Tag Archives: AfriCom

Latest Developments, May 18

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In the latest news and analysis…

G8(ish) summit
Deutshce Welle reports on the issues and questions facing the G8 as it convenes this weekend in Camp David, where the presidents of Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana and Benin will be in attendance, but Russia’s will not.
“The list of topics is long for a summit that doesn’t even last 24 hours. It spans from food security for Africa to the nuclear debate with Iran, troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, further course of action in Syria and North Korea all the way to climate protection.
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So time and again the question arises what the point of the G8 summits even is. After all: the eight countries represent 15 percent of the world’s population and two-thirds of the international economic performance. It is a loose union of states, without any solid organization, financing or rules. It was created as a forum in the middle of the oil crisis in the 1970s to coordinate economic and trade issues. But political and economic questions are now regularly on the agenda – even when the G20 is considered the more powerful economic forum and the UN Security Council regulates sanction mechanisms.”

US army to Africa
Al Jazeera reports that a combat brigade will be assigned next year to the US military’s Africa Command “to do training and participate in military exercises” around the continent.
“General Ray Odierno, the army’s chief of staff, says the plan is part of a new effort to provide US commanders around the globe with troops on a rotational basis to meet the military needs of their regions.
This pilot programme sends troops to an area that has become a greater priority for the Obama administration since it includes several nations from where it perceives an increasing threat to the US and the region.”

Let them eat tobacco
Inter Press Service reports that Malawi’s IMF-prescribed currency devaluation earlier this month has made life more difficult for the country’s poor by causing a huge hike in food prices but should help the tobacco industry.
“Tobacco is the country’s main revenue earner, accounting for up to 60 percent – or 950 million dollars – of foreign exchange. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Malawi’s tobacco accounts for five percent of the world’s total exports.
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‘On the export front, the devaluation will lead to increased demand for Malawi’s exports in the short run. In the long run, this is expected to stimulate production and thus lead to increased production of exportable goods … thereby generating foreign currency,’ said [the Malawi Economic Justice Network’s Dalitso] Kubalasa.
He added that because the prices of imports had automatically risen and become unaffordable for some, the situation would motivate locals to substitute these goods with commodities that can be produced locally. It would provide an incentive to local industry, he said.
But he admitted that the devaluation would affect the country’s middle class and poor.”

Matter of conscience
The Harvard School of Public Health’s Winston Hide explains that his conscience compelled his resignation from the editorial board of the Elsevier-published Genomics journal.
“No longer can I work for a system that provides solid profits for the publisher while effectively denying colleagues in developing countries access to research findings.”
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The vast majority of biomedical scientists in Africa attempt to perform globally competitive research without up-to-date access to the wealth of biomedical literature taken for granted at western institutions. In Africa, your university may have subscriptions to only a handful of scientific journals.
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So I’d prefer to devote the limited time I have available to an open access journal that provides its work at no cost to researchers who urgently require its contents to improve their environment.”

Growing debt
The Guardian reports that a few short years after a series of debt cancellations, total external debt owed by “developing countries” increased by $437 billion in 2010 to reach $4 trillion.
“A major chunk of the debt owed by 32 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, was eliminated by the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative of the World Bank and IMF, which was reinforced by the G8’s 2005 multilateral debt relief initiative (MDRI).
But many poor countries in Asia and Latin America (for example, Jamaica and El Salvador) did not have debts written off because their income per capita was too high to meet the IMF and World Bank criteria. Others, such as Bangladesh, did not qualify for cancellation because their debts were seen as sustainable.
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But even in countries that did qualify for debt write-offs, there is evidence that external debts, which fell significantly after 1995, are on the rise again.
‘These loans are building up again,’ said [the Jubilee Debt Campaign’ Tim] Jones. ‘It can go unnoticed if economies are growing and exports are on the rise – but as soon as there’s a crisis like a drought or flood it becomes a huge problem.’ ”

Techno fixations
In a review of two new books on transformative technology, Sona Partners’ Timothy Ogden slams “techno-utopianism.”
“In the few places where [Abundance authors Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler] begin to acknowledge that the problems that keep much of the world disenfranchised, impoverished, and unhealthy are not technological in origin, they quickly explain that we already ‘know’ how to deal with those issues. For instance, we ‘know’ that ‘community support is the most critical component for any water solution’ and ‘maintenance workers need to be incentivized.’ Now that we know these facts, a technology breakthrough is all that’s needed to fix global water problems. I wonder what technology will fix global justice problems now that we know all people are created equal.”

Too hot for TED
The Atlantic reproduces venture capitalist Nick Hanauer’s speech on inequality that TED University deemed “too politically controversial to post on their web site,” in which he questions the conventional wisdom that rich people and businesses create jobs.
“Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous.
That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.
Since 1980, the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.”

Latest Developments, September 14

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Moving beyond aid
In a speech entitled “Beyond Aid,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick argued wealthy countries have not yet adapted to a rapidly emerging multipolar world and continue to take a “do what I say, not what I do” approach to international relations.
“In a world Beyond Aid, sound G7 economic policies would be as important as aid as a percentage of GDP. In a world Beyond Aid, G-20 agreements on imbalances, on structural reforms, or on fossil fuel subsidies and food security, would be as important as aid as a percentage of GDP.”

Self-interested aid
Looking into the Canadian International Development Agency’s near future, the McLeod Group’s Stephen Brown and Ian Smillie see funding cuts and shifting priorities that have little to do with improving the lives of the poor in other countries.
“For instance, as Canada winds down its military involvement in Afghanistan, the Canadian International Development Agency will be “normalizing” aid to a level comparable to its 19 other “countries of focus.” This confirms a poorly-kept secret: aid to Afghanistan was always more about Canadians, candy and Kandahar than about sustainable long-term development.”

Resource curse
ECONorthwest’s Ann Hollingshead says the so-called resource curse is too often seen as a problem for the countries with said resources to resolve on their own.
“Above, I said the resource curse is “seemingly” an issue of national jurisdiction. That deserves some explanation. Governance itself is an issue of national jurisdiction, but the extractive industry that drives the supply of these resources is not. Most of these companies are, in fact, American and European and—therefore—are accountable to the governments of America and Europe. It is these companies, with their corrupt practices and lack of accountability, that facilitate the embezzlement and revenue misappropriation, which directly contribute to the resource curse.”

Population
The Overseas Development Institute’s Claire Melamed takes exception to arguments pinning poverty, hunger and climate change on population growth.
“Climate change is not a population problem.  It’s a consumption problem.  People in rich countries, where population is static or falling, consume many hundreds of times more carbon than people in the poor countries where population is still rising.  Let’s start with the problem we have now – consumption in rich countries – rather than worrying about some hypothetical future when everyone in Mali has a washing machine and two cars.”

Drones
University of Ottawa political scientist Roland Paris calls for the establishment of clear international rules regulating the use of drones before the technology becomes widespread.
“The U.S. seems to be taking the opposite course, extending its drone campaign to countries far removed from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan – including Yemen and Somalia – and using rules of engagement that are, at best, obscure and, at worst, illegal.
This is a dangerously short-sighted strategy. While execution by drone may appear to be a relatively low-cost and low-risk option for dealing with America’s enemies, it legitimizes methods that other countries may be expected to follow once they acquire similar capabilities.”

Mercenaries
The UN News Centre reports a UN panel has called for tighter regulation of private military and security companies “by both host and contributor countries” in order to reduce the risk of human rights violations and to ensure accountability when abuses occur.
“The panel…noted in its report on Iraq that incidents involving private military and security companies there had dropped since the killing of 17 civilians and wounding of 20 others in Nissour Square in Baghdad by employees of the United States security company Blackwater in 2007.
But it added that Iraq continues to grapple with the grant of legal immunity extended to private security contractors by US authorities after the 2003 invasion, preventing prosecutions in Iraqi courts while the case against the alleged perpetrators is still pending in US courts.”

AfriCom
The Hill reports the head of the US military’s three year-old Africa Command thinks looming Pentagon budget cuts are the biggest, though not the only, reason not to establish physical headquarters in Africa.
“Since AfriCom was formally established in October 2008, Pentagon officials and lawmakers have floated the idea of shifting its main hub from Stuttgart, Germany, to Africa or the United States.
But U.S. officials are hesitant to have a permanent and high-profile U.S. military presence on African soil due to indigenous skepticism about such an arrangement, which has left no clear candidates for its permanent home.”

Banking secrecy
The European Network on Debt and Development’s Alex Marriage says opposition to the so-called Rubik plan, whereby Swiss banks hand over tax money to national governments in exchange for maintaining their secrecy, could scupper a recent bilateral deal with Germany.
“The [Social Democratic Party]’s financial concept note published last Monday rejects the agreement with Switzerland. It is now quite likely that the deal will be rejected by the Upper Chamber, the Bundestat. North Rhine Westphalia’s Finance Minister Walter Borjans argued that effectively giving an amnesty to tax evaders was unconstitutional. Nicolotte Kressl and  SPD finance experts in the Bundestag said the deal should be halted as not to undermine EU efforts to secure automatic exchange of information with Switzerland.”

Corporate transparency
The Wall Street Journal reports the European Parliament has adopted a report that calls for laws to enforce transparency from oil, gas and mining companies.
“The report, which was first released July 25, contains a provision that calls for the EC to “establish legally binding requirements for extractive companies to publish their revenue payments for each project and country they invest in, following the example of the U.S. Dodd-Frank bill,” it said.”

Tobacco
The Guardian reports approximately 85 percent of the world’s tobacco is produced in the global south, often through the use of children as young as five working long hours under poor health conditions.
“The tobacco giants, who all have anti-child labour policies in place, insist they abide by the rules. British American Tobacco (BAT) says on its website that it does “not employ children in any of our operations worldwide”, but admits that using intermediaries to purchase tobacco makes it difficult to trace the country from which they buy the leaf and ensure all farm owners follow the rules.”