Patrick Bons on "... the difference between bogus ‘Africa Rising’ rhetoric as GDP increases thanks to raw materials exports, and Africa crashing in terms of fast-shrinking wealth, especially in resource-cursed countries like Nigeria and South Africa. To fail to acknowledge the distinction is to import from malevolent Northern economists what University of Pretoria political economist Lorenzo Fioramonti calls a Gross Domestic Problem. It means ignoring women’s unpaid labour, pollution, social ills and a variety of other variables that should be measured as losses from net income. The biggest of these GDP-blind factors in Africa is the depletion of natural resources, which when mined or drilled out are only counted as GDP credits on the income accounts, but not as debits, as they should be since a source of future income is now gone. "
Sreeram Chaulia 11.3.14: "What transpired thereafter was that Botswanans got cheated by China in a way they can never forget or forgive. Beijing’s state-owned China National Electric Equipment Corporation (CNEEC) initially looked like a knight in shining armour in 2008 when it bagged a $970 million contract to deliver a 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant in four years. Come 2012, however, CNEEC handed over a small fraction of the finished work, that too with serious technical flaws and flouting of safety standards that claimed the lives of Botswanan workers." "Botswana is Africa’s least corrupt country as per the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, and the usual Chinese tricks of bribing African elites and having it their way stood no chance. In January 2014, the Botswanan government invited a German company to take over maintenance and operation of the power plant, and to “identify problems created by CNEEC and rectify them,” adding further costs to taxpayers and leaving the country simmering with anger at the agony of load-shedding."
Fela Kuti's youngest son has become the family's loudest voice and, with the help of his father's legendary band, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 are set to release their third album, A Long Way From the Beginning. With a guest verse from Dead Prez co-founder M1, "IMF," the forthcoming album's opening salvo, is a hard-charging Afrobeat track that takes direct aim at the controversial org International Monetary Fund. (Although here it's renamed "International Mother Fucker.")
Luo Jianbo and Zhang Xiaomin 2014-02-19, Issue 666 (Luo Jianbo is director and professor of Center for African Studies, Party School of Central Committee of CPC. His study covers China-Africa relations, African integration, Africa’s peace and development. Zhang Xiaomin is associate professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. His field covers China-Africa relations and China’s foreign aid.)
CODESRIA Kenya extracts soda ash, limestone, gold, cement and gemstones but its resources are not exploited on a scale comparable to neighbouring Tanzania, Uganda or the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the recent discovery of commercially viable oil reserves in Turkana [http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/...], the impending arrival of a new port and oil refinery on the island of Lamu, enormous rare earth and titanium deposits found in Kwale [http://allafrica.com/stories/201307...], and discoveries of gold in Narok and Migori [http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/...] have caught the eye of new investors, hungry to turn a handsome profit from the country’s untapped resources.
President Condé of Guinea at Davos , Jan 2014 (Guardian 22.1.14): "... we live in a global economy. We simply can't deal with the network of corruption embedded in a few key western institutions from a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. These corrupt practitioners operate from the west, but their practices are global and require a global response. Only tighter, more responsive and highly co-ordinated action between law enforcement authorities in both developing nations and the world's financial centres will be effective... With international legal co-operation, Guinea will soon be announcing the outcome of an investigation into some of the most disturbing allegations of mining corruption in Africa's history. I ask other countries to do the same with their own financial institutions."
In September 2012, the Oakland Institute published a report in collaboration with Greenpeace International on a 73,000 hectares (ha) palm oil project proposed for development by SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon, Ltd. (SGSOC)/Herakles Farms in the Southwest region of Cameroon. The report, Massive Deforestation Portrayed as Sustainable Development: the Deceit of Herakles Farms in Cameroon, described the major flaws of the project and the questionable tactics used by the New York-based company and its CEO, Bruce Wrobel, to make the project look sustainable and beneficial to Cameroon
South African, "The One Million Climate Jobs Campaign is an alliance of labour, social movements and other civil society organisations in South Africa that are mobilising for real solutions to the threat of climate change. Cutting the pollution of those gasses that lead to climate change is urgent and involves doing many things. Overcoming unemployment and giving decent work to our people is just as urgent. By placing the interests of workers and the poor at the forefront of strategies to combat climate change we can simultaneously halt climate change and address our jobs bloodbath. This is why we campaign for our government to create a million climate jobs now. Our demand is based on well-researched solutions for how South Africa can immediately begin a just transition to a low carbon economy. + 7 point program
The African Sentinel is a pan-African quarterly publication founded by a vision of creating a renaissance around Africa-focused long-form and cross-border investigations; as well as visibilising of critical but unseen stories, histories, and countries. The publication was grant-funded for the first issue by the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) and SIDA.
Ajachi Chakrabarti 2013-12-07 on immigrants in Khirki and Nigerians in Goa. Obodo Uzoma Simon found murdered in Goa 30.10.13 "The next day, after the police managed to collect the body, the hearse was stopped by a group of around 50 West Africans, mostly Nigerians. They placed Simon’s body on the road and blocked NH 17, the arterial north-south road in the state." "Speaking to a television channel on the incident, activist Oscar Rebello was more blunt. “... Here, the biggest problem is that the drug trade of the coastal belt runs the political economy of the coastal belt. Period.”
Numsa Special National Congress December 17 to 20, 2013 Declaration Numsa calls on COSATU to break from the Alliance. The time for looking for an alternative has arrived. Explore establishment of a Movement for Socialism
Nicolas Gros-Verheyde : "La situation en Centrafrique montre les limites d’une politique de défense européenne qui reste sujette aux priorités des États membres et à leurs contraintes budgétaires. Si l’Union européenne a une réponse humanitaire, politique et financière rapide et efficace, la situation est largement plus contrastée, en matière militaire. L’UE n’a jamais réussi à mettre en œuvre la force de réaction rapide de 2000 hommes qui est pourtant opérationnelle depuis 2007. Chaque État en assurant, à tour de rôle, la permanence."
"La population a hérité de 50 millions de tonnes de résidus radioactifs stockés à Arlit et Areva continue de pomper gratuitement 20 millions de mètres cubes d'eau par an pendant que la population meurent de soif", a dénoncé M. Mamane. Selon lui, "les rues et les habitations d'Arlit sont construits à l'aide de résidus radioactif et la nappe phréatique usée et contaminée s'assèche par la faute d'Areva". "Le pire c'est que Areva continue de nier tout cela", a-t-il déploré.
Patrice Lumumba. Etienne Davignon. Bilderberg. Umicore "brags that it shares 50% of the global market in materials for lithium-ion batteries". David Cronin’s book Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War will be published in August. It is available for pre-ordering from Pluto Press (www.plutobooks.com).
"The biggest Brazilian investor in Africa - and one of the biggest investors in the continent from anywhere - is Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, which is usually known as Vale. It is one of the three biggest mining companies in the world and is the world's biggest iron ore miner, controlling about 27% of the global market. It also produces coal, nickel, copper, bauxite, alumina, aluminium and a wide range of other commodities. As a result of the needs of its mining operations, it also invests heavily in power plants, railways and port infrastructure. Vale currently has investments totalling $7.7bn in nine African countries and plans to invest more than $18bn in Africa over the next five years but much will depend on the direction of global markets over that time." "The firm's biggest investment, however, is its Moatize coal mining project in the Moatize Basin of Tete Province in northwestern Mozambique."
"This is 1885 all over again," Bond declaimed, accusing the Brics countries of mounting a "second Scramble for Africa" in their haste to extract the continent's natural resources. China's major construction of infrastructure on the continent - much lauded by South Africa and other African governments as well as development economists - became, in Bond's perspective, just an instrument of Beijing's neo-colonialist enterprise.
Anthony Butler, columnist in Business Day SA, 22 Feb 2013: "One field in which Brics leads the world is nuclear power. Fifty of the 66 nuclear reactors at present under construction are in Brics states....South Africa's R1-trillion procurement from a Chinese-French consortium, steered by Motlanthe, will reach a "point of no return" by June, according to Department of Energy director-general Nelisiwe Magubane. In an interesting coincidence, the energy minister has promised a "nuclear determination" by March. Sceptics in the Treasury, the National Planning Commission and the Department of Science and Technology argue there is simply no fiscal space for such a project.... A Brics bank, however, could facilitate "public corporate" models of financing.
Guardian Povertu matters blog 25.2.2013: " It was to challenge this form of south-south co-operation that the Oakland Institute, in partnership with Indian civil society groups the Indian Social Action Forum (Insaf), Kalpavriksh and Peace, organised an Indian-Ethiopian summit on land investments in New Delhi in February. Obang Metho of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia and Nyikaw Ochalla from the Anywaa Survival Organisation, members of the Anuak community of Gambela, Ethiopia, travelled to India with shocking testimonies of how their community has been dispossessed of livelihoods, ill-treated and subjected to misery while the Ethiopian government leases land to Indian corporations at giveaway prices."
"The Zambian sugar-producing subsidiary of Associated British Foods, a FTSE100 company, contributed virtually no corporation tax to the state's exchequer between 2007 and 2012, and none at all for two of those years."
BBC 22 October, 2002 About Camp Boiro in the Guinea of Pesident Ahmed Sekou Touré. "Ms Barry said most of the victims in the graves near Kindia had been killed during the night of 17-18 October 1971, when repression reached its zenith."
William F. Engdahl. " Mali for the Pentagon is but the next building block in the militarization of all of Africa by AFRICOM using proxy forces like France to do the dirty work. "
February 1, 2013 "A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. Reported by Associated Press on Christmas Day, this was missing from most Anglo-American media."
Said: " il nous faut considérer l’oeuvre de Camus comme une transfiguration métropolitaine du dilemme colonial : c’est le colon écrivant pour un public français, dont l’histoire personnelle est irrévocablement liée à ce département français du Sud ; dans tout autre cadre, ce qui se passe est inintelligible."
On May 16, General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, announced that AFRICOM, the American military mission in AFRICOM, would expand its activities, sending soldiers throughout the continent in a new plan of training, and it would involve a new combat detachment. Now—combat division, I should say. Now joining us to talk about this is Maurice Carney. He's the executive director and cofounder of Friends of the Congo, based in Washington, D.C.
j’aurais tendance à dire que cela s’inscrit dans une continuité graduelle qui renvoie à la marche des femmes sur Koulouba,...mécontentement profond au sein de l’armée... une crise de l’autorité militaire au sein de l’armée nationale... des militaires ont été impliqués dans l’acheminement de drogues illicites... des anciens rebelles aient été intégrés avec des grades importants, y compris au niveau du grade d’officier, et qu’on leur ait donné comme affectation des lieux de leur pays d’origine, à savoir le nord Mali. ... les conditions de l’impunité... chef de l’Etat qui ne sait peut-être pas suffisamment communiquer avec la population
The repatriation of human remains ... has evoked painful memories of colonial wars in which primary African resistance was crushed, and genocide perpetrated (1904–08) in what was then the colony of German South West Africa. This contribution situates the current issues and practices of memory politics between Namibia and Germany within their historical context.
"Remove Corruption Not Subsidies" "469 NASS members gulp N1.12 trillion and its ok....But 160million citizens gulp N1.3trillion and it becomes an issue. #OCCUPYNIGERIA."
Huffington Post 28.1.2012 In the desert of Southern Tunisia, a group of renewable energy entrepreneurs, NUR Energie Ltd, and their Tunisian joint venture partner, Top Oilfield Services, are creating what may just be the most ambitious solar power renewable energy project to date. Along with the endorsement of the Desertec Foundation, NUR Energie has launched the TuNur project to export solar energy from North Africa to Europe, linking Tunisia to Italy via a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Cable and into the Italian electricity grid in order to supply a constant 2,000 MW of electricity. When completed, TuNur is set to be the world's largest solar energy project.
Care petition against land grab Saudi Arabia "Resistance doesn't help when you are relocated, often being met with threats, violence and arrest, according to Human Rights Watch. The thousands already moved are just the beginning; the Ethiopian government plans to relocate 1.5 million people by next year. "
CNN Dec 20, 2010: "One of the nightmare scenarios of the 21st century is a "rogue state" or terror group getting its hands on nuclear material that could be sufficiently enriched to make a weapon. And diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks show that from central Africa to central Asia, it's a constant preoccupation of U.S. officials. Two cables from 2007 detailed the discovery of uranium in "multiple containers" in the Democratic Republic of Congo."
Nnimmo "Bassey’s work is rooted in the reality of what is happening now in Africa, and his knowledge and vision are increasingly recognised. In 2008 he was elected Chair of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), the world’s largest grassroots environmental network. In 2009 he was named by TIME magazine as a Hero of the Environment. In 2010 he was a winner of the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel Prize). In 2011, along with other climate campaigners from the South, he is in Durban."
Shiraz Durrani. Information Society and Justice (ISJ) is a biannual peer-review journal based in the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences (DASS) at the London Metropolitan University.
Yosh Tandon: "Africa is run by a global kleptocratic system that enriches a minute number of economic and power elite in Africa along with the global bankocrats and corporatocrats at the one end of the pole while it impoverishes the masses of African people at the other end of the pole. Economists call this ‘rent seeking,’ but it is simply looting."