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There is a lot of talk right now about taking action to eradicate extreme poverty from Africa. This weekend a series of Live 8 concerts were held across the world to pressurise G8 leaders to do just that. Recently the G8 wiped out IMF and World Bank debts of 14 African countries... The unfortunate thing about this is that attempts in the past to let Africa earn her way out of poverty have regrettably yielded disappointing results. Africa, which has abundant human and natural resources, and more farmable land than anywhere else in the world, ought to be able to...

ABUJA, Nigeria (CP) - Prime Minister Jean Chretien had a blunt message for African business leaders seeking foreign investment and debt relief Thursday: clean up your act and manage your resources better. Chretien's impromptu tough-love act came during a question-and-answer session following a speech to a Commonwealth business forum. It provided a welcome, and well received, contrast to the diplomatic niceties being served up on the eve of the start of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting. Chretien was scheduled to meet the Queen and has arranged several other bilateral meetings with leaders. In his speech, Chretien told the business...

Johannesburg THERE are growing indications that US and European companies, as opposed to African companies, will rebuild Africa through the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). Murray & Roberts CE Brian Bruce yesterday said it was getting more difficult for the company SA's second-largest construction group to do business in Africa. "In fact, Africa is going a little backwards," he said at an analysts' presentation. Bruce was referring to the lack of regulation in many African countries, which raised the risk of undertaking projects on the continent. He excluded southern Africa from his comments. Bruce said much of the problem...

Poor Infrastructure Scares Off Investors, Says NEPAD Official New Vision (Kampala) NEWSAugust 21, 2003 Posted to the web August 21, 2003 Kampala AFRICA needs some basic infrastructure before investors can find the continent an attractive place to come to invest in, writes Mikaili Sseppuya. When the cost of doing business is too high, because of high energy rates, many potential investors would go away. This was said by the chairperson of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), Prof. Wiseman Nkuhlu this week. He was meeting the finanace minister Gerald Ssendaula at the ministry boardroom in Kampala. "We need to...

British Labor Party foreign affairs guru Jack Straw recently flew to South Africa. There he handed over 30 million pounds to the ANC for “land reform and justice.” This was reported as a one line item in the prestigious South African Mail & Guardian newspaper. The question begs: Why should the hardworking, decent British taxpayer have to finance the on-going genocide of the South African farmer? Since the ANC took power in 1994, more than 1450 farmers have been murdered, with another 8000 attacks. This does not include maimings. The South African farmer is the highest at-risk murder group on...

   Sat 5 Jul 2003 Bush billions designed to buy stability Fred Bridgland SURELY no more symbolic site can be imagined for the beginning of the first visit to Africa by a Republican president. The "Door of No Return", on the tiny Senegalese offshore island of Gorée, is the oak one through which passed many of the 20 million black African men, women and children who were sold into slavery. Yet it is here, amid the memories of chains and shackles, at the door that was carved and erected in the same year as the United States’s independence, 1776,...

Johannesburg: THE official line on the US presidential visit to Africa is that it is aimed at strengthening diplomatic relations and showing solidarity with the continent's renaissance spirit as embodied by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). However, analysts suspect that there is more to President George Bush's African safari than meets the eye. They argue that Bush is reaching out to Africa in a desperate search for alternative oil suppliers for his country. No official date has yet been set for the visit, which is anticipated to take place within the next month. Bush is expected to visit...

THE New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) is a strategy document which reflects a new constellation on the African continent at the beginning of the 21st century. But critical observers ask if this is once again old wine in new bottles. And indeed, its socio-economic catalogue offers hardly any new conceptual approach. It reflects the dominant neo-liberal paradigm of the international financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It hence offers no alternatives to the current trends of economic globalisation but instead adheres to the underlying concept of liberalised trade regimes and the dogma of the private...

A nine-page letter from President Thabo Mbeki trying to reassure Africa's international partners that all is well with the Nepad political peer-review process seems to have backfired. The letter was addressed to Canadian Prime Minister and G8 chairman Jean Chretien. Diplomats interviewed on Monday said the letter had mostly added to the confusion surrounding the role of the New Partnership for Africa's Development in reviewing political governance. Mbeki wrote the letter to Chretien in reply to a letter from the G8 chairman asking for clarification of earlier remarks by Mbeki. Mbeki had suggested that Nepad's peer-review mechanism would review only...

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – A new initiative by the world's economic powers to revitalize Africa has become the hottest topic on the continent. The Group of Eight most industrialized nations is launching The New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD. The initiative has raised the hopes of many Africans but also invites skepticism. Does NEPAD signal a "renaissance" for Africa's poor or is it merely a tool of the West to tighten its grip on Africa's natural resources? The continent is awash with challenges, gripped by AIDS, colonization by communist China, civil wars, corporate raiders, mercenaries, dictators, self-induced famine,...

Johannesburg - The announcement by the Zimbabwean government that white-owned farms should cease operating on Monday was the last nail in the coffin of the country's economy and could have fatal consequences for the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), the New National Party said. The reaction came after it was announced that about 2,900 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were ordered to cease operating on Monday after a controversial land reform law was amended to give the government sweeping powers to seize farmland for redistribution, according to Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) spokesperson Jenni Williams. She said many of the...

NEPAD is flavour of the month. For much of this coming week, when G8 leaders gather in Kananaskis, Alberta, to discuss the recovery plan's merits with a group of African presidents, and in the weeks following, we can expect to hear of little else. It will also be at the top of the African Union's agenda when it meets in Durban next month. Presidents Mbeki, Obasanjo and Wade are the leading advocates of the plan ù the New Partnership for Africa's Development ù but because they crafted it with a minimum of consultation with their own civil societies it is...

Open letter to the Canadian High Commissioner to South Africa High Commissioner Lucie Edwards The Canadian High Commission Private Bag X13 Hatfield 0028 Pretoria Email: pret@dfait-maeci.gc.ca Dear High Commissioner: South Africa, Nepad and Zimbabwe In reply to complaints about your unfortunate remarks that suspending Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth councils was a “sign of real political will” by African leaders to apply principles of good governance, your office has been sending out copies of your response to criticism in the Mail and Guardian. This reply is both disingenuous and totally unsatisfactory. As a senior diplomat in Southern Africa, you must know...

President Thabo Mbeki begins a two-day state visit to Mozambique on Thursday which could define the forging of a more united regional bloc to end conflicts and develop joint economic projects to benefit the SADC region. South Africa recently became the largest foreign investor in Mozambique, a position formally occupied by Portugal, and Mozambique recently took over from Zimbabwe as South Africa's major African trading partner. South African investment in Mozambique has topped R9-billion and could double in the next few years, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad. 'We will have to deal with all the conflicts' The visit...

ZIMBABWE, once the jewel in southern Africa’s crown, is being left behind as the rest of the continent forges ahead with an ambitious Western-backed economic recovery plan anchored on key issues of democracy and good governance. Analysts this week said African countries, worried about the contagion of Zimbabwe’s flawed economic and political policies, were gradually tightening the screws on President Robert Mugabe’s administration and isolating it to attract Western support for the blueprint aimed at reviving their economies. The southern African country, the region’s second largest economy after South Africa, has been under unofficial Western sanctions since 1999 when the...