Category Archives: AFRICA
Africa Economics Malawi : Much to Lose, Little to gain – Assessing EPAs
Much to lose, little to gain Assessing EPAs from the perspective of Malawi, TearFund 2007
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries pose a major threat to development and poverty reduction. The ACP countries include some of the poorest countries in the world – 39 of the world’s 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Yet EPAs will require the ACP to liberalise substantially all of their trade with the EU. The EU is also using EPAs to push its agenda on the so-called ‘Singapore issues’ that developing countries have refused to negotiate at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for years.
This report shows that an EPA threatens to, inter alia:
- reinforce Malawi’s position as an exporter of low-value, unprocessed commodities, undermining the Malawian government’s development strategy to ‘add value’ to agricultural goods and to develop a manufacturing sector
- undermine regional integration between Malawi and its neighbours
- lead to a significant loss of fiscal revenue and induce other major adjustment costs.
Given the threat that EPAs pose to development and poverty reduction and considering the concerns being raised by stakeholders across the ACP, we make a number of recommendations outlined overleaf.
Produced by: Malawi Economic Justice Network (2007) together with TearFund
How to get a copy
Download paper online at: http://tilz.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/Campaigning/Policy%20and%20research/much_to_lose_little_to_gain.pdf
Suggested Books
- IT transforms Malawi’s economy: as Malawi’s economy picks up, the emergence of modern technology is transforming the financial sector right across the … African Review of Business and Technology
- Enhancing Investment in West Africa: The Role of Investment Instruments in Economic Partnership Agreement Negotiations (Economic Paper Series)
Africa Agriculture Ethiopia : Agricultural Water Management
Arba minch is a small town in the south of Ethiopia with – ca. 79’000 inhabitants – water supply fed by Arba Minch springs – distribution network: 25 public taps and 3000 private connections – no facilities for wastewater collection and treatment. – 85% use pit latrines The ROSA project promotes resource oriented sanitation concepts as a route to sustainable and ecologically sound sanitation in order to meet target 10 of the MDG. Different resource oriented sanitation systems have been built in Arba Minch town that include 15 urine-diversion dry toilets(UDDT), 23 Fossa alternas, 10 Arborloos, 8 greywater towers, 1 biogas unit and more than 4 cocomposting schemes and researches have been made to evaluate these units. The first two or three units were built for demonstration purposes. These units were considered as first testing units and the construction cost was covered fully form ROSA project budget. The remaining units were built with cost sharing as a strategic subsidy, (MoH, 2006), whereby about 75% of the total construction cost was covered by the households and the remaining 25% was covered from ROSA project budget.
For more information please read http://rosa.boku.ac.at/images/stories/Public%20Docs/34th_wedc_2009_ayele_shewa_et_al_2.pdf
Training Manual
Authors: Awulachew,S.B.; Lemperiere,P.; Tulu,T.
Produced by: International Livestock Research Institute (2009)
This training manual on agricultural water management has been prepared with the aim of providing reference and guidance materials on smallholders’ agricultural management, primarily for Ethiopian farmers, with support of development agents and technical personnel. The documents use existing knowledge in the form of texts, figures, demonstration materials derived from various sources such as books, grey literature such as web material, reports, manuals, etc.
The aim is to cover useful elements of agricultural water management from estimating runoff at micro and small watershed level up to irrigated field water management. In addition, the modules aim to cover water availability estimation, water control and management, soil-water-plant relationships, water lifting and conveyancing and irrigation methods. Each module chapter is illustrated with figures, tables, charts and examples.
The manual covers the following key areas:
- watershed hydrology for improved agricultural water management
- water harvesting and development for improving productivity
- soil water plant relationship
- pumps for small irrigation
- irrigation methods and options for smallholders: surface irrigation and drip irrigation
The modules make for a useful reference and field guide as well as teaching materials at technical, vocational, educational, and training centres.
Available online at: http://mahider.ilri.org/bitstream/10568/80/1/Modules1_5.pdf
Suggested Books
- THE STATE OF SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE IN ETHIOPIA: SOURCES OF OUTPUT GROWTH AND AGRICULTURAL INEFFICIENCY
- Ethiopia, 5th (Bradt Travel Guide Ethiopia)
Africa Book Review : On Trans-Saharan Trails – Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in 19th Century Western Africa
Sahara
[Photo credit: aterracielo]
About the Book
Ghislaine Lydon. “On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africaâ€. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2009. xxviii + 468 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-88724-3.
Book Review
Citation: Anissa Helie. Review of Lydon, Ghislaine, “On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africaâ€. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. February, 2010.
URL:Â http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25745
Reviewed by Anissa Helie (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY), Published on H-Law (February, 2010), Commissioned by Michael J. Pfeifer
A Bountiful Desert: Trade and Culture within and across the Sahara
“On Trans-Saharan Trails” successfully delivers on its author’s ambitious promises. Ghislaine Lydon pledges to challenge the long-standing divide between North and sub-Saharan Africa that led to a “disregard [of] North Africa’s ‘African’ roots” (p. 5) in African studies. Given the overall paucity of scholarship focusing on the Saharan region and the quality of the research, this book will certainly bridge the gap and contribute to a deeper understanding of the Sahara “as a dynamic space with a deep history” (p. 4).
Through an analysis of the [garbled] trade network (based in the northern tip of Western Sahara) Lydon focuses on a region which was islamicized early and was “less affected by colonial rule.” By recalling the testimonies of a “dying breed” (p. 28)–the caravaners–the book evokes the risky nature of their business, as they face deadly sandstorms, unforgiving heat, ongoing threats of pillages and murders, or increased regional instability due to jihads in the second half of the nineteenth century. This endemic insecurity sometimes had dramatic human and economic consequences (for example, five hundred camels were seized one single raid in 1875-76, p. 406). More broadly, the book examines the extent to which cross-cultural exchange and business ventures were facilitated by institutional frameworks inspired by literacy and a Muslim legal culture.
The author consulted sources in Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, and Libya, visiting over thirty-five private libraries and national archives. She also conducted over two hundred interviews and rightly insists on the centrality of orality. Apart from the wealth of oral testimonies, the diversity of written primary sources (contracts, “fatwaâ€s, estates, pilgrims’ accounts, but also colonial ethnography) is impressive, ensuring a multiplicity of perspectives. The book is divided into eight coherent chapters, and offers several maps, a glossary, and useful appendices (including a timeline and a list of interviewees.) Throughout the entire book, Lydon zooms in and out with ease, linking anecdotal details to larger contextual trends. “On Trans-Saharan Trails†will appeal to those interested in legal history, economic history, cultural history, world history, and African history, and to scholars of Muslim societies.
Suggested Books
- On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa
- Trans-Saharan Africa in World History (New Oxford World History)
Africa CFP: Journal Northeast African Studies
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Michigan State University Press is pleased to announce that the journal Northeast African Studies will resume publication in 2010.
The journal seeks to publish scholarly articles on all aspects of Northeast African studies, including but not limited to works in the social sciences and humanities, and we invite submissions to be considered for publication. We particularly welcome contributions that rethink established debates and paradigms in the field, address issues with comparative implications for scholars of other world regions, or draw upon new or underutilized source materials and disciplinary methodologies. For information on upcoming issue themes, please visit
http://msupress.msu.edu/journals/neas/.
We consider Northeast Africa to include the Nile Valley, the Red Sea, and the lands adjacent to both, and so invite articles on patterns and processes that characterize the region as a whole. We hope to make Northeast African Studies an essential journal not only for other area specialists but also for those engaged in comparative and transnational studies.
We will actively encourage submissions from Africa-based researchers, as well as papers based on collaborative research by African and overseas scholars.
For submission details, please visit
http://msupress.msu.edu/journals/neas/index.php?Page=subguide.
Morocco : Reading crisis alarms Moroccan writers
Reading in Morocco
Ministry of Culture data shows that Moroccans read only 2.5 books per year, while 1 in 10 don’t read books at all. Worried by what they characterise as a national “reading crisis”, Moroccan writers recently gathered to discuss restoring readers’ love of books.
http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2010/01/28/feature-02
Suggested Books
Literacy, Culture and Development: Becoming Literate in Morocco
Morocco (Country Guide)
UNESCO and Rhodes University develop syllabus on reporting Africa
In their attempt to upgrade the capacities of media training institutions to offer high-quality training and journalism education, UNESCO and Rhodes University have teamed up to set up an online discussion that will culminate in developing and disseminating a possible syllabus on reporting Africa, based on the UNESCO Model Curricula for Journalism Education.
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=29435&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Senegal Health : Total End of FGC Now in Sight
Senegal: Total End of Female Genital Cutting Now in Sight
Government of Senegal launches major national action plan to seize on momentum created by local communities and the NGO Tostan to end the practice by 2015
DAKAR, Senegal, 18 February 2010—Building on a massive grassroots movement for the abandonment of female genital cutting (FGC) which has seen thousands of communities in Senegal join its ranks in recent years, the Government of Senegal will announce tomorrow the launch of a comprehensive strategy for achieving its goal of nationwide abandonment of FGC by 2015.
The strategy, to be announced at an event attended by Senegalese Prime Minister Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, is largely based on the human rights approach developed by Tostan, an NGO working in Senegal since 1991. Through Tostan’s respectful, cross-cutting model of engaging communities, over 4,200 communities in Senegal have publicly declared their abandonment of the practice since 1997. A recent UNICEF study confirmed the long-term abandonment of FGC in communities that participated in the Tostan program.
The National Action Plan for FGC Abandonment 2010-2015 will focus on three key components of the Tostan strategy: implementing empowering education programs in national languages, engaging extended social networks through an “organized diffusion” model of communication, and supporting public declarations for the abandonment of FGC.
The Action Plan also stresses the importance of working with populations in the regions where FGC is most commonly practiced, Saint Louis, Matam, Kaolack, Tambacounda, Ziguinchor, and Kolda─regions which are among the poorest of Senegal.
The launch event will recognize the local community leaders who have led this movement from infancy to its current tipping point. Special recognition will be given to the first community to publicly declare abandonment of FGC in 1997, Malicounda Bambara. The Tostan organization and staff will also be recognized for their dedicated work on this and other development issues over the past 19 years. Khaldiou Sy, Director of Tostan Senegal, will speak at the event.
The launch event comes just days before a massive public declaration of all 256 communities of the Kedougou Region of Senegal, where, on Sunday, February 21, participating communities will declare an end to the practices of FGC and child/forced marriage on a regional level, marking one of the largest such events to-date. The event will be attended by the Minister of Women and the Country Representative of UNICEF in Senegal.
# # #
Via Tostan: Tostan, a US 501c3 organization that was founded in 1991, currently has over 1,000 full-time staff and community facilitators, and is working in over 800 communities in eight countries in Africa. Over 99% of Tostan’s staff is African. The organization’s US office is based in Washington, D.C. Tostan has been the recipient of several awards including the 2007 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the UNESCO King Sejong Prize for Literacy, and Sweden’s 2005 Anna Lindh Award for Human Rights. For more information, please visit www.tostan.org.
Related articles
- Senegal and Female Genital Cutting (almostclever.wordpress.com)
- Tostan and Molly Melching Receive 2010 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (prweb.com)
French Institute for Research in Africa in Nigeria website
The French Institute for Research in Africa in Nigeria (IFRA Nigeria) is delighted to announce the reopening of its website at the following address: www.ifra-nigeria.org.
It will enhance IFRA’s capacity to make its work more widely available both within Nigeria and internationally.  Please have a look at it for more information about IFRA’s calls for papers, fieldwork grants, research programmes and publications. You can also have access online to transcripts of events organised by the institute, past issues of the IFRA Newsletter and to a database of the Nigerian press in Hausa.
IFRA is looking forward to seeing you online!
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L’Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique au Nigeria (IFRA Nigeria) est heureux de vous annoncer la réouverture de son site internet à l’adresse suivante : www.ifra-nigeria.org.
Ce site va permettre à l’IFRA d’améliorer sa capacité à faire connaître son travail aussi bien au Nigeria qu’internationalement. Vous êtes donc invités à le consulter pour avoir plus d’informations sur les appels à  contributions, les bourses de terrain, les programmes de recherche et les publications de l’institut. Le site offre également la possibilité d’accéder aux transcriptions des colloques et des conférences organisés par l’IFRA, à la lettre d’information de l’IFRA ainsi qu’à une base de données sur la presse nigériane en Haoussa.
L’équipe de l’IFRA est impatiente de vous retrouver en ligne !
Politics Africa, a new African blog
A new blog on politics in Africa has been launched to highlight political and social issues in Africa. PoliticsAfrica, is a refreshing blog of
politics and news concerning Africa and is requesting submissions for its op-ed section. Students, professors, and professionals are encouraged to send papers for consideration.
Please visit www.politicsafrica.com for more information and guidelines for submission.
Water and Sanitation Resources
Issues surrounding water sanitation are really important in developing countries where water sources may be contaminated or of poor quality. Here are a number of papers which you may find interesting.
Sanitation and cleanliness for a healthy environment
Beyond the source: keeping water clean in developing countries
Authors: Jim Wright; Stephen Gundry; Ronan Conroy; University of Bristol, UK
Publisher: id21 Development Research Reporting Service, 2003
Diseases caused by drinking dirty water are major causes of health problems in developing countries. Approximately four billion cases of diarrhoea in the year 2000 represent more than 5% of all disease globally for that year. The problem is not only water containing bacteria at its source, but often clean water that becomes contaminated between its source and the point at which it is drunk. This is a serious problem which can undermine government health campaigns to provide every home with clean water.
Water Alternatives (WaA)
Water Alternatives is an interdisciplinary free journal addressing the full range of issues that water raises in contemporary societies.
Subject coverage includes issues relate to:
- water policy at global and national levels
- water governance and water reforms
- the politics of everyday water management (irrigation, watershed, etc.)
- water knowledge systems, concepts and discourses
- water and economics
- the politics of water provision and use
- water, environment and society
- water, technology and society
- water, globalization and geopolitics
- water, power and social divisions: gender, class, ethnicity
Website: http://www.water-alternatives.org/ Email: meinzen-dick@water-alternatives.org
UN-Water
UN-Water was endorsed as the new official United Nations mechanism to follow-up the water-related decisions reached at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Millennium Development Goals.
UN-Water is made up of the UN agencies, programmes and funds, including major non-UN partners that have a significant role in tackling global water concerns. It supports Member States in their efforts to achieve water and sanitation goals and targets. It is also responsible for the United Nations Decade on Water   2005 – 2015.
The website provides sections on water policies, information resources, events and UN members and partners.
Website: http://www.unwater.org Email: unwater@un.org
Africa IMF Report : Somalia 2009
IMF report for Somalia 2009
IMF Policy Paper: Review of the IMF’s Strategy on Overdue Financial Obligations
Summary: This paper reviews progress under the IMF’s strengthened cooperative strategy on overdue financial obligations. Total arrears to the Fund declined by SDR 11 million, to SDR 1,327 million, since the last review. While Sudan’s payments in excess of its new obligations falling due to the Fund accounted for the decline, arrears by Somalia and Zimbabwe increased further. The majority of the arrears to the Fund (85 percent) were to the General Resources Account (GRA).
http://www.imf.org/external/pp/longres.aspx?id=4360
All information from http://www.imf.org
To view and print pdf files you need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html
Suggested Books
- Somalia: Economy without State (African Issues)
- Modern History Of The Somali: Revised/Fourth Edition (Eastern African Studies)
Africa IMF Reports : Swaziland 2009
IMF reports for Swaziland 2009
Press Release: Statement at the Conclusion of an IMF Article IV Mission to Swaziland
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2009/pr09440.htm
Press Release: Statement by IMF Staff Mission to Swaziland
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2009/pr09262.htm
All information from http://www.imf.org
To view and print pdf files you need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html
Suggested Book
Related articles
- Swaziland’s economy near collapse, says IMF (apperi.org)
- SWAZILAND: Opposition to military spending grows (IRINnews.org)
