Internet Enriches Learning in Rural Uganda NEPAD E-schools Connecting Students to the World

By Itai Madamombe
Even in rural schools NEPAD project is connecting students to the Internet and expanding their learning horizons.
It was hard to squeeze into the classroom. Dozens of students clustered around computers, checking news on their favourite football teams in the World Cup tournament. Hardly remarkable: some 30 million people were watching the games worldwide.

What is different is that Bugulumbya is in rural Uganda, which for years has remained fairly untouched by advances in world technology. But the school made headlines in July 2005 when it became the very first institution to receive computers under the electronic-school (or “e-school”) initiative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).


“We are experiencing the world from our classroom,” beamed a 17-year old student, Munhana Paul Rogers. During breaks and after school, students closely monitored the latest news and scores. Though most of his favourite teams from Africa were knocked out of the competition early, Paul says there is a lot to be happy about.

“Since Bugulumbya received computers, we see a big difference in the way we learn. When you have the Internet, it’s like you have another five teachers in the classroom. It helps us find information we need on anything. International football matches, how to protect yourself from HIV/AIDS — it’s all there,” Paul told Africa Renewal.

African governments recognize the pivotal role information and communications technologies (ICTs) play in accelerating economic growth and social development. The Internet, telephones, computers, radios and televisions have the potential to foster regional integration, as promoted by NEPAD.

Useful skills
Students like Paul are the focus of the e-schools initiative. Its purpose is to provide every student with at least basic skills and the means to use ICTs to better his or her life, get better-paying jobs and help develop the continent.

“We have many intelligent students here in rural Uganda, and many parts of Africa, who might not get the chance to get into top universities simply because they are poor,” commented John Busima, the headmaster of Bugulumbya. “But if we give them useful skills, through initiatives like this by NEPAD, they will create not only their own livelihood, but also help their countries to develop.”



Teacher showing secondary students how to use computers.

Bugulumbya, like many rural schools in Africa, had no electricity, Mr. Busima noted. NEPAD officials, the Ugandan government and a consortium led by the Hewlett-Packard (HP) computer company provided the school with computers, furniture, electricity and all the equipment necessary to create an e-school. The community — teachers, students and parents — banded together to plaster and paint the buildings. Within weeks, the school was fixed up.

“Our school does not look the same,” the headmaster said. “We are a three-hour drive from the country’s capital, Kampala. We had no hope of being connected to the [electricity] grid. But now we have a generator to run the computers, we have DSL, television, the Internet. We feel equal to the rest of Uganda, and indeed the world.”

Web-surfing might seem like a luxury for a continent struggling with poverty, disease and other basic needs. But experts at a recent NEPAD-sponsored conference in Nairobi, Kenya, warned that development will be seriously hindered if Africa fails to bridge the ICT gap that separates the continent from developed countries. Despite improvements, only 2.5 per cent of Africa’s 800 million people have Internet access, compared with 17.8 per cent in the rest of the world, the experts noted.

Bugulumbya was the first of 120 schools to receive computers and Internet services during the first phase of the e-schools project. According to the e-Africa Commission, which coordinates all NEPAD communications technology activities, this first phase is a one-year demonstration stage in 20 African countries. Each country will choose six schools to try out the programme. Some 150,000 African teachers and students, the commission says, will benefit from the new computers and Internet access, and, in some cases, phones, fax machines, radio and television. Teachers are being trained to prepare and present material in the most interesting ways to their pupils.

‘We cannot afford to do less’
“This initiative is necessary because everywhere else in the world, this is what governments are doing,” says Henry Chasia, the commission’s deputy executive chairperson. “In Africa, we cannot afford to do less because to do so is to tamper recklessly with our future.” The demonstration phase, he adds, will help governments determine the type of equipment and training they will need. It also will highlight the best ways to overcome any difficulties.

Bugulumbya is already providing lessons. The biggest challenge, Mr. Busima said, is fixing the computers when they break down. Some teachers and students received training, but, notes the headmaster, the school needs a full-time technician with a solid background in computers.

The school is also waiting for all the computers promised in July 2005. “So far we have received only 12 of the 48 computers promised,” he said. “We have 300 students and things will be much better if we get the rest.”

Countries participating in the first phase were selected from those that joined NEPAD’s voluntary African Peer Review Mechanism, which allows participating African countries to monitor and evaluate each other’s political and economic management. Thirteen private companies will initially supply the necessary equipment and training to students and teachers. Governments will then take over the administration.

NEPAD promoters hope that with enough money, up to 600,000 institutions — and ultimately all African primary and secondary schools — will be transformed into e-schools.

Access to information and communications technologies can empower everyone, from businesses to communities, Olivier Suinat, managing director of HP Africa, told Africa Renewal. “It has every potential of transforming Africa. For this reason, HP is proud to head up a consortium on behalf of the NEPAD e-schools initiative.”

Bugulumbya, he added, is an excellent example of what NEPAD and its partners can do to encourage students to learn. With the Internet, geography need no longer isolate rural schools from the rest of the world.

New Partnership for Africa’s Development
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was adopted as the continent’s main development framework at a July 2001 summit meeting of African heads of state. According to NEPAD, attainment of Africa’s long-term development goals is anchored in the determination of African peoples “to extricate themselves and the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalizing world.” It calls for a new relationship between Africa and the international community, in which the non-African partners seek to complement Africa’s own efforts. The United Nations, Group of Eight industrialized nations and various donor countries have pledged to do so.

For Africa to develop, argues NEPAD, three conditions must prevail:

peace, security, democracy and good political governance
improved economic and corporate governance
regional cooperation and integration.
NEPAD further identifies several priority sectors requiring special attention and action:

physical infrastructure, especially roads, railways and power systems linking neighbouring countries
information and communications technology
human development, focusing on health, education and skills development
agriculture
promoting the diversification of production and exports.
Many of the required resources will initially need to come from outside the continent, although African governments are redoubling efforts to mobilize more domestic resources. “Africa,” states NEPAD, “recognizes that it holds the key to its own development.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
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Organized Crime Targets Weak African States UN Urges Stronger Police, Anti-corruption Action to Fight Crime Networks

By Gumisai Mutume
Kenyan police prepare to burn cocaine sachets seized from drug smugglers.

In one swoop in April, authorities in Guinea-Bissau seized 635 kilogrammes of cocaine, worth an estimated $50 mn. But the traffickers managed to escape with the rest of the 2.5-tonne consignment because the police could not give chase. United Nations Office on Drug Control (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa commended the seizure, but lamented the poor state of policing in the West African nation. “It is regrettable that the rest of the consignment was not intercepted, but hardly surprising as the police are woefully ill-equipped and often do not even have enough gasoline to operate their vehicles.”

That same month, media reports noted that drug traffickers had established a transit area along the Gulf of Guinea as a way to elude tighter policing off the coast of Europe. Fragile states in Africa are often overwhelmed by other pressing challenges such as poverty, weak public institutions or political instability and can provide a haven for such groups. One of the illicit networks, operating in Guinea-Bissau, is made up of South American suppliers, African transporters and European distributors.

Guinea-Bissau, still recovering from a civil war that ended six years ago, is particularly vulnerable. It is one of the world’s 10 poorest nations, lacking secure prisons or adequate border patrols. “All the institutions have collapsed,” explains Mr. Koli Kouame of the UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). Tighter policing on the Iberian Peninsula, which has traditionally been the transit point for drugs heading for Europe from South America, is forcing the syndicates to seek alternative routes through Africa. Strategically located close to Europe and with a porous coastline made up of a labyrinth of islands, Guinea-Bissau provides an ideal sanctuary.

High demand
Demand for drugs such as cocaine is at an all-time high in Europe. A kilogramme of cocaine reportedly sells for about $80,000 in Europe, compared with $50,000 in the US, the world’s biggest market for the narcotic.

Between 2000 and 2003, African authorities managed to seize only an average of 600 kilogrammes of cocaine per year, 0.2 per cent of the drugs estimated to have been trafficked in the region during that period, UNODC noted in a report on Africa in 2005.

The case of Guinea-Bissau illustrates some of the challenges facing many poor African countries. With weak enforcement capability, underpaid officials and porous national borders, these countries provide an ideal environment for organized criminal rings to extract or tranship illicit commodities.

Africa has far fewer police per citizen than other regions. There are only 180 police per 100,000 people on the continent, while in Asia there are 363. Moreover, when police officers are underpaid and government officials are susceptible to corruption, the job of traffickers only becomes easier. Public officials can be bribed to look the other way or even be induced to work in direct collusion with traffickers.

Transnational crime syndicates deal in a wide range of illicit commodities, including narcotics, diamonds, petroleum, ivory and weapons. They also smuggle human beings. The UN has reported that 90 per cent of African countries are affected by human trafficking flows, either as a source, transit site or destination.

Policeman in Rwanda: Many African police forces need to be better trained, equipped and financed to tackle the challenges of organized crime and smuggling.
Because drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling, loan-sharking and official corruption are illegal and many transactions are consensual, experts note that the extent of organized crime is hard to establish on the basis of official data, in Africa or elsewhere. “But perception surveys, as well as international crime intelligence and seizures of contraband, suggest that Africa may have become the continent most targeted by organized crime,” UNODC states in a 2005 report, Crime and Development in Africa. “Lack of official controls makes the continent vulnerable to money laundering and corruption activities, both of which are vital to the expansion of organized crime.”


Impeding development
Policy planners point out that organized crime can derail development programmes. In turn, unbalanced or inadequately planned development contributes to criminality, resulting in a vicious cycle of poverty-crime-poverty. Crime threatens security of life and property, the growth of democracy and good governance and the free exercise of human rights.

Crime also leads to the loss of scarce assets and resources. Although current data is scarce, the South African police estimated in 1998 that the country was losing more than $3 bn annually in potential revenue as a result of the operations of more than 30 Asian, Italian, Nigerian and Russian crime groups in the country.

Angola, another country recovering from conflict, is one of many in Africa that are losing millions of dollars’ worth of national resources that could be ploughed into development. The Southern African nation attracted scores of transnational crime syndicates during its decades-long civil war as the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) traded diamonds and other natural resources to fund its war against the government. When the war ended in 2002, some of its fighters switched from military activities to transnational crime.

“The loss of money through these crimes is a serious issue for the region because the money is lost by countries which can least afford to be without those kinds of resources,” says Mr. Charles Goredema of the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa. In Southern Africa, when gold and diamonds are smuggled, no taxes are paid on those commodities, depriving the state of resources it could otherwise use to finance basic services.

Public perceptions of high levels of crime or corruption in a country almost always dissuade potential investors. In its Crime and Development in Africa report, UNODC noted that investment levels in Africa are lower than they could be due to a perception that the rule of law does not prevail on the continent. In 2003, Africa’s share of foreign direct investment was just 8.7 per cent of the $172 bn received by all developing countries. The levels are low despite the fact that investment returns are much higher in Africa than in other developing regions.

Fighting the scourge
One way in which governments can fight the scourge of organized crime is by strengthening domestic laws to deter criminals from using those countries as transit points. When it emerged from conflict in 2002, Angola had no policy specifically designed to combat organized crime. The government argued that it had devoted all its resources to military defence. But with war over, it is now strengthening its domestic laws.

Even in more stable countries such as Uganda, inadequate legislation can hinder the fight against transnational crime syndicates. “Because of the weak laws we have in Uganda, traffickers find it convenient to transit through Uganda,” says Deputy Director of Criminal Investigations Okoth Ochola. “The current law, the National Drug Policy and Authority Act, is too lenient. If you are convicted under that act, you are either sent to prison for one year or you pay a fine of not more than one million shillings,” or about US$570. Therefore drug traffickers, who make millions of dollars, would rather risk being convicted in Uganda than in countries where the penalties are stiffer. And, Mr. Ochola adds, five years have passed since a draft bill to strengthen the law was circulated, but it has not yet been tabled in parliament.

With the assistance of the UN, some countries, including Guinea-Bissau, are carrying out security sector reforms to strengthen policing. In October 2006, the country set up a national commission to combat the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. But the government does not have enough funds to devote to the sector. The West African nation of 1.6 million people does not even have a standard high-security prison.

According to UNODC Executive Director Costa, Guinea-Bissau needs support from international funding agencies to buy police equipment, vehicles and communications systems. “If support is not forthcoming,” he says, “I fear that honest police offices could become discouraged. This country must not be allowed to become a narco-state.”

Continental strategy
Across West and Central Africa, governments’ responses to transnational organized crime have been limited mostly to updating national legislation and legal frameworks to comply with UN conventions and protocols, notes Mr. Antonio Mazzitelli of UNODC’s regional office.

So far, Mr. Mazzitelli says, that approach has yielded mixed results. “Concrete and courageous cleaning-up efforts, such as the anti-corruption campaign implemented by President Obasanjo’s government in Nigeria, should certainly produce dramatic results — if sustained long enough to ignite a virtuous cycle.”

Mr. Christophe Compaoré, coordinator of the Committee Against Illicit Drug Trafficking in Burkina Faso, argues that there “is an urgent need for all national bodies against drug trafficking in the sub-region to meet and cooperate well, to stop this scourge and dismantle the networks.” He warns that a drug transit route is opening up in the west and southwest of his country, fed by a growing network in the region. In April, police in Burkina intercepted $10 mn worth of cocaine on the border with Mali.

Countries also need to support regional institutions to effectively tackle the cross-border challenges presented by organized crime. One such body is the UN African Institute for the Prevention of Crime, established in 1989. Throughout its existence, the agency has operated with inadequate funding and, as a result, has often failed to carry out some of its substantive functions.

Another effort hindered by lack of adequate resources is the 2006-2010 African Programme of Action to fight crime. It was endorsed by members of the African Union following a conference organized by UNODC in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2005. It is a framework for technical cooperation and donor assistance to reduce the impact of crime and drugs on security and development in Africa. Some of its specific programmes include reforming criminal justice systems and developing measures to prevent money laundering, corruption and drug trafficking.

“Drug trafficking is a global issue, with a devastating impact on the well-being of the world community,” states Kenyan Assistant Health Minister Wilfred Machage. Progress in fighting the scourge will depend on greater funding, continuous disruption of drug cultivation, distribution, trafficking and marketing networks, and collaboration with regional and international law enforcement agencies, he says.

However, if left unchecked, the INCB warns in its 2006 annual report, “the problem of drug trafficking in Africa might further exacerbate existing social, economic and political problems.” Under such circumstances, weak states will only get weaker, fuelling an already growing problem.

From Africa Renewal,  January 7,2007 
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Gulf Countries Good in Providing E-Governance Services

The Centre for Public Policy at Brown University in the US has stated in its report that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are capable of developing websites to offer best possible electronic services.

According to the Report, there are 1,687 websites from 198 states of Gulf countries. The sites which are reviewed in the study, are generally portals related to prime minister office and legislative (parliament) and judiciary. Other websites are related with economic development, business regulation, military, transportation, taxation, tourism and foreign affairs. An index has been considered which is based on three main features: online information, service delivery and public access.

The index ranks countries on the basis of maximum 100 points. According to the report, North America emerged as the best region in e-Governance, which earned more than 45 points. This time, Asia has replaced Western Europe as the second best region in the world by earning almost 40 points. Western Europe is holding third position by collecting 37 points. The other seven countries competing the top ten positions are the US, the UK, Canada, Portugal, Australia, Turkey and Germany, respectively.

The Report ranked Bahrain as the most capable e-Government in the GCC and Arab countries. Bahrain has managed to advance 50 positions in a single year and thus earned 15th position worldwide.

From http://www.digitalopportunity.org/ ,  August 23,2007 
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US Climate Talks will Build on Positive Momentum

From Mr Sean McCormack.

Sir, Your article "Bush to host rival climate talks to UN" (August 4) implies that "the US is trying to create a rival process to UN efforts" by hosting a major economies conference "three days after the United Nations holds a key meeting on the same topic".

Nothing could be further from the truth. As President George W. Bush's invitation letter to major economy leaders stated, "the United States is committed to collaborating with other major economies to agree on a detailed contribution for a new global framework by the end of 2008, which would contribute to a global agreement under the UN Framework on Climate Change by 2009".

The US-hosted conference on September 27-28, dates convenient to participants in the UN General Assembly, will build upon the positive momentum we expect from the UN gathering earlier that week. It is disappointing your newspaper chose to stoke controversy where there is none.

Sean McCormack,

Assistant Secretary,

Bureau of Public Affairs,

US State Department

From Financial Times,  October 8,2007 
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Philippines needs broadband now

The Philippines must roll out a national broadband network now to help modernise its government services, if it is to remain competitive with its neighbours. That's according to the country's Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), reports Filipino newswire Inquirer.net. In a briefing, DOTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III said that although the Government's planned national broadband network (NBN) project had been criticised by some, its modernising impact on the administration would put the country in a better position to compete with other ASEAN economies such as those of Malaysia and Vietnam. "From a technological standpoint, the NBN is badly needed," said Formoso. "It is urgent. The countries we're competing with are starting to roll out their own broadband networks. For the Philippines to be competitive, we have to put in the right technology." Formoso noted that the Government had the capability to roll out the NBN project in the next three years, as it would only need to refurbish the existing telecoms network in order to do so.

From enn.ie,  August 29,2007 
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Massachusetts Program Captures Attention of States

A chronic nerve condition in his neck and recurring stomachaches dogged Joe Rothfarb until the 25-year-old left California for Massachusetts, where an ambitious new state law is opening doors once closed to many seeking affordable medical care.

The frustrating search for health insurance in California thrust the former rock musician into a Catch-22 familiar to millions of Americans: Undergoing diagnostic tests meant submitting claims to pay the medical bills, which caused one insurer to refuse to renew Rothfarb's policy because he was tabbed as having a pre-existing condition.

His move to Boston a year ago to do graduate studies in social work at Boston University changed all that. Last March, Rothfarb became one of more than 150,000 previously uninsured state residents to gain affordable coverage under a novel universal health care program now in its first year. The program is attracting intense scrutiny from officials in Sacramento and other state capitols considering ways to cover the growing ranks of the uninsured.

State officials and health care experts say the Massachusetts law has a good chance of achieving that goal by using both carrots and sticks. It is less clear whether its remedy would work in a state like California where money is scarce and the uninsured make up a larger share of the population.

In addition, Massachusetts might be strapped in a few years when it has to confront perhaps the most intractable health care problem of all: the relentlessly upward spiral of medical costs that every year forces more and more Americans to fend for themselves.

“Clearly, what's going to have to happen in the long run is more money will have to be injected in the program,” said Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped to write the state's plan. “We don't have to in the next year or two, but if you look five or 10 years down the road, if this program is going to continue to exist, it's going to take more money to keep it going.”

Polls in Massachusetts show that the program enjoys broad support.

The Rev. Huron Hamilton, pastor of the inner-city Roxbury Presbyterian Church and president of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, described his state's health plan as “the best public policy program for the poor in the country.”

Asked to explain its enactment, Hamilton said: “My theological answer is that God happened to be in the details. The practical answer is that timing is everything.”

The business community, which is bearing part of the burden of financing the program, is more guarded in its appraisal but remains generally supportive.

Rothfarb's insurance dilemma is familiar to 47 million uninsured Americans. It has bedeviled policymakers and polarized politicians at all levels for more than a decade. But in April 2006, Massachusetts' Republican governor and Democratic legislature passed a bill that reached across ideological lines.

Conservatives praised the bill for including tough steps to make the state's health insurance market function more efficiently and fairly; liberals liked that it provided subsidies to individuals and families of modest means.

The plan requires every Massachusetts resident to obtain health coverage by the end of this year or lose a state tax break worth more than $200. For residents who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but whose incomes fall short of 300 percent of the poverty line – about $29,412 for an individual – there are subsidized premiums.

For uninsured individuals and families whose incomes are above that point, a new state agency called the Connector Authority has assembled a range of options that in some cases include prescription drug coverage and that offer premiums ranging from slightly more than $100 a month for healthy young adults to more than $1,000 for older families with more complicated medical situations.

The new law is considered a crowning achievement of former Gov. Mitt Romney, now a Republican presidential candidate, but current Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, has thrown the weight of his office behind the law's implementation. Patrick and the Connector Authority were instrumental in winning premium discounts from the insurers after initial bids to provide policies produced rates that seemed excessive. The rollback was crucial politically and economically. Affordability is key to winning public acceptance of the requirement that residents obtain coverage on their own or through their employers.

Businesses with more than 10 employees are required to offer coverage that workers can purchase with pretax dollars. Employers who refuse pay an annual assessment of $295 per worker into the state kitty to help finance the program.

Patrick has asked for $1.7 billion in the next fiscal year to finance the program, with the funds coming in part from an existing pool of money used by the state to pay hospitals and community medical clinics for providing medical care to uninsured indigents.

Another indispensable pot of money involves about $400 million in Medicaid funds that have been made available for the program under a waiver granted by the Bush administration. That waiver will soon expire, however, and the prospect of renegotiating it with the federal government introduces a critical note of uncertainty into the program's fiscal future.

Although the program's goal is universal coverage, its architects included a provision exempting individuals and families from the mandate if they cannot afford any acceptable policy.

The program is helping many who had been priced out of the health insurance market.

Rothfarb, the transplanted Californian, said that before his move to Massachusetts, he took a job of little interest to him with a manufacturer of testicular and breast implants and other prosthetic devices in Santa Barbara only because the position offered a group policy that seemed to meet his needs.

Now he pays $35 a month – with no deductibles but a $10 co-pay – for a policy that covers CT scans, specialists, routine care, drugs and physical therapy.

Rothfarb said the Massachusetts program “has encouraged me to pursue a career that's not reliant on benefits as part of the deal. I wouldn't have gone ahead doing my volunteer work or my work for a (nonprofit) had I known that for any significant amount of time I wouldn't have had a policy.”

From http://www.nationalcenter.org/ ,  July 25,2007 
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Corruption Claims Taint Island Tax Haven

A scandal over alleged corruption in Bermuda has triggered a colourful political and courtroom battle that has delighted tax haven rivals and highlighted the unusual legal relationship between Britain and its remaining overseas territories.

The top appeal court for about two dozen former and current British colonies - the judicial committee of the privy council in London - has imposed a gagging order that will prevent full reporting of the case for almost three months.

Some Bermudans claim the allegations, extending to home improvements by Ewart Brown, prime minister, pose a potential danger to the image of a tax haven that is a linchpin of the world insurance industry.

Grant Gibbons, former leader of the opposition United Bermuda Party, said a drawn-out case could cause reputational damage even though there was nothing wrong with the islands' regulation of offshore finance.

"What happens domestically can have an impact on your international business," he said.

The controversy erupted in June after the Bermuda media reported details of a confidential police dossier relating to an investigation carried out between 2002 and 2004 into alleged corruption at the state Bermuda Housing Corporation. The reports said detectives carrying out the probe believed there were "reasonable grounds to suspect" offences involving government ministers had occurred.

Police closed the enquiry after concluding no crimes had been committed, although the then-head prosecutor admitted the outcome could have been different if Bermuda's criminal law had been updated.

The Hamilton-based Mid-Ocean News, which has seen the police documents, said investigators were looking at a possible Dollars 8m (Euros 5.8m, Pounds 3.95m) fraud involving bribes, questionable accounting practices, fraudulent deals and inflated invoices with building contractors. About Dollars 800,000 was allegedly paid to one decorator.

One of the most high-profile allegations reported was that Mr Brown, who was then transport minister, enjoyed Dollars 150,000 of publicly funded renovation on his house. According to the Mid-Ocean News, the then-head prosecutor advised there was "some indication" Mr Brown had not paid for work done on one or more of his properties, possibly opening the way for the housing corporation to launch a civil court claim against him.

The renewed focus on the case has incensed the government, which claims the leaks are politically motivated. Glenn Jones, Mr Brown's press secretary, said the premier was "exhaustively investigated and fully exonerated" in the police probe, adding that the story had emerged only because the government's opponents think an election is near.

The Bermuda authorities have gone to court to stop reporting of further contents of the investigation dossier, alleging breach of confidence. After losing the case in Bermuda, they took it to the judicial committee of the privy council, which has prohibited reporting of fresh allegations from the dossier pending a hearing on the case.

The complication is that the committee - which is made up of judges from the House of Lords, Britain's highest court, and meets in a special chamber at Downing Street, the prime minister's residence - began its two-month holiday last week. The week before that the committee declined to hear the case during the vacation, scheduling it for October 29.

The long delay threatens Bermuda with an uncomfortable period of uncertainty in which allegations affecting the heart of government cannot be fully aired. Before last week's hearing, Alan Dunch, lawyer for Bermuda Press Holdings, publisher of the Mid-Ocean News, described the delay as "unfortunate".

The hiatus brings into focus the strange and sometimes uncomfortable position of the privy council judicial committee, which some critics see as an colonial relic overseeing parts of Britain's former empire and the remaining overseas territories known colloquially as the "pink dots on the map". Robert Hazell, head of the constitution unit at University College London, said the committee had tried to become more sensitive to concerns about its role, making a pioneering visit to the Bahamas in December to hear four cases.

"They are aware of their own very limited legitimacy in being a final court of appeal for those jurisdictions," Prof Hazell said.

For now, the legal stalemate in the Bermuda case is being relished by some of the islands' rivals in the tax haven world, where the fight for business can be ferocious. An editorial in June in Cayman Net News, an online newspaper, said the situation in Bermuda had the potential to benefit the Cayman Islands, which would gladly catch "the subsequent flight of new and existing business".

From Financial Times,  August 8,2007 
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Nigeria: Government Business to Go Online - NITDA Boss

Plans to provide standard authentication for all official electronic documents with digital signature has been concluded, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has said.

The Director General of the agency, Professor Cleopas Angaye said this while receiving Minister of Science and Technology at his office recently.

He said under this plan, notice of meetings, official circulars and memos should be sent electronically, beginning with those of the Federal Executives Councils, while all Ministries, Department and Agencies without a website will join soon.

Also, all Ministries, Departments and Agencies that have websites would migrate to the .ng domain and fly the Nigerian flag on the internet, while public officers will no longer use free web email addresses for passage of official information.

Disclosing this during the maiden visit of Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhier to the agency, Prof. Angaye, said that with this plan in place an official e-mail going out will have a digital signature as 'classified mail".

"Programme for the adoption of Information Technology in the Public Service is underway. The following policy statement and guidelines for IT penetration in the Public Service are contemplated by NITDA in the short term.

"All MDAs are to establish a web presence before the end of the year or by early 2008. All MDAs who already have websites should migrate to the .ng domain (and fly the Nigerian flag on the internet," he said.

"Free web email addresses shall no longer be used by public officers for official communication. Notice of meetings, official circulars and memos should be sent electronically, beginning with those of the Federal Executive Council," he added.

"To implement that, NITDA shall soon provide standard s for the authentication of all electronic documents with digital signature", he explained.

On the provision of rural internet resource centre, Prof. Angaye pointed out that NITDA has concluded plans to set up internet resources centres in all the 774 local governments of the Federation, adding that this will serve as an incubation centre for internet facilities and enable the local government chairmen to participate in IT acquisition programmes.

According to him, "this is a programme to connect 774 LGAs to the internet. The Rural Internet Resource Centres would serve as rural hubs for e-government, capacity building and training centres as well as community resources centres".

The Director-General noted that Nigeria has become a dumping ground for obsolete and substandard computer products, adding that a large build up of used electronic products that are not properly disposed or recycled.

"These have the potential of constituting grave environmental hazards in the near future. NITDA intends to embark on a national programme for electronic waste management through standardization and policy intervention, environmental impact assessment studies and stakeholders collaboration", he stated.

Responding, the Science and Technology, Minister Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhre, advised the management of the agency to look into the area of income generation to enable it fund some of its activities.

Stressing on why it is difficult to establish and sustain rural internet facilities in the local governments across the country, the Minister said that the facilities could not stay because of the insecurity of mobile connection in the communities.

From http://allafrica.com,  August 27,2007 
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South Africa advances e-gov development

The South African government has revealed details of the next stage of development for its e-government strategy, reports newswire ITWeb. At a media briefing, public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said the government would now look to establish an interactive community relationships portal and to provide community development workers with mobile internet access. "We want to make e-government more interactive so that people can ask specific questions," she said, while acknowledging that content on government portals was a problem. She said that a task team had been set up to make sure departments update their websites regularly. Fraser-Moleketi also gave details of a pilot project to equip community development staff who work on the road with mobile phones and laptops with internet access.

From enn.ie,  August 29,2007 
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South Africa slow to make e-gov progress

Municipalities in the South African province of Gauteng are still in the very early stages of e-government development, according to a new study by the Wits LINK centre, reports tech newswire ITWeb. Of 14 municipalities surveyed, 12 had a website, but only one -- the city of Johannesburg -- was deemed to have made significant progress in terms of e-government delivery. "Websites are not explicit about what the various municipal functions are, how they are shared between local and district authorities and what social development and local economic development information is available," said Luci Abrahams of the Wits LINK centre. Other criticisms of municipal websites included poor responsiveness to e-mail queries, outdated content, too much information available only in English, poor search facilities and slow-loading webpages. The report recommended that "there must be explicit objectives for social development and local economic development. Also, provinces must have their e-government strategies aligned with those objectives and their own priorities."

From enn.ie,  August 16,2007 
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Global E-government 29 August

UK tool aims to tackle life expectancy gap | Chinese execs asked to help fight poverty

UK tool aims to tackle life expectancy gap: The UK's Department of Health has launched the Health Inequalities Intervention Tool, an interactive website aimed at helping local health services and councils improve life expectancy in areas of deprivation. The web tool is designed to help Primary Care Trusts, Practice-Based Commissioners and local authorities in so-called 'Spearhead areas' to understand the impact of simple measures on the life expectancy gap of their local populations. Spearhead areas are among the most deprived and vulnerable areas in the country, typically with more unemployment, lone parents and minority ethnic groups than average. Such areas account for more than one quarter of the population of England and have a lower life expectancy than the rest of the country. The Health Inequalities Intervention Tool shows the diseases which are causing low life expectancy in each Spearhead area, and it provides a "ready reckoner" to illustrate the impact interventions could have, such as smoking cessation, reducing infant deaths and treating heart problems. The tool can be used as part of a comprehensive local strategy to reduce health inequalities, the Department of Health said.



Philippines needs broadband now: The Philippines must roll out a national broadband network now to help modernise its government services, if it is to remain competitive with its neighbours. That's according to the country's Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), reports Filipino newswire Inquirer.net. In a briefing, DOTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III said that although the Government's planned national broadband network (NBN) project had been criticised by some, its modernising impact on the administration would put the country in a better position to compete with other ASEAN economies such as those of Malaysia and Vietnam. "From a technological standpoint, the NBN is badly needed," said Formoso. "It is urgent. The countries we're competing with are starting to roll out their own broadband networks. For the Philippines to be competitive, we have to put in the right technology." Formoso noted that the Government had the capability to roll out the NBN project in the next three years, as it would only need to refurbish the existing telecoms network in order to do so.


Chinese execs asked to help fight poverty: United Nations officials have called on China's business community to use ICT to help fight poverty in their country and abroad. "Development is no longer the sole responsibility of governments and non-governmental organisations," said Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang, addressing a group of Chinese executives in New York. "We also need to harness the collective strength of private sector entities in support of our development efforts. We therefore consider you as an indispensable stakeholder in the fight against poverty, illiteracy and disease." Sha noted that ICT can give a boost to education through distance learning, content creation and teacher training, and it can empower women by helping them to acquire new skills. Participants agreed that bolstering information technology can serve to improve quality of life, and that the provision of training is in the best interest of corporations.

Kids' laptop wins design prize: The XO Laptop, also known as USD100 laptop -- created for children in developing countries -- has won an international design award. The XO was designed by a team at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation, whose aim is to provide every child in developing countries with a laptop. The machine, which is affordable yet technically advanced, was recognised in the 'Community' category at the INDEX: AWARDS in Copenhagen. The laptop, which is about the size of a textbook and weighs less than a typical lunchbox, can be powered by a crank, pedal or pull-cord and is shock- and water-resistant, with a sunlight-readable screen. Encouraging computer literacy is seen as one way to help developing nations catch up with the global information economy. Several countries, including Argentina, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand, have already committed to buying the XO for schoolchildren.


South Africa advances e-gov development: The South African government has revealed details of the next stage of development for its e-government strategy, reports newswire ITWeb. At a media briefing, public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said the government would now look to establish an interactive community relationships portal and to provide community development workers with mobile internet access. "We want to make e-government more interactive so that people can ask specific questions," she said, while acknowledging that content on government portals was a problem. She said that a task team had been set up to make sure departments update their websites regularly. Fraser-Moleketi also gave details of a pilot project to equip community development staff who work on the road with mobile phones and laptops with internet access.

From http://www.enn.ie,  August 29,2007 
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NZ offers citizens advice on the web

New Zealand's Citizens Advice Bureau has been awarded NZD1.3 million in government funding to bring its services online, reports the Dominion Post. The CAB intends to use the grant, along with another NZD340,000 provided by the Consumer Affairs Ministry, to develop a website offering information and advice. The organisation offers advice on a range of areas, from employment and consumer problems to budgeting and tenancy issues. Citizens will be able to get free advice from volunteers through a real-time online chat facility on the site. The CAB will also install internet kiosks at its drop-in centres, where people can access its database and e-government services.

From enn.ie,  August 16,2007 
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Politics Over Policy

Uttar Pradesh was the first state to declare an agriculture policy that sought to link farmers directly to the boom in organised retail. But within days of the announcement, chief minister Mayawati has rolled back the policy. Intelligence reports indicated that farmers were against contract farming and the entry of private companies in agribusiness, she said on Friday. So, what really happened? Did farmers in the state take lessons in swadeshi economics? Or did middlemen in the farm sector educate the CM and her team about their economic clout and political muscle? The UP policy promised a new deal to the farmer. It sought the entry of big retail companies in agriculture and a direct link between the producer and the consumer. That would have ensured better prices for both the farmer and the consumer.

Nearly 40 per cent of India's farm produce is lost in transit as it travels from the field to the mandi, and later to neighbourhood shops. Nobody, not even middlemen, benefit from this colossal waste of foodstuff. The performance of agriculture, which employs two-third of India's workforce, continues to be a drag on the economy. That is because agriculture has failed to take advantage of the changes in the economy. The modes of production and distribution have remained the same for decades. Mayawati's announced agriculture policy had the potential to address these issues and transform the sector. Of course, such changes invariably impact a few people adversely in the short run. And these are the people who seem to have forced the issue in UP.

Vested interests resist change and people holding public office rarely resist them. Mayawati is not an exception to this trend. Mobs claiming to represent small retailers have ransacked retail shops of business houses in UP and Jharkhand. Rather than confronting the lawbreakers, the UP government has taken the easy option of closing down retail outlets. Earlier, the Kerala government had banned big retail outlets.

India's growth story depends on bold and consistent public policies. A small minority will always oppose change, even if it is good for the country. They need to be coaxed and persuaded. Consensus-building is an essential part of good governance. Smart change management is as crucial for governance as making bold public policy announcements.

From http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ ,  August 27,2007 
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11 Arab countries Meet in Dubai to Discuss Digital Divide at Government Technology (GT) Summit

Commenting on the event, Khaled Eid, Managing Director of the World Development Forum, the Organising Corporation for the Summit said the agenda of the meeting will focus on challenging issues in technology facing the governments in the Arab world amid rapid international developments in the field of technology.

He pointed out that devising a strategy on developing government services using technology must take into consideration recent scientific statistics and research. Quoting a report released lately by Internet World Stats, he said internet users in the Middle East increased at the rate of 479.3 per cent over the past six years whereas by the end of 2006 there were 19 million internet users representing 1.8 per cent of the total users worldwide, which preceded a billion during the same period.

Findings of the report showed that the Middle East ranked sixth among countries of the world that use internet technology, he said. Mr Eid lamented the fact that use of communication and information technology in the Arab region still lags behind, whereby landlines, cell phones and the internet are in use at the rate of 10,24 and 8 percent respectively.

He stressed that these statistics must be carefully considered while discussing issues pertaining to the use of technology in Government & Public services in the Arab world. According to the DAI or (Digital Access Index), decline in the use of information technology in the Arab countries, especially in the gulf region could be attributed to lack of technology awareness rather than deficiency of technological infrastructure.

Supervised by the ITU, DAI is based on four fundamental vectors that impact a country's ability to access ICTs: infrastructure, affordability, knowledge and quality and actual usage of ICT. Based on these indicators countries of the world are ranked to provide a transparent and globally measurable way of tracking progress towards improving access to ICTs.

"The UAE bagged the 9th position among countries with the highest access to communication and information technology, followed by Qatar which ranked 23rd and Kuwait in the 35th position", said Mr Eid. Among countries of decline access Syria came third, Yemen was placed in the 16th position followed by Mauritania 34th and SUDAN 38th while Iraq and Somalia were not included in the list, he added.

However, he said, UAE registered the highest number of internet users in 2006 where access percentage was 36.1 per cent of the total population, clinching thus the first position in the Middle East. The number of internet users in the UAE is estimated at 1.400million persons, constituting 7.3 per cent of internet users in the Middle East.

"Rapid evolution witnessed worldwide requires scientific as well as practical and precise follow up for global changes", commended Mr Eid. He stressed on the vitality of developing a joint Arab action to implement recommendations issued at the previous round of the GT Summit.

He mentioned that chalking out a regional strategy on utilising technology in further developing government services, as well as implementing comprehensive programmes on boosting communication and information technology in the Arab society, were recommended during the summit.

"Conferees at the last summit unanimously emphasised that adopting and implementing communication and IT projects in the Arab world, is a joint responsibility of Government institutions and the Private sectors", he said.

Elaborating on the annual event, Mr Eid stated that the GT Summit seeks to set a platform for exchange of knowledge and expertise in a bid to bridge the digital divide, improve management performance in the government sector and secure a level of competence in the private sector.

The summit paves the way for renowned communication and IT companies, and concerned prominent government officials in the Arab world to meet and shed light on obstacles impeding efficient use of technology.

11 Arab countries, including All GCC states, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Yemen will take part in the summit, he confirmed.

The GT Summit is an invitation-only event aimed at IT decision-makers in government officials in communications, commerce, education, finance, health, infrastructure and public works. In addition to public services such as chambers of commerce, municipalities, the judiciary, civil defense, utilities and tourism.

The 1st round of the GT Summit was held in association with 'ICTIDAR' initiative of (UNDP) and the Arab League, under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoun, President of Dubai Free Zone Authority for Communication and Media; the Summit tabled several important topics like E-government, IT governance, risk and compliance management, business process management and resources capacity planning.

In addition to actual IT dynamics such as smart IT infrastructures, enterprise architecture, integrated service delivery channels, Digital Cities and information security, access, collaboration and integration.

From http://www.ameinfo.com/,  July 25,2007 
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Putting People First

To succeed, e-government projects need to avoid excessive focus on technology and find champions, says Prof. Rajendra Bandi of IIM, Bangalore.


Rajendra Bandi, associate professor of information systems at IIM, Bangalore, has varied interests in academia. He has studied the social impact of computing, computing ethics, knowledge management, and IT in government, among others.

As a member of the technical advisory panel established by Karnataka’s Department of IT, Bandi has guided several e-governance initiatives. Further, he has made comparative studies on some of these e-government projects. In an interview to CIO India, Bandi talked about the state of e-government projects across the country, and suggested ways to improve them. Excerpts:

CIO: Do you think technology has been adequately utilized in e-governance projects across the country?
Rajendra Bandi: I would use the word ‘appropriately’ utilized. I would also say that most e-govern initiatives undertaken in the country, with a few exceptions, are technology-obsessed. To me, e-governance is a much broader phenomenon. Technology is but one component. But unfortunately, in most governance applications, more importance is given to technology than to other components. In that sense, it has been more than adequately utilized, and it’s not really good.

In e-governance the ‘e’ should simply precede the hyphen and governance should be core; ‘e’ should not drive the entire project. Far too often, we see projects which are pushed so aggressively by technology; governance objectives should take priority.

From http://www.cio.in/ ,  July 16,2007 
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Archaic Laws, Licence Raj and a Web of Change

For almost six decades after the country got its independence, Indian entrepreneurs had to wait for months with bated breath before lethargic and sometimes moody bureaucrats, after pouring over and sleeping on their documents for as long as they were satisfied, let them into the world of wealth creation. Then, early last year, an e-governance project speeded up the process by bringing the whole process online. It allows an entrepreneur to deal with the registrar of companies (RoC), the approving authority, online.

The results are galring. The incorporation of a company now takes less than five days against 15 days that was the norm before. And company name is approved in a day, compared to a week earlier. Procedures regarding filing of annual return, balance sheet, change of directors, registered office and increase in authorised capital now take just three days to be notified compared to two months earlier. The ministry of corporate affairs, which implemented the project, aims to deliver all such services within 48 hours by the end of this fiscal.

A government official recently said that if the system is inefficient, every time a businessman meets a regulator, there is a possibility of giving or asking for bribe. The e-governance project eliminates this possibility. Besides, no one can now backdate a document or get an already filed document replaced by another. “Transparency, efficiency and satisfaction have gone up tremendously,” said another official.

The latest statistics shows that the initial hurdles in giving wings to one’s entrepreneurial skills have almost disappeared. As on July 31, 2007, about 65,000 companies were born online, some of them in less than an hour, after the e-governance was introduced in February, 2006. The elimination of the personal interface between the entrepreneur and the regulator was complete when all the 20 RoCs went online. Now, 92% filings with the regulator take place either from the entrepreneur ‘s office or home.

However, incorporating the company is only the first hurdle for a business. As for the rest of its journey, India is not yet an ideal place. Agencies like the World Bank that studies international business environment ranks India 134th — 41 positions after China — “which is reforming at a faster pace”. In its report ‘Doing business in South Asia, 2007,’ the World Bank says that policies of various Indian states differ significantly and if all adopt the best practices of others, the country would move up to the 79th position.

To start legally operating a company, after incorporation, about 10 other registrations are required. This includes applying for a tax account number, a permanent account number and registrations with the Employee’s Provident Fund Organisation, the Employee’s State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and with the sales tax officer concerned for remitting value-added tax. The World Bank recommends a unique registration number for all these purposes so that seven steps are reduced to one. Besides, procedures for getting land use approvals, building permits and power connections are cumbersome in many states.

From http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ ,  July 15,2007 
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JNU Looks Ahead at E-governance

If all goes as planned, then everything from student registration and faculty recruitment to file and paper movement at Jawaharlal Nehru University here would be computerised within a year’s time.

The e-governance Cell at JNU will help streamline operations and utilise the resources in an optimal way. The cell was set up during the 10th Plan following a Rs. 50-lakh grant by the University Grants Commission.

“The objective is to make workflow at JNU more efficient with computerised operations and make accurate data and information available to users. This will help in reducing the time taken for movement of papers and files in regular official work. It will result in lesser paper work and better utilisation of manpower resources,” said Ramesh Kumar, former Registrar, who is presently a senior consultant with the Cell.

“The University envisages developing a fully integrated, user-friendly, reliable, modular, data-secured, upgradeable and web-used application software that will provide the administration with timely and necessary information,” he added.

JNU has roped in Accel Frontline Ltd. of Chennai for software development while Wipro is serving as the technical consultant.

The cell has developed different modules like Manpower Information Management System, Student Information Management System, Financial Information Management System and Library Information Management System. A majority of these modules are at the “User Acceptance Test” stage.

“We are thoroughly checking all the modules before they are put to use to find out whether they meet our requirements and are user-friendly. By the end of this year, most of these modules will be ready to be rolled out. The installation of hardware will be completed by the end of this week,” said S. Venkatesan, a system analyst with the cell.

The training programme in basic operation of computers for all the administrative staff members has already begun and will be completed within the next two months.

The trial phase for the entire system will begin within a month. “Within six months to one year of the trial stage, all work will be done on computers,” said Mr. Kumar.

From http://www.hindu.com/ ,  August 23,2007 
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The Asian Connection

E-readiness continues to improve around the world in 2007, but achieving it is becoming more complex. To reflect this, the Economist Intelligence Unit has "raised the bar" of e-readiness by modifying its ranking methodology. This change in methodology, along with underlying improvements in individual countries, has led to changes in the league table. Several countries, particularly in Asia, have seen their positions improve, while others have experienced declines. At the same time, the fundamental tenets of e-readiness remain unchanged, and the leaders in 2006 are still leaders today—nine of last year’s top ten countries remain in that bracket.

Denmark and the United States retain their number one and two spots in the rankings (with Sweden also tied for second), but Hong Kong (fourth), Singapore (sixth), South Korea (16th), Taiwan (17th) and Japan (18th) have experienced a boost in 2007 in both scores and ranks. This is largely due to their governments' vision and commitment in pushing digital development, and to continued progress in the adoption of broadband and other advanced infrastructure.

Several top-tier countries experienced a shift in their overall e-readiness performance as a result of the methodology changes. A sharpened focus on the policy environment and e-government, as well as on education and innovation, has helped Switzerland (fifth), Canada (13th), Germany (19th) and Ireland (21st). Their e-readiness has not declined, but the model refinements have uncovered areas where they and other countries must improve to maintain progress.

From http://www.economist.com/ ,  August 22,2007 
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Govt Working Hard to Realise IT Dream

With all tall claims of making UP a happening IT hub, next only to Bangalore, information technology crawls at snails pace in the state.

It has been six years since UP government issued its first GO directing all principal secretaries to launch their websites on the NIC server.

But, despite much cajoling, the great IT dream boat seems to have spluttered and chugged to a halt. Only 42 out of 86 departments have complied ever since while the rest have chosen to look the other way.

Now with chief minister Mayawati taking personal interest in the project, panic grips the defaulters. A terse note from the CM’s office dated July 13 said “that the CM was aware that information on official websites are outdated. Many still show up names of ministers and officials of last regime.�

It ends up with a warning to all to get their act together within a week’s time and report compliance. This has been followed up by four reminders in quick succession issued in a month’s time.

On July 19, a high-level committee did a follow up and discovered that only 50 per cent of departments had taken corrective steps.

The deadline, therefore, has been extended to August 28. In the meanwhile, Mayawati has announced promotion of e-governance as one of the top priorities on the occasion of her commemoration function last Tuesday.

This has lent the task fresh urgency. So experts hope that Behenji’s terror could finally be the key to e-governance in UP.

Topping the list of defaulters are the likes of state home department and department of science and technology. Even energy, department of alternative energy, environment or sports have to comply with the orders. So have departments of culture, rural engineering, tax and registration, protocol.

Law and legislature, agriculture marketing and export, integrated urban development, land development and management also sail in the same boat. None of these departments has launched its website, informed sources confirmed.

Talking to TOI, principal secretary, IT, VN Garg, said that the first GO for promotion of IT was issued as early as April 2001.

Then Right to Information Act, 2005, made it mandatory for every department to have all necessary information on their website. Sensing the slack progress, this government issued another GO July 14 to speed up the projects. There have been follow up GOs on July 15, July 16 and July 19 to monitor the issue.

Currently, 44 departments are in the process of getting their websites created through NIC or UPDESCO, Garg said. All websites, as per the CM’s instruction, will be in Hindi and English, he added, hoping that the wheels may finally begin to move in the next couple of months. Behenji willing, they sure will.

From http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com,  July 25,2007 
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DOTC Renews Call for Broadband Network Project

MANILA, Philippines -- The Philippines needs to implement the national broadband network (NBN) project now to be able to compete with its neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which are already establishing their own broadband networks to modernize government services, according to the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC).

In a briefing on Tuesday, DOTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III said that for all the criticism of the NBN project, its modernizing impact on the bureaucracy would put the country in a better position to compete with other ASEAN economies like those of Malaysia and Vietnam.

As it is, the Philippines has been left behind in the race to establish an “e-government” and further delays in the implementation of the NBN would surely leave the country in the dust, he said.

“From a technological standpoint, the NBN is badly needed. It is urgent. The countries we’re competing with are starting to roll out their own broadband networks. For the Philippines to be competitive, we have to put in the right technology,” said Formoso.

He said Malaysia and Vietnam have been preparing their broadband network roll-outs in 2007, with Kuala Lumpur laying out a capital outlay of $1 billion.

Even Burma and Cambodia, countries generally considered “backward” compared to the Philippines, are already contemplating implementing their own broadband networks to modernize government systems, according to Formoso.

An e-government, as defined by multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by government agencies to enable more efficient and cost-effective government as well as allow greater public access to information.

Formoso said the primary purpose of putting up the NBN would be to “provide connectivity down to the village level.”

As an example, once the pipeline is completed, satellite offices of the National Statistics Office in the provinces would be able to exchange documents and communicate seamlessly with the NSO main office in Manila to refer to important documents without delay.

Formoso said the government had the capability to roll out the NBN project in the next three years, as it would only need to refurbish and utilize the existing telecommunications facilities of government to create this broadband network.

He said there would be no danger of the project becoming a “white elephant” as the DOTC had the capacity to maintain the system upon the departure of its Chinese partner.

“Remember that the DOTC, notwithstanding a limited budget, has been running the telephone system of this country since the time when no private firm wanted to undertake it. We are all the more capable of handling it now since the newer system [for the NBN] will be easier to maintain and operate because of newer technology,” said Formoso.

The government recently announced plans to build two state-owned IT backbones, at a cost of $800 million, to create a cyber corridor in the country. One of the projects is the $329-million NBN while the other is a $460-million plan to build a satellite-based IT backbone for the cyber education program of the education department.

Both would make use of Chinese technology and financing.

The University of the Philippines School of Economics, in a recent paper, opposed the proposed cyber corridor project, arguing that it was unnecessary and a waste of funds.

The study, authored by economics professors Raul V. Fabella and Emmanuel S. de Dios, pointed out, among other things, the lack of a feasibility study behind the project despite claims of urgency to build the broadband backbone.

It said the government was embarking on a project to provide a broadband “highway” when most of the final users, the government offices in remote provinces, had yet to get computers to serve as their “vehicles” to travel the cyber highway.

But Formoso said the UP paper on the NBN project did not look into the details of the NBN project enough to criticize it.

What it did was quote news items about the NBN project and did not really study the nitty-gritty of the project, he said.

From http://technology.inquirer.net,  August 21,2007 
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Viet Nam's E-government World Position Soars

Ha Noi (VNA) – Viet Nam ’s ranking in applying information technology in services to citizens via government agencies has shot up from 126 th in 2006 to 90 th this year, according to Viet Nam ’s Ministry of Information and Communications.

The information came from a recently-released survey on global e-government in 2007 made by a research group of US-based Brown University.

The survey collected information from 1,687 government agency websites in 198 countries and territories in June and July.

In 2007, Asia is still the leading region for e-government, with the top three positions held by the Republic of Korea , Singapore and Taiwan. They are followed by the US, Britain, Canada, Portugal , Australia, Turkey, and Germany.

Of the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Viet Nam ranks fifth, after Singapore , Malaysia , Brunei and Cambodia.

According to statistics, 96 percent of government agency websites in the world are open to the public and 80 percent provide databases. In Viet Nam , 89 percent of the websites of government agencies are public and 100 percent of them supply databases.

Vietnam also has 22 percent of its government agency websites providing online services for the people compared to the world average of 28 percent.

However, the weakest point of the government websites in Viet Nam is that they do not have security and privacy policies while 23 percent of such websites in the world apply security and privacy policies.

From http://mathaba.net,  August 21,2007 
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Highways Department introduces e-tender facility

As part of the e-governance initiative to make its working transparent, the Highways Department has introduced e-tender facility, Minister for Highways and Minor Ports M.P. Saminathan said on Saturday.

Launching a website of the Tamil Nadu Highways Engineers Association (www.highwaysengineers. com), he said he would take up the issues, highlighted by the association, with the Chief Minister.

Highways Secretary K. Allaudin said efforts were on to allow submission of bids for projects worth over Rs.10 lakh through the Internet from October.

K. Lokanathan, general secretary of the association, appealed to the Minister to bring all departments related to the Highways Department under one roof, besides setting up an engineering reforms commission.

From http://www.hindu.com/ ,  August 26,2007 
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Knowledge Commission Asks Punjab Government to Implement its Recommendations

CHANDIGARH: A 3-member National Knowledge Commission (NKC) led by its Advisor S.Regunathan Monday called on Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to apprise him with the recommendations of the commission and their implementation to create a knowledge base in the state.

Regunathan informed adal that NKC was set up in 2005 as a highl-level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India headed by Dr. Sam Pitroda with the objective of transforming India into a knowledge society. It covers sectors ranging from education to e-governance in five focus areas of knowledge paradigm; Access – easy access to knowledge, Concepts - all levels and forms on, Creation – effective creation of, Applications – of knowledge and Services – like e-governance.

Interacting with the Commission, Badal appreciated the recommendations of the NKC and said that the state government would implement them to strengthen the educational system, promote research and innovation and knowledge applications in sectors like health, agriculture and industry. He also evinced keen interest to work in tandem with commission in focus areas of literacy, education, higher education, technical education, medial education, vocational education, libraries, science & technology, innovations, intellectual property rights and language & portals. Mr.Badal assured the visiting team that the state government would extend fulsome support and cooperation to the Commission for translating its recommendations into reality.

Later, the team headed by Mr.Reghunathan alongwith two research associates Aditi Saraf and Kanan Dhru had a detailed meeting with a group of officers headed by Chief Secretary to share their vision and perspective on an action plan for Punjab on select areas such as e-governance, translation, libraries, higher education and vocational education.

Prominent amongst others who were present on the occasion included Chief Secretary RI Singh, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister DS Guru, Secretary Coordination Tejveer Singh and Additional Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Gagandeep Singh Brar.

From http://www.punjabnewsline.com,  July 28,2007 
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Chinese execs asked to help fight poverty

United Nations officials have called on China's business community to use ICT to help fight poverty in their country and abroad. "Development is no longer the sole responsibility of governments and non-governmental organisations," said Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang, addressing a group of Chinese executives in New York. "We also need to harness the collective strength of private sector entities in support of our development efforts. We therefore consider you as an indispensable stakeholder in the fight against poverty, illiteracy and disease." Sha noted that ICT can give a boost to education through distance learning, content creation and teacher training, and it can empower women by helping them to acquire new skills. Participants agreed that bolstering information technology can serve to improve quality of life, and that the provision of training is in the best interest of corporations.

From enn.ie,  August 29,2007 
[top]

E-governance to Stream into Bombay

Bombay will soon go the ‘e’ way. Now, you will not have to stand in a queue to pay your water bills or run from one table to the other at the municipal office to get your birth certificate.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) e-governance program will soon be launched and will make all these facilities easier and faster.

“This computerisation of the BMC’s business will help the common man and will save his time and money,” said Municipal Commissioner, Jairaj Phatak.

The SAP system will be introduced as a part of this programme. This system will help in the paying of octroi, water bills and property tax. It will also help in displaying information about all the 25 municipal hospitals on the website and also information about the patients admitted in these hospitals will be stored in a data ware house. A vehicle tracking system will also be part of this new system which will help organise the 1,400 vehicles of the Solid Waste Management (SWM) department of the BMC.

According to the BMC, this system will bring transparency to the working of the corporation and will ease the facilities for citizens on a large scale. This system will make available all the data on one single platform and will help in co-ordination between different departments.

“The system will be inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh and it will soon be active,” said Phatak.

From http://www.cybernoon.com/,  July 25,2007 
[top]

Dubai GIS Centre to Participate at GITEX 2007

The GIS Centre volunteers, who will be available on both the Municipality and Dubai E-Government stalls, will be distributing gift items and brochures and presenting latest projects and services of the Centre. Sumaya Ismail Al Zarouni of the GIS Centre will give a special presentation on 9th September about the E-map service that is offered by the Centre.

"Electronic maps offer full fledged geospatial capabilities in an easy to use framework to both developers of government services and their users," said Manal Al Shamlan, Head of GIS Development Section.

She said it is an electronic service that offers an interactive, comprehensive and high quality map consisting of geographic features and attributes for the Emirate of Dubai.

"One of the key features of this service is that it adds a significant quality to the electronic services and desktop applications. The service can be incorporated within any e-service or any application without the need for prior knowledge of GIS application programming," said Al Shamlan.

"One can identify sites on the map through a research tool with the use of the advantage of enlargement and miniaturization and other tools available. E-Map can be combined or plugged to any sites or programme," she said.

Al Shamlan said one can use the e-Map easily and does not require any training. "To connect the e-Map the user can click on the e-Map link and plug it to the website," she said.

The GIS Centre was established in February 2001 by Dubai Municipality with the goal of creating a central repository of geographic information of the Emirate of Dubai that would provide spatial data and GIS-related services to the departments of Dubai Municipality, other government organizations of Dubai and the private sector.

GIS centre's vision is to make the geographic data as a public utility and provide the government and private sectors in Dubai with accessibility to link to GIS.

From http://www.ameinfo.com,  August 23,2007 
[top]

E-government to Serve Citizens at Their Houses

VietNamNet Bridge – Developing e-government is to help the government operate more effectively, more transparently and to better serve the people, said Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Vu Duc Dam.

Vietnam’s e-government ranking soars

A research group of the US’ Brown University shows that Vietnam gained a big leap in developing e-government (jumping from 126th in 2006 to 90th in 2007). Is this good news for Vietnam?

It’s good news for Vietnam but we should not be satisfied with it. Though we gain a big leap, we are still behind 89 countries, economies. To have an e-government at the same level with that of Singapore, the Republic of Korea or Northern European countries, where citizens can have contacts and transactions with the government via the Internet everywhere, anytime, we are still far from it and we have to exert efforts for many years.

A Singaporean or Canadian citizen who is travelling in Vietnam can still fulfill business establishment formalities through the Internet. When they declare information online, their private information will be automatically filed up by computer if they have registered to any government agency online before. To reach that level, the working process of each state agency must be standardised, clear and computerised. Moreover, the information system, including databases of those agencies must be linked into one. For citizens, a real government is a door and that door is a networked computer. That door is open 24/7 and is always near citizens.

Many people say that Vietnam doesn’t have electronic citizens so this will make the process to build the e-government slow?

I don’t worry about that issue. The people are not only ready to receive benefits from e-government but also will acquire them. Let’s imagine if the government is ready to provide services online; are the people willing to use them or do they still want to go and wait at state agencies?

The state, by developing e-government, will help the people to become electronic citizens soon. For example, everybody wants to have a code to use in all transactions with the government, instead of using the numbers of identity card, insurance card or driving licence.

How is the building of e-government in Vietnam progressing so far?

The gap between the expectations and the demands of the people and businesses and the fact is very wide. It is easy to see that most ministries, sectors and provinces have had their electronic portals or websites to have contact with the people and businesses. However, most of those only provide one-way, insufficient information. Some provinces and agencies begin to receive feedback from the people and businesses but this task is perfunctory. The number of online services is modest and they are becoming familiar to the people in big cities only.

How difficult is it to develop e-government in Vietnam?

New and unprecedented things often face difficulties at the beginning. E-government requires changes related to machinery and humans as well as synchronous measures. Only the requirement of publicity, transparence has affected the interests of part of state employees, thus the development of e-government faces many barriers. In addition, many state employees are afraid of learning information technology.

However, the driving force to overcoming those hindrances is bigger and bigger. That’s the requirement from the people and businesses, from the development of technology, and from the examples of leaders. If ministers and chairmen of provinces and cities have online dialogues to the people and have their own websites like the Prime Minister, there will be strong and widespread promotion.

The Ministry of Information and Communications is assigned to design the e-government scheme. How is it performed?

We have designed and submitted this scheme, which is named “IT application in state agencies to 2010” to the Prime Minister. This scheme is worked out based on experiences at home and abroad. This is not a super scheme with a huge fund but a guiding programme to bring into play the initiative of agencies at all levels.

The first step in building e-government is computerising administration?

Of course. If the administrative system and formalities are computerised, the operation of the state machinery will be thorough, effective and more transparent. At that time even if the transactions between the people and the government are not performed online, the people would be still better served. On the other hand, without computerising administration and the connection of information in the administrative system, how can transactions with the people through the Internet be performed?

From http://english.vietnamnet.vn,  July 28,2007 
[top]

South Korea still tops for e-government

Asian nations are continuing to perform well in international e-government assessments, taking the top three spots in a study by researchers at Brown University in the US. South Korea maintained its top ranking in the annual study since last year, with Singapore and Taiwan in second and third place. The US was next in fourth place, ahead of Great Britain. Ireland came in at eleventh position, down from seventh last year. The researchers evaluated government sites based on criteria including disability access, the existence of publications and databases, the presence of privacy policies and security policies, contact information, and the number of online services. The study found that 28 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, about the same as in 2006. Ninety-six percent of sites have online publications and 80 percent have links to databases. Only 23 percent of sites provide disability access, however, the same as last year. The full report can be downloaded from InsidePolitics.org.

From enn.ie,  August 16,2007 
[top]

Global E-government 16 August

UK considers blog monitoring: The UK government is trying to come up with a method for monitoring public opinion aired in blogs or discussion forums, according to a report in the Financial Times. The Central Office of Information's Media Monitoring Unit is considering how to include what people say about public policy on the web in the regular media briefings it sends to ministers. The briefings are often used as an early warning service on issues rising up the public agenda. Clarence Mitchell, director of the MMU, said that while there was debate about the objectivity of some bloggers, several were taken increasingly seriously within government. "There's a whole level of debate taking place online which simply didn't exist before and departments feel they need to be fully engaged in that," said Mitchell. Any blog monitoring service would need a sufficient number of government departments to agree to cover the extra costs involved; if this happens, a service could launch by the end of the year, the MMU said.


EU launches health warning system: The European Commission has developed a system that alerts public health officials to potential threats by sorting information from news websites. The MediSys system provides European health authorities with real-time information on developing health hazards such as disease outbreaks or industrial accidents. The system collects and sorts data from more than 1,000 news websites and 120 public health sites in 32 languages -- and uses e-mail and SMS to automatically alert health officials, giving them timely warnings of possible hazards. The European Commission says while other systems can monitor certain data -- such as death rates or hospital admissions -- they can miss public health threats reported in the press or other sources that MediSys will pick up. Read more on this story on ENN.



South Korea still tops for e-government: Asian nations are continuing to perform well in international e-government assessments, taking the top three spots in a study by researchers at Brown University in the US. South Korea maintained its top ranking in the annual study since last year, with Singapore and Taiwan in second and third place. The US was next in fourth place, ahead of Great Britain. Ireland came in at eleventh position, down from seventh last year. The researchers evaluated government sites based on criteria including disability access, the existence of publications and databases, the presence of privacy policies and security policies, contact information, and the number of online services. The study found that 28 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, about the same as in 2006. Ninety-six percent of sites have online publications and 80 percent have links to databases. Only 23 percent of sites provide disability access, however, the same as last year. The full report can be downloaded from InsidePolitics.org.


South Africa slow to make e-gov progress: Municipalities in the South African province of Gauteng are still in the very early stages of e-government development, according to a new study by the Wits LINK centre, reports tech newswire ITWeb. Of 14 municipalities surveyed, 12 had a website, but only one -- the city of Johannesburg -- was deemed to have made significant progress in terms of e-government delivery. "Websites are not explicit about what the various municipal functions are, how they are shared between local and district authorities and what social development and local economic development information is available," said Luci Abrahams of the Wits LINK centre. Other criticisms of municipal websites included poor responsiveness to e-mail queries, outdated content, too much information available only in English, poor search facilities and slow-loading webpages. The report recommended that "there must be explicit objectives for social development and local economic development. Also, provinces must have their e-government strategies aligned with those objectives and their own priorities."


NZ offers citizens advice on the web: New Zealand's Citizens Advice Bureau has been awarded NZD1.3 million in government funding to bring its services online, reports the Dominion Post. The CAB intends to use the grant, along with another NZD340,000 provided by the Consumer Affairs Ministry, to develop a website offering information and advice. The organisation offers advice on a range of areas, from employment and consumer problems to budgeting and tenancy issues. Citizens will be able to get free advice from volunteers through a real-time online chat facility on the site. The CAB will also install internet kiosks at its drop-in centres, where people can access its database and e-government services.

From http://www.electricnews.net/ ,  August 16,2007 
[top]

Cabinet Approves IT Blueprint

If a government plan to go digital comes to fruition, Russians will be able to circumvent endless lines at passport offices and even marriage registries by 2010.

The e-Government project, which was approved by the Cabinet at a meeting Thursday, will increase efficiency and transfer the bulk of official bureaucracy online, IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said.

From http://www.moscowtimes.ru,  August 17,2007 
[top]

PloneGov Selected as a Finalist of the European e-Government Awards

PloneGov is selected among the 52 best European e-Government projects, and is invited to present the project at the fourth Ministerial eGovernment Conference held in Lisbon in September 2007. PloneGov projects relies on 2 renowned open source software : Plone and Zope. Its success results from a close collaboration between public organizations and Zea Partners, an international network of SME building Zope and Plone solutions.

The third European eGovernment Awards, organised by the European Commission, selects good practices on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in public service.

Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, is expected to present the European eGovernment Awards 2007 for the most outstanding eGovernment solutions at the fourth Ministerial eGovernment Conference 2007 on 20 September in Lisbon, Portugal.

During the Conference, a major display of 52 real-life eGovernment solutions and applications will be organised to highlight new developments in Europe and to build upon these in order to stimulate the take-up and dissemination of good practices.

The forthcoming Portuguese presidency and the European Commission will jointly organise the Conference. This fourth Ministerial eGovernment Conference is the main European eGovernment event in 2007; it will feature achievements across European Member States and showcase good practices, as well as look towards the future.

Together with the forthcoming Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Lisbon (Portugal), the Awards revolve around four main themes relating to ICT:


Better public services for growth and jobs
Online public services directly contributing to the economic growth and jobs creation strategy of the European Union (known as Lisbon Agenda).
Participation and transparency
Interactive initiatives that empower citizens and business to influence open government, policy-making and the way public administrations operate and deliver services.
Social impact and cohesion
Public service initiatives contributing to improve the social environment and social cohesion. Services can be local, national, or European; user-oriented, inclusive, and interoperable.
Effective and efficient administration
Innovations or re-organisations in services and processes, which make administrations more efficient and effective and reduce administrative burden.
Public prize - Most inspiring Good Practice
Initiatives that provide creative solutions to common challenges and inspire others. For this prize there will be a vote by the public. All who register with the Good Practice Portal by 1 September 2007 can vote and provide comments.

Following the eligibility screening, each submitted case has been evaluated by a panel of independent experts. The experts work separately in a first phase of the evaluation process and agree on a ranking in the second to ensure the highest standards and complete impartiality. The result of the first two phases of the evaluation will be the selection of 52 finalists.


PloneGov, a major Plone e-government project, is selected among the 52 finalists and will be presented in Lisbon in September 2007. The winners will be presented at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference 2007 at the Awards ceremony on 19 September in Lisbon (PT).

This selection among the best European project is a success for Plone, Zope and Python. We hope that our action will be awarded and our community congratulated for its fabulous day-to-day work.

From http://www.zeapartners.org,  August 18,2007 
[top]

Portal Combat

Hired to create the government's most ambitious 'supersite' for all things public services, the chief executive of Directgov Jayne Nickalls tells Michael Cross that this time - despite the sizable challenges ahead - the plan will succeed.

In more than 20 years of solving technical problems for public bodies and private businesses, Jayne Nickalls has faced some tough challenges. She is now lining up for the toughest: persuading hundreds of government organisations to channel their communications with tens of millions of citizens through a single website: Directgov, of which she is the first chief executive.

The site, which has been running for three years, is supposed to be government's window on the web. A type of government Google, Expedia, Wikipedia and Facebook rolled in to one. The difference is, hardly anyone seems to have heard of it. The National Audit Office (NAO) reported last month that only 2% of internet users could name Directgov unprompted. "Brand awareness is an issue," Nickalls admits.

But people are finally getting used to "e-government". Nearly half of Britain's motorists buy their tax discs online. And it's not just national bodies. The north London borough of Hackney last year received four out of five of its applications for school places online.

At the moment, most e-government transactions go through thousands of agency, departmental and local authority sites. Directgov is supposed to replace the lot. Nickalls says rationalisation would be good for citizens: "All our research shows that people want a single channel to government." She says that once people find Directgov, they like it: "More than 80% of users think it's a very good site."

Rationalisation is a centrepiece of government IT strategy. Consolidating the rambling government estate in cyberspace was an idea promoted by Sir David Varney's review of government services, published by the Treasury last December. Varney estimated that the government could save £400m over three years by channelling all its e-activities through just two sites, Directgov and its business equivalent, businesslink.gov.uk.

However, the "supersite" scheme may be at odds with public agencies' desire to promote their own brand identities on the web. Nickalls says she is looking forward to the challenge. But does she realise she could be blamed for every problem encountered with government websites? "Of course!"

Empiricist training

Nickalls is one of a new breed of specialists being hired to beef up the government IT corps, which suffered more than a decade of hollowing-out through outsourcing and low salaries. Her background is in both government and the private sector. She began her career as a police scientific officer, working on software for classifying stolen works of art and on IT links between courts and police stations. She also spent seven years with a US-based software start-up. Her empiricist training left a mark - she comes over as someone who prefers facts to opinions.

Her current task is two-pronged. First, she has to persuade public bodies to route their electronic services through Directgov. Second, she has to persuade the public that Directgov should be its natural first port of call on the web when it comes to anything related to the government or public services. The site attracts 8 million unique visitors a month, well behind big commercial portals such as Google. It is not even the top UK government site - both the Met Office and Jobcentre Plus have more electronic visitors.

Directgov, launched in 2004, is the Cabinet Office's third stab at setting up a web portal for the UK public sector. The first, Opengov, was little more than a directory of departmental sites. In 2000, its successor, UK Online, attempted to channel citizens to e-services, such as filing tax returns online, through individual departments' websites. Directgov is supposed to take this process to its logical conclusion.

For all the hopes invested in Directgov, it had a troubled infancy. It was abandoned in 2005 when the cabinet office shed most of its responsibilities for running IT. It was then picked up by the Central Office of Information, but relied on other departments to supply content at their own expense.

In his review, Varney observed that the Directgov team spent an "undue amount of time" simply raising funds to maintain the site and warned that fears about the site's feasibility and sustainability were making other departments nervous about moving e-services there.

The solution was to give Directgov a secure home. Next April, it moves to the Department for Work and Pensions, as part the DWP's new remit as a ministry for citizens. That is good news, says Nickalls: "Our natural home is a big service department." Probably more important, however, is the fact that the new governance comes with new money. Nickalls says she expects Directgov's budget to go up from £8m to £30m next year, which she believes could help fund some serious brand building. It is a critical issue for her.

To date, Directgov has had only one serious, but limited, promotional campaign. In March last year, the cabinet office found £1.1m to paint some London buses orange and promote Directgov services in radio advertisements. Nickalls says the campaign did boost awareness among the target audience, and she insists that she is happy with the growth rate. "When I first joined [in 2005], we were getting 1 million visitors a month. We're doubling every year."

The next hurdle will be to begin bringing the various services on board. Departments are set to draw up convergence plans this summer, with a "superplan" to be compiled by the end of the year. In the meantime, the Cabinet Office has published a list of 550 government websites destined for closure. It is an ambitious goal.

In July, the NAO warned that converging all government web services on to two sites would be an unprecedented and bold plan and would need to be carefully managed. It also flagged up possible problems with the fact that four out of five people seeking information from the government start with a commercial search engine.

Nickalls remains unfazed, saying that rationalisation will continue despite such concerns. But she may have more fundamental things to worry about. A report, Power of Information, published in June by the prime minister's strategy unit, has questioned the whole basis of the way government works on the web. Rather than trying to control electronic information, it argues that Whitehall should let go, for example, by giving citizens' groups access to (non-confidential) government data to create self-help websites and encourage civil servants to chip in openly to blogs, wikis and social networking sites.

One of the report's authors was Tom Steinberg, interviewed in these pages in January, whose MySociety group fired a warning salvo at the government's ambitions when it created one of the best running jokes on the web: directionlessgov.com. It mocks Directgov by racing its search engine against Google's. (Generally, Directionless wins.)

Unfair, says Nickalls. "Directionless does work a lot of the time. But it misses the point that Directgov joins up information for the citizen in a way that they understand. If you do a Google search you will get the information from a number of places and the citizen has to do the linking up for themself."

User exchange

In its response to the Power of Information report, the Cabinet Office proposes that Directgov embraces Web 2.0 technology by incorporating a blog in which users exchange their experiences. (UKOnline's attempt at a user-generated service was withdrawn after moderators were overwhelmed by outbursts on subjects such as fuel prices and foot and mouth disease.)

When pressed on whether centralisation and rationalisation are the best philosophies for web-era government, a touch of irritation creeps into Nickalls' voice. "All our research, all our feedback, shows that people want the facility." She is one of them.

"The last thing I used Directgov for? Getting a form for my daughter's passport ... also for car tax, schools finder and Ofsted reports." She has also reported a dead fox to the London borough of Bromley, through the Local Directgov service. "I run my life online," she says.

From http://society.guardian.co.uk/,  August 22,2007 
[top]

Europe Gets Health Check Tech

The European Commission has developed a system that alerts public health officials to potential threats by sorting information from news websites.

The MediSys system provides European health authorities with real-time information on developing health hazards such as disease outbreaks or industrial accidents.


The system collects and sorts data from more than 1,000 news websites and 120 public health sites in 32 different languages -- and uses e-mail and SMS to automatically alert health officials, giving them timely warnings of possible hazards.



During the recent foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK, for example, the proliferation of news reports on the issue triggered alerts to be sent to public health officials across Europe.


The European Commission says while other systems can monitor certain data -- such as death rates or hospital admissions -- they can miss public health threats reported in the press or other sources that MediSys will pick up.


MediSys uses keywords to sort information into three categories: 'diseases', 'bioterrorism' and 'other threats'. The information is then sorted into more specific categories, such as particular disease types.


An automatic diease incident detection system, which complements MediSys and has been developed with the University of Helsinki, is also up and running.


The system extracts information -- such as the number of cases, location and date -- from English news reports. This information is then fed into a database and can be accessed by the EC, member states and EU citizens.

From http://www.electricnews.net/ ,  August 16,2007 
[top]

UK considers blog monitoring

The UK government is trying to come up with a method for monitoring public opinion aired in blogs or discussion forums, according to a report in the Financial Times. The Central Office of Information's Media Monitoring Unit is considering how to include what people say about public policy on the web in the regular media briefings it sends to ministers. The briefings are often used as an early warning service on issues rising up the public agenda. Clarence Mitchell, director of the MMU, said that while there was debate about the objectivity of some bloggers, several were taken increasingly seriously within government. "There's a whole level of debate taking place online which simply didn't exist before and departments feel they need to be fully engaged in that," said Mitchell. Any blog monitoring service would need a sufficient number of government departments to agree to cover the extra costs involved; if this happens, a service could launch by the end of the year, the MMU said.

From enn.ie,  August 16,2007 
[top]

E-Government is to be Created in Russia by 2010

By 2010 the RF citizens will be able to receive the main socially important state services through the internet. That is what Leonid Reiman, RF Minister of Information Technologies and Telecommunications said at a government session.

ICT usage in government bodies’ operations makes state services handier for citizens and organizations. According to Mr. Reiman, the key index to solve the given task is the number of state services provided in the electronic form, i.e. do not require the citizens to address the government authorities in person.

In 2006 the new version of the Federal Targeted Program E-Russia prepared by the Ministry of Communication was approved. Within the first years of the program implementation precious experience was gained and the necessary conditions for wider ICT implementation into the government administration were created. Leonid Reiman notes the achieved level of the departments’ technologic equipment makes it possible to provide the public services through the internet and move to the electronic interdepartmental cooperation.

Within the new edition of the Federal Targeted Program E-Russia, in particular, the planned measures are described in details, and their certain monitoring indices are shown. “The problem we are facing at present is to make it possible to receive through the internet the main socially important public service by 2010. That corresponds to EU plans”, - Mr. Reiman outlines.

From http://eng.cnews.ru,  August 23,2007 
[top]

UK tool aims to tackle life expectancy gap

The UK's Department of Health has launched the Health Inequalities Intervention Tool, an interactive website aimed at helping local health services and councils improve life expectancy in areas of deprivation. The web tool is designed to help Primary Care Trusts, Practice-Based Commissioners and local authorities in so-called 'Spearhead areas' to understand the impact of simple measures on the life expectancy gap of their local populations. Spearhead areas are among the most deprived and vulnerable areas in the country, typically with more unemployment, lone parents and minority ethnic groups than average. Such areas account for more than one quarter of the population of England and have a lower life expectancy than the rest of the country. The Health Inequalities Intervention Tool shows the diseases which are causing low life expectancy in each Spearhead area, and it provides a "ready reckoner" to illustrate the impact interventions could have, such as smoking cessation, reducing infant deaths and treating heart problems. The tool can be used as part of a comprehensive local strategy to reduce health inequalities, the Department of Health said.

From enn.ie,  August 29,2007 
[top]

EU launches health warning system

The European Commission has developed a system that alerts public health officials to potential threats by sorting information from news websites. The MediSys system provides European health authorities with real-time information on developing health hazards such as disease outbreaks or industrial accidents. The system collects and sorts data from more than 1,000 news websites and 120 public health sites in 32 languages -- and uses e-mail and SMS to automatically alert health officials, giving them timely warnings of possible hazards. The European Commission says while other systems can monitor certain data -- such as death rates or hospital admissions -- they can miss public health threats reported in the press or other sources that MediSys will pick up. Read more on this story on ENN.

From enn.ie,  August 16,2007 
[top]

Kids' laptop wins design prize

The XO Laptop, also known as USD100 laptop -- created for children in developing countries -- has won an international design award. The XO was designed by a team at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation, whose aim is to provide every child in developing countries with a laptop. The machine, which is affordable yet technically advanced, was recognised in the 'Community' category at the INDEX: AWARDS in Copenhagen. The laptop, which is about the size of a textbook and weighs less than a typical lunchbox, can be powered by a crank, pedal or pull-cord and is shock- and water-resistant, with a sunlight-readable screen. Encouraging computer literacy is seen as one way to help developing nations catch up with the global information economy. Several countries, including Argentina, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand, have already committed to buying the XO for schoolchildren.

From enn.ie,  August 29,2007 
[top]

Is High-Speed Internet Growth Slowing

The rapid expansion of the multibillion-dollar high-speed Internet business may be slowing, threatening one of the major growth engines for cable and phone companies.

The four largest phone and cable operators -- AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. -- added a total of 1.2 million broadband subscribers in the second quarter, 21% fewer than they added during the year-earlier quarter, and short of Wall Street analysts' projections.

While second-quarter results are typically weak, mainly because college students are disconnecting, the results suggest that the market is maturing. Until now, cable and telephone companies have primarily been focusing on persuading dial-up Internet subscribers to pay more for faster speeds.

That market is getting tapped out, prompting cable and telephone companies to eye each other's customers more hungrily. Operators are competing against each other aggressively with offers of faster speeds and new services such as video messaging.

"We still see growth but we are going to have to approach it in a different way," says Landel Hobbs, chief operating officer for Time Warner Cable.

The broadband deceleration comes after years of being on fire with growth. More than 50% of households in the U.S., or about 56 million homes, currently subscribe to a high-speed Internet service. An additional 21 million or so households have dial-up connections.

Industry watchers predict broadband growth will continue but statistics indicate the U.S. will remain well behind other countries that have adopted broadband more quickly. The U.S. is ranked 25th in broadband penetration, behind countries including South Korea, where penetration is 89%, and Canada, where it is 63%.

Analysts note the broadband growth rate may pick up later this year. Some companies and analysts believe that the dip in the last quarter was because the overall market is substantially bigger this year than last, making seasonal swings more pronounced.

Also, some telephone companies have slowed their use of discounts to attract customers. For example, AT&T last year offered introductory broadband rates as low as $12.99 a month, but canceled the promotion late last year to reduce the number of consumers who canceled service when the discount expired, according to a spokesman. AT&T now charges $19.99 a month for the same bundle, but introduced a slower tier for $14.99 a month.

After aggressive discounting, phone and cable companies are starting to "throttle back" and be more prudent in the types of customers they are going after, suggests Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group in Durham, N.H. "The market grew too quickly in 2005 and 2006," Mr. Leichtman says, and may be entering a new phase.

Some analysts say the lower growth rate could worsen by weakness in the housing market. If fewer people move to new houses, fewer may be in the market for new Internet service.

A number of broadband-dependent industries, such as online video sites and Internet calling services, could feel ripple effects if the number of high-speed subscribers begins to level off. Some have business plans built on the assumption that broadband adoption would continue apace.

Starting in the late 1990s, cable operators took an early lead in rolling out broadband services, initially capturing a two-thirds market share. Telephone companies had a tough time competing, partly because the digital subscriber line, or DSL, technology they used wasn't as fast as cable modems.

Telephone companies fought back using price, with introductory offers below $20 a month, compared with the $45 to $50 a month rate many cable companies charge. These discounts were effective for a while. Telephone companies began adding more than 50% of the new customers signing up for broadband.

DSL's share of net additions to the broadband market has been declining for more than a year, according to Craig Moffett, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Mr. Moffett says customers are opting for cable's faster speeds because they feel it's better for watching the millions of videos that are flooding the Web. "In a world of YouTube and Joost, [DSL] just isn't good enough," he says.

Meanwhile, cable operators have been holding the line on price. In the second quarter, for example, Comcast's average monthly revenue from a broadband subscriber was $43.37, compared with $43.06, the previous year.

The broadband battle is far from over because phone companies are scrambling to offer higher speeds as well. Verizon is deploying a fiber-optic network called FiOS that is delivering speeds of up to 50 megabits per second, far faster than the 1.5 to five megabits common for most DSL connections.

Operators also are trying to boost broadband sales by offering unique content and features. Comcast has compiled thousands of news, sports, entertainment and other videos in a feature it calls "the fan," which is available only to its subscribers. AT&T created a co- branded home page with Yahoo Inc., while Verizon in the spring launched a site called ActionHero, which showcases the power of its broadband offering.

From Wall Street Journal,  September 8,2007 
[top]

On the Web, English Becomes Coin of the Realm; Sites Translate Content In Hopes of Attracting Global Advertising

The Internet may be a global platform, but when it comes to advertising, one language speaks louder than others: English.

A number of European newspapers and content providers have come to that conclusion as they try to position themselves to get a bigger slice of the Internet advertising pie. As print advertising slips, newspapers are increasingly leaning on their Web sites to make up the difference. To maximize ad revenue, these sites must try to draw global interest. Some European news sites are taking note, trying to grab attention from readers and advertisers world-wide by producing more content in English.

Running a news service in more than one language isn't easy. Finding and hiring bilingual staff is expensive, and it takes time for translated sites to attract foreign interest and ad revenue. Nonetheless, non-English news sites are jumping in to compete for international readership.

The latest to feel the pinch is Les Echos, France's leading business daily. Parent company Pearson PLC is putting it up for sale, in part because it's worried that the paper's French-language content doesn't travel well.

"Our strategy is about more digital and more global, and Les Echos is about mostly print," Pearson Chief Executive Marjorie Scardino said last month at a press briefing. Les Echos, she said, was a "national brand."

"Money goes where the audience is," said David Katz, head of trading at London-based interactive-media agency Media Contact. "Being in English is an advantage."

France 24, a French round-the-clock news channel, produces all its Web site content simultaneously in English, French and Arabic. "You need the English language to attack the international ad market," said Stanislas Leridon, Internet and new media director.

German weekly magazine Der Spiegel translates about 20% of its news into English and offers it free on its Web site. Daryl Lindsey, managing editor of Der Spiegel International's English site, said this has helped attract global advertisers to the German print publication. "Some advertisers found Der Spiegel through our international Web site. It really helps to get the brand out there," he said. The English site also draws revenue by syndicating articles via the New York Times and by attracting readers to the German site. According to Mr. Lindsey, the English section of Der Spiegel brings in 27% of the site's total unique visitors.

Certainly, the Internet ad market is still young, and how it will evolve is unclear. While English-language content may be the most attractive to global advertisers, other languages, such as Spanish, Chinese and French, also have pull, and plenty of Internet-based advertising targets local markets.

The online edition of French daily Le Monde is the country's most popular news Web site, and more than a third of its readers are outside France. Yet it attracts very little foreign advertising. Elodie Buronfosse, head of marketing at Le Monde online, says the site still attracts plenty of advertisers focusing on the French market, making it profitable.

"Of course, we would like to attract more international attention," Ms. Buronfosse said. But it's impractical to translate the site into English, she says. "It would be a lot of work, and the potential gain is not worth it."

Meanwhile, the Internet has been a boon for British newspapers and content sites. The use of English gives their Web sites a big advantage over their European counterparts.

BBC News' online service was visited by 7.2 million people in June, making it the most popular British news site. France and Germany's top news sites, TF1 News and Spiegel Online, each attracted less than half that, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Foreign visitors to the Web sites of most of Britain's national papers outnumber local British visitors, according to comScore Networks Inc.

A spokeswoman for the BBC said the broadcaster plans to sell advertising on its Web sites targeted at visitors from outside the United Kingdom and is waiting for approval from its governing board. With 40 million readers a month, the BBC's sites would likely attract advertisers looking for international coverage, media buyers say.

The Financial Times, which is owned by Pearson, gets 85% of its online audience from outside the U.K., comScore says.

The Independent says its growing international following has boosted the paper's image. "It helps the brand, and it helps our position as news commentators," said Richard Withey, the global director of Independent News & Media PLC's digital-publishing arm. Jacques Barraux, editor in chief of Les Echos, said the paper may have to translate some material into English, but French can still claim its place on the Internet. "There is still space for the other seven or eight languages that dominate the planet," he said.

From Wall Street Journal,  June 8,2007 
[top]

100 Countries Adopt e-Government Programs to Modernize, Reform Public Services

Newswise — National and municipal authorities in more than 100 countries are introducing e-Government programs to modernize and reform public services. The authoritative new book, E-Governance, presents Global E-Governance initiatives in both developed and developing countries, presenting reports by sixty leading government, business and academic experts describing how many initiatives are essential to create “information societies.”

The major components of E-Government are extensively presented, including: (1) transitions to information/ubiquitous societies in Japan, South Korea, Finland, and Spain; (2) priority e-Government applications and services in Indonesia, Philippines, China, Russia and other countries; (3) expansion of e-Municipality programs in China, South Korea; Estonia and Europe; (4) ICT applications ranging from Next Generation Networks, e-projects in Finland, Thailand’s e-filing strategy, smart card applications in Hong Kong, SAR and ICT incubator experiences in Georgia and (5) the role of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in Japan, Thailand, and Europe.

The book is a highly practical resource for those seeking to learn how governments in several countries have designed and implemented e-Government strategies, rolled-out priority public service applications, and adopted necessary legal and regulatory policies including digital signature, authentication, privacy and security initiatives.

These important trends and developments were presented at a major international conference sponsored by the Waseda University Institute of e-Government in Japan, organized by Prof. Toshio Obi, who served as editor of the e-Governance book. Underscoring the importance of e-governance, Obi said “This is regarded as one of the most important dimensions in the Information Society. Global e-Governance for both public and private sectors is becoming extremely significant in an innovative and seamless world community.”

E-Governance
A Global Perspective on a New Paradigm
Volume 1 Global E-Governance Series
Editor: T. Obi
August 2007, 192 pp., hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-58603-776-5
Price: US$130 / €100 / £68

CONTENTS
Information/Ubiquitous Society
Global e-Governance / Y. Utsumi
Japan’s Information Technology Strategy / T. Motegi
Ubiquitous Society in Japan / T. Murakami
Ubiquitous Society Experiences in Korea / J.-S. Youm
Issues on Information Society in Finland / A.-V. Anttiroiko
Digital Local Agenda: A Strategy for the Development of the Information Society / X. Abaroa
E-Government and E-Governance: Towards a Clarification in the Usage of Both Concepts / L. Orihuela and T. Obi

e-Government
e-Government and e-Leadership / N. Hanna
The Japanese New IT Reform Strategy / I. Matsuda
R&D and Capacity Building for ICT/CIO Development in Thailand / R. Pravich
ICT Policy in Indonesia / D. Sofyan
Philippines ICT Policy Roadmap / T. Diaz De Rivera
E-Government in Brazil / S. Barreiros
e-Government in China / M. Yan
e-Government Experiences in Finland / J. Julin
Implementation of Electronic Government Concept in Russia: Current Stage and Prospects for the Future / Y. Fedotov
How Has Taiwan Achieved the World’s Highest e-Government Standard? / F.Y.-H. Sung

e-Municipality
Strategy for Local e-Government in Japan / T. Shimokouchi
The e-Government Movement of the Local Chinese Governments: Serving the Public While Enhancing Governmental Capabilities / F. Yang
City Development Strategies in the City of San Fernando / M.J. Ortega
Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide 2005: An Assessment of Municipal Web Sites Throughout the World / S.-T. Kim
Optimal Strategy for e-Government at City Level / H. Astok
Open City Portals / M. Kusakabe

ICT and Applications
New Generation Networks in Broadband/Ubiquitous Society / N. Wada
UNESCO and International Strategy for Disaster Reduction / K. Matsuura
Living with Risk: Mainstreaming Reduction of Disaster Risk and Vulnerability in Development / H. Van Ginkel and S. Herath
Role of University on e-Governance / M. Pornchai
e-Projects in Finland / J. Viitanen
Thailand e-Filing Strategy / J. Siriseangtaksin
e-Government Infrastructure: Smart Cards Can Provide the Last Mile / A.S. Kohli
ICT Incubators, the Georgian Experience / D. Tsiklauri
Broadband for Local and Regional Governments / S. Willis

The Role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) and its Relationship with e-Governance
CIO in Japan / H. Mase
CIO in Thailand / T. Pairash
CIO in the United States / J.P. Auffret
CIO in Europe / M. Finger
Education for ICT Manpower / F. Cho
Japanese e-Government Toward Ubiquitous Society in Japan / T. Obi

About IOS Press
IOS Press (http://www.iospress.nl), celebrating its 20th anniversary, publishes some 85 international journals and approximately 100 book titles a year, ranging from computer sciences and mathematics to medicine and the natural sciences. Commencing its publishing activities in 1987, IOS Press serves a variety of scientific and medical communities in all parts of the world. IOS Press is a rapidly-growing publishing company that embraces new technologies for the dissemination of information. All journals are available online and an online book platform was launched in the first half of 2006. Following its founding, IOS Press established several co-publishing initiatives. Its most recent expansion is the acquisition of Delft University Press at the end of 2005. IOS Press also maintains offices in the Washington, DC area, Berlin and a co-publishing relationship with Ohmsha, Ltd (Tokyo).

From http://www.newswise.com,  August 21,2007 
[top]

Googling 'Monopoly'

Barely a week goes by without a new Google controversy. Most recently, the company has been in a dispute at the FCC over the rules for the upcoming spectrum auction. Egged on by self-styled public interest groups and Google rivals, regulators have the company in their sights. Google has been under fire in Europe for retaining its data too long; in Oakland, Calif., for recording someone's cat sitting in a window as part of its new Street View map service; and back in Washington for purchasing the Internet advertising firm, DoubleClick.

In the last few months, the three most prominent players in the world of online advertising have each announced major acquisitions: Google-DoubleClick, Microsoft-aQuantive, and Yahoo-Right Media. Yet the Google deal has stirred the most controversy and is currently being scrutinized by the Federal Trade Commission. Merger reviews are difficult when the markets are rapidly changing, as they clearly are here. Internet advertising is growing rapidly -- up 38% globally in the last year. As TV and the Internet converge, the market will expand even more dramatically.

The great appeal of Internet advertising is the ability to target the message to consumers more precisely than in other media. Using information from a variety of sources, including sometimes the past history of an individual's Internet browsing, ads can be delivered to consumers that are most likely to be of use to them.

Those who complain about Google's purchase of DoubleClick make two claims. Both are flawed.

The first argument is that, since both firms have a large market share of their respective spheres, a merger would be monopolistic. The flaw is that the two companies undertake activities that don't overlap. Google places text ads mainly on its own Web sites and search-result screens. DoubleClick delivers display ads from advertisers to Web sites. It creates no ads and controls no Web sites. Even if we believe that Internet advertising is a distinct market (debatable, since it comprises only about 5% of all advertising) the combined firms will not gain any market power since they do not have any business in common.

The second argument comes from privacy advocates who have filed a brief with the FTC. They say the merger "could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America." The FTC's antitrust function and its consumer protection function are fundamentally different. Indeed, the more information markets have, the more competitive they are. If "privacy" advocates have their way, there would be less information and markets would not work as well.

Marketers use information. Some people have a cockeyed notion that if this information benefits marketers, it is to the detriment of consumers. Wrong. Consumers benefit when marketers provide them with information about products, especially new products, that they may want. A free flow of information enabling more efficient "targeting" of consumers is to their advantage.

Opponents of Google's purchase of DoubleClick also cite the risk of identity theft, which they claim is increasing. The actual data from Javelin Strategy and Research indicate that identity theft is not increasing. More important, free use of information reduces this risk. After all, how does a seller identify a purchaser? One way is to ask questions, of which "mother's maiden name" is only one. For this method to work, sellers must have access to the information needed to check the answers and be sure that the purchaser is in fact who he says he is. It is exactly because this information is available that consumers can obtain financing for a car in one day, and more generally make purchases in many venues (including the Internet) easily.

Our intuitions about privacy and information are flawed. We tend to think that if something is known, then a person knows it. But most of the information used in Internet marketing is "known" only to computers. These computers do not start with a person and ask "What do we know about Tom Lenard?" Rather, they start by asking "Which IP numbers (Internet addresses) are likely to be associated with someone interested in a new car?" and then put ads for automobiles on those computers. No one knows or cares whose computer is targeted.

Even Google does not fully understand this process. When its opponents claim the company will have access to excessive information, Google defends itself by pointing out that they have in the past not misused data. The better answer is that the information to which they will have access will be useful for both consumers and sellers, and by having access to additional information they will provide large social benefits.

Both the antitrust and the consumer protection branches of the FTC should leave this acquisition alone. It will create benefits with no increase in market power and no harmful reduction of privacy.

---

Mr. Lenard is acting president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Mr. Rubin, an adjunct fellow at the foundation, is professor of economics and law at Emory University. Both were senior officials at the FTC during the 1980s.

From Wall Street Journal,  August 21,2007 
[top]

Democracy Heads to Web Laboratory; Novel Online Forums Reshape Presidential Debates, but Will Voters Engage?

Washington -- Last month's YouTube Democratic presidential debate, starring "Billiam the Snowman" and other Internet questioners, was just the beginning. In coming months, the candidates will become guinea pigs in a host of Web-based debating experiments -- from "video mashups" to instant-message questioning -- that will continue to transform how debates are produced and watched.

Months away from the first primaries and more than a year away from the presidential election, it isn't clear how many voters will tune in for the online events. Online proponents argue that Internet debates, forums and other online outreach efforts at least give voters more opportunities to find out about candidates and their policy positions.

The next big online experiment comes next month, when Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and the other Democrats participate in a forum co-sponsored by Yahoo, online magazine Slate and blog Huffington Post. Each candidate will be interviewed separately, answering the same questions posed by PBS host Charlie Rose.

But it won't be broadcast that way. Instead, viewers can mix the videos in any sequence they want. The "mashup" format allows viewers to turn the separate interviews into a kind of debate, by choosing among video snippets of the Democratic candidates answering the same questions and compare the answers back-to-back.

"The user will get to choose their path through the content," says Scott Moore, Yahoo's senior vice president of news and information. "It's up to the consumers on how much they want to consume and how they consume it."

The Internet influence on campaign debates sometimes gets ridiculed. One of the main Republican candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, declared the CNN/YouTube snowman debate undignified.

Sponsors of the experimental forums say the outlets can elevate the level of debate, providing new ways for voters around the country to get a more in-depth look at candidates on the issues than the 90- second format -- or the "raise your hand" approach -- of the main televised debates.

Online debates allow candidates "to go deeper into substantial explanation than you'd get on television with sound bites," says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, which has sponsored two online Democratic presidential town halls focusing on the Iraq war and energy policy and will sponsor a third this fall on health care.

In the MoveOn energy debate, for instance, Illinois Sen. Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards were asked about instituting an auction system for carbon-emission rights. Mr. Obama spent almost 2 1/2 minutes -- much longer than he would have had in a televised debate -- explaining how he would tweak the current system to include auctions. Mr. Edwards spoke almost as long about how such a system would provide great benefits to the U.S. Both clips have been watched about 11,000 times on YouTube.

Voter input and feedback are also going to expand dramatically in the coming months, both for online and conventional debates. In the "video mashup" being held next month, for instance, Mr. Rose will take the questions from viewers. Also next month, MySpace plans to start a series of forums for Republican and Democratic candidates across the country. Each will feature one presidential candidate speaking in a college campus hall filled with MySpace members. The meetings will also be broadcast online, where other MySpace users can submit questions via instant message and vote on how well the candidate has answered questions.

"Rather than putting 10 candidates on a stage and filtering questions through producers from traditional media, we were interested in finding a way to create as authentic dialogue as you can with someone running for president," said Jeff Berman, senior vice president of public affairs at MySpace. MySpace is a division of News Corp., which has agreed to acquire Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

For campaigns, the online format offers another advantage. For some of the forums, the candidates don't actually have to appear together in person at the same place at the same time. This campaign has seen a proliferation of debates and forums. Between now and the end of the year, no less than 16 debates, forums and town halls are being planned for the more than a dozen politicians vying for each party's nomination. That has become a sore point with the candidates, who try to juggle that with their regular campaign schedules. For the MoveOn town halls, candidates Webcast their remarks from different locations around the country.

The Democratic candidates have embraced online debating more fully than Republicans, and they have taken the lead with much of the experimentation. CNN and YouTube had to delay their plans for a Republican debate after two leading Republican candidates -- Mr. Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- cited scheduling conflicts and announced they would bypass the planned September event.

That prompted a small, vocal group of Republican political Internet consultants to protest and launch a Web site, Savethedebate.com. "We do realize that we're behind and the first step in any recovery is recognizing that you have a problem," said David All, a former congressional spokesman turned Internet consultant who helped start the blog TechRepublican.com.

Mr. Giuliani's campaign has confirmed he will attend the rescheduled CNN/YouTube debate in St. Petersburg, Fla., now planned for late November. Mr. Romney hasn't. "The proposed date is still well over three months away, so we haven't yet finalized any schedule plans that far in advance," said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney. Arizona Sen. John McCain has also confirmed he'll attend the debate, which has already attracted more than 1,200 video questions online.

For candidates, the Internet debates also come along with polls, which allow campaign supporters to rally online to show grass-roots support. At the end of each of its town halls, MoveOn members voted on the winner, and the group issued a fund-raising appeal on his behalf. Mr. Obama won one; Mr. Edwards, the other. MySpace will cap its town- hall series with a two-day national online primary in January.

In December, a separate nonprofit group is planning a national Internet presidential caucus. Stanford University's Center for Deliberative Democracy and the University of Virginia's Center for Politics are among the groups that have signed on to help with the event, which would still require voters to meet in person to decide on their favorite nominee. Information about local caucusing sites and the results would be compiled and posted online.

"If there's going to be a national primary, then you ought to have a national caucus first," says Myles Weissleder, a former Meetup.com executive who is helping to plan the event.

From Wall Street Journal,  August 16,2007 
[top]

Internet Regulation by Another Name

From Mr Walter McCormick.

Sir, I am writing to urge caution with regard to the benign- sounding campaign for "net neutrality" ("Free the edge", FT.com July 30).

The more accurate term is internet regulation, which financial readers understand is a significant impediment to a healthy investment climate.

In the US today, there are more than 1,200 broadband service providers. By every measure - falling prices, infrastructure deployment, adoption rates, diversity of technologies and competitors - the broadband market is advancing in a healthy, positive and competitive direction. In this environment, consumer choices, not government regulation, should determine the shape and nature of the marketplace.

The priority in the US and around the world today should be deploying broadband to everyone and building up capacity to keep pace with sophisticated new applications. These efforts are well under way. In fact, North American telecommunications providers will invest Dollars 70bn this year alone towards achieving that goal.

The Orwellian notion that we "save the internet" by regulating investment in it is worthy of our scepticism. We advance broadband innovation by allowing this investment to proceed unfettered, speeding the arrival to consumers of all that broadband can do to enhance our lives.

Walter McCormick,

President and Chief Executive,

United States Telecom Association,

Washington, DC 20005, US

From Financial Times,  June 8,2007 
[top]

Helping the IT Department Help You; Secure Passwords, Saving Files to Central Storage Can Ease Headaches

Corporate information-technology workers are mad.

Laws governing how employees use technology have gotten increasingly strict, as lawmakers try to keep companies from spilling private information about their employees and customers. Meanwhile, employees themselves have become increasingly creative at finding ways to break the IT rules -- and that is putting IT departments in a bind.

Many office workers are circumventing their IT departments by bringing nonapproved technology into the workplace, sending giant files using Web-based services, sneaking forbidden software onto their personal computers, accessing work email on their handheld devices and so on. (The Wall Street Journal recently detailed some of these workarounds in a story titled "Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You," which generated many angry responses from IT workers.)

"The typical user treats their computer at work like their computer at home," said Robert Lamm, president of computer-services company Lamm Technical Resources LLC in Sedalia, Mo. "The difference is that when the computer at work encounters a service issue like a virus, malware infection or running out of disk space, the company -- not the user -- pays for the repair."

In the end, IT workers said they get blamed both by employees who feel too restricted and by company executives who, when things go wrong, fume that policies must not have been restrictive enough.

So it is little wonder many IT departments want to keep some secrets from workers. There are, however, some things your IT department wishes you knew:

1. How to create a secure password that you can actually remember.

Bad guys have lists of common passwords that get circulated online, including the word "password," simple words such as "love" and "hope," and common names. If your password is on the above list, do yourself a favor and change it.

Jeff Peterson, an independent IT consultant in San Leandro, Calif., said he once offered that advice to employees during a security audit at a natural-foods company. One senior manager, a deeply religious man, refused to change his password, which was "hope." He also insisted on having full administrative access to the company's network. Using his user name, probably gleaned from an email, and his weak password, a hacker broke into a computer server and used it to blast spam all over the Web. Soon, the company was blacklisted and couldn't send email to most of its customers and vendors for two weeks, said Mr. Peterson.

If you use weak passwords because they are easier to remember, try this trick: Use secret phrases to remember your password. For example, "George is always safe for work" becomes "gias4w." Or pick a word, capitalize it and replace the letters with numbers. For example, use "MICROSOFT," but change the "Os" to zeros.

2. How to lock your computer physically and electronically.

If you go to lunch and just turn your monitor off or get up and leave, anyone could sit down at your desk and open all your files or, worse yet, use your computer to hack into other computers at your company. Jeff Josephson, a systems administrator at Seattle game- developer Zombie Inc., points out Microsoft Windows provides an easy way to secure your computer: Press down the Windows button -- the one with the Windows logo -- and the "L" button. That way, whoever sits down at your computer will need to log in with your user name and password.

Also, see if your company will spring for a physical lock for your laptop from vendors such as Belkin International Inc. or Kensington Computer Products Group.

3. How to get the company to buy you new technology.

Ever wonder why some people get the company to pay for everything from slick handheld devices to wireless PC cards and digital cameras? Chances are, they simply asked. Before you stroll over to your boss's office to demand an iPhone, consider this tip from Beau Woods, an information-security analyst in Decatur, Ga.: Build a business case first.

That involves writing a short letter explaining what you will be able to accomplish with the technology that you currently can't do, and how that will benefit the company. Be as specific and quantitative as you can, to show how the purchase can help make money and keep costs low. Typically, these requests should be routed through your own manager rather than directly through the IT department. Find out what the protocol is at your organization.

4. How to get a quick answer from the IT guy.

"'X is broken' makes it very hard for us to properly take care of your problem, because we don't even know how to categorize and prioritize the problem," said Ian Beyer, a network administrator at United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan.

Instead, offer some basic information right when you request help: What were you doing when "X" did something unexpected? Did it give you any error messages? If so, what were they? When did it happen and how long has it been going on? Can you make it do it again? By when do you need the help?

5. How to prevent laptop problems.

Chances are you know the basic stuff. Don't visit untrusted Web sites that could infect your machine, make sure your antivirus software is updated, and so on. A less obvious tip, from Kristina Wood, who has worked in various technical-support roles at companies including Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and Verizon Communications Inc.: Keep your children away from your work laptop.

Ms. Wood once spoke with a caller whose computer had been "accidentally" upgraded to Vista, the new version of Windows -- by his children. Vista, it turned out, was unsupported by this person's company and not allowed on the corporate network. Remedying the problem cost the company several hundred dollars in contractor fees and the user "a lot of headache," Ms. Wood said.

6. How to avoid losing all your files.

Save your files to your company's central storage, instead of directly on your computer's hard drive, suggests Rob Newby, director of product management at security firm Kinamik Data Integrity SL. An easy way to do this is to create a shortcut on your desktop that acts as a pathway to a folder on your corporate network and save everything into that folder. Talk to your IT department for help.

(See related article: "Technology (A Special Report) --- Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You" -- WSJ July 30, 2007)

From Wall Street Journal,  August 14,2007 
[top]

Connecting With Developing World; Millicom Grows Rapidly by Selling Wireless to Customers a Second at a Time

As markets in the U.S., Europe and much of Asia become saturated with wireless phones, an increasing number of telecommunications companies have looked to emerging markets. But this has created a different kind of challenge: squeezing profits out of a population that has little disposable income.

One company that has been successful is Millicom International Cellular SA, a Luxembourg-based wireless provider that targets markets in Latin America, Africa and Asia. By gearing its pricing and marketing strategies to consumers, some of whom live on as little as a few dollars a day, Millicom has emerged as a top wireless provider in countries like Paraguay and Cambodia.

For example, Millicom offers plans in which customers are charged on a per-second rather than a per-minute basis. The company also has figured out a way to turn street vendors into sellers of its service. "We're selling minutes like Coca-Cola's selling soft drinks," says Marc Beuls, Millicom's chief executive.

Often operating under the brand name "tigo," the company now has 18 million subscribers in 16 markets, up from 2.8 million from continuing operations five years ago. Millicom's stock price more than tripled from the beginning of 2006 to almost $100 a share last month. Millicom's stock sold for as little as 12 cents a share in 2002 in the midst of the global telecom slump, which threatened to push the company to the brink of bankruptcy-law protection. Millicom shares fell 77 cents to $82.36 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading yesterday.

Millicom could find its previous growth rates hard to match, as other telecom companies look to the same developing markets for growth. Its shares lost 12% of their value July 24 after the company's second-quarter results didn't meet Wall Street's lofty expectations. The company added 1.5 million new subscribers in the quarter, for example, compared with the 1.8 million projected by Morgan Joseph & Co.

Doing business in developing countries is complicated by conflict and politics. For instance, subscriber growth was off during the quarter partly because of a new law in Senegal requiring cellular operators to register new subscribers.

Emerging markets today have a lot of potential. In countries like Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, only about 5% of the population has activated cellphones. Colombia's ownership level, known in the industry as its penetration rate, is 60%, according to a Millicom report. By comparison, in some Western European markets there are more active mobile subscriptions than people because some have more than one.

Last year, Latin America, Africa and Pacific Asia, including Japan and South Korea, accounted for 69% of wireless growth world-wide, a number that is expected to rise, according to Wireless Intelligence, which tracks cellphone-industry data.

Wireless revenue in South America, Africa and all of Asia is expected to reach $320 billion this year, close to half of the total global wireless market, according to Insight Research Corp., a Boonton, N.J., research firm. Wireless companies are expected to pull in $431 billion in total revenue from those regions by 2011.

Other companies are also flocking to these markets, and Millicom faces an array of regional rivals. The company is strongest in Latin America, where it has greater market share than its major competitors -- America Movil SAB de C.V., based in Mexico City, and Telefonica SA, based in Madrid -- in four of the six markets where they operate. It is facing tougher fights in Africa, which includes some of Millicom's newer markets, where the company is chasing MTN Group Ltd. of South Africa in Ghana and France Telecom SA in Senegal, among others.

These companies have varied strategies for profiting from consumers who pay as little as $10 or $11 a month for cellphone service. When users buy more phone time, they add an average of $1 or less each time.

Some companies are offering monthly calling plans; more advanced technology known as third generation, or 3G; and new services such as wireless Web access. Millicom has avoided add-ons to focus on keeping prices low, though it is exploring upgrading its networks to 3G in some markets.

Mr. Beuls says his rivals have invested in new technologies that may not be suitable for emerging markets. "Customers at the end of the day in emerging markets don't care about technology," he says. "It's about what benefits you provide. They want accessibility."

Mr. Beuls prefers to hire employees from fast-moving consumer-goods companies that he believes better understand distribution patterns, like Seagram Co., a unit of Diageo PLC, rather than other telecom companies.

Millicom first introduced prepaid calling cards in its markets in 1997, removing the need for credit checks, which are a major barrier to acquiring a cellphone for people who often lack identity papers.

Since then, Millicom has introduced e-PIN, a way to allow users to add minutes to their phones without having to purchase a prepaid card. A customer pays cash to a vendor, such as a clerk at a corner store, for a specified number of minutes. The vendor then sends a text message to Millicom with the buyer's phone number and a request to add minutes to the customer's phone. Within seconds, the company returns a text message to the buyer's phone, confirming the new balance.

By relying more on e-PIN, Millicom has been able to sell fewer calling cards, which is a more costly way of providing service. The lower expenses have allowed it to lower the minimum amount of airtime available for purchase to roughly 30 cents from $1.30. "Each time we lowered the value of the reload, people were buying more," Mr. Beuls says.

Also boosting sales: Anyone with a cellphone and several minutes' worth of airtime can become a tigo vendor. The company allows customers to send a text message to Millicom requesting that minutes be transferred from their phone to another's. The company also introduced a "share balance" program that lets customers who have exhausted their minutes send a free text message to a friend asking for more. The friend can then send a text message to Millicom requesting a transfer from his or her own phone.

Recently, the company started selling seconds, not minutes, under per-second billing. Instead of rounding up a 30-second call and charging the user for the full minute, Millicom charges for only the exact duration of the call. After testing per-second billing in Paraguay, calls per user increased 47%. After introducing e-PIN and per-second billing in Paraguay in 2005, Millicom saw subscribers rise 84% and revenue rise 91% within a year.

Already this year, Millicom has introduced its tigo brand in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka and Laos. Mr. Beuls told investors he plans to invest $800 million this year in new markets if good opportunities are found. Next year, Millicom will begin offering more services, such as ring tones, in Latin America.

Sarah Childress. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 28, 2007. pg. A.8

Abstract (Summary)
For example, Millicom offers plans in which customers are charged on a per-second rather than a per-minute basis. The company also has figured out a way to turn street vendors into sellers of its service. "We're selling minutes like Coca-Cola's selling soft drinks," says Marc Beuls, Millicom's chief executive.

Often operating under the brand name "tigo," the company now has 18 million subscribers in 16 markets, up from 2.8 million from continuing operations five years ago. Millicom's stock price more than tripled from the beginning of 2006 to almost $100 a share last month. Millicom's stock sold for as little as 12 cents a share in 2002 in the midst of the global telecom slump, which threatened to push the company to the brink of bankruptcy-law protection. Millicom shares fell 77 cents to $82.36 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading yesterday.

Also boosting sales: Anyone with a cellphone and several minutes' worth of airtime can become a tigo vendor. The company allows customers to send a text message to Millicom requesting that minutes be transferred from their phone to another's. The company also introduced a "share balance" program that lets customers who have exhausted their minutes send a free text message to a friend asking for more. The friend can then send a text message to Millicom requesting a transfer from his or her own phone.

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As markets in the U.S., Europe and much of Asia become saturated with wireless phones, an increasing number of telecommunications companies have looked to emerging markets. But this has created a different kind of challenge: squeezing profits out of a population that has little disposable income.

One company that has been successful is Millicom International Cellular SA, a Luxembourg-based wireless provider that targets markets in Latin America, Africa and Asia. By gearing its pricing and marketing strategies to consumers, some of whom live on as little as a few dollars a day, Millicom has emerged as a top wireless provider in countries like Paraguay and Cambodia.

For example, Millicom offers plans in which customers are charged on a per-second rather than a per-minute basis. The company also has figured out a way to turn street vendors into sellers of its service. "We're selling minutes like Coca-Cola's selling soft drinks," says Marc Beuls, Millicom's chief executive.

Often operating under the brand name "tigo," the company now has 18 million subscribers in 16 markets, up from 2.8 million from continuing operations five years ago. Millicom's stock price more than tripled from the beginning of 2006 to almost $100 a share last month. Millicom's stock sold for as little as 12 cents a share in 2002 in the midst of the global telecom slump, which threatened to push the company to the brink of bankruptcy-law protection. Millicom shares fell 77 cents to $82.36 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading yesterday.

Millicom could find its previous growth rates hard to match, as other telecom companies look to the same developing markets for growth. Its shares lost 12% of their value July 24 after the company's second-quarter results didn't meet Wall Street's lofty expectations. The company added 1.5 million new subscribers in the quarter, for example, compared with the 1.8 million projected by Morgan Joseph & Co.

Doing business in developing countries is complicated by conflict and politics. For instance, subscriber growth was off during the quarter partly because of a new law in Senegal requiring cellular operators to register new subscribers.

Emerging markets today have a lot of potential. In countries like Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, only about 5% of the population has activated cellphones. Colombia's ownership level, known in the industry as its penetration rate, is 60%, according to a Millicom report. By comparison, in some Western European markets there are more active mobile subscriptions than people because some have more than one.

Last year, Latin America, Africa and Pacific Asia, including Japan and South Korea, accounted for 69% of wireless growth world-wide, a number that is expected to rise, according to Wireless Intelligence, which tracks cellphone-industry data.

Wireless revenue in South America, Africa and all of Asia is expected to reach $320 billion this year, close to half of the total global wireless market, according to Insight Research Corp., a Boonton, N.J., research firm. Wireless companies are expected to pull in $431 billion in total revenue from those regions by 2011.

Other companies are also flocking to these markets, and Millicom faces an array of regional rivals. The company is strongest in Latin America, where it has greater market share than its major competitors -- America Movil SAB de C.V., based in Mexico City, and Telefonica SA, based in Madrid -- in four of the six markets where they operate. It is facing tougher fights in Africa, which includes some of Millicom's newer markets, where the company is chasing MTN Group Ltd. of South Africa in Ghana and France Telecom SA in Senegal, among others.

These companies have varied strategies for profiting from consumers who pay as little as $10 or $11 a month for cellphone service. When users buy more phone time, they add an average of $1 or less each time.

Some companies are offering monthly calling plans; more advanced technology known as third generation, or 3G; and new services such as wireless Web access. Millicom has avoided add-ons to focus on keeping prices low, though it is exploring upgrading its networks to 3G in some markets.

Mr. Beuls says his rivals have invested in new technologies that may not be suitable for emerging markets. "Customers at the end of the day in emerging markets don't care about technology," he says. "It's about what benefits you provide. They want accessibility."

Mr. Beuls prefers to hire employees from fast-moving consumer-goods companies that he believes better understand distribution patterns, like Seagram Co., a unit of Diageo PLC, rather than other telecom companies.

Millicom first introduced prepaid calling cards in its markets in 1997, removing the need for credit checks, which are a major barrier to acquiring a cellphone for people who often lack identity papers.

Since then, Millicom has introduced e-PIN, a way to allow users to add minutes to their phones without having to purchase a prepaid card. A customer pays cash to a vendor, such as a clerk at a corner store, for a specified number of minutes. The vendor then sends a text message to Millicom with the buyer's phone number and a request to add minutes to the customer's phone. Within seconds, the company returns a text message to the buyer's phone, confirming the new balance.

By relying more on e-PIN, Millicom has been able to sell fewer calling cards, which is a more costly way of providing service. The lower expenses have allowed it to lower the minimum amount of airtime available for purchase to roughly 30 cents from $1.30. "Each time we lowered the value of the reload, people were buying more," Mr. Beuls says.

Also boosting sales: Anyone with a cellphone and several minutes' worth of airtime can become a tigo vendor. The company allows customers to send a text message to Millicom requesting that minutes be transferred from their phone to another's. The company also introduced a "share balance" program that lets customers who have exhausted their minutes send a free text message to a friend asking for more. The friend can then send a text message to Millicom requesting a transfer from his or her own phone.

Recently, the company started selling seconds, not minutes, under per-second billing. Instead of rounding up a 30-second call and charging the user for the full minute, Millicom charges for only the exact duration of the call. After testing per-second billing in Paraguay, calls per user increased 47%. After introducing e-PIN and per-second billing in Paraguay in 2005, Millicom saw subscribers rise 84% and revenue rise 91% within a year.

Already this year, Millicom has introduced its tigo brand in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka and Laos. Mr. Beuls told investors he plans to invest $800 million this year in new markets if good opportunities are found. Next year, Millicom will begin offering more services, such as ring tones, in Latin America.

From Wall Street Journal,  August 28,2007 
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Abu Dhabi System and Information Committee Signs Agreement to Bring Oracle to Abu Dhabi Government

The Abu Dhabi System and Information Committee (ADSIC) signed an agreement with Oracle on Thursday, to deploy Oracle's business solutions throughout the Abu Dhabi government's IT infrastructure.

Under the Enterprise License Agreement, Oracle applications including the E-Business Suite ERP solution will be licensed to all Abu Dhabi government departments. The agreement is intended to help the government to establish a "modern, efficient and citizen-centric e-Government platform", according to an ADSIC statement.

The license is a perpetual agreement, with an annual maintenance contract, and was awarded to Oracle for an undisclosed one-off payment.

No start date was given for the implementation of Oracle's software, although HE Rashed Lahej Al Mansoori, ADSIC chairman, said an implementation plan was in place and would be started "very soon".

"By virtue of this agreement, Oracle will provide Oracle applications to all Abu Dhabi Government Entities at preferential terms. ADSIC will work closely with Oracle to build the capacity and knowledge of Oracle product end-users in the Government, through providing a comprehensive training program," he said.

Husam Dajani, the senior vice president of Oracle Middle East and Africa, said that the implementation and enhancement of systems was something that would be an ongoing exercise in the government of Abu Dhabi.

"Some of the government departments are already in production now and some others will be implemented soon. Implementation will occur according to the priorities of the ADSIC. But we expect to be announcing one of the government departments going live very soon," he added.

Dajani also commented that links and communication between different local governments in the UAE, federal government and between different government departments, one of the core mandates of the ADSIC, would be improved due to the widespread use of Oracle in government organisations.

"It is the good luck of the UAE that most of the other Emirates have standardized on Oracle. We already have an agreement with the Ministry of Finance, for example, to provide Oracle systems at federal level as well," he said.

The Enterprise License Agreement signed today includes a number of modules of Oracle's E-Business suite including Oracle Financials, Stock Management, Fixed Assets Systems, Advanced Procurement, Human Resources Management System & Employee's Self-service System, Budgeting and Payroll and Database & Oracle Technology Tools.

From http://www.arabianbusiness.com/ ,  August 18,2007 
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What Google Can Learn from Apple

Imagine you spotted a market that was just ripe for your company's service. It looks like a goldmine - your chief executive has just declared it the single biggest new opportunity out there. There is just one drawback. The only way you can think of to break into this new market is to try to change the rules of the game for everyone else who already plays there.

This is roughly the position Google finds itself in as it sizes up the mobile internet business. But pushing too hard to change the rules of the gamecould be a mistake.

The cellular world is nothing like the free and open internet where Google now thrives. In many places, network operators decide which mobile services will receive the oxygen of attention, admitting them to their "walled gardens" of favoured services and giving them preferential positions on the "decks", or content menus, that appear in front of users.

By controlling which handsets connect to their networks, they can also block any devices that come pre-loaded with software applications that do not take their fancy. (Translation: if you do not play by the operator's rules - for example, in how advertising revenue is shared - do not expect to reach an audience.)

Meanwhile, handset makers are nothing like the companies that produce personal computers. As vertically integrated hardware/ software companies, they can often seem inconsistent about how much of the mobile pie they want to keep for themselves.

All this explains why Google has started to ape the sort of behaviour you would normally associate with a good old-fashioned monopoly - say, an AT&T or a Microsoft.

Last month it turned up the heat in Washington DC, taking on AT&T and other big US communications companies by trying to influence the rules for an important auction of wireless spectrum. It even went as far as offering to bid at least Dollars 4.6bn (Pounds 2.3bn) to buy spectrum in order to try to shape the outcome. In this it was at least partially successful, even if it did not get everything it wanted.

Meanwhile, there have been reports all year that Google has been in discussions with handset makers in Asia, prompting speculation that it is developing plans for its own family of Google-branded mobile phones.

If not a shiny piece of Google hardware, how about a range of phones from some of the world's biggest handset makers that run Google software? Building an ecosystem of handset makers for its software is exactly what Microsoft has been attempting. The internet company last week tried to brush off suggestions it has some masterplan in the works, but it is clearly working hard to get wider distribution for its software.

With all this going on, it is not surprising that some outlandish speculation has been doing the rounds. Is Google going to build its own wireless network in the US and take on AT&T at its own game? In its eagerness to break into the mobile market, will it become network operator, handset provider and online service company in one?

The answer to these questions must surely be "no". It is partly a business model issue. If you had gross profit margins of 85 per cent, would you be eager to change your business model that radically?

It is also a matter of good sense. Google relies on breadth of reach: there is no point just getting to a subset of internet users - for its advertising platform to work it needs to get in front of everyone. To set itself up as a rival to an AT&T or a Nokia would risk limiting its reach. It has no choice but to play ball with everyone who is already on the field.

So what exactly has Google been up to with its sharp-elbowed tactics in mobile? The most charitable answer is that it is rocking the boat - hard.

This might well turn out to be a smart strategy. The existing model for the mobile internet business has not worked and is already showing signs of strain. The walls around the walled gardens have been crumbling - more so in Europe than the US, but the failure of operators to generate meaningful revenues from their data services is widely apparent. Flat-rate data-pricing plans are becoming common, again starting in Europe. A more open platform, where users are not charged extra every time they use the service, begins to look much more like the traditional internet. It makes sense for Google to try to nudge the industry faster down this road.

This, though, will only ever be a small part of the answer. Politicking and grand strategising were not the skills that first made Google a world-beater. If it is in search of

a role model, Google should be looking to emulate Apple, not

AT&T or Microsoft.

As Apple's iPhone has shown, true innovation will do more than anything to change the rules of the game in the mobile internet. To become the sole operator to carry the iPhone, AT&T ceded an unusual degree of control of the user experience and applications on the device to Apple. If customers are prepared to line up in the streets to buy your product, you stand a much better chance of calling the shots.

So far, no mobile internet service has achieved anything like this pulling power.

Memo to Google: do not get wrapped up with lobbying and the grand strategies. For the next six months, why not suspend the famous "20 per cent time" that lets all your engineers spend a day a week on their pet projects, and focus all that extra effort instead on building the killer applications of the mobile internet? Now that is something that could really make the world a better place.

From Financial Times,  August 13,2007 
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Internet Firms Face a Setback Over TV Device

The federal government gave a failing grade to a prototype device that Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Dell Inc. and other technology companies said would beam high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves.

In an 85-page report, the Federal Communications Commission said the devices submitted by the technology coalition couldn't reliably detect unused TV spectrum, and could cause interference.

Despite the setback, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the agency still would like to find a way to transmit high-speed Internet service over unused airwaves.

Edmond Thomas, who represents the coalition, said the companies are convinced the spectrum can be used without causing interference to TV and wireless-microphone signals. "We intend to work with the FCC in order to identify the discrepancies in their tests with the tests we've done," said Mr. Thomas, a former chief engineer with the FCC.

The coalition -- which includes Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., EarthLink Inc. and Philips Electronics North America Corp., a division of Netherlands-based Philips Electronics NV -- said it will work with the FCC to resolve questions.

The companies say the unlicensed and unused TV airwaves, also known as "white spaces," would make Internet service accessible and affordable, especially in rural areas, and spur innovation.

But TV broadcasters oppose use of white spaces, fearing the device will cause interference with television programming and could cause problems with a federally mandated transition from analog to digital signals in 2009.

If the device eventually is approved by the FCC, the commission could adopt rules for operating unlicensed devices in the white-space spectrum by October, according to its own timetable. By December, the agency could start certifying similar devices, which means manufacturers of the devices would have to show their technology conforms to the agency's technical requirements.

Any such devices wouldn't go on sale until after Feb. 18, 2009, however, when TV broadcasters switch to digital transmissions from analog.

From Internet Firms Face a Setback Over TV Device,  September 8,2007 
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Google Deserves Admiration for Seeking Open Networks

From Mr Michael Liebhold.

Sir, Richard Waters' article "What Google can learn from Apple" (August 13), about Google's efforts to open up a broadband web, touched only briefly on the controversy that has been bubbling for a long time before Google's recent public efforts to open up carriers' mobile walled gardens.

There is a dilemma for mobile network operators: while they can claim a rightful need to recover network expenses, their decision to offer only their own "enhanced" services, limiting access to an open mobile web is thwarting plans and ambitions of vast communities of innovators, techies, artists, entrepreneurs, investors, academics and civic groups with thousands of interesting ideas on the benefits of a mobile web.

Ironically, carriers' narrowly constrained services are completely dependent on limited creativity of their own internal or partner developers, and so are vulnerable to potential subscription churn and subscriber loss due to mediocre implementation, and their walled gardens are discouraging engaged end-users and entrepreneurs, who want to create new content, media and services which ironically would stimulate instead of discouraging usage of their networks by current offerings of boring, limited services.

As Mr Waters suggests, Google could stop lobbying and focus on creating "killer applications" for a mobile web, but there are already hundreds of great applications and services, ready for deployment once a more open mobile service ecosystem is enabled by a network platform. By lobbying visibly at the Federal Communications Commission, and directly with carriers, Google is widely admired for acting powerfully on behalf of thousands of entrepreneurs, service providers and innovative end-users who believe a true "mobile web" ecosystem will stimulate a blooming economy of continuous new, useful applications. Google's interests and public interests coincide perfectly. Its contextual advertising and mobile web search service can only work if there is a community of thousands, even millions of mobile web services to search for. Meanwhile, despite wireless network operators' objections, those same operators could actually benefit greatly as more developers attract more users to their networks.

Contrary to Mr Waters' assertions, Google is not acting strictly selfishly in its requests for open networks, and is not asking for special conditions for its sole benefit. Instead, it is acting on behalf of thousands of others asking the FCC to follow its official mandate to manage public radio spectrum for public benefit, by removing special conditions that benefit only legacy, incumbent wireless network carriers, and not the larger public and business communities.

Michael Liebhold,

Senior Researcher,

Institute for the Future,

Palo Alto, CA 94301, US

From Financial Times,  August 17,2007 
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OMB, CIO Council Issue Architecture Principles

The Office of Management and Budget and the CIO Council released today a new framework that underpins many of the Bush administration’s core management tenets.

The Architecture Principles for the U.S. Government defines what is important to the administration, said Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and information technology.

“These principles balance department and agency mandates on the one hand and governmentwide interests on the other,” wrote Evans, also the council’s director, and Dave Wennergren, Defense Department deputy chief information officer and vice chairman of the council, in an e-mail message to CIOs. “Clear, well-understood and sanctioned principles, combined with an executive commitment to enforce them, help drive change across disparate departments and programs, and also within agencies.”

Richard Burk, OMB’s chief architect, who helped develop these principles during the past year, said that although the values may seem simplistic on the surface, the implications are deeper.

“All of these fundamental principles underpin the administration’s effort and it is good to get them down on paper so when we have a discussions with people who want to maintain the status quo, we can say ‘That has been decided and now we have to figure out how to do it,'" Burk said. “These are architectural reaffirmation of the President’s message that we want to be a citizen centered results oriented government.”

The principles include:
The federal government focuses on people. That means agencies will design and apply their business processes and services to benefit people and present a unified face when doing so.
The federal government is a single unified enterprise. That means agencies need to work together to reach common goals, including integrating services. “The implication is we may sub-optimize at one department level for the good of the entire enterprise,” Burk said. “Thus the rationale that some agencies move from IP Version 4 to IPv6 is difficult to make a cost justification, but it is for the benefit of the entire government so that is why we are doing it.”
Federal agencies collaborate with other governments and people. That means agencies will work more closely with other federal, state and local agencies and private-sector experts. “We recognize this isn’t just about cross agency collaboration, but we are in a government ecosystem that includes state and local governments and the private sector,” Burk said. “When we come to conclusions about standards and what data we use, we will do that in collaborative fashion in all three sectors.”
The federal architecture is mission-driven. That means agency enterprise architectures are driven by business needs and guide capital planning and investment processes.
Security, privacy and protecting information are core government needs. Agencies must apply security and privacy consistently and monitor compliance. Security controls also must be clearly defined so cost and risk are managed.
Information is a national asset. Agencies will improve the information-sharing environment to disseminate public information. That requires departments to be the authoritative source of information.
The federal architecture simplifies government operations. The enterprise architecture is designed to reduce complexity and enable integration among software and hardware components. Agencies should share best practices and reuse business and technical components.
“The principles help narrow some of the decisions we need to make because they eliminate decisions that don’t meet the federal government’s objectives,” Burk said. “It helps agencies balance departmental mandates with governmentwide interests. The principles are boundary markers.”

Using these high-level principles as guidance, agency program and technical officials are expected to adopt these principles and identify agency-specific ones that express the same shared focus, Evans and Wennergren wrote.

Burk added that the principles show they are about not only technology but also how agencies deliver services to people.

“I’m very pleased these are finally out,” he added. “These will help us begin to think more often as being a single government and when we take action we will think about it that way.”

From http://www.fcw.com/ ,  August 27,2007 
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Zimbabwe May Still Escape Real Regime Change

ALEC RUSSELL


When dictators finally lose their aura of power, their ejection from their presidential palace can be wonderfully swift. How many times in the past decade or so has the world agonised over how a people can be liberated from a tyrant, only to see his authority implode overnight? It happened in the Romanian capital Bucharest in December 1989, when just days after his forces had mown down anti- government demonstrators, an incredulous President Nicolae Ceausescu was booed off the Central Committee building balcony, deposed and then executed. Then again in Belgrade in 2000, weeks after rigging an election to stay in power, the Yugoslav president and warmonger Slobodan Milosevic was forced out by crowds on the streets.

The situation in Zimbabwe is very different to the Balkans. But recent events have led the Zimbabwean opposition - and many abroad - to dare to believe that after 27 years the Mugabe regime has also reached its "tipping point". They may yet be disappointed.

When the history of the Mugabe era is written, there is little doubt the events of these past few months will be deemed to have hastened his departure. The International Monetary Fund recently said that annual inflation could reach 100,000 per cent by the end of this year. Now the government is penalising casual importers of food, depriving many people of their primary source of supplies. Yet, despite all this, it is still unclear what will tip the regime over the edge.

What is increasingly clear, however, is that the implosion of the economy may not in itself be enough to bring Mr Mugabe down. A recent study by Professor Stephen Hanke of Washington's Cato Institute highlights how the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s suffered from far worse hyperinflation.Mr Milosevic still survived, in part by doing just what Mr Mugabe has been doing: blaming his economic woes on the outside world. There are plenty of countries in Africa where the economy and infrastructure have been far more systematically destroyed than in Zimbabwe without causing regime change.

Apart from dying, one of three things has to happen to Mr Mugabe to bring his departure: a popular uprising, the application of irresistible international pressure, or a palace coup.

A chance event, such as a police car crashing into a crowd and killing a child, could spark popular fury and lead to the first scenario. But Zimbab-we's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is in no shape to precipitate a revolution. Its members have been brutally oppressed by the security forces and it is split into two bitterly opposed factions. Also, of immense value to Mr Mugabe, the country has a pressure valve, the border with South Africa across which thousands of mutinous citizens flee in search of employment each month.

As for outside pressure forcing Mr Mugabe out, that scenario can be all but dismissed. South Africa has worked hard to mediate between the MDC and the ruling Zanu-PF, but Mr Mugabe retains a mesmeric hold over many of his regional peers, so there is little chance of any meaningful pressure coming from them.

That leaves a palace coup as the most likely conduit for change. Most of the Zanu-PF bigwigs appear to have lost their respect for Mugabe. But there are still plenty of reasons for them not to act. Many party chiefs are profiting handsomely from the meltdown. For the time being, the all-powerful security bosses appear to have calculated that until there is a clear post-Mugabe scenario that preserves their interests, the status quo is the safest option.

The outgoing US ambassador Christopher Dell recently predicted that economic meltdown would force Mr Mugabe out by Christmas. Thisrattled Mr Mugabe's inner circle, but the prospect of his clinging on, before stepping down in favour of a Zanu-PF successor, seems far more likely. Regional leaders would rush to the microphones to hail such a turn of events, delighted at a crisis averted.

The west should resist the temptation to do likewise. A successor government that gave the elite a second sitting at the state trough would be a tragedy for Zimbabweans. The west should dangle its recovery package for the post-Mugabe era as an incentive for a new start, but only under a genuinely "reformist" government. Romania's grim experience once the euphoria of the revolution died down was of several wasted years under rebranded members of the old guard. Sadly, at the moment that is the most likely outcome to the Zimbabwean crisis.

The writer is the FT's Southern Africa correspondent

From Financial Times,  August 15,2007 
[top]

Africa Becomes Sunny Proposition for Funds

By KATE BURGESS and WILLIAM WALLIS

Not long ago you could count the number of funds investing in Africa on one hand. You would need several, however, to count the number of new Africa funds launched since the beginning of this year.

Persuaded that the continent's dominant economies are turning a corner, funds listed on London's Aim, mutual funds, private equity funds and hedge funds are pouring.

Last week it was Johannesburg-based Pamodzi Investment Holdings that made waves when it announced the launch of a Dollars 1.3bn pan- African private equity fund backed by US investors.

Since the start of the year, more than Pounds 1bn (Dollars 2.03bn) has been raised by private equity funds in London. More is on the way. Since June, three funds, raising close to Dollars 400m, have listed on Aim, and the London Stock Exchange says there are likely to be more.

Hedge funds have also been drawn to the region, with higher estimates of their exposure to Nigeria alone running to Dollars 1.5bn. Tudor Investments and Millennium Partners are backing newly- listed Africa Opportunities Partners which is seeking, for example, to pick up a stake in a Tanzanian brewery, a fixed line Senegalese telecoms company, an Egyptian insurer, and a West African oil and gas services company.

"Two years ago there were just two funds we could have invested in, now there are more than a dozen," says Andrew Lister, whose Advance Frontier Market fund of funds was launched in June. A third of the fund is earmarked for Africa.

Flush with cash and looking for high returns on new frontiers, international financiers have persuaded themselves that Africa is in the middle of a structural rather than cyclical recovery. The amounts they are raising may be small in global terms, but together they promise to make up the largest ever flow of money from the investment community into Africa.

The scramble has been partly spurred by a generation of Africans who cut their teeth on Wall Street or in the City of London and are now using their expertise and contacts to invest back home.

It has also been driven by a shift in the continent's terms of trade. For the best part of a quarter century, from the 1970s to late 1990s, these were in decline.

Chinese and Indian demand for natural resources has helped spur the turnround, fuelling a boom in commodities, including oil, that Africa has in large supply, and the promise of a massive programme of investment in infrastructure.

But, equally, investors say their confidence is inspired by improved fiscal discipline, liberalisation of key sectors of some economies, and the fragile re-emergence in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana of a middle class.

Local factors, such as pension and financial reforms, and privatisation in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria have also driven stock markets up.

"In the past, when people talked about an African renaissance, it was largely about politics. This time what is encouraging is that it is being led by the private sector, and by capital flows," says Tsega Gebreyes, who manages Satya, a new private equity firm backed by Sudanese Telecoms tycoon Mo Ibrahim.

The headline figures have also been good. Seven of the world's 20 fastest-growing economies are in Africa and, since 2001, Africa's overall GDP growth has exceeded global growth.

Sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries, however, still fill up many of the bottom slots on the World Bank's annual reports on the ease of doing business. Ironically, Africa's fringe position within the global economy contributes to its pull. Outside South Africa, the correlation between African equity markets and other regions of the world is low, offering opportunities to reduce portfolio risk at a time of global volatility. These capital flows are susceptible to global shocks and may prove fickle. "Commodity prices won't grow to the moon," says Tope Lawani at Helios, the private equity firm.

Mr Lawani believes the profits generated from commodities are affecting a sustainable transformation in Africa. But he acknowledges the risk that those funds swept into Africa by euphoria, rather than operating experience and local knowledge, may not fare so well.

"We believe that you need real knowledge of a market. The risk is that investors get ahead of themselves and put money with the wrong teams. When things go wrong, they don't blame the fund managers. They blame Africa."

From Financial Times,  October 8,2007 
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Corporate Governance Starts to Win Acceptance in African Companies

From Mr Roman Zyla.

Sir, Kate Burgess and William Wallis's article "Africa becomes sunny proposition for funds" (August 10) provides room for discussion of funds flows into Africa. As the continent is now a fashionable investment destination, this is an opportunity for African companies to rise to the occasion and show that they are becoming solid investments for the long term.

Corporate governance, long seen as a luxury of developed markets, is slowly but robustly gaining acceptance among African companies. Around the continent corporate governance codes are being adopted; director institutes are preparing boards and directors for their duties; and organisations including the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, work with companies and markets directly to improve corporate governance, notably in the fast-growing African markets that are proving so inviting for investment funds.

As investors seek out the sunny proposition of attractive African markets, they might recognise that corporate Africa is increasingly adopting good governance practices. Investors who pro-actively search for those companies that are improving their corporate governance may help ensure that there is a place in the African sun for themselves and other investors for a long time to come.

Roman Zyla,

Corporate Governance and Capital Markets Advisory Dept,

International Finance Corporation,

Washington, DC 20433, US

From Financial Times,  August 16,2007 
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China Tightens Local Oversight; Crackdown Aims to Enforce Safety, Environmental, Labor Rules Andrew Batson

Beijing -- President Hu Jintao's administration, suffering from a string of embarrassing scandals, is moving to take authority away from China's powerful local governments.

Provincial and city governments in China have for decades had broad freedom to run their own affairs, as long as they delivered economic expansion and kept social conflict in check. They have often proved entrepreneurial, business-friendly and flexible -- and especially adept at drawing investment to create jobs and increase the nation's more-than-10% annual-expansion rates.

Yet too often, critics say, that focus on growth has led local authorities to turn a blind eye to violations of safety, labor and environmental standards. Local governments are blamed for the downsides of China's rapid economic expansion, such as rising inequality, a disintegrating social safety net and pollution.

Now, the pendulum is starting to swing the other way, as Mr. Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao try to enforce greater uniformity across their vast and often chaotic nation.

The drive to rein in local governments has been given extra impetus this year by scandals that have outraged the Chinese public. Local officials in Henan and Shanxi provinces were found to be in cahoots with the owners of brick kilns and coal mines who kidnapped hundreds of children and adults and forced them to work in harsh conditions.

Lax local enforcement of safety regulations has also been blamed for permitting numerous shoddy and unsafe products to reach Chinese and overseas consumers. Mr. Wen has called ensuring food safety and product quality a top priority of the government, and headed a State Council meeting last month that passed rules making local officials accountable for product-safety failures. Repeated problems will be grounds for demotion or dismissal, the rules say.

The central government is focusing its efforts on a number of areas, including land use, environmental controls, agriculture and social services. Having made sweeping public commitments to China's 1.3 billion people to improve living standards and equality, the government needs to make sure it can keep its word.

"This is a major test of our strength and credibility," said Xu Shaoshi, China's minister of land and resources. "It is imperative that enforcement of land regulations be tougher and stricter."

Mr. Xu also holds the new post of state land inspector general, in which he runs a network of regional agencies that oversee local governments' land-use policies. His top priority: reducing seizures of agricultural land for commercial development that have led to a surge in protests by farmers and renewed concerns about food security.

Many cities have disregarded land regulations, and seized land for development of new industrial parks, housing projects and office towers. Such deals increased local government revenue and enriched many well-connected developers, but the sheer magnitude of land seizures has made them a focus of concerns about corruption and social unrest.

Some analysts credit the stronger backing for planning rules, including a requirement that sales be done through public auctions, with curbing the once-rapid pace of land sales.

The shift to stronger central authority is one that many inside and outside China endorse, seeing it as a way to bridge the enormous gap between the prosperous cities and often desperately poor rural areas. "On health, on education, on many other things, the central government has to play a larger role," Khalid Malik, head of the United Nations Development Program in China, said in a recent speech.

Support for the changes also comes from the widespread public perception that the top leadership is basically honest and well- meaning. Local officials, by contrast, are regularly blamed for forced relocations, deaths in illegal coal mines and other abuses.

The new approach comes as Messrs. Hu and Wen prepare to start their second and likely final five-year terms next year, following a major Communist Party conclave this autumn. In preparation for that gathering, hundreds of provincial and local government officials have been reassigned, promoted or fired -- a reshuffling intended in part, analysts say, to ensure the new local leaders will be more attentive to orders from Beijing.

But the central government is also reworking the power structure to ensure its edicts have more force, as it has with the new system for supervising land use. Local authorities have long been lax in enforcing environmental rules because they frequently have close ties to polluting enterprises. So the central government has created new agencies to monitor enforcement. There are now six regional "inspection centers" scattered across the country, and crucially, they answer to the central government rather than to local authorities.

"Enforcement is the chief issue in solving China's environmental problems, and the local level is the most important," says Zhang Shaomin, a deputy director general at the State Environmental Protection Administration who helped organize the new system. "There are some local governments who, because of their one-sided pursuit of GDP [gross domestic product], use their administrative power to block strict environmental enforcement." GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a nation.

Though most of the centers have been up and running for a year or less, Mr. Zhang credits the inspectors with ferreting out factories that had dumped their waste with impunity, and with speeding up local responses to environmental disasters.

The accumulation of such rules, requirements and supervising agencies leaves local governments less room to maneuver. China's local authorities have generally had the freedom to do what they see fit to develop their economies, but most of that power is theirs by default, not by right. China isn't a federal country like the U.S. or Australia, so localities have only as much power as the central government allows them.

"Where there is no legal framework to govern them, local governments have lots of power. In the gray areas they can be the main player. But as things become more formalized, local government authority is reduced," says Wang Yongjun, a professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing.

That is especially true as the central government also starts to take a bigger role in what has been the main job of local governments: running basic social services such as schools and hospitals. The central government is now using its control of tax revenue, which has been increasing rapidly, to create and fund popular new initiatives directly -- without relying on local governments as intermediaries.

The central government also abolished an ancient agricultural tax, saving farmers 125 billion yuan, or about $16.50 billion, in 2006 tax payments. That both pleased farmers and yanked away a source of local- government revenue -- one that regional officials often abused. And when public-health authorities in Beijing decided they needed to beef up inoculation against infectious diseases, they bypassed the locals and paid for a new system of clinics themselves.

Not everyone thinks greater centralization is the answer to China's problems. Many scholars argue that local governments need more responsibility and power, not less, if they are to deal with the demands and conflicts of China's complex and wealthy society. By taking on more responsibility, the central government also has left itself open to more public criticism if it fails to deliver on its promises.

"Right now you have this sense that the central government is good, and it is the local government hooligans who mess things up. Whenever there is a problem, Beijing tries to shift the blame to local leaders," says Jing Huang, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution. "People will eventually ask the real question, which is 'Why do we have this kind of system?' Eventually the blame will go upwards, to the central government."

From Wall Street Journal,  October 8,2007 
[top]

Can Life Begin at 60 for the Sprightly Indian Economy?

AMARTYA SEN


Pablo Picasso once remarked: "One starts to get young at the age of 60." Something rather like that seems to be happening to India right now, at least on the economic front. There is much more sign of life there today than could be seen when political independence came to the ancient land in 1947, when its strait-laced economy moved at a slow and imperturbable pace - the famous 3 per cent rate of growth. The feebleness of the economic pace was in sharp contrast with the speed of political change in the new republic: India became overnight the first poor country in the world to be a full-scale democracy.

Democracy has indeed flourished well in India since then, withfew hiccups and with regular and orderly elections, free and flourishing media, independence of the judiciary and, no less importantly, the willingness of ruling parties to vacate office when defeated in general elections, rather than calling in the army. This would be remarkable enough for any poor country, particularly one the size of India, but it was a much harder task in a land of so many important languages (each with its long and proud history) and such diversity of distinct religions (all placed under a secular but tolerant umbrella). Secularism has been threatened from time to time by sectarian groups, but massive support for secularism across India has asserted itself repeatedly.

On the economic side, India's comparative success is rather new. Some changes came slowly and the growth rate of the economy did move up to 5 per cent a year in the 1980s, which was much faster than in the early decades of independence, not to mention during a century of colonial semi-stagnation. But the decisive moment for the radical changes that have made the Indian economy so dynamic today occurred in the early 1990s, led by reforms introduced by Manmohan Singh, then the newly appointed finance minister (he has been prime minister since 2004, after a period out of office in between). It is useful to ask, in taking a long view of the Indian economy, what changes were needed in India and what really happened over the period of gradual transformation initiated by the reforms of the early 1990s.

India faced two huge problems of governance. The first one was government over-activity in areas of work in which its presence was overbearing, but where its ability to mess things up was truly gigantic. The so-called "licence Raj" made business initiatives extremely difficult and put them at the mercy of bureaucrats (large and small), thereby powerfully stifling enterprise while nurturing corruption. The going has sometimes been rough but the direction of policy change has been unmistakable from the early 1990s onwards (if still a little slow in many assessments), endorsed even by successor governments run by other political parties.

But India also had a second problem that needed to be addressed urgently. This was the problem of government under-activity in fields in which it could achieve a great deal. There has been a sluggish response to the urgency of remedying the aston- -ishingly under-emphasised social infra-- structure - for example, the need to build many more schools, hospitals and rural medical centres - and developing a functioning system of accountability, supervision and collaboration for public services. To this can be added the neglect of physical infrastructure (power, water, roads, rail), which required both governmental and private initiatives. Large areas of what economists call "public goods" have continued to be under- emphasised.

The radical changes in the 1990s did little to remedy the second problem. If things have begun to change here too (though rather slowly), a part of the credit for ushering in that change must go to India's democratic politics. There is a growing appreciation of the electoral relevance of the unfulfilled basic needs of people (related to schools, healthcare, water supply and other facilities) and there are also pressures generated by better-informed media discussions and by the activities of civil society movements demanding elementary rights.

So where does India stand now, after all this? The economic growth rate, now about 8 per cent (sometimes touching 9 per cent), is, of course, agreeably high, but the sharing of the benefits that flow from this is still remarkably unequal. Poverty rates have fallen, but are nowhere near what could have been achieved had the distributional side got more attention. Some failures are huge, such as continuing undernourishment, particularly of children, and of course the continuing scandal of a quarter of the population (including half of all women) remaining illiterate in a country with such high-technology achievements based on excellent specialised training and practice. A democratic country can hardly want to maintain a divisiveness that makes it part California and part sub- Saharan Africa.

The unequal distribution of the benefits of economic progress is not unrelated to continuing gaps on the social side, since the human capabilities that make it easy for people to use the new economic opportunities can be vastly enlarged by enhanced public services, such as universal - and good - school education, efficient and accessible public healthcare and good epidemiology. Remedying this calls for much more economic resources and better organised public services.

This is not, however, an argument for considering economic growth to be unimportant. Indeed, quite the contrary, since economic growth also generates government resources that can be powerfully used precisely to expand public services.

Government revenue will grow very fast if it keeps pace with the rapid growth of the economy. In fact, government revenue has persistently grown faster than the growth of gross domestic product: in 2003-04, the economic growth of 6.5 per cent was exceeded by revenue growth of 9.5 per cent and in 2004-05 to 2006-07, the growth rates of 7.5 per cent, 9.0 per cent, and 9.4 per cent have been respectively bettered by the expansion rates of government revenue (in "real terms", that is, corrected for price changes) of 12.5 per cent, 9.7 per cent and 11.2 per cent. Money will continue to flow very rapidly into the government's hands and what is critically important is to use these resources intelligently where they are most needed.

When Picasso said we start to get young as we turn 60, he also expressed the bleak belief that it may be "too late" by then. But changing the neglect of public goods and public services isin no way too late for a country that has already done so much with youthful energy. With a bit more deliberation and purpose, the best may be yet to come.

The writer, who received the 1998 Nobel Prize for economics, is Lamont university professor at Harvard University and former master of Trinity College, Cambridge

From Financial Times,  August 14,2007 
[top]

A Call for EU Border Talks

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Monday conditioned the continuation of Turkey's membership talks with the European Union on a high-level effort to define the bloc's future borders. Sarkozy, an outspoken opponent of Turkey's entry into the EU, called on the 27 members to appoint a committee of "wise men" by the end of the year to determine what the bloc should look like in 2020 - roughly the time when Ankara's accession negotiations are expected to reach their conclusion.

Turkey's membership talks have been overshadowed by Ankara's refusal to recognize Cyprus, prompting the EU to freeze 8 of 35 outstanding areas of negotiation - so-called chapters - in December. In June, Paris added to the strain by vetoing the opening of talks on economic and monetary affairs with Turkey - an area that Sarkozy argued was too clearly associated with future membership.

Credit: The New York Times Media Group

From International Herald Tribune,  February 8,2007 
[top]

Courting Turkey Will not Counteract the Damage we are Doing Elsewhere

From Mr Keith Tunstall.

Sir, David Gardner makes a poor case for Turkey's membership of the European Union ("Europe should celebrate this milestone in Turkey's transition", August 17). Byzantium and Christianity were ousted from what has become Turkey more than 500 years ago. The Turks cannot now try to claim that as their heritage.

Nor does Mr Gardner make it at all clear why Turkey deserves membership because it is an Islamic democracy. An Islamic democracy may be something new, and it may be something good, but why does it qualify Turkey to be a member of the EU?

Much is made of Turkey being a bridge between the west and Islam. Have we any evidence that other Islamic states look to Turkey as a beacon for their future? It is apparent that Turkey is more friendly with many western states and with Israel than with other Islamic states. It is not apparent that this means it would be a good bridge. And do we need a particular member of the EU to be friendly with Islamic states? Is it the idea that the EU would act through Turkey? I think not.

Cannot we all have good relations? Indeed, until we went berserk and invaded Iraq, we did have good relations. Courting Turkey is not going to counteract the damage being done by threatening Iran and not recognising the democratically elected Hamas government.

Keith Tunstall,

Bletchingley, Surrey RH1 4LB, UK

From Financial Times,  August 22,2007 
[top]

In Europe, Does Devolution of Power Cost Too Much?

In Europe, Does Devolution of Power Cost Too Much?; Business Leaders Warn Of Toll Local Rules Take; Spain's 700 Retail Norms
Jonathan House. In Europe, Does Devolution of Power Cost Too Much?. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 3, 2007. pg. A.5
Abstract (Summary)
Business leaders, though, warn excessive regulation will undermine the competitiveness of Spanish companies over the long run. They are calling on the central government to take steps to unify economic legislation, in part by applying EU directives that have supremacy over national legislation. Fernando Eguidazu, head of economic policy for Spanish business association Circulo de Empresarios, says it isn't easy to quantify the negative effects of decentralization on investment and efficiency. "But it's something that companies from all sectors are starting to complain about."

The Spanish finance ministry is working on draft legislation to transpose the EU Services Directory in 2009, and the government has shown itself able to resist regions' demands for more economic autonomy, a ministry spokeswoman said. The government, for example, refused Catalonia -- Spain's most industrialized region -- the power to collect corporate taxes for the region's new tax agency.

In a recent speech in Barcelona, Catalonia's capital, Bank of Spain Gov. Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez warned against rupturing the country's internal market. "We need to reflect and take the strong and positive aspects of decentralization and avoid those phenomena that hold risks for the efficiency of the economy," he said.

» Jump to indexing (document details)
Full Text (976 words)
(c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.


MADRID -- A growing number of Spanish business leaders and policy makers are warning their country's devolution of powers to regional governments has gone too far, creating barriers to commerce and investment within the European Union's fifth-largest country.

At a time when European countries are working to strengthen EU institutions, many are rethinking the balance of power between their own central and regional governments. Germany last year moved to streamline its legislative process, ceding to its states authority over areas such as shop opening hours and trade fairs, while limiting their participation in federal legislation. At the same time, countries such as Spain and the United Kingdom have been handing over basics such as health care and education in an effort to assuage ethnic tensions and improve government accountability. Spain also has devolved wide powers for regions to legislate over transportation, commerce and the environment, among other areas.

In the 32 years since dictator Francisco Franco's death, Spain has gone from being one of Europe's most centralized countries to one of its most decentralized. Its 1978 constitution recognized 17 autonomous communities and launched a process to gradually pass decision-making authority to them.

In recent years, the Socialist-led government has encouraged regions to draft new charters granting them greater autonomy.

As the European common market becomes a working reality, the acceleration of devolution has sparked fears Spain could rupture its own internal market, denying companies economies of scale offered by a relatively large market of 46 million people.

"The proliferation of regional legislation means that, in some cases, companies have to abide by 17 different regulatory frameworks in their domestic market . . . posing obstacles and higher costs for private enterprise," said Gerardo Diaz Ferran, head of Spain's employer's association, Confederacion Espanola de Organizaciones Empresariales, or the CEOE.

In Spain's heavily regulated retail sector, more than 700 national and regional norms dictate opening hours, sales periods and other aspects of business, according to Anged, a Spanish association of 16 large retailers including El Corte Ingles SA, Carrefour SA and Ikea International AS.

National law dictates that most types of shops can only open eight Sundays a year. Each region can then decide whether or not to allow more openings, though most don't. The regions also choose which Sundays they will allow store openings and when to let retailers hold sales.

"We cannot coordinate marketing campaigns or logistics on a national scale, which translates into higher costs," said Anged Managing Director Javier Millan Astray.

Many Spanish regions have banned new-store openings of large retailers, usually defined as outlets of more than 1,500 square meters (16,140 square feet). The Balearic Islands has had a ban in place for 11 years. Anged estimates that 3 billion euros, or more than $4 billion, in investment, which could create more than 10,000 jobs, is on hold as a result of these bans.

Increasing regulation of retailers reflects the political clout, in regions such as the Balearic Islands and Catalonia, of small-shop owners who seek to curb the expansion of large chains. Restrictions on opening hours, for example, protect small shops that don't have enough staff to stay open late.

More regulation also reflects the growth of regional administrations, which employ nearly three times the staff of Spain's central government.

"Decentralization has brought more interventionism," said Jose Maria de Areilza, vice dean at Madrid's Instituto de Empresa business school.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says Spanish retail regulations are the third-most rigid among those of its 30 member nations, behind Greece and Belgium. It says inefficiency in this important sector contributes to Spain's low productivity and high inflation.

To be sure, fragmentation of its internal market doesn't seem to have dented Spain's economic growth rate, the highest among the large countries of the euro zone for more than a decade. Spain continues to benefit from the massive stimulus of historically low interest rates and large immigration flows.

Business leaders, though, warn excessive regulation will undermine the competitiveness of Spanish companies over the long run. They are calling on the central government to take steps to unify economic legislation, in part by applying EU directives that have supremacy over national legislation. Fernando Eguidazu, head of economic policy for Spanish business association Circulo de Empresarios, says it isn't easy to quantify the negative effects of decentralization on investment and efficiency. "But it's something that companies from all sectors are starting to complain about."

Mr. Eguidazu also is managing director of the Fraternidad Muprespa, an agency affiliated with the Spanish health service, providing medical services to workplace-accident victims. He said it took two years for his company to obtain permission to operate in some Spanish regions for its Prevencion unit, which advises companies on how to improve workplace safety.

The Spanish finance ministry is working on draft legislation to transpose the EU Services Directory in 2009, and the government has shown itself able to resist regions' demands for more economic autonomy, a ministry spokeswoman said. The government, for example, refused Catalonia -- Spain's most industrialized region -- the power to collect corporate taxes for the region's new tax agency.

But a spokesman for Spain's chemical-industry association, Federacion Espanola de la Industria Quimica Espanola, or Feique, said the cost of compliance with pollution-control regulation in Catalonia is 10 times as high as in neighboring Aragon.

Spain's Parliament last year approved a new charter for Catalonia, which has been challenged in the country's Constitutional Court by the opposition Popular Party.

In a recent speech in Barcelona, Catalonia's capital, Bank of Spain Gov. Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez warned against rupturing the country's internal market. "We need to reflect and take the strong and positive aspects of decentralization and avoid those phenomena that hold risks for the efficiency of the economy," he said.

---

Andrew Peaple in London and Andrea Thomas in Berlin contributed to this article.

From Wall Street Journal,  March 8,2007 
[top]

European Control of IMF 'to End'

Developing countries could provide the future head of the International Monetary Fund if they accept Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former French finance minister, this time round as the new director of the body, according to the president of the group of eurozone finance ministers.

"The next director willcertainly not be aEuropean," Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister, told FT Deutschland, the Financial Times' sister paper, in an interview.

"In the Euro group and among EU finance ministers, everyone is aware that Strauss-Kahn will probably be the last European to become director of the IMF in the foreseeable future," he said.

Mr Juncker's comments come in response to increasingly widespread criticism that, by putting forward the former French financeminister, the European Union is trying to maintain its claim to nominate the IMF's head.

Under a long-standing carve-up between the US and the EU, the head of the World Bank is usually an American while the IMF is headed by a European.

In the interview, Mr Juncker criticised the UK's behaviour in the current debate. Britain had not formally opposed the nomination of Mr Strauss-Kahn as the European candidate. "They have criticised the selection process and have said that we should have talked to others as well. But we did talk to others as well," Mr Juncker said.

"Anglo-Saxon accusations that, by nominating Strauss-Kahn we were trying to cement the unwritten rule that Europeans provide the IMF's head, are missing the point."

Many developing countries have expressed dismay at the EU's nomination of Mr Strauss-Kahn, criticising the Union for ignoring the growing economic impact of countries such as China, Brazil and Mexico.

Russia has nominated Josef Tosovsky, the former Czech central banker, as an alternative candidate to Mr Strauss-Kahn. The UK, meanwhile, maintains that it would support an openprocess in which the best candidate for the job were chosen regardless ofnationality.

Mr Juncker defended Mr Strauss-Kahn's nomination. The former French minister was a "well-known reformer" who would not leave his "reform ambitions at the wardrobe" of the IMF.

"When Strauss-Kahn leaves the IMF one day, he will have adjusted the IMF firmly to the expectations and interests of developing countries," he said.

That was one important reason why the EU hadnominated him, he added.

The reform of the appointment process at both the World Bank and the IMF should be discussed together, Mr Juncker said. "We have to start thinking about these reforms now."

From Financial Times,  August 29,2007 
[top]

Sovereign Funds a Useful Weapon for Poorer Nations

From Prof Robert H. Wade.

Sir, Both Jeffrey Garten ("We need rules for sovereign funds", August 8) and Lawrence Summers ("Sovereign funds shake the logic of capitalism", July 30) make the same point about sovereign wealth funds. They say the funds created or being created by the governments of countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are leading market players, and risk undercutting a key premise of a global market - that, in Prof Garten's words, "it is dominated by private participants seeking to maximise their welfare and that of their shareholders". Prof Summers warns that governments may use sovereign funds to help "their national companies compete effectively, or to extract technology or to achieve influence". This makes them "suspect from the viewpoint of the global system".

But "the viewpoint of the global system" is the viewpoint of the west. They can also be seen as a partial redress to the unlevel playing field built into the "global system" through a panoply of international rules - including for trade and finance - which confer structural advantages on western companies and tend to hinder the catch-up growth and structural change of most developing countries. Moreover, the fact that most developing country states are much weaker at negotiating trade deals, obtaining technology and defending intellectual property than developed country counterparts puts developing country companies at an additional disadvantage. Sovereign wealth funds can be a useful weapon for strengthening the bargaining power of developing country states, so as to make the playing field a bit more level for companies based in countries fortunate enough to have them.

Robert H. Wade,

Professor of Political Economy,

Development Studies Institute,

London School of Economics,

London WC2A 2AE

From Financial Times,  October 8,2007 
[top]

Maybe Investing in US Treasuries is the Right Move

From Prof Ronald McKinnon.

Sir, Jeffrey Garten ("We need rules for sovereign funds", August 8) draws attention to important issues for the capital markets. In arguing for transparency, Prof Garten wants sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) to publish internationally audited reports on their entire portfolios - together with their corporate governance and risk management techniques. In this, surely he is on the side of the angels. Indeed, one can make a case for imposing such openness on domestic financial institutions, including banks insured by the government, and leveraging artists (locusts?) such as hedge and private equity funds.

But how realistic is this laudable goal? Not very. It turns out that the two Singapore pioneering SWFs, Temasek and the larger Government Investment Corporation (GIC), are not transparent. Amazingly, the huge GIC publishes virtually nothing about the distribution of its many billions of dollars worth of overseas assets - as I learned personally while breaking lances in Singapore trying to find out.

Prof Garten did not address the question of monetary stability associated with recycling hot money flows from the huge pile of official exchange reserves in Asia and the Middle East. The Reserve Bank of India, for one, has come under great pressure to use its dollar reserves "constructively" by setting up a special fund to lend for domestic infrastructure development. But of course financing domestic roads and bridges would mean that these dollars would have to be converted back into rupees to pay workers, forcing the RBI to enter the foreign exchange markets and buy them all back to prevent the rupee from appreciating even further - further weakening its monetary control.

More subtly, suppose the new government-owned China Investment Corporation, chastened by its recent loss in investing in the Blackstone private equity fund, decided to invest more passively in offshore US dollar deposits in Hong Kong - which earn a little bit more than the current yield on US Treasuries.

Such dollar deposits would then give the Hong Kong banks additional wherewithal to lend dollars back to mainlanders speculating on the renminbi's continued appreciation. The current avalanche of hot money flowing into China, through its porous capital controls, would be accentuated, forcing the People's Bank of China to buy these dollars back in order to prevent the renminbi from appreciating precipitately.

So there are perils to managing official exchange reserves - whether through newly created SWFs or not. Perhaps the time-tested method of investing just in US Treasuries is not so bad after all!

Ronald McKinnon,

Professor of Economics,

Stanford University,

Stanford, CA 94305, US

From Financial Times,  August 14,2007 
[top]

World Bank Struggles to Meet Dollars 39bn Aid Target

By RICHARD MCGREGOR and DAVID PILLING

The World Bank faces "an uphill task" persuading donor countries to meet its fundraising target of Dollars 39bn for the International Development Association, the bank's concessionary lending arm that provides funds to the world's poorest countries, Robert Zoellick, its president, said yesterday.

In a briefing in Tokyo, Mr Zoellick said factors including budget constraints, taxpayer resistance and a weak US dollar and Japanese yen made the current three-year round, which closes in December, very difficult.

"Part of my job is to explain why IDA is important. What tends to sell aid is if you can show it has a direct connection for the country or a particular problem or a disease. But IDA is the general fund," he said.

Japan had cut its IDA pledges sharply, from 18.7 per cent of the total six years ago to 12.28 per cent now, pushing it into third place behind the UK. Mr Zoellick said he was trying to persuade Tokyo not to cut further.

Overall, Japan's overseas development aid had shrunk38 per cent in six years. By some calculations Germany and France could overtake Japan as aid donors by next year, pushing the world's second- biggest economy into fifth place, a World Bank official said.

Apart from budgetary constraints and currency depreciation in the US and Japan, which make buying each "special drawing right" more expensive, the round is complicated by previous debt forgiveness pledges. Poor countries have been allowed to skip about Dollars 6bn (Pounds 3bn, Euros 4.4bn) in IDA repayments, which would normally have been reinvested.

One positive, if largely symbolic, development was that China for the first time had indicated it might be willing to pledge funds, Mr Zoellick said. Jin Renqing, China's finance minister, had said he wanted to attend an IDA donors' meeting in November in Dublin.

"This is China being a responsible stakeholder in the world of IDA support," Mr Zoellick said.

The Ministry of Finance in Beijing declined to comment yesterday, but an official familiar with the issue said the State Council had not yet approved participation in the IDA round.

China received Dollars 1.67bn of aid in 2004, according to the OECD, making it the seventh largest recipient, although that will decline as aid from Tokyo ends. As it has become richer and its global interests more important, China has begun using aid as a diplomacy tool, especially in resource-rich Africa but also in Asia.

China has given direct grant aid, provided infrastructure, and also offered large concessionary loans to many countries, sometimes directly tied to resource projects.

The total amount of Chinese aid has not been quantified, but an official familiar with its policies said yesterday "there's more going out than coming in".

From Financial Times,  October 8,2007 
[top]

History of Financial Regulation is a Race to Laxity

From Mr Terrence R. Keeley.

Sir, Jeffrey Garten weighs in on regulating the sovereign wealth fund investment phenomenon in typical American fashion - full of good purpose, yet riddled with impractical idealism ("We need rules for sovereign funds", August 8). His recipe of transparency, reciprocity and ownership restrictions makes plenty of sense to a debtor nation hell-bent on preserving its family silver - but none whatsoever to the creditor with a fistful of IOUs. His wish-list is not only fanciful; it is completely unenforceable.

SWFs today are being demonised even before they are clearly defined. Why should ADIA or Temesek be denied an investment opportunity, one should wonder, when Gulf Co-operation Council- funded takeover bids by KKR or Carlyle are allowed to proceed? Is a joint-venture fund backed by Saudi wealth but fronted by a western corporation any less nefarious than direct investments by the Korean or Chinese Investment Corporation? If not, shouldn't the US have prohibited the stake Chinese authorities recently took in Blackstone?

The history of financial regulation shows nothing else but a race towards laxity by competing jurisdictions and rapid innovation to skirt unwelcome interference. No sooner are guidelines made in one locale than legal vehicles are created somewhere else to avoid them.

Finally, Prof Garten says: "Others will worry that the US will jeopardise much-needed funding for its large current account deficits." As well they should! Indeed, let us all hope American authorities are spending tenfold the effort on promoting US energy independence, raising domestic savings rates and opening foreign markets to US goods and services than they are to propagating international SWF investment guidelines. The former would have real effect in correcting debilitating global imbalances; the latter merely papers over their unfortunate - and ultimately unavoidable - effects.

Terrence R. Keeley,

Global Head,

Central Bank Services,

UBS,

New York, NY 10019, US

From Financial Times,  October 8,2007 
[top]

Former Czech PM Respected by Peers

Josef Tosovsky, a former Czech central bank governor and prime minister, is a well respected banker with a good reputation among his peers.

Mr Tosovsky, 56, interrupted a seven-year tenure as Czech National Bank governor during the 1990s to hold a six-month tenure as caretaker prime minister.

Vaclav Klaus, then prime minister and current president, resigned over a campaign financing scandal in late 1997, and the non- partisan Mr Tosovsky was appointed prime ministerby Vaclav Havel, the former president, to calm theturbulent political situation.

Despite a premiership of just six months, Mr Tosovsky was instrumental in laying the foundations for several reforms and paving the way for talks which would lead to the country's accession to the European Union five years later. He also began the process of banking privatisation.

Previously, Mr Tosovsky was president of the State Bank of Czechoslovakia and later oversaw the currency crisis of May 1997 as governor of the Czech National Bank. In July 1998, after general elections in the country, he resumed the post of governor for two more years.

He belongs to a group of economists who implemented the economy's transformation on market principles, contributing to anti- inflationary monetary policy, exchange rate stability and the introduction of the convertibility of the Czech koruna.

In 1993 he was named central banker of the year by Euromoney magazine, and in 1996 European banker of the year by leading EU journalists.

Earlier this year a Czech daily newspaper claimed he had co- operated with the StB communist secret police in the late 1980s.

The newspaper focused on Mr Tosovsky's role as adviser for the then head of the State Bank of Czech-oslovakia. Mr Tosovsky denied the collaboration allegations.

He is currently head of the Financial Stability Institute (FSI) within the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland.

From Financial Times,  August 23,2007 
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We Need Rules for Sovereign Funds

We need rules for sovereign funds; [LONDON 1ST EDITION]
JEFFREY GARTEN. Financial Times. London (UK): Aug 8, 2007. pg. 13
Abstract (Summary)
Washington has asked the International Monetary Fund and WorldBank to establish a code of good practice for SWFs. Berlin is eyeing new legislation to deal with these funds, modelled on US procedures for screening incoming foreign direct investment. Brussels is considering a European-wide set of guidelines. But so far no western government has had the courage to admit that dealing with SWFs may require departures from the conventional liberal orthodoxy concerning global trade and investment flows. Yet this is precisely what is needed.

When relatively few SWFs existed, such as Singapore's Temasek Holdings or the Kuwait Investment Authority, the challenge they posed to the global financial system and to market-based cross- border investment was small. But now sovereign funds in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia are becoming active, Beijing is establishing the government-owned China Investment Corporation, and Japan and South Korea are contemplating similar SWFs. Moreover, the amounts under sovereign management could soar from about Dollars 2,500bn (Pounds 1,200bn) today to Dollars 12,000bn in 2015, according to Morgan Stanley.

Reciprocity should be required. If western host countries are going to treat SWFs like any other market participant, the economy of the SWF's home country must be as open as the country in which the SWF aspires to invest. In addition, if a sovereignfund was established because of currency manipulation in the host country that led to excess reserve creation (China), or if it is the result of strident resource nationalism (Russia), or if it is due to monopolistic pricing practices (Saudi Arabia), then consultations should be initiated between the two governments to reduce these policy distortions.

» Jump to indexing (document details)
Full Text (844 words)
(Copyright Financial Times Ltd. 2007. All rights reserved.)


T he growth of government-owned investment companies, often called sovereign wealth funds, has caused a lot of hand-wringing in the US and Europe - and rightly so.

Washington has asked the International Monetary Fund and WorldBank to establish a code of good practice for SWFs. Berlin is eyeing new legislation to deal with these funds, modelled on US procedures for screening incoming foreign direct investment. Brussels is considering a European-wide set of guidelines. But so far no western government has had the courage to admit that dealing with SWFs may require departures from the conventional liberal orthodoxy concerning global trade and investment flows. Yet this is precisely what is needed.

When relatively few SWFs existed, such as Singapore's Temasek Holdings or the Kuwait Investment Authority, the challenge they posed to the global financial system and to market-based cross- border investment was small. But now sovereign funds in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia are becoming active, Beijing is establishing the government-owned China Investment Corporation, and Japan and South Korea are contemplating similar SWFs. Moreover, the amounts under sovereign management could soar from about Dollars 2,500bn (Pounds 1,200bn) today to Dollars 12,000bn in 2015, according to Morgan Stanley.

These funds are going to have the ability to buy any global company, to create panic in markets if they move too precipitously, even to dwarf the political clout of international financial institutions. They can no longer be ignored.

The agenda for dealing with SWFs must take account of disturbing trends in the global marketplace. For allthe backslapping among financeofficials and private bankers about the benefits of increasing globalisation and the diversification of risk via securitisation and high-technology derivatives, the fact is that the capital markets have become increasingly opaque.

Between the growth of impossible-to-value derivatives, the phenomenal increase in secretive hedge funds and the multiplying layers of connections among different markets, a critical assumption underlying a liberal economic order - that market participants have the information they need to make rational decisions - is beingjeopardised.

This is where sovereign wealthfunds come into the picture. Yes, they are only part of the global financial black box, but because they aredriven by governments, they nevertheless compel immediate attention. As they expand their presence, they could undercut another key premise of a global market - that it is dominated by private participants seeking to maximise their welfare and that of their shareholders.

Of course, in 2007, sovereign funds may seek to invest excess foreign exchange reserves or extraordinary profits from oil for nothing more than higher returns than would be earned from US Treasuries. But who knows what the governments of countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia may look like a decade from now, and what their political motivations might be?

In the first instance, the US and European Union should harmonise their policies rather than pursue their usual go-it-alone response to important global issues. Among the principles that Washington and Brussels ought to consider are these:

Transparency is the key. In order to be treated as normal investors, SWFs should be obliged to publish internationally audited reports on their entire portfolios at least twice a year. They should disclose the precise mechanisms by which they themselves are regulated in their home countries - including the specific individuals charged with that oversight. From the SWF disclosures we should know the fund's investment philosophy, its corporate governance process and its risk management techniques.

Reciprocity should be required. If western host countries are going to treat SWFs like any other market participant, the economy of the SWF's home country must be as open as the country in which the SWF aspires to invest. In addition, if a sovereignfund was established because of currency manipulation in the host country that led to excess reserve creation (China), or if it is the result of strident resource nationalism (Russia), or if it is due to monopolistic pricing practices (Saudi Arabia), then consultations should be initiated between the two governments to reduce these policy distortions.

Ownership guidelines are essential. SWFs should not own more than 20 per cent of any company in the US or Europe, without a decision of the host government to go higher. The under-lying premise must be that SWFs are political entities and should be treated as such.

Many in global financial marketswill see these proposals as having a protectionist thrust. However, it would be equally dangerous to pretend thatgovernments will always invest like normal market participants, or that without effective rules, the growing activity of SWFs will not set off an even larger protectionist backlash than the rules themselves would create.

Others will worry that the US will jeopardise much-needed funding for its large current account deficits. It is equally possible, though, that predictable rules could facilitate capital flows. One thing is for sure: it will become more difficult to deal with SWFs once they become an entrenched feature of the world economy. Now is the time to act.

The writer is the Juan Trippe professor of international trade and finance at the Yale School of Management

From Financial Times,  August 8,2007 
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West Cannot be Choosy over Asset Purchases

From Mr Julian Jessop.

Sir, Jeffrey Garten raises some valid concerns about government- owned investment companies ("We need rules for sovereign funds", August 8).

However, governments in the west have to accept that Asian countries and oil exporters will be buying more US and European assets in one form or another, as long as global imbalances persist. Borrowers cannot always be choosy over what form these purchases will take.

Indeed, it is not obvious that purchases of corporate assets via sovereign funds pose any greater systemic threat than the recent dependence on sales of government bonds to finance current account deficits. If anything, purchases of corporate assets represent a greater long-term commitment to the health of economies in the west.

China in particular already has a huge vested interest in preventing a disorderly decline in the dollar and supporting the economy and financial markets of its most important trading partner, the US. Is the Chinese government really going to be a less reliable investor than, say, a fickle hedge fund with a much shorter horizon and no wider agenda at all?

Julian Jessop,

Chief International Economist,

Capital Economics,

London SW1W 9TR

From Financial Times,  October 8,2007 
[top]

Millions of Activists for a Day Stand Up Campaign Seeks to Garner Public Support to Fight Poverty

By Gumisai Mutume

In October, more than 23 million people — some 3.6 million of them in Africa — set a world record by literally standing up to bring attention to persistent global poverty and to prompt world leaders to act on their promises to eradicate the scourge. The message of the Stand Up Against Poverty campaign, coordinated by the New York–based UN Millennium Campaign, reached people at more than 11,000 events in over 80 countries — cricket fans in Jaipur, India, music lovers at a concert in Harare, Zimbabwe, children in school in Lebanon and soccer supporters in Mexico. Organizers timed the global campaign to coincide with other events marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Kenyans bang spoons against plates during an October 2006 “Stand Up” anti-poverty rally in Nairobi.
“Together, we sent a clear message to our political leaders that we are going to keep pushing them to deliver on aid, on debt cancellation, on trade justice and to provide good and accountable governments,” said Mr. Kumi Naidoo of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). An alliance of community organizations, faith-based groups, trade unions and campaigners in over 100 countries, GCAP was one of the organizations supporting the Stand Up campaign.


Stand Up served as a reminder to the 189 world leaders who gathered for the 2000 Millennium Summit at the UN in New York that they are nearing the halfway mark to 2015 — the date by which they pledged to attain a number of targets in the fight against poverty. Known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the targets include a reduction in child mortality, primary education for all children and progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Stand Up also demanded debt cancellation for poor countries, more and better aid, government accountability in both North and South and “fair” trade rules to allow developing countries to take better advantage of world trade.

“It does not require heroism to help save the lives of people dying in poor countries due to poverty and help to promote economic development,” says UN Special Advisor on the MDGs and head of the UN Millennium Campaign Jeffrey Sachs. “It would just take having our eyes opened. It would take some attention. It would take a breakthrough in our country [the US] from doing nothing to doing something, because we really are, essentially, doing nothing right now.”

The campaign therefore asked ordinary people to do the least they could — stand up and read a statement asking leaders in industrial and developing nations to keep their promises. But a number of participants interviewed by Africa Renewal at an event in New York said they did not understand how their efforts would translate into poverty reduction in poor countries. “How does my standing up put food in the mouth of a starving child in Africa?” asked a UN staff member who requested anonymity.

Broader campaign
By asking individuals to take simple actions, Stand Up gave ordinary citizens the chance to become campaigners, explains Ms. Sylvia Michuli, communication coordinator in the Africa office of the UN Millennium Campaign in Nairobi, Kenya. The idea, she says, was to use Stand Up as a symbolic gesture to draw global attention to poverty and the MDGs.

More than five years after the Millennium Summit, its goals and issues are not only far from the electoral agenda in many countries, but most people have not even heard about them. A 2005 EuroBarometre survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that only 12 per cent of citizens in that region have heard about the MDGs and that “real” awareness of the issues may even be lower. Another study in Canada reports that 62 per cent of those who had heard about the MDGs could not say what they were about.

Stand Up was a useful tool to educate citizens because “it was very easy for ordinary people to get involved,” Ms. Michuli told Africa Renewal. “We managed to get more than 3.6 million people in Africa involved, the first time we have been able to do this.” In addition, she says, it was not an isolated event, but part of a broader effort by a coalition of anti-poverty groups “to put sustained pressure on governments to deliver on their promises.”

‘An invitation to citizens’
In 2005, GCAP held a series of events similar to Stand Up. It asked ordinary citizens around the world to wear white wristbands and demand that their governments act against poverty, explains Mr. Henry Malumo, coordinator of the GCAP coalition in Zambia. “It was an invitation to citizens to take their rightful place and demand good governance,” he told Africa Renewal. He says that for too long Africans have been passive recipients of flawed policies designed by their governments and international partners.

The first of the GCAP-led events, the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign, was held before the July 2005 summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations in Gleneagles, Scotland. Two others were staged later that year, before the World Summit at the UN and the World Trade Organization’s ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.

Whether such campaigns achieve the desired results is the subject of an ongoing study, the Public Perceptions of Poverty survey, funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development. The study finds that in general the proportion of the public in the UK saying they were “very concerned” about poverty in poor countries rose sharply in July 2005 following the MPH activities. However, it declined in the second half of the year, returning to pre-2005 levels. This may mean that such campaigns need to be sustained in order to maintain public interest on these matters, the survey notes.

Similarly, a majority of those interviewed in the Public Perception of Poverty survey reported awareness of the G-8 immediately after the MPH campaign, compared to a small minority previously. Without knowledge of the G-8, the study says, it would have been difficult to pursue political dialogue on the international causes of underdevelopment or highlight the role of the donor community in the fight against poverty.

At the Gleneagles summit, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US agreed to write off the debts of the world’s poorest countries and double aid flows by 2010. While the MPH cannot be directly credited for this, it did play a role in mobilizing pressure on the G-8, the study says.

Complex issues
Such campaigns, however, only go so far in educating people on the complex issues of debt, trade, aid and development. Even after the MPH, people’s understanding of poverty and development issues remains shallow, the study notes. For example, many people believe that development assistance is an expression of sympathy and solidarity with victims of humanitarian crises, rather than part of a long-term commitment to fighting global poverty. Because people see development assistance as mere charity, aid budgets are often the first to be cut in times of economic difficulty.

If political leaders from rich donor nations are genuinely committed to poverty reduction and long-term development, they need to “shift from dependency on passive, uninformed public support for aid to a more critically aware constituency at home,” says the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 30 rich countries, in its own assessment of public views on poverty. Currently, public discussion of and education about development are not a top priority in OECD countries, and this must change, notes the report, MDGs, Taxpayers and Aid Effectiveness. OECD countries now spend about 0.26 per cent of their aid budgets on educating the public about aid and development issues, well below the 3 per cent they have agreed is necessary for this purpose.

The authors of the OECD study, Ms. Ida McDonnell and Mr. Henri-Bernard Solignac Lecomte, recommend “the building of a constituency in Northern countries by engaging people in a deeper debate about development that could be sustained even after the ‘debt-relief bubble’ is gone.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 1,2007 
[top]

Collusion Over Who Runs Global Bodies Must Stop

YEGOR GAIDAR


On August 22, Russia nominated well-known Czech economist Josef Tosovsky as candidate for the post of International Monetary Fund managing director. It did so because the means for managing the world's financial system, with the World Bank and the IMF as key elements, is fundamentally out of date and in need of reform.

The essence of the historic agreement struck in the 1940s was that the head of the World Bank would be an American and the head of the IMF, a west European. This system is a relic of the colonial empires of Europe; in the past 60 years the world's economy has changed dramatically, with the rise of China, India and Brazil.

It would seem strange if the summer Olympic Games had been held for the past 60 years only in Washington and half the winter ones in Paris. But this is not about games. The issue concerns the institutions that ensure the stability of the world financial system.

The main aim of the IMF has been to manage global financial crises. It makes sense for it to be led by someone with experience of such crises. Most of the big European countries have not dealt with financial disorders in the past 20 years, making it hard to find specialists there with the experience.

The finance ministers of Australia, South Africa and Brazil have sent a letter to the head of the IMF, essentially saying a system in which a country, or group of countries, simply inherits a feudal right to run two leading financial bodies is not in line with the modern world economy. The leaders of many countries share this view. I can suppose that this position is shared by the leadership of my country too.

The world has not had serious financial disorders after the crises in Turkey and Argentina. But they will occur again. Russia's financial situation is now stable. We do not borrow from the IMF and have paid off our debts to it. But Russia went through two serious financial crises in the past 20 years, when a constructive position from the two key institutions was important. That is why they must retain the trust of the global community.

The main issue is not personalities. Nobody has anything against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French candidate. It is a question of principle: rejecting the monopoly right of one group or another to hold the leadership of the two institutions. It is also about how the candidate should be elected by democratic means.

A significant part of the world has reached agreement on this question. We are ready to ignore the political problems existing between our countries: relations between the centre of an empire and its former colonies, for instance relations between Russia and the former Warsaw pact countries, are not always the easiest. But the Russian authorities are ready to put forward and support a candidate from one of the east European countries because his reputation is spotless.

We cannot and do not intend to tell the countries of eastern Europe what position their governments should take. We have nominated Mr Tosovsky not as a representative of eastern Europe but as someone with an impressive reputation. For us, it is not so important from which country or group of countries he hails. I will express my own thoughts on this, which have not been discussed in the slightest with the Russian monetary or financial authorities: the countries of eastern Europe should consider ways of increasing their influence in key decisions within the European Union on questions of world financial politics.

Mr Tosovsky ran the central bank of Czechoslovakia and then of the Czech Republic. He has experience in managing financial crises. When he led monetary policy, Czechoslovakia was one of the few countries that survived the collapse of the communist system and avoided hyperinflation. When Czechoslovakia was divided into two states, he created a Czech and Slovak currency without serious crisis. He is recognised as one of the best bankers in the world.

The IMF's quota system for voting needs reform. The right to make decisions in key financial institutions should be in line with a country's share in the world economy. Western Europe could try to form an arithmetical majority on the IMF board by relying on the promise of US support for its European candidate in return for the support of the Europeans in electing the World Bank head. In doing so it could try to oppose the rest of the world. But I am convinced: the time for such collusion is past.

The writer is the former prime minister of the Russian Federation and isdirector of the Institute for the Economy in Transition

From Financial Times,  August 27,2007 
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Russia Nominates Own Candidate to Run IMF

By CATHERINE BELTON, PEGGY HOLLINGER, JO JOHNSON, KATKA KROSNAR, STEFAN WAGSTYL and JONATHAN WHEATLEY

Russia challenged western dominance of world international financial institutions yesterday by nominating a surprise candidate, Josef Tosovsky, the former Czech premier and ex-central bank chief, to run the International Monetary Fund.

The nomination pitted Mr Tosovsky against Dominique Strauss- Kahn, the former French finance minister, who has the backing of the European Union.

Russia's move ran into immediate trouble when the Czech Republic, which joined the EU in 2004, declared that it was standing by the EU's decision to support the French candidate.

However, Moscow's move shows Russia's increasing international assertiveness and willingness to clash with the west over issues ranging from energy supplies to US plans to site missile defence bases in Europe.

The Kremlin has also raised concerns over US-EU domination of international institutions - an issue that plays well with large developing countries, including China, India and Brazil.

The IMF chief is traditionally selected by European nations while the World Bank head is chosen by the US. But developing nations have long resented this informal arrangement, which dates back the the 1940s.

Alexei Kudrin, Russia's finance minister, said the move was aimed at boosting the prestige of the IMF, which had failed to handle recent financial crises, including the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

"Given the IMF's failures in resolving crises in a number of countries, the IMF needs to raise its prestige", he said. Mr Kudrin praised Mr Tosovsky as a proven crisis manager. He said developing states, including Brazil, India and China, had all expressed support for an open selection process in talks.

Mr Putin has slammed world financial institutions as "archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy" and called for their radical overhaul to reflect the surging growth of developing nations.

The US Treasury department said of Russia's move: "We look forward to working with our colleagues at the fund to select a new managing director. The secretary looks forward to speaking with any candidate."

The French finance ministry said: "We believe that it will not put into question the momentum behind Dominique Strauss-Kahn's candidacy." Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, said "Mr Tosovsky was not, and is not, the Czech Republic's candidate for this post."

Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, said: "Mr Tosovsky was not, and is not, the Czech Republic's candidate for this post."

Officials said Russia's move would have no impact on talks over hosting part of the planned US missile defence system.

Few countries yesterday backed Moscow's choice of Mr Tosovsky. Mr Strauss-Kahn, in Beijing yesterday, was reported as saying he felt he had China's backing.

A senior Indian finance ministry official told the FT that as far as he was aware there had been "no conversation" about the nomination and he declined to say whether New Delhi would back Mr Tosovsky.

A senior Brazilian presidential official said Brazil sought reform but was not backing any particular candidate.

Additional reporting by Peggy Hollinger in Paris, Jonathan Wheatley in Sao Paolo, and Jo Johnson in New Delhi

From Financial Times,  August 23,2007 
[top]

Woman Storekeeper Boosts Malawi Farming

By Itai Madamombe

On a small farming plot not far from her grocery store, Dinnah Kapiza points at the different types of fertilizers, explaining how each should be used. Local farmers gather around her, asking questions about the pros and cons of each brand she sells at Tisaiwale Variety Shop in Mponela, 60 kilometres from the Malawian capital, Lilongwe.

Fertilizer and seed distribution in Malawi: Shopkeepers can help supply farmers not only with inputs, but also agricultural advice.

The 58-year-old businesswoman is one of a new breed of “agro-dealers,” who not only sell products, but are certified to advise customers on how to best use them.

“We don’t want them to just buy,” Ms. Kapiza told Africa Renewal. “We want them to know the best fertilizer to use for their needs and how to use it. You can’t just use chemicals any way you want. Most are fatal. As trained agro-dealers, we have demonstration plots. When people ask about a specific product, I can say: ‘Please come and see; it’s right here and this is what you do’.”

She adds: “Because I help them with farming tips, they return to buy my supplies. So it is advertising, as well as helping people. We are improving farming methods, therefore food security and economic welfare. Everybody benefits in the end.”

Struggling for food
Small-scale farmers in Africa are struggling to meet food needs. Poor soil, notes Maria Wanzala, an expert with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), is one of the major reasons they cannot produce enough food to supply the more than 204 million people on the continent who suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

“Africa loses the equivalent of over $4 bn worth of soil nutrients per year,” Ms. Wanzala, the NEPAD’s fertilizer adviser, points out. “Yet small-scale African farmers use little or no fertilizer to nourish the impoverished soil. They use only about 8 kilogrammes per hectare, versus a world average of 100 kilos per hectare.”

Reducing hunger on the continent, stresses Ms. Wanzala, must begin with addressing its severely depleted soils. Improving agriculture is a priority under NEPAD, Africa’s development framework. In June, NEPAD promoters held a Fertilizer Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, that brought together heads of state and diverse stakeholders. Subsequently, they adopted 12 action points that included taking concrete steps, by 2007, to improve farmers’ access to fertilizers by developing agro-dealer networks in rural areas.

Helping farmers
Aaron Kamwaza is one of the farmers who has benefited from improved agro-dealer networks. He grows maize, groundnuts and vegetables near Ms. Kapiza’s store. Easier access to fertilizer, says the farmer, has boosted his yields.

“The soil here is very, very poor. Without feeding it fertilizers, you get little out of it,” Mr. Kamwaza said. “This is why I’m happy the store sells everything we need right here in our village. It saves us extra money and time. We don’t have to go to the city.”

If farmers do not have supplies, they cannot do anything with their knowledge, says Richard Chapweteka, the country director of the Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs (CNFA). The organization seeks innovative ways to boost rural incomes by empowering farmers and entrepreneurs.

With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in the US, CNFA started a guarantee fund to help grocery store owners, like Ms. Kapiza, add agricultural products — such as fertilizer, seeds, small tools and pesticides — to their shelves.

In 2000, Mr. Chapweteka said, the Malawian government commissioned a study into problems faced by farmers. “They found that the distance the farmers travel to buy seeds, fertilizers and other supplies is a big handicap. We started training storekeepers, giving them the means to procure products so farmers can get what they need at their doorstep and cut down on travel costs and time.”

Credit guarantees, he says, are paramount to storekeepers like Ms. Kapiza who cannot get bank loans. The CNFA provides credit against which they can purchase supplies from participating companies in Malawi, such as Pana, SeedCo and Omnia Fertilizers.

“It was difficult to get a loan, as I needed collateral,” recalls Ms. Kapiza. “With the credit guarantee, companies gave me goods. In 30 days, I must pay them back. I always pay on time. In the end they gave me even more than what CNFA could guarantee.”

Ms. Kapiza says she serves an area of about 9,000 people. At first she sold household essentials such as bread and cooking oil. But business was slow, so she diversified. “There has been a 70 per cent increase in sales since I added seeds, pesticides and fertilizers to my store.”

Prospects looking up
Things are looking up so much that she now employs four people: two cashiers and two men to guard the store. Confident and enthusiastic about her future, she is hardly recognizable as the same woman who thought her world had come to a standstill seven years ago when her husband died. Ms. Kapiza opened the store soon after to help with income to care for her 10 children. Her hope now, she says, is to open at least two more shops.

“When you are determined to do something, do it and mean it. Don’t say: ‘Because my husband is gone, I should give up.’ This is my advice to women,” she said. “CNFA gives the credit, but we provide the hard work.”

The guarantee fund, Mr. Chapweteka observes, has worked well. “We have had, over the last five years, less than 5 per cent default out of 450 agro-dealers, which is insignificant. We are happy with the system. Programmes that work, like this one, need to happen on a much larger scale — pilot projects will not take us anywhere. Continent-wide action, under NEPAD, will hopefully open new opportunities and markets that motivate farmers.”

Ms. Wanzala, the NEPAD fertilizer expert, concurs: “The Malawi project illustrates one of the actions NEPAD is trying to promote. A woman like Dinnah Kapiza bettering her income as one of the best agro-dealers in her area, while helping farmers get fertilizer, is an example of exactly what we are working to achieve all over Africa.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 1,2007 
[top]

Ventures in Vietnam's Rural Backwaters

By EDMUND LI and SUNNY YI

Its economy is small, its infrastructure is fragile, its industries are still largely run by central planners, and per capita incomes are low. Yet, at this moment, Vietnam may be one of the world's most attractive new opportunities for financial services companies.

Just how attractive will become clearer in the coming weeks, when Hanoi-based Vietcombank, one of Vietnam's big four state-owned banks, finalises plans to offer shares amounting to 10 per cent of the bank's capital in the first in a string of big bank IPOs this year and next.

The trends so far are moving in the right direction. With GDP growth on track to top 8.5 per cent in 2007, Vietnam has entered Asia's economic fast lane. Since the government opened its financial services sector to global competition under World Trade Organisation rules late last year, international banks can acquire up to 30 per cent of the equity in the country's 32 joint-stock commercial banks.

Succeeding in Vietnam's emerging banking sector will require more than capital, technical expertise, and management know-how. With Vietnam's per capita income still among the world's lowest at just Dollars 726 per year, it will take the right strategy to crack a market where only 6 per cent of the country's 85m people own a bank account and only 2 per cent have borrowed from a bank.

Vietnam's cities are the obvious places to start, but only about half of Hanoi's residents and fewer than a third of those living in Ho Chi Minh City have bank accounts. That means newcomers cannot afford to ignore the rural countryside where three-quarters of the population reside. Building a profitable customer base in provincial towns and villages - markets western banks have found difficult to crack in other emerging economies - will prove to be an even bigger challenge.

One way to reach these hard-to-serve populations with affordable financial services is to borrow from the playbooks of banks in other developing markets. In Central America, for example, Banco Agricola (BA) has grown with entry-level products and easy access to distribution channels for low-income urban residents in El Salvador. Already a leader serving small businesses and the narrow stratum of affluent retail customers, BA managers recognised that the high fixed costs of the bank's full-service branches and wide array of deposit accounts and collateralised loans were money-losers in low- income markets.

Rather than write off this vast customer segment, BA set out to redefine its branch network and radically streamline its product offerings. The bank opened customer-friendly personal-credit centres where borrowers could take out small personal loans and began issuing low-limit credit cards for use with local merchants.

To keep costs low, BA also created two new entry- level transaction accounts serviced through debit cards and automated kiosks. The no-frills approach has doubled the bank's potential profit pool and could generate, by BA's reckoning, a return on equity better than 30 per cent.

Another challenge for global banks entering Vietnam is to extend their reach to the countryside where informal networks of money- lenders, clan associations and family members meet more than half of Vietnamese financial needs. Though expensive and often unreliable, these traditional sources of capital have made provincial rural dwellers savvy borrowers. That is an advantage for retail banks: rural borrowers familiar with the use of credit can become loyal bank customers if they see advantages in terms of cost and reliability. The key for banks will be finding cost-effective ways to reach isolated and thinly populated communities.

ICICI Bank, India's second-largest banking company, combines technology and local partners to reach customers in rural India. The bank teams up with village shopkeepers, leasing them low-cost kiosks that offer a range of deposit and credit products via the internet and training them to sell specially designed credit, insurance, and even investment products to their rural neighbours.

Early results are encouraging. ICICI has made its rural banking operations a stand-alone division, with a loan portfolio that is forecast to grow at a 33 per cent compound annual rate through 2009. For investors, the rural banking strategy is helping to make ICICI Bank, in the words of one local securities research firm, the "best play in the 'emerging India' story".

Now it is Vietnam's turn. The Vietcombank IPO will be one important test of the growth potential of Vietnam's banking sector. But the bigger tests will come afterwards, as the country's banks and their global partners combine the old and the new, and try to keep Vietnam in Asia's fast lane.

Edmund Lin and Sunny Yi are partners with Bain & Company, based in Singapore and Seoul, respectively.

From Financial Times,  July 30,2007 
[top]

Financing Entrepreneurship: Bank Finance versus Venture Capital

Jean-Etienne de Bettignies, James A Brander.

Abstract (Summary)
This paper examines the entrepreneur's choice between bank finance and venture capital. With bank finance, the entrepreneur keeps full control of the firm and has efficient incentives to exert effort. With venture capital finance, there is a two-sided moral hazard problem as both the entrepreneur and venture capitalist (VC) provide unverifiable effort. The entrepreneur benefits from the VC's managerial input but must surrender partial ownership of the venture, thus diluting the entrepreneur's incentive to provide effort. Venture capital tends to be preferred to bank finance when VC productivity is high and entrepreneurial productivity is low. [PUBLICATION

From Journal of Business Venturing Vol. 22, Iss. 6. ,  January 11,2007 
[top]

Building Futures Cross-border Banking Extends New Credit Lines to the Poor

Now 47, Jose Antonio Reyes has worked for years as a builder in his native El Salvador and has never once thought about opening a bank account.

On the face of it, he and his wife Edith Portales seem like some of the most unlikely people to have their lives transformed by innovations in trans-national finance. The couple live in a cramped and airless house in Soyapango, near the country's capital, San Salvador, which they share with their son Fernando and their nephew Gerardo Alfaro's three children. They are dependent on the Dollars 600 (Pounds 299, Euros 440) or so that Mr Alfaro sends them each month from the US.

Mr Reyes says he has long wished to add a floor to his home, but getting a mortgage to finance the work was never an option. In El Salvador, as throughout Latin America, commercial banking services have traditionally been available only to the better off.

This year, though, Mr Alfaro was offered an innovative Dollars 20,000 mortgage loan in the US that will allow his relatives at home to build the extra floor, providing his kids with a room of their own and somewhere to study. The deal was organised by a US money transfer company called Alante and Integral, a Salvadorian micro- finance bank.

Until recently, handling a mortgage for such a small amount, especially a cross-border mortgage, would have been too expensive for banks to make a decent return. But helped by greater economic stability in the region and lower interest rates, micro-finance banks and some other innovative financial institutions have begun to see potential in this market.

The deal highlights the way migrant workers and their families are slowly being brought into the world's banking and credit markets, which experts say is crucial to giving remittances a wider impact on economic development. Money transfer companies such as Western Union have traditionally handled the vast bulk of transactions (see below left). They transmit cash electronically, convert it into local currency and arrange payment in cash for local family members in exchange for a percentage commission.

Such a cash-to-cash system means that only a small proportion of remittances - which make up more than 15 per cent of El Salvador's gross domestic product - stays in the banking system, where it could be used to finance local investment.

Yet, given the right opportunities, families that regularly receive remittances could use them to open bank accounts and would then find it easier to buy insurance and other financial products, borrow money to buy a house or start a small business. All that could dramatically increase the economic impact of the money. In the words of Don Terry, the head of the Multilateral Investment Fund at the Inter-American Development Bank: "Creditworthiness simply produces greater multiplier effects."

Mainstream banks have begun to wake up to the potential of migrant business. Spanish banks have been particularly active in offering accounts to Ecuadorians, Peruvians and other Latin American migrants who have flocked to their country in recent years. US banks - including Citicorp, Bank of America and Wells Fargo - have also been eyeing the potential of migrant families.

"The immigrant segment is younger than the mainstream and in many ways in the early stages of the financial life cycle," says Daniel Ayala, head of Wells Fargo's global remittance services. "They are buying their first car, their first home and they are beginning to accumulate credit card debt. Getting them on board now is an opportunity to put our foot in the door."

Some mainstream institutions are also moving into the trans- border mortgage market, where customers such as Mr Alfaro can secure a mortgage at home but pay for it from money earned abroad. They have been encouraged by the steady decline in interest rates and growth of domestic mortgage markets in Mexico and some other Latin American countries.

In recent years, hundreds of Ecuadorian migrants based in Spain and Italy have been able to obtain mortgages from Quito-based Banco Solidario - now part of the Mutualista Pichincha group - and a similar programme involving a number of local banks has enjoyed some success in Peru.

Last year the trend extended to Mexico, the Latin American country where the remittance market has grown fastest, with lenders such as Su Casita extending between 2,000 and 3,000 mortgage loans to immigrants to spend in their home country.

From his simple basement office in a bohemian corner of Denver, Colorado, Francisco Arana, the local manager of Su Casita, says he completes about 40 mortgages a month, with Mexican migrants typically looking for loans of about Dollars 45,000-Dollars 50,000 to buy homes in new, privately developed housing estates. "It is definitely growing. We are definitely seeing more people who want to build up some assets back in Mexico," he says.

At a time when a housing market downturn has exposed providers of so-called subprime mortgages in the US, optimism about the prospects of a new market oriented to similar low-income groups might seem misplaced. But trans-border mortgage lenders insist this is a very different kind of business. "A Salvadorian earning Dollars 25,000 is low-income in the US but in El Salvador he is well-off," says Kai Schmidt, executive vice-president of Alante, which is part of the Washington-based Microfinance International Corporation. "What is a subprime customer in the US could well be a prime customer at home."

In addition, players in this new market are insisting on tough credit checks for customers, something that often went by the board in the subprime sector. "You are giving loans to people in line with their actual income. That's not like in subprime where lenders were just betting house prices would keep rising," says Mr Schmidt.

However, there remain many obstacles to incorporating remittances into mainstream financial services. First and foremost, relatively few migrant families in the rich north and even fewer in the poorer south have bank accounts, let alone access to financial products such as mortgages, insurance or consumer and small-business loans.

"Banks give a chequebook but the migrant just doesn't know how to use it. He has never seen one before in his life," says Luis Pena Kegel, general director of Banorte, a Mexican bank. In the US, language difficulties can add to the problems. Bankers say many illegal migrants fear that their details may be passed on to US immigration authorities.

Even migrants who have had bank accounts at home may have had bad experiences, remembering how accounts were frozen or confiscated during Latin America's turbulent recent past. "Migrants believe that banks are distant, expensive and not accessible," says Mr Pena Kegel.

Second, despite the growth of remittances in recent years, most payments come in tiny amounts and pay directly for food and medicines. Most recipients are so poor that for banks the costs of administering their business would outweigh potential gains. "If banks could bank them they would do," says Gwenn Bezard at Aite, a Boston-based financial consultancy. "But it is just not feasible, at least not overnight."

Third, most Latin American banks that have entered the remittance market have mainly adopted a limited role as agents. In other words, they disburse remittance payments to the families of migrant families in return for a one-off fee rather than offering a broader range of banking services.

Manuel Orozco, a remittance specialist at Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, says the profitability of the agency fees serves as a disincentive to offer accounts or loans. He says that Central American banks, for example, are making a quarter of their profits from agency business. Some banks - such as Banorte - are trying to convert remittance clients into fully fledged bank customers but advances have been slow.

Fourth, many US banks have been put off from entering the market. The institutions that have pushed hard to develop business among migrant groups are exceptions. Some banks have made unsuccessful and costly forays into the market, for example misjudging the extent to which Mexican customers would be prepared to use debit cards. Others have been put off by regulatory pressures linked to the clampdown on money-laundering or the rising political controversy associated with illegal immigration.

Mr Terry of the IADB has been pressing US banks to open their doors to migrant and remittance business but says he has been disappointed with the results. "I thought we would have been more advanced. But under regulatory pressure banks have really backed off."

Bank technology provides a further obstacle, because the transmission network typically used by banks - even those that form part of the same multinational group - is not geared to retail consumer transactions. Although individuals can send money, charges are relatively high and the service is not at all user-friendly. "It is just not geared for customers who want to send Dollars 200 or even Dollars 5,000," says Mr Bezard at Aite.

All this means that alternative financial institutions such as credit unions, financial co-operatives and micro-finance institutions are playing a prominent role.

In the US, credit unions - offering savings accounts and loans to migrant workers - have been flourishing in Hispanic communities. "When we talk to the chief executives of these organisations they say their membership is being fuelled by immigrants," says Dave Grace, vice-president at the World Council of Credit Unions in Wisconsin.

In Latin America, micro-finance institutions such as Integral offset high administrative costs and risks with interest rates that, while lower than those charged by loan sharks, are much higher than on conventional loans. Carlos Viteri, general manager of Integral, reckons that remittances fund payments on about 15 per cent of the micro-finance company's Dollars 33m portfolio of small-business loans. "We want to make the connection between remittances and asset building at the lowest level more clearly," says Maria Otero, president of Accion International, which has investments in Integral and dozens of other micro-finance institutions in the region.

Micro-Finance International Corporation, owner of the Alante money transfer company, has also been developing broader initiatives in the area. MFIC, which has received funds from European and US development agencies as well as Japan-based investors, has invented a messaging system that is aimed particularly at the alternative market.

"Our objective is to build the capacity of the disenfranchised and the unbanked," says Romi Bhatia, vice-president for international operations at MFIC. "We want to get some real depth into the market and go to places where the banks don't go."

Even so, it is early days. Mortgages such as Mr Alfaro's are time- consuming - so much so that Alante, which launched its product this year, has still only negotiated a handful of deals. Much will depend on the ability of mainstream financial institutions to make the most of these opportunities. "It might happen but it is going to take 50 to 100 years," says Mr Bezard. "You definitely have some major banks trying to crack the code but no one has managed it."

From Financial Times,  August 29,2007 
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The Re-decimalisation of the Naira

ONE issue that has dominated the national space in the last few days is the new policy on the nation’s currency, the Naira, announced by Professor Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Though the Federal Government had, on Friday, August 24, suspended the Soludo policy based on reasons of its not being channelled through the due process and the alleged misleading position of the CBN governor, among others, this action has not, in any way, quenched the fire of controversies that the announcement generated. If anything, government’s announcement, that it had suspended the policy, has only added to the tension, as Nigerians continue to mull over the implications of the new policy.

INSTRUCTIVELY, Professor Soludo, on Tuesday, August 14, before a packed audience comprising state governors, ministers, captains of industry and media executives, announced the major monetary policy. The new policy which caught most Nigerians unawares has three key elements. These are re-decimalisation of the naira; sharing of revenue allocation to federal and state governments in dollars; and full liberalisation of the current accounts of the balance of payments.

THE first of this policy, which is the re-decimalisation of the naira, involves moving two decimal points to the left from the prevailing currency and issuing more coin denominations. By the time the exercise, which will commence from August 1, 2008, is completed, the highest denomination of the naira will be N20. The CBN governor also disclosed that the US dollar will exchange for N1.25 when the new policy becomes operational. The expectation of the Professor Soludo is that the re-decimalisation of the naira will in the short term not have any impact on the value of the naira, as the policy will only affect the nominal value of the naira.

THE CBN governor has premised the new policy on a number of reasons. First, it is in line with the CBN FSS 2020 which was launched recently. Second, the new policy is aimed at making the naira the reference currency in Africa. Third, Professor Soludo also hinted that the new policy would eventually enhance the value of the naira.

HOWEVER, the new policy has begun to generate heated public debate, with three camps emerging: those who are in support of the new policy, and those that are against it. The third group is made up of those that are adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

THERE are two major areas in respect of the new policy that we are concerned about. The first relates to the process for arriving at the policy and, second, the economics of the new decision. On the policy aspect, we are worried that Nigerians were not involved in such a major decision that will have significant impact on their livelihood. In a democracy, public policy should be inclusive in order to benefit from the ideas and suggestions of as many people as possible.

A corollary of the above is that some decisions should not be taken in a hurry but should go through the necessary chain of policy process to allow for contributions and debates. A pointer to the fact that the new policy may indeed be a hastily taken decision was the fact that the country has just gone through a process of currency change. The question that bothers many Nigerians is: Why is the currency overhaul coming so soon after a major currency change and at a huge cost to the economy? Should Nigerians not have a right to know the cost of carrying out this change? An economy should not be a mere laboratory for testing out policy experiments and ideas.

IT is said that the CBN has policy autonomy and that the new policy decision is within the rights conferred on it by the new CBN Act. However, while the CBN may have the legal backing, is it not also expedient for the CBN to have carried the fiscal authorities along in such a decision? Does the CBN also have the right to determine the currency in which the revenue allocation will be carried out as implied in its recent policy statements? These are some of the issues that the CBN must clarify.

ON the economies of the process, we also have a number of concerns that CBN should address. First, the nominal value of the naira is expected to be preserved at the completion of the re-decimalisation process. However given the structural distortions and rigidity in the economy, there may not be, as expected, a full pass-through of the value change in prices, hence it should be expected that some economic agents, in particular the consumers, will suffer some losses in their purchasing power. Who will compensate such agents?

SECOND, the CBN governor hinted in his presentation that the exchange rate value of the naira may actually appreciate at the completion of the exercise. It is important to mention, however, that for a country heavily dependant on oil export, appreciation of local currency, not backed up with changes in the key fundamentals of the economy, may penalise non-oil exports and favor import to the detriment of the domestic sector.

THIRD, it is important to also point out, as the CBN governor himself knows, that what will make the Nigerian economy or its currency a reference point in the region/sub-region is hardly the nominal value of the exchange rate, but more importantly the competitiveness of its economy. Nigeria has continued to wallow in the bottom part of global competitiveness index. The truth is that the nation needs to fix its domestic infrastructure, reduce threat to security of life and property, reform its police and justice system, reduce various distortions in the economy and link up the financial sector to the productive sector. All the above, in our view, should rank higher in fixing the Nigerian economy than the artificial manipulation of the decimals of the naira.

FOURTH, it is a truth today that a significant amount of money continues to flow out of the economy almost corresponding to the foreign inflow that the country receives. The question that should urgently engage the country’s monetary and fiscal policy makers is: How can Nigeria stem the spate of the outflow? Why are Nigerians reluctant to invest in their own economy?

FIFTH, we are also not persuaded by the argument that the re-decimalisation will reduce inflation. Inflation is a measure of the rate of changes in the general price level. In fact, seemingly small increases in prices of a product, for example, from N1 to N1.20 may lead to a higher increase in the general price level than a movement in the price of the same product from N1,000 to N1,100, notwithstanding that the increase in the latter in absolute terms is higher than the former.

WHILE it is easy to celebrate the successes in the banking sector today, it is important to also point out that it has not reduced the structural distortions in the economy. A booming banking sector co-exists with a collapsing non-oil manufacturing sector. Inflation rate is going down but the interest rate still remains high. Interest rate spread, (the difference between bank lending rate and deposit rate), a measure of distortion in financial sector, in Nigeria is one of the highest in Africa. The President of NACCIMA, at a public forum recently, remarked that it made a lot of economic sense today for a manufacturer to sell his manufacturing plant and use the money to buy shares in a bank. This, in our view, is not a healthy reflection of the economy. No wonder then that unemployment rate remains high and poverty remains the lot of most Nigerians.

WE concede that the new policy will no doubt have some benefits like reducing the volume of naira needed per unit of transactions, making counting of money much easier to carry out, and reducing transaction costs associated with exchange of goods and services. Even then, some of these benefits can be realised by a general shift from the use of currency in day-to-day transactions to using other near moneys like payment cards.

WE do not have anything against the CBN governor. In fact, he has demonstrated in the last few years his willingness to take bold decisions. However, we are of the opinion that he has not demonstrated with reasonable convictions the economic justifications for the proposed re-decimalisation of the naira. We align ourselves with the decision of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to set up a committee to examine the implications of the new policy. This new policy must be subjected to a public debate before it becomes a policy that binds us as a nation.

From http://www.tribune.com.ng,  August 27,2007 
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South Africa: At Last, A Policy

With so little fanfare that it almost went unnoticed, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) this week released its long-awaited corporate governance and proxy voting policy.

It may sound dull but it's a huge deal. It sets the tone for the trillions in investment money in SA - it means that funds can be shunted carefully in all sorts of good directions but without prescription.

The document, which has been in the pipeline for three or four agonising years (how many missed opportunities were there for useful shareholder activism?), is comprehensive and lays some issues to rest.

Not surprisingly, the PIC had gained a reputation for being reactionary and only concerned with empowerment issues.

But according to the policy document this is far from the only focus. Although the fund manager has a fair amount to say about empowerment (which is a good thing), it also has a lot to say about the structuring of a board, the treatment of shareholders, auditing, remuneration, sustainability and more.

With the revised Companies Act still in the offing ( and not expected to be overly exciting) and the second King report outdated and staid, and the JSE's listing requirements growing long in the tooth, the fact that the PIC's policy advances our market at all is to be applauded.

It puts a stake in the ground on the issue of directors taking control of unissued shares - the PIC is against this. Hopefully, companies will stop asking shareholders for their permission to do what they will with unissued share capital. Even the JSE asked if it could use some of its unissued shares and very few people objected. The PIC's stance should better protect investors from themselves.

But when it comes to nonexecutive directors, the PIC's policy is less impressive. It follows King II, which means directors can be considered independent even if they were once an executive of the company. The policy also doesn't stipulate how many boards someone should probably sit on. In SA, what with a small pool of directors and a healthy old boys club, many big names hold more directorships than they can probably humanly manage. It's a scourge that the PIC could have helped to stamp out, thereby forcing local companies to grow more local talent.

But when it comes to remuneration, the PIC's document is very strong. At least by comparison to what is already in the public domain in SA. First off, it thinks very little of share options . It reckons nonexecutive directors should never be granted share options, putting paid to the contentious debate for once and for all and hopefully stopping nonexecutive directors who do have options from defending themselves by saying that "the shareholders voted for it".

Further, the PIC wants performance incentives to be capped. This is a great idea but rarely implemented around the globe. This means that spectacular performance can be rewarded really well but not necessarily excessively. For example, Steve Ross of Edgars Consolidated, who got R112m in 2005, may have "only" got R40m if there had been a cap. He'd still have been rich but shareholders would have had more cash in their pockets.

The PIC is also clear that all elements of a pay package, including all incentive schemes and gains, need to be reflected in the total figure given. Very good. And it wants individual performance targets and packages to be spelt out for each director. Transparency, disclosure and giving shareholders something to work with is what it's all about.

So, for the most part, it's a good document. The trick now is to use it. From the PIC to the asset managers that manage its money, this rather racy policy will only make the kind of difference we would all like to see if it is adopted with passion and implemented with enthusiasm.

From http://allafrica.com/,  July 24,2007 
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How Ghana's Economic Turnaround Is Threatened; Falling Water Level Stunts Hydro Power

AKOSOMBO, Ghana -- Just as its economy is picking up steam, Ghana is finding its growth stunted by a force beyond its control: climate change.

Rainfall in the West African country has declined so sharply in recent years that the water level behind the 41-year-old Akosombo Dam, long the country's main power source, is now at a record low, forcing the government to ration power and companies to invest in costly diesel generators. Economists estimate the water-and-power shortage could slash as much as two percentage points off Ghana's economic growth this year.

"Definitely there are climatic changes affecting our part of the world," says the Rev. Ishmael Gansah, deputy chief executive of the Volta River Authority, a governmental body that runs the dam and its reservoir, Volta Lake. "Predictions are that our part of the world will get drier."

Many scientists suspect that global warming is responsible for decreased rainfall in areas as far-flung as Australia, Algeria, Mali and the American Southwest. The World Bank estimates that global warming is a major reason rainfall in the Niger River Basin to the east of here has fallen by 15% since the early 1970s, and officials at the international development agency suspect the effect has been similar here in the Volta River Basin, which includes parts of Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali and Togo.

Ghana's experience illustrates how changing weather patterns can have a direct -- and severe -- impact on critical parts of an economy. The water level at the Akosombo Dam is at 235 feet, 41 feet below the dam's high-water mark. Engineers have had to shut down four of the hydroelectric plant's six turbines because the water doesn't come up high enough to run them. The spillways, used to empty excess water in times of surplus, are completely above the lake surface.

In the 1980s, the dam accounted for 100% of the country's power. Now it supplies closer to 60%. While the country has brought two oil-fired generating plants on line in recent years, that hasn't been sufficient to make up for Akosombo's diminishing returns. And Ghana hasn't moved quickly to find alternative sources of electricity to relieve the pressure on Akosombo, according to economists.

"From where we stand as a nation, I think we could have done better in terms of planning ahead and making alternative sources of energy available," says Daniel Tetteh, head of research for Databank Financial Services Group, an Accra investment bank and brokerage firm.

Officials say they will bring emergency generators on line and hope a long-dormant plan to add a Chinese-financed dam on the Black Volta River, upstream from Akosombo, will become a reality within a few years. It isn't clear, however, what effect that project would have on water levels in Volta Lake, especially during the long period during which the upstream dam, the Bui, would be closed to allow its reservoir to fill.

Burkina Faso has already put a hydropower plant upstream from Akosombo, which analysts believe may be contributing to the low water in Volta Lake.

Not all scientists blame global warming for the dry weather here. Chris Gordon, senior fellow at the Volta Basin Research Center at the University of Ghana, says he believes global warming is occurring, but doesn't know whether the basin is being affected by that or by the dry phase of an extended weather cycle.

"For the past 25 years, we have gone through a dry spell," Prof. Gordon says. "On a global timescale, it's nothing, the wingbeat of a hummingbird. But on the scale we live in, it's important."

Whatever the cause of the dryness, the potential impact could be devastating. Ghana "may have to shut down the whole hydro operation and switch to thermal energy, which they don't have," says John Mason, executive director of the Nature Conservation Research Center in Accra. He says excessive use and poor management are in part to blame for the dismal state of the Volta reservoir.

The Volta River Authority began rationing power a year ago and increased the power cuts this year after a disappointing rainy season. The authority publishes a rotation of 12-hour outages in the newspapers. "You don't have an option," says Rev. Gansah.

Databank estimates that the outages are forcing companies to spend $62 million a month, or about $744 million a year, on extra power generation, or about 6% of the country's entire economic output. Databank forecasts the power shortage will cut 2007 economic growth from 6.5% to between 4% and 5%.

"Power rationing is taking its toll on industry," says Tony Oteng- Gyasi, president of the Association of Ghana Industries, which counts 1,200 member companies.

Among those hard-hit is Unilever's Unilever Ghana Ltd.'s plant in the industrial town of Tema. The factory produces margarine, oils, laundry detergent, hand soap and other consumer goods. When the power rationing began, the authorities gave Unilever a choice: Either the factory could voluntarily cut power consumption by 25%, or adhere to the schedule of rotating power cuts.

Unilever chose the first track, but had to purchase diesel generators to make up for the lost electricity from the power grid. In the meantime, turning parts of the grid on and off so frequently has itself made the power system less reliable, above and beyond the planned cuts.

"The systems keep breaking down," says Richard Nkrumah, Unilever's chief engineer.

From Wall Street Journal,  June 8,2007 
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Zimbabwe Inflation 'Set for 100,000%'

Zimbabwe's government is taking steps to soften the impact of price controls introduced last month to fight soaring inflation, after warnings from businesses that they would push the economy closer to collapse.

In the latest grim forecast, an International Monetary Fund official said annual inflation could hit 100,000 per cent by the end of the year, compared with the government's most recent figure of 4,530 per cent in May.

"International experience shows that once inflation reaches high levels and policies do not change, inflation rates tend to accelerate exponentially," said Abdoulaye Bio Tchane, the IMF's director for Africa, during a visit to Mozambique this week.

The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe puts the figure higher than official statistics, saying year-on-year inflation increased to 13,000 per cent in June. PwC puts the figure at about 11,000 per cent. Many businesses say it is becoming almost impossible to survive. Callisto Jok-on-ya, the president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, has called for a truce with the government on price controls, calling the situation no longer sustainable.

"The time has come for us to sit down and settle the issue. Let us forgive and forget what happened and move on," he said.

There are signs that some ministers are beginning to heed calls for an early switch from the complete price freeze announced last month to a system of agreed mark-ups, although officials are struggling to devise an acceptable formula.

Government splits and the dominance of hardliners - including senior military personnel - in President Robert Mugabe's inner circle have complicated the task.

The launch yesterday of a new large-denominationbank note of ZDollars 200,000 - worth Pounds 6.50 (Euros 9.70, USDollars 13) at the official exchange rate and 65 pence at the more realistic parallel rate - underlines the disarray. The central bank had wanted to issue a ZDollars 500,000 note, but a bank official said this was vetoed by the finance ministry because senior staff thought such a large denomination would have re-inforced an impression that inflation was out of control.

The government has, however, taken some clear measures to moderate the impact of the price controls, including reversing a decision to end a fuel-coupon system allowing private imports.

The government has also allowed a 300 per cent rise in the price of cooking oil, approved a similar price increase for cattle, and abandoned previous efforts to control imports and exports of basic foodstuffs. A measure covering food imports and known as the control of goods order, which should have taken effect yesterday, has also been cancelled.

Reflecting the government's more considered approach, the state- owned Herald newspaper said the "time has come for gradual implementation of the system of agreed formulas laid down by law. With the government now holding the whip in hand, it should be possible to create mutually agreed formulas for pricing every essential commodity that do allow a fair return".

About 6,500 business people, mostly retailers, have been arrested and fined for breaking the price-control regulations. Many say cash flows are plunging.

"Utility prices have not been reduced, nor have wages or fuel prices," said one businessman. "Because of power cuts, we are being forced to run costly diesel-powered generators to operate our factories."

Manufacturers complain that artificially low prices and Zimbabwe's skewed exchange rate have also encouraged smuggling of products such as soft drinks, cigarettes, clothing and foodstuffs into neighbouring Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa.

From Financial Times,  February 8,2007 
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Combating Zambia’s ‘Hidden Hunger’ NEPAD and Partners Fortify Food with Vitamins and Minerals

By Itai Madamombe

Checking a child’s weight: Adding vitamins and other nutrients to basic foods can bolster overall health and nutritional standards.

The majority of children in Zambia eat a meal at least once or twice daily. But despite a full stomach, many lack nutrients essential for their physical and mental development. The Zambian government is fighting this “hidden hunger” by fortifying maize meal, the staple food, with life-saving vitamins and minerals.

“A child can eat three meals per day, but still have problems,” says Mr. Ward Siamusantu, who manages the country’s Maize Meal Fortification Programme. “A few doses short of vitamin A or iron, and you throw away a child’s ability to do their best in life. Impaired children will grow up to be impaired adults, costing Africa billions of dollars in lost productivity.”

African leaders, through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), are at the forefront of continent-wide efforts to infuse micronutrients — vitamins and minerals — into maize meal, salt, flour, oil, sugar, soy and other foods. One of the goals of NEPAD, the framework guiding Africa’s efforts to accelerate development, is to ensure that all citizens are healthy enough to contribute their full physical and mental potential.

Micronutrient deficiencies debilitate minds and bodies, says a report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency. The lack of iron alone, the report says, is so widespread in adults that it is lowering overall labour productivity, resulting in estimated losses of up to 2 per cent of GDP in the countries most affected.

“We became concerned when the latest government research revealed that 66 per cent of all Zambian children under five years of age suffer from vitamin A deficiency and 63 per cent lack enough iron,” Mr. Siamusantu told Africa Renewal.

Maize fortification
In response, the government launched a programme in 2006 to fortify all commercially milled maize with iron, vitamin A, folic acid and zinc. Legislation, Mr. Siamusantu says, is also expected by February 2007 to mandate that all maize meal sold in stores contain these essential vitamins and nutrients.

Fortifying food improves children’s health and their ability to learn.

By controlling deficiencies in children, says Amanda Marlin, the communication manager for the foundation Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), African nations can jump-start development in a short period. Set up to foster efforts to fill the micronutrients gap, GAIN is helping fund the project in Zambia.

“Anytime you talk about development, you are talking years of work. But with food fortification, you see results in a short period,” Ms. Marlin says. “NEPAD leaders are supportive of these efforts, because they’ve seen it work in Europe and America and they said, ‘Let’s make this happen in Africa’.”

Several countries in Africa, she says, already have fortification programmes, but GAIN, NEPAD and other partners aim to expand them to 47 countries over three years. It makes sense to tackle the problem on a regional scale, Ms. Marlin continues. Because food is traded between countries, it is important to ensure that food from across the border is all fortified.

“The beauty of this project is that we don’t ask people to change their habits,” she says. “People resist big diet changes. We enhance whatever is already an important part of their diet.”

This was a lesson Zambia had to learn, confirms Mr. Siamusantu, who said the country at first fortified sugar with vitamin A, but found that sugar “was not commonly consumed and we realized it was better to go for the staple food, maize meal.”

The Millers Association of Zambia, which is made up of 33 of the country’s top producers of maize meal, has agreed to add vitamins and minerals to its products. The executive officer of the association, Mr. Harrison Banda, says that at first the manufacturers worried that the additives might affect the quality of the maize meal and therefore hurt business. “We were concerned how the vitamins and minerals would affect the taste, smell and quality of our product. But we have been assured it won’t be a problem.”

Consumers, Mr. Banda adds, had concerns of their own. “Some people worried that this was a ploy by Western governments to experiment on them. They said, ‘Why is this not given to their own people?’ There were rumours that this would cause infertility. Through education campaigns, people now know that even in America and Europe, they eat fortified food. They know it’s good for them and their children.”

‘A noble project’
Millers received machinery from GAIN, but need to purchase the vitamins and minerals out of pocket, raising another public concern that they would pass the costs on to consumers. But that is not the case, Mr. Banda says. “Our production costs will go up by only 3 per cent and this is a small sacrifice given what is at stake. Once our fears concerning quality were allayed, we wanted to be a part of this. We support the reasons behind this project and feel it’s a noble project that should be supported by the private sector.” The association, he says, reaches about 60–70 per cent of the country. The remaining, more remote parts of the country are serviced by small-scale millers.

But across Africa, notes Mr. Steven Lauwerier, a UNICEF programme officer in Côte d’Ivoire, it is in remote rural areas that people are most in need of nutrient boosting. “In towns you have a direct impact, because people rely on commercial food,” he points out. “But these products do not penetrate poor rural areas. There, fortification cannot be used alone. You have to complement it with more community-based nutritional programmes.”

The Zambian millers’ association, Mr. Banda says, is working to bring rural millers on board, if additional funding can be secured. “The vitamin doses needed per tonne of maize meal are very, very small. We cannot allow [the lack of] a few grams of vitamins to set Africa back.”

New Partnership for Africa’s Development
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was adopted as the continent’s main development framework at a July 2001 summit meeting of African heads of state. According to NEPAD, attainment of Africa’s long-term development goals is anchored in the determination of African peoples “to extricate themselves and the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalizing world.” It calls for a new relationship between Africa and the international community, in which the non-African partners seek to complement Africa’s own efforts. The United Nations, Group of Eight industrialized nations and various donor countries have pledged to do so.

For Africa to develop, argues NEPAD, three conditions must prevail:

peace, security, democracy and good political governance
improved economic and corporate governance
regional cooperation and integration.
NEPAD further identifies several priority sectors requiring special attention and action:

physical infrastructure, especially roads, railways and power systems linking neighbouring countries
information and communications technology
human development, focusing on health, education and skills development
agriculture
promoting the diversification of production and exports.
Many of the required resources will initially need to come from outside the continent, although African governments are redoubling efforts to mobilize more domestic resources. “Africa,” states NEPAD, “recognizes that it holds the key to its own development.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 1,2007 
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Water Betters Lives in Tanzania Access to Clean Water Critical to NEPAD Development Goals

By Itai Madamombe
With water taps nearby, villagers no longer have to walk so far to fetch water.

No one in Lusala needs to walk more than 400 metres in search of water anymore. Fresh water gushes from taps at 11 drawing-points right within the Tanzanian community. For years, shortages sent women and children, the main collectors, several kilometres away each day. The drudgery was worsened by the hard-rock terrain they had to climb carrying heavy pots back to their hilltop village, located about 700 kilometres southwest of Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital.

“Life is much better now that I have clean water near my house,” Elizabeth Mtweve, a villager and mother of four, told Africa Renewal. “I don’t walk all day in the heat to find water. In three to five minutes you fill your bucket by turning a tap. The water project has saved every woman in Lusala a lot of hardship and time.”

“My children, and even myself, used to fall sick because of dirty water,” she adds. “Now we don’t run to the hospital complaining of diarrhoea anymore. With clean water, we enjoy good health.”

Lusala’s estimated 4,000 inhabitants depend on farming for a livelihood, and their farm income partially funded the water scheme. People grow coffee and bananas to sell. Maize and beans are also popular, as both subsistence and cash crops. Villagers raise chickens, goats, small ruminants and some cattle. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) — which also funded the water project in Lusala — said lack of water made it hard for villagers to take care of their animals. Contaminated water also caused most of the village’s health problems, further deepening poverty in the community.

Villagers work together to build and maintain their water system.

Not difficult or expensive
Across Africa, cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other diseases kill thousands each year. African leaders, through their development blueprint, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), have identified water scarcity as one of the factors undermining the continent’s development. NEPAD provides an overarching framework for efforts to ensure that households, schools, farms, hospitals, industries and other important operations have enough water to meet their needs. African countries have agreed to bring safe, clean water to within no more than 15 minutes walking distance for their citizens.

African leaders, through NEPAD, have identified water scarcity as one of the factors undermining the continent’s development.
The Tanzanian government, with support from UNDP, responded to the water problems that plagued Lusala village. UNDP reports that the scheme uses gravity to tap water from a higher point, so that it naturally flows down through two intake pipes into a 75-cubic-metre reservoir. From there, it is distributed via ground pipes to 11 points where people simply turn on taps to fill their containers.

“Such water schemes are not difficult or too expensive to set up,” Nehemiah Murusuri, the UNDP country coordinator in Tanzania, told Africa Renewal. “You use the natural pull of gravity, so no complicated machines, no pumping is necessary. The maintenance is also very cheap and easy. Apart from the rare bursting of a pipe or replacing a loose tap, there is nothing much needed once you set it up.”

Bringing fresh water to Lusala, though not cheap, was not prohibitively expensive. The project, Mr. Murusuri noted, cost the equivalent of US$40,000 — a figure that would have likely quadrupled had private contractors implemented it. Instead, community members, with technical guidance from government water surveyors and engineers, built the reservoir, installed pipes and provided all the necessary labour.

Every family in Lusala was allocated a portion of a 9.4 kilometre trench that needed to be dug in order for the pipes to be installed, explains Dominicus Mganwa, chairperson of the Lusala Development Association, which was formed by villagers to organize their participation in the scheme. The association is today responsible for collecting water fees from users. The money is used to repair equipment when needed.

Coming together
“Working together, problems came up here and there,” Mr. Mganwa notes. This was particularly the case when “trying to decide what we wanted and who was responsible for what. But in the end we learned to resolve our differences. This has benefited the whole community.”

“We are not only putting a water project in place, but also contributing to NEPAD and the Millennium Development Goals to improve water, governance and health and to reduce poverty.”
—Nehemiah Murusuri, UNDP Tanzania country coordinator
The availability of clean water, he continues, has changed the village in unexpected ways. “Since water is nearby, people have started small brick projects, so now you see good quality houses, all over Lusala, replacing mud and pole huts. This we did not expect, but we are very pleased.”

Two years after the completion of the water project, Mr. Murusuri of UNDP says, the benefits have indeed been multifaceted and have helped make progress towards the goals set by African leaders in other areas. “We are not only putting a water project in place, but also contributing to NEPAD and the Millennium Development Goals to improve water, governance and health and to reduce poverty. People learned to reach agreements through democratic means. Hospital records show a significant drop in the number of people reporting waterborne diseases. Women have more time to focus on income-generating activities.”

Such water projects can be replicated easily in other villages, notes Bedoumra Kordje, director of the Africa Water Facilities at the African Development Bank. There are many successful initiatives to supply safe water for domestic and industrial needs, he told Africa Renewal. But efforts fall short of what is needed to promote lasting socioeconomic development.

“There is no question that the availability of fresh water is one of the most critical factors in development,” says Mr. Kordje. “Yet Africa enjoys only about 3 per cent of its annual renewable water supply, compared to over 80 per cent in the United States.” African countries, he adds, need to improve storage and distribution to help the estimated 300 million people who do not yet have access to clean water.

“We must ensure water is available,” says Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete. “You can do anything you want to improve the infrastructure, but if there is no water, then it amounts to zero work.” The government aims to bring clean safe water to within 400 metres of every Tanzanian household by 2015. For Lusala village, thankfully, that is no longer another goal waiting to happen.

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
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Big Leap in China-Africa Ties Beijing Offers Continent More Aid, Trade and Business

By Ernest Harsch

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the opening of the China-Africa summit in Beijing.

Like other African leaders, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi returned home from a three-day summit in Beijing with enthusiastic praise for his hosts and an armful of new economic agreements. More Ethiopian agricultural products would be allowed into China duty-free, he revealed, and China had pledged some $500 mn for various development projects in Ethiopia. “China is an inspiration for all of us,” he added. “What China shows to Africa is that it is indeed possible to turn the corner on economic development.”

Fifty years after China established its first diplomatic ties with an African country, the third summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held 3–5 November. It marked the biggest-ever gathering between Chinese and African leaders. All 48 African countries that have diplomatic relations with China took part — with most of their delegations led by presidents or prime ministers. In addition, hundreds of African businesspeople went for a two-day trade exhibit immediately following the summit, eager to explore new market outlets in the most populous country in the world, which has one of the fastest growing economies.

‘New type’ partnership
Building on several years of growing exchanges between China and Africa, the summit approved a three-year action plan to forge a “new type of strategic partnership.” That partnership, the plan says, would be based on pragmatic cooperation, equality and mutual benefit. The plan pledges that China will:

Double aid to Africa by 2009 (to about $1 bn)
Set up a $5 bn China-Africa development fund to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa
Provide $3 bn in preferential loans and $2 bn in preferential buyer’s credits to African countries
Cancel all debt stemming from Chinese interest-free government loans that matured by the end of 2005, for the 31 highly indebted and least developed countries (LDCs) in Africa that have relations with China (an amount estimated at around $1.4 bn)
Further open China’s markets to exports from African LDCs by increasing from 190 to 440 the number of products receiving zero-tariff treatment
Train 15,000 African professionals, double the number of Chinese government scholarships given annually to Africans (to 4,000) and send 100 senior agricultural experts and 300 youth volunteers
Build 30 hospitals, 30 malaria treatment centres and 100 rural schools.
China also vowed to support the African Union, the continent’s regional organization, including by building a new convention centre at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. It likewise reaffirmed its commitment to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the AU’s development plan.

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which will hold its next summit in Egypt in 2009, is an important vehicle for dialogue on Africa’s behalf, noted UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, who represented the UN at the meeting. The forum, he said, lends a “strong voice” to the UN’s work to promote African interests among developed countries, including on aid, debt relief, market access and support for Africa’s anti-poverty efforts.

No strings
During visits to several African countries earlier in the year, Chinese President Hu Jintao reiterated his government’s longstanding “policy of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs.” On that basis, all African governments that have diplomatic ties with China were invited to the Beijing summit, no matter what their records on democracy or human rights. That stance elicited some criticism, including from human rights groups and donor agencies.

“As long as China is so willing to invest in Africa, we must not miss out on the bounty. But we must engage with our eyes wide open.”
— Macharia Gaitho, managing editor, The Nation (Kenya)
Some African commentators have pointed to shortcomings in China’s economic involvement in Africa. They have cited the limited regard for environmental and safety standards of some Chinese companies, their tendency to bring in Chinese workers rather than hire Africans and the stiff competition that African manufacturers face from large quantities of low-priced Chinese imports.

While acknowledging such drawbacks, other Africans have welcomed the opportunity to diversify the continent’s external partnerships. They also appreciate the absence of explicit political or economic policy conditions on China’s part, in contrast to the sometimes heavy-handed approach of certain Western powers.

During the summit, the Chinese authorities signaled their willingness to pay greater attention to countering corruption and protecting the environment in their African activities. Premier Wen Jiabao said that projects implemented by Chinese firms would be conducted in an “open, fair, just and transparent” manner. The action plan pledged Chinese assistance in building African countries’ capacities to safeguard the environment and preserve biodiversity.

‘Eyes wide open’
Chinese foreign investment in Africa has grown spectacularly since the early 1990s. According to a recent study by the industrialized countries’ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), flows of Chinese direct investment into Africa in 2003 reached $107 mn, more than 100 times the annual level in 1991. Today, some 700 Chinese firms are estimated to hold a total investment stock of $6.3 bn in Africa. The Beijing summit brought a dozen major new investment agreements totaling $1.9 bn. They included deals to build expressways in Nigeria, a telephone network in rural Ghana and an aluminum smelter in Egypt.

“As long as China is so willing to invest in Africa, we must not miss out on the bounty,” Mr. Macharia Gaitho, managing editor of the Kenyan daily Nation, commented. “But we must engage with our eyes wide open.”

‘More balanced’ trade
Trade between China and Africa is also expanding rapidly. Valued at only around $3 bn in 1995, total trade grew to an estimated $40 bn in 2005. Premier Wen stated during the summit that China hopes to increase that amount to $100 bn by 2010.

So far, the nature of these flows has been quite similar to those between Africa and its traditional trading partners, noted the OECD study, The Rise of China and India: What’s in it for Africa? For the most part, it found, Africa exported oil and other raw materials to China, while importing Chinese manufactured goods. Inexpensive Chinese textile and clothing products have become prevalent in many African markets, seriously jeopardizing the survival of Africa’s own manufacturers.

A columnist in the Nigerian Daily Trust newspaper, Mr. Charles Onunaiju, observed that unless steps are taken to alter this pattern of trade, “the relationship in future will come to resemble the Europe/America and Africa relations, that is, lopsided, dependent and even detrimental to Africa.”

China’s leaders are responding to such criticisms. The action plan calls for the growth of China-Africa trade “in a more balanced manner.” The decision to more than double the number of African products allowed into China duty-free was one concrete step in that direction. Another was a Chinese pledge earlier in the year to voluntarily cap clothing exports to South Africa.

Whatever questions Africans may still have about China’s economic relations with the continent, noted Mr. Legwaila, the high African turnout in Beijing “was a clear demonstration that China has succeeded in winning the confidence of its African partners.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 1,2007 
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African Gays and Lesbians Combat Bias An ‘Invisible’ Minority Seeks Legal Safeguards, Acceptance

By Michael Fleshman
Gay pride march in South Africa: African gays and lesbians are challenging discrimination and prohibitions.
The international campaign for equal rights for homosexuals and other sexual minorities took a step forward on 14 November when South Africa became the first country in Africa, and the fifth in the world, to legalize same-sex marriage. “This country cannot continue to be a prisoner of the backward, time-worn prejudices which have no basis,” declared ruling African National Congress parliamentarian and Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota in urging passage. “Culture is not static.”

The new law, adopted by a 230– 41 vote, was welcomed by gay and lesbian activists in South Africa and around the world as a significant advance for equal rights. But it is not a trend. Conservative religious and political leaders in many countries still strongly oppose equal rights for homosexuals, including same-sex marriage. The week before the South African move, same-sex marriages were banned in eight US states, although similar proposals were defeated in a dozen others. In Nigeria, President Olusegun Obasanjo introduced legislation in 2006 that not only bars same-sex marriages but criminalizes anyone who “performs, witnesses, aids or abets” such ceremonies. Sex between men in Nigeria, defined as sodomy, was already punishable by up to 14 years in prison, reports the non-governmental International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA).

‘Ultimate rejection’ of human rights
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour noted in August 2006 that worldwide, more than 80 countries criminalize consensual sexual relations between persons of the same sex — including seven in which the punishment can be death. “There is no doubt that these laws violate international human rights standards,” she said. “Neither the existence of national laws nor the prevalence of custom can ever justify the abuse, attacks, torture and indeed killings that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons are subjected to because of who they are or are perceived to be.”

The “shameful silence” with which homophobic violence is greeted by governments and society, she told delegates to a Montreal human rights conference, is the “ultimate rejection of the fundamental principle of the universality of rights.”


“Neither the existence of national laws nor the prevalence of custom can ever justify the abuse, attacks, torture and indeed killings that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are subjected to.”
— Ms. Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

In Africa, according to a 2000 study by the ILGA, homosexuality was illegal in 29 countries and enjoyed legal protection in just 10. Although sexual minorities are gradually winning recognition and protection of their rights under the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other human rights treaties, they remain at great risk of official harassment, arbitrary detention, public stigmatization, extortion and even assault because of their sexual orientation. These minorities include lesbians, homosexual men (often referred to as “gay”), bisexuals and persons of one sex who identify primarily as members of the other (known as “transgendered”).

Discrimination, isolation, repression
Bias and stigmatization against homosexuals and other sexual minorities in Africa is rooted in deeply held cultural and religious values. They can be accompanied by abuses, are too often enforced by vigilante violence and are sometimes enshrined in law.

In one widely reported instance, the UN Human Rights Commission found Cameroon in violation of its treaty obligations after police arrested 17 men at a Yaoundé nightclub believed to be frequented by members of the gay and lesbian community and held nine for more than a year. One of the detainees, a 30-year-old man living with HIV/AIDS, died 10 days after his release.

Prosecutors initially charged the men with “homosexuality,” although that is not itself a crime in Cameroon. Seven of the men were later convicted under the country’s anti-sodomy law, although no evidence of any sexual activity was presented. In a letter to the New York–based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), a senior government official said that homosexuality was not acceptable in society and defended the arrests as necessary to preserve “positive African cultural values.”

In Uganda, five men were arrested in October 2006 under the country’s colonial-era anti-sodomy law, which can bring life imprisonment upon conviction. The arrests followed by months the publication in a Kampala magazine of a list of 45 men alleged to be homosexuals. The editors acted, they claimed, “to show the nation ... how fast the terrible vice known as sodomy is eating up our society.” The publication was denounced as “homophobic” by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a human rights organization in Kampala. It said the men now lived “under unbelievable fear of being arrested, ostracized by their families or sacked from their jobs.”

It was not the first time Ugandan activists linked hostile articles in the press to victimization. In 2005, local government officials raided the home of SMUG chairperson Juliet Victor Mukasa, seized files and papers and briefly detained another activist after a state-owned newspaper called on police to “visit the holes mentioned in the press, spy on the perverts, arrest and prosecute them.”

‘Highly vulnerable’
Nor is family or community necessarily a haven. In testimony at the UN Council on Human Rights, Ms. Mukasa, a transgendered person, described her life as a member of this “highly vulnerable” community: “In Africa, transgendered people are seriously punished for being who they are. I was always being beaten by my father for ‘behaving’ like a boy. In school the same story. . . . I became the laughingstock of the village and expelled myself because of the humiliation.

“In church I was once stripped naked before a multitude of people. The pastor ‘saw’ the spirit of a young man inside me and they burnt my clothes and shoes in order to kill the male spirit. . . . As a transgendered person, it is constantly demanded of me to explain and justify why I do not fit into other people’s idea of what a man or a woman should be.”

A gay Nigerian man, who refused to provide his name for fear of reprisal, told IGLHRC in early 2006 that “a team of policemen in Lagos came to my apartment and took me away to an unknown place for two days. I was beaten beyond recognition and am still receiving treatment for the head injury I received. I was dehumanized and paraded naked to the press. My money, ID card and shoes were taken. Eventually I was released without being charged and tried. My only offence was that I am gay. I no longer live in Nigeria. I cannot go back there.”

‘Un-African’ claims challenged
Much of the stigma attached to homosexuality in Africa has been justified by opponents on broad religious or cultural grounds, with assertions that same-sex relationships are condemned in the Bible or Qur’an or that they never occurred in pre-colonial African society. Religious scholars on both sides of the issue are still debating, sometimes bitterly, the proper interpretation of scriptural references to homosexuality.

Recent research by African and Northern academics, however, is challenging the assertion that homosexuality was imported to Africa by colonialism and is not compatible with tradition and culture.

To be sure, same-sex relationships can raise a host of issues in societies where marriage and family are intimately bound up with access to land and property, inheritance rights, community status and even political stability. In an interview with the UK Independent newspaper, a South African traditional healer, Mrs. Nokuzola Mndende, lamented the difficulty of applying traditional practices to same-sex couples: “There’s the issue of lobola [a traditional dowry paid to the family of the bride]. Normally the man pays it. In this case who’s going to pay?” The prospect of same-sex households being childless and thus complicating long-standing inheritance and family practices is another concern raised by traditionalists.

But research among the Gikuyu people of Murang’a district in central Kenya by Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi and William O’Brien found traditional acceptance of “woman-woman marriage” when such relationships brought children into households or eased disputes over inheritance of land and other property. In one case, they reported in 2000 in a scholarly article in the US National Women Studies Association Journal, a childless woman married a younger woman with the expectation that the new wife would bear children by a male partner and create heirs. In the relationships examined in the study, the complexities of gender roles were more a source of amusement than tension in the community, and, at least within Gikuyu tradition, acceptable.

Other researchers have found traditional homosexual and bisexual practices among men in some African cultures as well, and words for homosexuality, gay men and lesbians in a large number of indigenous languages.

Some Gikuyu women in same-sex relationships have expressed a sense of liberation from male domination and of equality within the marriage. One female “husband” told researchers: “I don’t have a man, but I have a woman who cares for me. I belong to her and she belongs to me. And I tell you I don’t have to worry about a man telling me what to do.”

In the view of many such researchers, the traditional African family was quite adaptable, and sometimes encompassed a range of same-sex relationships, entered into for economic, romantic and emotional reasons.

Out of the shadows
Despite the risks, a slowly growing number of African gays and lesbians, encouraged by the spread of democracy and galvanized by the need to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, have emerged from the shadows to confront stigma. In recent years gay and lesbian advocates have become more visible — challenging legal discrimination in the courts and at the African Union, asserting their rights under international law and the African Charter for Human and People’s Rights and claiming a place in Africa as Africans.

In February 2004, 22 homosexual, bisexual and transgender organizations from 16 African countries called on their leaders to “safeguard our real situations and our basic rights. We, African lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people, do exist — despite your attempts to deny our existence.

“Political leaders promote hatred against us to solidify their own political situations,” they continued, but “we have and have always had a place in Africa. . . . We demand that our voices be heard.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
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Improving Reintegration of Former Combatants African Experiences Help UN ‘Refine’ Disarmament Efforts

Improving reintegration of former combatants
African experiences help UN ‘refine’ disarmament efforts
Through its peacekeeping operations, the UN has helped disarm and return to civilian life some 400,000 former combatants over the past five years alone. Many have been in Africa, including more than 72,000 in Sierra Leone, 100,000 in Liberia and 28,000 in Burundi. Some 126,000 are in the process of being demobilized in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Ensuring that such ex-fighters do not again take up arms is “critical for the stabilization of post-conflict situations,” then UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown emphasized in December, when the UN launched its new Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards.

“By refining our approach to DDR,” said Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guéhenno, “we can better help each ex-combatant to ultimately reintegrate into society.” The aim, he said, is to have them “go from being a cause of insecurity to a force for growing stability.”

In contrast to the ad hoc disarmament and reintegration efforts that marked many early peacekeeping operations, the new standards seek to foster a comprehensive approach. They provide detailed policies, guidelines and procedures for carrying out DDR, from planning and design through mainstreaming HIV/AIDS, gender and youth. To ensure easy access worldwide, the standards and many related documents have been posted on the Web (www.unddr.org).

From Freetown to Kinshasa
In developing the new standards, 14 UN departments and agencies pooled their expertise and drew on the lessons of more than a decade-and-a-half of DDR programmes around the world. African experiences featured prominently in that undertaking, not only because of the number of peacekeeping missions on the continent, but also as a result of an African-led initiative to approach disarmament and reintegration more systematically.

In June 2005, the government of Sierra Leone and the UN Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) organized in Freetown an international conference on DDR and stability in Africa.

Although experts from donor countries and international and regional organizations also took part, the event highlighted the work of delegations from 15 African countries, which included government officials, current and former members of national DDR commissions and peacekeeping missions, beneficiaries of DDR programmes, members of armed forces and representatives of women’s associations, civil society groups and communities hosting ex-combatants.

By comparing the successes and failures of earlier DDR programmes in Africa, the participants pinpointed a number of key recommendations. Those included emphasizing national ownership, paying special attention to the needs of child and women combatants, adopting a regional perspective and ensuring that the reintegration of ex-fighters is closely linked to long-term post-war economic and social development plans (see Africa Renewal, October 2005). Most of those recommendations were subsequently incorporated into the integrated DDR standards, Sierra Leone’s UN Ambassador Joe Pemagbi observed at the December launch.

A second conference on DDR in Africa, to be held in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on 12–14 June, will help promote the standards and provide another occasion for Africans to draw lessons from their own experiences. Organized by OSAA and the newly elected Congolese government, the conference will focus in particular on the complexities of carrying out DDR operations in Africa’s Great Lakes region, which is struggling to emerge from more than a decade of war.

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
[top]

Congolese Media Defend Democracy Press Freedom and Responsibility Go Hand in Hand

By Michael Fleshman
Reading newspapers in Kinshasa: Media groups are striving to improve their quality and professionalism.
Since its founding in 1998, the non-governmental watchdog group Journaliste en danger (JED) has won international recognition for its tenacious defence of press freedom in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the vast central African country battered by decades of dictatorship, ethnic division and war. But when inflammatory reporting fuelled political violence in the capital, Kinshasa, in August 2006, threatening elections, the JED found itself in the unusual position of calling for stronger control of abuses by the media by the official regulatory agency, along with more aggressive enforcement of ethics standards by professional media bodies.

Within a week of the violence, the rights group convened a meeting of the country’s main journalists’ associations and media houses to demand an end to biased coverage of political events, even-handed enforcement of media laws by the official Haute authorité des média (HAM) and the relaunch of an industry-wide “tribunal of peers” to monitor compliance with standards of accuracy and fairness.

In a post-election analysis of media coverage during the campaign, the JED found that some newspaper, radio and television outlets were acting as a “propaganda press committed to defending the political interests of its own candidates and demonizing its political adversaries,” in a country where many private media companies are owned by candidates and political parties.

The press freedom group charged that some coverage resorted to “shamefully exploiting macabre images” of the violence, “inciting revenge and accusations, justifying crime and . . . cementing political tensions” between ethnic groups, parties and regions throughout the election campaign. “Worst of all,” the report charged, “state-owned radio and television stations took part in the general decline by siding almost exclusively” with the president’s party.

Media’s role vital
The stakes in the DRC were high. The 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda had touched off more than a decade of both internal conflict and external intervention in the DRC (formerly Zaire). Estimates of the number of deaths caused by violence, disease and the collapse of basic services run as high as 4 million. A fragile peace agreement was signed in 2002 and opened the way for the largest UN peacekeeping operation in history, the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC), which has nearly 20,000 international soldiers and civilians.

Some Congolese newspapers and broadcasters have worsened political tensions by disseminating “hate” messages.

Despite the UN presence, ethnic conflict continued in the eastern part of the country, and the election period itself was marred by clashes between supporters of the incumbent, President Joseph Kabila, and those of a former rebel leader, Mr. Jean-Pierre Bemba. Mr. Kabila was declared the winner of presidential runoff elections in October 2006 that Congolese and international observers declared generally free and fair.

Many saw the role of the media as vital to the success of the transitional period that began after the signing of the December 2002 accord. In a resolution adopted earlier that year at protracted peace talks known as the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, the warring parties declared that “independent, free, responsible and efficient media are a guarantee for public freedoms, the smooth running of democracy and social cohesion.” During the election campaign, they noted, the media would be essential in helping voters “gain insight into the profiles of public figures and politicians, as well as into their programmes. . . . This enables the public to express itself credibly during electoral and consultative events.”

The media were especially important in a country the size of Western Europe with few roads and railways, 1.5 million people uprooted from their homes by violence and no experience of political pluralism or elections. The large distances and high cost of travel, weak and poorly financed political parties and the continuing presence of armed, partisan militias in some areas meant that traditional campaigning by candidates and party officials would be limited. That placed an even greater burden on the media as the main vehicle for voter education and political campaigning.

Freedom of expression and the press, largely unknown during the dictatorial 30-year rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, was entrenched in the transition constitution. Article 27 established individual freedom of expression. Article 28 guaranteed press freedom, limited by the need to “safeguard public order [and] morality” and the rights of others. Clause 29 established a public “right to information.” It also required state-owned media to be objective and impartial and to provide fair access for “a plurality of opinions.” Oversight and regulation of the media was entrusted to the HAM, an official body composed of all parties in the transitional unity government and headed by a respected journalist and award-winning rights campaigner, Mr. Modeste Mutinga.

‘Irresponsible reporting’
Training increased in an effort to prepare the Congolese media for its new role as an instrument of democracy. The JED and the other media organizations sponsored many briefings and seminars for reporters, broadcasters and editors on the elections and the media’s ethical and professional obligations. The German Konrad Adenauer Foundation conducted a 12-day training course in June 2006 for 15 Congolese provincial journalists, a programme that included background on the electoral process, meetings with senior transition officials and the head of the national electoral commission, and training in interviewing, recording and editing techniques.

But in the end, noted Ms. Julia Craw-ford, Africa director for the New York–based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “while some media in the DRC have played an important role” in the process, “there were a lot of problems and a lot of irresponsible reporting.” Much of the media, particularly in Kinshasa, she said, were strongly partisan, and, in the view of many international and local observers, sometimes fanned sectarian divisions through slanted or false reporting.

Encouragingly, Ms. Crawford told Africa Renewal, “many DRC press freedom organizations, particularly JED, spearheaded the effort to highlight abuses, even as they advocated for more press freedom and greater professional responsibility.”

Many of the worst abuses seemed to occur at moments of crisis. During heavy fighting between ethnic militias in the eastern town of Bunia in 2003, JED President Donat M’baya Tshimanga reported, the Congolese media generated extensive coverage of the violence, but without sending reporters to the scene. “The media — and they may not even be aware of it — serve as a platform for the warlords, who use the rivalry between different ethnic groups in Bunia and the DRC only for their own profit. . . . The hate speeches of the conflict would not have had the same effect if the media had not agreed to play the role of mouthpiece” for the opposing sides.

In a special report on the DRC in 2004, the CPJ observed that national and local officials sometimes exceeded their authority under the transitional constitution to censor and punish unfavourable or incendiary reporting — taking radio and television stations off the air and threatening legal action against reporters in contravention of the agreement. The international press freedom group also documented instances of continued harassment and assault of journalists by militias and political parties throughout the transition.

Nor was the official media oversight body, the HAM, immune to criticism. In its November analysis of the media, the JED charged that “the struggle against incitement to hatred and violence, while noble in principle, has allowed the media regulator to exercise systematic censorship of the privately owned media, thereby restricting the democratic debate so greatly needed during the election period, while the state-owned media has been usurped by the ruling party.”

According to a report by the non-governmental International Crisis Group, based in Brussels, the HAM shut down a pro-government radio and television station in 2005 for 15 days for broadcasting a politician’s comments describing a mixed-race opponent as “a bat — half mouse, half bird” and urging government partisans to “trap it, burn it and eat it.” The same station broadcast another speaker’s call on party supporters to grab opposition leaders and “burn them with tyres around their necks.” In contrast, two opposition newspapers were shuttered for 90 days for contentious but less inflammatory reports alleging ongoing allegiances between Mr. Kabila and neighbouring Tanzania, where he grew up. Overall, concluded the JED, “a large number of Congolese media failed to live up to their role.”

Although the JED’s primary role is to protect press freedom and individual journalists from government censorship and harassment, noted Ms. Crawford, the organization has always pursued “a double-pronged approach: shouting to local and international media about abuses by the authorities . . . but at the same time pushing for more responsibility in the journalism profession.”

That approach was in large part a response to serious abuses by the media, she said. But in addition, “the JED has also said on numerous occasions that the entire press corps could find itself being penalized for the excesses of only some sections of the media.” Improving the quality and accuracy of reporting in the DRC, she observed, was one way to protect the press from government interference.

Entrenched obstacles
Despite the problems, the Congolese media produced a body of sound reporting and the transitional institutions often worked well in moving quickly against abuses. According to many observers, the tattered condition of the Congolese media meant that the situation could have been much worse.

In a detailed survey of the state of the Congolese media commissioned by the South African Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in late 2004, Mr. Claude Kabemba observed that while the DRC media was “one of the most diverse and free on the continent, the quality of information and the role of the media in the democratization process leaves much to be desired.”

Despite the presence of more than 200 different newspapers, 52 private television networks and some 250 private and community radio broadcasters, in addition to state radio and television, Mr. Kabemba asserted that few “capture the reality of the society.” Instead, these media outlets reflect “the political, religious and ethnic inclinations of their owners.” The profession itself, he said, is “divided and without vision” and is often marked by “a total disregard for ethics and professionalism.”

Part of the explanation is financial, as the steady decline in the country’s economic and social fortunes has taken an inevitable toll on the media industry. Printing presses and broadcasting equipment are often decades old, expensive to operate, difficult to repair and maintain and inadequate for meeting the information needs of a population of more than 50 million. Neither state television and radio nor the scores of private stations transmit nationally, as antiquated equipment and chaotic regulations limit their broadcast range.

Dire poverty is another major obstacle. Few of the country’s nearly 3,000 trained journalists earn a living wage. Instead, journalists are paid to write stories by the individuals or organizations they are covering — a practice known as le coupage (literally, “blending”). “Most journalists go around searching not for news but for people who can pay them to publish their stories,” Mr. Kabemba wrote. The resulting stories invariably reflect “what the person who pays the money wants to hear” and bring the profession into public disrepute.

Reforming the DRC’s economic and political culture to allow the media to play their part in development and nation-building will be a major challenge to the nation’s journalists, its fledgling democratic government and the international community. In his conclusion, Mr. Kabemba argues for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the industry, including massive retraining of staff, investment in modern printing presses and transmitters, refurbishment of the education system, adoption of new media laws and pay scales that can help insulate the press from undue political influence and the temptation of le coupage.

“The DRC is the principal reservoir of world strategic minerals which are the envy of both regional and international powers,” Mr. Kabemba concluded. The country “needs to be protected by a truly democratic state. . . . The media holds the crucial key in promoting the culture of democracy and good governance, but it needs the necessary support to play its role efficiently and correctly.”

The UN’s Radio Okapi
Given the shortcomings of the DRC’s national media, the dangerous divisions among Congolese and the enormous territory to monitor, the UN peacekeeping mission attaches great importance to the use of media to promote reconciliation and democracy. One result has been Radio Okapi, the innovative official MONUC radio station established jointly with a Swiss non-governmental organization, Fondation Hirondelle. Staffed almost entirely by Congolese journalists, Radio Okapi states that its mandate is “to inform the Congolese public and the international community of the process of the political transition” and to serve as a “communication relay” between MONUC and the Congolese public.

Broadcasting in the DRC’s five main languages and able to reach virtually every corner of the country through its network of transmitters, relay towers and shortwave equipment, Radio Okapi is the only media outlet with national reach. Its slogan, “breath of the DRC,” was soon associated with reliable news reporting and unbiased programming about the transition to democracy.

In contrast to much of the local media, Radio Okapi’s reporters are comparatively well paid and rigorously trained in journalistic ethics and reporting standards. Le coupage — accepting payment in return for favourable stories — is forbidden, as is editorializing on behalf of parties or individuals. The station pioneered a number of journalistic firsts in the DRC, including political debates, fair access to airtime for political parties and scientific opinion polling.

Radio Okapi’s status as MONUC’s official radio outlet has insulated editors and reporters from political influence and freed the station from dependence on wealthy patrons eager to promote their political views. Its emphasis on political impartiality, financial independence and high professional standards make it a model for journalism in the transition to Congolese democracy.

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
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Africa a Priority for New UN Head Ban Ki-moon Sets African Issues High on the Global Agenda

By Ernest Harsch

Mr. Ban Ki-moon visiting the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, during his first official trip as the new UN Secretary-General.

During his first official trip as UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon assured Africa’s leaders that the continent will remain a central priority for the organization. Africa has achieved much through “unity of purpose,” he told a summit meeting of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 29 January, just four weeks after taking office. “Unity of purpose is also the foundation of Africa’s partnership with the United Nations,” he emphasized, “as we take on the broad range of challenges we share.”

Those challenges, Mr. Ban continued, include tackling ongoing conflicts in Côte d’Ivoire, Somalia and Sudan, building peace in countries just emerging from war, combating disease and ill health, reducing poverty, promoting broad-based development and countering the impact of climate change.

He commented to journalists: “My presence here in the first month of my tenure as the Secretary-General of the United Nations is a strong sign of the growing partnership between the United Nations and the African Union and of the high priority I attach to Africa.”

Mr. Ban’s trip, his appointment of an African woman (former Tanzanian Foreign Minister Asha-Rose Migiro) as deputy secretary-general and his numerous affirmations about the continent’s importance came amidst some concern within Africa that the end of the tenure of the former Ghanaian secretary-general, Kofi Annan, might bring a shift in course. As a headline in the independent daily L’Observateur Paalga of Burkina Faso expressed it: “UN: change in men, change in priorities.”

Mr. Ban tacitly acknowledged this worry in his address to the AU summit. After 15 years of being led by Africans (Mr. Annan and his Egyptian predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali), the UN is now led by a non-African, observed Mr. Ban, who is from the Republic of Korea. “But like all human beings,” he told the heads of state, “my origins are in the cradle of humanity, Africa, and I am proud of that.”

The outgoing UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, urged
Africans to work with his successor to advance Africa’s cause.

The fundamental reasons for the UN’s emphasis on Africa lie in the continent’s unfortunate realities, noted then Under-Secretary-General for Africa Legwaila Joseph Legwaila. “People are constantly reminded of the carnage in places like Darfur,” he told Africa Renewal. “People are reminded of the AIDS pandemic. And of course we are always described as the poorest of all continents.” The challenges facing Africa will not be different because the UN now has an Asian Secretary-General, he said. “Africa will continue to experience the problems it has been experiencing.”

A built-in focus
Africa became a central priority for the UN years before someone from the continent ascended to the world body’s highest office. At the urging of African countries, the UN General Assembly in 1986 held a special session to find ways for the continent to overcome its unprecedented economic crisis. Delegates from Africa, the rich donor countries and other parts of the world negotiated a five-year UN Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development. It amounted to a pact — unique in UN history for its focus on just one world region — in which African countries pledged to carry out sweeping economic reforms and donors promised to provide more aid and other support.

At the programme’s conclusion, then Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar found that while Africa had undertaken a range of initiatives and achieved “notable progress towards democratization,” the continent’s economic and social conditions “actually worsened” during that period. The General Assembly responded by drawing up another plan, this time lasting a decade, called the UN New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s. It too achieved disappointing results.

African leaders then decided to take the initiative. In 2001 they adopted the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), an African-led plan to achieve continental peace and development. “The Africans for the first time decided that they were not going to wait for the General Assembly to come up with a plan,” explained Mr. Legwaila. “The Africans realized that they themselves would have to take their destiny into their own hands.”

The General Assembly welcomed this African commitment. Rather than drafting another UN plan, it decided in November 2002 that the international community should instead support Africa’s own efforts, through NEPAD.

In September 2005, leaders from across the globe assembled at UN headquarters to review progress in reducing global poverty and achieving other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for human well-being. Noting that Africa lags particularly far behind in reaching the MDGs, they included a special section in the summit “outcome document,” highlighting the continent’s specific requirements. They reiterated international support for NEPAD and pledged more aid, debt relief, trade opportunities and other assistance. “We reaffirm our commitment to address the special needs of Africa,” the world leaders declared.

For the many different parts of the UN system, Africa has become a built-in priority. Much of the UN’s peacekeeping and humanitarian work concentrates on Africa. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) devotes about half of all core programme spending to Africa — some $680 mn in 45 sub-Saharan countries in 2005 alone.

Dr. Margaret Chan, who took office as the new director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) in early January, announced that her two chief goals would be to improve the health of women and of Africans. “The people of Africa,” she noted, “carry an enormous and disproportionate burden of ill health and premature death.” She pledged the WHO’s help in strengthening Africa’s weak national health systems.

Passing the torch
As his decade as Secretary-General drew to a close, Mr. Annan reflected on the accomplishments and disappointments of his tenure. Among his greatest achievements, he believed, was focusing global attention on the fight against poverty, through the MDGs campaign.

In an address to the General Assembly in September 2006, Mr. Annan recalled that when he first took office in 1997, he felt that the world faced three main challenges: ensuring that globalization would benefit all humanity, healing the disorder of the post–Cold War period and promoting human rights.

While these challenges were global, he said, they also concerned him directly, as an African. “Africa was in great danger of being excluded from the benefits of globalization,” he said. “Africa was also the scene of some of the most protracted and brutal conflicts. And many of Africa’s people felt they were unjustly condemned to be exploited and oppressed, since colonial rule had been replaced by an inequitable economic order on the global level and sometimes by corrupt rulers and warlords at the local level.”

Being from Africa, Mr. Annan had a particular advantage in speaking bluntly to African leaders about issues they were not always comfortable addressing. During his first year in office, he urged African leaders, in especially forceful terms, to do far more to safeguard and advance human rights. Such rights, he said, “are not a luxury of the rich countries for which Africa is not ready.”

Citing the concept of a “responsibility to protect,” he repeatedly encouraged African leaders to act against genocide and other massive human rights violations in neighbouring African states, contrary to their earlier tendency to remain silent about such abuses. And he strongly urged African leaders to speak out frankly and publicly about HIV/AIDS and to devote greater efforts to combating the pandemic.

In December, following Mr. Ban’s selection as the new Secretary-General, Mr. Annan urged Africa’s UN representatives to work with his successor “to advance Africa’s cause and agenda within the organization.” Mr. Ban, in turn, pledged to build on his predecessor’s legacy. He vowed to concentrate on the goals already set for the UN, rather than find “new frontiers to conquer.”

The ravages of war
As Mr. Ban learned firsthand during his Africa trip, the UN’s agenda on the continent is a highly ambitious one. No goal is more important than achieving peace and security, he affirmed. Addressing the AU summit in Addis Ababa, Mr. Ban recalled his own childhood experience in war-torn Korea, which showed him “how war robs individuals of the chance of building a decent life and whole societies of the chance to prosper.”

To help achieve a more peaceful future for Africa, Mr. Ban noted that the UN currently has more than two-thirds of all its peacekeepers worldwide stationed there. As of January 2007, there were nearly 55,100 uniformed peacekeeping troops and police on the ground in six African missions — in CŸte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sudan and the Western Sahara, and on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border.

In addition, Mr. Ban reported that the UN had just allocated $35 mn from its new Peacebuilding Fund to help consolidate peace in Burundi (another $35 mn was allocated to Sierra Leone in March). He also reaffirmed the UN’s support for helping the AU build up its own capacities for peacekeeping and conflict resolution.

Some countries are demonstrating notable progress. The DRC, in the wake of its first democratic elections in 40 years, is now a “true source of hope for all of Africa,” Mr. Ban stated during his visit to that Central African country. Liberia also “shines as an example,” he said.

But the conflicts in Côte d’Ivoire and Somalia have been more intractable, the Secretary-General acknowledged, and “bleed like open wounds on the face of the continent.” Most serious at the moment is the crisis in Sudan’s western Darfur region, “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” Mr. Ban met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during the African summit in an effort to secure the Sudanese government’s support for a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur. “The people of Darfur have waited much too long,” the Secretary-General stated after the meeting. “This is just unacceptable.”

Because of the spillover of the violence in Darfur into neighbouring Chad, Mr. Ban proposed in a report to the Security Council in February that the UN also authorize a mission of up to 11,000 peacekeepers for eastern Chad, to deter cross-border attacks and protect 120,000 displaced Chadians and 232,000 Sudanese refugees.

From poverty to climate change
Combating poverty and promoting economic and social development are also daunting tasks for Africa, and the new UN Secretary-General took the occasion of a visit to the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, to highlight them. “I feel very much humbled by what I am seeing now,” he said during the visit. “That makes me resolve again my firm commitment to work for the improvement of living conditions, education, water, sanitation, housing — all these are the challenges which we must overcome.”

While some African countries have achieved reasonably strong economic growth rates and are making progress towards at least some of the MDGs, much of the continent lags far behind, Mr. Ban noted in his AU address. He reported that he would soon convene a working group of African stakeholders, international organizations and donors — a “coalition of the willing” — to develop an action plan to advance the MDGs in Africa.

Addressing the effects of climate change will be a major focus of his global agenda, Mr. Ban has affirmed frequently since taking office. In Addis Ababa, he noted that the impact of climate change “will fall disproportionately on some of Africa’s poorest countries.” He cited UN estimates that 30 per cent of Africa’s coastal infrastructure could be inundated by rising sea levels linked to global warming, that more than a quarter of Africa’s habitats could be lost by 2085 and that tens of millions of people could be in jeopardy. “The time has come for the rest of the world to assist African countries in adapting to the effects of a warming planet.”

Given the numerous problems and enormous potential of Africa, Mr. Ban assured Africans that their concerns will be at the top of the international agenda. “The success or failure of the United Nations in the coming years,” he said in Addis Ababa, “will be determined largely on this continent.”

Ban Ki-moon, a seasoned diplomat
Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the eighth UN Secretary-General, has more than 37 years of experience in public service. Among his prior positions, he was the minister of foreign affairs and trade of his native Republic of Korea, as well as chief national security adviser. During the 1970s, he was first secretary for his country’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York and director of the UN Division at the Foreign Ministry’s headquarters in Seoul. While ambassador to the UN in Vienna in 1999, he served as chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. In 2001-02 he was chef de cabinet of the Republic of Korea’s presidency of the General Assembly. Mr. Ban has also been active in inter-Korean relations, in 1992 as vice-chair of the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission and in 2005, while foreign minister, as an architect of a landmark agreement aimed at promoting peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
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Coping with Less Rain in Burkina Faso Officials, Farmers and Activists Gear up for Climate Change Battle

Coping with less rain in Burkina Faso
Officials, farmers and activists gear up for climate change battle
By Jean Marie Sawadogo
Ouagadougou
Planting trees along a stone line to prevent soil erosion from heavy downpours of rain.

The heat wave that started in March has not yet, two months later, given way to the first rainfall of the new farming season, except in a few isolated parts of Burkina Faso. Abel Raogo, a 60-year-old farmer in the village of Ipelcé, some 50 kilometres from the capital, has already finished sowing his fields. Now he waits for the rain.

“The good, generous years — when farming could begin in April thanks to early, plentiful and lasting rains — are long behind us,” he remarks, sitting in his field in the shade of a shea tree. “Forty years ago, we weren’t tormented by constant anxiety and uncertainty, worried about poor harvests, like we are today.”

Hamadou Tamboura farms and raises livestock near Sapouy, in a neighbouring province. He moved there five years ago from the arid Sahel region in Burkina’s north. “I decided to move to Sapouy to escape the hard conditions of the Sahel’s hostile environment and seriously degraded land,” he explained to Africa Renewal. But now his land in Sapouy has become exhausted and no longer produces enough.

Raogo and Tamboura toil in different areas. Each faces his own particular situation. But they are both aware that the conditions they confront are no longer what they once were. The two farmers have seen the reality of the changing weather, although they are not sure of the reasons. They do not ask for explanations of “climate change.” That concept features mainly in national and international intellectual debates. They do understand the immediate dangers represented by degrading soils, drying rivers and other changes in their environment — and they want urgent, concrete solutions to those problems.

Drawing water in rural Burkina Faso: The government is helping villagers dig wells and build small water reservoirs to better utilize the country’s scarce water resources.

Vulnerability
Burkina’s economy is based mainly on agriculture, which provides livelihoods for 80 per cent of the population. Natural constraints, such as degraded soils, recurrent droughts, deforestation and spreading deserts, have a major impact. They combine to make people’s lives more vulnerable.

Over the past four decades, Burkina has experienced frequent extremes of climate. Drought in the 1970s caused a serious famine, which cost numerous lives and major livestock losses. Although famine has been less severe since then, it remains a frequent spectre in parts of the country.

Over the decades, Burkina’s desert areas have been spreading, a process known as “desertification.” Scientists find it difficult to separate desertification from climate change. There is evidence that desertification influences local climate patterns, while climate variations in turn affect the process of desertification.

In a 2006 study, the National Council for Environment and Sustainable Development, an inter-ministerial coordinating body that also includes independent experts and civil society representatives, identified four sectors that are most vulnerable to climate change: water, agriculture, stock raising and forestry.

Lower rainfall and higher temperatures have contributed to the silting and evaporation of lakes and rivers and a long-term decline in the capacity of water reservoirs. In the Central Plateau region, according to government figures, three-quarters of the 84 dams and reservoirs are silted and require rehabilitation. Farmers report that some dams and reservoirs no longer hold enough water during the dry season to enable them to produce crops.

Albert Bouda grows vegetables in fields irrigated by the Goué dam, near Ouagadougou. Now, to keep on farming, he told Africa Renewal, “we have to dig wells to get enough water for our crops.”

Higher temperatures lead to more evaporation from water bodies, and also degrade the quality of soil, contribute to the spread from the north of certain agricultural pests such as locusts, lower crop yields and reduce biodiversity. Agricultural experts estimate that 30 per cent of Burkina’s land suffers from serious degradation.

The eastern and southwestern parts of the country, which are rich in natural resources and generally have more favourable weather, are increasingly hit by high temperatures and pockets of drought. Human activities — excessive cutting of trees, overgrazing by livestock and more intensive farming — also contribute to environmental deterioration.

In the east, “we see the start of growing pressure on the land, especially around strategic resources such as protected conservation areas, rivers and lakes,” notes Antoinette Ouédraogo, president of a women’s development association and a member of a national climate change experts’ group. Those pressures, she told Africa Renewal, include the uncontrolled clearing of land, poaching of wildlife and migration of livestock, as herders from the north search for new pastures. Such environmentally harmful practices worsen the impact of climate change.

Ironically, the north, which usually has Burkina’s lowest average rainfall levels, has in recent years sometimes experienced unexpectedly heavy rains. In August 2006, for example, a downpour in Oudalan province caused serious flooding, with widespread property damage. Meanwhile, sandstorms, which normally hit only the northern parts of the country, now affect other regions as well.

Adaptation plan
In 1992, Burkina was one of the early signers of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was negotiated that same year. At the end of 2006, an interdisciplinary group of experts, working under the authority of the Ministry of the Environment, drew up a National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA), designed to initiate concrete responses to the challenges of climate change. The plan has been adopted by the government.

Drafted in consultation with civil society organizations and community representatives, the NAPA is intended to identify immediate needs and projects to help local communities confront the adverse effects of climate change.

“Even though the situation in Burkina is not today catastrophic,” explains Mamadou Honadia, a member of the NAPA coordinating committee and Burkina’s former national focal point for the UN convention, “there are grounds for concern and to take action to mobilize the necessary financial and human resources to address the impact of this phenomenon.”

As it is conceived, the NAPA will be used not only to counter the current negative impacts of climate change, but also to anticipate their consequences and the rise of new threats. National experts expect average temperatures to increase by 0.8 per cent by 2025 and by 1.7 per cent by 2050. Meanwhile, average annual rainfall could decline by 3.4 per cent by 2025 and by 7.3 per cent by 2050.

“Lower rainfall, combined with higher temperatures, will have negative repercussions on overall agricultural production and on the vegetation cover because of diminished surface and underground water resources,” says the plan. “Satisfying the water needs of people, livestock and crops will be difficult, given that water capacities are weak.”

Because the challenges are huge and the available resources are limited, observes the plan, successfully countering the adverse impacts of climate change will require the involvement of all national actors, from the government down to local communities. It will also require adequate assistance from the international community, to support the country’s own efforts.

Reservoirs, trees and seeds
Whether it is against the impact of climate change or environmental degradation more generally, the government has already initiated action on a variety of fronts. In his annual “state of the nation” address to parliament in late March, then Prime Minister Paramanga Ernest Yonli cited a number of actions over the past year alone:

Developing small-scale irrigation projects on 26,000 hectares of land and training thousands of farmers in irrigation techniques and water management, as part of a decade-long plan to promote irrigated farming
Starting or completing construction of more than two dozen medium-sized dams and water reservoirs
“Adapting to climate change” by extending an experimental project, known as the Saaga programme, to seed clouds in the arid Sahelian zones
Producing more than 8 mn tree seedlings to replant 13,000 hectares of land
Building more than 1,660 kilometres of “living hedges” as wind breaks
Rehabilitating nearly 4,000 hectares of degraded land
Fixing sand dunes over nearly 350 hectares in the Sahel
Encouraging farmers to adopt improved and hardy new seed varieties that require less water, such as high-yielding cassava and the New Rice for Africa (Nerica).
Many civil society groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are active around environmental issues in Burkina. They help train farmers to conserve water, topsoil and vegetation and introduce practices that both preserve the environment and increase yields.

According to Henriette Ouédraogo, president of the Ragussi Association, a group of 60 women shea butter producers active in the central region, her group seeks to raise women’s awareness of the risks of cutting trees and the hazards of using certain kinds of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. The association also promotes the conservation of shea trees and other plants that can provide farmers with additional sources of income.

Dialogue and partnerships
To share experiences and help coordinate their areas of work, many of these environmental groups have formed the Network of NGOs and Associations for the Protection of the Environment (ROAPE). Its coordinator, Paul Bayili, believes that civil society has a key role to play in raising public awareness of climate change and in developing responses. “ROAPE has set itself the goal of popularizing the concept, with government support,” Mr. Bayili told Africa Renewal.

In March, the ROAPE organized a regional workshop on climate change with the aim of defining a strategy to counter its negative effects. Participants recognized the importance of raising the awareness not only of the general public, but also of elected officials, decision-makers and managers of urban zones and forest preserves.

According to Mr. Honadia, of the NAPA coordinating committee, partnerships with the government and such NGOs, as well as with technical experts, rural producers and donor agencies, are essential for confronting Burkina’s environmental challenges.

“Dialogue is needed,” he told Africa Renewal. Through building partnerships, it will be possible to develop projects that benefit from on-the-ground experience and involve all actors. In that way, no one will be pushed to the margins, and “everyone can agree to move forward.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 7,2007 
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Conflict Resources: from ‘Curse’ to Blessing Transforming an African War Risk into a Peace Asset

By Ernest Harsch

Guard at an illegal diamond mine in Angola during the country’s civil war. How can such resources be turned towards peace and development?

For years, Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta region has been the scene of repeated armed clashes among local residents, dissident groups and the military and police. The fighting has claimed many lives and sporadically disrupted the country’s main export sector.

The unrest has been stoked by popular frustrations over poverty, pollution and heavy-handed security tactics. The area’s “vast oil wealth has barely touched people’s lives,” noted the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in a July 2006 report on human development in the Niger Delta.

Many local residents believe that the government, military and foreign oil companies are not doing nearly enough to correct this situation. “People know that they will not be allowed to enjoy the benefits of our oil unless they fight,” one rebel leader in Warri told an investigator for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental research and advocacy organization based in Brussels.

The same month the UNDP released its report, more than 1,000 kilometres away in the town of Gaoua in Burkina Faso, about 150 demonstrators armed with cutlasses, clubs and bows and arrows tried to march to a meeting of the newly elected municipal council. Police blocked the march, but a dozen protesters were able to present their grievances to the provincial high commissioner. They demanded that the authorities send police to halt illegal gold mining on a hill considered sacred by the local Lobi community.

Meanwhile, in the northern part of neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, a rebel faction controls a large open-pit diamond mine in the town of Seguela. It is one of several producing diamonds — estimated to be worth more than $20 mn — that have been smuggled into Mali and Ghana to help fund arms purchases, in violation of UN sanctions.

Breaking the links
As part of their broader efforts to secure peace and development on the continent, Africans and their international partners are focusing increasingly on ways to break the links between conflict and natural wealth. Whether as objects of competition or sources of military financing, notes UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, natural resources have played a “negative role” in many of Africa’s bloodiest wars, from Sierra Leone and Liberia to Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A 13-year-old boy carries a sack of earth and rock at a diamond mine in Mbuji-Mayi, the Congolese “diamond capital.”
To highlight the problem, Mr. Legwaila’s Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) organized a three-day experts’ group meeting in Cairo, Egypt, in June 2006. The experts — who included representatives of governments, the UN and other regional and international organizations, civil society groups, academics and the private sector — recommended measures to strengthen international and national controls to prevent natural resources from financing warring factions. They also suggested steps to reduce domestic conflicts over access to natural wealth, including “responsible, just and economically productive resource management” by African governments, with “equitable distribution of wealth to all stakeholders, in particular local communities.”


With such an approach, the experts argued, the exploitation of natural resources can be better directed towards improving society as a whole, by reducing competition and transforming natural wealth “from a peace liability to a peace asset.”

The presence of a valuable natural resource is not, by itself, a “curse” destined to incite conflict (see box). Rather, argues University of London lecturer Abiodun Alao, the central issue is how such resources are used and the money they generate is distributed. “The future of the continent,” he wrote in a background paper for the Cairo meeting, “depends largely on how well it manages these resources. Taking a broad look at natural resources and conflict in Africa, it seems obvious that at the centre of most of the problem is governance.”

Cleansing ‘blood diamonds’
There is perhaps no better-known symbol of the link between African resources and conflict than diamonds, evocatively called “blood diamonds.” Because they are small, diamonds can be easily transported and smuggled. The high price they fetch on world markets can buy many arms, pay fighters or otherwise sustain military activities.

In Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war, the fiercest fighting was over control of that country’s diamond fields. Diamonds smuggled from Sierra Leone also helped finance one side in the war in neighbouring Liberia, as did illegal exploitation of Liberian timber and iron ore. In Angola’s war, each side had a ready source of revenue — the government controlled offshore oil fields, while the rebel UNITA movement sustained itself for years through illegal diamond mining.

Thanks to campaigns by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and wide media coverage of the phenomenon, the Kimberley Process was launched in 2000. It is a UN-backed scheme to stop the illegal trading of diamonds and other gems from conflict zones, with scores of diamond-producing and -trading countries now belonging to the initiative. Under the arrangement, all diamond shipments from participating countries must be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity specifying their origin. Experts at the main diamond exchanges in Belgium and elsewhere conduct scientific tests of the diamonds’ composition to try to verify where they came from. Participating countries pledge to punish violators.

UN peacekeepers
patrol against diamond and gold smugglers on Lake Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In some countries, the Kimberley Process has had an impact. In Sierra Leone, only a mere $1.2 mn in diamonds was legally exported in 1999, but by 2005 the figure had risen to $140 mn, as the certification scheme encouraged more miners to sell their diamonds to authorized dealers. But the process has major shortcomings. Experts estimate that between $30 mn and $160 mn worth of diamonds are still smuggled out of Sierra Leone annually.

The illegal export of diamonds from northern Côte d’Ivoire is another indication of the limitations. Unless such problems are resolved, warns Global Witness, an advocacy NGO, the Kimberley Process risks becoming “little more than a paper-pushing exercise.” Partly in reaction to the situation in Côte d’Ivoire, a 15 November plenary meeting of the participants in the Kimberley Process agreed to closely monitor all diamond exports from West Africa, with technical information on geological origins required in each shipment out of the region.

One inherent weakness in the Kimberley Process, argues SaferAfrica, a South African NGO, is that it is voluntary, depending on the willing cooperation of governments, companies and diamond dealers. Not all are so willing. Along with other participants in OSAA’s Cairo meeting, SaferAfrica recommended strengthening the ability of governments, NGOs, civil society groups and others to more effectively monitor compliance with the certification scheme and urged governments to penalize and punish violators.

Transparency and ethics
Besides strengthening Kimberley, the OSAA experts’ group proposed that similar schemes be extended beyond diamonds to cover other valuable natural resources. That is beginning to happen, in part thanks to NGO advocacy.

Since 2002, a broad coalition of 300 civil society groups and NGOs has been waging a campaign called Publish What You Pay (PWYP), designed to pressure multinational oil companies to operate more transparently by publicly revealing the details of their oil contracts in Africa and elsewhere. The aim is to make it harder for company or government officials to engage in corrupt acts, a problem that often contributes to domestic political tensions over how oil revenues are allocated.

The NGO Global Witness has specifically highlighted the case of Angola, where some government officials, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), siphoned off $4 bn in oil revenues into private offshore accounts between 1998 and 2002. Since then, the government has requested technical assistance from the World Bank to help it improve transparency in its oil sector.

Weighing gold in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Not all countries that have formally joined the initiative have actually followed up with practical steps “to prove that they are managing their oil revenues transparently,” notes Mr. Christian Mounzéo, of the coalition’s chapter in the Congo Republic. Besides pressing for full disclosure, he also urges his own government and other African oil producers to establish special oil revenue accounts designed to benefit “future generations,” as Norway has done. Mr. Mounzéo and other PWYP campaigners have suffered legal harassment as a result of their activities.


In 2003, the UK government launched the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which seeks to improve management of revenues from oil, gas and mining. Primarily, it encourages multinational corporations to be more transparent and accountable in their mining operations. More than 20 countries — 14 of them in Africa — have formally joined the initiative. However, notes Prof. Alao, its success depends “on the willingness of multinational corporations and even incumbents in power to open all the relevant files to public scrutiny.”

Some major companies have pledged to be more open in their dealings, but many remain reluctant, citing competitive pressures, the need for business secrecy and governments’ desire for confidentiality. Moreover, the Cairo experts’ group noted, some mining companies, especially in the extractive industries, show little regard for the social and environmental risks of their operations. The experts urged corporations to implement ethical codes of conduct and the governments of the companies’ home countries to hold them accountable for their practices abroad. African governments were asked to require the companies to develop sustainable development plans to safeguard the environment, provide benefits to local communities and contribute to national development priorities.

State capacities
Even where African governments are willing to better supervise and regulate their countries’ natural wealth, they often are unable to do so very effectively. Especially in countries that are involved in conflict or struggling to recover from war, notes Prof. Alao, there is “a genuine lack of institutional capacity to effectively monitor the vast swaths of territories where natural resources are deposited.” Some resource-rich areas may be near poorly controlled borders, such as the diamond mines in Sierra Leone and Liberia and the mining regions in the eastern DRC. Others are in difficult terrain, as in Nigeria’s swampy Niger Delta.

Moreover, many central governments are unable to fully control the behaviour of their own officials and employees. With large sums of money involved, armed factions and smugglers can often pay off ministers, licensing authorities, customs officers and border guards. During Sierra Leone’s civil war, rebels were frequently able to trade diamonds for weapons from the very government commanders and soldiers who were supposed to be fighting them.

Even in countries at peace, mining, timbering and other extractive activities are difficult to regulate. According to a 2004 study by a research group on African mining at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, the economic austerity policies recommended by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s weakened overall state capacities in many African countries. Although some of those policies have since been modified with the aim of rebuilding state institutions, recent reforms in Africa’s mining and investment codes have conceded so many incentives to mining companies that national governments have little regulatory control and their treasuries and economies derive few benefits. These reforms, noted the researchers, have “tended to favour a weakening of the state’s fiscal basis, its capacity to monitor and enforce, and, consequently, decreased legitimacy and state sovereignty.”

In light of the widespread weaknesses in national institutions, the Cairo experts’ group recommended that the UN, donor agencies and other international institutions provide more aid to African countries to strengthen capacities for natural-resources management. This aid could include training for customs officials and auditors, the establishment of new systems for monitoring extractive industries and support for measures to better combat government corruption and corporate fraud.

In Liberia, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has provided technical and financial assistance to help the country develop a forestry policy. During the civil war, indiscriminate logging and illegal smuggling of forest products were used to help fund the conflict, leading the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Liberian timber exports. A prominent Dutch timber merchant is currently on trial in the Netherlands on charges of buying timber from former President Charles Taylor in exchange for shiploads of arms and ammunition.

“The new forestry policy,” says Mr. Adrian Whiteman, an FAO forestry officer who worked on the project, “aims to maximize the benefits from the forestry sector to the Liberian people and put an end to the use of forest resources to fund conflict. The Liberian Forestry Development Authority is now in a position to regain authority and control over the forest resources.”

Who decides?
Building effective institutions can often take a long time, however. In some countries, donor agencies have been tempted to step in directly to try to quickly overcome problems of corruption and poor administration.

One such initiative involved the construction of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline to transport oil from remote fields in southern Chad to a port on Cameroon’s coast. The two governments and the World Bank signed a complex arrangement in which the Bank offered to help fund the pipeline if Chad agreed to allocate the bulk of its oil revenue to specific poverty alleviation and development programmes, through accounts managed by a consortium comprised of government, World Bank and civil society representatives. The scheme was aimed at avoiding a situation in which sudden oil wealth could encourage vast corruption, while the 60 per cent of Chadians who live in poverty see few benefits.

After completion of the pipeline, three major oil companies began producing oil from Chadian wells in 2003. In 2006, the government is expected to earn $200 mn in oil taxes and royalties — more than its entire annual fiscal revenue from all other sources. But the arrangement with the World Bank started to come apart in late 2005 when the government announced its intention to increase the share of oil revenues going directly into the budget, and to use part of it to build up its military to confront domestic rebels and attacks from Sudanese militias across the border in Darfur.

Another donor-initiated scheme was set up in Liberia in 2005. Called the Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP), it was designed to tackle corruption, fraud and other poor practices under the transitional government set up at the end of the civil war. Under it, external financial managers were brought in to control the customs office, ministry of lands and mining and numerous state enterprises.

Opinion in Liberia is divided. Some have criticized GEMAP as a violation of Liberian sovereignty. Others see it as necessary to help control widespread graft. The new elected government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, which took office in January 2006, views GEMAP as a useful short-term effort, but emphasizes the need to develop domestic accountability to make external initiatives unnecessary.

The experts’ group meeting convened by OSAA looked at both the Chad pipeline and Liberian initiatives. It proposed that the African Union (AU) strengthen efforts to achieve better national management of natural resources, in part by incorporating specific standards into the African Peer Review Mechanism, through which African countries assess each others’ governance practices. The meeting also urged donors to “respect and support the AU-led process, rather than attempt to impose governance-related conditions for development assistance or supporting externally driven parallel initiatives.”

Notes Mr. John Ohiorhenuan, UNDP’s deputy assistant administrator, even if initiatives such as GEMAP may be necessary because the “plundering has gotten out of hand” and there are no ready alternatives, policymakers should be aware of the danger that such ventures may be a “double-edged sword” that can undermine state sovereignty and foster long-term dependency.

Sharing the wealth
Even if governments are able to manage their natural resources more transparently and effectively, that will have only a limited impact if the benefits are not also shared more widely within African societies. Paradoxically, many areas that have plentiful oil, diamonds or other minerals are also extremely impoverished, from the Niger Delta to Kono, the heart of Sierra Leone’s diamond fields.

Mbuji-Mayi in central DRC is sometimes called the “diamond capital of the world.” But the city itself is little more than a slum. Its province, Kasai Oriental, has high rates of illiteracy and infant mortality, it lacks electricity and 60 per cent of its children under five suffer malnutrition. Meanwhile, a few Congolese and foreign diamond merchants display unimaginable wealth. Such inequities contribute greatly to social and political tensions across Africa, and make it easier for armed groups to mobilize local supporters.

To counter poverty and inequality, the Cairo experts’ group strongly urged African governments and mining and oil companies to ensure that a greater share of natural-resource wealth is used for social services and development programmes nationally, as well as to directly benefit local communities.

In a few cases, the concept of revenue sharing has featured prominently in peace agreements. As part of an accord that ended a long civil war in southern Sudan in 2003, the central government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army worked out a detailed arrangement in which the two sides would share revenues from oil.

In Nigeria, all 36 states received roughly equal allocations of national oil revenues until 2000, when the share for the oil-producing Niger Delta states was increased to 13 per cent in an effort to allay local grievances. But most of the money went to elites in the cities and some was lost through corruption, so that few poor residents noticed any real improvement. As a result, demands have escalated. The governments of the oil-producing states are now asking that the share be increased to 20–25 per cent, while a government committee proposed in March 2006 that it be raised to 18 per cent.

In an effort to generate some goodwill, foreign oil companies active in the Niger Delta have also directly financed a range of local development projects, from funding health clinics and schools to building public infrastructure and hiring some local workers for their operations. While some communities have benefited, others complain that they are still excluded.

‘Before they blow up’
In 2005, two NGOs (Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada) joined with two diamond companies (De Beers and the Rapaport Group) to launch the Diamond Development Initiative (DDI). Its aim is to promote better conditions for Africa’s approximately 1 million small-scale artisanal diamond miners, many of whom now earn as little as $1 a day despite their hard and dangerous work.

DDI cites examples from various African countries where programmes are already under way to benefit artisanal miners. In Sierra Leone, the government has established a special tax to boost investments in diamond-producing communities. In the DRC, a public office was established in 2003 to help that country’s hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners better organize themselves, improve safety, acquire new tools and strengthen their power to bargain with diamond merchants. It also allocates 20 per cent of its tax and licence revenues to local community development projects.

Several companies active in Angola’s diamond regions have built schools, rehabilitated health clinics and hospitals, installed hydroelectric power plants and sanitation systems and launched agricultural projects. However, notes a DDI report on Angola, “Government investment — very low in a diamond-producing former war zone — needs to be increased. The expenditures by mining companies are little more than a drop in an ocean of need.”

The International Crisis Group, in an August 2006 report on the conflict in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, noted that the most successful local development projects are those in which communities themselves play an active role. Pro-Natura International (Nigeria), a small NGO with both Delta and foreign staff, pioneered a “participatory” approach in the Akassa kingdom in the oil-producing state of Bayelsa in 1997. Under that approach, the communities identify “micro-projects” costing less than $7,150, such as schools, health centres, skills-training units and micro-credit facilities. Community members provide the necessary land, labour and materials, and the financing comes from oil companies, donor governments, foundations and the European Union. The effort has since been extended to three other kingdoms.

Along with transparency in public and corporate management of natural resources, many more such local development efforts are needed across Africa, says UNDP’s Mr. Ohiorhenuan. Natural wealth need not contribute to conflict, he told Africa Renewal, if African countries initiate “internal dialogue” and deal with various forms of inequity and exclusion “before they blow up in our faces.”

‘Stop blowing the gifts of nature’
When the Cold War ended, there was some initial optimism that armed conflicts in Africa would decline with the absence of the old ideological divides between East and West. While some conflicts did gradually wind down, new ones also erupted, often insurgencies or civil wars among contending political forces within the same country. As a result, not only political analysts but also economic researchers began to look at non-ideological factors, such as ethnic and economic competition.

Some of these researchers, including a team led by Mr. Paul Collier at the World Bank, detected a strong correlation between the outbreak of armed conflict and a country’s dependence on one or two readily exploitable natural resources, such as diamonds, gold or oil. The presence of profitable resources was also seen as a factor in the spread of high-level corruption, a further source of conflict and public resentment.

From this research emerged two broad concepts that were taken up by both policymakers and the media: that the very presence of valuable natural resources often serves as a “curse” that generates conflict, and that insurgent forces frequently are motivated less by genuine grievances than by “greed” for money from the control of natural wealth.

Both explanations have been criticized as simplistic. According to Prof. Wayne Nafziger of Kansas State University in the US, natural resources, by themselves, are not a curse. “Of course,” he adds, “there’s bad stewardship of resources.”

Mr. Rory O’Ferrall, director of external affairs for the De Beers diamond mining group, agrees. At a panel discussion on natural resources in African least developed countries organized by the Office of the Special Adviser for Africa (OSAA) in September, he emphasized that possessing diamonds or other minerals is not a curse. “It all depends on what you do with them.” He cited as an example Botswana, a major African diamond producer, which is a “shining example” of good governance and judicious use of diamond revenues. “Let’s stop blowing the gifts of nature and focus on what we’re doing with them.”

Under-Secretary-General Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, who heads OSAA and is himself from Botswana, made a similar point, adding that “the curse is the people who abuse” natural resources.

Participants in OSAA’s June 2006 experts’ group meeting in Cairo also considered the “greed versus grievance” view of conflict as a distortion. They argued that it tends to over­emphasize the influence of natural resources on the behaviour of rebel groups and draws insufficient attention to how poor government management of resources can contribute to conflict and human rights abuses.

Rebels in Sierra Leone and Liberia were widely believed at the time to have been primarily motivated by “greed.” But later investigations by several researchers, including Mr. Paul Richards of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, found that while rebel commanders did benefit from access to diamonds, timber and other natural resources, most young people who joined the rebel ranks were not driven by a desire for the spoils of war. Instead, they sought to oppose abuses by government authorities and traditional chiefs or rebelled in the hopes of altering rural tenure systems that denied them access to land. In both countries, as in Côte d’Ivoire and elsewhere, wrote Mr. Richards in a recent essay, “reform of rural rights seems as urgent an issue as tracking the gun-runners or diamond- and timber-smugglers.”

From Africa Renewal,  January 1,2007 
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Pledging Peace at Great Lakes Summit In a Region Emerging from War, Cooperation Remains a Challenge

By Michael Fleshman
Three leaders sign pact at Great Lakes summit. From left: Rwandan Prime Minister Bernard Makuza, DRC President Joseph Kabila and Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza.

Efforts to consolidate peace in Central Africa’s war–ravaged Great Lakes area took another step forward at the end of 2006 with the adoption of the comprehensive Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region. The agreement was signed by the heads of state of 11 countries in Nairobi on 15 December and came just weeks after another significant regional milestone, the successful presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The region plunged into widespread armed conflict in the chaotic aftermath of both genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the overthrow of the dictatorial government of Mobutu Sese Seko in the DRC, then called Zaire, in 1997. By 2003, when a transitional government took power in the DRC as part of a UN–backed peace agreement, eight African countries and a score of independent rebel groups were involved in the fighting. The protagonists included Rwandan and Ugandan forces seeking to overthrow the DRC government, Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian troops fighting alongside government soldiers, Burundian troops operating in the Congo against their own rebel opponents and anti–government Rwandan militias in the eastern DRC, in addition to local ethnic militias (see box).

Four priorities, many challenges
The signers of the pact (Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Congo Republic, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) pledged to cooperate in four areas: security, democracy and governance, economic development, and humanitarian and social welfare. They agreed to detailed region-wide protocols and programmes of action for each. The assembled leaders also pledged to develop joint approaches to HIV/AIDS, the empowerment of women, environmental protection and human rights. The pact’s four main areas are:

Peace and security: Signers must renounce force in regional relations, abstain from supporting or tolerating the presence of armed dissidents of other states, cooperate in disarming and dismantling existing rebel movements, control regional arms transfers, eliminate and prevent hate speech and ethnic discrimination, and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly sexual violence and abuse of women and girls.

Democracy and good governance: The signatories must establish or abide by the rule of law and respect for human rights; enact or strengthen constitutional systems based on a separation of powers, political pluralism, regular and credible elections and transparency in political and economic governance; and establish a regional council on information and communications to promote free expression and media rights.

Economic development: Parties to the agreement must end or prevent the illegal exploitation of natural resources, respect national sovereignty over natural resources, establish the Great Lakes as a “specific reconstruction and development zone,” harmonize national and regional economic policies, cooperate in projects relating to regional energy, transport and communications, and enhance commerce and development among border populations to promote regional integration.

Humanitarian and social welfare: The signers must protect and assist internally displaced populations in line with international standards, protect and respect the property rights of returning refugees and displaced persons, establish regional early warning and disaster prevention systems, and guarantee access to basic services for populations affected by conflict and natural disasters.



‘Long and difficult’ path
The pact is the product of a six-year, African-led diplomatic process aimed at reducing mutual suspicions between area governments and establishing a legal and political framework for addressing the region’s pressing economic, security and humanitarian problems. The first breakthrough came in 2002 in South Africa, when the parties to the Congo conflict agreed on a cease-fire, the withdrawal of foreign forces and the establishment of an interim government.

In 2004, regional leaders responded to a UN Security Council call for region-wide talks by attending the first International Conference on the Great Lakes Region in Tanzania. That summit adopted the Dar es Salaam declaration, outlining the terms of a comprehensive regional settlement. It was at the second international conference in December that regional leaders agreed on the final details of the pact. The process has been supported politically and financially by a 28-country Group of Friends that includes South Africa, the US, Nigeria, and many members of the European Union.

In a message delivered to the summit on behalf of then Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa Legwaila Joseph Legwaila noted that “the Great Lakes region has witnessed some of the bloodiest wars in the world. The cooperative mechanism embodied by this international conference reflects the centrality of the regional dimension in finding solutions to the various conflicts.” He acknowledged that negotiations “proved to be long and difficult because of the magnitude and complexity of the problems” and cautioned that the hardest part — implementation — still lies ahead.

The responsibility for implementation rests with the governments of the Great Lakes, aided by a conference secretariat that reports to a regional committee of cabinet ministers. This committee in turn advises the heads of state, who will meet in summit every two years. Civil society groups are expected to participate locally through national implementing bodies. Funding for the secretariat will come from mandatory assessments on signatory countries and donor funding. The pact also establishes a Reconstruction and Development Fund, to be financed by donors and Great Lakes governments and managed by the African Development Bank. The fund will help underwrite reconstruction, development and regional integration projects.

Failure ‘not a choice’
Although the complex peace agreement is fragile, there are signs of progress. In early February southern Sudanese authorities ordered Ugandan rebel forces out of the country, accusing them of mounting attacks inside Sudan. Several weeks later, the DRC’s newly elected President Joseph Kabila told a meeting of Great Lakes parliamentarians that the area’s conflicts were “blocking development” in the area. “Open war has come to an end, and dialogue has become the method of resolving conflicts,” he said. He added that his government is closely monitoring continuing peace talks in Uganda and Burundi.

According to press reports, the DRC’s armed forces have sought to expel the remaining Rwandan rebels from its territory and complete the demobilization of former combatants. Some 20,000 UN peacekeepers remain in the DRC to assist the new government with security. A 6,000-strong UN force completed its peace mission in Burundi at the end of 2006.

In an interview, the head of the conference secretariat, Tanzanian Ambassador Liberata Mulamula, told Africa Renewal that while implementing the pact is “a huge challenge,” there are prospects for “quick dividends” in a number of areas, “including the establishment of joint security management of common borders,” the creation of “transborder development basins” to ease poverty and discontent along porous and insecure national boundaries, and early-warning mechanisms for conflict prevention and humanitarian emergencies.

“The signing of the pact was seen as a new beginning for the Great Lakes region and indeed the African continent,” Ms. Mulamula said. But success will hinge on adequate funding for the agreement and its development programmes and on the political will of regional leaders to respect its provisions. “The world has witnessed the devastating effects of war and intractable conflicts in this region,” she concluded. “Failure is not a choice!”

Africa’s first ‘world war’
The Great Lakes region earned the unenviable title of host to “Africa’s first world war” after the collapse of the Mobuto dictatorship in 1997 triggered a scramble for control of the vast, mineral-rich Zaire (later called the Democratic Republic of the Congo). But the ongoing crisis in the Great Lakes is really a series of interlocking conflicts involving virtually all of the countries in the region. Relations between the Sudanese and Ugandan governments, for example, were badly strained by allegations of Ugandan backing for the rebel Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army and charges that the Sudanese in turn supported the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency that has taken more than 10,000 lives, displaced 2 million people and fuelled the kidnapping of upwards of 25,000 children into the rebel army. Uganda hosts nearly 200,000 Sudanese refugees, plus tens of thousands more Congolese and Rwandans, which places an enormous strain on Uganda’s modest resources.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Tanzania — among the poorest countries in the world — has for years hosted more than 600,000 refugees from countries in the Great Lakes. As of early 2006, Zambia and Kenya sheltered an additional 300,000.

In the DRC alone, upwards of 4 million people died from violence, starvation and disease, 1.3 million refugees decamped to neighbouring countries and 4 million internally displaced people, including 1.4 million children, were driven from their homes. Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been raped and sexually assaulted over the course of the brutal conflict (see Africa Renewal, January 2007).

From Africa Renewal,  January 4,2007 
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Taking on Violence Against Women in Africa International Norms, Local Activism Start to Alter Laws, Attitudes

By Mary Kimani
Kenyan women demonstrate against rape in Darfur, Sudan: Violence against women is becoming an increasingly public issue across Africa.

The incident was not unusual in Africa. In December 1998 a Kenyan police officer, Felix Nthiwa Munayo, got home late and demanded meat for his dinner. There was none in the house. Enraged, he beat his wife, Betty Kavata. Paralyzed and brain-damaged, Ms. Kavata died five months later, on her 28th birthday.

But unlike many such cases, Ms. Kavata’s death did not pass in silence. The Kenyan media covered the story extensively. Images of the fatally injured woman and news of her death generated nationwide debate on domestic violence. There followed five years of protests, demonstrations and lobbying by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as by outraged men and parliamentarians. Finally, the government passed a family protection bill criminalizing wife-beating and other forms of domestic violence.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), violence affects millions of women in Africa. In a 2005 study on women’s health and domestic violence, the WHO found that 50 per cent of women in Tanzania and 71 per cent of women in Ethiopia’s rural areas reported beatings or other forms of violence by husbands or other intimate partners.

In South Africa, reports Amnesty International, about one woman is killed by her husband or boyfriend every six hours. In Zimbabwe, six out of 10 murder cases tried in the Harare High Court in 1998 were related to domestic violence. In Kenya, the attorney general’s office reported in 2003 that domestic violence accounted for 47 per cent of all homicides.

‘No boundaries’
Domestic violence is a global problem. In Europe, estimates the WHO, violence in the home is the primary cause of injury and death for women aged 16–44, more lethal than road accidents or cancer. Indeed, “violence against women,” said then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1999, “knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. It is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation.” And, he added, it is “perhaps the most pervasive.”

Violence against women goes beyond beatings. It includes forced marriage, dowry-related violence, marital rape, sexual harassment, intimidation at work and in educational institutions, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilization, trafficking and forced prostitution.

Such practices cause trauma, injuries and death. Female genital cutting, for example, is a common cultural practice in parts of Africa. Yet it can cause “bleeding and infection, urinary incontinence, difficulties with childbirth and even death,” reports the WHO. The organization estimates that 130 million girls have undergone the procedure globally and 2 million are at risk each year, despite international agreements banning the practice.

Sexual violence is another problem. A local organization in Zaria, Nigeria, found that 16 per cent of patients with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) were girls under the age of five, a sign of sexual assault. In the single year 1990, the Genito-Urinary Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, treated more than 900 girls under 12 for STDs. Such assaults, observes a WHO publication, put “African women and girls at higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases [including HIV/AIDS] than men and boys.”

Rooted in culture
Abusers of women tend to view violence as the only way to solve family conflicts, according to a 1999 study on violence against women by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health near Baltimore, US. Perpetrators typically have a history of violent behaviour, grew up in violent homes and often abuse alcohol and drugs.

The story of Janet Akinyi in Kenya is a case in point. In 2006 she filed for divorce and custody of her children after her husband attempted to kill her with a knife. She had endured violent beatings throughout her 10 years of marriage. “We used to be okay until he started drinking,” Ms. Akinyi told Africa Renewal. “Then he would get furious at anything and start beating me. He would say it is the only way to teach me to respect him.”

A girl who was raped in Somalia.
However, violence against women, the Johns Hopkins study points out, goes beyond the brutalization of women by individuals. The prevalence of the phenomenon, “cuts across social and economic situations, and is deeply embedded in cultures around the world — so much so that millions of women consider it a way of life.”

In a report by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2000, the agency noted that in interviews in Africa and Asia, “the right of a husband to beat or physically intimidate his wife” came out as “a deeply held conviction.” Even societies where women appear to enjoy better status “condone or at least tolerate a certain amount of violence against women.”


Such cultural norms put women in subservient positions in relation to their husbands and other males. That inferior status makes women “undervalued, disrespected and prone to violence by their male counterparts,” observed a 2003 report by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, agreed, noting that discriminatory norms, combined with economic and social inequalities, “serve to keep women subservient and perpetuate violence by men against them.”

Focusing specifically on Africa, Ms. Heidi Hudson found in a 2006 study by the South African Institute of Security Studies that “the subservient status of women, particularly rural women, in many African countries is deeply rooted in tradition.”

Women as property
This is true to such an extent, Ms. Hudson added, that women can be perceived as objects or property, a view reflected especially clearly in practices such as wife inheritance and dowry payments.

The impact of both practices was illustrated by a 2003 study on domestic violence in Uganda by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). The study found that families justified forcing widows to be inherited by other males in the family with arguments that the family had “all contributed to the bride price” and that therefore the woman was “family property.” Once inherited, a widow lost her husband’s property, which went to the new husband. And if a woman sought separation or divorce, the dowry had to be reimbursed. Often, the study found, “a woman’s family is unable or unwilling” to refund the dowry, and her brothers may beat her to force her back to her husband or in-laws “because they don’t want to give back cows.”

Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere, was an early critic of such cultural practices. He noted in 1984 that denying women the right to inherit and own property leaves them economically vulnerable and dependent. That creates a situation in which “women in Africa toil all their lives on land that they do not own, to produce what they do not control, and at the end of the marriage through divorce or death, they can be sent away empty-handed.”

Since Mr. Nyerere’s time, Africa’s economic decline has left many women in even worse conditions. Their plight is so severe, noted a study by the WHO and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), that many women see no option but to remain with husbands who routinely batter them. The women stay because men “serve as vital opportunities for financial and social security, or for satisfying material aspirations.” Moreover, as such women are often both poor and uneducated, “the combination of dependence and subordination can make it very difficult . . . to demand safer sex or to end relationships that carry the threat of HIV/AIDS infection.”

A police station in Mombasa, Kenya, with a special unit for crimes against children and women: Activists are urging the police and courts to take such crimes more seriously.

The WHO found that women with at least a secondary education were more able to negotiate greater autonomy and control of resources within marriage, have a wider range of choices in partners and are more able to choose whether and when to marry. Such capacities have often been associated with lower levels of violence in the home.

Women’s activism
Women are not just victims. They have been working actively for change. In Senegal, after the 1996 rape of a nine-year-old by a community and political leader, the NGO Association pour la promotion de la femme sénégalaise (APROFES) initiated protests, leafleting campaigns and local theatre performances to publicize the case. That thwarted efforts by the man and his supporters to force the girl’s family to withdraw charges.

APROFES also provided legal counsel at the subsequent trial. The court proceeding, attended by thousands, yielded a 10-year prison sentence for the perpetrator, the first conviction for such a crime in Senegal.

Women have also been active internationally to gain better mechanisms to protect women. This has included successfully pushing for adoption of international treaties and instruments, such as the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (see box). That convention commits governments to change discriminatory practices and laws, including those that permit early marriage, bar women from inheriting property or relegate them to a secondary status.

The convention entered into force in 1981, and as a result the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was officially established. In 1992, the committee affirmed that violence against women was a “violation of their internationally recognized human rights” and “a form of discrimination” that “nullified their right to freedom, security and life.”

The committee asked governments to identify and end customs and practices that perpetuate violence against women. It urged them to conduct public education, create safe havens, institute counseling and rehabilitation programmes for victims, sensitize law-enforcement officials and draft relevant laws to protect women against all kinds of violence.

Unfortunately, UNIFEM found in 2003, few countries have met those obligations. Many countries, reported the agency, do not collect information on violence against women, so there is little data available to assess whether measures are having any impact. Worse, few countries have enacted laws to prevent abuse. As of that year, only 17 sub-Saharan countries had specific laws against domestic violence. Ten did not have any laws on rape or sexual assault and 30 had no laws prohibiting female genital mutilation.

As of 2007, out of 179 countries that are party to the convention, only 89 have laws specifically outlawing domestic violence. Ninety governments have laws against sexual harassment. In Africa, only South Africa has enacted all relevant laws to punish violence against women.

Slow change in laws
At a 2007 forum in New York of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, Kenyan Member of Parliament Njoki Ndugu illustrated the challenges women face when trying to get male-dominated parliaments to pass laws in women’s interests. “The motion to amend the sexual violence act had been introduced several times since independence and failed,” Ms. Ndugu said. “Each time, it was seen by the male members of parliament as giving too much power to women.” Some male parliamentarians, she added, “argued that stricter anti-sexual-violence laws would lead to men being falsely accused of raping women.”

The sexual violence bill in Kenya passed only after certain sections, such as one that would have outlawed marital rape, were removed. In Uganda, similar laws have languished for more than a decade. Participants from Tanzania and Zimbabwe said they had faced similar resistance.

There have been some exceptions. In Rwanda, UNIFEM worked with the government to create a law requiring all parties to field equal numbers of male and female candidates in parliamentary elections. Today, 49 per cent of Rwanda’s legislators are women, the highest rate in the world. The legislature has passed several progressive laws, including one that gives female children the right to inherit their parents’ land and property, a right that was traditionally reserved for males.

This advance was especially important for female survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Without the new law, they would have been beholden to male relatives and vulnerable to abuse. But they can now take control of their family resources and provide for themselves.

In South Africa, men and women legislators together helped pass the Domestic Violence Act in 1998, at a time when the country had the lowest number of female ministers and parliamentarians since the end of apartheid in 1994. Legislation introducing minimum sentences for rape and tightening bail requirements for those accused of rape was enacted in 1997, and guidelines for the handling of sexual offences were passed the following year.

Enforcement
Putting new laws on the books is not enough. Law enforcement and court mechanisms also have to be made friendly and accessible to women, says Ms. Mary Wandia, the Africa women’s rights coordinator for the non-governmental Action Aid International. “The police force is often uninterested in domestic violence,” she observes. “Unless a woman can show physical evidence of the violence she has suffered, police and law-enforcement authorities are often unwilling to believe and assist her.”

Moreover, Ms. Wandia adds, “many communities are complicit in excusing or condoning violence against women, and in so doing, tacitly approve of the abuse.” Neighbours and friends may hesitate to intervene in abusive relationships because marital relations are often considered a “private matter.”

According to Ms. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UNFPA, there is a need “to ensure that all those who respond to violence against women — whether they are police officers, judges, lawyers, immigration officials, medical personnel or social workers — are sensitized and trained to provide a response that is compassionate and comprehensive.”

In Rwanda, gender desks have been established at police stations, staffed mostly by trained women who help victims of sexual and other violence. They investigate cases and ensure that evidence is available for court proceedings. As a result, in 2006 the Rwandan police referred 1,777 rape cases to prosecutors, resulting in 803 convictions. The gender desks have “improved reporting and response to these crimes,” Ms. Josephine Odera, UNIFEM’s director for Central Africa, told Africa Renewal. “What we need now is to expand this approach to more countries.”

In 1996, the government of Burkina Faso passed a law prohibiting female genital cutting. To make the law effective, the authorities launched a public education campaign on the issue, added the topic to the school curriculum and opened a telephone help line for girls at risk. As a result, reports Plan International, there were 400 convictions between 1996 and 2005, with sentences of up to three years and fines equivalent to US$1,800. Public support for female genital cutting has fallen.

However, even good laws can fail if the legal process is too expensive. When Ms. Akinyi, in Kenya, filed for divorce after her husband’s attempt to kill her, she had to borrow money for legal fees from friends. “I have already spent KS35,000,” equivalent to US$500, she told Africa Renewal. “I tried to get legal aid, but I was told there many other cases more dire than mine. Some women have had cases pending before the court for five years because they are relying on free public defenders who handle too many cases. I now realize why so many women never leave their husbands. How can they possibly afford this process?”

“There have to be free legal services,” argues Ms. Saran Daraba Kaba, a former government minister in Guinea who is now executive director of the Mano River Women’s Network, which works in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. “There is a need for lawyers who are well trained in helping the victim to make an informed decision. We have created free legal clinics and trained local lawyers to address that. It is a very new model, but it’s something that has promise for the future.”

Changing social attitudes
To Ms. Kaba, the biggest challenge is changing the social attitudes and beliefs that confine women to an inferior status. “We have to get more women to know their legal rights. We have to teach our people why it is important to protect women and how it benefits the entire community when women are afforded better protection,” she argues.

Educating both men and women is critical. The WHO study found that 80 per cent of women surveyed in rural Egypt believed that beatings were justified if the woman refused to have sex with her partner. In Ghana, more women (50 per cent) than men (43 per cent) believed that a man was justified in beating his wife if she used a family planning method without his consent.

In Uganda, the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention works with 73 community volunteers, balanced roughly equally between women and men. They use street theatre to generate support for local laws on domestic violence. Male activists also engage men, to emphasize that nonviolence benefits the whole family, not only women.

In Tanzania, the NGO Kivulini uses open-air meetings, local drama groups, traditional drumming, singing and dancing to engage people in discussion about domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. In Guinea, public education efforts bring together local NGOs and imams to explain that Islam does not condone the abuse of women.

By engaging both men and women, such civil society groups send a message that domestic violence is not an issue just for women, but a problem affecting the whole community. “Mindsets must change,” Ms. Safiye Cagar, the UNFPA’s director of information, told government and civil society representatives at the 2006 Commission on the Status of Women forum. Such change, said Ms. Cagar, can only be achieved through dialogue and debate, advocacy, community participation and the concerted mobilization of civil society. “Too many women are subjected to violence and made to feel shame . . . for crimes committed against them.”

The real shame, Ms. Cagar said on International Women’s Day, belongs to a world that allows such crimes to continue. “It is the responsibility of governments and society as a whole to condemn violence against women — and to take action to eliminate it.”

Global spotlight and uneven progress
In addition to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the 1993 Vienna Declaration on Human Rights and the 1995 Declaration of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing specified actions to protect women from discrimination and violence. Similarly, a 1993 UN General Assembly Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women called on governments to condemn such violence and to refrain from using customs, traditions or religious beliefs to avoid their obligations to end it. These agreements serve as the framework for the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on violence against women.

In 2003, African governments adopted a protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights in which they committed themselves to end discrimination and violence against women. The protocol came into force in November 2005 after ratification by 15 states.

Today, the UN special rapporteur and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) serve as two of the main avenues through which issues of gender violence can be addressed internationally. CEDAW encourages states to report on the extent, causes and effects of violence, and on the measures they have taken to counter it. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can submit supplementary reports. The system has had some successes and faced many challenges.

Uganda — In 2002, CEDAW expressed concern about the absence of laws to address the high incidence of violence against women in Uganda. In the absence of a domestic violence law, the police and courts rely on laws that cover assault and homicide. The committee strongly recommended the speedy enactment of two bills that have languished in parliament for a decade: the Domestic Relations Bill, which is intended to consolidate laws on marriage and divorce, and the Sexual Offences Bill. But political leaders described the bills as “not urgent.”

Nigeria — In 1998, CEDAW also raised concerns about the prevalence of violence against women and girls, “including domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace,” in Nigeria. The minister for women affairs and social development responded that the government had difficulty addressing the issue because “women hardly report violence to the police for fear of reprisal from both the husband and wider family.” Five years later, a study by Amnesty International in Lagos found that there still were very few criminal prosecutions in such cases.

Morocco — In 1997, CEDAW asked the Moroccan government to address violence against women and establish support services for victims of violence. The following year a Geneva-based NGO, the Organisation mondiale contre la torture (OMCT), submitted an alternative report outlining several laws that made Moroccan women vulnerable to abuse. Because of activism by the OMCT and other international and local women’s groups, Moroccan laws changed in February 2004. The minimum marriageable age for girls was raised from 15 to 18. A legal obligation for a wife to obey her husband was scrapped, and women were permitted to contract their own marriages and more easily sue for divorce.

From Africa Renewal,  January 7,2007 
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Women Push onto Africa’s Agenda NEPAD Responds to Advocates for Women’s Rights

By Itai Madamombe

Rwandan members of parliament taking oath of office: Nearly half of the country’s legislators are female.
The status of women in many African countries is improving. “Africa is in a period of great experiment,” says Ms. Anne Marie Goetz, who heads the governance, peace and security division at the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). “Things are starting to change, as countries see a window of opportunity to create ways for women to contribute their skills and talents to national development.”
And women themselves are driving that change, notes Ms. Goetz. “Women, through their groups, are making it clear they are not putting up with the status quo anymore.” Women are demanding, among other things, laws that guarantee their rights to manage economic resources and that protect them from violence. Such pressure has pushed governments to be more responsive. Countries have begun to respond with commitments to reduce maternal deaths, get more girls into school, give women rights to own land on a more equal basis with men and ensure that a minimum number of women get into key positions in government.

‘Don’t just complain’
When African heads of state originally launched their continental development plan, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), in 2001, women’s organizations banded together to protest the initiative’s seeming lack of sensitivity to gender issues. They demanded that NEPAD’s proponents ensure that women were not frozen out of the social and economic benefits promised by the initiative. Ms. Litha Musyimi-Ogana, an advocate for women’s rights, was among those in the forefront asking for change.

“I got the NEPAD foundation document into my hands,” recalls Ms. Musyimi-Ogana. “I rushed to the goals and the second one said that empowering women was a priority. I got excited. Then I flipped the pages to find a plan of action that said concretely what NEPAD would do — one, two and three — for women. There was nothing there.”

The once skeptical activist is today part of NEPAD’s management structure, heading the Gender and Civil Society Organizations Unit formed in 2004 to bring women’s issues into policies, programmes and activities related to the initiative. The unit, based at the NEPAD Secretariat in Johannesburg, South Africa, was created in direct response to recommendations by women’s groups, civil society organizations and other stakeholders.

“Our attitude in protesting was: If you see something missing, help add to it,” Ms. Musyimi-Ogana reflects. “Don’t just complain. While the NEPAD declaration was far from perfect, I saw a commitment, I saw a spirit in it. It is the first time heads of state are committing to Africa voluntarily. This is historic. I said to myself: ‘I am going to support this vision and change things from within if necessary’.”

Monitoring rights
In one of NEPAD’s most innovative initiatives, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), African governments carry out periodic reviews of the policies and practices of participating countries to assess progress in promoting democracy, good governance and economic management. Among other indicators, countries participating in the peer review are required to demonstrate the measures they have taken to promote and protect women’s rights, as well as the laws they have adopted and other steps they may have taken to enhance the participation of women in society. They are expected to back up their claims with figures on the percentages of women in decision-making positions, parliament and so on.

Rwanda has been a leader in the number of women elected to parliament, notes UNIFEM’s Ms. Goetz. The constitution mandates that at least 30 per cent of parliamentary deputies be women, but the strong push to support women candidates during elections has resulted in women holding 49 per cent of seats.

Women dig irrigation canals in Rwanda: NEPAD acknowledges that women play the predominant role in food production.
NEPAD’s peer review report on Rwanda, released in 2006, found that in addition to constitutional provisions, “Rwanda has created a plethora of institutions and development programmes to enhance the status and welfare of women in all walks of life.” Inheritance, land, labour and family laws were reformed to address discrimination against women.

Despite the huge strides, the APRM’s country review team reported that women still face many hurdles. For married women to carry out commercial activities, for example, they still need their husband’s permission. Rwanda was advised to address such disparities.


Similar reviews, accompanied by proposals to improve women’s status and opportunities, as well as other recommendations, have also been carried out for Ghana and Kenya. Two dozen other countries are also part of the APRM, and await peer reviews.

Hands on the purse strings
Overall in sub-Saharan Africa, an average 16.8 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women, close to the world average of 17.1 per cent, according to estimates by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international body that serves as a forum for dialogue among legislators.

“Getting women into key positions is critical,” Ms. Goetz points out. “If you have women in public office — though not always the case — they tend to be more sensitive to the needs of female citizens.” The ability of women deputies to bring about real change, however, depends on the stance of their parties and the calibre of the representatives themselves.

Occupying top government posts does not necessarily translate to influence. It is disappointing, the IPU reports, that women are still less likely than men to hold an economic portfolio or to be a country’s top foreign affairs representative.

“The question of women keeps coming back,” notes Augustin Wambo, an agriculture policy expert at the NEPAD Secretariat. He argues that noble goals will be meaningless unless those in positions of power are made aware of women’s needs.

“No matter how many pledges are made,” Mr. Wambo stresses, “unless we empower law-makers to unblock resources from national budgets and put in place the necessary means and policies to support women, the initiative is not going to fly.”

Producers and entrepreneurs
NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), completed in 2003, argues that “special attention must be given to the vital food-producing and entrepreneurial roles of women in rural and urban African communities.” The CAADP adds, “African women account for substantial amounts of production in both the informal and formal sectors,” while women entrepreneurs “not only invest in their business but also place high value on social investments in their communities.”

It is estimated that women produce more than half the food crops in most African countries. Studies by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have found, however, that despite women’s dominant role in food security, contemporary laws and traditional customs make it difficult for them to own land or acquire credit. Women also get only a tiny fraction of the professional training provided by agricultural institutions.

In March 2007, the NEPAD Secretariat organized a Southern African regional conference to brief members of parliament on the role they can play in their constituencies to achieve NEPAD’s agriculture goals. The conference emphasized the significance of gender and what can be done to support women farmers.

Networks and think tanks
To ensure that issues affecting women are better reflected in policies and programmes, the NEPAD Secretariat consults with pools of experts across all sectors. In 2005, for example, at a meeting organized by the Kenya-based African Women’s Development Communication Network (FEMNET), representatives from over 40 countries called for a mechanism to respond to gender and civil society matters.

As a result of further consultations, the Civil Society Organizations Think Tank, comprising 60 gender experts from all regions of Africa, was created that same year. Its members are experts in NEPAD’s various priority themes, such as agriculture, education, transportation and health. These experts work with women on the ground, and thus have a good understanding of what ordinary women most need.

Such willingness to consult gender experts, notes Roselynn Musa, a member of the think tank, shows that African leaders now realize that NEPAD’s goals cannot be achieved unless women and girls are able to participate to the best of their abilities. Ms. Musa, a programme officer at FEMNET, believes this is the beginning of a new type of partnership between NEPAD and African women.

“The think tank shows that the NEPAD leaders are aware there was a gap in how they initially planned to do business,” Ms. Musa told Africa Renewal. “They are now trying to fill that gap.” By having a positive impact on daily lives, Ms. Musa adds, NEPAD will become more credible and relevant to African women.

From Africa Renewal,  January 7,2007 
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Congolese Women Confront Legacy of Rape War and Sexual Violence Leave Survivors in Desperate Need

By Mary Kimani

“If there had been peace, this would not have happened to us,” says Kasoke Kabunga. Like thousands of other women, Kasoke and her daughter were raped by armed militiamen in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Her daughter died. Kasoke survived, but contracted HIV/AIDS.

A rape victim recovering in a hospital in Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: Rape has often been used as a weapon of war in the region.

Their tragedy is the female face of 10 years of war in the DRC, which has claimed more than 3 million lives and displaced another 3.5 million people. Today, a handful of courageous Congolese women are seeking to help Kasoke and other rape survivors find solutions to the many problems facing them.

Rachel Kembe, a medical doctor, is one of those providing help. In 1997, when hundreds of women from the