Africa

Free the Eritrean trade unionists!

Activists from the GMB and No Sweat protested outside the Eritrean Embassy in north London on 14 July in defence of three jailed Eritrean trade union leaders. Tewelde Ghebremedhin (chair of the Food Workers Federation), Minase Andezion (secretary of the textile workers' federation) and Habtom Weldemicael (leader of the Coca-Cola Workers Union) have been detained without trial or charges. The labour movement campaign internationally is being co-ordinated by the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF). To help the campaign to release these men, download the petition and factsheet from www...

The world's poor need solidarity

After their own fashion, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown do have a “third way”. Their friend Peter Mandelson, now European Union trade commissioner, explained it in the Independent on 4 July. “Aid-for-trade... is the key to the trading strength needed to sustain development in Africa.... To argue that free trade has failed these countries is simplistic and ignores the huge structural obstacles in the path of even the most determined modern African entrepreneurialism”. Blair, Brown, and Mandelson want to make the capitalist market work better. They oppose socialism, or even “old Labour” schemes...

If the Government wants to help Africans, why won’t it let refugees in?

By Dale Street The government’s professed concern for human rights and poverty in Africa stands in marked contrast to its treatment of refugees from Africa. Last year the major “refugee-producing” countries in Africa were Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and Sudan — all of them scenes of major human rights abuses and, in some cases, ongoing armed conflicts. But rejection rates for asylum claims lodged by nationals of these countries were uniformly high — only 55 out of 1,765 asylum-seekers from the Congo were recognised as refugees, for example, and just...

Debt relief, rights and wrongs

The Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) estimates that the total external debt of low-income countries is $523 billion (£260 billion). Debt is a huge problem. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is the current international debt relief scheme. HIPC was set up in 1996 by the World Bank and the IMF to reduce poor countries’ debts. It was reformed in 1999. The JDC says that by the beginning of 2005, only $49 billion (£25 billion) of debt has been cancelled. The total debt service being paid every day by low-income countries is $100 million (£50 million) and for every $1 (50p) received...

Who will end world poverty?

How can hunger, poverty, and suffering through preventable or curable disease be ended? Share the world’s food production equally, and everyone would be well-nourished. Add on some extra production achieved by reducing the subsidies given in Europe and the USA to farmers not to produce. Add more by giving plots of land to some of the one-third of the world’s workforce who are unemployed, or get only scraps of work, and also giving them the equipment to produce with. Cut the huge waste in food that is over-processed or over-transported for the world’s well-off. Then everyone could feast when...

Africa’s force for change

By Paul Hampton The voices of African workers have been missing from the recent media frenzy about Africa. Even on the left the general picture of Africans is of passive victims of disease and malnutrition in need of charity. This conception is completely wrong. The political and economic situation for African workers is generally very difficult, but their militancy and organisation is an inspiration that deserves our solidarity. And the working class in Africa is no privileged caste but the crucial agent of progress on the continent: both for reducing poverty, for improving democratic rights...

How Europe underdeveloped Africa

Gordon Brown claimed that the European countries should stop apologising for their role as colonial powers in past. Colin Foster explains why to “forgiving and forgetting” the past stop us from understanding the problems African and other "Third World" countries face in a post-colonial present. When Africa was not “backward” In the Middle Ages, Ethiopia was not underdeveloped. Walter Rodney — a black Marxist historian assassinated in 1980 as he tried to build a working-class party in his native Guyana — wrote: “The kings distinguished themselves by building several churches cut out of solid...

African conflicts the G8 will ignore

Sudan The Nairobi peace agreements this January brought to an end — in theory, at least, 21 years of civil war in Sudan, which have killed at least 400,000 people and forced nearly five million to flee their homes. Unfortunately, the underlying causes of the war remain largely unaddressed, as does the persistent big-power interference in Sudanese politics. What is more, there is still a war going on in Darfur, a conflict inextricably linked to that between the Islamist dictatorship and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). A conflict which has been driven by a vicious government-backed...

Africa, poverty, G8: some facts

AIDS In Western Europe and North America, death rates for those with HIV/AIDS have been cut dramatically through the use of antiretroviral drug treatment. In poor countries where six million people with HIV/AIDS need treatment, only 400,000 - less than 8% - are receiving it. In Africa, home to 26 million HIV/AIDS victims, only 1% are receiving treatment. The UN was understating it hugely when it commented that "treatment and care are not yet reaching the vast majority of people in need" (December 2003). This is because the massive pharmaceutical corporations producing brand drugs have fought...

Some notes on the G8 debt agreement

By Paul Hampton These notes are based on materials from the Jubilee Debt Campaign for a No Sweat meeting in London 14 July 2005 More info: Jubilee Debt Campaign . 1. Why debt relief is necessary The overall debt situation is huge. The Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) estimates that the total external debt of low-income countries is $523bn (£260bn). The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative is the current international debt relief scheme. HIPC was set up in 1996 by the World Bank and the IMF to reduce poor countries' debts. It was reformed in 1999. The JDC says that by the beginning of...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.