Tag: Africa

Missing Pieces: China’s Challenges, Africa’s Mixed Picture, and More

By Isobel Coleman for Council on Foreign Relations.

An employee puts up a price tag after updating the price at a supermarket in Hefei, China, April 9, 2012 (Jianan Yu/Courtesy Reuters).

In this week’s installment of Missing Pieces, Charles Landow discusses stories on China and Africa, as well as a report on U.S. international engagement. Enjoy the reading.

Categories
Global Voices

Will Local Content Policies Help Africa Avoid the Oil Curse?

Tullow oil camp, Uganda. Image by Conservation Concepts on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Tullow oil camp, Uganda. Image by Conservation Concepts on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

In recent years, major reserves of oil have been discovered at various locations across Africa. If this ‘black gold’ represents an opportunity for economic growth, the fear that the windfall may not benefit the local populations – and maybe even become a curse – is shared by Sub-Saharan African citizens and experts alike.

In 2009 Modern Ghana’s Nana Adjoa Hackmansuggested a 2009 possible solution:

“It is common practice for oil and gas producing countries to negotiate local content agreements with interested IOCs [International Oil Companies] in an attempt to secure for the country a higher share of the value from oil and gas projects. This trend has surfaced as a result of the realization of the poor economic performance of many resource rich countries despite their vast wealth.”

Continue reading “Will Local Content Policies Help Africa Avoid the Oil Curse?”

New ISN Partner: Climate Change and African Political Stability Program

We are happy to announce that the Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) Program based at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law has joined the International Relations and Security Network. CCAPS is a collaborative research program among the College of William and Mary, Trinity College Dublin, the University of North Texas and the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

CCAPS examines the impact of climate change on political stability in Africa and develops strategies for how to prevent related conflicts. In the words of CCAPS, the program aims at answering three main questions:

  • Where and how does climate change pose threats to stability in Africa?
  • What is the role of government institutions in mitigating or aggravating the effects of climate change on political stability?
  • How effective is foreign aid in helping African countries adapt to climate change?
Continue reading “New ISN Partner: Climate Change and African Political Stability Program”
Categories
Humanitarian Issues

A ‘Complex Emergency’ in the Horn of Africa

Famine in Somalia. Source United Nations/flickr

Biafra, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia… the same story, the same heartbreaking pictures of children starving, and the same anger: These children are not starving because there is not enough food. They are starving because their governments – or whatever is left of them – have failed and are failing to handle this crisis.

The famine and refugee crisis in Somalia, said to be the result of the worst drought in 60 years has left the international community floundering to address it. The crisis is the result of a combination of a two-decade old civil war and the second famine in 20 years. In response Somalis are fleeing to Mogadishu or Kenyan refugee camps. Families are compelled to leave behind the weak and disabled – including babies – on the long walk through conflict and drought zones in search of a means of survival. Most Somalis head to the Dadaab camp in Kenya – the world’s largest refugee camp. It is seriously overcrowded – with an official capacity to hold 90,000 people, it currently hosts more than 420,000.

Many of those who manage to reach to the camp die waiting to enter, as there are endless lines at the registration offices. And even those who enter the camp face a new risk of violence: the local marauding gangs and criminals in the camp. Men are beaten and women raped. The Kenyan police say they do not have enough manpower to stop them.

Continue reading “A ‘Complex Emergency’ in the Horn of Africa”

‘Land Grabbing:’ Taking Stock of Two Years of Debate

The romanticization of farmland is part of the debate. Image: David M. Wright/flickr

“Whether viewed as ‘land grabs’ or as agricultural investment for development, large-scale land deals by investors in developing countries are generating considerable attention. However, investors, policymakers, officials, and other key stakeholders have paid little attention to a dimension of these deals essential to truly understanding their impact: gender.” (The Gender Implications of Large-scale Land Deals, IFPRI, April 2011).

Two years after the publication of “‘Land Grabbing’ by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries,” the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is again setting the agenda. The idea that we should consider gender issues when evaluating large-scale land deals shows how the ‘land grabbing’ debate has matured since it started in 2009, when rich investors from powerful countries were pitted against poor farmers in developing countries.

Of course, there are still those who condemn greedy land grabbers abusing their power to deprive poor Africans of their land, on the one side, and those who hail benevolent investors lending their money to develop backward agriculture in the ‘south’ on the other. But we can also observe many shades of gray in a debate which seems to have revived in spring 2011.

A Google Timeline search shows how the 'land grabbing' debate really started in 2009. After it cooled down a bit in 2010, it seems to have revived in 2011: not yet half into the year, the bar already shows about half of the results found for 2009.

Two years into the ‘land grabbing’ phenomenon, here are some resources on the issue.

Continue reading “‘Land Grabbing:’ Taking Stock of Two Years of Debate”