Africa’s share of world trade declined from 5.5% in 1980 to 2% in 2003, with an overwhelming dependency on trade with the EU (European Union). Trade policies have a critical role to play in supporting economic development across Africa. These policies are increasingly set through agreements in international arenas. Whilst the World Trade Organisation has set trade rules that have implications for African countries, it is a new generation of bilateral/regional trade and investment agreements that will critically determine the types of trade and wider economic policies that governments can use to support development. There are widespread and justified fears that the configuration of the EPA negotiating blocs will undermine rather than promote aid effectiveness.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
This policy brief assesses the current status of health and trade policies and analyses opposition to liberalizing trade in health care. It conceptualises and contrasts two international policy dialogues. One, typified by UN bodies such as the World Health Organisation, is skeptical - if not hostile - to increased trade in health care, particularly North-South integration. Its policy errs on the side of protectionism and favours an industrial policy approach. The other, operating under World Trade Organisation (WTO) discourse, has more of a free trade bent. And yet, in policy practice, few countries in the WTO trade in health care and trade agreements typically contain little to promote liberalisation. Examples in this study from those few (mainly developing) countries that have shown initiative towards trade in health care contradict this negative and apathetic approach. Countries as diverse as Brazil, China, Cuba, India and South Africa are already significant exporters of health care. Trade does hold some very tangible benefits for this sector, for North and South alike, and does not necessarily entail undermining government regulatory power. Further analysis of different health care systems’ trade-compatibility is needed.
This article discusses African countries and the second generation of ‘emerging market’ countries. Eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been deemed to meet the ‘emerging market’ criteria by the International Finance Corporation: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The rise of some African countries to emerging market status gives them great economic opportunity. The article looks at ways to determine a countries growth prospects, depending on whether a country is resource-rich or resource-scarce.
The World Trade Organisation Doha Round talks ended bitterly on 31 July, but negotiators left town with the general consensus that hard-earned work to date should not be lost and that there might be resumption of talks sometime in the future. The fate of intellectual property (IP) issues at the WTO remains vague and may not come clear for weeks or months, according to some sources, while others said it will be business as usual for international trade rules on IP.
This article suggests that the recent collapse of the WTO mini-ministerial, July 2008, reflects the new geopolitics of the global economy. The emerging economies are approaching trade issues and negotiations differently. Particularly they place more emphasis on supporting women employed in agriculture. There is new conviction among negotiators that poverty and livelihood issues cannot be left to the market to be regulated. These concerns contributed to the collapse alongside the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) issues. The paper emphasises that the political value of technical issues should not be ignored. Reasons for this and for why the SSM was not the only reason for the collapse include:import surges of subsidised products could displace millions of people, giving the SSM major political value; the G33, the G7 and the G20 could not find a common position in discussions on the SSM; cotton, a highly politically contentious issue, was due to be discussed after the SSM and was likely to have caused problems; and agricultural market access discussions reflected a political choice that links growth to market access and ‘offensive interests’. In conclusion the paper notes: the context of the Uruguay Round no longer exists as the emerging economies now have a voice; there may be increasing use of the Dispute Settlement Body.
As the push toward neoliberalism advances, and quantitative measures to protect local markets, such as tariffs and quotas, disappear, industrial powers are turning to qualitative measures such as food safety regulations to further skew trade in their favour. In the food safety arena, both the US and the EU are pressing their standards on other countries. For Washington, even though its own food safety system is widely criticised as too lax, this means getting countries to accept GMOs and US meat safety inspections. For Brussels, whose food safety standards have a much better reputation, it means imposing high standards on countries that cannot meet them. Bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have become a tool of choice to push through the changes.
‘Neoliberalism’, has guided the globalisation of economic activity and become the conventional wisdom in international agencies and institutions (such as the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the technical agencies of the United Nations, including the WHO). Reproduced in the ‘Washington Consensus’ in the United States and the ‘Brussels Consensus’ in the European Union, this ideology has guided policies widely accepted as the only ones possible and advisable. This book assembles a series of articles that challenge that ideology. Written by well-known scholars, these articles question each of the tenets of neoliberal doctrine, showing how the policies guided by this ideology have adversely affected human development in the countries where they have been implemented.
Intellectual property is the last real comparative advantage that rich countries have, said a panellist at a recent International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) joint event. This may explain an increasing global drive for enforcement of these rights, but does not mean that such enforcement is necessarily good for developing countries.
The round table on ‘Conceptual and Operational Issues of Lender Responsibility for Sovereign Debt’ was hosted by the World Bank following the publication of a draft World Bank discussion paper entitled ‘Odious debt: Some considerations’ in September 2007. The event was organised in response to a request by a coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) interested in discussing the findings of the bank’s paper and the broader issues of odious/illegitimate debt and responsible lending. This outcome report captures some of the main points raised by panellists as well as the discussions with the meeting’s participants which followed, namely, the concepts of odious and illegitimate debt, whether or not these can be considered well-established legal concepts, consideration of how feasibly these concepts could be applied in practice and practical approaches to addressing concerns on responsible lending and borrowing in the future. As follow-up some civil society organisations suggested that, if the World Bank was indeed serious about the importance of the odious debt issue, it should foster further discussions on the subject with legal experts to discuss different approaches to dealing with the problem. It was also proposed that the World Bank and a Southern CSO jointly appoint an independent auditor to examine selected credit according to mutually agreed indicators. Finally, CSOs called for the World Bank discussion paper and roundtable outcome report to be discussed by the bank’s management and Board.
A SADC Task Force of Ministers of Trade, Finance and Agriculture met on 13 July 2008 in Lusaka, Zambia to discuss measures to mitigate currently increasing food prices, the impending food crisis and ways to improve the food security situation in the SADC region. The Ministerial Task Force noted that prices of food commodities worldwide have risen sharply over the past couple of years and even more sharply from January 2007 to date. There are a number of factors that are believed to contribute to the observed increase in world food prices. Key among them are the increasingly poor weather conditions, high energy prices, worldwide reduction in levels of food stocks, massive shift in crop cultivation towards bio-fuels, increased consumption of food in emerging economies such as India and China, commodity speculation, and inadequate investment in agriculture in recent decades. However, prices in the SADC region haven’t risen quite as sharply as world prices, which provides for a window of opportunity for measures to be taken for minimising future rises in food prices. The Ministerial Task Force came up with several measures the Member States and the SADC Secretariat should take in order to reduce current and future food crises in the region. These include: increasing the levels of investment in agriculture, including aligning national budgets to the 10% of national budgets agreed to by SADC Heads of State and Government in May 2004; improving access to agricultural inputs especially fertiliser through the provision of temporary subsidies to smallholder farmers; expediting the harmonisation of Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Standards measures and removal of non tariff barriers within the region; encouraging financial institutions and NGOs to prioritise agriculture and extend credit to small scale farmers especially women and vulnerable groups; introducing social security systems targeted at the vulnerable to cushion them from the impact of increased food prices; facilitating easy flow of information among Member States and with SADC Secretariat; facilitating the establishment of a Regional Food Reserve Facility; and creating appropriate incentives for private sector involvement in services related to agricultural and food security.