'Fast Economic Growth' in Africa

The economic outlook for Africa is improving after a decade of growth of 5.4% for the continent that matches global rates, the World Bank has said.
The trend indicates that a fundamental change is occurring in Africa, a World Bank official told the BBC. But the bank's latest report, Africa Development Indicators 2007 (ADI), says ongoing investment is needed to sustain long-term development on the continent. Otherwise, a split may grow between affluent nations and stagnant ones.

The report looked at more than 1,000 indicators covering economic, human and private-sector development, governance, the environment and aid. It concludes that growth in many African countries appears to be fast and steady enough "to put a dent on the region's high poverty rate and attract global investment". The World Bank's chief economist for Africa, John Page, said he is "broadly optimistic" that there's a fundamental change going on in Africa. "For the first time in about almost 30 years we've seen a large number of African countries that have begun to show sustained economic growth at rates that are similar to those in the rest of the developing world and actually today exceed the rate of growth in most of the advanced economies," he told the BBC. The key, said Mr Page, was that "Africa has learnt to trade more effectively with the rest of the world, to rely more on the private sector, and to avoid the very serious collapses in economic growth that characterized the 1970s, 1980s and even the early 1990s." The report points to wide variations in Africa, however, highlighting three distinct groups of countries: 1. The big oil-exporting countries. 2.Those with expanding, diversified economies. 3. Those which have few natural resources, are conflict-prone and are experiencing slow or no growth.

Uneven growth rates between these groups risks splitting the continent between countries which become affluent and eradicate poverty and those which continue to stagnate. For example, 60.5% of total net foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005 went to oil exporting countries. South Africa and Nigeria account for more than half of the region's gross domestic product. Poor infrastructure and the high cost of exporting from Africa compared to other regions of the world has been holding the continent back rather than any failures of African enterprise or workers. Volatility in sub-Saharan Africa has dampened investment, the report says. Corruption is also a factor that may limit needed investments in education and health. "Perhaps the easiest illustration of that is in the resource-rich economies where the resources often accrue to a small number of corporations and to government," said Mr Page.
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Musharraf Calls Crackdown Crucial to a Fair Vote

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 13 (New York Times) — Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lift his state of emergency, insisting in an interview that it was the best way to ensure free and fair elections. He vigorously defended the emergency decree issued 10 days earlier that suspended the Constitution, dismissed the Supreme Court, silenced independent news stations and resulted in the arrests of at least 2,500 opposition party workers, lawyers and human rights advocates. “I totally disagree with her,” General Musharraf said in an interview with The New York Times at the presidential building here in the capital. “The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner.” He said Sunday that elections would go ahead by Jan. 9.

Dressed in a dark business suit rather than his military uniform, General Musharraf spoke in a confident tone, saying the decree was justified because the Supreme Court had questioned the validity of his re-election, and because of the seriousness of threats from terrorists. He refused to say when he would step down as army leader and become a civilian president, a demand that President Bush has made publicly and, in a telephone call last week, privately. “It will happen soon,” he said. General Musharraf, who has been criticized as being increasingly isolated and receiving poor advice from a shrinking circle of aides, insisted he was in touch with the mood of Pakistanis. Dismissing consistent reports that a vast majority of Pakistanis oppose his emergency decree, he said he had information from “several organizations” and feedback from politicians and friends that the move was popular. “I know what they feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place,” he said, speaking of the rising number of suicide bombings in Pakistan. “Their view is, Why have I done it so late.”

He sharply criticized the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, saying she was confrontational and would be difficult to work with. Ms. Bhutto returned to Pakistan last month in a deal brokered by the Bush administration, which hoped that the two could find a way to share power, in order to increase public support for General Musharraf’s increasingly unpopular military government. The understanding was that she would take part in elections that could make her prime minister, while he would run for re-election as president. Instead, they have engaged in increasingly public sparring, and Ms. Bhutto has come in for criticism that she is an American pawn who is not mounting serious opposition to the general. Early Tuesday, 900 police officers surrounded the house where Ms. Bhutto was staying in the eastern city of Lahore, preventing her from leading a march to Islamabad to protest what opposition groups say is martial law. After waiting for more than a week, on Tuesday she joined other opposition leaders and called for General Musharraf to resign. “You come here on supposedly on a reconciliatory mode, and right before you land, you’re on a confrontationist mode,” he said in the interview, conducted in English. “I am afraid this is producing negative vibes, negative optics.” As for her demand that he resign, he said “she has no right” to ask.

On Nov. 3, General Musharraf imposed emergency rule when it became clear that the Supreme Court was about to declare his re-election last month illegal. That election was carried out by the national and provincial assemblies and boycotted by many opposition parties, though not by Ms. Bhutto’s. After a more compliant court was impaneled this week, General Musharraf said he expected to be sworn in as a civilian president after the new court validated his re-election. But asked when emergency rule would end, he said matter-of-factly, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” He said Pakistan was suffering from a “disturbed terrorist environment,” and he appeared to be unaffected by calls from Europe as well as the United States for an end to the emergency rule. Instead, the general, whose government has received more than $10 billion in aid from the Bush administration, mostly for the military, asked for even more support, and more patience. The Bush administration has called the general the best bet to fight Al Qaeda and Islamic militants, but has also complained that the cooperation of the Pakistani military has been sporadic and often ineffective.
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Tens of Thousands Flee Congo Refugee Camps

Nov. 14th. (CNN): Tens of thousands of Congolese refugees fled camps Tuesday in the Democratic Republic of Congo as rebel troops attacked government forces in the area, the U.N. refugee agency said. A press release from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it didn't appear rebels had targeted the camps, but it reported some were looted after camp residents, classified as internally displaced persons, fled. Roads to Goma, about 10 miles from the camps, were crowded with refugees and local residents fleeing the fighting, the UNHCR reported. Torrential rain made the movement even more difficult. "The main road toward Sake was crowded with people; we had difficulties getting through," UNHCR field safety adviser Pierre Nazroo was quoted as saying in the agency's release. "Internally displaced people are moving from site to site, in the direction Goma."

UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said, "They have been living in extremely difficult conditions anyway. Now they have nothing but what they can carry." Redmond added, "These are people in poor health; they are soaking wet because of the torrential downpours. They need shelter, they need water, they need a lot of assistance so we're going to have to move quickly to get that help to them because a lot of them are already in a weakened state." While the Congolese government accused troops under rebel general Laurent Nkunda of staging the attack, a Nkunda spokesman denied the allegation, according to a report from the Integrated Regional Information Networks, a U.N.-affiliated news service. The spokesman, Bwambale Kakolele, said Rwandan Hutu rebels who also operate in the area were behind the attack, that report said.

A spokesman for the U.N. military mission in the Congo said it was uncertain which group attacked the Congo army outpost near the village of Kishangazi, according to the U.N.-affiliated news service. "We think it could have been insurgents close to Nkunda who attacked, but we cannot rule out the [Rwandan rebels]," spokesman Col. Pierre Cherayron was quoted as saying. The UNHCR identified the affected camps as Mugunga I, Mugunga II, Lac Vert and Bulengo, saying about 28,000 had abandoned the first three camps and about 2,000 had left Bulengo. The UNHCR said 375,000 Congolese in North Kivu province have been forced from their homes in the past year. In the past two months alone, 160,000 have fled their homes amid the fighting between renegade troops and government forces, the agency said.

Congolese President Joseph Kabila has tried to gain a cease-fire with the rebels in the area under Nkunda, but fighting continues as hard-liners among the rebels and in the government have blocked reconciliation efforts, according to the International Crisis Group, an nongovernmental organization looking for solutions to conflicts.
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Poor S Africans Double in Decade

There are more losers in post-apartheid South Africa

The number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day has more than doubled in a decade since shortly after the end of apartheid.

The South African Institute of Race Relations survey said 4.2m people were living on $1 a day in 2005. This is up from 1.9m in 1996, two years after the first all-race elections. "Poverty has increased both in absolute numbers and proportionally," SAIRR said in a statement, blaming the rise on unemployment and HIV/Aids. Despite good economic growth in recent years, unemployment has remained consistently high at about 26%.

SAIRR says poverty is also increasing among the white population while inequality was growing among the black population. The government plan to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014 was ambitious, said SAIRR. "It is going to take a long time to get rid of the poverty," said researcher Marius Roodt.

Poverty and jobs

The governing African National Congress chooses a possible successor to President Thabo Mbeki in December, with trade unions backing the former deputy president Jacob Zuma.

South Africa has failed to create enough jobs

He has criticised Mr Mbeki's government for not doing more to reduce poverty. A government-backed report on unemployment released last month warned that a reliance on growth alone will not achieve the target of halving joblessness by 2014. It also concluded that even if the government did meet this target, it would not go very far to relieving poverty.

The most likely areas of job growth are in domestic service, restaurants and the informal sector - none of which are well paid. As the author of the Accelerated & Shared Growth Initiative for SA report, Miriam Altman, put it: "Poverty is something that we are likely to see in South Africa for many generations." (BBC Report)

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Catholic Church in Shock as State Expels Missionaries

ASMARA, ERITREA Nov 13:(CISA) -The Eritrean government has thrown the Catholic Church into tension by expelling 13 missionaries in unclear circumstances. Reliable sources have confirmed to CISA that the missionaries, including a Kenyan, were given 14 days to leave the country, beginning November 6. The expulsion, our sources say, is part of a wider plot by the Maoist dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerki to destroy the Catholic Church in the Horn of Africa nation.

The missionary news agency MISNA reports that the expulsion order was issued to four Comboni fathers (2 Mexicans, a Filipino and a Kenyan), 2 Comboni sisters, 2 Pavonian fathers, 2 Filipino Pius Teachers, 2 nuns of an unspecified congregation and a lay missionary. The lay missionary, an Italian national, was a volunteer working as secretary for the Bishop of Barentu, south-west of Eritrea. Two of the 13 missionaries, a Comboni father and sister, are already outside of Eritrea, but for personal reasons, according to MISNA. The reasons for the expulsion remain unclear. But sources told MISNA that two years ago the government gave notice to some missionary institutes to prepare local personnel ahead of a planned exit of foreigners from the nation.

Eritrea has one of the worst records of religious freedom violations in the world. More than 90 percent of its people belong to four recognized religions: Orthodox, Catholicism, Lutheran and Islam. Members of unrecognized churches are often detained and tortured. The annual International Religious Freedom Report issued by the United States of America this September says religious freedom worsened in 2006. The government severely restricted the freedom of religion for groups that it had not registered and infringed upon the independence of some registered groups.

Following a 2002 decree that religious groups must register, the government closed all religious facilities not belonging to the country's four principal faith groups. It continued to harass, arrest, and detain members of independent evangelical groups and sought greater control over the approved religious groups. The government also meddled with the Eritrean Orthodox Church by supplanting the patriarch in favour of its own candidate. It failed to register four religious groups that had applied in 2002, and it restricted religious meetings and arrested individuals during religious ceremonies, gatherings, and prayer meetings. According to media reports, many hundreds of religious detainees continue to be held without due process in harsh conditions that include extreme temperature fluctuations with limited or no access to family.
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U.S. Says South Africa Impedes U.N. Motion to Condemn Rape as a Tactic

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 8 — The United States accused South Africa on Thursday of obstructing an American-drafted General Assembly resolution that would specifically condemn rape and sexual abuse used by governments and armed groups to achieve political and military objectives. While the resolution does not mention any countries by name, the Bush administration has cited accusations that rape was being employed by soldiers and militia members as a tactic for intimidation and warfare, notably in Sudan and Myanmar. “The South African position is shocking,” said Kristen Silverberg, the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, given “South Africa’s long struggle against oppression.” She noted that the South African government took a strong domestic position against sexual violence.

Speaking in a telephone interview from Washington, Ms. Silverberg said that the South Africans were demanding watered-down language that would make the resolution one about sexual violence in general rather than one about sexual violence sponsored by governments. “We think there is a real difference between governments that fail to prevent rape and governments that actively promote it, and we do not want the resolution to blur that difference,” she said. The resolution, which currently has 61 co-sponsors, would also call on the secretary general to report back to the General Assembly on evidence of government-sanctioned rape. Ms. Silverberg described this as a needed backup mechanism that did not exist in any of the many international conventions and resolutions on sexual abuse. “We want the secretary general with all the power behind his office to shine a spotlight on this specific form of abuse,” she said.

Asked about Ms. Silverberg’s expression of shock at South Africa’s position, Baso Sangqu, the country’s deputy ambassador, said, “I am shocked about that statement because we have been working very closely within the African group to find agreement on this resolution.” He said, “We are objecting to the resolution because it is politicized and singles out clear categories of rape. We want a resolution that is nonpoliticized and that looks at rape in a holistic manner in all its situations including rape by soldiers in detention centers and in situations of foreign occupation.”

American officials said that South Africa initially tried to portray its position as one that enjoyed the support of the 43-nation African group at the United Nations. When American diplomats made inquiries in individual capitals, however, they said, they found this not to be true, and three African countries, Burundi, Congo and Liberia, have signed on as co-sponsors. Since beginning its two-year term as a member of the Security Council in January, South Africa has continually been criticized at home and by longtime supporters abroad for withholding the same sorts of international human rights condemnations at the United Nations that helped end apartheid. In the cases of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, two notorious rights violators, South Africa moved to tone down or prevent harsh actions by the Council. And it has resisted proposals for strict measures by the Council put forward by Britain, France and the United States to curb Iran’s nuclear program, even though South Africa is the only country ever to have renounced its nuclear program of its own accord.

The United States had hoped for a vote on Friday, but Ms. Silverberg said that was now in doubt because of the persistent South African demands for changes. “We would like to have a vote as soon as we have a resolution that reflects the interests of the victims rather than the interests of the government,” she said.
By WARREN HOGE
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