Middle class?

Defining the African “middle class” is a challenge. For the World Bank, it comprises everyone who earns between $2 and $20 per day. It’s a range that is far too broad and while the African Development Bank uses the same income range, it emphasises the need to subdivide the middle class into two. The upper middle class, by this definition, earns between $10 and $20 a day, and a vulnerable lower class is one that earns between $2 and $4 dollars a day. The latter are just marginally above the poverty line of $1.50 a day and can easily slip back into it.

According to the Moscow-based Institute for Emerging Market Studies, the African middle class will rise three times from 32 million in 2009 to 107 million by 2030 — the largest increase in the world.

Professor Marcel Benie Kouadio, economist and dean at the  Cote d’Ivoire’s Abidjan Private University Faculty tells IPS “The middle class has shrunk. Twenty years ago, teachers and doctors were middle class. Now, they can’t afford a new car. The Ivorian middle class lost its purchase power.”

Purchase power is a key word. Accountants differ with economists in their understanding of the middle class; rather than analysing income, they look at disposable revenue. Being middle class is about hitting a “sweet spot”, where people are able to spend money for things other than survival, says a report from accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Cocoa Capitalism

Cocoa is crucial to the Ivory Coast's economy and is mainly grown around the deep green and undulating lands in the south, centre and west of the country. These areas help the country produce around 40% of the world's entire cocoa supply, and the crop is responsible for 15% of the Ivory Coast's GDP, 20% of its tax revenue, and 35% of its exports. Ivorian cocoa typically ends up at ports like Amsterdam - the biggest cocoa harbour in the world.

The idea that millions of young children are being trafficked, enslaved, and forced to work 16-hour days in dire conditions makes for dramatic and emotive story, and one that campaigners can easily rally around. The concept of inequitable state pricing, misguided economic policies and distorted value chains makes for a much less rousing tale. However, while the former is thankfully a myth, it is the latter that is all too real. There is no shortage of problems within the Ivory Coast's cocoa industry. But despite the headlines, child slavery doesn't seem to be one of them.

Child labour has been a staple of Western campaigners in recent years. In late 2012, for example, this website published an article citing estimates that some 1.8 million child labourers are working in Ghana and the Ivory Coast as well as a US Department of State guesstimate that over 100,000 children are working under "the worst forms of child labour" on Ivorian farms. Meanwhile the Dutch journalist-turned-activist-turned-ethical-chocolatier Teun van de Keuken has claimed there are 460,000 people "working in conditions that have been declared illegal" in West Africa. Figures citing hundreds of thousands of child slaves make for sensations headlines, but they don't chime with the reality.

A 2013 background paper on forced labour and trafficking in Africa, the International Labour Organisation explained that "there are many clear examples where the assumption of forced labour has proved wrong. This is especially the case with cocoa production." The paper cites a range of studies that have disproven the idea of large numbers of child slaves and of widespread exploitation in West African cocoa fields, concluding that "an absence of good quality, accurate, empirical data has allowed for the perpetuation of sensationalist and often misplaced claims."

The Ivory Coast's cocoa industry is wrought with problems, most of which can be traced back to its hasty, ill-considered and poorly executed liberalisation in the late 1990s. Before then, the industry had been regulated by the Caisse de stabilisation et de soutien des prix des productions agricoles, more commonly known as Caistab.

Caistab was a state agency that offered farmers a guaranteed market at set prices. The organisation facilitated the buying and selling of the crop and removed many of the risks and uncertainties associated with cocoa farming. However, Caistab also worked to siphon illicit extra funds into the pockets of the ruling party and its leader Félix Houphouët-Boigny. It was partly this corruption that led the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to call for its abolition. Ivory Coast eventually acceded to its wishes.

Liberalising the industry, however, proved to be a hugely problematic. The cocoa industry disintegrated into a large number of cooperatives and private operators; government oversight and management of the sector lost its coherence as it fractured into various smaller bodies; and a few large multinational buyers were able to use their financial leverage to muscle in on the hitherto protected market and gain a stranglehold on exports.  Prices plummeted to the point that growing and selling cocoa sometimes cost them money.

With cocoa prices differing between neighbouring producers, particularly Ivory Coast and Ghana, many exporters try to get higher profits by smuggling crops across the border. The amount smuggled can be as high as hundreds of thousands of tonnes each year, leading to significant losses in tax revenues for the Ivorian or Ghanaian governments.

Furthermore, the new system hardly rooted out opportunities for corruption. In fact, one could argue that it deepened and intensified it, with vast amounts of embezzled cocoa revenues being used to fund the country's civil war in the mid-2000s. Farmers claim they are still extorted, over-taxed and short-changed by the current system. "With Caistab we had to support a director, his family, his home, his car, his mistress and so on," says one farmer from Sikensi. "With the new system in place, we've got to support four of five of these."

From a report by Bram Posthumus, an independent press and radio journalist with more than 20 years of experience living and working in West and Southern Africa.

Child Slavery In The Ivory Coast

The call for action below draws our attention once again to the lengths that businesses in capitalism will go in order to maximise their markets and maximise their profits. Children in one part of the world subjected to slave conditions so that children in 'richer' parts of the world can enjoy chocolate in fun shapes. 
Yes, abolish slavery once and for all - better still abolish the wages system which enslaves all workers. JS 

WARNER BROS.' CHAMBER OF SECRETS

In the cocoa fields of the Ivory Coast, child slavery is ‘normal.’ It’s routine. It’s accepted.¹ Children as young as 7 are sold – deprived of their childhood, ripped from their families, and subjected to routine abuse – to work long, backbreaking days picking cocoa.² And it all stems from our love of chocolate.
While many chocolate brands have made public commitments to find the best solution, Warner Bros. is lagging behind:

1. An independent investigation into their supplier Behr's Chocolates led to a failing score of 1 out of 48 possible measures to ensure their operations are slavery-free;³
2. Warner Bros. dismissed the findings of the investigation, simply stating that they were 'satisfied’ that fair labour practices were being used in the production of their chocolates;
3. Given the conflicting information, outraged consumers asked Warner Bros. what steps were taken to ensure there was no slavery in Harry Potter Chocolates. Warner Bros. refused to respond. 

As we head into one of the busiest times of the year for Warner Bros. theme parks. Children excited to experience the world of Harry Potter will be asking their parents to buy these chocolates. That's why taking a stand right now will make a big impact.
Ask Warner Bros. what steps they’re taking to ensure Harry Potter chocolates are slavery-free.

---

¹ Source 1
² Source 2
³ Source 3 

 

 

The Rich Elite

While millions live in crushing poverty a tiny elite that make up the super-rich across Africa.

About 200 Nigerians own the luxury cars, each costing up to $180,000, Porsche brand manager Michael Wagner said. Porsche is already planning a showroom in the Angolan capital, Luanda, similarly awash with petrodollars and ranked the world's most expensive city 10 years Over in the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan, once nicknamed the "Paris of Africa", billboards advertise French perfumes and Rolex watches. The city is home to a glass-front luxury brand-only boutique, Zino's. "Ninety per cent of our customers can walk in and spend $35,000 in one visit without thinking about it," store director Jean Miguel Darde said.

Shortly after officials revved the latest Carrera model for reporters and thrilled onlookers, posing for photographs in front of the gleaming black car. In the sticky heat outside, an employee said owning one of the personalised Porsches he was washing would be "a dream. But I only earn $120 a month," he shrugged.

Most of Nigeria's Porsche sales will come from Abuja, the makers believe. In the moneyed capital city, where wedding-cake mansions overlook smooth cloverleaf highways, wealth is a more conspicuous status symbol.
"There's a big market here. For example, I have a Bentley, a Porsche and a Ferrari, so I can easily buy another brand-new one," said one businessman from Abuja who sponsors golf tournaments as a hobby. But he added: "People don't travel by road anymore, they go by air. So the Ferrari in the garage hasn't done 500 miles in three years."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/23/africa-super-rich-luxury-cars

legal vultures

Socialist Banner has previously reported on the Ivory Coast environmental disaster caused by the company Trafigura. Many of the victims managed to gain a share of £30million compensation for the health affects by the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

But it seems that the multimnational were not the only sharks . The lawyers ,Leigh Day and Co, who represented more than 30,000 victims , poor , uneducated citizens of the Cote d' Ivoire have claimed 105 million pounds legal costs including a £50 million success fee , £20 million more than the compensation reward. Not just that but they have failed to ensure that all the claimants received the money . Only 12,250 of them had cashed their cheques.

Civil litigation experts said that the costs were unusually high. "£105m is a very high figure – I don't think I've ever heard a higher one in over 25 years of practice," said David Greene, head of litigation at law firm Edwin Coe.

ivory coast misery

We read that Ivory Coast , once called the "economic miracle" of Africa, with rapid growth in the first two decades after independence from France in 1960, is one of Africa's major agricultural exporters - around 40% of the world's cocoa, and more rubber and cashew nuts than any other country on the continent. But despite these cash crops, Ivory Coast has large regions suffering from malnutrition.

A third of children nationally suffer from chronic malnutrition. A recent survey showed that malnutrition was now at emergency levels among children under two years old in two regions in the north-west, Bafing and Worodougou. Children with malnutrition do not always get the help they need because of the cost of modern medicine, the lack of the health facilities close by. According to the International Monetary Fund, the poverty rate rose from 38% to 49% between 2002 and 2008.

This is not a country facing a famine, but a series of factors has left large numbers of the population struggling to grow and buy enough food.

"The reason why people are malnourished is mainly not due to a lack of food, but mainly due to accessibility issues due to poverty," says Mr Gerard ,country director for the health charity, Merlin. "The food on the market is expensive..."

Once more its a matter of capitalism's principle law "Can't pay - can't have"

Criminal Capitalism

A British oil trading giant has agreed to a multimillion-pound payout to settle a huge damages claim from thousands of Africans who fell ill from tonnes of toxic waste dumped illegally in one of the worst pollution incidents in decades.
Trafigura, a London-based company which bills itself as one of the world's largest oil traders, said it was in talks to reach a "global settlement" to the claim by 30,000 people from Ivory Coast, who brought Britain's largest-ever lawsuit after contaminated sludge from a tanker ship was fly-tipped under cover of darkness in August 2006.
The incident caused at least 100,000 residents from the west African country's most populous city, Abidjan, to flood into hospitals and clinics complaining of breathing difficulties and sickness. Investigations by the Ivorian authorities suggested that the deaths of at least 10 people were linked to the waste.

Trafigura struck a series of bargains on the international markets in 2005 and early 2006 to buy cheap and dirty petroleum, called coker gasoline, which the company believed could then be cleaned up at profit of £4m per cargo.Rather than send the oil to a refinery, Trafigura used the Probo Koala, a Panamanian tanker chartered by the company since 2004, as a floating processing plant while it was anchored off Gibraltar. "This is as cheap as anyone can imagine and should make serious dollars."
Using an ad hoc process of adding caustic soda and a catalyst to the coker gasoline, the oil was "cleaned" to produce a sellable fuel and a toxic sludge which sank to the bottom of the ship's tanks. "This operation is no longer allowed in the European Union, the United States and Singapore" it is "banned in most countries due to the 'hazardous nature of the waste'", one e-mail warns.

Problems began for Trafigura when it needed to dispose of the slurry. When the Probo Koala arrived in Amsterdam in July 2006 and tried to unload the contaminated slops, allegedly described as "watery cleaning liquids", the process caused a health alert and Trafigura was informed the cost of dealing with its by-product would rise from £17 per cubic metre to £80.Rather than pay the estimated bill of £500,000, Trafigura ordered the waste to be pumped back on to the Probo Koala and the vessel travelled to west Africa where in Ivory Coast fleet of 12 trucks hired by a local waste contractor, Compagnie Tommy, which had only received its operating licence weeks earlier, offloaded the sulphurous sludge from the cargo vessel and deposited the waste at 18 locations around Abidjan .

A United Nations report found that "there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping".

Trafigura repeatedly deployed one of Britain's most aggressive firms of lawyers to dispute reporting on the case by media outlets including the BBC. Trafigura, a privately-owned multinational last year claimed a turnover of $73bn (£44bn). The figure is double the entire GDP of Ivory Coast, where half the population of 21 million live on less than a dollar a day.

Poisoning Africa

In August 2006 a local company hastily fly-tipped truckload after truckload of chemical waste at around 15 locations around the city.

Trafigura had chartered the ship carrying the waste, which unloaded the waste in Ivory Coast, after a failure to agree deals to get it treated in the Netherlands and Nigeria.It said it had contracted a local firm, Tommy, to handle the waste in good faith.

In an out-of-court settlement, Trafigura agreed to pay the Ivorian government around $200m (£100m) in one of the largest ever payments of its kind.

Thousands of victims say they have yet to receive compensation - or say that what they have been given - around $500 (£250) in the main injury category - falls short of the amount they have lost in medical bills and earnings.

Trafigura also disputes whether the chemical slops were the cause of the large number of medical cases.

The United Nations says the dumping of the 500m tonnes of waste led to at least 16 deaths and more than 100,000 other victims needing medical treatment.

Two years on it is still here.

The UN special rapporteur on the dumping of toxic waste, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, recently spent four days in the country speaking to officials and victims.

"After almost two years, these sites have still not been decontaminated and continue to threaten the lives and health of tens of thousands of residents, across different social spectrums in Abidjan.The government has informed me that it does not have the technical capacity to clean up and decontaminate the dumpsites in a timelier manner," he said in a statement."This should be an absolute priority."

Food for thought

As a result of the protests reported here Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has cancelled custom duties after a second day of violent protests against rising food costs. Mr Gbagbo also cut taxes on basic household products .

But let no-one be under the mis-comprehension that tampering with the effects locally will solve the problem .

The head of the World Food Programme warned rising food prices had helped create a "perfect storm", leaving more people hungry than ever before. "The cost of our food has doubled in just the last nine months," said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran. "We're very concerned about our operations."

Sheeran also confirmed what Socialist Banner keeps repeating - that capitalism is a "can't pay, can't have" system of society regardless of need .

"We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before," she said. "Often we are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it."

cocoa cop-out

Socialist Banner have previously reported here on the child exploitaion in the cocoa producing regions and another news item reveal little has changed .

Despite the international outcry in 2000 over child exploitation on West African cocoa farms, and efforts by governments since then to regulate the industry, very little has changed for an estimated 284,000 child labourers, according to campaign groups. Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire produce about three-quarters of the world's cocoa and according to the US State Department, they employ 200,000 children. Up to 12,000 of these children have been illegally trafficked across African borders to work on Ivorian cocoa farms, according to the NGO Stop the Traffik. Many of these children are forced to work in dangerous conditions, on slave-labour wages or for nothing in order to put chocolate into the mouths of consumers .

In 2001 nine West African governments came to a voluntary agreement with the US government known as the Harkin-Engel protocol (named after the two US senators who passed it), which aimed to decrease the number of children working on farms, improve working conditions, and certify that half of the cocoa produced in West Africa would be free of exploitative child labour by 2005. But according a spokesperson for industry association International Cocoa Initiative , delays - due to conflict in the case of Côte d'Ivoire, and other burdens on resources elsewhere - meant the deadline was postponed to 2008.

"Now the industry needs to put its money where its mouth is, to get West African children off farms and back into school where they belong," said Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International, another NGO.

But Eileen Maybin, spokesperson for the Fairtrade Foundation :

"Cocoa certification is a 'band-aid' policy - it is attempting to address the problem of child labour without addressing the underlying cause, which is low cocoa prices...Unless chocolate manufacturers are willing to pay more for their cocoa, these poor conditions on farms will persist."

The Harkin-Engel initiative is funded by governments and cocoa manufacturers, but critics say it has not provided enough money to address the root causes of the problem: that poverty drives farmers to exploit children.

It is the capitalist market that decides how humanitarian the degree of exploitation will be .

Cocoa wars

First came "blood diamonds" from Sierra Leone.

Then came "blood timber" from Liberia.

Now another West African conflict is being funded by yet another commodity beloved in the West: " blood chocolate." from Ivory Coast

Government and rebel leaders of the world's leading cocoa exporter, Ivory Coast, both siphoned off millions of dollars from the cocoa industry to finance the 2002-03 civil war that divided the once-stable and prosperous country in two, according to a recent report from Global Witness, a London-based group that focuses on resource-fueled corruption. The government received more than $58 million from institutions and cocoa revenues, while the rebel New Forces pocketed about $30 million since 2004 in taxes and revenues, claims the report titled "Hot Chocolate: How Cocoa fuelled the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire." Global Witness not only contends the cocoa trade drove the war economy but that the industry still serves the interests of both the government and the rebels who have reaped political and economic benefits with impunity.

Ivory Coast is the world's leading producer of the commodity, responsible for about 40 percent of global exports, which earned more than $1 billion in 2006.

La Francafrique

In previous blogs we have highlighted the roles of Chins and The united Staes in the politics and economics of Africa and in case we are criticised for not mentioning the other nations exploiting the continent , we have decided to highlight the French on this occasion

French businesses have longstanding operations in Africa. The continent accounts for 5 percent of France’s exports. Though France has diversified its sources of raw materials, Africa remains an important supplier of oil and metals. There are 240,000 French nationals living in Africa.

About 6000 French troops engaged in peacekeeping operations are deployed in Africa in both military and advisory capacities, according to the French Ministry of Defense. There are three main French bases in Africa. The largest is at Djibouti , with smaller forces at Dakar in Senegal and Libreville in Gabon. Their purpose is to promote regional security, though the base in Djibouti allows France to exercise a measure of military influence in the Middle East. (Also in Djibouti are about 1,500 American personnel stationed at the former French base Le Monier since 2003.)

Chad. France fields some 1,200 troops in Chad to protect French nationals, support the government of President Idriss Deby Itno, and provide logistical and intelligence support to Chadian forces. On a recent visit, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin promised France would “honor its agreements with a friendly and legitimate government.”

Central African Republic . France maintains some 300 troops in the CAR capital Bangui as part of Operation Boali, charged with restructuring the local armed forces and supporting FOMUC, an African force led by the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, a regional body. François Grignon of the International Crisis Group say it’s likely “French special forces were engaged for limited but decisive operations.” The Economist reported that French fighters, attack helicopters, and special forces quashed a rebel advance on the capital Bangui in late 2006, allowing government forces to retake towns captured by rebels.

Ivory Coast. France deploys approximately 3,000 troops—under a UN mandate—to patrol the buffer zone between the rebel-controlled northern regions and the government-controlled south. Locals tend to view French troops as an occupation force; one French observer, as quoted in the Economist, calls Ivory Coast “France’s little Iraq.”
"First, we send soldiers to protect our nationals," declared diplomatic correspondent Christophe Ayad. "Then, we send more soldiers to protect the soldiers protecting our nationals. In the end, we send soldiers to decide a war."

Togo. French soldiers and transport aircraft are stationed in nearby Togo to support the operations in Ivory Coast.

France conducts joint maneuvers and peacekeeping training through the Reinforcement of African Peacekeeping Capacities (RECAMP) program and its Peacekeeping School (EMP) in Mali, which has trained over 800 African officers. These institutions intended to support the African Standing Force, a 20,000 strong rapid-response peacekeeping force projected to be ready by 2010.

France intervened militarily in Africa 19 times between 1962 and 1995. Most of the operations were ostensibly to protect French nationals or subdue uprisings against legitimate governments. Yet Professor Shaun Gregory of the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in England points out that the standard for military support was contingent on an African leader’s willingness to support French interests.

French hands had blood on them during the Rwanda genocidal massacres . Despite having been a Belgian colony, by 1990 Rwanda was a fully-fledged member of "La Francafrique".
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990. The aim of this Tutsi dominated army was a return to their Rwandan homeland. The RPF were vilified by high-ranking French military figures as a "terrorist" bunch of foreigners from Uganda, and likened to the "Khmer noir".
Elite French paratroops were sent into Rwanda to keep the RPF at bay, in one of sixteen non-UN mandated military interventions by Paris in Africa between 1960 and 1994. Officially France sent more than $25 million worth of arms to Rwanda between 1990 and 1993, as well as providing army trainers to motivate and advise Habyarimana's army. Witnesses have recently testified that the French were also involved assisting with the newly formed youth militia, which were later to carry out the bulk of the genocide. In late June 1994 Mitterrand launched Operation Turquoise as a "humanitarian" intervention to protect Tutsis. While it undoubtedly saved around 10,000 lives, it also allowed fully armed genocidaire to escape over the border into Zaire, from where they were to relaunch attacks on the newly installed Kagame government. Such attacks, which independent NGO's said were partly financed and aided by French operatives .Mitterrand went further, to block desperately needed EU aid to the devastated country.

Child Slavery and the Chocolate Factory

The BBC is reporting that child labour , in fact , near enough actual slavery , remains an unresolved problem in the Ivory Coast , the world's biggest cocoa producer.

A 2002 report by the industry body, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, put the number of children working in dangerous conditions in cocoa in West Africa at 284,000 in 2002, 200,000 of them in Ivory Coast. Many children on cocoa farms don't get to school, some exchange their childhood for work, a roof over their head and a meal a day. Others have been sent by their parents into virtual slavery, suffering beatings and abuse.
Progress in eradicating child labour has been slow.

Naturally not very particularly good news for the chocolate manufacturers in the more developed countries . There can be no worse PR for a chocolate company than news that children in West Africa - the source for the bulk of the world's cocoa - are being forced to pick beans used to make chocolate for the children in the West.

A voluntary industry initiative, called the Harkin-Engel protocol, in 2001. Its initial aim was to have a system in place to monitor labour conditions on cocoa farms by July 2005. That deadline shifted has now towards a 2008 deadline to monitor labour conditions in 50% of farms in Ghana, the world's number two producer, and neighbouring in Ivory Coast.

Mme. Amouan Acquah, the government official responsible for child labour issues in Ivory Coast makes the excuse that "We are in a state of war. We cannot make such guarantees."

Yet with or without war, Ivory Coast's cocoa has always made it to the world market . Critics say that if the cocoa can get to market even in times of conflict, then it should also be possible to monitor labour conditions on the farm.

Mme Acquah points out "The issue at the heart of this [child labour] is poverty."

In the words of cocoa farmer Eugene Djedje "No one is obliged to send a child to school. If you don't have money you don't go. "

Some major companies that knowingly use chocolate produced by slave labor:-

Hershey’s
M&M/Mars
Nestlé
Ben & Jerry’s
Kraft
Toblerone
Hauser Chocolates