China has asserted that its aid to Africa has no strings attached. The author of this article argues that in contrast China's activities in Africa, like those of other major external funders have conditionalities attached. There is an oft-repeated Western view that China's only interest in Africa is to extract its natural resources. However in Mozambique China's investments are more targetted at the industrial sector, and there are numerous infrastructure and development projects across the continent attesting to the effectiveness of Chinese investment. The author notes that African governments would be foolish to believe that their relationship with China will avoid all the political wrangling inherent in aid and trade relationships. He warns that rather than casting aspersions on China's role in Africa. Western governments should acknowledge their own mixed record in African relations, and build a more balanced analysis of the costs and benefits of China's growing engagement in international development.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
According to this article, Africa has much to gain from China’s growing presence on the continent, though it is not without some negative impacts. Increased trade and investment links are particularly promising, as they have the potential to support poverty alleviation and sustain recent economic gains. However, African countries must exercise their bargaining power more effectively to ensure that they benefit from the growing relationship, including in areas such as modern technology transfer. It is also the continent’s responsibility to make sure that, as it takes advantage of Chinese investments, competition is preserved and encouraged and regulatory frameworks are improved, including mining codes, by increasing transparency and accountability of contracts. In addition, large flows of Chinese investment and aid should not be allowed to delay much-needed domestic reforms, such as strengthening economic management and improving the business environment. These are needed to attract foreign direct investment from Western countries, which in turn would help to counterbalance potential overdependence on China’s investment. Africa does not have to choose between the West and China – it can have both.
A growing concern among those interested in economic development is the realisation that hundreds of billions of dollars are illicitly flowing out of developing countries to tax havens and other financial centres in the developed world. This new book by the World Bank assesses the dynamics of these flows, much of which is from corruption and tax evasion. What causes them, what are their consequences and how might they be controlled? The chapters by authors from a variety of backgrounds, including criminologists and practicing lawyers as well as economists, examine many dimensions of the phenomenon. Some chapters examine major illegal markets (drug trafficking and human smuggling) to assess how they contribute to these flows, while others are concerned with the corporate role in the phenomenon, particularly the possibility that transfer pricing (in which firms set prices for international trade among wholly owned affiliates) might play a major role in moving money illicitly.
In this UNRISD paper, the author reviews research on the employment impacts of neoliberalism, specifically on women’s employment. She considers a number of aspects that are central to employment issues: the slowdown in economic growth and the decline in the responsiveness of employment to growth; the impact of trade and investment liberalisation, informalisation and inflation targeting on employment; the consequences of increasingly frequent economic crises; and the public sector. The author contends that the Washington consensus’ macroeconomic policy conventions – liberalisation, privatisation and macro stability – have become so globally entrenched that they are rarely questioned by the academic and policy establishment. To this effect, she points to numerous, wide gaps in research into the employment impacts of neoliberal macroeconomic development policy.
Increased demand for seafood and its functional by-products has been associated with a concomitant rise in fishing and aquaculture activities. This increased consumption and processing of seafood is associated with more frequent allergic health problems among seafood processors, according to this overview of occupational allergies and asthma in seafood-exposed workers. It illustrates the changing nature of the fishing and seafood processing industry in the midst of ecological degradation and globalisation. It provides detailed insights into the major and minor allergens that have been identified and other pathophysiological mechanisms that have been ¬implicated in airway inflammation. More refined exposure assessment studies in recent times have enabled detailed characterisation of allergen exposure response relationships, which confirm the increased risk associated with elevated allergen exposures. Directions for future research and preventive strategies are outlined.
According to the Southern Africa Development Community’s (SADC) latest financial report, the region recorded an average real GDP growth of 4.7% in 2011, which is 0.8% below the 2010 growth rate of 5.5%. Inflation pressures gathered in most SADC Member States; however, regional inflation averaged 8.3%, almost the same level as in 2010. The average fiscal deficit deteriorated to 4.8% of GDP in 2011 compared to 3.2% of GDP in 2010. However, general government debt remained at 2010 level of 39% of GDP. The current account deficit of the balance of payments improved marginally from 8.8% of GDP in 2010 to 8.3% of GDP in 2011. Medium-term prospects are good but downward risks are high partly as a result of the sovereign debt crisis in the European Union.
This article refers to a forthcoming analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations. The analysis identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The work, to be published later in 2012 in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1,318 companies with interlocking ownerships, each of which had ties to two or more other companies, and on average connections to 20 companies. Although they represented only 20% of global operating revenues, the 1,318 appeared to collectively own through their shares most of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – referred to by the authors as the “real” economy – representing a further 60% of global revenues. Further analysis of the web of ownership revealed that much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies that control 40% of the total wealth in the network – these companies include financial giants like Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs. Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make the global economy more stable, the author argues, adding that we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level. The author argues that firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to prevent power being concentrated in the hands of a few.
The concept of ‘green growth’ implies that a wide range of developmental objectives, such as job creation, economic prosperity and poverty alleviation, can be easily reconciled with environmental sustainability. The authors of this study, however, argue that rather than being win-win, green growth is similar to most types of policy reforms that advocate the acceptance of short-term adjustment costs in the expectation of long-term gains. In particular, green growth policies often encourage developing countries to redesign their national strategies in ways that might be inconsistent with natural comparative advantages and past investments. In turn, there are often sizeable anti-reform coalitions whose interests may conflict with a green growth agenda. The authors illustrate this argument using case studies of Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa, which are engaged in development strategies that involve inorganic fertilisers, biofuels production, and coal-based energy, respectively. Each of these countries is pursuing an environmentally suboptimal strategy but nonetheless addressing critical development needs, including food security, fuel and electricity. The study’s results show that adopting a green growth approach would not only be economically costly but also generate substantial domestic resistance, especially amongst the poor.
African Heads of States and Governments convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 23-30 January 2012 to launch a continent-wide free trade agreement (CFTA). The Summit focused on solutions to the numerous impediments that hinder intra-African trade including: trade facilitation, productive capacity, trade related infrastructure and trade policy. In this article, the author calls for greater regional integration given African countries smaller markets. Africa’s regional economic communities are adopting uniform policies among their members but they are expected to trade with the rest of the world under various international trade regimes, which is argued to undermine regional integration and trade diversification. The author observes that trade preferences should be viewed only as a temporary arrangement – what is needed is to extend the period of the current trade regimes (say until 2020) and consolidate their conditions in a manner that supports manufacturing and consolidates regional markets. International partners and African countries should adopt a policy that revolves around access to high-income and emerging market countries linked to progress in integration with neighbouring countries.
In this study, economy-wide and hydrological-crop models are combined to estimate and compare the impacts of current and future climate trends in Zambia. Accounting for uncertainty, simulation results indicate that, on average, the trends may reduce gross domestic product by 4% over a ten-year period and pulls over 2% of the population below the poverty line. Socio-economic impacts are larger during drought years, and climate variability is projected to be a binding constraint on development in Zambia, at least over the next few decades.