Managing Africa For Business, Not People

African leaders on Wednesday signed a potentially historic, 26-nation free-trade pact to create a common market spanning half the continent, from Cairo to Cape Town.
The deal on the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) is the culmination of five years of negotiations to set up a framework for preferential tariffs easing the movement of goods in an area that is home to 625-million people.
Analysts say the pact could have an enormous impact on African economies, which despite growth still only account for about 2% of global trade.

The deal will integrate three existing trade blocs – the East African Community, the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) – whose countries have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $1-trillion (€885-billion).

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The TFTA pact is to be unveiled officially on the weekend of June 14 and 15 at the summit of the African Union in Johannesburg.
The TFTA pact was launched at a summit in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Members of the three blocs range from relatively developed economies such as South Africa and Egypt to countries such as Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique, which are seen as having huge growth potential.
But hurdles remain, with the timeline for bringing down trade barriers yet to be worked out and the deal needing ratification in national parliaments within two years.

“What we are doing today represents a very important step in the history of regional integration of Africa,” Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said as he opened the summit.
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim told the summit that the TFTA would allow Africa “to make tremendous progress and move the entire continent forward”.
“Africa has made it clear that it is open for business,” he said.
“The geographical area covers Cape to Cairo ... the agreement paves the way for a continental free trade area that will combine the three biggest regional communities,” said Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said the deal would create a “borderless economy” that would rank 13th in the world in terms of GDP.

Negotiators drafted the deal this week at Sharm el-Sheikh and said they had addressed concerns such as management of trade disputes and protection for small manufacturers once the TFTA comes into force.
Officials said the agreement envisions the eventual merger of the three blocs.
“The ultimate goal is to ensure easy movement of goods in these countries without duties,” said Peter Kiguta, director general of the East African Community.

World business leaders have welcomed the TFTA, with experts saying that only 12% of Africa’s trade is between countries on the continent. 
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said in 2013 that if Africa is to boost its intra-continental trade, it must focus on creating “more space for the private sector to play an active role”.
Analysts say that although the continent’s growth over the past 15 years outstripped global GDP expansion by nearly three percentage points, falling commodity prices, power shortages, political instability and corruption are holding back its economies.
“What we have realised is that having one trade regime is better than the costly multiple trade regimes,” said Comesa secretary general Sindiso Ngwenya, who led negotiations among the three blocs.

from here

No mention of the workforce or consultation with any civil groups. 
We wish you luck, workers of Africa.

Turning The Commons Into a Marketable Commodity

Africa's land and seed laws under attack

The lobby to industrialise food production in Africa is not only pouring money into plantation projects on the ground, it is changing African laws to serve foreign agribusiness as well. This is the main finding of a new report from the civil society organisations Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and GRAIN.

The report, "Land and seed laws under attack", documents who is pushing what changes in these two battlegrounds across Africa. Washington DC, home to the World Bank, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the US Agency for International Development, stands out the biggest source of pressure to privatise African farm resources right now. But Europe, through the European Union and various donor mechanisms, is also deeply involved, providing funds and legal frameworks like the plant patenting scheme known as UPOV.

Privatising land and seeds is essential for the corporate model to flourish in Africa. With regard to agricultural land, this means pushing for the official demarcation, registration and titling of farms. It also means making it possible for foreign investors to lease or own land on a long-term basis. With regard to seeds, it means having governments require that seeds be registered in an official catalogue in order to circulate. It also means introducing intellectual property rights over plant varieties and criminalising farmers who disregard them. In all cases, the end goal is to turn what has long been a commons in Africa into a marketable commodity that the private sector can control and profit from at the expense of small farmers and rural communities.
"More than 80% of all seed in Africa is produced and disseminated through informal seed systems, that is, on-farm seed saving and exchange between farmers," points out Bridget Mugambe of AFSA. "Marginalising and criminalising farmers' seeds through UPOV and by introducing strict marketing regimes will be great for multinational seed companies but a disaster for our small family farmers," she says.

The land privatisation agenda is also quite threatening. "In the name of land securitisation, which may sound great to vulnerable rural communities, donors and African governments are actually pushing to create Western-type land markets based on formal instruments like titles and leases that can be traded in one way or another," explains Ange David Baïmey of GRAIN. "In fact, the explicit aim of many initiatives, such as the G8 New Alliance, is to secure investors' rights to land."
The thinking is to make Africa more attractive to business. But this will only erode the rights of rural communities prevent them from continuing to serve as the backbone of the region's food and farming systems.
The report, "Land and seed laws under attack: Who is pushing changes in Africa?" is available at grain.org/e/5121

from here

Healthcare = Profits in Lesotho

A hospital built in Lesotho using public/private financing with advice from an arm of the World Bank threatens to bankrupt the impoverished African country's health budget.

More than half the country's entire health budget (51%) is being spent on payments to the private consortium that built and runs the hospital in the capital, Maseru, led by South-Africa-based Netcare, the biggest private healthcare provider in the UK.

Oxfam says the healthcare of the poorest people is at risk, as the Queen Mamohato memorial hospital draws off money that is badly needed for clinics in rural areas. The government is spending $67m a year on the hospital complex, which includes several primary care clinics, in loan repayments and the cost of patient care. It quotes the minister of development planning, who said: "Health is increasing but this will be at the expense of something else. We may be able to treat people if they get ill but we will not be able to ensure they have enough to eat."

Public/private partnerships to build hospitals have a poor track record even in the wealthy west. PFIs (public finance initiatives) have proved a heavy financial burden on the NHS in England, where 22 hospital trusts in 2012 said repayments were endangering their clinical and financial future and one has since gone into administration because of PFI debts.

Oxfam says this is a dangerous model for low-income countries in Africa. In Lesotho, it warns that the situation is unsustainable. It is sharply critical of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank, which advised Lesotho on the deal and is now discussing similar projects with Nigeria and Benin. Oxfam says the IFC has acted irresponsibly, "both in terms of its role as a transaction adviser to the government of Lesotho and in its marketing of the Lesotho health PPP as a successful model for other low-income countries to replicate." It quotes a senior ministry of health official, who said: "The IFC were transaction advisers. We're in this because of them. They should have done better and they must help us to get out of this mess."

The contract runs for 18 years, at the end of which the hospital passes into government ownership. Tsepong Ltd's return on its investment is 25%. The IFC received a fee of $723,000 for its work on the deal.

Lehlohonolo Chefa, director of the Lesotho Consumer Protection Association, which is joint author of the report, said: "Our government is piling more money into healthcare but not enough of it into rural areas where most people need it. It's going instead into this otherwise important tertiary facility in the city and from there into private pockets including of one of the world's biggest health companies. Lesotho was promised a better health service for the same price – and that just hasn't happened. Other countries in Africa and indeed all over the world need to look closely at this experiment in Lesotho and be very wary of repeating it."

Tanzania: Investors Assured Of State Support

Mwanza — GOVERNMENT has assured local and foreign investors that there shall never again be nationalisation in Tanzania as it seeks to promote private investments in key sectors.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, Eng Christopher Chiza said that government is committed to promote private sector investments in its key economic sectors and there would be no policy reversal.

"Government has no plans to nationalise your assets," the minister said in his closing remarks of the Lake Zone Investment forum that was organised to promote investment opportunities in the Lake Zone region.

He said government is keen to ensure that the rights and assets of investors were protected.

Policy predictability was mentioned in the forum as among key requirements in attracting local and foreign investments.

Participants said investors would not go where policies cannot be predicted. The minister, who represented the Prime Minister, Mr Mizengo Pinda, said government is committed to continue improving trade and investment climate and promote the growth of the private sector in the country.

The minister further said despite attracting foreign investments in the agricultural sector, there would be no land grabbing in the country. He said land to be used for investments would be acquired through proper channels. "Send this message to all that Tanzania's government has no plans to grab land," he said.

He said government will work on challenges that were discussed in the forum as it seeks to promote private sector investments in various areas.

He said improving the business and investment climate in the country was on top of government agenda so as to speed up the growth of the economy and poverty alleviation.

Earlier, the chairman of Lake Zone Investment Forum, Mr George Kahama had asked government to work on their request for the six lake zone regions to be considered as special economic zones. He said the area had the potential of becoming the business and financial hub of Africa's Great Lake region.

Mr Kahama also noted that the six regions making up the Lake Zone deserved to be made special economic zones with a view to attract more local and foreign investments. He said that attracting more investments would help to alleviate poverty through job creation and opening up of more business opportunities.

The Lake Zone Investment Forum was organised by the six regions making up the zone, which are Mwanza, Geita, Shinyanga, Simiyu, Kagera and Mara in collaboration with the Tanzania Investment Centre to promote investments opportunities in the regions.

About 1,000 local and foreign investors as well as major regional players in business and investments participated in the forum.

By Henry Lyimo

Source:Tanzania Daily News

Eviction Of Thousands Into Poverty Is Just Another Externality

Africa needs ‘ethical land policies’

By Polycarp Machira from The Citizen

Dar es Salaam. African countries should have ethical economic land policies to save the continent from land conflicts, international land conference was told on Wednesday.

African land needs clear stewardship for the benefit of both current and the future generations. This should put into consideration interests of small-scale farmers by involving them in any decisions made on the use of land. The observation was made by Dr Camillu Kassala from Christian Professionals of Tanzania Research Fellow, Interfaith Standing Committee for Socio-economic Justice and Integrity of Creation, when presenting a paper at a conference in Dar es Salaam.

He said land holds the social-cultural attractions of many African communities; therefore forceful eviction of locals from their land in the name of investments interferes with social identity of people. “There is a lot more that needs to be considered before any decision to evict people from their land is made, but apparently our government does not even give the locals opportunity to express their wishes,” he said.

According to Dr Kassala, the government is never neutral when it comes to acquisition of land by investors and only thinks of how to remain in power.

He accused the government of always working in the interest of influential members of the private sector who often give irrational demands.

For his part, the University of Dar es Salaam lecturer, Dr Ringo Tenga, basing on his previous research, said land grabbing is very much evident in Tanzania as the government tries to downplay the reality.

Same old story. Local people seen as externalities - they get in the way of the few to make money. Tanzania, just one of Africa's many separate countries, is typical of the recent frenzy of land acquisition by foreign agricultural and investment companies, all primarily interested in reaping profit from the land either from food crops for export, from crops for biofuel production or simply investment for future profit. The common thread is disenfranchisement for many small farmers and total loss of home and access to livelihood. The scale is enormous and growing annually - just another part of capital's accumulation process. Nothing but world socialism will put an end to such atrocities.
JS