Improving the access to services by poor and marginal groups is a strong or central objective of most sector wide programmes, which are reviewed by the Overseas Development Institute. The review presents findings from the collection of information on how the sector wide approaches are tackling poverty reduction objectives.

Seven senior government officials have been charged with the theft of public funds, say Zambian police. Those charged include Treasury Secretary David Diangamo and a former official of the state-owned Zambia National Commercial Bank (Zanaco) Samuel Musonda.

Fraud-related cases in the Eastern Cape could soon be dealt with speedily after the Scorpions announced the establishment of a special corruption court in King William's Town. Scorpions representative Sipho Ngwema announced the establishment of the special court on Wednesday, after four former government officials were arrested by the anti-corruption task team on charges of defrauding the Social Development Department of over R5,8-million.

South Africa, Swaziland, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are some of the countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that recorded momentous events and experienced diverse and chronic problems in 2002. Here is a brief look at some of the news that featured prominently...

This week a lot of noise will be made regarding the nomination of incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria as the candidate for the People’s Democratic Party heading into upcoming elections. More than a few people will regard the convention just held as some sort of sign that democracy is on the march in Nigeria. The truth is very different. Functional democracy is in a fragile state and being suffocated by corruption, political violence and silence in the face of quite unacceptable practices on the part of government.

The upcoming Nigerian elections are being conducted by a body whose commissioners are appointed solely by the sitting President, who has gone out of his way to appoint associates and ‘party hacks’. Local government elections are actually under the thumb of the state governor who also has exclusive power to appoint a state commission. The control of the electoral commissions is just one element of a political system that has a long way to go before it can be recognised as anything like a democratic system in which individuals are confident that they can freely participate in elections where their votes will be properly counted.

I could go on at length about corruption of the current political process, and about how it starts from the very first stages of the election cycle and culminates in an election that is reduced to a meaningless charade. However for the balance of this editorial I would like to emphasise the role of the international community and the extent to which it legitimises regimes like those found in Nigeria.

Over the last four years the Nigerian government has wasted a great deal of goodwill both domestically and internationally. At the international and local level there has been a response that resonates desperation: that any civilian regime is better than a return to military rule. Unfortunately this is only partly true. In the last four years Human Rights Watch and others have chronicled human rights violations and mass killings, including several by government, which would have brought immediate sanctions against a military regime.

There is a crucial need for the international community to recognise that political elites, dressed in the garb of sham democracies, can be every bit as violent as the harshest of military regimes. For people from NGOs who have traditionally resisted government repression and are now encouraging political participation the risks of violence are real and ever-present. There have already been a number of political killings. The unfortunate reality is that as we struggle to bring forward genuine elections we face the risk of many more casualties, primarily at the hands of political thugs used with no fear of accountability by political incumbents.

If Nigeria is not subjected to intense pressure, both internally and externally, to allow the development of the fundamentals of democracy, then those of us in ‘civil society’ face a bleak future. While the belated registration of new political parties, after inexcusable delays which have wrecked their chances of normal development ahead of upcoming elections, is a step forward, the reform of Nigeria’s electoral laws and practices is a fundamental pre-requisite before Nigeria is even recognised as a democracy.

Nigeria is not alone in Africa in practising appalling shams of democracy. One of the reasons for some peculiar stances taken by ‘African leaders’ is that in too many countries we are ruled by elites who have no regard for the grassroots members of their society. Often civil society in the form of NGOs are pursuing quite different agendas to those of our so-called leaders. Some of the positions we are forced into are quite different to those that are assumed by international NGOs, who have sometimes neglected the question of legitimacy of many African governments. For example, my own experience is that there is considerable sympathy amongst NGOs in different countries for the firmest conditionality for governments seeking fresh loans to prop up corrupt regimes on various pre-texts.

Our appeal to the international community is based on the fact that Nigeria has repeatedly said the international community is welcome to observe how far it has progressed on the democratic path. This opportunity should be taken, but pursued vigorously in a manner where the international community seriously considers whether the fundamentals have changed in Nigeria and communicates exactly how far we have to go for the Nigerian government to achieve international respectability.

* Ledum Mitee is the President of Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), an NGO which has been campaigning for the environmental and human rights of the Ogoni people since 1990. [email]mosop@phca.linkserve.com
Ph (+234) 84 233 907

* Send your comments for publication in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News to editor@pambazuka.org

Links

* Nigerian president fights for survival
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,869158,00.html
* "I'm sorry," says Obasanjo for civilian massacre

Malawi's finance minister is expected to come under investigation for his involvement in the controversial sale of the country's strategic maize reserves just months before widespread crop failure, officials told IRIN on Monday.

Nigeria's anti-corruption commission has a tough job - the country is ranked the second most corrupt in the world according to Transparency International. The commission to fight corruption was one of the bodies set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo soon after he came into office in 1999. But in all that time, its work has led to the conviction of just one public official.

Academic discourse and development policy debates have grappled with the contentious issue of the state-market interactions in Africa’s development agenda and process, particularly since the 1960s independence era. At the heart of this debate has been the contestation over agency for development: what is the key locomotive or engine of development? This article revisits this debate and critically interrogates the extent to which the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) presents a new paradigm in development thinking in the African continent.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed concern over Nigeria's macroeconomic imbalances which it said remained large and persistent while poverty and social indicators are declining. The Fund also insisted that Nigerian economy shrank by 0.9 per cent in 2002.

The Tanzanian economy performed better in 2002 than in previous years, with growth reaching nearly five per cent, inflation falling from five to 4.5 per cent from July to November 2002, and most large industries announcing increased profits.

US President George W Bush approved 38 Sub-Saharan African countries as eligible for tariff preferences under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) on December 31.
The approval is based on progress toward a market-based economy, the rule of law, free trade, economic policies that will reduce poverty, and protection of workers' rights.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has issued a major report to inform and focus international development assistance - looking back over five decades of work and looking ahead to future challenges: "Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security, and Opportunity." The report, commissioned by USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios, draws on the best minds of development, democracy and governance to address the critical development challenges facing the world in the next ten to twenty years and beyond.

The IRC seeks a Community Development Coordinator for its Guinea Program based in the Kissidougou field office with frequent travel to project sites located in the Prefectures of Gueckedou and Macenta. The primary goal of this position is to oversee all of the project activities of the USAID funded Community Development Project in the three prefectures of Guinea and to coordinate the community mobilization component. The strategic direction of this position is local community capacity building through participatory development principles.

Guess who is claiming $73m this year from the famine-stricken Ethiopian government? Nestlé? Some big multinational suffering a temporary corporate social responsibility bypass? Guess again. The vulture creditors in question are the World Bank, the IMF and the governments of some of the world's richest countries. Ethiopia is not alone. Three other sub-Saharan countries facing an epidemic of hunger - Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi - will pay back an estimated $250m to their creditors this year, even as they struggle to feed their people, writes Charlotte Denny from Jubilee Research.

This is wishing you all of the best over the festive season, and during 2003. Thanx once again for all the inspiration contained in the weekly newsletters.

Ranjit Purshotam,
Legal Resources Centre, Durban, South Africa

I am interested to learn and share with other people on issues concerning human rights, good governance, democracy and peace building.

Two Bills which will clear the way for the resumption of donor aid will be brought before Parliament when it resumes, President Kibaki announced. The donor community had insisted that the two bills - The Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Bill and the Public Service (code of Conduct and Ethics) - be passed by Parliament and implemented by the government as a condition for resumption of aid.

COHRED is looking for a Coordinator to lead the organisation into the next phase of its development. COHRED's vision is to attain a system of effective health research as a tool for development, based on values of equity and social justice and targeting the health problems of those most in need. COHRED works with numerous developing countries, research networks, UN agencies and other organisations to advocate for country-driven health research, based on the ENHR approach.

Presidential and legislative elections are to take place on 14 October in Liberia, the chairman of the Liberian electoral commission, Paul Guah, announced on Thursday. Guah said voter registration would be held from 15 to 29 April and the final list of candidates would be published on 20 June, news organisations reported.

This new one year full-time (or two years part-time) Programme in Globalization & Development is open to graduates of any discipline who seek training in globalization, governance, human development & human security. This specialist inter-disciplinary course is based in Central London & consists of three written papers and a dissertation. Speakers come from international agencies & think tanks as well as the academic community.