African Union ministers of trade and agriculture gathered in early December 2012 at a joint conference in Addis Ababa to discuss their growing and increasingly overlapping work agendas. Agriculture remains the key source of income and employment for most Africans, while efforts intensify across the continent to liberalise intra-regional trade. In this blog, the authors summarise the main resolutions from the summit, while the final outcomes document is being drafted. Ministers agreed to accelerate implementation of the Plan of Action for Boosting Intra-Africa Trade in both agricultural commodities and processed food products. This is hoped to lead to an early deal to liberalise key regional food staples markets, as part of the continental free trade area. They also identified the national and regional compacts and investment plans of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) as the main instruments to define and operationalise trade-agriculture collaboration, while strengthening the capacity of relevant institutions and producers to effectively participate in these innovative practices and monitor their impact at country level. While they acknowledged the need to work at national, regional and continental levels to remove trade barriers in agricultural commodities, they emphasised that without immediate follow-up, food security will remain uncertain.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
This book presents a detailed account of South-South collaboration in the health biotechnology sector. In particular, it casts light on the factors that guide effective scientific partnerships and exchanges. The authors explore these issues by combining a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including co-publications analyses, in-depth surveys of biotechnology firms and interviews with around 350 researchers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers in developing countries. The key findings indicate that the level of South-South collaboration among researchers in health biotechnology remains low but is slowly increasing and that entrepreneurial collaboration seems to be more prevalent. Collaboration has helped to extend capacity in health biotechnology research, manufacturing and innovation to an increasing number of developing countries and thereby lessened the divide between them. Such collaboration has strongly focused on shared health needs and has helped to increase the availability of more affordable health products and services. Governments and non-governmental organisations have also been able to foster closer ties between researchers by establishing programmes and extending funding for collaboration. Nevertheless there is still a lack of dedicated resources.
Many developing countries have entered into bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to protect foreign direct investment (FDI), which entail substantial restrictions on the sovereignty of recipient countries. At the end of 2011, 2,833 BITs had been signed worldwide. The granting of legal protection to foreign investors under BITs and other agreements (such as chapters in free trade agreements negotiated with developed countries) has often been seen as necessary to attract FDI. However, the author of this article argues that it is doubtful whether they have actually been effective in generating investment flows and promoting development gains. Moreover, many low or middle income countries that have signed BITs have been sentenced by international arbitral tribunals to pay millions of dollars as a result of alleged violations to these treaties. The authors caution that awards by tribunals have been based on overbroad definitions in the agreements and ambiguous legal standards such as “fair and equitable treatment” that have led to negative court outcomes for policies adopted in the public interest. The author presents a case study of Uruguay, where the government is being sued by a major tobacco manufacturer for issuing stricter packaging and labelling requirements for cigarettes to reduce tobacco consumption.
Least developed countries (LDCs) that are members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have submitted a request to the TRIPS Council for an extension of the transition period for them to comply with the TRIPS Agreement for as long as they are classified as LDCs. The request was submitted by Haiti, on behalf of the LDCs, at a meeting of the TRIPS Council on 6-7 November 2012. The exemption will continue to allow LDCs to access affordable medicines without the risk of violating patents on the medicines. Haiti argued that because of their extreme poverty, LDCs need the policy space to access various technologies, educational resources, and other tools necessary for development. Furthermore, LDCs have such small economies that they do not represent a significant loss of profits for pharmaceutical patent owners. Most intellectual property-protected commodities are simply priced beyond the purchasing power of these countries’ governments and their nationals, the spokesperson for Haiti added. Haiti has asked for this issue to be put on the agenda of the next TRIPS Council meeting, scheduled to take place in March 2013.
In this policy brief, the authors argue that mineral wealth can be harnessed for equitable and sustainable development if countries: design and implement comprehensive, inclusive and rights-based social policies; build strong democratic institutions; and develop the policy space to foster productive diversification while safeguarding macroeconomic stability. Public revenues generated through mineral production can provide a starting point for building state capacity that delivers on economic and social development objectives. States should enhance their capacity to strategically mobilise and allocate resources, the authors argue, as well as enforce standards and regulations, and establish social pacts through funding, delivering and regulating social services and social programmes. For countries that are dependent on mineral revenues, social policy is a crucial instrument to harness the development potential of mineral wealth while helping to avoid the pitfalls associated with the resource curse.
From a mere US$2 billion in 1999, annual Sino-African trade has now reached $160 billion, making China a leading trade partner for Africa. China’s economic cooperation with Africa is also fuelled by investments and aid. In this report, CCS argues that Africa needs to include transparency, governance and public service delivery are included in the agenda for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which was set up in 2000 to formalise bilateral engagement between China and Africa.
The European Union (EU), as part of the G-20, has backed the Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security (GAFSP) and has given the World Bank a lead role in operationalising the programme. However, the authors of this article argue that this programme will make small farmers dependant on genetically modified seed technology, and criticises the programme as being a way of legitimising land acquisition by agribusiness in the name of increased land investment and higher agricultural productivity. The GAFSP is supposed to promote agricultural productivity but analysts agree that the kind of productivity this describes is one of intensification of agribusiness. The authors call on the EU and the rest of the G-20 to scrap solutions that increase neoliberal free trade. The authors propose options for trade in the region based on solidarity and complementarity with food sovereignty as a core principle.
Recent government actions by Indonesia and India to issue compulsory licenses will enable access to cheaper medicines in Asia to treat serious ailments, especially HIV and AIDS, cancer and hepatitis B. The supply of generic medicines, either through import or local production, has been the major method of reducing prices and making medicines affordable. In 2003, Malaysia became the first developing country to issue a compulsory license to a local firm to import medicines from India to treat HIV and AIDS, with Indonesia, Thailand and India following suit. In September 2012, Indonesia issued compulsory licenses to enable local manufacturers to make, import and sell generic versions of seven patented drugs used for treating HIV, AIDS and hepatitis B. The author suggests that countries in Africa follow this precedent.
Negotiators from 46 Least Developed Countries met in Nairobi on 29 October 2012 to develop a common position to be presented at the November climate talks in Doha. The technical experts said that developing nations will agree on shared goals, which include establishment of a new climate treaty, financing and technologies required to accelerate green transition. Kenya's Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Ali Mohammed, said that the global South has borne the brunt of negative impacts of climate change despite minimal contribution to green house gases responsible for warming the planet. He endorsed the multilateral process of the climate talks, which provides vulnerable developing countries with a forum for participating in global discussions and agreements. At the same time, developing countries should strengthen their negotiation capacity to influence a positive outcome of the Doha climate talks and overcome roadblocks in their efforts to table their concerns. Developing countries are in agreement that financing for climate adaptation, operationalisation of a green climate fund and the future of Kyoto protocol are key issues that should be prioritised at the Doha meeting.
Earth Grab analyses how Northern governments and corporations are cynically using growing concerns about the ecological and climate crisis to propose geoengineering 'quick fixes'. These threaten to wreak havoc on ecosystems, with disastrous impacts on the people of the global South. As calls for a 'greener' economy mount and oil prices escalate, corporations are seeking to switch from oil-based to plant-based energy. The book exposes how a biomass economy based on using gene technologies to reprogramme living organisms to behave as microbial factories will facilitate the liquidation of ecosystems. This constitutes a devastating assault of the peoples and cultures of the South, accelerating the wave of land grabs that are becoming common in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It also shows how the world’s largest agribusiness companies including Monsanto, BASF, Dupont and Syngenta are pouring billions of dollars into, and claiming patents on, what are claimed to be 'climate-ready crops'. Far from helping farmers adjust to a warming world – something peasant farmers already know how to manage – these crops will allow industrial agriculture to expand plantation monocultures into lands currently cultivated by poor peasant farmers. These crops are not a solution to growing hunger, they will feed only the gluttony of corporate shareholders for profits.