 

In recent years, efforts have been made by Tanzanian academics, researchers, policymakers and the public sector in knowledge sharing, advocacy and networking for policy formulation. TZ CLK-NET will be linked with Tanzania’s development philosophy, Vision 2025, which calls for the promotion of a learning-oriented society as a key to improving living standards. TZ CLK-NET will address the gap in the exchange of information and learning, as current knowledge is not being shared systematically between all stakeholders, thus slowing down the learning process. 

The absence of effective platforms for generating and sharing information on past experiences can result in inconsistencies between policies and broader socioeconomic benefits. 

ACBF Executive Secretary, Dr Frannie Léautier, emphasized that “CLK-NETs leverage the knowledge of national professionals and those in the Diaspora, through electronic discussion boards and similar platforms, in order to gather information that is then made available to policymakers for input in their development policy planning, design, reform, implementation and evaluation. We are delighted to provide this the three-year grant to TZ CLK-NET, which will enable the development of a knowledge-clearing house that will systematically gather, synthesise, utilise and disseminate knowledge and information to stakeholders, including government, civil society organisations, academia and private sector.”

TZ CLK-NET’s goal is to promote peer learning and create broad – based participation, involvement and debate on key issues of national concern, including management of development policies and programmes via a consultative process. 

Once established and fully functional, TZ CLK-NET will be a valuable knowledge hub and a community of practice for policymakers. It has the potential to become a value-adding resource for Ministers of Finance, Planning and Public Service, Central and Reserve Bank Governors, Chambers of Commerce and Industries and other development policy management stakeholders.

Judiciary, police top EA graft list
Friday, 23 July 2010/By Lucas Liganga/thecitizen.co.tz

Tanzania’s Judiciary and Police Force are among the ten most corrupt institutions in East Africa, according to a regional survey.

The East African Bribery Index (EABI) 2010 Transparency International also lists the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA), Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (Rita), Prisons Department and Department of Defence as highly corrupt institutions in the country.

The EABI report says the Aggregate Index for Tanzania has notable changes due to the first-time listing of some institutions, adding that eight of the listed institutions were new entriesm while Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa) exited the index.

The survey mentions the 10 most corrupt institutions in Tanzania in descending order as the Police Force, Judiciary, TPA, Rita, Tanzania Revenue Authority, Prisons Department, Immigration Department, other unspecified organisations, Lands, Housing and Human Settlements ministry and hospitals.

“The Tanzania Police Force was the worst performer in this indicator,” says the report released yesterday in Nairobi.

In Tanzania, the survey recorded 15,071 interactions within both private and public institutions, showing that bribery was either expected or demanded in 40.9 per cent of these interactions, while 64.9 per cent of the interactions were characterised by bribery payments.

It says a total of 1,714 respondents, of whom 1,028 (60 per cent) were men and 686 (40 per cent) were women, reported having paid paying bribes in Tanzania.

The respondents reported paying bribes for services (44.7 per cent), law enforcement (22.2 per cent), regulation (12.2 per cent), others (10.4 per cent), employment (7.0 per cent) and business (3.7 per cent).

The report says the reportage of bribery incidents in Tanzania was very low, with 92.9 per cent of the respondents who were asked for a bribe not reporting the demands to anyone in a position of authority.

The leading reason for not voicing bribery-related complaints was the belief that no action would be taken.

“About 20 per cent feared intimidation that may follow such reporting,” adds the 76-page report.

Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Mathias Chikawe declined to comment, saying he had not seen the report.

“I’m in Nachingwea where I haven’t even seen yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) newspapers. I will direct my personal assistant to look for the survey which I will peruse before I make any comment,” said Mr Chikawe, who is also the Nachingwea MP, when reached by telephone. 

The ministers responsible for finance, health, land, home affairs and infrastructure development were not readily available yesterday as they were preoccupied with the CCM nomination process, which kicked off on Monday.

The reports notes that Burundi is the most corrupt country in the region with a corruption prevalence of 36.7 per, cent while Rwanda is the least corrupt with a prevalence of 6.6 per cent. 

It adds that Kenya, third on the list of shame, has registered a slight improvement in the prevalence of corruption from 45 per cent in 2009 to 31.9 per cent this year. Uganda is second on 33 per cent, while Tanzania is fourth with a corruption prevalence of 28.6 per cent. 

The survey mentions the Revenue Authority in Burundi as the most corrupt institution in the region, dislodging Kenyan police, which topped the list in 2009. 

The police force in Burundi is second followed by Kenya’s police force, Uganda Revenue Authority and Tanzania’s Police Force, in that order. 

Completing the list of the top 10 most corrupt institutions are the Uganda police force, Kenya’s ministry of State for Defence, Nairobi City Council and judiciaries in Kenya and Tanzania. 

Kenya has relinquished its position as the most corrupt country in East Africa to Burundi, according to the survey that has been expanded to Rwanda and Burundi this year.

Three institutions listed in 2009 exited the 2010 Kenya Aggregate Index, the report says, mentioning them as the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and the ministry of Public Works. 

New entrants are the Kenya Prisons Service, Kenya Ports Authority, ministry of Forestry and Wildlife and the ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. 

In Uganda, there were minimal changes in the overall ranking compared to the 2009 Aggregate Index.

However, some institutions, including public and private schools, public hospitals and state corporations, made their first appearance in the index, adding that the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund, The Aids Support Organisation (Taso) and the Immigration Department left the index. 

The survey notes that with the exception of low levels of bribery in Rwanda, corruption is still an impediment to responsive public service delivery in the region. 

“Key governance and enforcement institutions such as the police, judiciary, and defence featured prominently in the index, as did institutions offering key services like health, education, housing and finance,” says the report.

The survey says the commencement of the East African Common Market Protocol on July 1, 2010 is expected to boost trade across the five East African countries by promoting free movement of goods, services and capital. 

It warns, however, that corruption threatens to hold back the attainment of the objectives set out by the member states. 

“East African countries need to scrutinise their service delivery mechanisms with the objective of rooting out practices such as corruption that are impeding the accessibility of basic services,” said the Transparency International-Kenya Executive Director, Samuel Kimeu. 

“This will promote equality, development and the reduction of poverty in the region,” he added during the launch attended by the heads of the other four TI national chapters in East Africa.

The survey was conducted among 10,505 respondents selected through random household sampling across all the administrative provinces in the five countries between January and March 2010.

CONGO RDC :

New law targets ‘conflic minerals’
By Peter Svensson/Associated Press/07/23/2010 

NEW YORK — Does that smart phone in your pocket contribute to rape and murder in the depths of Africa? Soon, you’ll know: A new U.S. law requires companies to certify whether their products contain minerals from rebel-controlled mines in Congo and surrounding countries. 

It’s a move aimed at starving the rebels of funds and encouraging them to lay down their arms. 

But experts doubt the law will stop the fighting. Furthermore, they say, it could deprive hundreds of thousands of desperately poor Congolese of their incomes and disrupt the economy of an area that’s struggling for stability after more than decade of war. 

“For many, many people, it’s the only livelihood they have,” said Sara Geenen, a researcher at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, who just returned from a trip to the Kivu provinces in eastern Congo. 

At issue are three industrial metals — tin, tantalum and tungsten — and gold. Tin is used in the solder that joins electronic components together. Tantalum’s main use is in capacitors, a vital component in electronics. Tungsten has many uses, including light-bulb filaments and the heavy, compact mass that makes cell phones vibrate. 

Exports of these metals from eastern Congo have been the subject of a campaign by nonprofit advocacy groups for a few years, one that’s borne fruit with the addition of a “Conflict Minerals” provision to the financial-regulation legislation that President Barack Obama 

signed into law Wednesday. 
While Congo has vast reserves, poverty and war mean most of the mining and processing is done by hand, so production is slow. The country produced 5 percent of the world’s tin supply in 2008, according to tin research institute ITRI. The figure for tantalum ore, a rarer mineral, is higher, but the main sources for world supply are in Brazil and Australia. 

Even though Congo’s production is small by world standards, the minerals constitute much of the economic activity in eastern Congo. 

Advocacy groups, the United Nations and academic researchers such as Geenen agree that the mines fund rebel groups, homegrown militias and rogue elements of the Congolese army. 

But the academics say the advocacy groups have been overselling the link between the mines and violence, such as when John Prendergast, the co-founder of the Enough Project, told “60 Minutes” last year that minerals are the “root cause” of the fighting. 

“The fight is not a fight over the minerals,” said Laura Seay, an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, who studies and visits Congo. “The minerals are used to fund some of the fighting, but it’s not a fight for control of the mines.” 

More important causes of the fighting, she said, are land rights and the status of the refugees and militias from neighboring Rwanda who flooded into eastern Congo in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. 

Sasha Lezhnev, a consultant to the Enough Project and the director of an organization that tries to rehabilitate child soldiers, agrees that the fighting wasn’t originally about the minerals. But Lezhnev said that has changed. 

“The minerals are the chief driver and fuel for feeding the flames out in the East now. One of the main results of the military operations over the last year has been for one armed group to take control of minerals from the other armed group,” Lezhnev said. “You have many people displaced from their homes because mines are being set up.” 

The U.S. law doesn’t ban the minerals trade with the area, something the United Nations has avoided doing as well. Instead, it forces companies to report annually whether their products contain any of the four “conflict minerals” from Congo. The nine surrounding countries are included as well, out of concern that minerals might be smuggled out of the Congo to obfuscate their origin. 

If companies find that they use minerals from any of the ten countries, they need to have audit done to determine “with the greatest possible specificity” which mine they’re from. 

Companies can label their products as “conflict free” if they manage to prove that their products don’t contain minerals that directly or indirectly finance or benefit armed groups in any of the ten countries. 

Two years ago, chip maker Intel started to alert its tantalum smelters, who turn the ore into the metal, that they will have to start certifying that their ores don’t come from “conflict mines.” The process will add some minor costs to the supply chain, spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, on the order of a penny per part.

Congo-Kinshasa: Impunity in the Country – Defending Human Rights
Maurice Namwira and Emma Pomfret/Pambazuka News/23 July 2010

In a nation that has experienced three decades of brutal dictatorship, followed by almost 15 years of war, Christian Aid’s partner organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) live and work against a backdrop of poverty and a legacy of endemic corruption.

The recent armed death threat against Emmanuel Lubala Mugisho, president of leading Congolese human rights organisation Héritiers de la Justice, once again brings into sharp focus the enormous risks many take through their courageous work in the DRC.

The violent attack, the latest incident in a long-established trend of targeting human rights activists and journalists, happened just a week after the murder of Congolese civil liberties activist Floribert Chebeya, and less than five years since the murder of Héritier’s late secretary general, Pascal Kabungulu.

On 31 July 2005 Kabungulu was assassinated in his home in front of his family for his knowledge of illicit gold mining in Kamituga, South Kivu, for his help in exposing the use of rape as a weapon of war in eastern Congo, for his persistent defence of human rights and for his documentation of serious human rights abuses in the DRC. He shares the fate of a long line of human rights defenders and journalists who have been attacked as a result of their efforts to help build the rule of law and accountability in the DRC.

Indeed, Héritiers de la Justice has a long record of documenting human rights abuses. It denounced those committed by former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko when the country was Zaire, and later by former president Laurent Kabila and the current transitional government, headed by Kabila’s son, Joseph. It has also documented serious abuses committed by the armed groups which have terrorised eastern Congo since civil war broke out in 1998.

The film ‘Weapons of Impunity’ tells the story of Pascal Kabungulu’s assassination and the impunity that still surrounds his case, as well as the courageous efforts of Congolese civil society actors to challenge this culture and help establish the rule of law in the DRC.

A military tribunal, initially set up to investigate Kabungulu’s death in November 2005, was suspended and, as is often the case in the DRC, those responsible have never been bought to justice.

‘The often dangerous work of our Congolese partners makes a unique and essential contribution to the country’s fragile state-building process,’ says Jacques Miaglia, Christian Aid’s country manager in the DRC.

‘Organisations like Héritiers de la Justice are dedicated to helping communities to rebuild their lives and futures through raising people’s awareness of their civil and human rights, defending those rights, documenting abuse, and strengthening accountability and transparency at all levels of governance.

‘Christian Aid calls on the UK government, the EU, and other international donors in the DRC to support an independent enq
uiry into the death of Chebeya and the reopening of judicial proceedings relating to Kabungulu’s murder.

‘We also want to see those responsible for the attacks against Lubala to be identified and held to account. Such efforts would significantly contribute towards ending the corrosive and pervasive culture of injustice in the DRC.’

Sadly some of the people interviewed in the film have since been killed (Serge Maheshe, Radio Okapi journalist), but Maurice Namwira, executive secretary of Héritiers de la Justice, is here to tell the story and continue the struggle for justice.

Five years on from the assassination of Pascal Kabungulu, how would you say the political climate has developed for civil society and human rights activists in the DRC?

After the assassination of Pascal we have seen that the number of activists killed hasn’t stopped or slowed down despite the denunciations, alerts and demands made by human rights organisations.

What are the main means of organising people when it comes to activism in the DRC?

One of the principal means of organising people is by networking at all levels, from the bottom up and through actions such as awareness-raising work with all the different social classes (civilians, soldiers, civil servants, religious leaders, students, politicians, etc) in order that they know their basic rights and freedoms, and human rights education in schools and with various social groups to help people to understand the existing mechanisms for enforcing respect for human dignity.

It is also very important to maintain an open dialogue with authorities about their responsibilities to protect and promote human rights and their duty to guarantee universally recognised fundamental freedoms.

Finally, it’s vital to invite the political authorities in the DRC to work towards establishing a legal framework which guarantees the rights of all and the welfare of the people.

‘Weapons of Impunity’ is a powerful title to describe the attempts of those in power to instil fear and keep voices silent. How would you describe the way in which this ‘impunity’ operates and the challenges it presents for activists seeking to establish the rule of law?

In various ways, even the authorities at all levels sometimes admit now and then to the existence of the problems of insecurity, impunity, abuses by the army and police and the threats and attacks against human rights defenders. These problems are well known by all Congolese people. What is so far missing to bring about the change we seek (an end to impunity) are effective measures on the ground and at the different levels of power that will definitively eradicate impunity, for example the re-opening of judicial proceedings for Pascal Kabungulu’s case, which is in suspense since 2006 – this is the same for the murder of journalist Didace Namujimbo … here are many other similar cases. Until such measures are taken, those responsible for these crimes remain unpunished and free to commit new crimes.

Civil society, naturally, has a very important role to play as a country moves forward. How would you say Héritiers de la Justice is viewed among ordinary Congolese?

What is meant by an ordinary Congolese? We are all equal before the law. There aren’t those who are ordinary and those who are special. It is this differentiation that often causes problems to our people, when some people think they’re ordinary and others special. People trust the work of human rights defenders and because of this we are often consulted for advice or assistance when they have problems.

The fact that many compatriots base their hopes on the work of human rights defenders became very clear following the deaths of activists and journalists such as Pascal Kabungulu, Maheshe, Didace Namujimbo, Floribert Chebeya, Muhind, when the public spoke out to expose these heinous murderers, demanding justice and an independent investigation so that the truth be known.

In addition to documenting human rights abuses, it seems that one of the key objectives of Héritiers de la Justice is to work towards establishing the rule of law in the DRC. When it comes to tackling impunity, debate rages in countries like Kenya about the rule of external institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). In your view, is justice something to be sought internally, or should Congolese also look outside their country?

This is true and cannot be questioned in light of the testimonies of our local communities. This can also be seen through the proven results of the work we have carried out with support from Christian Aid. From 1998 to 2007 Christian Aid supported Héritiers de la Justice’s extensive human rights and peace education programme in schools.

We should remember that the Congolese are not isolated from the rest of the world. What Congo is living through today has been experienced elsewhere and the lessons learnt have helped others to build a new world which puts the welfare of the collective at the centre. These states – which are now stable and have already gone down the difficult path Congo is on today – should help Congolese leaders to strive towards developing a culture of excellence, respect for the common good and an equitable distribution of wealth. This must be done without forgetting to put into place projects that will have visible impacts in fighting poverty and other causes of human rights violations.

Do you have links with other civil society and activist organisations across the region facing similar struggles?

The situation for human rights defenders in the Great Lakes region is not an easy one as they are misunderstood as being the enemies of politicians. Government leaders need to recognise that civil society organisations and human rights defenders are advocating for and, like them, striving for the well-being of our people, even though our approaches may differ. For it is said that things come to light through the clashing of ideas.

Thus all the present threats should give way to cooperation and a positive collaboration to go beyond selfish interests in favour of the general, public interest. This misunderstanding is sadly the cause of the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment suffered by the human rights defenders in the Great Lakes region who are wrongly threatened, arrested and killed.

Maurice Namwira is executive secretary of Héritiers de la Justice. Emma Pomfret is Christian Aid’s Africa editor. Interview conducted and transcribed by Emma Pomfret, with questions by Alex Free. Héritiers de la Justice is a longstanding partner of Christian Aid.

LINKS

[1] Héritiers de la Justice website: http://www.heritiersdelajustice.org

[2] Pascal Kabungulu, obituary in the Guardian, 24 August 2005, http://bit.ly/btfeBZ

[3] Letter to President Kabila, 7 September 2005, Re: Assassination of Pascal Kabungulu Kibembi, Executive Secretary Héritiers de la Justice (from AI, Christian Aid, HRW and Frontline Defenders), http://bit.ly/ajFj9F

In war-ravaged corner of central Africa, Israeli widow works to pull ‘rape capital’ out of poverty
New Jersey-born aid worker Gila Garaway is go-to person for Israeli medical delegation. 
By Cnaan Liphshiz /www.haaretz.com/23.07.10

UVIRA, Democratic Republic of Congo – Eastern Congo was the last place American-Israeli Gila Garaway wanted to end up
. But that’s exactly where the New Jersey native found herself, after her husband was killed in a plane crash here nearly 15 years ago. Today, she is Israel’s unofficial liaison in the area, which has been termed by the UN the “rape capital of the world.” 

On July 13, Garaway welcomed five Israeli medical specialists to Congo’s South Kivu district. They came to treat the burn victims of a deadly tanker fire that killed 230 and injured dozens at the beginning of July. 

More than once, Garaway’s diplomatic skills and determination have been the only thing making sure their expensive equipment makes it to aid the impoverished locals. 

Garaway, 63 and a mother of four, started working in Congo in 1996 with her husband, Noah Garaway, with whom she had immigrated to Poriah in the Galilee from California in the early 1980s. They went with the hope of helping in the recovery of war-ravaged areas of post-genocide Rwanda. They returned to Israel a year later, with Gila vowing never to return to the war-torn Congo, rife with suffering and death. 

“When we left Africa for Israel, I told Noah I never ever wanted to come back to Congo,” she recalled. “We used to say that Africa was for Africans.” 

But after Noah was killed while on a short trip to the country in 1997 to celebrate the creation of the DRC, Garaway was called back to Africa to identify the remains and decided to stay. “I felt I had a mission to fulfill here,” she says. “It just felt right.” Later on in the conversation, she adds: “You need faith to make it in Africa.” 

Now she lives most of the year in Congo running Moriah Africa, an organization she founded with a focus on building local capacity through training. Still, she visits Israel on Passover and Rosh Hashanah to see her two sons and seven grandchildren. Gila has lived through years of brutal civil war in eastern Congo, where militia troops still use rape as a means of terrorizing and subduing the local population. 

According to a recent UN estimate, one out of three women in the South Kivu region, where Garaway works, has been raped or sexually assaulted. 

“When things deteriorate, the armed soldiers go for the NGO houses, because that’s where the goods, the money, the cars, the televisions are,” says Garaway, who works with international NGOs to train local labor and encourage small initiatives in rural areas. “Of course, if there are girls there, they’ll take that too,” she said. 

In 2004, Congolese soldiers raped a number of female Western volunteers of one international NGO working in nearby Bukavu, after the city was attacked by a rebel force led by Brig. Gen. Laurent Nkunda. Garaway says she is relatively safe from meeting the same fate because she lives with local friends, “who would put themselves in harm’s way to protect” her. 

“In general, Africans would be very, very hesitant to assault or attack a white [person] in Congo because they don’t know whom you know,” Garaway said. “Whites generally are perceived as having a lot of power.” 

The fact that she is older than the average female NGO worker in Congo helps too, “because people don’t quite know what to make of me, they don’t now what’s my story,” she says. 

Garaway has had a “very close call,” though. Traveling via public transportation on a road in rebel country in 2006, she had an encounter with Mai Mai rebels. Trapped inside a minibus with a group of rebels in tattered uniforms, she managed to claw her way out of the vehicle in time to throw herself on the windshield of a passing UN car and out of harm’s way. 

Garawayhas been spending time this month escorting the Israeli medical delegation every day to the hospital in the border town of Uvira, where they performed skin grafts on the 50 burn victims from a July 2 fire in the village of Sange, started after locals opened an overturned fuel truck to siphon the oil inside its compartments. The wounded are hospitalized in four different hospitals in the area. 

While doctors Eyal Winkler, Shmuel Kalazkin, Gil Nardini and Ariel Tessone and nurse Noa Anastasia Ouchakova operate, Garaway takes care of administrative issues. Communicating with the locals in fluent Swahili and with the visitors in Hebrew, she is there at the request of the Foreign ministry’s aid agency, Mashav, which initiated the mission. 

At one medical institution, she physically blocked employees from taking the material that the Israeli team brought with them to the central storage room. “They were in no way trying to steal the materials, but their good intentions were not backed by a clear set of operating protocols,” she later explained. 

The go-between is an important element of ensuring proper use of materials in this region, she says, “where there’s so much need and where people have been conditioned to grab what they can.” 

Congo saw the eruption of several armed conflicts after the removal in 1997 of its late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the nation since 1965. He was believed to have been one of the richest men on Earth, and his regime was derided as a kleptocracy concerned with plundering the country’s resources. 

Israel does not have a permanent ambassador to Congo, and its roving envoy to the region, Daniel Saada, had been called back to Jerusalem on July 14. “Our local knowledge in this trip rests largely on Gila,” Saada told the delegation. 

She is accustomed to extreme human suffering, and her reaction to it seems matter-of-fact. But her eyes soften when she speaks about Israel. “I still experience what a miracle it is to live in this generation, when we can live in the Land of Israel and not in the Diaspora, that we have a home,” she says while sitting on a staircase at Uvira hospital, her voice breaking with emotion. One of Garaway’s older sisters, Emunah Gorman, also immigrated to Israel, and now lives in Arad. 

At home, the couple prepared their children for college early in Poriah. One of their sons had passed his matriculation exam at the age of 16, but could not go to university in Israel until he was 17. Noah was killed on his way to Congo for a conference, to deliver a blessing from Israel. After his death, Garaway and her two sons went to the crash site with a tallit, in the hopes of returning the body to Israel for burial. 

Gila Garaway says her late husband was adamant that she not join him on the visit. He went instead with the couple’s neighbor and friend, a recent immigrant from the U.S. by the name of Boaz Falco, a Messianic Jew. Both bodies were burnt beyond recognition and were unable to be transported back. 

As an Israeli Jew, Garaway is “pretty isolated” from many of the other Western NGO workers in the region. 

“Many of the large international organizations working here are very pro-Palestinian,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of contact with many internationals here. My work doesn’t involve the traditional relief and development aid.” 

With the local population, by contrast, being Israeli is a major plus, she says. 

“With the Africans it gives me a lot. Ninety percent of the population is Christian and they love Israel. Most of the poor people think it’s in heaven somewhere. I have people asking me to pray for them all the time because I’m from Israel. And it gives a lot of responsibility because they hold us in utter high esteem.”

Congo’s children battle witchcraft accusations
The Montreal Gazette/ By KATRINA MANSON, Reuters/ July 23, 2010 

When Pascal’s little brother got sick, his family accused him of witchcraft and took him to a pastor who forced him to drink pigeon’s blood and oil.

Denied food and beaten for three days, the 10-year-old managed to escape, joining some 250,000 other street children in Congo for three years until he was scooped up by a children’s centre in Kinshasa’s tough east end.

“(The pastor) wouldn’t let me eat or drink any water -he said it would increase the power of the witch,” Pascal, not his real name, said in the centre where nearly 100 other children, most accused of witchcraft, have also sought shelter.

UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s charity, says accusing children of sorcery is a fairly new and growing trend in Africa, despite long-held traditional and mystic beliefs on the continent.

“The phenomenon of ‘child witches’ … occurs in urban areas, where it has grown constantly in the last thirty years,” according to a UNICEF study published this month.

Where previously elderly women were accused, today the focus more often falls on young children, often some of the most vulnerable, such as orphans, disabled or poor.

The UN report says many children ousted from their homes for being witches are blamed for family misfortunes ranging from sickness and poverty to envious stepmothers. Some religious sects make money exorcising their spirits.

“It’s a problem that’s growing every day,” says Father Justin Onganga, a Catholic priest who manages another centre. “This has nothing to do with witchcraft but it has everything to do with urban poverty.”

Congo’s 1998-2003 conflict earned the label of Africa’s world war after it sucked in six neighbouring armies and killed 5.4 million people, mostly from malnutrition and disease. Nearly 80 per cent of the population still live on less than $2 a day. The conflict simmers, mostly in the east, but Onganga said the “child witch” phenomenon was a symptom of a capital under extreme strain.

“It’s just down to economic reasons -when they can’t look after their home they find a reason to get rid of a child.”

Although short on numbers, the UN study cited cases across the continent, from Botswana and South Africa, to Ghana in the West and Tanzania in the East.

Study author Aleksandra Cimpric found 70 per cent of people imprisoned in Central African Republic’s capital are there due to witchcraft accusations.

The UN has called for the decriminalization of witchcraft in countries where it is a crime and also blames dysfunctional families and poverty.

333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: FR-BE;” lang=”EN-US”>KENYA :

Aid agencies call for peaceful
constitutional referendum
July 23 /www.coastweek.com

constitution goes back to independence in 1963
and has been criticized for creating an ‘imperial
presidency’ with dangerously sweeping powers
. 

NAIROBI (Xinhua) — Kenya’s humanitarian and development partners have called for a peaceful constitutional referendum in the East Africa nation as campaigns for and against the proposed charter intensify across the country.

The partners met in Nairobi on Wednesday to review measures put in place to ensure a successful outcome of the national referendum on the proposed new constitution, which takes place on Aug. 4.

A statement issued in Nairobi on Thursday after the meeting said the partners’ dialogue underscored the fact that regardless of the referendum’s outcome, priority must be given to ensure peace and tranquillity is maintained across the country.

“Peaceful campaigns are encouraged to continue to avert polarization of the country,” said the partners who included UN agencies.

“The humanitarian and development partners have pledged their support for the government’s leadership in the referendum period to ensure a stable, peaceful and cohesive country.”

Kenyans, who are disillusioned with corruption, land ownership scandals and powerful politicians, look set to approve the new legal framework to replace a constitution written at the time of independence from British colonial rule in 1963.

The proposed new charter would limit presidential powers, increase civil liberties and address long-time marginalisation of some tribes, forming a key plank in reforms seen as necessary to avoid a recurrence of the country’s bloody post-election crisis in 2007.

The country’s constitution goes back to its independence in 1963, and it has been criticized for creating an imperial-like presidency with dangerously sweeping powers.

The main objections to the new constitution are the perception that is its weaker on abortion, the new constitution keeps it illegal and defines life as beginning at conception, but allows abortion under certain circumstances, and that it recognizes traditional Islamic courts for family law and inheritance matters.

Several prominent Kenyan Christian leaders have urged their supporters to vote the constitution down, though most recent polls indicate that it will pass.

The Catholic Church like many other Christian groups have been urging their followers to vote No during the referendum on the basis of the various flaws.

In particular, the Church objects to the section of Article 26 which empowers doctors to end a pregnancy if it endangers the woman’s life or she needs emergency treatment.

The Christian leaders are also opposed to the retention of Kadhi courts in the proposed constitution under Article 169 and 170, which limit their authority to disputes over personal status, marriage, divorce or inheritance, where all the parties are Muslims and agree to take the case to a Kadhi.

However, in their meeting, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Kenya, Aeneas Chuma, commended the work already undertaken to develop preparedness plans and strengthen coordination among partners on the ground.

“Working in partnership with the Kenyan government, UN agencies, civil society and other national and international organizations, including the Kenya Red Cross, we have developed a harmonized action plan aimed at maximizing existing capacities and minimizing gaps in response for the pre- and post-referendum scenario,” Chuma said.

In response to concerns over possible violence triggered by hate speech, humanitarian partners said adequate structures have been put in place to ensure the atmosphere remains calm and peaceful leading up to and immediately after the referendum, while at the same time maintaining operational neutrality.

They said the Uwiano Platform for Peace, a joint initiative of the government and civil society, has supported the establishment of peace committees in districts identified as potential hot spots ahead of the referendum.

“As the referendum campaigns come to an end on 2 August, peace rallies and a night vigil will be held to continue to spread the message of peace using the slogan ‘Choose Kenya, Choose Peace’,” said Dickson Magotsi from the National Steering Committee of Peace Building and Conflict Management.

The adoption of a new constitution was a key element of a power- sharing deal brokered by former UN chief Kofi Annan that ended the post-election violence that killed 1,300 Kenyans and displaced another 650,000 others.

ANGOLA :

Angolan government to protect national industry
[ 2010-07-23 ] /(macauhub) 

Luanda, Angola, 23 July – The Angolan government plans to adopt a partially protectionist economic policy for Angolan industry and to simultaneously stimulate its competitiveness, the Minister of State and Economic Coordination said Thursday in Luanda.

At the opening ceremony of the 5th Business forum of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), themed “Business in the Portuguese Language,” held at the International Luanda Fair, Manuel Nunes Júnior noted that the protection was due to the government recognising that most Angolan companies are at a competitive disadvantage when compared to foreign companies.

“In that respect we need to be clear, all countries that have been successful in their industrialisation process, protected their industries,” noted the Minister, cited by Angolan news agency Angop.

At the time, Nunes Júnior noted it was necessary for companies to face the world with greater structural competitiveness in various business sectors, which requires focus on differentiation and quality of products and services, in order to increase comparative and competitive advantages. (macauhub) 

Portuguese President recommends reading to children
7/23/10 /www.portalangop.co.ao

Luanda – The President of Portugal, Anibal Cavaco Silva, on Thursday here recommended the need to stimulate children to read, both in Angola and in Portugal, during his tour to the premises of the Angolan Writers Association (UEA), ANGOP witnessed.

“We should not just give them incentive to watch television”, he said to the press, after touring the various areas of the UEA, an institution to which he offered more than 1,000 books.

Cavaco Silva said he enjoyed to the visit to the writers headquarters and guaranteed that he is willing to support the interchange among writers from both countries.

At UEA, Anibal Cavaco Silva was accompanied by the writers Mendes de Carvalho, Roberto de Almeida, Maria Eugénia Neto, Fragata de Morais and Adriano Vasconcelos.

On the occasion, the Angolan plastic artist Alvaro Macieira offered a work to the visiting Portuguese President entitled “Angola Meu Coração”, meaning Angola My Heart.

WFO s co-operation strengthens institutional capacity of Family Ministry
7/23/10 /www.portalangop.co.ao

Luanda – The chairman of the World Family Organisation (WFO), Deisi Noeli Kruszta, said on Thursday in Luanda that the co-operation relations between the Angolan government and her institution will benefit the Ministry of Family and Women Promotion.

According to her, the reinforcement of the institutional and economic capacity for the implementation of actions so as to improve the living conditions of women and families are some of the benefits from this co-operation.

Speaking to the press at the end of the talks with the national department of the Ministry of Family and Women Promotion, WFO’s official said that this agreement will facilitate the upgrading and implementation of programmes and strategic projects outlined between both 
institutions.

To her, the other considerable gain will be reintegration of Angola as a permanent member of the WFO for a better access to the programmes in the African sub-region, mainly with the installation of the future head-office of the organisation in the country.

The Angolan government and WFO agreed on Thursday to set up relations of technical and financial co-operation to conduct various partnership projects in the fields of family, women and development.

On Friday, Deisi Noeli Kruszta will travel to the northern Bengo Province, so as to learn about the social projects of the Angolan government outside Luanda. 
The meeting was attended by directors, consultants and technicians of the Ministry of Family and Women Promotion and senior employees of WFO.

Cooperation Angola/Portugal honours common history – portuguese premier
www.portalangop.co.ao/7/23/10

Luanda – The portuguese prime-minister, José Sócrates, considered on Thursday in Luanda that the prevailing cooperation between Angola and Portugual honours the history, language and culture of both people.

At the end of a visit to the portuguese stand at the Luanda International Fair (FILDA), the portuguese premier expressed “a enormous emotion and joy” for eyeing Angola and Portugal more united and closer, honouring a traditional brotherhood of two nations striving side by side for a better future both on government and business levels. 

He added that the fact that the angolan government has always had a stimulus word to the development of portuguese companies means that Portugal has to do its best for a mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

“On behalf of the portuguese government let me say that we are proud of what you (portuguese businessmen) are doing to promote what is best made in Portugal and I am proud of what you are doing to promote economic cooperation between Angola and Portugal” – Jose Socrates said.

Mozambican, Equatorial Guinea presidents arrive for CPLP Summit
Pana /23/07/2010

Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries Luanda, Angola – The presidents of Mozambique and Equatorial Guinea arrived in Luanda on Thursday for the 8th meeting of the heads of state and government of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) to be held on Friday in the Angolan capital.

The Mozambican head of state, Armando Guebuza, was welcomed at Luanda’s 4 de Fevereiro International Airport by the Angolan Minister for Youth and Sports, Goncalves Muandumba while the Equatorial Guinea president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, was welcomed by the Oil Minister, Botelho de Vasconcelos.

The Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister, Celso Amorim, also arrived on Thursday to represent President Lula da Silva at the summit.

Equatorial Guinea, which has been CPLP observer member since 2006, has embarked on a diplomatic effort with Portuguese speaking countries to become a full member this year.

Already in the Angolan capital for the summit to be held on the theme, “Solidarity in Diversity”, are the President of Portugal, Anibal Cavaco Silva and his prime minister Jose Socrates, the president of Cape Verde, Pedro Pires and the deputy prime minister of East Timor, Jose Guterres.

The Summit, to be held at the Conventions Centre of Talatona, has been preceded by a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the community who prepared the agenda for the heads of state and government.

The CPLP member states are Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe while Equatorial Guinea, Mauritius and Senegal are observers.

Luanda

SOUTH AFRICA:

South Africa’s Gordhan Says Mining Royalty Taxes Super-Profits
July 23 /(Bloomberg)

— South Africa’s Mineral Royalty and Petroleum Resources Act, implemented from March, taxes “some of the super-profits that the resource sector generates,” Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said.

Gordhan was responding to a question from a lawmaker on whether South Africa will impose a mining tax similar to that proposed by Australia. South Africa only announces tax proposals at the time of the budget, Gordhan said in a written reply to the question, which was e-mailed by Parliament today.

South Africa’s Tutu to retire from public life
Times wires /www.tampabay.com/ Friday, July 23, 2010 

Tutu to retire from public life in october

After decades at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid and injustice, Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, announced Thursday he would begin reducing his public appearances in October, on his 79th birthday. A Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1984, at the height of unrest in South Africa’s racially segregated townships, Tutu said in a statement he would step down from many public duties in order to sip afternoon tea with his wife, watch cricket and “travel to visit my children and grandchildren rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.”

Mandela Grandchildren Escape Gun Attack Unhurt
July 23/www.aolnews.com

(July 22) — Nelson Mandela’s daughter and four grandchildren got the shock of their lives when returning home after celebrating the 92nd birthday of South Africa’s iconic former leader: They were met in the driveway by two gunmen who ordered them to get out of their car and lie down.

For reasons not yet known, the gunmen then left briefly but quickly returned to the Johannesburg home, authorities say. One fired a bullet, a family driver returned fire, and the two men fled. No one was hurt.

An attempted-murder case has been opened in the incident, police spokesman Brig. Govindsamy Mariemuthoo told Agence France-Presse today.

The attack happened on Sunday, but according to The Star in Johannesburg, the case wasn’t opened until Wednesday. The spokesman could not say why it took three days to report it

“I can confirm that we are busy with investigations,” he told a Star reporter, and according to The Associated Press no further information was being released.

Other South African media have reported that a car that fit the description of the gunmen’s vehicle that was marked by bullet holes was recovered Sunday evening, and that one of the attackers may have been shot in the leg.

The Star also quoted Eyewitness News as saying two men believed to be police officers removed bullet casings from the driveway, but the AP said the police would not comment on those reports.

According to news agency reports, South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime in the world, with an average of 50 killings a day.

Sunday’s attack came as the family was still mourning the death in June of Mandela’s great-granddaughter Zenni, 13, who died in a car crash on her way home to Soweto from a concert the day before the opening of soccer’s World Cup.

S.Africa’s Pick ‘n Pay to open more stores in Zambia
July 23, 2010 /uk.ibtimes.com

South Africa’s Pick ‘n Pay will open seven stores in Zambia in the next five years as the country’s second biggest grocery retailer builds its presence in the continent.

Pick n Pay, which on Tuesday opened its first store in the copper-rich southern Africa nation, will spend $25 million over the period.

The Cape Town-based company has embarked on an expansion drive in the rest of the continent and plans to also launch operations in Mozambique and Mauritius in a bid to offset slack demand at home.

Pick n Pay, which has been dwarfed in the rest of the continent by its larger rival Shoprite, sold its underperforming Australian unit last month to focus on expansion closer to home. .

“We plan to invest $25 million in Zambia in the first five years and intend to double that investment in the long-term,” Nick Badminton, Pick n Pay chief executive officer said.

Badminton said Pick ‘n Pay would create between 100 and 200 jobs in each of its outlets

Seven S.African police killed in helicopter crash
Fri Jul 23, 2010 /Reuters

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Seven South African policemen including senior officers were killed in a helicopter crash on Friday about 130 km (80 miles) east of Johannesburg, a police spokesman said.

“The details are sketchy but it is believed the chopper crashed in an open field. The policemen are burnt beyond recognition,” said Zweli Mnisi, the spokesman for the police minister Nathi Mthethwa.

Mnisi could not disclose the identities of the deceased, nor the destination of the helicopter.

Paramedics were searching fields adjacent the crash site in Witbank, in the country’s northern province of Mpumalanga, for the remains of three of the seven occupants.

South Africa’s police have been celebrated at home in recent weeks for their work in preventing any major incidents at the soccer World Cup, which ended earlier this month.

AFRICA / AU :

Banks, Policymakers and Researchers call for Increased Access to Finances for African Farmers
23 July 2010/allafrica.com

Ouagadougou — “We should all commit ourselves to mobilising the resources that are required in order for us to implement the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). We need to look very carefully at how we can increase national budgetary and private sector support for our farmers”, said Dr. Laurent Sedogo, Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries for Burkina Faso at the start of the second annual CAADP Day.

“This day gives us the opportunity to strengthen the links between the African private sector, the development partners and farmers’ organisations. It is an opportunity for us to review the progress of CAADP since 2003 and also for us to identify the challenges and the solutions to them”, he added.

The 2010 edition of the CAADP Day was held under the theme ‘Post-Compact CAADP Implementation: the African private sector and investments in agriculture’ with a specific focus on how to get banks to support the work of African farmers.

The day was hosted by the Government of Burkina Faso and organised by the African Union Commission (AUC), the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency) in partnership with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

As per the 2003 AU Maputo declaration CAADP is based on two major principles: the pursuit of a six percent average annual growth rate at the national level in the agricultural sector, and the allocation of ten percent of national budgets to agriculture.

According to Martin Bwalya, the Head of CAADP at the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency “CAADP’s agenda reflects a fundamental shift in the way Africa’s leadership looks at agriculture and its potential contribution to ending poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. The program—fully owned and led by African governments—is at the heart of efforts to achieve growth and national development in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”.

“The overall vision of this year’s CAADP Day is to widen and broaden the political space and investment climate for CAADP to agriculture by paying particular attention to the role of the private sector. And also to showcase the work of CAADP”, he added.

“The reason as to why we are focusing on the banks this year is because the evidence on the ground shows that in order for us to boost agricultural productivity in Africa, we need to direct our attention towards increasing access to finances for farmers in Africa”, said Bwalya.

National ownership, financial incentives and information sharing – all crucial to agricultural-led development

The event attracted close to 200 policymakers, Ministers, researchers, and representatives from farmers’ organizations, the media, the private sector, and development partners who engaged with each other through a moderated panel discussion – on their CAADP implementation experiences.

The panelists at the discussion included: Dr. Sam Sesay -Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security of Sierra Leone, Kwesi Ahwoi -Minister of Food and Agriculture of Ghana, Dr. Laurent Sedogo -Minister of Agriculture, Water resources and Fisheries of Burkina Faso, Vincent Rubarema – Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries of Uganda, Lucy Muchoki – Chief Executive Officer of the Pan African Agribusiness Consortium, Esther Muhiri -General Manager Marketing Agribusiness of Equity Bank and Mr. Alphonse Kadjo -General Director of UBA.

During the discussions representatives from the farmers’ organisations highlighted that the problem of funding and access to finances requires new thinking and new solutions that go beyond what is being offered by the banks today.

The Ministers overwhelmingly felt that in order for a country to succeed with the implementation of the CAADP agenda there had to be political will at the highest levels of Government and genuine national ownership of the country’s agricultural strategy.

Burkina Faso is being expected to sign its CAADP Compact by the end of the week whilst Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire will do so during the course of next week. This will bring the total number of countries that have signed their CAADP Compacts to 22.

Representatives from the private sector highlighted that they see agriculture as a serious business venture. However, they also felt that it was important for African agriculture to be move away from a subsistence focus to a commercial focus and that there are financial incentives on the market that can be accessed to do this.

Members of the media called upon researchers and scientists in African agriculture to be more proactive in terms of sharing information with the media and also recognise their roles as sources of information. Scientists were also called upon to use social media as an avenue for highlighting their work to the wider public.

The CAADP Day was held within the context of the Africa Agriculture Science Week and the FARA General Assembly.

UPDATE 1-Two AU peacekeepers killed in Somali violence
Fri Jul 23, 2010/Reuters

* Two dead, three injured 

* AU peacekeepers add bases in Mogadishu

MOGADISHU, July 23 (Reuters) – Somali Islamist insurgents have killed two African Union peacekeepers in fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, a spokesman for the AU peacekeeping force said on Friday.

This month’s coordinated bomb attacks on the Ugandan capital Kampala, which were claimed by Somali rebels, have thrust the Somali conflict and the peacekeepers’ mandate to the top of the agenda at AU’s summit now being held in Uganda. 

“We lost two soldiers and about three others were injured in Bondere district on Wednesday,” spokesman Barigye Ba-Hoku told Reuters.

The nationalities of the deceased peacekeepers were not immediately clear.

AU-backed Somali troops have been fighting the militants to regain control of suburbs of the war-scarred capital.

“In this month alone, AMISOM (the peacekeepiong force) has moved to 3 new bases in Mogadishu, Bondhere base and Oruba and Jubba bases,” Ba-Hoku said. 

“We continue to advance and provide more security to the people of Mogadishu. Nothing is going to deter us from achieving peace for Somalia’s people,” he added.

In the wake of the Uganda bomb blasts, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni called for the AU peacekeepers to be handed a stronger peace enforcement mandate. Such a move would allow the more than 6,000 troops to take the fight to the rebels.

Regional powers ultimately want 20,000 AU and United Nation peacekeepers deployed in Somalia, but most AU members have been reluctant to commit troops. 

The al Qaeda-inspired al Shabaab movement said the Uganda attacks were in retaliation for the east African nation’s peacekeeper contribution. Both Uganda and Burundi, which also has peacekeepers in Somali, have said they will not withdraw their troops despite Islamist threats of further attacks.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; editing by Richard Lough)

Over 40 African Leaders to Attend AU Summit in Uganda
Peter Clottey/www1.voanews.com/23 July 2010

A top official with Uganda’s foreign ministry says several African heads of state and government will begin arriving Friday and Saturday to participate in the African Union (AU) heads of state summit scheduled to begin this Sunday.

Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary James Mugume said Ugandans expect the African Union to take a firm stance against the recent twin-bombings in the capital, Kampala.

The attacks, which were inspired by the hard-line Somali insurgent group, al-Shabab, killed over 70 people including foreign nationals who were watching the finals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“The foreign ministry and the organizing committee, working with the AU commission, have been ready for the last one month. And we started the meeting on Monday with the permanent representatives. Yesterday and today (Friday) we are having a meeting of the Executive Council. So, we are ready,” Mugume said.

Described by Washington as a terrorist organization with strong links to Al Qaeda, al-Shabab has been battling almost daily the internationally backed Somali government.

The group has refused to recognize President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s government and has vowed to overthrow the administration and implement the strictest form of the Sharia Law.

Analysts expect the escalating conflict in Somalia as well as a possible troop surge in that restive country to be high on the agenda for discussion.

Permanent Secretary Mugume said that over 40 heads of state and government have confirmed that they will attend the 15th ordinary session of assembly of African heads of state and government summit.

“In the agenda of the assembly, they will be looking at the report of the AU Peace and Security Council. And in that report, there will be issues to do with Somalia, Sudan and other conflict areas in Africa. The Council, I think will be looking at the bombings in Kampala on July 11th by the al-Shabab,” Mugume said.

Observers say the official theme for the summit which is “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa” has been overshadowed by the heightened security following last week’s Uganda bombings.

Uganda’s government sharply condemned the twin bombings and has re-assured the African heads of state and government as well as other delegates scheduled to attend the summit of their safety.

Mugume said the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) will also be focusing on security issues on the sidelines of the AU summit.

“There will be a meeting of what they call EASBRIG (East African Standby Brigade), one of the five standby brigades that is part of the new AU Peace and Security (structure) which includes the Peace and Security Council and the standby force. So, we will be also looking at the possibility of implementing the EASBRIG … and that will also look at the possibility of handling the issue of Somalia,” Mugume said.

Africa: IFJ, African Journalists Call On AU to Make Journalism Safer
Yobosa Uwugiaren/Leadership (Abuja) /allafrica.com/23 July 2010

Abuja — The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and some 37 journalists’ unions and associations are pressing government leaders attending the 15th African Union Summit in Kampala, Uganda, to make safety of African journalists a priority for the African Union.

In a letter to AU leaders the unions, led by the IFJ African regional body the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), welcomed the declaration by African leaders to designate 2010 as the “Year of Peace and Security in Africa”.

“This timely declaration must be taken forward with practical, pragmatic and prompt actions,” they said. “It is a sad and incontrovertible fact that, many decades after the achievement of political independence, so many Africans continue to lose their lives as a result of armed and non-armed conflicts, much of it driven by unscrupulous politics, intolerance and rivalries whether based upon ethnic, religious or cultural divisions.

Addressing the safety and protection of African journalists, the journalists and media groups said “Among the many victims are African journalists who are routinely targeted, often injured, killed, displaced or mentally scarred. Their only crime is their defence of African peoples’ right to know, their determination to expose all forms of corruption and their conviction that everyone should enjoy the right to free expression.”

Last year 13 African journalists were murdered in Africa, nine of them in Somalia. This year six journalists have already been murdered – three in Nigeria, one in Somalia, one in Rwanda and one in Angola. It will almost be inevitable that other journalists will continue to be the victims of grave human rights violations and fall to assassins’ bullets as they strive to carry out their legitimate job to inform their fellow citizens, whether on unravelling corruption or lawlessness, reporting civil insurgencies, or exposing drug trafficking.

Last March, the continental congress of the Federation of African Journalists held in Harare, Zimbabwe, adopted a strong resolution on safety of journalists and called for an end of the culture of impunity against media workers in Africa. A few months later, delegates from over 100 countries assembled at the IFJ World Congress in Spain pledged solidarity with African colleagues and called on African governments to bring this safety crisis to an end.

“The loss of media lives should remind all African citizens of the sacrifices that journalists and media staff make in the cause of the right to know. Whatever the future brings, journalists will continue to strive to be the pillar of democracy, providing invaluable journalism as a public good often under difficult and dangerous conditions”, the joint letter said.

Journalists and media organizations concluded that “If the Year of Peace and Security is to have a lasting meaning, African leaders should do more to make journalism safer and bring to an end the injustice of impunity.”

Bashir warrant: Chad accuses ICC of anti-African bias
23 July 2010 /www.bbc.co.uk

Omar al-Bashir was greeted warmly by his Chadian counterpart in Ndjamena
Chad has accused the International Criminal Court of only targeting African leaders, as it justifies its decision not to arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir.

Chad’s ambassador to the US told the BBC that justice suffers if it is unfair.

The ICC accuses Mr Bashir of war crimes and genocide – which he denies.

Chad is the first ICC signatory Mr Bashir has visited since he was indicted in 2009.

All of the five cases the ICC is currently dealing with are in Africa but The Hague-based court says it is up to member states to refer cases for it to investigate.

It was set up to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor rejects the accusation of bias against Africa, saying not only are the worst crimes being committed in the continent, but the victims are also African. 

The African Union and the Arab League have always opposed the ICC’s decision to issue the arrest warrants issued over the conflict in Darfur.

Chad’s ambassador Ahmat Mahamat Bachir said it was merely following the AU’s lead, despite a storm of protest from human rights groups.

“We are with the rule of law and everybody has to pay for his mistakes and for any crime he commits but when it will be selectively and targeting only African leaders it should not be accepted,” he told the BBC’s World Today programme.

He said there were many other leaders who deserved to be treated in the same way as Mr Bashir but he declined to name them.

Mr Bashir is charged with arming Arab militias accused of attacking black African civilians in Darfur after rebel groups took up arms in 2003.

The UN estimates the conflict has cost the lives of some 300,000 people and displaced a further 2.7 million.

The Sudanese government puts the death toll at 10,000 and says the problems in the region have been exaggerated for political reasons.

Mr Bashir is in Chad for a summit of the regional bloc, Community of Sahel-Saharan States (Censad).

Chad and Sudan have previously been accused of fighting proxy wars through rebel groups in the other country and Chad’s ambassador said the international community had urged the two countries to improve relations in order to bring peace to Darfur.

“When you normalise [relations] with a country, you are not going to arrest the head of state,” he said.

An ICC spokesman said Chad was obliged to implement its judges’ decisions and co-operate with the request for Mr Bashir to be arrested.

Human rights organisations condemned the Chadian authorities.

“Chad risks the shameful distinction of being the first ICC member state to harbour a suspected war criminal from the court,” said Elise Keppler of Human Rights Watch.

Amnesty International also called on Chad not to shield Mr Bashir and said the visit was an opportunity for justice.

BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says the next decision for Mr Bashir is whether to attend this weekend’s African Union summit in Uganda.

The African Union has accused the ICC of targeting the continent and recommended its members do not co-operate, but like Chad, Uganda is a signatory of the court.

Relations between Sudan and Uganda have blown hot and cold so often that Mr Bashir may well decide not to ride his luck and instead head home, our correspondent says.

Francafrique at 50
By Sanou Mbaye/www.koreatimes.co.kr/23072010

DAKAR ― In May, Africa’s Francophone countries marked the 50th anniversary of their independence, and of the ties they maintain with France. But is there much to celebrate?

Even before French President Charles de Gaulle took office in 1958, he foresaw the wave of revolutionary nationalism that would soon sweep across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. As French president, he sought to circumvent that tide by proposing to the leaders of France’s African colonies a negotiated settlement for independence.

To accept de Gaulle’s offer, these leaders had to agree, among other things, to allow the stationing of French troops on their territory, provide France with a steady supply of raw materials at pre-determined prices, assume all colonial-era debts incurred by France, maintain the CFA franc as their common currency, and grant the French Treasury veto authority over their sub-regional central banks. De Gaulle got most of what he wanted, and granted independence.

Francophone Africa has been paying for independence ever since. French troops have repeatedly intervened in Chad, Gabon, Zaire, Central Africa, Togo, and Cote d’Ivoire to prop up and protect complacent, corrupt, undemocratic, and incompetent leaders, remove recalcitrant ones, or curb civil unrest. In Rwanda, France has yet to live down its perceived role in enabling the 1994 genocide.

On the monetary front, the CFA franc zone’s member countries dismantled the federal structure that united them during French occupation and erected trade barriers instead. The CFA franc issued by two sub-regional central banks (BCEAO and BEAC) are not interchangeable. As a result, regional trade and economic integration have been stifled.

The ensuing economic difficulties were exacerbated under President Francois Mitterrand, whose prime minister, Pierre Beregovoy, pursued a strong French franc ― a policy that ultimately led to a massive 100 percent devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994. 

And the euro’s appreciation against the dollar from 2002 until very recently meant that the shift in the CFA franc’s exchange-rate peg from the French franc to the euro caused a repeat of that scenario. 

With the bulk of their exports denominated in U.S. dollars and their imports priced mainly in euros, chronic structural deficits have wrecked the franc zone economies, and the prospect of a second devaluation looms larger by the day.

More appalling is the fact that France guarantees the CFA franc’s free convertibility into hard currency, originally on the condition that all 15 franc zone countries surrender 100 percent of their foreign reserves to the French Treasury. The amount was reduced to 65 percent, and then 50 percent, in 2005, but France still deducts its share directly from these countries’ export earnings.

Moreover, the mandatory 20 percent foreign exchange cover stipulated in the convention signed with France in 1962 now stands at 110 percent. And a foreign-exchange control enacted in 1993 ensures that only France benefits from this capital drain by limiting the free flow of capital to France alone. The ensuing massive capital flight has bled the region’s economies and eroded their competitiveness.

This is a shame, because the economic situation elsewhere in Africa has been improving in recent years ― mostly in Eastern and Southern Africa, where economic integration is proceeding within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).

Unfortunately, West Africa’s regional grouping, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), is not as effective. 

With the establishment of ECOWAS, the franc zone countries created two sub-regional groupings, WAEMU and CEMAC, in a bid to curb British, American, and Nigerian influence. As a result, West African countries are mostly missing out on Africa’s current revival ― and the prospect of a prolonged period of stagnation in the eurozone certainly won’t help.

The imbalanced relationship between France and its former African colonies would beggar belief if the psychology of Africa’s “liberators” 50 years ago were overlooked. 

Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, was a strong believer in white supremacy who once wrote that “reason is Helennic; emotion is Negro.” Leon Mba, the first Gabonese president, was such a Francophile that he bequeathed his personal fortune to France in order to finance the construction of a hospital in Paris.

Similarly, the founder of Cote d’Ivoire, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, coined the word “Francafrique” to underline the total osmosis between France and its former colonies. Houphouet-Boigny’s support for France’s African policy led him to establish diplomatic ties with South Africa’s apartheid regime and make his country a supply-transit route for the Biafra secessionists.

These leaders were unlikely ever to dispute France’s diktat, and the same applies to their heirs. Indicted French child abductors were freed by Chad at France’s request.

In Mali, several suspected terrorists ― members of a local branch of al-Qaida ― were set free in exchange for a lone French hostage. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade once labeled the CFA franc a colonial relic ― but that was when he was an opposition leader. Now he considers it the best currency in the world. 

This economic and psychological status quo ensures that, after 50 years of independence, true emancipation for Francafrique will remain a distant prospect. If there is something to celebrate, it is that the balance of global economic power is shifting to emerging countries, and that new role models and a new generation raised in a globalized world are becoming ready to assume the mantle of leadership.

Sanou Mbaye, a Senegalese economist, is a former member of the senior management team of the African Development Bank and the author of “L’Afrique au secours de l’Afrique” (Africa to the Rescue of Africa). For more stories, visit Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).

UN /ONU :

Joint UNHCR/WFP News Release: Food, shelter and protection promise stable future for Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
23 July 2010/www.unhcr.org

Press Releases, 
Goma- The Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), Josette Sheeran, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), António Guterres, said they hoped more people displaced by years of conflict in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo will soon find the security they need to return to their homes and re-start farming their land.

“Worldwide we see that wherever security allows, people return to their homes and resume their lives,” said Guterres. “We want to see more of this happening in eastern Congo. But it’s a goal that can only be achieved if protection of civilians in DRC is both a national and international priority.”

” I have no doubt that given the support they need, and the stability that they crave, the people of this region can take advantage of the fertile land they live on to build a better future,” Sheeran said. “Where relative peace prevails, WFP is planning to help Congolese communities return to productive lives through innovative programmes that use cash, vouchers and local purchase to support the growing agricultural economy.

Sheeran and Guterres made their comments ahead of a visit to camps near Nyanzale for Congolese who have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict in eastern Congo.

The camps for internally displaced people near Nyanzale, some 130 kilometres from North Kivu’s provincial capital, Goma, highlight some of the most critical work being done by WFP and UNHCR in eastern Congo. Both agencies are supporting populations that have been forced from their land and villages by fighting, as well as preparing them for a better future if peace and stability endures.

WFP is providing food assistance to some 150,000 internally displaced people in North Kivu Province. That includes some 3,900 people living in three camps around Nyanzale. The vast majority of camp dwellers – some 70 percent – are women. Most have lost their husbands and many have been raped during years of violence in eastern Congo.

In North Kivu, UNHCR is assisting refugees, coordinating humanitarian assistance to 84,000 internally displaced people in 42 camps, and working to prevent and respond to sexual violence. UNHCR has assisted 106,000 IDPs in returning to their villages and re-building their lives since 2007.

In the past 15 months, relative stability in some areas has allowed over a million displaced people to return to their villages. Elsewhere, however, there has been significant new displacement. Given this shifting security environment Sheeran and Guterres warned that decisions relating to the future of UN peacekeepers must take into account their vital support to humanitarian agencies in reaching the displaced in remote and insecure areas.

WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. Each year, on average, WFP feeds more than 90 million people in more than 70 countries.

WFP now provides RSS feeds to help journalists keep up with the latest press releases, videos and photos as they are published on WFP.org. 

UNHCR works to help the world’s refugees and internally displaced people. At the end of 2009 there were 43 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including 15.2 million refugees (10.4 million of whom were under UNHCR’s care), 983,000 asylum seekers, and 27.1 million internally displaced people.

Westerwelle calls for African seat on UN Security Council
23.07.2010 /www.dw-world.de

Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, addressed an AU summit in Kampala, urging Africa to unify and take its place on the world stage. He said Germany wanted to see Africa realize its economic potential.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has stressed Germany’s desire for economic and political partnerships with African nations – as well as reiterating Berlin’s obligations to the continent.

Addressing the African Union (AU) on Thursday in the Ugandan capital Kampala, Westerwelle referred to Africa as a “continent of opportunities.” He urged African countries to band together in order to stabilize volatile political situations in Somalia and Sudan, and to better represent their own interests on the world stage. 

An increasing interest in African affairs

Westerwelle, who became the first German foreign minister to address the 53-country AU, told Deutsche Welle that Germany had “a great interest in Africa’s global image changing.”

Deutsche Welle’s African affairs analyst, Ludger Schadomsky, said Westerwelle’s address demonstrated an “increasing interest in African affairs.”

Schadomsky explained that Germany had been “instrumental in supporting the Peace and Security Commission, the core body of the African Union in terms of capacity building,” as well as in the “training of Somali army personal in Uganda.”

Promoting political stability

While the summit was originally meant to address health concerns, focus quickly shifted to political stabilization of the continent in the wake of a deadly suicide attack in the Ugandan capital earlier this month. 

In retaliation for Uganda’s deployment of 3,000 soldiers to Somalia, Islamist radicals committed dual suicide bombings on July 11, killing over 70 soccer fans while they watched a World Cup match. Westerwelle, who had earlier laid a wreath at one of the bomb sites, called for greater AU intervention in Somalia – a country largely controlled by Islamist militias since the early 1990s. 

Westerwelle warned that political chaos in Somalia posed “dangers for the whole world,” that “the whole issue of piracy has to do with the state’s lack of control.”

“That damages not only German trade interests, but the trade interests of all countries,” he said. “Allowing Somalia to drift farther down this path will create a breeding ground for terrorism, and that’s why I welcome the African Union’s action in stabilizing and rebuilding Somalia.” 

‘Africa to join the world stage’

Westerwelle praised the AU for placing peacekeeping troops in Somalia and the West-Sudanese conflict region Darfur, breaking the non-interference policies of the Organization of African Unity, the African Union’s predecessor. 

However, other than increasing aid to Somalia by one million euros ($1.3 million), Germany’s Foreign Minister made no new aid commitments to the AU. Prior to the summit, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni had advocated increasing the number of AU peacekeeping troops in Somalia from 5,000 to 20,000. 

Westerwelle stressed that “Africa taking its future into its own hands” was “far more crucial than any aid money flowing from Europe.” He said a unified approach would help increase Africa’s global standing.

Germany’s Foreign Minister also called for the African Union to have its own permanent seat on the UN Security Council – alongside China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US.

Westerwelle also said he believed Africa has a great deal of potential to realize.

“We want to be there when this continent comes into its own economically and politically, when it takes advantage of its opportunities,” the foreign minister said. “Germany wants to be a part of that – it’s also i
n our own interest.”

Meeting Africa’s potential

Though Ludger Schadomsky is skeptical on the possibility of Africa having a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, he did comment that Westerwelle’s visit “came at the right time and certainly went down very well with the hosts.” 

“Africans have always been keen for Germany to play a greater role. Obviously the important thing is to sustain this initiative,” Schadomsky said.

To that end, Westerwelle promised that, after summer break, German parliament would pass a so-called “Africa Concept”- measures taking into account Africa’s “security, social, economic and environmental challenges” as well as its “great developmental potential.”

He promsied that, should the Africa rise to meet that potential, as South Africa had already done, Germany would be first in line to form new economic partnerships.

Author: Daniel Pelz (David Levitz)

Editor: Mark Hallam

UN council urges Guinea-Bissau to free detainees
Fri Jul 23, 2010 /Reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council urged Guinea-Bissau on Thursday to release or prosecute prisoners detained over an April 1 army mutiny and demanded that the government help combat the country’s narcotics trade.

The 15-nation council voiced “serious concern” about the increase in drug trafficking in the tiny country on the coast of West Africa, which U.N. officials say has become a hub of the drug trade between Latin America and Europe.

“The Security Council calls on the government of Guinea-Bissau to release immediately all those detained in the events of 1 April 2010 or prosecute them with full respect for due process,” the council said in a nonbinding statement.

Council members also urged Guinea-Bissau’s rulers to return the country to civilian control and expressed “concern at the current security situation and threats to constitutional order.”

“The Council calls upon the authorities of Guinea-Bissau to create the necessary environment to ensure that actions to tackle drug trafficking and organized crime, including actions supported by the international community, are effective,” they added.

Last week, the United States said it could not help in international efforts to reform the country’s armed forces unless they were purged of suspected leaders of the growing West African drug trade.

Washington has already named two senior Guinea-Bissau military officers as drug kingpins.

U.N. special envoy to Guinea-Bissau Joseph Mutaboba described the April 1 mutiny as “defiance toward the international community” and has said civilian authorities have yet to establish control over the armed forces.

Defending Ban, UN Official Says No FOIA Needed, Myanmar & Sudan No Comment
By Matthew Russell Lee /www.innercitypress.com/July 23

UNITED NATIONS, July 22 — Ban Ki-moon’s desire for a second term as UN Secretary General was on display on Thursday, when two separate press conferences were held to rebut the critique of outgoing Under Secretary General for Investigations Inga Britt Ahlenius.

At noon, USG Angela Kane and her human resources Assistant SG Catherine Pollard provided a dense, some say misleading defense of Ban’s reaching down to determine Ahlenius’ choice of a deputy.

Ms. Kane says it would be improper, however, for her as USG for Management to answer Inner City Press’ request for Team Ban’s response to Ahlenius’ statement that Ban has failed on such issues as Myanmar and Sudan. 

Inner City Press asked who would take questions on Myanmar and Sudan, and Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said you may have an opportunity shortly.

From 5 to 6 pm that afternoon, a self described “senior UN official,” whom we’ll refer to as SUNO or as “he,” while it may have been a woman, took questions off camera from the Press. 

When Inner City Press asked for example about Ban, despite the centrality of gender balance to his defense, having named of High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing consisting of 19 people, all men, until one was replaced by Minister Lagarde of France, the Senior UN Official said the criticism by the Presswas “unfair,” since a woman was added to the 19 member Group in the end. A Ban advisor — to play by the rules, we cannot say whether the same or a different one — similarly this week blamed the media.

Inner City Press began by asking for a defense of what Ahlenius and others call Ban’s failure on Myanmar and Sudan. The Senior UN Official deflected this by saying that on some issues you move favor and some slow. 

But in South Sudan there is the deadline of a planned referendum. The Official countered that he only wanted to talk about Ms. Ahlenius’ critique — which, of course, included Myanmar and Sudan, as well as Congo and Cyprus, but who’s counting? 

So Inner City Press asked about the division of powers question at the heart of Ahlenius’ critique, that under the rules she should had the independence, as UNDP does, to appoint her own D-2 level officials. The UN Official responded first that in practice, “systematically,” Helen Clark of UNDP checks on such appointments with Ban.

But Clark doesn’t have to, and Clark is also not in charge of investigating Ban Ki-moon and the Secretariat. The founding documents of OIOS say that it should have the same hiring independence as UNDP.

The Official disagreed, surreally. It can’t be the same, he said, “mutatis mutandi… you should know… what applies to [you] does not apply to [another journalist]… you have a beard.” Then the Official turned to take other questions.

After the Official bragged about Ban’s UN’s transparency, Inner City Press asked why the Compacts Ban signs with his officials — now to their credit including the heads of peacekeeping missions — are only placed on the UN’s intranet, and not for the public, or “we the peoples,” and why the UN under Ban stopped moving toward, or even talking about, a Freedom of Information Act.

On a FOIA, the Senior UN Official replied, “ask the member states, let them legislate, then we’ll do it.” He pauses. “If the member states insist, our way of decision making would have to be modified” for “this kind of perfect transparency.” So, no UN FOIA. So much for transparency. Watch this site.

Pregnant with hope and possibility
Friday, 23 July 2010/Asha-Rose Migiro/thecitizen.co.tz 

The news of a pregnancy should ideally be met with joy – but all too often there is justifiable fear. The African Union Summit this week, set to focus on the health of mothers and children, has a chance to transform this fear into hope. 

Ten years into the Millennium Development Goals, we know what African leaders have always appreciated: when you invest in mothers, whole societies benefit, and when you care for children, you raise a new generation of leaders. 

This is not a theory; at the United Nations we see it happen in reality.

In Sudan, 16-year old Awatif Altayib lost her baby following two days of difficult labour, and emerged from the ordeal herself injured with obstetric fistula. Her future with this debilitating condition looked bleak – until she recovered with assistance from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and its partners. Now Awatif is a working midwife, helping other women to survive.

Southern Sierra Leone has one gynecologist serving an area home to two and a half million people. That is why recently when Hawa Barrie suffered complications in pregnancy, she and her family feared the worst. 

But the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is working with the Government and other partners to improve health services there. Thanks to these efforts, Hawa survived, her newborn son received his shots, and both are on their way to a healthy life.

Abiodun Titi of Niger is another thriving African mother. Although she is HIV-positive, she was able to conceive with her HIV-negative husband safely thanks to a method involving the female condom. With help from the UN and its partners, she now teaches others this life-saving approach.

Unfortunately, millions African women do not have the same opportunities. Maternal mortality rates on the continent are among the highest in the world. And progress in reaching the Millennium Development Goal of drastically reducing these deaths has been abysmally slow.

Fortunately, African leaders are squarely facing the issue. The scale and seriousness of the problem demand no less. And it is especially fitting that the AU Summit will focus on maternal and child health. Africans, place great cultural value on mothers – not only those who give birth but all women, since in a meaningful social sense all are helping to raise children. 

The United Nations is ready to work with Africa to make good on its proud traditions. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently launched a Joint Action Plan to accelerate progress on safe motherhood, calling for 2010 to be a turning point for women’s health.

Africa’s leaders must also do their part by pledging the resources we need to honor past promises and open the way to a better future. We have a blueprint in the Maputo Plan of Action on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, which has clear objectives and detailed cost estimates for how to reach them. And as Africa leaders commit to doing their part, so should their development partners.

The AU Summit should join its voice to the rising chorus of partners supporting the Joint Action Plan. That means expanding national health plans that put priority on women and children’s health. It requires increasing the proportion of budget resources for this purpose. Countries must commit to a full continuum of care, so that women are not just seen when an emergency strikes, and so that clinics and caregivers address all of their reproductive health needs, whether pregnancy-related or not. And we must reach even the most remote and poverty-stricken areas.

By taking a strong stance backed by concrete pledges of funds, the Summit can unleash a wave of progress within countries, across the region and around the world.

I know the value of a declaration from the continent’s leaders. During my years as Tanzania’s Minister for Community Development, Gender and Children, I saw how a signal from the AU summit could serve as a rallying point for our work countrywide, spur action throughout the region and benefit the entire continent. And from my view at the United Nations, I see how Africa’s bold actions can inspire other continents to advance.

There will naturally be many other issues requiring the Summit’s attention, including conflicts, poverty and other blights that are causing so many girls and women to suffer. But by putting their health at the top of the agenda, the Summit will do more than benefit individual females – it will set the stage for resolving these broader problems and creating a better world for all.

Dr Asha-Rose Migiro is United Nations Deputy Secretary-General

USA :

Somalia: Conflict Will Spread Unless International Community Acts – U.S. Policymaker
23 July 2010/allafrica.com

Somalia, which has not had a functioning central government in more than two decades, is experiencing an upsurge in violence and increased civilian casualties. Clashes have intensified between al-Shabaab insurgents and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed , which enjoys international recognition but controls limited territory in and around the capital, Mogadishu. Troops from Uganda and Burundi comprise the 6,300-strong peacekeeping mission from the African Union supporting the TFG – the justification provided when Shabaab claimed responsibility for the bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, on July 11 that left 74 people dead.

U.S. assistance for the AU mission, known as Amisom, could be enhanced if the African participants ask for increased logistical support and training, Gen. William Ward, who heads the U.S. Africa Command, said in Washington this week. Current U.S. aid for the TFG includes a range of non-lethal equipment, plus a significant amount of ammunition, according to U.S. officials. Urgent action is needed to address instability in Somalia, according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, the Obama administration’s senior Africa policymaker. In the second part of an AllAfrica interview this week, he said continued insecurity poses a danger not only to the 10 million people living there, but also to the region and, as piracy directed at ships from around the world continues unabated, to the international community,. Excerpts: 

In the aftermath of the two bombings in Kampala on July 11, what is the United States doing to assist Uganda? 

Let me start by saying that we in the United States were deeply saddened by the double bomb blasts that occurred on the last night of World Cup in Kampala, and this event in Uganda shattered what should have been an Africa-wide sense of achievement related to South Africa’s successful holding of the Cup.

We believe that Uganda was probably targeted in large measure for its participation in Amisom and its support for the Djibouti [peace] process and the TFG, the current Somali government. While the information is still coming in, it would appear that elements linked to Shabaab were responsible. This event in Kampala focuses not only African, but international attention on the problem that exists in Somalia.

Somalia is a problem which is three-dimensional in nature. Somalia, for the last twenty years, has been a state without a strong, effective central government; it is a state which [has] virtually imploded; a state that has been racked by enormous civil strife, famine and recurring humanitarian problems. It is a state that has been fragmented into three large units: Puntland, Somaliland and south-central Somalia – Somalia as we know it, based out of Mogadishu. And certainly in southern Somalia we have seen episodic levels of extreme violence with warlords preying on citizens and relief groups, and now, violent extremists doing the same thing. Somalia has collapsed in on itself.

The second dimension is regional. Somalia’s problems have overflowed into the region. Today, Kenya plays host to 170,000-plus Somalis in the Dadaab refugee camp in the northeastern part of the country. International aid agencies say that between 5,000 and 6,000 Somalis every month cross from the deteriorating situation in south-central Somalia into Kenya. Those who don’t make it into Dadaab become a burden on the Kenyan state. Many migrate to Eastleigh, a major suburb inside Nairobi which is largely a Somali community.

You have Somali refugees in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and even further afield in places like Uganda and Tanzania. This is an enormous burden on all of the refugee-receiving countries, but it’s not just the refugees who are causing this burden. We see enormous illegal arms flows out of Somalia into the region. We see illegal commercial items moving out of Somalia into the region. People talk, in many parts of eastern and southeastern Ethiopia, about illegal smuggled goods coming through the ports of Mogadishu and Kismayu ending up in Harar, Dire Dawa and Kulubi, undercutting the legitimate commerce of the region. This is true in Ethiopia, and it’s true in Kenya. You have illegal goods coming in, illegal arms coming in, flows of people – all creating disturbances and having a negative impact.

We also have seen the problem bleed into international piracy in the Red Sea. Somali piracy is a direct result of the lack of centralized, effective governance in the country, the absence of a police force, the absence of a judiciary and the rise of impunity; also the absence of an alternative source of income; the absence of a formal and informal economy capable of providing jobs. If there were economies providing jobs, if there were a judiciary and a police force, security services to manage and jail people for piracy, we wouldn’t see piracy going on. But as long as there is a breakdown of such enormous proportions across Somalia and Puntland, we will continue to see piracy.

Beyond piracy, we see a multiplicity of problems flowing throughout the region. Violent extremism is an issue of international concern. The bombings in Kampala are a result of violent extremism. We know some of the leaders of the al-Qaeda east African cell were responsible for the tragic bombings of the American embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi on August 7th, 1998, and were responsible for the Paradise Hotel bomb blast in November 2002 and the attempt to shoot down an Israeli commercial plane on the same day. It is no longer possible for the international community to ignore the danger from a continued absence of security and governance in south-central Somalia.

What does it mean that the threat from Shabaab does not seem to be lessening? Do you believe that backing the TFG militarily and diplomatically can be effective? 

I think it is the correct policy. The policy that we pursue towards Somalia is supported by IGAD [the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an organization of six eastern African nations]. It is a policy that was designed and orchestrated by the people of Somalia and supported by the region to bring together a transitional government that would bring in as many clans and sub-clan groups as possible.

We think that we need to do as much as we possibly can to keep the Djibouti [peace] process – and the TFG which flows from it – moving forward. There is no question that the TFG has to do more than it’s done in the past. It has to not simply be a government in name only, but it has to be a government that provides services to the people; a government that is working towards stability; a government that is trying to be inclusive and bringing in more groups opposed to al-Shabaab and committed to stability.

It has to provide a clear alternative to al-Shabaab. The people of Somalia are largely moderate followers of Islam – people who desire a stable and peaceful country; people who are desirous of the right to have economic opportunity and prosperity. Shabaab does not offer that. I think Shabaab provides an extremist, radical, draconian alternative. I don’t think Somalis want it. I don’t think Somalis deserve it.

Why hasn’t the TFG been effective? 

The TFG needs to improve its game. It needs to be more active and energetic – more inclusive, governing better, being seen by the people as a positive force for stability an
d the delivery of services, and security. Shabaab has only delivered an authoritarian and draconian alternative –ruthless, brutal, and bloody.

There are those who argue for “constructive disengagement”, like Bronwyn Bruton in a Council on Foreign Relations report, saying “doing less is better than doing harm”. Is it possible that the current U.S. approach is doing more harm than good? 

Also there are reports of child soldiers being used by the Transitional Federal Government, of civilians being targeted. What does that say about the policy? 

I think that’s a false dichotomy. I think you can do more without doing harm, and I think that it is up to diplomats and to development workers and to security officials to calibrate U.S. policies in a fashion designed to advance stability, security, and service delivery as well as more inclusiveness and better governance – without doing harm.

I’ve seen the news reports about allegations of the TFG using child soldiers, and I believe those stories are an exaggeration. Not that there aren’t child soldiers around, but that they represent a small fraction of what is happening. When we have talked to and worked with the TFG on training, we have made sure that none of the individuals associated with any training that we have assisted in funding have had child soldiers. It’s against our laws. We vet to make sure that we are not in any way supporting child soldiers, and that we are not supporting in any way individuals who have been in violation of someone else’s human rights or civil liberties. We take those legal requirements very seriously. Clearly, there are things in Somalia that we can’t control, but we certainly try to make sure that anything we’re associated with is done legally.

We’ve also seen in the Washington Post allegations of indiscriminate fire by Amisom troops on civilians. We don’t deny that some of this has probably happened, but I do not believe that there is a policy of deliberate shelling by Amisom forces. That some of it may occur, yes, and it’s wrong whether it’s a lot or a little. But I don’t think it represents a policy. Somalia is probably one of the three or four most dangerous and unpredictable war zones in the world, and these kinds of things happen in those environments.

Does the United States provide support directly to the TFG and to the African Union as well? 

We work with the TFG directly, and we also work with Amisom countries. We have supported the acquisition of non-lethal equipment by Burundi and Uganda. We have provided them with military equipment – everything from communications gear to uniforms. We have supported the training of TFG forces outside Somalia, mostly in Uganda and in Djibouti. We have supported specialized training in dealing with improvised explosive devices and training for the protection of ports and airports. But this training has been provided by Ugandans, not by any U.S. military officials.

We work with the AU, and we work with the IGAD countries. And that is precisely what we need to do. We encourage others in the international community to do as we are doing. We have not done enough on Somalia, which, for far too long, has been the subject of benign neglect by the United States, and by the international community.

Given the magnitude of the problems on three levels – domestic, regional, international – now is the time for the international community to recognize that this problem will only get worse for all of us if we do not come together to find a solution.

CANADA :

AUSTRALIA :

EUROPE :

France Says it Aided African Anti-Terror Crackdown, EU
By Associated Press Writer | (AP)/ July 23, 2010

PARIS — 
PARIS (AP) France’s military says it provided technical and logistics support to Mauritanian forces in an operation against suspected al-Qaida extremists alleged to have been preparing an attack.

The Defense Ministry says the operation led by the Mauritanians “neutralized the group of terrorists and prevented a planned attack against Mauritanian objectives.”

The ministry said Friday that the group also has refused to discuss freeing a French hostage it has threatened to execute.

French news reports say the Mauritanian army’s operation aimed to free hostage Michel Germaneau but failed to find him.

The ministry did not immediately return a call seeking more information about the operation against the al-Qaida offshoot, known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

Sacu still in limbo after SA talks
By Southern Times Writer/ 23-07-2010 

Johannesburg – The Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) heads of state meeting called by President Jacob Zuma last week did little in resolving differences between the minor players in the union and the key player, South Africa. 

The oldest still existing customs union in the world, established in 1910 as a Customs Union Agreement, met in Pretoria to discuss tensions over deals signed by some of its members with the European Union (EU), but still emerged with fissures amid complaints that there was no resolution on the issue of a common external tariff for the region. 

Analysts also said there was also no discussion on the long-standing issue of Mozambique becoming part of the union, although the issue of other regional states joining the five-member group remains on the Sacu agenda. 

Sacu has come under strain after Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland (BLNS) signed interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the EU. This has placed pressure on South Africa to align its trade, development and co-operation agreement with Europe with the EPAs. 

Alternatively, it could sign a new EPA. 

But Zuma declared at the end of the weekend meeting that Sacu revenue should focus on fostering trade and tariff policies that supported industrialisation in the region. 

South Africa has long held the view that payments from the revenue pool should not prop up member states’ budgets. 

Sacu is also involved in negotiations for a free trade agreement with the EU, and the organisation has corresponded with EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht between February and March 2010, to request that the EU did not demand the ratification and implementation of the EPA’s at the next round of negotiations without the concerns of the SACU countries being addressed. 

De Gucht replied that he would like to ‘invite the SADC EPA countries concerned to swiftly complete signature, notification and implementation of the interim EPA’, and that ‘in the meantime, the EU is more than willing to address all pending issues and concerns’. 

Business Report on Tuesday quoted Trade Law Centre director Trudi Hartzenberg as saying it would be bad for business in the region if the customs union was downgraded to a free trade area. This was one way of resolving the issue of economic partnership agreements (EPAs) signed by Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho with the EU in 2008, which caused uncertainties over a common external tariff. 

Describing the meeting as ‘disappointing’, Hartzenberg said the impact of this would be that goods imported from a third party – a state outside of Sacu – could become liable to trade tariffs as the goods crossed the border into one of the five member states, which also includes Namibia. Namibia, like South Africa, has not, as yet, signed an EPA. 

Hartzenberg explained that South African businesses that were flourishing in the region might import items from the EU, which could then face tariffs as they crossed borders into, for example, Botswana. Most goods came through the ports of entry in South Africa before being shipped across the borders of Sacu states

CHINA :

Crackdown on overheating property market crunches commodity prices
Analysis: Andrew Batson From: The Wall Street Journal/www.theaustralian.com.au/ July 23, 2010 

A SLOWDOWN in China’s headlong economic growth, while moderate so far, is reverberating through global commodity markets. 
This is bad news for resource-rich countries because of China’s outsize role as a buyer of metals, minerals and other commodities.

Since China’s government started cracking down on its overheating property market in mid-April, global prices for aluminium are down 18 per cent; for copper, 13 per cent; for lead, 19 per cent; and for nickel, 27 per cent, though prices for all of those metals have stabilised somewhat in recent weeks.

Steel prices in China are down about 15 per cent over the period. Analysts say there could be further declines, as growth in China’s huge construction sector continues to ease.

The construction boom in China has played a crucial role in global demand for raw materials, to the enormous benefit of resource exporters such as Australia, Brazil, Canada and much of Africa.

The Chinese government this month reaffirmed its commitment to policies aimed at restraining high housing prices and property speculation, which became an increasing source of middle-class discontent in recent months.

Analysts expect conditions in China’s property market to get worse before they get better.

Data issued July 15 showed overall growth in China easing to 10.3 per cent in the second quarter from 11.9 per cent in the first quarter.

Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, says China’s commodity consumption is likely to fall more sharply than overall economic growth.

“It is heavy industry and commodities that are worst affected, as they benefited most from the earlier investment-led growth surge,” he says. “The financial markets may not be recognising the risks of a sudden drop-off. They’re still not used to China’s outsized swings.”

China accounted for 66 per cent of world iron-ore imports and about 40 per cent of global consumption of aluminium, copper and zinc in 2009, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, a government research agency.

The International Energy Agency this week further highlighted China’s huge role in natural resources, saying the country has surpassed the US as the world’s largest consumer of energy – an assertion China disputed.

By contrast, China accounts for only about 3 per cent of world imports of consumer goods, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, so its slowdown won’t be as noticeable to countries that make such products. And most indications are that China’s economy has cooled only modestly so far.

“China’s economic growth has made a significant contribution to the world economic recovery,” says National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Sheng Laiyun, pointing to 53 per cent growth in China’s total imports in the first half of the year.

Shipments of commodities tell a different story: China’s purchases of iron ore in June dropped 15 per cent from a year earlier in volume terms, and those of copper fell 31 per cent. China’s coal imports, while still high, were at their lowest level in a year in May.

Heavy industry seems to be shifting into a lower gear, with China’s crude steel output growing at its slowest pace in a year in June.

“Steel consumption demand has fallen,” Industry Minister Li Yizhong said in recent comments reported by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

He warned of the impact of worsening business conditions in the world’s largest producer and consumer of steel.

“Some steel companies are losing money, and if they don’t quickly take effective measures, it could affect the steel industry’s hard-won recovery,” he said.

In Australia, the central bank raised interest rates in May, citing in part the boost that high commodity prices were delivering to the Australian economy. China bought nearly 22 per cent of Australia’s exports last year and absorbs about a third of its key minerals exports.

The central bank of Canada, another major commodity exporter, followed with its own increase in interest rates in June.

But in announcing this month that the Reserve Bank of Australia was leaving interest rates unchanged, Governor Glenn Stevens noted that “there are indications that growth in China is now starting to moderate to a more sustainable rate.”

Still, he didn’t express alarm about the recent fall in raw-material prices.

“Commodity prices are off their peaks but those most important for Australia remain at very high levels,” he said.

Growing demand from developed economies could still support global commodity prices, though there are worries about the strength of the recovery in the US and Europe.

In an April report, the Bank of Canada said it expects non-energy commodity prices to rise by about 30 per cent over the next three years.

While it forecasts China’s growth to slow to 9 per cent in 2011 and 2012 as the effects of the stimulus wear off, it expects other major global economies to be growing more strongly by then and taking up the slack in commodities markets.

Many businesses are still bullish, figuring that even slower growth in as big a consumer as China still means lots of sales.

“The people who are negative on China, they are saying ‘I’m expecting 8.5 per cent (growth).’ I mean, 8.5 per cent is a pretty substantial number,” said Klaus Kleinfeld, chief executive officer of Alcoa, the aluminium producer, in a conference call this month.

“I continue to be optimistic on China and believe they are managing very well some of the overheating in some markets,” he added.

SA, not China, Africa’s biggest investor: study
Written by defenceWeb /Friday, 23 July 2010 

South Africa, not China, was the biggest emerging market investor in Africa between 2006 and 2008 with US$2.6 billion (R19.3 billion) in average annual foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, the 2010 World Investment Report says.

The research, undertaken by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), however shows China is among the most active investors in Africa, but developed countries still account for most FDI into the continent. It also shows developed nations accounted for by far the bulk of estimated inward FDI flows into Africa, contributing 72% of inflows between 2000 and 2008, and 92% of inward stock in 2008.

“The notion that Chinese investment is somehow the dominant foreign investment in Africa is quite misleading,” said Stephen Gelb, a professor of development economics at the University of Johannesburg and a contributor to the report. “China is far from being the dominant investor. But it is growing faster from a low base.” China invested $2.5 billion in Africa between 2006 and 2008, a fraction of its overall investment outflow, the Business Report says.

Southern Africa remained the largest recipient of FDI within Africa, even though inflows declined from a 2008 high propelled by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s purchase of 20% of Standard Bank for $5.5 billion. South Africa was the fourth-biggest recipient of FDI on the continent, with $5.7 billion of inflows in 2009, after Angola, Egypt and Nigeria. Africa’s key economies were reasonably positioned among the top priority economies for FDI in the world – South Africa in 19th place (its first time in the top 20) and Egypt in 31st. Eight South African companies were ranked among the report’s top 100 non-financial transnational corporations from developing countries.

The biggest local company abroad in 2008 was cellular group MTN with $13.3 billion of foreign assets, followed by Sasol ($6.7 billion), Sappi ($5.9 billion), Netcare ($5.6 billion), Steinhoff ($5 billion), Gold Fields ($4.8 billion), Medi-Clinic ($4.8 billion) and Naspers ($3.8 billion).

Reuters meanwhile reports global FDI flows will steady this year and rise further in 2011-12 as cross-border mergers by multinational companies pick up on growing business confidence. FDI, on which many developing countries rely to finance their economies, will rise to $1.3-1.5 trillion in 2011 and towards $1.6-2.0 trillion in 2012 from $1.2 trillion this year. FDI inflows fell 37% to $1.11 trillion in 2009 after falling 16% in 2008 and peaking at $2.1 trillion in 2007. In the first quarter of this year FDI outflows were about 20 percent higher than a year earlier.

“After this freefall, a timid and uneven recovery appears on its way, thanks to better corporate profits and improved economic and financial conditions.” Prospects for FDI growth are fraught with risks and uncertainties, including the fragility of the recovery, it said. FDI refers to long-term investments, such as stakes in foreign companies or the construction of a plant for a subsidiary, in contrast to volatile financial investments.

The recovery in FDI will mainly occur through a revival of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) where restructuring and the privatisation of companies rescued in the crisis will offer opportunities, the UNCTAD report said. Multinational companies’ willingness to expand abroad looks more robust for 2011 and 2012 than in 2010, with business confidence benefiting from improved economic conditions, corporate profits and stock market valuations seen this year.

The report documents the growing weight of the emerging economies as both sources and destinations for FDI. China and Russia were the sixth and seventh biggest sources of FDI in 2009, with $48 billion and $46 billion in investments, up from ninth and eighth positions respectively, in 2008. While the United States remains the biggest destination of FDI, China edged up to second place in 2009 from third in 2008.

The recent retreat in investment in manufacturing against that of services — driven by the need for labour-intensive projects — and the primary sector including mining and energy — benefiting from rising commodity prices — is unlikely to be reversed, UNCTAD said. In cross-border M&A, manufacturing fell 77% in value in 2009, while the primary and services sectors contracted by 47% and 57% respectively, although the latter included a drop of 87% in M&A in financial services.
The number of cross-border M&A deals fell by 34% in 2009, or 65% in value, while greenfield investments in new plant by multinational companies declined only 15%. M&A seems to be rebounding more quickly this year than greenfield investment.

The internationalisation of production continues to grow, with the value added by foreign affiliates of multinational firms shrinking less sharply in the past two years than the overall economy. That took multinationals’ share of the world economy to a record 11%, employing 80 million people.
Foreign direct investment by private equity funds fell by 65% in 2009, but flows from sovereign wealth funds increased by 15%, UNCTAD said.

Efforts to encourage investment inflows while regulating them more thoroughly in the wake of the crisis are posing challenges to governments. The proportion of more restrictive investment policy measures rose to 30% in 2009, its highest level since UNCTAD started monitoring the trend in 1992. 

US expert challenges myths about China in Africa
By John Sexton / China.org.cn/July 23, 2010

After 27 years of research and field work, U.S. Africa expert Professor Deborah Brautigam is in a position to challenge prevailing Western orthodoxies about China’s role in Africa.

Speaking in Beijing on Thursday, Professor Brautigam attacked lurid accusations commonly seen in the press that “the Chinese are the new colonialists, their aid is toxic; they are making poverty worse, and are undermining democracy and good governance.”

She said she preferred the assessment of a Financial Times editorial that “Beijing has thrown down its most direct challenge yet to the West’s architecture for aiding Africa.”

“China’s core ideas about development are quite different,” she said. “It’s not about colonialism. It’s globalization with Chinese characteristics.”

China’s message to Africa is “Leverage what you have,” said Brautigam. “Leverage the natural resources you have and use those to secure loans, to swap for loans, to build infrastructure.” This approach, she said, reflects the Chinese slogan, “If you want to get rich, build a road.”

China grants resource-backed loans that effectively fund infrastructure projects in Africa in return for raw materials. According to Professor Brautigam, the model is based on a Japanese US$10 billion loans-for-oil deal with China made in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.

Brautigam said China learnt valuable lessons from its experience as a recipient of loans and is applying the lessons in Africa.

She emphasizes that Chinese involvement is about mutual benefit rather than aid. Loans are made at commercial, not concessional, rates and money is not handed to the recipient government but to the Chinese firms contracted to build roads, sewage systems, sports stadiums and so on.

But Brautigam says this model of exchanging resources for infrastructure, works better than giving cash loans that can be siphoned off into offshore bank accounts by corrupt politicians and officials.

And the infrastructure benefits the whole economy. Brautigam quoted a Nigerian diplomat as saying “The west came to Nigeria and it is all about oil, oil, oil. The Chinese are interested in all aspects of the economy.”

Brautigam says the press also routinely exaggerates the extent of Chinese involvement in Africa. Even the World Bank gets it wrong, misquoting Wen Jiabao as saying China has given Africa a total of US$ 44 billion when the correct figure was 44 billion yuan (US$6.5 billion). Annual Chinese aid to Africa is currently around US$2 billion, much lower than figures commonly cited.

Another myth is that Chinese projects in Africa only employ Chinese workers. In fact, Professor Brautigam said, on average, Chinese projects employ 80 percent Africans and 20 percent Chinese.

This is not to say Chinese involvement in Africa is without problems, Brautigam said. Chinese manufacturers, traders and farmers compete with local businesses. Corruption and kickbacks are common practices, and Chinese firms often have low environmental and labor standards.

Nevertheless she compares China’s involvement favorably with that of the West.

“The West is not very successful in Africa in raising living standards or fostering structural transformation,” she said. “Our record is not very hard to beat”

Professor Brautigam’s book The Dragon’s gift: The real story of China in Africa was published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.

INDIA :

Bharti shortlists five cos for $1-bn Africa IT outsourcing deal
23 Jul 2010/Shivapriya N & Joji Thomas Philip,ET Bureau/economictimes.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has shortlisted three multinational firms and two home-grown IT majors for its billion dollar plus IT outsourcing contract
in Africa,two people with direct knowledge of the matter told ET. 

IBM, which currently handles Bharti’s IT for India and Sri Lanka along with Hewlett Packard and Accenture are among the multinational vendors that have made it to the shortlist. Also, Wipro and Tech Mahindra are the Indian vendors in the running for what could be one of the largest IT deals spread across 15 geographies in Africa. 

“Both Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services are no longer in the race,” said the person quoted earlier . Another executive with direct knowledge of the development said that IBM, which was considered as the front-runner for the deal, was now facing stiff competition from the attractive terms and conditions offered by other IT firms in the fray. This executive also added that business sense mandated that Bharti diversify its IT options as against putting all its ‘eggs in one basket’ .Bharti executives did not comment. 

In April-end Bharti Airtel had invited Request for Information or RFI to outsource operations worth over a billion dollars for African assets it acquired from Kuwait’s Zain Telecom, suggesting it is looking for better deals than those being offered by its existing partners. It is learnt that a number of IT firms had made presentations to Bharti Airtel’s management in response to its RFI. Executives with leading IT firms who did not want to be named said that Bharti had issued a revised tender for its IT contract earlier this month because of reservations expressed by some vendors regarding a few terms and conditions, which they felt favoured the incumbent, IBM. But, ET could not independently verify this. 

While IBM already has IT deals with three large Indian telcos (Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone), Wipro has the deal for Aircel and Telenor, and Tech Mahindra has been roped in by Etisalat DB (Swan) to manage its IT requirements. HP and Accenture are yet to win any large deals from Indian telecom players. 

All the vendors are stepping up efforts to woo Bharti . Tech Mahindra, which already does some work for Zain, is learnt to have invited Sunil Mittal for a gala dinner it hosted for select customers before the FIFA finals, where Mahindra Satyam was one of the sponsors. HP is also learnt to have committed a lot of pre-sales expenditure . 
“Though Bharti may want to de-risk its IT by giving it to a vendor other than IBM, it may find it hard to refuse IBM if it makes a compelling proposition. Bharti is highly leveraged and if IBM makes a good offer, it may go with it,” said an executive from the IT industry, requesting anonymity. 

Bharti Airtel’s 10-year deal with IBM was originally estimated to be worth $750 million but it has already crossed $3 billion, an industry executive with knowledge of the contract said. Bharti had also outsourced the IT needs for its Sri Lankan operations to the USheadquartered company. Riding on the success of its deal with Bharti, IBM signed similar outsourcing agreements with Vodafone and Idea Cellular worth $1.2 billion and $900 million, respectively, in 2008. Last year, IBM signed a similar deal with Malaysia’s Maxis to manage its IT operations. 

Another executive said that Bharti may explore the option of having different IT vendors for its divisions in Africa. These divisions include Bharti Anglophone (comprising of the English speaking nations), Bharti Francophone (comprising of the French speaking nations) and Nigeria. 

Outsourcing all key operational functions is the key to its low-costhigh-usage business model that has enabled the telco to emerge as the country’s largest operator. Replicating this outsourced model of operations in Africa will be the key to returning Zain to profitability. 

India Must Lift Rice Export Ban to Lower Prices, Official Says
July 23, 2010/Bloomberg

July 23 (Bloomberg) — India, the second-biggest producer of rice, must end a ban on exports to help pare prices of Asia’s most important staple, according to a member of the nation’s top planning body.

“India not exporting is hurting a lot of other people in the world,” Abhijit Sen, a member of the Planning Commission, said in an interview in New Delhi yesterday. “We should allow exports as it will bring down world prices.”

Lifting the two-year restriction may lead to shipments of as much as 500,000 metric tons of parboiled rice to Bangladesh, the Middle East, South Africa and Nigeria, pressuring prices in Thailand, the top supplier, according to Emmsons International Ltd., a grain exporter in New Delhi.

“Exports will definitely create a problem for Thailand,” said Rakesh Singh, a trader at Emmsons.

Thai rice prices, the benchmark for Asia, dropped to the lowest level in more than two years, the Thai Rice Exporters Association said this week. The price of 100-percent grade-B white rice fell 1.1 percent to $458 a ton from a week earlier, the lowest level since January 2008, according to data from the association’s website.

Rice futures in Chicago, which climbed to $16.27 per 100 pounds last December on concern that India may become a net importer for the first time in more than two decades, traded at $10.36 at 2:17 p.m. Mumbai time.

India banned exports of all grades, except the aromatic Basmati variety, in April 2008, to increase domestic supplies. The restriction persists as a drought in 2009 pared production by 10 percent to 89.13 million tons in the year ended June 30, according to the farm ministry.

Plantings Increase

The government may permit exports in limited quantities as output of monsoon-sown crops including rice, cotton and oilseeds this season will be higher than a year ago because of increased plantings, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said July 16.

“The decision to allow exports couldn’t be taken last year because of drought and even this year there’s a certain hesitation on allowing export as rainfall figures still suggest that we are below normal,” the Planning Commission’s Sen said.

The monsoon, the main source of irrigation for the nation’s 235 million farmers, is 12 percent below the long-period average since June 1, according to the weather office. Still, total food grain output may rise 6 percent to 230 million tons in the year to March 31, as the La Nina weather event brings more rain after a weak start to the monsoon season, Normura Holdings Inc. said in a report on July 21.

“We have enough supplies for exports,” trader Singh said.

India’s rice reserves on July 1 totaled 24.26 million tons, more than twice the buffer norm of 9.8 million tons, according to data compiled by state-owned Food Corp. of India.

The Planning Commission is a state agency that sets growth and spending targets.

–Editors: Ravil Shirodkar, Jarrett Banks

BRASIL:

SA, Brazil mull cooperation on aerospace, agriculture, health and energy
By: Keith Campbell/www.engineeringnews.co.za/23rd July 2010 

Aerospace, agriculture, health, nuclear energy and shipbuilding were all sectors highlighted for cooperation between South Africa and Brazil during the recent visit to this country by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Few details were, however, released.

Addressing a South Africa-Brazil Business Forum, in Sandton, north of Johannesburg, on July 9, South African Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies reported that the two sides “had some fruitful discussions on cooperation in aerospace”. He continued that South Africa was interested in such cooperation with Brazil but that the South African government had processes that had to be followed before any decision could be taken. “We undertook to get back [to the Brazilians] as quickly as possible.”

Brazil is known to have put South Africa on the list of countries it wants as strategic partners in the Embraer KC-390 military transport and air-to-air refuelling aircraft programme. Indeed, Lula da Silva made explicit reference to this at a joint press conference with President Jacob Zuma earlier that day. Lula da Silva also stated that Brazil was looking at South African unmanned air vehicles.

Addressing the forum, Zuma – who referred to Lula da Silva as “my friend and my brother” – said: “We have mechanisms to develop cooperation. A memorandum of understanding was signed in 2009 between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.

“It is vital that we give attention to the creation of partnerships.” Zuma cited the need to “strengthen our shipbuilding industries, to lessen our dependence on foreign vessels for trade” across the South Atlantic.

He also highlighted health as an area of future cooperation, including the provision of universal healthcare (Brazil has a universal healthcare system), the financing of healthcare and the joint production of pharmaceuticals, for both domestic markets and for third country markets.

“We want to follow Brazil’s example of using education to drive social and economic development,” stated Zuma. “Cooperation with Brazil in nuclear and renewable energy is also a priority for South Africa.”

In his address to the Business Forum, Lula da Silva – who described Zuma as “my brother, my comrade” – said: “What we need is to get to know the potential of each of our capabilities. We could manufacture helicopters in partnership with South Africa. We could manufacture cargo aircraft.

“South Africa has very sophisticated agriculture,” he added, predicting an agricultural revolution in Africa, in general, over the next 15 years. Lula da Silva also strongly advocated the production of sugar cane-based ethanol across the continent, asserting that developed countries could, in future, buy biofuels from Africa. “Let’s show the potential for development that Africa has,” he urged.

Trade was also touched on. “We firmly believe that there is great potential to significantly expand the scope of South- South trade,” averred Zuma. “Brazil is a key partner in this regard. It is very clear to us in South Africa that deepening South-South trade and economic cooperation is not just a ‘nice to have’ but an imperative,” said Davies.

Regarding bilateral trade, Zuma pointed out that it had grown steadily from 2005 to 2009.

“Foreign trade between Brazil and South Africa has once again started to grow,” cited Brazilian Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Vice-Minister Ivan Ramalho.

“In the first semester of this year, Brazil’s imports from South Africa grew by 70%.” Although the terms of trade remain in Brazil’s favour, the gap is narrowing and is expected to be significantly reduced by the end of the year. While Brazil wants to increase its exports, Ramalho gave the assurance that the country desired balanced trade and so also sought to increase its imports.

Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu

EN BREF, CE 23 juillet 2010… AGNEWS /OMAR, BXL,23/07/2010