From Africa Recovery, Vol.15 #4, December 2001, Briefs page

AIDS drug access and funding top Africa's concerns

Access to medications and increased funding for HIV/AIDS education and prevention dominated the 9-13 December International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Africa, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It is vital to "ensure that people living with HIV/AIDS in the South can have ... access to medication, whether the drugs are copies or originals," Burkina's President Blaise Compaoré told the delegates.

Other speakers called for dramatic increases in overall funding for AIDS programmes in Africa. "Scaling down the disease can only take place by scaling up the resources," declared Mr. Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. According to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), $5 bn is needed every year to control the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, but so far countries have pledged only one-tenth of that amount. Dr. Ibrahim N'doye of Senegal, president of the African Union Against Sexually Transmitted Diseases, said that the world's response to the AIDS crisis in Africa should be as great as its reaction to the 11 September terrorist attacks in New York.

According to UNAIDS, some 2.3 million people died of AIDS in Africa alone last year, and approximately 28 million Africans are HIV-positive. The scale of this crisis, said UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot, demands urgency. "Turning back the epidemic requires nothing more and nothing less than keeping the commitments that governments have made in the past year.... It is time now to turn those commitments into action."

'Open society' initiative launched in West Africa A new foundation to promote civil society and democracy, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), was launched on 11 December in Abuja, Nigeria. With funding from Mr. George Soros, a billionaire international financier, it will provide grants to organizations seeking to strengthen the region's independent media, court systems and other non-governmental initiatives that help support democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Democracy, stressed Mr. Soros at the launch, is "not just free elections, but also the institutions without which democracies cannot function." Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had previously urged Mr. Soros to extend his philanthropic activities to West Africa, welcomed the establishment of OSIWA. He hoped that the foundation, in addition to its other concerns, would also help ensure "transparency as an antidote to rampant corruption." OSIWA board members (from left): Chairperson Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nii Akuetteh and Zainab Bangura, with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. Photo: ©allAfrica.com The organization's board is composed of prominent individuals from the region, and is chaired by Ms. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former head of the UN Development Programme's Regional Bureau for Africa. It will cover 18 countries, including all the members of the Economic Community of West African States, plus Chad and Cameroon. In addition to the Abuja office, OSIWA will open one in Dakar, Senegal. Six years ago, Mr. Soros launched a similar group, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), with an office in South Africa.

Rights vital to Africa's progress, says UN commissioner

Africa can much better tackle poverty and advance its development by pursuing a strong "human rights approach," says UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. Marking International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2001 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia -- the first time in 52 years the UN officially commemorated the day in Africa -- she said that such an approach would guarantee people's participation, non-discrimination and a broad range of civil, political, cultural, economic and social rights. Such rights are indivisible from the right to development, she said.

The continent's struggles for self determination and racial equality, particularly the campaign against apartheid, helped shape many international human rights instruments, Ms. Robinson noted. "This is a debt the world owes to Africa, but which is not often recognized," she added. Africa's recent initiatives for political and economic recovery, under the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development, offer opportunities

for the international community "to begin to redeem that debt.... We must create true partnerships with African peoples and institutions ... if real change is to take place in the material conditions of the people and enduring democratic foundations are to be strengthened or built."

Extreme poverty, Ms. Robinson observed, is the worst human rights problem in the world today, and Africa is the worst hit. "Let us all, my office, other UN agencies, the OAU [Organization of African Unity], governments and organs of civil society commit ourselves to ... make human and peoples' rights a reality in the lives of African peoples."

Transition government seated in Burundi amid heavy fighting

The installation of a power-sharing transition government in Burundi on 1 November was welcomed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as "a significant step forward" in efforts to end the country's bloody civil war. But heavy fighting continued near the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, between the minority Tutsi-dominated army and rebels drawn from the Hutu majority. The bloodshed was a stark reminder that Burundi's two principal rebel movements remain outside the peace agreement, prompting the UN Security Council to declare the signing of a cease-fire the "number one priority" for the new government. Since the war began in 1993, an estimated 200,000 people have died, and 800,000 others have been driven from their homes.

Under the terms of the agreement, reached in negotiations begun by the late Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and concluded by former South African President Nelson Mandela, the transitional government will serve for three years, with the current military head of state, Maj. Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, serving as president for the first 18 months. His Hutu vice-president, Mr. Domitien Ndayizeye, will occupy the presidency for the second half of the transition. The interim government is charged with integrating the army and civil service and preparing for general elections.

Security for members of the new government will initially be provided by a battalion of South African soldiers, part of a pan-African peacekeeping force that is to eventually include Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. In the absence of a cease-fire, however, the Security Council has not authorized a UN military presence. On 7 December donors concluded a meeting in Paris with pledges of $830 mn in reconstruction and development aid for the war-ravaged country.

'E-commerce' a tool for development

Poor countries can exploit rapidly expanding opportunities for profitable commercial ventures on the Internet, argue researchers of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). "E-commerce," as it is popularly called, can be "an important tool for development," says the agency's E-Commerce and Development Report 2001, released in November 2001. Advanced information and communications technology can enable businesses to cut costs, increase efficiency and reduce constraints of time and distance, enhancing their productivity. Noting that e-commerce in industrialized countries has helped stimulate growth, the report highlights the potential for developing countries to also benefit.

Among the African e-commerce ventures cited is EthioGift, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It earned $50,000 in 2000 selling a variety of products, including "very big sheep" for family feasts, many of them bought by Ethiopians who live in developed countries but support their families back home. The key to success, observes UNCTAD, is to sell products to a diaspora community or "small niche market" abroad. Other examples include a Ugandan company selling traditional African fabrics to African-Americans and a Tanzanian venture that markets African art to the same clientele. E-commerce ventures can also be used to secure expert advice on health care from doctors in Northern countries, as well as to promote tourism via the Internet ("e-tourism"), notes the report.

There are some constraints hampering e-commerce, however, including inadequate access to computers, skilled personnel and Internet facilities, and a limited ability to handle credit card payments, the report states. For developing countries to realize the full potential of e-commerce to help narrow the North-South productivity gap, they must step up their technological development. Otherwise, it warns, e-commerce could further widen the gap.

Nigeria seeks to ease tensions in oil delta

On 10 December the Nigerian government and the UN Development Programme opened a three-day conference on the sustainable development of the oil-rich Niger Delta wetlands. Since 1970 over $320 bn worth of crude oil has been exported from the region, accounting for some 90 per cent of Nigeria's hard currency earnings and making Nigeria a major world oil-producing country. But the 7 million residents of the Delta are among Nigeria's poorest, and protests against the perceived injustice of extreme poverty in the midst of vast wealth have often disrupted oil production -- threatening the country's economic lifeline and provoking violent clashes among local communities, and between activists and the authorities.

The meeting brought together community leaders with members of the government's newly established Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for dialogue on a delta-wide programme to create jobs, build infrastructure and ease the frustrations fueling unrest. "Farmers and fishermen of this agro-rich region have largely been deprived of their means of livelihood through extensive pollution of their rivers and farmlands," Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told delegates. "I pledge to seek immediate solutions to the many problems which have so long beset the region." The NDDC, made up of the governors of the oil-producing states, has announced it will spend $3 bn over the next 10 years on development projects in consultation with local elected officials and civil society groups.

Photo: ©Michael Fleshman

The NDDC proposals fall short of community demands for greater resource control, however. On the final day of the meeting, members of the militant Bayelsa Youths Federation stormed the NDDC office in the Bayelsa state capital of Yenagoa to denounce the commission. Police broke up a similar protest a week earlier by the National Youth Council of the Ogoni People, whose activists forced the Shell oil company to withdraw from the Ogoni region of the delta in 1993.

Highlighting the continuing environmental problems that arouse so much local anger, the government's Department of Petroleum Resources reported that in the week between 26 November and 2 December alone, the delta experienced 18 separate oil spills involving the discharge of over 2,500 barrels of crude oil.

African bank to support universities

Africa's desperately underfunded universities will soon get another source of potential financing. The African Development Bank (ADB), a continent-wide bank headquartered in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, is finalizing a new fund of some $70 mn specifically to support higher education institutions. According to Senegal's Minister of National Education Moustapha Sourang, the Bank is motivated by recognition of the importance of advanced knowledge and skills for the continent's long-term development. Moreover, he said, the ADB believes African universities should also be funded by African regional institutions, and not just governments or external donors.

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