An African view of the U.S. election

We have mentioned in a previous post how poverty in America has barely been mentioned in the campaign for president. What has been discussed even less by the candidates is poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Many Africans have felt ignored by the U.S. over the last four years. This cold shoulder has been reflected in trading statistics as well. China is now the biggest reading partner with Africa, eclipsing a record that the U.S established in 2008.

From Reuters Alert Net, writers  Njuwa Maina and Tosin Sulaiman have this view of the U.S. election from African eyes.

Looking across the Atlantic to the Nov. 6 presidential election, the continent is cooler now towards the "son of Africa" who is seeking a second term. There are questions too whether his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, will have more to offer to sub-Saharan Africa if he wins the White House.

Obama, who hailed his "African blood within me", only visited sub-Saharan Africa once in his four years - a stopover of less than a day in Ghana in between summits elsewhere.

In Kogelo, which was put on the tourism map by Obama's election and where his grandmother still lives, locals take this personally.

"He should have come to at least say 'hi' to the people of Kenya so that we can know that we are still together in spirit, rather than abandoning us as if he was not our son," said Steven Okungu, 21. "It is a disappointment."

Many in Africa feel their enthusiasm for Obama was not requited by him in terms of increased U.S. commitment and fresh concrete initiatives on the world's poorest continent, a deficit they see being filled by other emerging players such as China, Brazil, India and South Korea.

Sub-Saharan Africa has gone virtually unnoticed as a topic in the U.S. presidential election campaign, focused heavily as it has been on pressing domestic issues such as the lack of jobs and how to prod America's stuttering economy into faster growth.

But analysts see a strong counter-terrorism focus increasingly driving U.S. policy towards Africa, as Washington throws its weight behind efforts on the continent to confront the spreading presence there of al Qaeda and its Islamic jihadist allies in hotspots from Somalia to Mali and Nigeria.

"These concerns don't recognise borders," Mark Schroeder, Director of Sub-Saharan Africa analysis at STRATFOR Global Intelligence, told Reuters, predicting this security focus will figure strongly whoever wins the election.

In 2009, China overtook the United States as Africa's largest trading partner. According to the Brookings Institution, President Hu Jintao of China has made up to seven trips to Africa, five as head of state, and has visited at least 17 countries. In contrast, Obama's 20-hour 2009 sojourn in Ghana has been his only trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president.

"We would have expected to see more American involvement instead of a retreat. If you go to many countries and ask them about who is doing more, they will tell you China," said Mwangi Kimenyi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Africa can feed itself, and free trade within the continent can help

When we look for answers on how Africa can produce more food we are often looking at drought resistant seeds, more land available to the people, and irrigation. The World Bank has recently weighed in on the subject with a new report.

The bank’s answer is not surprising for an institution that often encourages more trade. But with all of the roadblocks, checkpoints and bribe taking between the countries, their argument seems to make sense.

From the Guardian, writer Greg Nicolson unpacks the report. 

In a new report, "Africa Can Help Feed Africa" pdf, the World Bank looks at how the continent can prevent food shortages and unlock its massive agricultural potential. The general recommendations might be predictable for the institution known for its support of neoliberal policy, but they offer key recommendations to achieving food sustainability. The report looks at how opening up cross-border trade will increase Africa's potential food production, increase food security by improving access to food, and raise returns for small-scale farmers.

It begins with the basic premise that regions have natural food surpluses in certain staples and deficits in others; the key is to maximise output and get the food to where it's needed. Attempts at national self-sufficiency haven't worked and the effects of climate change will only make production more volatile, says the report. "Removing barriers to regional trade presents benefits to farmers, consumers and governments." Farmers will make more money from meeting the rising demand; consumers get cheaper access to food and benefits such as jobs from a growing agricultural sector; governments can better deal with food security.

But from producer to consumer, barriers to regional competition and trade have limited agricultural output. Because of inconsistent policies within Africa, seeds and fertilisers are generally imported from outside at high prices, with new innovations coming years later than in other developing regions. Transport services remain extremely expensive, outdated and uncompetitive as roadblocks eat time and money. Regulations on imports and exports are volatile, with changes often only communicated to foreign producers when they reach the border. Those borders remain hotbeds of corruption and abuse: traders are regularly harassed, sexually abused, or forced to pay bribes.

From a private investor's point of view, the enormous potential hardly seems worth the costs and risks. But the World Bank argues that if these problems are addressed, the incentives for farmers will greatly increase. Production will then rise and consumers can get basic foodstuffs from a neighboring region rather than foreign shores.

New report says Africa could grow a lot more wheat

There is enough land in Africa to grow more than enough food for all of its people, but what they grow in reality is far behind their potential. A new study released today focuses on wheat production in Africa. The study claims that Africa is only growing 10 to 25 percent of its potential.

This echos what OXFAM said last week about Africa, but their report focused on how the land is misused by land grabs or investment speculators. A good proportion of farm-able land in Africa sits empty while a foreign investor holds onto it. Some land that is being farmed is not human consumption of food but for cars instead with Ethanol.

The authors admit that wheat is not a tropical plant, but maintains that it can be grown in the high elevation areas of Rwanda, Burundi and others. From Reuters Alert Net, writer Alister Doyle tells us more about why wheat is important for Africa.

The report, examining environmental conditions of 12 nations from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe, said that farmers south of the Sahara grew only 44 percent of the wheat consumed locally, meaning dependence on international markets prone to price spikes.

"Sub-Saharan Africa has extensive areas of land that are suitable for profitably producing wheat under rain-fed conditions," according to the study by the non-profit International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

It said countries in the region were producing only between 10 and 25 percent of the amounts that the Center's research suggested was "biologically possible and economically profitable" with a net return of $200 per hectare (2.5 acres).

The 89-page study, issued at a wheat conference in Ethiopia, said it aimed to identify ways to raise wheat production as "a hedge against food insecurity, political instability and price shocks."

"Wheat is not an African crop, it is not a tropical crop (but) many governments want to produce wheat locally instead of paying for imports," Hans-Joachim Braun, director of the Center's global wheat program, told Reuters by telephone.

The report estimated that African nations would spend about $12 billion to import 40 million tonnes of wheat in 2012, particularly for fast-growing cities. More wheat should not be grown at the expense of other more viable crops, Braun said.

Mineral wealth leads to slower economic growth for some African nations

One of the sad paradoxes of Africa's oil producing countries is that there can be great wealth under ground, but very little for the people above it. Oil producing nations can pump a lot of oil, but all of that money never seems to change poverty levels.

A new report from the World Bank shows that economic growth in oil producing nations is actually slower that African countries without it. From the Guardian, writer Mark Tran unpacks the report.

Africa's Pulse, a twice-yearly analysis of Africa's economic prospects, noted that the decline in poverty rates in resource-rich countries has generally lagged behind that of countries without riches in the ground. Some countries, such as Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon, have witnessed an increase in the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty.

The report confirms the common perception that, to a large extent, the benefits of growth have not reached the poorest segments of society. It raises questions for aid donors and African governments on how to deal with the "resource curse", with strikes in South African mines providing a stark illustration of what is at stake.

"Resource-rich African countries have to make the conscious choice to invest in better health, education, and jobs, and less poverty for their people, because it will not happen automatically when countries strike it rich," said Shantayanan Devarajan, the World Bank's chief economist for Africa, and lead author of Africa's Pulse. "Gabon, for example, with a per-capita income of $10,000 (£6,200) has one of the lowest child immunisation rates in Africa."

How to ensure that natural resources benefit the general population, not just the elite, is a question likely to grow more acute as discoveries of oil, gas and other minerals in African countries are expected to generate considerable wealth in the future.

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Africa's Pulse underlines the continent's heavy dependence on commodities for its recent growth, although domestic demand has played its part. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow at 4.8% in 2012, broadly unchanged from 4.9% growth in 2011, and is largely on track despite setbacks in the global economy. Excluding South Africa, the continent's largest economy, growth in sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to rise to 6%.

While African economies have not been immune to the crisis in the eurozone, the World Bank said consistently high commodity prices and strong export growth in countries with mineral discoveries in recent years have fuelled economic activity and are expected to underpin economic growth for the rest of the year.

Growth of African cities beginning to slow

One of the common perceptions about Africa is that the cities are growing out of control. People flee the rural areas because there are more jobs in the city. But recent research is indicating that this growth is starting to slow down, because of a lack of jobs in the urban areas.

From Reuters Alert Net writer Laurie Goering attended a presentation covering the new data.

Contrary to expectations, countries like Ivory Coast, Mali, Zambia and Central African Republic have seen periods in the last 20 years when more city dwellers have moved to rural areas than vice versa, said Deborah Potts, a Kings College London demographer who looks at urbanisation trends in sub-Saharan Africa.

In many parts of the region, “you have tremendous counter-movements out of the cities back to rural areas… because people are finding it really hard to find livelihoods that will sustain them in the cities,” she said during a presentation at the Chatham House think tank in London.

This outwards migration has slowed the expected rate of population growth in some African cities such as Lagos, Potts said. That could have important implications for urban planners and for national preparations to deal with climate change.

The lack of jobs in African cities may also challenge widely held assumptions that rural families hit by increasingly extreme weather will be able to adapt by moving to cities or sending family members to work there.

Farmers affected by worsening droughts may move to towns or cities, Potts said, but “there are no livelihood activities for them and if there are no such activities, they will just be refugees. That’s a different kind of urbanisation.”

In fact, faced with food shortages and weather disasters like flooding, African city dwellers may actually move - temporarily or permanently - to rural areas to try to cope, said Deborah Sporton, an Africa expert and human geography lecturer at Britain’s University of Sheffield.

Free Trade Agreement in Africa to Promote intra-African Trade

This month, many African Heads of State will come together in an effort to launch a "continent-wide free trade agreement (CFTA)."  This is in an effort to promote intra-African trade and hopefully provide an avenue for the poor to free themselves from economic oppression.

Boosting Intra-African Trade: What Role for External Trade Regime?

Effective regional integration in Africa would not only enhance trade within Africa but it would also attract investment in manufacturing. Experience in many countries has demonstrated that light manufacturing can be a major source of job creation and economic growth. African countries remain highly fragmented, preventing investment by firms in the development of efficient supply chains on the continent.

African Farmers adapting to climate change

There is growing evidence that farmers in Africa are already adapting to climate change. They are beginning to change their farming methods on their own in order to keep harvests plentiful.

A development research conference in France touched upon that subject last week. Writer Christophe Assogba from Science Development.net relays what was said by one expert at the conference.

"Social adaptation to climate change has also been found in animals," said Abdoulaye Gouro, president of the scientific committee of the research network RIPIECSA (Interdisciplinary and Participatory Research on Interactions between Climate, Ecosystems and Society in West Africa).

He was speaking at a workshop last week (18–21 October) organised by France's Institute for Development Research (IRD) to obtain feedback on current RIPIESCA projects.

"Farmers are not inactive in the face of climate change. They are sowing second crops, and growing cassava, yams and so on in the lowlands. They have been able to increase their acreage in some areas because of the shifting seasons," Euloge Agbossou, head of the hydrology laboratory at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin,told the workshop.

"People are not waiting for engineers, scientists and researchers in order to adapt to climate change. They are aware of the phenomenon, they feel it around them and they have adapted to it," he said.

"Now it is up to us to improve on their methods, and see whether their approaches to adaptation are consistent with what science indicates."

The Fight Against Malaria - Successes, Failures

A story from Time Magazine - Malaria has been one of those diseases that has been fought against for a long time. Much $$ has been spent in apparent 'aid' to try to eradicate this disease in third world countries. This article takes a look at why most of those efforts are misguided, and how the latest attempts are succeeding.

Malaria: Epidemic On the Run

"...There are other, more telling statistics, he says, like how in the worst weeks, his handful of staff members may treat 5,000 people. Or how from 2007 to '08, those treated included 70% of all children in Apac and nearly a third of the area's total population..."

Women struggle for land ownership in Africa

Cultural norms have kept women from owning land in Africa. Women more often than men are farming the land while the title is often held by the men. Customs and biased attitudes are often written into African laws that keep women out.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Miriam Gathigah takes a look at another aspect of gender inequality.

The situation is worse for poor women who lack the economic muscle to fight for land ownership against a backdrop of gender-insensitive customary laws that continue to sideline them. Consequently, women still hold a negligible percentage of land title deeds. In Kenya, only a paltry three percent of women have land title deeds and in Tanzania only one percent own land.

"The economy of most African countries depends on women who are deprived of the right to own land. They toil all day on land that they have negligible control over. They sustain the breadbasket regions of many countries that are dependent on agriculture but their labour is unacknowledged and poorly remunerated," says Mwanahamisi Salimu, from Oxfam, Tanzania.

According to Elizabeth Nzioki, who has conducted research on women and land in Kenya: "A key development in Kenya land tenure reform was the issuing of title deeds in the name of the "head of the family". The problem with the legislation is that the titled land is being transferred almost exclusively to male individuals."

The situation becomes very complicated when a married couple separates because in Kenya, the Marriage and Property Act is silent on how land should be divided under these circumstances. In a separation or divorce, because title deeds are in a man’s name, he is usually awarded ownership of the property.

"In Tanzania the situation is not any different, with only about one percent of women with title deeds. It means that the rest of the female population, who form the bulk of the labour force in agriculture, break their backs but have no say in proceeds from the farm," Salimu expounds.

Video: African migrants rescued off Italian island

From Al Jazeera, a video on another African migrant rescue off of the coast of Lampedusa, Italy.

One in three Africans are in the middle class

A new report that analyzes African incomes may be a breakthrough in correctly understanding the state of the continent's economy. The African Development Bank says that one out of three Africans are considered to be middle class.

The Bank's definition of middle class is earning anywhere from two to twenty dollars a day. Out of that 313 million people in the middle class, 180 of them are right on the edge of the poverty line only earning two to four dollars a day.

From the Guardian, writer David Smith tells us more about the new report.

Mthuli Ncube, the bank's chief economist, said the findings should challenge long-held perceptions of Africa as a continent of famine, poverty and hopelessness.

"Hey you know what, the world please wake up, this is a phenomenon in Africa that we've not spent a lot of time thinking about," Ncube said. "There is a middle class that is driven by specific factors such as education and we should change our view and work with this group to create a new Africa and make sure Africa realises its full potential."

Ncube said the study used an absolute definition of middle class, meaning people who spend between $2 and $20 a day, which he believed was appropriate given the cost of living for Africa's nearly 1 billion people.

The study found that, by last year, Africa's middle class had risen to about 34% of the continent's population, or about 313m people – up from around 111m (26%) in 1980 and 196m (27%) in 2000.

The growth rate of the middle class over the past 30 years was about 3.1%, slightly faster than that of the total population. Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt had proportionately the biggest middle classes in Africa, while Liberia, Burundi and Rwanda had the smallest.

The Africa middle classes are more likely to have salaried jobs or own small businesses. They tend not to rely entirely on public health services, seeking more expensive medical care. The middle classes tend to have fewer children and spend more on their nutrition and schooling.

Sales of fridges, TVs and mobile phones have surged in virtually every African country in recent years, the report said. Possession of cars and motorcycles in Ghana, for example, has gone up by 81% in the past five years.

Video: Chinese build new pipeline in Western Kenya

From NTV Kenya, this video shows an example of the China Africa development relationship that we talked about in our previous post.

A backlash begins against Chinese business in Africa

We often blog about the relationship between Africa and China, an article that we found today points at some backlash in the relationship.

It certainly would be understood if Africans were uneasy about foreigners coming into their land after years of colonial rule. Despite the unease, China has put more money into developing Africa than any other country in the world. Often the development is a part of a deal to allow Chinese companies to build factories, refineries or farms so they can have a share of Africa's minerals, oil or food.

Increasingly there are questions by locals and opportunistic politicians about how effective China's development has been, and if it has sometimes even hurt local economies. Even with all of the concerns there are a few examples where the relationship has worked to everyone's advantage.

From the Economist, a new article tries to answer the question of why there is a growing backlash.

“Look at us,” says Wang Jinfu, a young factory-owner. “We are not slave drivers.” He and his wife came four years ago from Fujian province in southern China with just $3,000. They sleep on a dirty mattress on the factory floor. While their 160 employees work 40 hours a week, the couple pack boxes, check inventory and dispatch orders from first light until midnight every day of the year. “Why do people hate us for that?” says Mr Wang.

Indeed, China has boosted employment in Africa and made basic goods like shoes and radios more affordable. Trade surpassed $120 billion last year (see chart 1). In the past two years China has given more loans to poor countries, mainly in Africa, than the World Bank. The Heritage Foundation, an American think-tank, estimates that in 2005-10 about 14% of China’s investment abroad found its way to sub-Saharan Africa (see chart 2). Most goes in the first place to Hong Kong. The Heritage Foundation has tried to trace its final destination.

One answer to Mr Wang’s question is that competition, especially from foreigners, is rarely popular. Hundreds of textile factories across Nigeria collapsed in recent years because they could not compete with cheap Chinese garments. Many thousands of jobs were lost.

Quite a bit of criticism of China is disguised protectionism. Established businesses try to maintain privileged positions—at the expense of consumers. The recent arrival of Chinese traders in the grimy alleys of Soweto market in Lusaka halved the cost of chicken. Cabbage prices dropped by 65%. Local traders soon marched their wire-mesh cages filled with livestock to the local competition commission to complain. “How dare the Chinese disturb our market,” says Justin Muchindu, a seller. In Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania, Chinese are banned from selling in markets. The government earlier this year said Chinese were welcome as investors but not as “vendors or shoe-shiners”.

Another answer, according to China’s critics, is that the Chinese are bringing bad habits as well as trade, investment, jobs and skills. The mainland economy is riddled with corruption, even by African standards. International rankings of bribe-payers list Chinese managers near the top. When these managers go abroad they carry on bribing and undermine good governance in host countries. The World Bank has banned some mainland companies from bidding for tenders in Africa.

China’s defenders reply that its detrimental impact on governance is limited. African leaders find it surprisingly hard to embezzle development funds. Usually money is put into escrow accounts in Beijing; then a list of infrastructure projects is drawn up, Chinese companies are given contracts to build them and funds are transferred to company accounts. Africa, for better and worse, gets roads and ports but no cash. At least that is the theory.

A third answer is that China is seen as hoarding African resources. China clearly would like to lock up sources of fuel, but for the moment its main concern is increasing global supply. Its state-owned companies often sell oil and ore on spot markets. Furthermore, its interest in Africa is not limited to resources. It is building railways and bridges far from mines and oilfields, because it pays. China is not a conventional aid donor, but nor is it a colonialist interested only in looting the land.

Opposition building to Great Green Wall

From IRIN a story about the long dreamed about "Great Green Wall" stretching across Africa, The story explain what exactly the wall is all about and attempts to make it a reality.

What’s green, controversial, 15km wide, 7,775km long, cuts across 11 African countries and is designed to reduce livestock deaths and boost food security for millions of people? Nothing yet, but the Great Green Wall project, a pipe-dream for decades, was recently endorsed by a swathe of African states stretching from Senegal to Djibouti.

An estimated 10 million people faced severe food shortages due to recurrent drought and climate change in the Sahel region last year. In Niger alone, the famine in 2010 left half the country’s population needing food aid and one in six children suffering from acute malnutrition. Some villagers in Niger described 2010 as worse than the 1973 drought that killed thousands of people, according to Malek Triki, West African spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP).

The Great Green Wall (GGW) project, originally proposed by Burkina Faso’s Marxist leader Thomas Sankara in the 1980s, was later resurrected by former Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo in 2005 before receiving approval by the African Union in December 2006. In June 2010, 11 countries involved signed a convention in Chad to further the development of the project, but the plan remained on standby until February when it was officially approved at an international summit in Bonn, Germany.

During the summit, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) set aside US$115 million to fund the wall. Mohamed I Bakarr, a senior environment specialist with GEF, told IRIN the wall “is in reality a metaphor to reflect the vision of African leaders for an integrated land-use system that addresses environment and development needs across all affected countries”. The GEF foresees the wall adopting a “mosaic” of “sustainable land-management systems with stakeholders, including grassroots communities, in all 11 countries implementing options that are appropriate to the local context”.

The plan entails each country implementing its own land, water and vegetation-management projects on up to two million hectares of land, under the framework of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Monique Barbut, CEO of the GEF, said in a statement it would not fund “an all-out tree-funding drive from Dakar to Djibouti”, but rather, would allocate the funding according to national priorities, which have yet to be finalized. In a paper adopted by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) in 2008, alleviating poverty is said to be one of the wall’s principal objectives.

The paper outlines national and regional objectives, including consolidating and expanding existing greenbelts of trees, conserving biodiversity, restoring and conserving soil and promoting income-generating activities, as well as carbon capture and storage of 0.5-3.1 million tons of carbon per year.

Indigenous communities "threatened"

The project has faced opposition, despite its stated commitment to combating drought and desertification, which have exacted a heavy toll on the region as a whole. Wally Menne, a member of Timberwatch, the African NGO focal point for the Global Forest Coalition, told IRIN the organization was sceptical. “In our view it seems poorly conceived in terms of both ecological and socio-economic considerations. Its chances of being a success could be limited, and it may even cause more harm to the environment,” he said. The Global Forest Coalition campaigns for the rights of indigenous and forest people and for socially just policies.

Menne added that the inclusion of carbon sequestration activities and the potential future development of REDD projects (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) as components of the GGW would require converting suitable land within the belt to fast-growing foreign species of monoculture tree plantations and carbon sinks opposed by many indigenous groups in the Sahel. Growing plantations would also require displacing people living on land earmarked for the GGW and would lead to further depletion of scarce water sources.

A concept paper on the kinds of vegetal species to be included in the GGW states that the wall will run through both inhabited and uninhabited areas, but will be located in areas where the average annual rainfall is higher than 200mm. It also stated that the only species to be adapted to the wall would be "primarily those that are found, live and develop there".

However, in a statement to the Indigenous People’s of Africa Coordinating Committee, IPACC, Sada Albachir, director of Association Tunfa, a Tuareg human rights group in Niger, said that “international agreements in the past introduced alien invasive species into the Sahara, without tackling the root problems of poor governance, dangerous uranium mining, and a failure to conserve biodiversity and water security in the arid region. I think the idea of planting a Green Wall across Africa is not to be entertained by indigenous people living in the proposed sites, unless the project has been studied in collaboration with them and they are also involved in the implementation.”

The programme coordinator for the OSS, Jihed Ghannem, told IRIN such concerns were baseless. “The full participation of communities is essential,” he said.

Timberwatch’s Menne told IRIN: “In my experience, ‘consulting’ local communities usually means misinforming them about the potential impacts of a project by exaggerating how they will benefit, whilst neglecting to inform them of the negative impacts. When they say that local communities will be an integral part of the project, it normally means that they will be used to provide cheap labour.”

Part of the GGW concept plan includes a section on “Food for Work” designed to recruit unemployed workers in each country to help with the planting of the greenbelt in the Sahel. According to OSS, under the scheme, “members of the communities assuming responsibilities are paid in part at the time of planting. The remainder is paid two years later on the basis of the plant growth scale.” The plan also indicates that private businesses, including “initiators of safari parks, modern farming, ecotourist sites” will find “some economic opportunities” in the wall.

Menne said the wall could be a useful tool to combat desertification only if “viewed as an exercise in adaptation, rather than as an opportunity for climate change mitigation and making money from CDM/REDD carbon offsets as presently envisioned”.

According to Khadija Hassan*, representative of an indigenous people’s organization, the GGW might also interfere with migration patterns of pastoral communities and instead should incorporate ancestral systems of land management. “It would be best to protect what already exists in the region, stop the felling of trees in valleys and oases, repair damage caused by climate change, educate communities about REDD and restore livestock that has been lost,” she said. “I find the project is good, but too ambitious.”

Bono weighs in on Africa's future

U2 singer Bono believes that the future is bright for Africa. The celebrity activist says that Africa will soon become an economic powerhouse that may even eclipse China.

From the Guardian, writer John Mulholland inverviews Bono on his optimistic outlook for the continent.

Most people are saying that the 21st century will be China's. You say that it will be Africa's. Why?

Well, go talk to the Chinese. Why are they pumping so much investment into Africa? Why are they creating such a huge presence in Africa? They know where the future is. Ask them.

You know, these African lions are going to be a match for the Asian tigers. If the right economic plans are made and civic society can keep the vision honest, it will make our interest irrelevant. I never felt so good to feel so useless. These African lions will put us out of business.

I look at Mo Ibrahim and, although he might be an elder statesman, I see him as the new voice of Africa. People like him, they are drowning out our voices and so they should.

And so the future of aid in Africa is?

We mustn't forget that in general aid budgets are under threat, although thankfully not in the UK. And we mustn't forget that people's lives are dependent on it in the near term. And smart aid gets great results. A global alliance for vaccines has averted more than 5 million deaths this last decade and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria saves more than 4,000 lives a day. It's just about getting the balance right for the future and ensuring our smart aid today builds self-sustaining systems for the future .

And in terms of aid, let's remember the good stories that came out of debt cancellation and the Gleneagles promises. Let's not forget these success stories. In most cases, as verified by the World Bank, Africa's governments spent that money wisely and pulled millions of people out of poverty and despair. And that has helped destroy the mythology that money is wasted.

But we mustn't forget that there are concrete things we can do to speed Africa's path to the future, things that don't involve money. As part of the global grassroots Publish What You Pay coalition, ONE has lately been focusing on the extractive industries. We've seen the rush to extract oil, gas and minerals from poorer countries across the world. Our concern is how best to protect those countries and ensure citizens benefit. How to stop them going down the road of other countries suffering from the resource curse. How can you do that?

So the movement we're part of lobbied for an amendment to a finance bill in the US last year, to make legally sure that companies that are taking resources out of Africa have to disclose what they pay governments for the right to do that.

Now we're seeing leaders in Europe catching on, with Sarkozy telling me he'll push this at the EU. We're also looking for British leadership on this. Our mission is to make this a global requirement. So eventually there'll be no place to hide, and civil society groups will be able to challenge their government if the money they are making from the nations' resources isn't being used in the right way. Mo Ibrahim has said that this deal is bigger than debt cancellation for Africa. I'm proud to support the "publish what you pay" campaign that has been leading this issue for years.

1 million Chinese living and working in Africa

There are around one million Chinese living and working in Africa. The number of Chinese nationals living in the continent has grown exponentially since 1990 when it was only 100,000.

The Chinese leave for Africa mostly at the request of employers. Some state owned businesses are involved in the infrastructure for land exchanges between China and African governments. Other people leave for Africa because they see economic opportunity for themselves, and a few leave just for the slower pace of life.

From the Guardian, writer Xan Rice has an outstanding article that profiles some of the Chinese making a living in Africa.

In December 1999, a 24-year-old Chinese man called Zhang Hao left behind the freezing winter of his native Shenyang city to fly to Uganda. Zhang was nervous. He spoke no English. The journey was not even his idea, but that of his father, who had worked in Uganda a few years before on a fishing project involving the Chinese government.

"If you want to start something – and be the boss – Africa is the place to do it," Zhang's father had told him when he asked for business advice.

Zhang had quit university to travel to east Africa, but he did not need a degree to spot easy money-making opportunities as soon as he set foot in Kampala: goods that were available cheaply in every city in China were either expensive here, or unavailable. He started by importing shoes. Then schoolbags. Then fishing nets, nails and bicycles.

"I imported everything. At that time they needed everything!" recalls Zhang, an affable man with rimless glasses.

His business grew quickly; he made money and local friends. But after a few years he grew weary of the long buying trips to China. So he and his wife bought a large plot of land in Kampala. On it they constructed a spectacular Chinese-Korean restaurant, with private dining areas, karaoke rooms and a giant 500-seat dining hall. To the side of the restaurant they built a bedroom, which became their home. The business prospered, and soon he started additional enterprises including a bakery, a firm selling flat-screen televisions and a security company.

"Chinese don't think, they just try without studying the market too much. Otherwise, the chance is gone," he says.

At the site of each new enterprise, Zhang built a room for his family – he had a son in 2007 – to sleep in. They literally live at work.

It has paid off. Zhang says he is now the biggest Chinese employer in the country, with 1,200 local staff. He has even been offered a Ugandan passport, but has refused, just as he has declined to take an English first name.

"I am Chinese, and we need to build a Chinese name here – to let people know that our country is not like before. We are richer, catching up the world."

Africa is serious about becoming food secure

From IRIN, a story on the return of record food prices and the steps Africa is taking to become food secure.

The record prices of staple grains in 2008 made investment in agriculture an attractive proposition for countries exporting as well as importing food. The African Union (AU), with its mix of producers and buyers, has been steadily gearing up for self-sufficiency.

Shortly after Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika became AU chair in 2010, he announced a plan to make Africa food secure in the next five years.

Martin Bwalya, head of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) said the AU’s seven-year roadmap to put the spotlight on farming so as to promote food security and economic growth, and reduce poverty, had been set in motion five years ago.

By the end of 2010, the agriculture development plans of 18 African countries had undergone a rigorous independent technical review and were being rolled out.

Over 60 percent of Africa’s people live in rural areas and most depend on farming for food and income. Agriculture contributes between 20 percent and 60 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) to national coffers.

In a document called The African Food Basket, Mutharika spelt out the details of his plan, which requires countries to allocate a substantial portion of their budget to agriculture, provide farming input subsidies, and make available affordable information and communications technology.

This would be possible with the help of a new strategic partnership between countries, donors, aid agencies and the private sector.

CAADP, initiated in 2003, covers all the main aspects of Mutharika’s plan, including the commitment to devote at least 10 percent of their budgets to agriculture.

Under the programme, countries draw up comprehensive investment plans that include the four CAADP pillars: sustainable land and water management; improved market access and integration; increased food supplies and reduced hunger; and research, technology generation and dissemination.

“We expect the countries to contribute at least 10 percent of the annual expenditure budget demonstrating local ownership and responsibility…”, said Bwalya.

He added while development aid financing remained important, it was also crucial that countries consider measures to attract direct private sector financing to agriculture.

Uganda, one of the 18 states to undergo the review process, has accounted for about 65 percent of its funding requirements from its own budget.

The AU’s development agency, the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which runs CAADP, helps countries to mobilize funds.

Is achieving food self-sufficiency in five years a realistic goal? It would be a tough call said Ousmane Badiane, director for Africa at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

He noted that the AU had 53 members with varying degrees of agriculture investment, development and needs, and some countries did not have the structural capacity to reach the target of food self-sufficiency for many reasons including civil conflicts.

Going regional

A more realistic option, Badiane said, would be for countries with the potential to improve food production to produce enough to feed their less productive neighbours. This called for expanding regional trade and investment in transportation, including ports, railways and highways linking countries.

AU members have begun to take regional economic integration “seriously”, noted Calestous Juma, professor of international development at Harvard University in his recently released book, The New Harvest.

He lists regional markets as one of the three opportunities that could fortify Africa’s food security against the rising threat of climate change.

There are at least eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs), such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC) “that are recognized by the AU as building blocks for pan-African economic integration”. However, “regional cooperation in agriculture is in its infancy and major challenges lie ahead."

Regions could become food secure “by capitalizing on the different growing seasons in different countries and making products available in all areas for longer periods of time”, he wrote.

Both Mutharika and CAADP emphasize the development of regional markets. Mutharika listed 12 regional trade corridors identified by the various RECs and suggested the AU draw up an institutional framework for each corridor.

Science and technology

In his book Juma lists advances in science and technology as another factor that could propel Africa towards food self-sufficiency, and called for more investment in the creation of regional hubs of research and innovation.

Research is being carried out by groups created under NEPAD, such as the Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa Network (BecANet), which has been leading research on food crops, including banana, teff, cassava, sorghum and sweet potatoes. More investment in networks, especially agriculture-related ones, could produce far-reaching results.

Subsidies

Underuse of fertilizers has often been cited as a major cause of low production in Africa. Only four countries – Egypt, Malawi, Mauritius and South Africa – have exceeded the 50 kg per hectare target set by the AU, Mutharika noted in his plan.

Fertilizer use in Africa accounts for less than 10 percent of the world average of 100 kg per hectare, “Just five countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria) account for about two-thirds of the fertilizer applied in Africa,” Juma said.

Mutharika, who promoted the provision of subsidised fertilizer in Malawi, makes a strong case for this approach. At present 19 African countries are implementing various programmes providing fertilizer.

Juma sees leaders like Mutharika, who has prioritized food security as the third factor that could set Africa on the path to food security. The Malawian government devotes 16 percent of its national budget to agriculture.

Yet IFPRI’s Badiane sounded a note of caution on subsidies and cited the case of Senegal. After independence the West African country put in place an agriculture subsidy programme in the 1960s that was even more comprehensive than Malawi’s. “It had a dramatic effect on agriculture in Senegal, but by 1979 one of its [agriculture] agencies had worked up a deficit amounting to 98 percent of the national budget.”

Carefully managed subsidies, run for a short term, and aimed at strengthening existing markets and agricultural infrastructure, were a lot more effective, he said.

The Rwandan government provided free fertilizer to farmers for four years after 1994. In 1998 it wanted to hand over importing and distribution to the private sector, which unfortunately lacked capacity, so the government continued to procure and import fertilizer but left distribution and selling to the private sector.

Since then, aid from financial institutions has helped the private sector build capacity to import, and at least 20 bodies now import several hundred tonnes of fertilizer, Badiane said.

Way forward

The AU’s plans for agriculture also tackle other major issues affecting food security, such as irrigation (only four percent of Africa’s crop area is irrigated, compared to 39 percent in South Asia); improving soil fertility (more than three percent of agricultural GDP in Africa is lost annually as a direct result of soil and nutrient loss); post-harvest storage loss (sub-Saharan Africa loses about 40 percent of its harvest per year, against one percent in Europe); setting up databanks to share early warning information and energy.

There is a high level of engagement between countries on agriculture. “They meet regularly and we support them in building evidence-based information,” CAADP’s Bwalya noted.

If they stayed the course in implementing CAADP, Badiane said in five years a large number of African countries, if not food secure, would be in a much better position to feed themselves.

Overnight Links for December 16th

The UK is giving some emergency humanitarian assistance to Somalia. 1.5 million people have been displaced due to ongoing violence, so the emergency aid will provide food, water and shelter for those people. This Shabelle Media Network article from All Africa gives us the details. 

80 million children work in Africa and experts warn that that number could increase. From Africa News, writer Rubakana Eddy explains how most of thee children are victims of exploitation.

From the Inter Press Service more details on Israel's mass deportation of African migrants. Writer Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani find that some observers are likening it to building a new wall against another people.

Finally, Reuters Alert Net is providing an audio newscast of world headlines that we will begin embedding into our overnight links post.

WHO reports a reduction in malaria infections for Africa

The World Health Organization says that malaria cases have seen big decreases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some countries have 50 percent reduction in cases of the mosquito borne disease from a few years ago. The WHO attributes that to the increase in use of mosquito nets and drugs.

From the Guardian, writer Sarah Boseley gives us more of the WHO statement and why the improvements are at risk.

Malaria cases or hospital admissions and deaths have been cut by half in 11 African countries over the past decade, the WHO's world malaria report shows. Outside Africa, in 32 of the 56 remaining malaria endemic countries, the gains have been even greater. Eight more countries have seen reductions in the number of cases of between 25% and 50%. Last year Morocco and Turkmenistan were certified malaria free.

"The results set out in this report are the best seen in decades," said WHO director general Dr Margaret Chan. "After so many years of deterioration and stagnation in the malaria situation, countries and their development partners are now on the offensive. Current strategies work."

A huge push to get insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) to families in malaria ridden countries over the past three years, involving UN agencies, governments, charities and celebrities, will have supplied approximately 289m nets to sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2010, which is enough to protect 578 million people – 76% of the 765 million at risk.
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But what the WHO calls the fragility of the gains is clear. By the middle of this year still only 35% of children in Africa – who are the most vulnerable to malaria – were sleeping under a net. "The percentage of ITNs is still below the WHA [World Health Assembly, the supreme decision-making body for WHO] target of 80%, partly because up to the end of 2009 ITN ownership remained low in some of the largest African countries," says the report.

And the lifespan of the nets, at only three years, represents a "formidable challenge", the report goes on. "Nets delivered in 2006 and 2007 are therefore already due for replacement, and those delivered between 2008 and 2010 soon will be. Failure to replace these nets could lead to a resurgence of malaria cases and deaths."

There are other worries. A single class of insecticide is used at the moment in the nets and mostly for indoor spraying. There is a possibility that the mosquito-borne parasites that spread malaria could become resistant to it.

How best to feed Africa, Part 2

As mentioned in our previous post on this topic, Africa has an untapped potential in agriculture. Many believe that the continent can grow enough food to feed itself, yet the continent has lagged behind all the others in food production.

Asia has seen explosive growth in the amount of food it grows since the 1970s, but that same type of expansion has not reached most of Africa. The country of Malawi has proved that it is possible to grow a surplus of food, and ever since the international community has changed their thinking on how to best aid Africa.

Despite this knowledge there is still debate on how to best move forward, scientists believe new technologies in in bio-tech can help, yet many environmentalists are reluctant to use them. From the Guardian, writer Madeleine Bunting examines this debate.

But if there is widespread agreement on the causes of the problem, there is an extraordinarily polarised debate about the best strategy to tackle the problem. On one side there is a powerful lobby which argues that biotechnology, massive investment in irrigation and mechanisation are the way forward, and on the other side are those who argue that these kinds of investments are usually tied up in big corporate deals in which local smallholder subsistence farmers lose out – either they lose their land or access to water, and often both.

Juma and his prestigious panel of international experts have attempted to pick a politically feasible path between these two positions. His report, A New Harvest, is being launched with the backing a clutch of presidents, including those of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Inevitably, his enthusiasm for biotechnology will trigger anxieties among that alliance of European and African activists who believe that this entails Faustian pacts with multinational corporations. Another constituency will also be doubtful on the grounds that this kind of emphasis on biotech and science as the way forward in Africa lacks understanding of how development is largely a political process and crucially depends on the effectiveness of institutions – it is a weakness of westerners to believe that clever technology can sort any problem out.

One old hand in the field told me the other day that, on average, it takes 46 years for agricultural innovations to get from the laboratory to widespread use in the field in Africa; it's not lack of technology that is the problem but effective means to disseminate practical solutions. Technology might be able to achieve quick fixes in health on the continent, but they might be elusive in agriculture because it entails much more complex issues of land rights and power.

But what will delight these very critics is Juma's championing of the smallholder farmer – not as an encumbrance to development but as central to its achievement. At the very beginning – the first page of chapter one – he throws his weight behind the example of Malawi, which in 2005 defied USAid (and initially the World Bank) to put major investment into subsidised fertiliser and improved seeds in an attempt to boost maize production. Yields doubled and Malawi was meeting domestic need and exporting surplus maize within a year. Malawi became a poster-girl for western NGOs because it successfully challenged the best part of two decades of a consensus on aid in Africa – namely that the state should not subsidise smallholder agriculture.