Intelligent Management Strategies (IMS) extends an invitation to attend an International Conference on Corporate Citizenship and Social Responsibility to be held at the Inter-Continental Sandton Sun and Towers, Sandton, Johannesburg.

The event is entitled "Transform our Communities."

Topics for discussion include:

- Economic development and upliftment;
- Structuring investment;
- Making Corporate Social Investment (CSI) an invested interest; and
- Legal and empowerment issues around CSI.

The African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) will on 19 and 20 May, 2004 host a workshop for its affiliates and stakeholders to discuss the contents of their latest publication, Reality of Aid, Africa Edition 2003/4, which will be launched at the same event in Pretoria, South Africa. The theme for the workshop will be: "Governance & Promotion of Rights in International Cooperation and Aid" and will provide a space for the 18 participants to review the findings contained in the Africa Edition of the Reality of Aid publication, as well as come up with recommendations for the way forward.

Despite warnings of a third successive year of famine, a government spokesman in Zimbabwe said that the country’s food stocks were sufficient and it would not require relief aid from international agencies. State radio quoted Paul Mangwana, the Minister of Social Welfare, as saying that the Government had “ruled out food imports or receiving aid ...because the country has produced enough food for its requirements.”

Incoming International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said this week that during his five-year mandate as head of the institution, he will work toward fulfilling the interests of its 184 member countries while giving special attention to poor nations. "The position of managing director of this institution requires me to work in the interest of all 184 member countries, with particular attention to those who have the greatest difficulties and lower income levels," Rato said in his first news conference in Washington after being chosen as the IMF chief last week. He is scheduled to officially assume the new position early next month.

This report, published by the World Health Organisation, outlines progress made by the Stop TB Partnership in meeting the objectives of the Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis (GPSTB). Achievements highlighted include the implementation of DOTs in 180 countries and the establishment of pilot projects for joint HIV/TB control and for treatment of patients with multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). Recommendations include more streamlined evaluation of new drugs and diagnostic tools, and targeted distribution of approved vaccines to areas where the TB burden is greatest. In conclusion, the report calls for urgent large-scale investment of both financial and human resources to accelerate progress and ensure the 2005 TB reduction targets are met.

The Mozambican parliament started on Tuesday to debate a report on its corruption law, with all discussions focusing particularly on article six, concerning applications and petitions to any institution. This law had been passed by the parliament and submitted to the President for promulgation, but the President sent it back to the Assembly, after finding that it contained some aspects that were not constitutional.

The European Union has offered to stop subsidising farm exports in a move aimed at reigniting world trade talks. European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has written to members of the World Trade Organisation outlining the plan. An agreement will depend on other WTO countries such as the US, Canada and Australia being willing to follow suit.

Access to quality education in rural areas has been consistently neglected. Many governments either lack the political will or the capacity to meet the educational needs of the huge numbers of rural people who remain outside the mainstream education system. Today in many parts of the world, growing up in a rural region often means growing up without a decent education. School attendance is generally low and drop-out high, with girls, mountain populations and ethnic minorities losing out most. This is not surprising, considering the distance many children have to walk daily, only to find a school in poor condition, without furniture, learning materials, drinking water or toilets, and sometimes even without a teacher.

Children from four continents opened the first dialogue at the Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona, Spain, by talking from first-hand experience about child labour, conflict, disability, migration and HIV/AIDS - some of the most visible signs of child poverty. As leaders in their own communities in China, Colombia, Guinea Conakry, Tajikistan, Kosovo and Morocco, the children will talk with Dean Hirsch, President of World Vision International and chair of the Global Movement for Children, and will ask the world to take action on children in poverty.

This report, published by Save the Children, focuses on girls who become mothers while still children themselves, highlighting the particular health risks and challenges which they, and their children, face. It includes the first ever Early Motherhood Risk Ranking which analyses data on child motherhood from fifty countries. Key findings show that early motherhood carries a very high risk of mortality for both mother and baby, with mothers aged 10 to 14 five times more at risk than mothers in their twenties; and that girls in sub-Saharan Africa tend to have the highest rates of early marriage and motherhood as well as the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality.

In 2005 the General Assembly will be reviewing the situation of youth and achievements made in the implementation of the World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY). The year 2005 has been chosen because it is ten years after the adoption of WPAY. This Toolkit is meant for national youth organisations and/or representatives working with youth. It can be used as a tool to: assess your country’s progress in reaching the WPAY goals; prioritize your organisation’s work, based on your findings; and, initiate actions at the national level.

The world's forests, under siege from urban sprawl and ruthless commercial logging, are a treasure trove stacked with biological and genetic resources which could revolutionise medicine. That's the message self-described "renegade scientist" and Canadian author and botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger, will deliver this week at a forestry conference as she stresses the world is wasting a vital resource.

The world's least developed nations say they're prepared to make concessions to revive global trade talks. After a two-day meeting in Senegal, the poorer nations welcomed recent concessions from both the US and Europe. They pledged to be more flexible in trade negotiations, particularly on the issues of cotton and farm subsidies, which led to a deadlock at the WTO summit in Cancun last September. In this interview with Radio Netherlands, Louk de la Rive Box, professor of international co-operation at Maastricht University, explains why there's a new mood of compromise.

Throughout history, international trade has generated considerable controversy. While conceding that some trade was imperative, Aristotle observed that trade was disruptive of community life. Until the 19th Century, most European powers viewed trade as a form of undeclared warfare. Their objective was - and still remains - the maximization of benefits accruing to themselves and minimization of those accruing to rival nations. The weapons of choice in this warfare were import barriers.

The idea of trade as a mutually beneficial activity only gained currency and political momentum following David Ricardo's elaboration of the theory of comparative advantage in 1817. Today the free trade doctrine reigns supreme. Trade negotiations - at multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral levels - all focus on reduction and eventual elimination of trade barriers (a kind of disarmament treaty).

The removal of trade barriers in rich countries can accrue certain benefits for impoverished countries. But this can only occur when the economies of underdeveloped countries are accorded the right space to respond first and foremost to the fundamental developmental needs of these countries. Rapid import liberalization imposed on underdeveloped countries via structural adjustment programmes has more often than not intensified poverty and inequality.

The IMF, the World Bank, and most industrialized country governments are strong advocates of trade liberalization. In the case of the two Bretton Woods institutions, advocacy has been backed by loan conditions which require countries to reduce their trade barriers. Largely as a result of these loan conditions, poor countries have been opening their economies much more rapidly than industrialized countries. Average import tariffs have been halved in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and cut by two-thirds in Latin America and East Asia.

Problems with Trade Liberalization

The popular view is that trade liberalization is an outcome of negotiated trade agreements. But, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) emphasizes that the principal vehicles for trade liberalization are the conditions attached to IMF and World Bank loans. That is, the IMF and World Bank disburse loans as, or when, borrowing governments comply with conditions, including trade-related conditions that are sometimes part of Structural Adjustment Programmes. The work programme of the Doha Agenda have been incorporated in IMF and World Bank SAPs for years.

Trade As If Nothing Else Mattered

Economists' training prepares them to build and have unshakeable belief in models that have not been successfully challenged. But they are not very well trained in how to rigorously verify their policy relevance for specific contexts. The models are often deployed on the assumption that they are relevant to a specific context without the benefit of supporting justification.

The assumption of applicability is perhaps the most widely deployed, yet unstated, auxiliary assumption used in economic policy analysis. It is especially concerning models dealing with underdeveloped countries where many of these assumptions below are routinely violated - especially those based on smoothly mobile labour and capital, complete and functioning markets, and perfect information flows.

Regional Integration and Regional Trade Agreements

Integration is once again a concept so much in vogue. The promoters of economic globalization are using it to justify the unprecedented expansion of the power of transnational corporations. The underdeveloped world, especially Africa, is being constantly reminded that it has to be integrated into the world economy if it is survive. The validity of this position will be examined briefly at some later stage. Integration means different things to different people. For some, it is an all-embracing union of contiguous countries and includes both economic and political areas. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union are perfect examples of this type of integration. For others, it is agreement among a group of countries to remove various kinds of trade barriers. In between these two extremes lie numerous types of arrangements. In all these arrangements, the overarching concern is the formation of a body with a common purpose, usually to increase human welfare.

Integration in Africa has been driven by two competing forces - one internal and the other external. Internal impetus to integration of African economies has been provided by the realization that the continent has over the centuries suffered wanton exploitation of its natural, material and financial resources at the hands of imperialist forces. The global economic arrangement since the 15th Century has defined for Africa its place in the international economic division of labour - to produce and export primary commodities in line with its perceived comparative advantage. Value adding by way of processing, manufacturing, packaging, branding etc. is left to industrialized countries. In other words, Africa produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce.

The motivation for internally-driven integration derives from the following expected benefits:

- More efficient use of the region's capital, labour and natural resources, which are often less than optimally utilized nationally and has been exploited extensively by the industrialized countries.
- Developing the market, so that instead of fighting and bending backward to be 'granted' access to the markets of Europe and North America, Africa can begin producing first and foremost for its own markets.
- Reduced Costs of transaction within the region, as a result of reductions in tariff and non-tariff barriers. This reduces monopolistic profits and leads to efficiency gains.
- Training effect, as national producers are gradually exposed to the regional market before the world market, since it is easier to compete in the regional market than in the global market. This could be a stepping stone to the outside world.

External interests also push for regional integration in Africa but for different reasons. The overarching motivation for externally-induced regional integration is to maintain the historical division of labour that assigns Africa the role of green field that feeds Northern industry with raw materials. Below are characteristics of externally-driven integration:

- High-tech, Low-value ghettoes: With the increasing demands for higher wages, improved working conditions and environmentally sound production methods, many transnational corporations are increasingly looking at Africa as possible sites for the assembly of their high technology exports such as electronics, auto and engineering products.
- Raw material reservoirs: In order to keep feeding the Northern industries with the necessary raw input, it is in the interest of industrialized economies to secure the source of minerals, agricultural commodities and other natural resource-based inputs. As it is cheaper to deal with a bigger entity with uniform policies and procedures than individual states with differing policies and often changing political moods.
- Entry points for multilateral negotiations: As resistance to many issues fronted by industrialised countries in the WTO intensifies, the North finds it easier forcing the issues through regional fora.
- Captive markets: Trade and trade negotiations are about accessing markets. Expansion and securing of African markets rank very high in the scheme of corporate interests in industrialized countries. It is the essence of integration of Africa into the global economy.

Cotonou Agreement

Perhaps the most important trade agreement outside the WTO agreements is the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and the European Union (EU) relation under the Cotonou Agreement signed in June 2000. As a successor to the Lome Convention, which had guided these relations since 1975, the Cotonou Agreement has the following new characteristics;
- It breaks the solidarity of ACP countries by creating regional differentiation through negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
- It introduces reciprocity.
- It seeks to be WTO compatible (Indeed, the EU proposals are WTO-plus).
- Creates uncertainty and confusion among Least Developed Countries.

AGOA

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), though not a trade agreement, deserves serious attention for its destructive effect on Africa's economy. The eligibility criteria undermine policy autonomy of African countries. Some of the worrying items in the criteria include:
- US strategic interests clause (War against terrorism).
- Rules of origin
- Free Trade Areas with SSA
- Monitoring and review
- Study on improving agricultural practices in Africa (GMOs?)
- Elimination of restrictions to US investments

*Oduor Ong'wen heads the SEATINI Office in Kenya, in which this article was first published. For more information and subscriptions, contact SEATINI, Takura House, 67-69 Union Avenue, Harare, Zimbabwe, Tel: +263 4 792681, Ext. 255 & 341, Tel/Fax: +263 4 251648, Fax: +263 4 788078, email: Email: [email]seatini.zw@undp.org, Website: www.seatini.org

Calls for a national slavery memorial day have been made by an United Kingdom MP, who says the horrors of the slave trade must not be forgotten. Three years ago Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly committed himself to supporting a Slavery Memorial Day, but a committee to turn this idea a reality collapsed just months later amid accusations that Home Office officials were trying to obstruct its' progress.

The showdown between the Government and private schools has intensified as Government toughened its stance and began shutting down some private boarding schools that had opened ahead of the start to the second school term, for increasing school fees without its approval. About 30 000 children are affected. Police officers were deployed to 45 private schools throughout the country that had allegedly refused to abide by the Government's order not to increase school fees, to ensure that these schools do not open for classes.

Press freedom suffered a substantial worldwide decline in 2003, according to a major study released by Freedom House. Legal harassment, political pressure, and violence by state and non-state actors against journalists combined to worsen conditions in many countries, resulting in the second consecutive year of a global decline in freedom for news media. The report was released to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3. The survey assesses the degree of print, broadcast, and Internet freedom in every country in the world and assigns to each a category rating of Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. It analyzes events during the calendar year 2003.

Education is paramount if we are to reach individuals infected with HIV and those living with AIDS. Obviously, our best resource is from those who are affected by the disease! Information is not reaching those most in need and there is a certain mistrust of science and medicine. People are afraid. Many have only seen or heard of people dying and many people believe the drugs will kill them. It is important that they learn from those whose lives have been saved and who have benefited from the drug treatments, renewing a quality of life they would not have had otherwise. Who better to explain the realities of living with HIV?

About 70,000 girls and one million infants born to young mothers die worldwide every year due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth, according to a report released on Tuesday by Save the Children. Many of these deaths could be avoided by policy and programme changes that help girls to postpone marriage and childbirth and provide health and education services to them, said the charity's "State of the World's Mothers" report.

More often than not, enrolment data for pre-primary education cover the entire age group, from 3(4) to 5(6) years, in a single rate. The problem with such aggregated reporting is that it fails to reveal differing enrolment rates from one single-year age group to the next, where considerable gaps have long been suspected. This is the conclusion of the just-published issue of the UNESCO Policy Briefs on Early Childhood.