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- Volume 18, Issue 3, 2004
Africa Renewal - Volume 18, Issue 3, 2004
Volume 18, Issue 3, 2004
The Africa Renewal magazine examines the many issues that confront the people of Africa, its leaders and its international partners: sustainable development goals, economic reform, debt, education, health, women's empowerment, conflict and civil strife, democratization, investment, trade, regional integration and many other topics. It tracks policy debates. It provides expert analysis and on-the-spot reporting to show how those policies affect people on the ground. And, it highlights the views of policy-makers, non-governmental leaders and others actively involved in efforts to transform Africa and improve its prospects in the world today. The magazine also reports on and examines the many different aspects of the United Nations’ involvement in Africa, especially within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
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Accords save trade talks from collapse
Author: Gumisai MutumeA year-long impasse that threatened to derail the current Doha round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization in Geneva finally ended in July when member countries reached a compromise. The round, launched in Qatar in 2001, ground to a halt in Cancún, Mexico, in September 2003 over a series of disagreements. In particular, developing countries demanded the elimination of subsidies on cotton and other key agricultural exports from the North, while industrial nations insisted on introducing into the round a set of four completely new areas.
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‘Golden leaf’ loses its lustre
Authors: Naututu Okhoya and Gumisai MutumeThe growing global campaign against smoking poses a daunting challenge for Malawi, a country almost entirely dependent on tobacco for government revenue, employment and development financing. After the government, the tobacco industry is the second largest employer. It is responsible for 75 per cent of foreign earnings and contributes 10 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. The crop has been so eagerly embraced by farmers in the region that they call it the “golden leaf.”
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Women: The face of AIDS in Africa
Author: Michael FleshmanThere are days when Mary Mwasi does not know where she will find the strength to get out of bed. But sickness, exhaustion and despair will not feed the children or fetch the water, and so, somehow, she wills herself erect and steps into the sunlight of another Kenyan morning. “I have to look for food for the children day by day,” she told a counselor for the US charity World Vision. “Life is difficult. Unless I get help from well-wishers, we cannot afford to eat.”
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Africa’s youth on the edge of the chasm
Author: United NationsSince his appointment in January 2001 as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Ambassador Stephen Lewis has earned a reputation as a fierce, plainspoken advocate for greater action against the HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping the continent. He was an early — and often lonely — voice for a much stronger focus on the special challenges to and contributions from African women in the struggle against the disease.
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Civil society engages African plan
Author: Ernest HarschIn the Southern African country of Malawi, most local civil society organizations were initially very critical of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Activists objected that the continental development plan was “top-down,” having been drafted by a handful of presidents and then adopted by African leaders, without public consultation, in 2001. They complained that its accent on promoting foreign investment and trade ignored the constraints facing especially poor countries such as Malawi.
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Youth pledge fight for millennium goals
Author: Wilma Jean Emanuel RandleFor young people across Africa, education is vital, argues Mohammed A. Latif Mbengue, a 28-year-old graduate student at Senegal’s Cheikh Anta Diop University. The fact that African countries have not yet succeeded in working together to solve the continent’s problems has hampered access to education. “The lack of coordination makes it very difficult for me if I want to study at another African university.”
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Joining business and Africa’s development
Author: United NationsTo realize the ambitious goals of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, governments must forge solid partnerships with African businesspeople, says the president of the African Union, Mr. Alpha Oumar Konaré. “We strongly believe in the African private sector,” the former president of Mali told a conference on business support for NEPAD held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in December 2003. “Without its help, we cannot achieve great things.”
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Progress in tackling Africa’s conflicts
Author: United NationsAfrica today is afflicted by fewer serious armed conflicts than it was just six years ago, says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. When he issued his first major report on the causes of conflict in Africa in 1998, there were 14 countries in the midst of war and another 11 were suffering from severe political turbulence. Today, Mr. Annan notes in his annual follow-up report,* just a half-dozen African countries are suffering from serious domestic armed conflicts, among them Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. And very few other countries are facing deep political crises.
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African plan advances, says UN
Author: United NationsAfrican countries are making considerable progress in carrying out their continental plan, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says. Yet to help them surmount the serious challenges they continue to face, he argues in his second annual report on NEPAD’s implementation,* Africans also require firmer and more coherent support from the international community. This should entail more aid, debt relief, foreign investment and trade opportunities. It also should involve greater consistency in external policies, so that advances on one front are not undercut by lags on another.
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Africa strives to rebuild its industries
Author: Gumisai MutumeJust a few decades ago, the African island-nation of Mauritius depended overwhelmingly on growing sugar-cane – and was as poor as much of Africa. Since then, Mauritius has transformed itself into a diversified manufacturing and tourism centre, able to attract foreign investors and provide its people with incomes far above the continental average.
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Mixed results for regional economic blocs
Author: United NationsSince 1994, when Africa began implementing a treaty to establish a continent-wide economic community, integration has proceeded weakly and irregularly across countries, sectors and regional economic communities. In its first comprehensive assessment of regional integration in Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), based in Addis-Ababa, reports that the best performing regional economic communities had well-developed integration programmes that were implemented “steadily and effectively by member states.” By contrast those communities affected by political, economic and social upheavals performed poorly, notes the study, Assessing Regional Integration in Africa 2004, released in July.
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