Creator

Jonathan Cannard

Jonathan Cannard is a researcher at the Alternative Information & Development Centre in Cape Town, working on international trade, Eskom, and organised labour responses to both climate change and unemployment.

(Unless South Africa’s Covid-19 vaccine uptake improves soon, the country will be saddled with well over seven million expiring doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine by July — with nobody to offload them onto. Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

AFRICAN CONTINENTAL FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

20 DEC 2021

When free trade is not free

Free trade limits the policy space available to states worldwide, locking them into market-based trade and industrial policies.

Jonathan Cannard

5 min read

Artificial ventilators are produced at a rapid rate at Sanko Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Saitama on April 8, 2020, amid an outbreak of the new coronavirus COVID-19. Japanís Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proclaimed a state of emergency to Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa, Chiba, Osaka, Hyogo and Fukuoka for about one month on April 7th, and asked for refraining from going out to the extent possible. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic, globally widespread on March 11th. (The Yomiuri Shimbun)

CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH

14 APR 2020

To fight Covid-19, we must fight intellectual property, trade and investment rules

These restrictions must be overturned or ignored because they are limiting the production and importing of essential medical equipment such as ventilators

Jonathan Cannard

9 min read

$3.05-billion of the loan was dedicated to completing the Medupi coal-fired power station in Limpopo. (Madelene Cronje/M&G)

COUNTRY

19 AUG 2019

Cancel Eskom’s odious debt to the World Bank

It was never in the public interest to incur a debt of $3.75-billion to build coal-burning Medupi

Jonathan Cannard

8 min read