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/ 29 December 2005
South Africa’s microfinance institutions face competition from loan sharks who prey on the vulnerable, especially in the townships where a majority of the country’s poor live. ”You still find loan sharks in the townships. They charge ridiculous rates like 100% a week. But a lot is being done to address it,” said Hennie Ferriera, chief executive officer of Micro Finance South Africa.
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/ 18 October 2005
On paper, regional integration in Southern Africa has made advances — with countries being knit together by protocols and agreements of every stripe. It’s a pity there isn’t a similarly comprehensive network of roads and railways, say transport analysts — who point out that true regional integration will remain a pipe dream if goods cannot move efficiently between Southern African states.
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/ 12 October 2005
A groundbreaking gender equality training course for local government officials has wrapped up in Johannesburg. ”The course was the first of its kind in South Africa and the region involving gender and local government,” said Colleen Lowe Morna, director of Gender Links, the NGO headquartered in Johannesburg that organised the training.
Corruption is costing Africa’s oil industry billions of dollars annually, says Peter Eigen, founder and chairperson of Transparency International (TI) — a non-governmental group based in Berlin that monitors and fights graft. He made the comment to journalists at a gathering organised by TI South Africa in Johannesburg.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has expressed concern over mounting political and ethnic tensions in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), warning that this might spark renewed conflict in the country. In a report issued recently, the group says additional fighting could undermine the DRC’s uncertain peace process
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/ 24 September 2005
South Africa’s civil society groups are demanding a bigger role in the national self-assessment to be conducted under the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). APRM is the brainchild of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), an initiative that seeks to attract more foreign investment to the continent by improving the management of African states.
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/ 14 September 2005
The ostrich industry in South Africa has welcomed Tuesday’s announcement by Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza, declaring the country free of avian influenza. However, it warned that this does not translate into an automatic resumption of ostrich-product exports.
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/ 6 September 2005
Since the advent of democracy a decade ago in South Africa, efforts have been made to give the country’s majority black population opportunities in the farming sector. During the colonial era and under apartheid, blacks were dispossessed of land — and often prevented from buying it.
A three-day conference that took place last week in Johannesburg has highlighted the possibilities for increased trade between South Africa and Nigeria. The Nigeria and South Africa Business Investment Forum 2005 kicked off on August 24, mostly with the aim of attracting South African entrepreneurs to the West African country.
They are trends that show little sign of abating: the influx of refugees and economic migrants to South Africa, and the extent to which these persons become the target of xenophobia. ”We are an attractive destination in Africa: we can’t run away from this,” Zonke Majodina, deputy commissioner at the South African Human Rights Commission, said this week.