More than 3 000 delegates from 193 nations will descend on the Ghana capital, Accra, on Sunday for five days of United Nations talks on globalisation — against a backdrop of rising food prices and an economic slowdown. The talks will be opened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who will warn that not everyone benefits from globalisation.
Kenya’s food crisis was set to worsen after a fungus wiped out 10% to 20% of its annual rice production, the United Nations said on Friday. The fungus destroyed 5 600ha of rice in the Mwea Irrigation Scheme in Central Province, known as the rice basket of the country, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
South Africa would be wise to increase household savings in the current economic climate, helping to ease pressure on financing of the current-account deficit, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Tuesday. Manuel said that the country’s savings rate was not adequate at just under 14% of gross domestic product.
Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries.
Oil prices eased from recent highs in Asian trade on Monday after international finance ministers warned that near-term global economic prospects had weakened. In afternoon trade, New York’s main oil contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May, fell by 29 cents to ,85 per barrel.
A doubling of food prices over the past three years could push 100-million people in poorer developing countries further into poverty and governments must step in to tackle the issue, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said on Sunday at the end of the World Bank spring meeting in Washington, DC.
Developing countries, including China and India, are unwilling to sign up to a new global climate-change pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 because the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions, according to the United Nations’s top climate official.
Zimbabwe’s official presidential election results may remain secret for at least another week while substantial numbers of votes are recounted in a move the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says is designed to overturn fraudulently Robert Mugabe’s defeat and his Zanu-PF party’s defeat in Parliament.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) holds its spring meeting in Washington, DC, on Saturday amid what officials describe as the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Depression and as the global economy weakens. The 185-member IMF warned on Wednesday that the economic outlook was increasingly grim.
The global economic outlook is becoming increasingly grim as the United States appears unable to escape recession from a housing meltdown, the effects of which are still spreading, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday. Global expansion is set to slow to 3,7% in 2008 amid an unfolding crisis that began in the United States, the IMF said.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
A new World Bank and International Monetary Fund report warns that most countries in Africa will not meet most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) due by 2015. While there has been strong growth in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the region is still likely to fall short of the first goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.
Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades. ”The World Bank’s foray into climate change has gone down like a lead balloon,” Friends of the Earth campaigner Tom Picken said.
Zimbabweans waited anxiously on Thursday for an end to a deafening official silence over the outcome of their presidential election, after the opposition took control of Parliament. The country’s electoral commission wrapped up final results on the parliamentary contest in the early hours, in which President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party lost its majority.
Britain and other Western donors need to spend money on strengthening African Parliaments to ensure they can hold governments to account for how aid is being spent, a group of British MPs said on Monday. The cross-party delegation, which toured four African countries, said that foreign aid may have weakened Africa’s democracies.
Will Mugabe accept the result? Zimbabweans didn’t so much speak in Saturday’s presidential election as shout so overwhelmingly that Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party elite who came to believe in their unchallenged right to rule have been stunned into silence.
The United Nations is to hold its first debate on road safety amid warnings that the problem is a ”public health crisis” on the scale of Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. Next week’s meeting will follow research by the World Health Organisation forecasting that between 2000 and 2015, road accidents will cause 20-million deaths.
Sky-rocketing food prices in Egypt since the start of the year are being matched by a rumbling wave of popular discontent and unprecedented strikes and demonstrations. Textile workers, teachers, doctors and accountants have all threatened strikes under the united banner of ”Stop the expensive life” while doctors went ahead last week with a one-hour work stoppage.
The highest and oldest wall is that which separates ”us” from ”them”. This is described today as a great divide of religions or ”a clash of civilisations”, which are false concepts, propagated to provide ”the other” — a target for fear and hatred that justifies invasion and plunder, writes John Pilger.
A grouping of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters on Sunday backed United Nations-led efforts to forge a global pact to fight climate change but disagreed on a sectoral approach to curb emissions from industry. G20 nations held three days of talks near Tokyo to discuss ways to tackle rapidly rising emissions.
South Africa’s rating of 63,2% ranks it 52nd globally on the Heritage Foundation 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. In a statement released on Monday, Century 21 South Africa — the local chapter of the world’s largest real-estate brand — said the index, which covers 162 countries, took 10 specific freedoms into account.
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/ 25 February 2008
Rapid economic growth rates in Africa are at risk from a global downturn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told West African leaders on Monday. The IMF has cut its 2008 global growth projection to 4,1%, down from 4,9% last year, blaming the weak outlook in the United States and Europe.
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/ 18 February 2008
United States President George Bush handed out hugs and bed nets to battle malaria in Tanzania’s rural north on Monday, saying the US is part of an international effort to provide enough mosquito netting to protect every child under five in the East African nation.
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/ 12 February 2008
In the second instalment of his interview with Kgalema Motlanthe, Ebrahim Harvey speaks to the ANC deputy president about healing division in the party, unity among the alliance partners and the Polokwane ‘revolution’.
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/ 8 February 2008
The rapid spread of HIV/Aids is posing a huge threat to Mozambique’s future growth and the sustainability of its poverty-reduction programmes, according to a World Bank report. The report, published in January, noted that the high costs of procuring medicines and caring for those with the disease was plunging most families further into poverty.
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/ 7 February 2008
United States President George Bush will spend most of his time during a five-nation tour of Africa later this month in Tanzania, to spotlight development gains in the East African nation. "This is a success story," said US embassy public affairs officer Jeffery Salaiz of Tanzania, during a press conference held in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday.
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/ 7 February 2008
The Spring Festival is traditionally the time for China to put up its feet and relax. That has rarely been more necessary. With food prices rising, Olympic expectations growing and much of the country snarled up in snow and ice, China enters the Year of the Rat under more pressure than at any time in more than a decade.
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/ 5 February 2008
China took part for the first time recently in World Bank meetings on the needs of some of Africa’s poorest countries in what the Bank sees as an important shift in Beijing’s role. China has a growing presence in Africa and has spent billions of dollars to secure raw materials to fuel galloping Chinese economic growth.
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/ 4 February 2008
Though it may be difficult to believe, the principle of accentuating the positive remains an important aspect of journalism. Yes, even the Mail & Guardian is sometimes guided by it. I accept that it is easier to apply to the sports pages (Buffoona Buffoona’s recent woes not withstanding) than to other beats such as crime and politics (I admit that the difference between these two often confuses me).
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/ 4 February 2008
A Kenyan legislator on Monday accused President Mwai Kibaki’s wife, Lucy, of assaulting him at the official State House residence three weeks ago and said he planned to sue her. The government denied the charge. Government-allied legislator Gitobu Imanyara told reporters he had been the latest target of Lucy Kibaki’s ire.
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/ 1 February 2008
Mozambique’s poverty-alleviation programme this week received a boost following the approval of a further -million loan by the World Bank. ”The council of executive directors of the World Bank has approved a credit for the International Development Association to the value of -million,” the bank said in Maputo on Friday.
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/ 24 January 2008
Kenya’s opposition on Wednesday called off mass rallies scheduled for Thursday to protest disputed presidential polls. This was at the request of former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, who is in Kenya to mediate the crisis. Annan was in Nairobi in the latest attempt to mediate the turmoil sparked by the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki last month.