The Conferences and Events Secretariat supports participation by eligible delegates at conferences that address topics of particular interest to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Conferences must directly support one or more of CIDA’s program priorities (governance, health, basic education, private-sector development, and environmental sustainability, with gender equality as a cross-cutting theme), and seek to influence sustainable development in developing countries and/or countries in transition.

TrainersPod is a media rich support center for organizations in need of support for the development of learning technologies. At TrainersPod you can share your experience in creating e-learning and e-training solutions for the education, business and health care fields. The sharing is mutual in that creators can receive feedback via the blogs and hopeful help disseminate information on advancement in technology and pedagogy.

GenARDIS is a Small Grants Fund to address Gender Issues in Information and Communication Technologies for Agricultural and Rural Development in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP Countries). 15 grants @ 7,000 Euro will be awarded. Submission Deadline:June 2, 2008.

Comment on Gala Gabirondo article

Thank you for the helpful analysis! It shows well the Gates contradictions. A major point missed in the article, however, is that AGRA capitalists do not only want to position themselves, against China, to be the suppliers of seed and agricultural inputs to poor African farmers. They are also advancing full speed ahead in stealing African bioresources. AGRA will greatly assist the theft and patenting (biopiracy) of African indigenous strains, something already happening in Kenya as they genetically modify sorghum.

Corporations with falling rates of profit from overproduction, as Gabirondo correctly points out, need new markets. But they also need lower cost or free inputs, such as biodiverse food crops. This theft of seed ('accumulation by dispossession' - David Harvey) adds to profit more quickly than dreams of future markets.

Further, rather than allowing them to use the word, 'philanthropy,' let's call it private ownership of Africa's gene pool. The corporations are financing research after African governments have been systematically removed from agricultural extension, research and marketing since 1981, according to the neoliberal agenda. African agriculture does need assistance, but what the Gates Foundation is doing is not a gift, for the program is taking genetic wealth much more valuable any billions of dollars.

*For further analysis, please see Andrew Mushita and Carol B. Thompson. 2007. Biopiracy of Biodiversity – International Exchange as Enclosure. Africa World Press.

Attempts to use certification schemes to reduce the widespread environmental and social problems caused by growing crops for fuels and animal feeds are bound to
fail, states a new report released today by Friends of the Earth groups. The report is released on the eve of a controversial April 23-24 meeting in Buenos Aires set to discuss the certification of growing soy, a crop expanding rapidly to meet the increasing demand for fuel and the world's most-used animal feed.

Increasingly restrictive asylum policies in Europe, as well as a growing emphasis on the return of rejected asylum seekers, refugees and irregular migrants, raise new interest amongst governments and international organizations for processes of return migration. Researchers from CIDIN (Radboud University) and AMIDSt (Amsterdam University) analyzed the return migration experiences of 178 former refugees, rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants to six countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Togo and Vietnam.

The article and analysis is especially topical [China still a small player in Africa, China's emergence as a key economic player in Africa deserves critical analysis. The writer does well to discuss and put into context China's growing economic interests in Africa.

I believe we are in the midst of a shift in balance of power in Africa with the Chinese coming in as the new kids on the block. Its reported for instance that China lends three times more to Africa than the World Bank. African leaders seem content with dealing with China in comparison to the west. And ex-Botswana president, Mogae has said the Chinese treat them as partners compared to europeans who treat them as surbodinates. However Africa is still simply a source of raw materials for China and a market for Chinese industry unless this relationship is transformed further real partnership will be anything but achieved.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem argues that "there is nothing revolutionary in perpetuating personal rule in the name of liberation" and therefore Africans have a duty to see electoral justice in Zimbabwe regardless of where the West stands

A couple of weeks ago it was the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther king Junior. He remains relevant even for generations that never knew him largely because the great injustices and oppression of his days which  he confronted with nothing more than exemplary moral courage to take a stand against unjust power. Those injustices  still continue to mutate not only in the US but across the world. That's why the words and example of martin Luther King Junior continue to echo as a source of inspiration to all those who speak truth to power. One of his many quotable quotes that I like is: "evil triumphs because good men refuse to speak up". We have to forgive the absence of gender sensitivity in the emphasis on 'men' as typical of the age but it does not deter from the import of the statement. Good people must speak up in the face of injustice no matter the consequences They obligation is not just to speak up it must extend to taking whatever action one is able to.

Zimbabwe and President Mugabe is a situation we cannot in all good conscience continue to pussyfoot about anymore. It is indefensible that one man, no matter his contribution to the country, should be holding the people to ransom. I know that a tree does not make forest. I am quite aware too that Mugabe alone is not responsible for the situation. There are many interests hiding behind him. It is even conceivable that in spite all the rhetoric and masochistic belligerence that the old man has become an executive prisoner trapped in a power system he pioneered which now has him cornered without escape route.  This kind of structural analysis is important  but it risks underestimating human agency and individual responsibility. Its primitive determinism  may even be used to justify any situation rendering intervention impossible. If individuals are not important why do we have heroes and heroines? Why do we have leaders? We are neither zombie not automatons who behave in a predetermined way. Choices are made and unmade by human beings therefore accountability is first and foremost individual. Mugabe is no longer part of the problem of Zimbabwe: he is now the problem. The choice that he makes or not make can either help resolve the crisis or accentuate it. If he decides to step down there will be no body who will force him to remain in office. Neither the v dreaded Security services nor the  aged ZANU-PF nomenclatural can force him to remain in the  presidential palace. The fact that he has not taken that option is a deliberate personal choice just as his one man contest for candidacy of the party has always been his choice.

It is simply wrong and unacceptable that weeks after the March 29 general election the result of the Presidential contest is yet to be declared. Meanwhile there is a recount of the declared Parliamentary results! Even those who were willing to overstretch their good will to Mugabe must be finding it ridiculous or running out of excuses.   Some of them continue to beg the issues further by  forcing parallels with other botched elections. They point out that it took 6 weeks and the Supreme Court to declare Bush President of the USA in 2001. why should an avowed Pan Africanist leader vomiting all kinds of anti imperialist attacks be defended by Washington's non standard?  They also point at the two months it took before the final results of the 2005 controversial elections in Ethiopia could be released. I am surprised they are not even saying that Mugabe is better than Meles who jailed those who defeated his party! Why should Africans always judge themselves by looking down instead of looking up to  higher standards?  Other people's bad manners and the hypocrisies of others should not justify the mischief making by Mugabe and his hirelings.

They have now shot themselves not just on the foot but all over the body by this syndicated circus. Whatever the outcome now they are losers because most reasonable people have concluded that they have tampered with and are still tampering with the result. Even if they declare the MDC as winners people will still say it is because of delayed shame or fear of consequences.

It is really sad that President Mugabe who is probably one of the better (if not the best) prepared leader for the job should end like this. He has 7 degrees (not honorary) for goodness sake! A man who acquired a mosaic of  degrees in an academic cocktail of humanities and social sciences disciplines and also led one of the most successful liberation movements in Africa could not be accused of arriving in state house by accident. But he is ending his rule and life as a tragic figure hanging on and increasingly sounding and behaving like a man trapped in a time warp. It must sadden all Africans and good ammunition to all enemies of Africa who believe that nothing good comes out us no matter how well and promising the beginning was.

Unfortunately for Africa when one of us fails it is blamed on all of us. No one will blame Americans and other westerners for all the atrocities of George Bush. No one will even blame Brown for Blair's evil fraternity with Bush and other Europeans will quickly wash their hands clean of him. Yet these same people use Zimbabwe and Mugabe to beat our heads all the time. Consequently many Africans whether Presidents or peasants have become defensive about the situation. The fear of not being seen as echoing London and Washington has policed many of us into silence which ZANU-PF/Mugabe hard liners have harvested as popular support among Africans . While it maybe true that many Africans identify with Land reform (including grabbing it from the descendants of settlers who had violently grabbed it from Africans in the first place) and hale Mugabe's anti imperialist posturing we must be painfully aware that the conflicts in Zimbabwe goes beyond Land. It is high time we are more proactive in saying to the old man : thanks for the Land but enough is enough of your personal rule. It is dodging the issue to be constantly saying he is not the only one. Tripoli, Kampala, Douala, Addis Ababa, Luanda, Liberaville , Conakry and other places have long term rulers who really have to be looking at life outside of state house. However the fact that there are other culprits does not mean that those caught should not be dealt with. President Mugabe still has opportunity to exit with some dignity but it requires a level of selflessness and patriotism that may be lacking in him at the moment.

There is nothing revolutionary in perpetuating personal rule in the name of liberation. How many more Zimbabweans have to die before we stop blaming our leaders, the AU, SADC, COMESA, etc? What can you do wherever you may be to show concrete solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe? The workers of South Africa who refused to allow arms from China meant for Harare to be offloaded in the Durban port have shown the way. Their Mozambican comrades have done the same. Now the arms are heading for Angola and the workers of Angola need to also be clear that they will not be party to arming a regime destroying its own people. How can a country that cannot feed its citizens be importing arms? If our governments cannot act what about us in whatever symbolic way possible?

We need to rid ourselves of the anti western default reflexes we have internalized that makes anyone being attacked by the West,   is ipso facto, African nationalist and anti imperialist hero or heroine. It is moral cowardice and politically irresponsible for us to hide indecision and inertia behind anti Western postures. London, Paris, Brussels or Washington and New York should not be our moral compass. We need to judge ourselves by higher standards .  We have to stop watching our shoulders to see where London or Washington stands before taking a standard on matters of principle.  It is is time to speak out and stand up for what we believe in.

*Dr Tajudeen Abdulraheem writes this syndicated column as a concerned Pan Africanist.

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

Leaders of churches, development agencies, civil rights, labor, and human rights groups have praised the passage by the US House of Representatives by a vote of 285-132 of the Jubilee Act (HR 2634). The legislation calls on the US Treasury Department to negotiate a multilateral agreement for debt cancellation for up to 24 additional poor countries that need cancellation to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Rights of an elected parliamentarian must be respected as it impacts on the entire country, according to the Committee on Human Rights of the Interparliamentary Union (IPU). "... if the rights of an elected parliamentarian are not respected, this does not bode well for the ordinary citizens of those countries," says President of the IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, Sharon Carstairs, Thursday.

The project 'Co-operative research on East African territorial integration within globalisation' (CREATING) has received funding from the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development under its Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) programme of measures to support international cooperation.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa is one of the 9 major partners in Europe and eastern Africa involved in this project.

South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994 created new possibilities for economic policy. Economic liberalization brought sustained, if unspectacular, growth that reversed the long decline in per capita incomes, but left its scars in much job shedding associated with business becoming internationally competitive. Using poverty estimates from a combination of sources, this WIDER study demonstrates that poverty nevertheless declined quite substantially after the turn of the century.

After decades of civil war, the Democratic Republic of Congo is about to sign an agreement with China who will provide $9 billion worth of investment in rebuilding infrastructure in exchange for the country’s natural resources, the largest deal of its kind in Africa.

The 2nd Symposium on Academic Globalization: AG 2008, part of the Academic Globalization Project, is being organized in the context of WMSCI 2008, and its collocated conferences. The purpose of AG 2008 is to bring together scholars, educators and practitioners with the objective of exploring, reflecting and sharing ideas with regards to the impact that the Globalization Phenomena is having or might have on universities (research, teaching and continuing education), and vice versa: the impact that academia is generating, or could generate on the phenomenon of globalization.

Present to 350 other experts from the international youth enterprise, employment and livelihood community. The Call for Proposals is now open. Proposal submission deadline is April 18, 2008. Click here for more information. Practitioners, funders, members of the private sector, academics and youth leaders from over 25 countries and all sectors will share learning, innovations, and ideas for strengthening and expanding opportunities for young people around the world.

Celine Tan argues that "the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness may have the effect of circumscribing national sovereignty and country autonomy over development policies contrary to its stated principles of country ownership and mutual accountability."

Two recent studies have highlighted the propensity of new modalities of aid and aid harmonisation processes under the Paris Declaration framework to increase rather than reduce donor interventions in aid recipient countries and exacerbating the imbalances of power between donor and recipient countries.

The Paris Declaration was adopted in 2005 as a roadmap to increase the quality of aid, and development assistance is increasingly influenced by whether the recipient developing countries comply with the Declaration's principles.

In a report prepared for the UN Human Rights Council?s High-Level Task Force on the Implementation of the Right to Development released earlier this year, Roberto Bissio, executive director of the Third World Institute and Social Watch based in Montevideo, Uruguay, argued that the relatively minor gains in efficiency and reduction of some transaction costs in the aid process are often overridden by the asymmetrical conditions under which negotiations are taking place between donors and recipients within the Paris Declaration framework.

Meanwhile, the findings of a study by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) released two weeks ago showed that donors have continued to undermine policy ownership in low-income developing countries by imposing their own priorities and policies on developing country governments through new aid instruments while marginalising the voice and participation by citizens and civil society groups in the process.

Taken together, these studies highlight the danger that the new architecture for negotiating and delivering concessional financing to developing countries under the rubric of the Paris Declaration may have the converse effect of reducing rather than improving the efficacy of development assistance.

They demonstrate that increased coordination of aid policies by developed countries can in practice work towards undermining rather than supporting global partnerships for development, including those under the Millennium Declaration, and create new forms of conditionalities on developing countries.

The Paris Declaration is a non-binding declaration that was endorsed by a group of developed and developing countries in 2005, following on from a series of high-level inter-governmental forums on aid effectiveness and harmonisation.

It has a total of 115 signatories to date and claims to lay down ?a roadmap to improve the quality of aid and its impact on development with 56 partnership commitments organised around the five key principles: ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results, and mutual accountability.

Compliance with the principles of the Paris Declaration is measured using 12 different indicators and development financing is now increasingly channelled through countries? compliance with these indicators.

According to Bissio's extensive study of the Paris Declaration framework, the Declaration fails to provide the institutional mechanisms to address the asymmetries in power between donors and creditors on one hand and individual aid recipient countries on the other. He argues that institutional ownership of the Paris Declaration process remains vested with the OECDs Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the World Bank where donors and creditors have exclusive or majority control, with little or no developing country voice or vote.

Bissio's report further points out that for recipient countries, the Paris Declaration creates a new level of supranational economic governance above the World Bank and the regional development banks, with the OECD?s DAC comprising of the same western governments who control the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and who contribute to the Bank?s concessional lending facility, the International Development Association (IDA).

At the country level this new international governance increases the asymmetry between the aid recipient country and its donors and creditors, which gather together as a single group in the new aid modalities ... While this is intended to save costs and make procedures easier for the recipient country (and thus make aid more efficient), the inherent risks of such an increased imbalance in negotiating power at the country level are not compensated in any way by the international mechanisms set in motion by the [Paris Declaration].

Although developing and developed countries are represented in equal numbers in the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness which has the responsibility for managing the operationalisation of the Paris Declaration principles, the presence of institutions controlled by OECD members tilts the balance in favour of the latter, said the report.

Further, in such an ad hoc new body, developing countries lack the tradition and expertise of their own negotiating groups that they have put together over the years in other international negotiating fora (such as the G77 in the UN or G20 and G33 and other regional groupings in the WTO).

Under the Paris Declaration framework, donors and recipients are not peers, as recipient countries are penalised if they do not implement conditions for assessing financing under the framework but they do not have a corresponding mechanism for penalising the donors and/or creditors, the report argues.

Bissio's study found that the complex set of assessment criteria and definition of indicators by which the Paris Declaration is reviewed, the associated new conditionality packages for disbursement of aid under new mechanisms such as direct budget support and sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) and criteria for evaluating recipient countries' governance systems as part of the new aid system are all ultimately decided upon by the DAC, in close working relation with the World Bank?.

These findings are complemented by results of the Eurodad study which showed that the Paris Declaration?s measure of country ownership is the presence of a good quality and operational national development strategy as determined by the World Bank.

The Eurodad report also argues that in spite of the Paris Declaration's rhetoric on mutual accountability, donors are rarely held accountable for the quality of their aid to developing countries.

Instead, it found that the focus of the Paris Declaration has been ?entirely on the recipient government?s responsibilities and fails to recognise the steps that donors must take to create space for recipient governments to fulfil these responsibilities.

At the same time, recipient governments rarely take the lead in determining aid policies and ?are only negotiating around the edges if at all when it comes to improving the quality of the resources on offer. Case studies from seven low-income countries showed that power imbalances and weak capacity continue to limit developing country governments? ability to negotiate with donors and creditors on the conditions of their financing. The high aid dependency of some recipient countries shifts the balance of power to the donors,? says Eurodad.

Both reports also highlight the undermining of national policy space which accompanies the new modalities of aid championed by the Paris Declaration, including those centred on the World Bank and IMF-led Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and PRSP-linked financing instruments, such as budget support whereby financing is channelled direct into a country?s budget in support of a general policy framework.

The Eurodad report shows that the complex array of structures which have grown up around the PRSP process where donors and recipient governments gather to discuss policies and programmes under the guise of policy coordination have increased donor interventions in country?s development strategies and economic policies.

As donors increase the amount of aid they give either through direct budget support or to sector (e. g. agriculture, health, education) ministries, they also want to have a say on government policy in that sector, says the report.

Not only do the donors' constant presence and increased discussions with governments on the minutiae of government policy place additional pressure on overburdened administrations in developing countries, they also enable donors to get increasingly involved in the details of national policymaking.?

The Eurodad report argues that the conditionalities accompanying new aid instruments such as budget support has therefore shrunk the political space that such an instrument was supposed to have provided.

It says: Budget support has come hand in hand with more intrusion by donors in government policy making through ever more detailed matrices of policy conditions and performance indicators ... usually laid out in the Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) - the conditionality matrix attached to budget support.

Conditionalities may also be attached through the Paris Declaration indicators themselves. For example, according to the Paris Declaration, donors are required to increase the use of country systems, including national procedures for public financial management and public procurement. However, recipient countries must in turn commit towards improving such systems in order for them to be considered reliable by donors.

Indicators for reviewing compliance with the Paris Declaration principles in these areas include adherence of developing countries to broadly accepted good practices or implementation of a reform programme to achieve such practices. These good practices in turn are based upon the OECDs indicators which include the opening up of national procurement systems to qualified foreign firms, according to Bissio's report.

This amounts to a controversial conditionality of liberalising public procurement system and undermining developing countries' right to use national procurement systems as a development tool, and one which goes against the developing countries demands against the Singapore issues in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), says Bissio.

In adopting some of the reports recommendations at its fourth session in January this year, the High-Level Task Force on the Right to Development called for greater efforts to promote untied aid aligned with national priorities, particularly in the fields of procurement and financial management in order to meet the ownership requirements under the Paris Declaration and to make use of opportunities to build on the congruence between the principles of aid effectiveness and the right to development?

*Celina Tan is a Senior Researcher at the Third World Network.

**The two reports referred here have come at a crucial time for the Paris Declaration in the run-up to the third High Level Conference on Aid Effectiveness to be held in Accra, Ghana in September 2008 which will review the operationalisation of the Paris Declaration framework. They can be downloaded at: and [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

More mothers and children in developing countries are receiving treatment than ever before, according to a new report by the United Nations. But stigma, limited information and fragile health systems still pose hurdles to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Coverage of mother-to-child transmission prevention (PMTCT) services continues to expand, especially in southern and eastern Africa, according to a report by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) entitled, “Children and AIDS: Second stock taking report.”

South Africa's Archbishop has condemned the persecution of lesbians, gay, transgender, bisexual and intersex (LGBTI). Desmond Tutu addressed hundreds of gays and lesbians at an annual awards gala dubbed "A Celebration of Courage" in San Francisco in the United States.

When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Directors meet for their Spring and Annual Meetings tens of thousands of demonstrators regularly protest in front of the conference centers. The activists want to raise global awareness of the neoliberal trade and financial policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions. These policies were established in 1989 in the so-called “Washington Consensus” between the World Bank, IMF and the US Government.

While recognising that market access is important to ensure the development of international trade, India is engaging with African countries and offering trade privileges to the continent, which is home to over 900 million people.