Trade advocates had some good news recently: at a recent high-level financing conference in Lusaka, Zambia, international donors pledged over $1 billion to the North-South Corridor Initiative to upgrade transport links across Eastern and Southern Africa. Continue reading
Tag Archives: East Africa
Free Trade Agreements for Africa
by Paul Fakes
After ECOWAS, the EAC, and COMESA got things rolling, Business Daily Africa reports that regional free trade agreements in Africa are expanding to more and more of the continent:
“Twenty six African countries seeking to merge their economies into a single trading bloc that controls a combined wealth of $624m and a market of 527m people moved to a definitive stage after their leaders approved plans to establish a free trade area early this week.” Continue reading
African Entrepreneurs Promote Sustainable Sanitation Solutions
Three social entrepreneurs from Africa were in Washington, DC, in February to promote their creative – and lucrative – solutions to some of Africa’s most intractable sanitation problems.
The three – Kenyan David Kuria, Nigerian Joseph Adelegan and South African Trevor Mulaudzi – have each identified a problem in their communities and set about finding a solution based on a business model rather than turning to aid or public funding. Their innovations are successfully changing social behavior and improving public health, the environment and the economy. Continue reading
Foreign Aid: Time to Start Listening
Jeff Sachs has a great op-ed in the New York Times this week about President Obama’s ambitious plan to double financial support to promote agricultural growth in developing countries. The African countries to receive the bulk of this money are Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Malawi. Continue reading
Powering Africa
By Meg Dallett
It’s no surprise that Africa’s chronic power supply problem is bad for business. The World Bank has started adding up just how bad it is, though, and the results are staggering-Uganda alone loses $50 million annually from distribution and transmission problems on its electrical grid. Continue reading
Women Rule in Rwanda
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were murdered – there will be commemorations throughout the world on April 7th, the day that the genocide began. I was in Kigali last week and was struck by a number of things – how clean and beautiful the city is, how many NGOs and multilateral organizations are working there, and how many women are involved in every sector of society. Continue reading
Connecting East Africa
I’m writing from a hotel room in Nairobi, making do with slow internet. Like all of East Africa, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of cheap and fast broadband from the submarine fiber-optic cables soon coming ashore. SEACOM, the first of four competing cable projects, landed at the port city of Mombasa a few weeks ago. Continue reading
Training for Growth
By Meg Dallett
“Entrepreneurship” is a hot topic in development – in much of Africa, where the private sector was marginalized for so long, small business owners are a key part of driving growth. But running a successful business takes more than a good idea, and many entrepreneurs struggle because they lack training in business management. Continue reading
Washington Celebrates Rosa Whitaker & Her Company on Capitol Hill
Just hours before President Barack Obama addressed a joint meeting of Congress on February 24 to publicly disclose details of his economic rescue plan, U.S. Congressional leaders, representatives of African Embassies, World Bank President Robert Zoellick and American business, policy and nongovernmental organization leaders gathered on Capitol Hill to pay tribute to Rosa Whitaker on her birthday and the sixth anniversary of The Whitaker Group (TWG), the company she founded in 2003. More than 150 people, including distinguished American and African political and business leaders, paid tribute to TWG for driving more than $1 billion in trade, investment and revenue streams to Africa during the past six years. Continue reading
Bitter Medicine
by Charles Wetherill
Leaders and health officials from around Africa are calling for action against the flood of counterfeit and substandard medicines which daily exhaust the confidence of patients and give advantages to diseases that need no advantage as they take lives. Africa faces the steepest health care challenges of any region in the world. Medicines that cannot be trusted compound those challenges beyond measure. Continue reading
Ugandan Farmers Supply World Food Program
Ugandan smallholders have supplied $53 million worth of food to the United Nations World Food Program as part of its new Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative which is designed to give poor farmers in developing countries the opportunity to move beyond subsistence agriculture into commercial production. (Photo by Penny Ferguson/WFP)
WFP bought maize worth $34 million and beans worth $10 million from Uganda, as well as $9 million worth of maize meal and enriched blends for children. It also paid $14 million to local truckers to transport the foodstuffs to their destination warehouses. The food is intended for use in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Continue reading
Africa Health News Jan-Feb 2009
In this issue: successful PEPFAR partnerships, strengthening Tanzania’s health sector, a new initiative in Uganda, the final push against guinea worm, and more. Continue reading
Africa Health News November-December 2008
Search engine company Google announced in October that it awarded grants of more than $14 million to support researchers in Africa and Southeast Asia who are working to prevent the next pandemic. The initiative, known as Predict and Prevent, will be part of a global effort to identify hot spots where diseases may emerge, detect new pathogens circulating in animal and human populations, and respond to outbreaks before they become global crises. Continue reading
Rosa Whitaker Applauds Starbucks’ Investment in Burundian Coffee
Rosa Whitaker praised the Starbucks Coffee Company for including coffee from Burundi’s Kayanza region on the featured menu in stores nationally.
”This is a testament to Burundi’s hard work in bringing peace to their country and to Starbucks’ commitment to African development,” said Ms. Whitaker, who worked with the Embassy of Burundi to facilitate a Starbucks team visit to Burundi in 2007. She called the promotion a “peace dividend” for Burundi, emphasizing the benefits to the country’s economy. “Working with Starbucks will create more jobs, boost the coffee industry and bring about the kind of growth that helps raise living standards for everyone.” Continue reading
Uganda Update Fall 2008
Africa moved one step closer to full economic integration in October when representatives from three regional trade blocs, including six Heads of State, agreed at a summit hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala, to form a new cross-regional free trade bloc and customs union. The new bloc, to be comprised of the 26 member nations of the Common Market of Southern and Eastern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), will create the largest free trade area on the African continent with a market of over 527 million people and a combined GDP of $624 billion.
Africa Health News September-October 2008
Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), has commended African governments on their leadership in advancing health care across the continent. At the opening of the 58th session of the Regional Committee for
Africa on September 1, 2008, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Dr. Chan said, “You have demonstrated that, with enough commitment and support, truly anything can be done.”
President Museveni Advances Africa’s Interests During US Visit
President Yoweri Museveni of the Republic of Uganda concluded an official state visit to the United States during which he advanced Africa and, specifically, Uganda’s interests in a myriad of ways. During meetings with President Bush, Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice, United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Acting Administrator of USAID Henrietta Holsom Fore, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus, Museveni urged US leaders to protect and expand the African Growth and African Opportunity Act (AGOA), President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). He further urged US leaders to consider launching a US-Africa Summit to build on the partnership with Africa, while according African leaders with an opportunity to officially provide Washington with input on global issues, such as climate change, trade, and terrorism. Continue reading
President Museveni Calls for Public-Private Partnerships in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS
President Museveni of the Republic of Uganda was lauded at a breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel for his achievement in fighting HIV/AIDS by an audience of over 130 representatives of the African Diplomatic Corps, health care industry, NGO’s and global media as well as senior U.S. and Ugandan officials. The breakfast, entitled “The Way Forward on HIV/AIDS and Health Care in Africa: Partnerships and a New Paradigm,” was held at 8:30 am and co-hosted by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) and a coalition of NGOs including the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, Africare, Church World Service, Constituency for Africa as well as The Whitaker Group. In a speech that highlighted success stories from Uganda’s fight against HIV/AIDS, the President emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships between industry, NGOs and government to advance research and innovation around the globe and to improve access to medicine and treatment across Africa. The discussion followed yesterday’s meeting between the President and U.S. President George W. Bush, during which the two leaders discussed efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Continue reading
