At the outset of the twenty-first century, Afropessimism permeates both the scholarly and popular literatures on Africa. In the dominant discourses, Africa is constructed as "hopeless," "hemmed in," on the periphery, and even as "left out" of the global economy and community of nations. This interdisciplinary volume interrogates these interpretations and offers a probing critique of neoliberal globalization and its uneven impact on Africa. The essays debate the constraints and opportunities for Africa’s political economy, civil societies, and cultural production in the current era of intensifying globalization.

A last-minute World Trade Organisation compromise in Geneva on intellectual property protection and access to medicines is being heralded by some as finally opening the doors to imports of generic medicines by poor countries without a manufacturing capability. In intense negotiations in recent months, the U.S. reached behind-the-scenes agreements with key countries such as Brazil, India, South Africa, and Kenya. The U.S. and the international pharmaceutical industry made some concessions after blocking an agreement for almost two years. However, the compromise also imposes extremely complicated procedures designed to protect patent rights, which leave enormous obstacles to overcome before affordable medicines are actually made available. The World Health Organisation and treatment access activists stress that the real test will be whether affected countries and international agencies take full advantage of their right to put public health before patent rights. Clicking on the link provided will take you to the rest of this posting by Africa Action containing a variety of statements and articles on the issue.

From 14-17 August 2003, we activists from across Africa, representing African civil society organisations, labour unions and other social movements, gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa to evaluate the current state of negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and to strategise and make known our positions on the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference due to be held in Cancun, Mexico from 10-14 September 2003. Our stand on WTO's role: We re-affirm our recognition of the WTO as a key instrument of transnational capital in its push for corporate globalisation. We noted the many destructive effects of WTO agreements on the lives of working people and the poor, especially women, in Africa and throughout the world. We renewed our determination to continue resisting corporate globalisation, and the WTO itself until it is replaced by a fully democratic institution.

A new report reveals the key role transnational corporations play in shaping the policy of the WTO. 'Business Rules: Who pays the price?', released on August 28, was produced by Friends of the Earth International and the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO). Friends of the Earth International is highlighting the WTO meeting which it believes could have devastating impacts on people and the environment around the world. Through a series of eight case studies, the report strips back the rhetoric of free trade and the "pro-development agenda" and reveals the reality of the WTO system.

The world is beginning to look like France, a few years before the Revolution. There are no reliable wealth statistics from that time, but the disparities are unlikely to have been greater than they are today. The wealthiest 5% of the world's people now earn 114 times as much as the poorest 5%. The 500 richest people on earth now own $1.54 trillion - more than the entire gross domestic product of Africa, or the combined annual incomes of the poorest half of humanity. Now, just as then, the desperation of the poor counterpoises the obscene consumption of the rich. Now, just as then, the sages employed by the global aristocrats - in the universities, the thinktanks, the newspapers and magazines - contrive to prove that we possess the best of all possible systems in the best of all possible worlds. In the fortress of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay we have our Bastille, in which men are imprisoned without charge or trial.

Is it fair that every European cow laps up $2.50 a day in subsidies while half the people in the world live on less than $2 a day? Cutting through the technical jargon, that is the crucial political question that trade ministers from 146 countries must answer when they meet next week in the Mexican resort of Cancun. The gathering will assess the prospects for the World Trade Organisation's Doha round of market-opening talks, launched in the Qatari capital in November 2001 and ambitiously scheduled to be wrapped up by the end of next year.

Watching the news, it seems that there's a new environmental crisis occurring almost daily: global warming, pollution, habitat destruction, species depletion and extinction, and much more. The bad news is plentiful and painful. But then, on a fairly regular basis, a nice-looking man pops up and says that everything you are seeing is an exaggeration. The environment is fine. Everything's fine. To the average person, it must be quite confusing. What's going on here? Are the stories on environmental calamity really an exaggeration? The quick answer is no.

Privatization of public services and natural resource extraction is now a central component of IMF and World Bank program and project work in developing countries. For most impoverished countries, it is a condition for development assistance and debt relief. This review by the Halifax Initiative, a coalition of organisations concerned about the international financial system, looks at privatisation in the areas of water, land and labour - and indicates that broad assumptions about the benefits from privatization are an error. "For the poor especially, privatization as a whole has not brought better service at an affordable price," says the review.

Non-contributory pensions can help to reduce and prevent poverty among older people and their households in developing countries, according to evidence from a new research study, which compares and examines the impact of non-contributory pension programmes in Brazil and South Africa. The joint project was undertaken by researchers in the UK universities of Manchester and East Anglia, universities in Brazil and South Africa, and HelpAge International.

Real world economic outlook is a yearly publication, produced by the team that launched the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Real world economic outlook examines the global economy from a radical perspective: that of economic and environmental justice. In stark contrast to the output of institutions like the IMF, whose bi-annual economic report it shadows, this book is both intellectually rigorous and accessible, informing and offering alternative analyses to a wide audience. With contributions from high profile and leading thinkers like Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik and Herman Daly, it sets out to integrate economic, environmental, and gender themes; to challenge dominant economic orthodoxy; and to transform mainstream economic thinking.

Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser will get his final chance in January 2004 to beat agribusiness and biotechnology giant Monsanto, when the Canadian Supreme Court is to issue a ruling that could affect farmers the world over. Schmeiser's entire canola crop was seized after Monsanto filed a legal complaint. Monsanto said Schmeiser violated their patent rights on the company's genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready canola by growing it without paying for the seed and without signing a technology use agreement. "The outcome of the Schmeiser case will set an important precedent for other countries," says Peter Rosset, an agroecologist and co-director of FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy, an organisation that promotes food as a human right. The implications for agriculture worldwide will be profound, agrees Helweil.

President George W. Bush has ordered the State Department to withhold U.S. family planning help from overseas groups that promote or perform abortions with their own money. The decision Friday expands an order issued two years ago that applied only to family planning money administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, a division of the State Department. Bush opposes abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or when pregnancy endangers a woman's life.

A new study has highlighted the key role of ethnic, religious or linguistic discrimination in establishing and perpetuating economic exclusion against minorities and indigenous peoples. The causal link between these forms of discrimination and economic exclusion often remains hidden due to insufficient data and lack of understanding by development actors of their role in the process of entrenching poverty. However, this connection has serious implications for development policy aimed at reducing poverty and inequality, a major priority of many current development efforts. The study by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), states that economic exclusion is just one of many forms of exclusion including lack of social and political opportunity and participation.

A good indicator of a country’s quality-of-life is the way it treats its most vulnerable members. Kids are a good measure of how well government policies percolate to the most sensitive and defenceless segment of society. A new report contains data on all countries with a population of more than ten million, noting that children are more vulnerable than adults to hazards of any form due to their size, physiology and behaviour. Children under age five breathe more air, drink more water and eat more food per unit of body weight than adults, so they experience a greater risk from pathogens and pollutants.

Nigerian textile firms are crumbling by the day courtesy of Nigeria's accord with the World Trade Organisation. The collapse of the firms - despite the federal government's limited protection - has thrown thousands of able-bodied men and women into the unemployment market. Since Nigeria signed a WTO agreement sometime in 1995, Nigerian firms have been groaning under the weight of goods-dumping by foreign companies.

In the context of growing interest in youth participation, child protection organisations are increasingly calling for more input from children and youth themselves. However, this focus on the “voices of youth” is often translated solely into circumscribed forums, such as contests, three-minute interventions at the UN Security Council or a spotlight of fame on a radio broadcast. Too rarely do we get an in-depth glimpse into the thought processes, experiences and opinions of young people caught up in poverty and war. Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life by China Keitetsi provides a different perspective: over 200 pages of reflections on China's early childhood in rural Uganda, her involvement as a child soldier in the National Resistance Movement (NRM, which brought current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni into power), her eventual flight to Denmark via South Africa and her opinions on past and current political developments in Uganda.

The privatisation of water has been accompanied by large profits, higher prices, cut-offs to customers who cannot pay, lack of transparency, reduced water quality, bribery and corruption, says a book from the Council of Canadians and the Polaris Institute, which takes a sobering look at the growing scarcity of fresh water and argues that the commodification of water is wrong on ethical, environmental and social grounds. The book notes that trade agreements are robbing governments of their control over domestic water supplies: with water now classified as a good, global trade institutions give transnational corporations unprecedented access to the freshwater resources of signatory countries.

Senegal is shutting down all mining operations in protected forests in a bid to preserve the country's natural resources. No new mining permits will be issued for protected forestlands throughout Senegal. When current ones expire, they will not be renewed, government sources say.

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa could earn about two billion U.S. dollars more every year if industrialised countries dropped their trade-distorting agricultural policies and opened their markets to goods from the developing world, says the International Food Policy Research Institute. The present round of world trade talks - called the Doha round - are meant to kick-start the economic development of the developing world. However, the talks have stalled because of differences between the developing world and the industrialised countries over trade in agricultural goods. World trade ministers are scheduled to meet in Cancun, Mexico on Sep. 10-14, to see if they can find a way out of the impasse.

From September 10 to 14, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will hold its Fifth Ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico. Pushed by multinational corporations, the United States, the European Union, and other developed countries are seeking to launch a new round of "free trade" negotiations and expand corporate globalization - further eroding human rights, workers' rights, environmental protections, and democracy - in the interest of corporate control. Popular movements in Mexico and their international allies will mark these meetings with massive demonstrations to demand a world that puts democracy and human dignity ahead of corporate profits.