Africa

BRICS in Africa: “You are either at the table or on the menu”

5 June 2018 - by Patrick Bond

At a Johannesburg BRICS think tank, scholars get drunk on their own rhetoric South African academics and think tanks met on 28-31 May 2018 for deliberations leading to the July 2018 BRICS heads of state summit to be hosted by South Africa. Most of these scholars believe that the BRICS (...)
China vs the US: The new imperial scramble for Africa and global rivalries

4 June 2018 - by Lee Wengraf

Lee Wengraf writes that the rush for profits, economic volatility and militarization across Africa promises only instability, rising exploitation and violence. Since the start of the new millennium, sub-Saharan African economies have undergone a dramatic boom. This surge has been marked by (...)
China-Africa relations without Africans’ contributions

28 May 2018 - by Daouda Cissé

The piece relates that, at times, Africans are not invited to debates, conferences and other key platforms on Africa-China relations even though the topic is about Africa’s and Africans’ relations with China and Chinese. Recent discussions and exchanges among members of a research network on (...)
The EU caught in the trap of Nigeria’s refusal to sign the West Africa Economic Partnership Agreement and the Continental Free Trade Area

9 May 2018 - by Jacques Berthelot

The EU caught in the trap of Nigeria’s refusal to sign the West Africa Economic Partnership Agreement and the Continental Free Trade Area On April 9, 2018 President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria very explicitly stated to the new Ambassador of the European Union (EU), Ketil Iversen Karlsen, who (...)
Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla: “the Continental Free Trade Area is a mistake” (Interview)

4 April 2018 - by Ndongo Samba Sylla, Maghreb Emergent

The economist Ndongo Samba Sylla is the author of the following books, among others: The Fair Trade Scandal: Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and La démocratie contre la République: l’autre histoire du gouvernement du peuple. He tells Maghreb Emergent why the CFTA is “suicide for African (...)
International Women’s Day Declaration, 2018

1 March 2018 - by World March of Women

On the 8th of March2018, International Women’s Day, we from the World March of Women, diverse women from all peoples, races and ages, come together once again to reaffirm that we will keep marching until we are all free from all the oppression from the patriarchal, capitalist and colonial (...)
New Evidence of Africa’s Systematic Looting, From an Increasingly Schizophrenic World Bank

5 February 2018 - by Patrick Bond

A brand new World Bank report, The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018, offers evidence of how much poorer Africa is becoming thanks to rampant minerals, oil and gas extraction. Yet Bank policies and practices remain oriented to enforcing foreign loan repayments and transnational corporate (TNC) (...)
The Bamako Seminar, The CADTM network reinforces the struggle against illegitimate debt !

27 December 2017 - by Nathan Legrand, Fatima Zahra El Beghiti

The CADTM International network delegations met in Bamako, Mali, from 15 to 25 November 2017 to follow several political training and coordination activities. Indeed the third “women, debt and microcredit” seminar, the annual CADTM training session, was held at the same time and in the same (...)
The revival of the Commonwealth: an opportunity for further exploitation or a time to correct past wrongs?

22 December 2017 - by Mary Serumaga

The Origins of the Commonwealth ‘Commonwealth’ is a word being heard with increasing frequency in the post-Brexit era. It had always been used to refer to the British Empire – first to Australia in the 1890s and later to other territories. From the record of the Colonial Affairs debate of 1939, (...)
‘Africa Rising’ in retreat: Signs of new resistances

29 September 2017 - by Patrick Bond

Capitalism is bleeding Africa to death: illegal financial flows, legal financial outflows, FDI flows, foreign indebtedness, sub-imperial accumulation, new subsidies for infrastructure financing and uncompensated mineral and oil and gas depletion. The continent is further threatened by land (...)
Colonialism’s new clothes: The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements with Africa

22 August 2017 - by GRAIN

Since 2002, African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have negotiated a reciprocal free trade agreement known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU). While it was marketed as the magic bullet towards the ACP countries’ industrialisation and development, it (...)
African peasants highlight their struggles at Via Campesina global conference

4 August 2017 - by Boaventura Monjane

Peasants across Africa are intensifying their struggles against land grabs and other harmful policies that promote industrial agriculture. At a recent international conference organized by the world’s largest peasants movement, Via Campesina, African peasants had opportunities to share their (...)
The dark side of infrastructure investment in Africa

12 June 2017 - by Collective

With its Compact with Africa the German G20 presidency is actively promoting private loans and investment as solutions to infrastructure deficiencies on the African continent. The Compact aims at using public resources in order to improve the investment climate and mobilize private capital to (...)
Honest Accounts 2017 - How the world profits from Africa’s wealth

6 June 2017 - by Mark Curtis, Tim Jones

Profiting from Africa’s wealth Africa is rich – in potential mineral wealth, skilled workers, booming new businesses and biodiversity. Its people should thrive, its economies prosper. Yet many people living in Africa’s 47 countries remain trapped in poverty, while much of the continent’s wealth (...)
World Economic Forum-Africa hosts a turf battle between Jacob Zuma and ‘white monopoly capital’

3 May 2017 - by Patrick Bond

At a time US and South African presidents Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma personify controversies over crony capitalism, corruption, populist rhetoric and self-serving economic strategies, will big business calm down the politicians – or just egg them on? Business elites are confused, even while (...)
Africa’s New Debts

23 March 2017 - by ajohnstone

Mozambique is the first major African nation in recent times to become unable to meet obligations to international creditors. In 2012, Mozambique’s obligations to its creditors amounted to 40 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), they now total 130 percent. Banks and investment funds were (...)
How years of IMF prescriptions have hurt West African health systems

3 March 2017 - by Thomas Stubbs, Alexander E. Kentikelenis

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. But its policy proposals don’t always yield positive results for the countries it purports to help. For instance, critics have argued that the IMF inhibits government spending on public health (...)
18^th February Sahrawi Women’s Day

16 February 2017 - by World March of Women

A tireless struggle for freedom From the World March of Women we want to send to our Sahrawi sisters all of our solidarity for the celebration of their day and express all our recognition and admiration for their strength and constancy with which they lead their fight of decades for their (...)
African labour and social militancy, Marxist framing and revolutionary movement-building

1 February 2017 - by Patrick Bond

It is a great period to be a revolutionary activist in Africa. Yet the sense of stop-start progress and regress in so many sites of struggle reflects in part how poorly the working-class, poor, progressive middle class, social movements and other democrats have made alliances. The African (...)
Civil Society Denounces World Bank’s Scheme to Hijack Farmers’ Rights to Seeds

20 January 2017 - by Oakland Institute

Oakland, CA – Ahead of World Bank’s release of the 2017 “Enabling the Business of Agriculture” (EBA) report this month, 157 organizations and academics from around the world denounce the Bank’s scheme to hijack farmers’ right to seeds, attack on food sovereignty and the environment. In a letter to (...)
Campaigners demand Credit Suisse ‘comes clean’ as Mozambique defaults

19 January 2017 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

The Mozambique government has said it will not make a $60 million interest payment due on 18 January On 17 January, campaigners from the Jubilee Debt Campaign handed in a call from 900 people for Credit Suisse to “come clean” about its facilitation of secret loans to Mozambique. The campaign (...)
Are we heading for another debt crisis? If so, what should we be doing?

7 December 2016 - by Duncan Green

Just when you thought life couldn’t get more retro (Leonard Cohen on the radio, post-Brexit trade negociations, impending nuclear war), here comes another debt crisis. Probably. Had a good briefing from some key wonks in Development Finance International and the Jubilee Debt Campaign, two small (...)
IMF increasing its influence in sub-Saharan Africa

29 September 2016 - by Bretton Woods Project

SUMMARY * IMF increasingly active in sub-Saharan African states * New loan contemplated for Zambia * Existing borrower countries struggling to adhere to strict deficit limits set by Fund The IMF is increasingly active in sub-Saharan states, with sixteen current loans to countries in the (...)
“The New Green Revolution”

5 September 2016 - by Rémi Vilain

“Addressing extreme poverty and hunger around the world.” These are two goals that have not ceased to appear on “good-practicing and well-intentioned” international institutions’ agendas for several decades. If these objectives are really on the agenda - 800 million people suffer from hunger around (...)
The International Context of Global Outrage (in 5 parts)

28 July 2016 - by Eric Toussaint

We publish in a single block a series of articles written by Eric Toussaint [1] late 2011 - early 2012 which deals with the international context of global outrage. The text traces the milestones of the altermondialist movement between the early 1990s and 2012. Looking back on the movements (...)