Bilateral trade between China and Tanzania has increased by almost 70%, climaxing at US$47million last year. According to the secretary of bilateral trade at the Chinese Embassy in Dar es Salaam, imports by China from Tanzania went up by 150.1% valued at $17million while exports from China to Tanzania increased by 40.6% to $3 million. The increase is attributed to the special preferential tariff (SPT) agreement-involving 190 tariff items-to the most undeveloped countries in Africa.

The heads of 11 of the world’s leading human rights, environmental and social development international organisations have publicly endorsed the first global accountability charter for the non-profit sector. International NGOs play an increasingly influential role. Global public opinion surveys show higher trust in NGOs than in government and business.
* See for the full charter.

115 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers' rights in 2005, while 1 600 were assaulted and 9 000 were arrested, an international survey said. Rubber bullets and teargas were a feature of police responses to protests by workers in South Africa. New laws in Nigeria placed heavy restrictions on the right to strike and totally banned trade unions for certain types of worker.

Internet search engine Google has released a web-based spreadsheet application, on a limited test basis. Spreadsheets are software applications with a grid of rows and columns and calculating capabilities, which allow users to input or organise information.

The newly redesigned June issue of Alliance magazine, with a special feature on donors and learning, has just been published. Funders talk about listening to their grantees and their beneficiaries, and spend time and money on evaluating their programmes, but what lies behind the rhetoric?

Following reports of sexual exploitation of refugees in West Africa in 2001 and in Nepal in 2003, the UN Secretary-General issued a Bulletin obliging UN agencies and their partners to prevent, and when suspected, to investigate any sexual exploitation and sexual abuse (SEA) by humanitarian staff. Humanitarian organisations began adopting and revising Codes of Conduct and other related policies. This evaluation is a critical component underpinning the larger SEA prevention and response equation as the humanitarian community makes efforts to build capacity to receive and investigate allegations of sexual abuse - or exploitation-related staff misconduct.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has softened his stance on the expulsion of illegal immigrants' children from French schools. Mr Sarkozy plans to spare about 1,200 children who faced expulsion and deportation with their families.
Since April, more than 40,000 people have signed a petition pledging to protect and house the children of immigrants to save them from expulsion. An immigration bill adopted by the lower house envisaged such expulsions.

This month, WEDO launched MisFortune500, a highly-anticipated, much-needed website that challenges corporate malfeasance against women worldwide, helping them reclaim their rights to decent work, a clean and healthy environment, and access to land, water, food and quality public services. MisFortune500 - a parody of Fortune magazine's annual list of top profit-making companies -exposes corporate violations of women's rights that threaten lives and communities and destroy the environment.

The way NGOs and other global civil society organisations operate must be reformed if they are to embody the progressive claims often made on their behalf, argues Leni Wild. For too long, people on the liberal left of politics have assumed that global civil society is inherently progressive and a force for social progress. This approach is partial and ignores the darker side of the phenomenon.

A complete, interactive version of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2006 – Literacy for Life – is now available on CD-ROM in English. Its convenient HTML format means it is fully searchable: users can therefore explore the report and accompanying statistical data, maps, background papers and boxes with easy navigation from one to the other, using an advanced search function. Additional features include the report’s headline messages, a summary report and a statistics tool that generates charts and tables for export to printer or PowerPoint.

The Global Education Digest 2006 presents the latest education statistics from primary to tertiary levels in more than 200 countries. “What this report shows is that the real dynamic in tertiary education is coming from African, Arab and Chinese students. They are the driving force behind the internationalization of higher education,” says Hendrik van der Pol, UIS Director.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has accused some countries of putting their "heads in the sand" in failing to spell out the truth about Aids. He told the BBC he was disappointed a declaration at a UN Aids conference did not specify homosexuals, prostitutes and drug addicts were at risk. But Mr Annan still said the declaration was better than he had expected. The declaration commits countries to work towards universal access to Aids care by 2010.

One of the poorest countries in Africa, Ethiopia, is spending a 10th of its gross domestic product each year on information technology, and Uganda has launched Africa's first "e-school" as part of a continent-wide initiative targeting hundreds of thousands of schools.

When the United Nations General Assembly meets in June to review progress in tackling the AIDS epidemic it will be reminded by civil society globally of the commitment made to ensure universal access to treatment for AIDS by 2010. This commitment has greatest resonance in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS related mortality is highest, begins an editorial from the latest edition of Equinet News, the newsletter of the Network for Equity in Health in Southern Africa.

"The sad reality [is] that those, within the alliance, who purport to have the interests of the working class at heart, while being at the forefront of the 'Zuma for presidency' campaign have been, ironically, absent from militant working class struggles for better living conditions and affordable basic services." writes Percy Ngonyama, a social-movement activist based in Durban in discussing the furore over the succession struggle in South Africa.

Steve Ouma Akoth discuses the notion of corporate responsibility, introducing two notions of human dignity - individualistic and choice oriented vs. communal and substance oriented - that reflect two different world views. In discussing these views, he argues that the choice is for a thicker or broader notion of the moral self.

Corporate Responsibility or Citizenship has evolved in a time of increased economic and social globalization. As part of this evolution, the debate has moved beyond responsibilities and accountability [1] of the Corporate Citizens [2] to that of respective roles that the non-state actors can play in the governance of global and national societies. In building this understanding, attention has invariably been focused on how the concept and process has evolved from the paternalistic philanthropic [3] focus to the current talk of accountability.

It is apparent from the scholarly materials and information available in this area that most pundits more so those focusing on accountability of business enterprises, have looked at this issue from the perspective of the Western system of knowledge and its confrontation with neo-liberalism. This “singular focus” has thus missed a major thrust and leverage factor from other cultures and jurisdictions which would otherwise significantly influence the clarity of this discourse.

From the various view points [4], one must also note that there has been no significant challenge to the economic system within which the business enterprises which are being called to be more accountable operate. Milton Friedman laid down corporate law in the mid 20th Century when he said that business' only role was to make business, which has been ignored in this debate [5].

Jerry Mander & Edward Goldsmith have taken this debate further by exposing the spirit of Miltons argument by stating that:

“The essence of the capitalism system is the accumulation of capital, the making of profits in order to invest and to make still more profits. The first law of capitalism is; And the best way to accumulate capital is not to work hard but to get others to work hard for you. Private gains, not social needs, are the central rule for the capitalist system.”

As an erstwhile chairman of Castle Cooke put it: “We are in the business of making profit. We are not in business primarily to satisfy society. We are not going to satisfy society very long if we go out of business. So profits are the number one consideration.”[6]

This is why I think that any efforts to promote ethical business practices and encourage respect for and fulfillment of human rights, must question the framework of profit making. The response to this kind of mind set in my opinion can not simply be the business case or the legal frameworks which have been touted as the major contours and impetus for Corporate Accountability. In my opinion this is about what is good and what is bad. It is about ethics and morals.

Although ordinarily the debate on ethics and morals is seen as a fragile and delicate landmine, [7] this is where the Corporate Citizenship discourse can benefit from the African Context. Because at the very minimum, business has a moral obligation to ensure it does not undermine human dignity and progress. To this, African Context through both economic system and value system gives an unwavered response.

The Traditional African Economic System.

The African Economic system was widely anchored in the principles of economic democracy. The basic premise of this notion is to view economics as 'culture'. In other words, importance is given to the study of economic processes in relation to the social and cultural contexts in which they occur To strengthen this understanding Anthropologists [8] have decided to create a distinction between this economic system - which they have called the 'substantivist' economy - and the now dominant neo-liberal economic system which they refer to as the formalist [9] economy.

The 'substantivist' economic system is anchored in the principles of egalitarians. This school of thought is closely associated with Karl Polanyi who is remembered today as the originator of a 'substantivist' approach to economics, which emphasized the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This thinking appreciates the fact that economic systems have three interrelated aspects;

- Patterns of subsistence - the means by which environmental resources are converted for human use
- Systems of distribution - the means by which goods and services are made available to members of a particular group
- Patterns of consumption

Polanyi isolates four institutions as crucial to the economic and political order that had characterized most native economies : a balance of political power, the international gold standard,
a self-regulating market system, and the liberal state. The SRM (Self-Regulating Market) was "the fount and matrix of the system," the "innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization". [10]

Most African societies were organized in a system that Polanyi describes here as the SRM (Self-Regulating Market). Polanyi differentiated between economic systems in which there were markets and the "starkly utopian" SRM of the nineteenth century. Markets are places or networks in which goods are bought and sold; they are human interactions organized by price, quality, and quantity of traded goods and services. The SRM was a society-wide system of markets in which all inputs into the substantive processes of production and distribution were for sale and in which output was distributed solely in exchange for earnings from sales of inputs.

The SRM was a society-wide system of markets in which all inputs into the substantive processes of production and distribution were for sale and in which output was distributed [11] solely in exchange for earnings from sales of inputs. Society is vital to humans as social animals, and the SRM [12] was consistent with a sustainable society. This argument represents the character of most pre-colonial African economies.

There exists substantial evidence that organization of production and distribution in many societies had been accomplished through social relationships of kin or community obligations and counter obligations (reciprocity). The same system of relation with business enterprises can be found in the Agrarian and pastoralist [13] societies. This framework seems to be in great resonance to the modern concept of Corporate Citizenship. It implies that business can not survive unless it is in articulation with the societal values and operates in a conscientious manner to the expectation and aspirations of the society.

African Ethics for Business: Ubuntu

There is a very diverse set of ethical and customary frameworks throughout Africa. However, to illustrate how some of these concepts or terms may be applicable to business ethics and Corporate Citizenship, a deeper focus on the world view of most African societies would be useful.

This is very well represented in the philosophy of ubuntu which is based on the proverb “Umntu Ngumntu Ngabantu,” which can be translated as “a person is a person through other people” or “I am what I am because of you”. The following extract is from a book by Desmond Tutu called No tomorrow without forgiveness and it gives a good impression of ubuntu:

“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks to the very essence of being human. When you want to give high praise to someone we say, 'Yu, u nobuntu', he or she has ubuntu. This means that they are generous, hospitable friendly, caring and compassionate. They share what they have. It also means that my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in theirs. We belong in a bundle of life. We say, 'a person is a person through other people' (in Xhosa Ubuntu Ungamntu ngabanye abantu and in Zulu Umuntu Ngumnutu ngabanye). I am human because I belong, I participate, I share. A person with ubunti is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good; for he or she has proper self-assurance that comes with knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were no less than who they are.” [14]

The term “Ubuntu” emphasizes that we all live and work in community [15]. Hence ubuntu can apply to the inside of a company and we could see company employees and management as a community, where one looks after the interest of others. Ubuntu also applies to a company as part of the broader community, where the company looks after other members of the community so that it can thrive. It is therefore apparent that ubuntu has important implications for corporate citizenship. Linking this with the economic system postulated above, essence of Ubuntu (humanity) cuts across Africa.

It is pertinent to take account of the African world view and culture in the context of governance of companies and the moral power that they imply. This high standards of morality are based on historical precedent. These are bolstered by the close kinship observed through totem or clan names and the extended family system [16]. This notion of co-existence with other people which is highly valued can inform the way we conceptualize and design the responses to Corporate Accountability and Responsibility today.

Two notions of human dignity

The outcome of the above discussion is two very different notions of self dignity: A classical libertarian understanding which (when pushed) reduces human dignity to individual free choice, and a broader, social (egalitarian as illustrated by the African cosmological context) perception of humanity which insists that human dignity involves more than free choice. Precisely what the latter means in any particular society is determined not merely by ideological theory (whether of Kant, John Stuart Mill or Karl Marx) but by values inherent to the historical and social context (with all the political, economic, cultural and religious dimensions) that influence any particular society at a given time. Within this context theories, doctrines and traditions (the theoretical apparatus we bring to a situation) usually need to be reshaped, reconceived and rewritten. As suggested in the introduction, the exercise of thinking through and developing the Social Responsibility standard must thus involve an intellectual and theoretical renewal which responds to the conflicts within the current economic system. The two notions of human dignity - individualistic and choice oriented vs. communal and substance oriented - reflect two different world views.

It is apparent that this African cosmological context presents a major tension that challenges and haunts liberal politics. These are challenges that confront all politic. Its is the tension between how to allow the maximization of individual freedom of choice while at the same time addressing the corporate responsibilities that are part of any social union. If individual [17] liberty is the primary value, then equality may have to be sacrificed. If equality is the primary value, there will be violations of liberty [18]. The quest must thus contribute to resolving this apparent contradiction [19] which resides at the heart of democratic-liberalism. An illustration using the African context affirmations of individual freedom alone constitutes a one-sided view of a fragmented tradition [20]. As such it provides a useful basis on which to address the political issues central to the required reconstruction. The concern is to balance individual and common values, rather than to propose a compromise within which neither is adequately addressed. [21] The goal is the establishment of a social theory and morality, which 'rests on a view of ourselves as co-members of a common world'. It involves a morality within which each individual is necessarily seen as 'one of us', requiring co-existence based on mutual respect and co-operation by a community of individuals who consciously locate themselves within their social context rather than seek (in a Kantain way) to abstract themselves out of it. The quest is for a thicker or broader notion of the moral self. [22]

* The Author is the Programmes Coordinatotor and Deputy Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Member of the Advisory Board of Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and a Student of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Governance at University of South Africa Contact address Valley Arcade, Gitanga Road, P.O. Box 41079, 00100 Nairobi - GPO, Kenya Tel. 254-2-3874998/9, 38776065, 0733-629034, 0722-264497, Fax: 254-2-3874997E-mail: [email]souma@khrc.or.ke

[1] The discourse of accountability implies obligation by the law and a framework that can be used to hold the actor to responsible for their actions.

[2] These are artificial persons created by the law.

[3] The history of involvement of Corporations in societal issues has an origin in welfare and charity work at that time not much linked to the strategic operations.

[4]Here we are only referring to the view points that have been taken on Corporate Accountability and Responsibility

[5]Jerry Mander & Edward Goldsmith, eds., The Case Against the Global Economy and For a Turn Toward the Local (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996); Ed., Kevin Danaher, 50 years is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Boston: South End Press, 1994).

[6] Chairman of Castle and Cooke of Dole Standards Fruits CO., interview in the documentary film Controlling interests, (San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1978).

[7] This is mainly due to relativity of the term.

[8] Classic economic anthropology has been concerned with the logic of exchange systems, with peasant economies, and with livelihood systems. An anthropological approach to economics will enable a critical analysis of some of the cultural biases in the 'universal' principles of mainstream economics, e.g. the concepts of work and leisure, poverty and wealth, gifts and commodities, and money and markets.

[9] This formal neoclassical theory cannot be used to explain economic activities in non-western societies

[10] Polanyi, Karl. 1944, 1957. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press by arrangement with Rinehart & Company, Inc.

[11] One must however note that the strongest and most long lasting criticism of The Great Transformation has been directed at the passages where he argues that reciprocative and redistributive forms of integration have been much more common in human history than self-regulating market systems.

[12] In his further works, Polanyi's argues that the SRM could not survive -- not because of the distributional consequences that play the major role in Marx's explanation of the inevitable collapse of capitalism -- but because the starkly utopian nature of the SRM gave rise to a spontaneous counter movement, even among those enjoying increased material prosperity.

[13] In pastoralist societies for instance the concept of “cattle complex” which implies the deep intrinsic values that are inherent in pastoralism , do explain how social responsibility and sustainable models of economies and social relations inform business.

[14] See the Introduction to Corporate Citizenship, UNISA, Centre for Corporate Citizenship.

[15] This is almost some spirituality of Collectiveness and Humility. This Perpetual optimism is due to strong belief in the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent superior being in the form of the creator of mankind.

[16] As a result, there is an inherent trust and belief in fairness of all human beings. This manifests itself in the predisposition towards universal brotherhood, even shared by African-Americans.

[17] The individual here refer to both natural and legal persons.

[18] Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice, p 65.

[19] As I have mentioned in other discussions, I doubt if the ISO system has either the capacity or the willingness to confront this challenge. See Steve Ouma Akoth; Comments on the Guidance on Social submitted on 19th April 2006.

[20] Pinkard, Democratic Liberalism, pp. 51; 101f.

[21] Pinkard views Duncan Kennedy's classification of 'individualism' and 'altruism' as two competing theories and a fragmentation of liberalism. This concern is to transcend rather than choose or reduce the two into compromise. Pp. 100f

[22] Pinkard, DemocraticLiberalism, p, 15.

More than twenty years into the AIDS epidemic in Africa we continue to struggle with its scale and tragic consequences. In a continent where, according to UNAIDS and WHO in 2005, up to 28,9 million adults and children were living with HIV and AIDS, we continue to fail to prevent infection in young people, to leave many who need it without access to treatment and to rely heavily on poor households for care and support. In 2005 alone on the continent there were about 3 million people newly infected and 2,5 million adult and child deaths due to AIDS.

So what can we learn from the history of the epidemic that will help us change this unacceptable loss of life and wellbeing?

John Illife’s book claims ‘modesty’ in outlining the history of the AIDS epidemic in Africa based on accessible, published literature. He discusses the still contentious first origins of the epidemic and maps the spread of HIV across the major regions of the continent. He traces the epidemic through conditions such as Tuberculosis and Kaposi’s sarcoma, that marked the path of the virus. The book cautions against over-simplifying the conditions that lead to the spread of HIV infection. For example, he describes how areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo, affected by war and violence, had low rates of HIV infection due to isolation and reduced mobility, preventing the linking of sexual networks. At the same time economic opportunities in more stable societies led to mobility and urbanisation that provided channels for the spread of HIV infection.

His presentation of the international, national and local response to the epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s describes both the inadequacy of the international response, the burnout and collapse of morale of families and medical professionals, and the courage and focus given to the response from centres like TASO and individuals like Elly Katabira in Uganda. The book traces the maturing of the epidemic in the late 1990s, both in the falling off of HIV prevalence in some parts of Africa, and the growing pressure for access to treatment from communities on the continent.

Illife proposes that history teaches us some lessons about the epidemic and our response to it. The first new cases in Africa were early, in the late 1950s, and the disease spread through commercial and population movements before the disease was known or recognised. By the 1980s when it was recognised, after some initial resistance internationally and within the continent, it was already rooted within the population at epidemic levels. He argues that this deprived the continent of the opportunity to intervene in the earliest stages of the epidemic, and is a fundamental reason for the depth of the epidemic on the continent. Illife describes how the response to the epidemic was confounded by economic, social and gender inequities and diverse and contradictory understandings of the epidemic, from medical and scientific analyses to those drawn from religious and traditional morality and political perceptions.

The evolution of AIDS, under the intense scrutiny of medical and social science and in a period of growth of global communication, does make this epidemic unique both for the way it is understood and for the responses to it. Many of these lessons on the epidemic and the responses to it have been learned from Africa. The book by Illife adds further useful evidence to this learning and places the epidemic in a historical perspective.

And yet, despite this growing body of evidence, African households continue to take on a significant burden of the response to AIDS. Only recently have meaningful resources for treatment begun to flow to Africa and the policies and resources to prevent HIV infection remain inadequate. How can history assist to understand a global inequity of this scale? Surely this calls for a deeper political economy analysis of the historical facts that Iliffe presents?

Let’s take one example of this political economy: The book hints at the corporate economic, social and political interests that shaped responses to the epidemic. It gives less evidence on the structural adjustment policies that spread through Africa at the same time as the epidemic. In the 1980s, when countries were competing for foreign investment under liberalisation policies, public health reason was overshadowed by economic imperative. Even as AIDS was recognised and diagnosed, economic policies cut spending on the interventions and systems to prevent and treat it, with falling access to public health services, and especially primary health care outreach in low income communities. Policies that increased the economic and social determinants for HIV, such as mass retrenchment, flexible and insecure employment, inadequate housing and unsafe community environments with privatising essential services could not be questioned. The change being produced by AIDS was subject to a much more powerful change agenda: a penetration of ‘free’ market policies, efficiency driven social policies and liberalised production that left families and communities on the margins of their own national economies, producing what they did not consume, not able to afford what they did not produce, susceptible to the risk of HIV and vulnerable to the impact of AIDS.

Public health evidence on AIDS at the time was interesting, sometimes alarming, but not decisive. If in the 1980s the full devastating reality of the evidence cited in the book of 13 million AIDS related deaths and 12 million orphans due to AIDS were really given recognition, would there not have been some rethink about the scale and pace of this market reform, its associated collapse of solidarity and exposure to poverty? Perhaps it was not simply the quiet spread of the virus through our populations in the 1970s that made the epidemic in Africa so profound. It was also in the 1980s the massive block placed by dominant neoliberal free market policies to the universal, solidarity based comprehensive social protection, health and employment policies that were needed to respond to HIV and AIDS.

Iliffe is correct at the end of the book that the long incubation period of the epidemic has provided grounds for a new form of organising: that of patients for their own treatment. The actions of social movements and some states have brought back onto the agenda issues of solidarity and universal access to health care and access to treatment at a global level. Pointing to the maturing of the epidemic, Iliffe ends on a note of optimism that ‘the virus no longer holds the initiative that explained its success’. If however it is indeed our own political, economic and social institutions and policies that we must confront to take control over HIV and AIDS, then a more pertinent lesson from history may be the one captured on the front cover of the book, in the hands of a person holding a poster saying ‘Stand up for your rights’.

* Rene Loewenson is Programme Manager for Equinet, the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

A new resources section on the Civil Society Partnerships Programme website gives useful information on funding opportunities, lessons and approaches from other programmes and details of other organisations that work directly or indirectly in the same field.

The 6th edition of the Arab Film Festival is being held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands from May 30 to June 4th. In addition to the screenings of films from the Arab world or from Arab filmmakers, there will be discussions, debates and the opportunity to meet filmmakers, actors, artists, journalists etc.

According to new data in the UNAIDS 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic the AIDS epidemic appears to be slowing down globally, but new infections are continuing to increase in certain regions and countries. The report also shows that important progress has been made in country AIDS responses, including increases in funding and access to treatment, and decreases in HIV prevalence among young people in some countries over the past five years.
Related Link:
* Campaigners demand action on G8 AIDS pledge at UN meeting