September 2010

The Chairman of the ACP Committee of Ambassadors, H.E Patrick I. Gomes, Ambassador of Guyana, set out the priorities for the group in the coming six months in a statement to the Bureau of the ACP Committee of Ambassadors on 14 September. These include the establishment of a Reflection Group which will lead an multi-stakeholder reflection process on the future orientations of the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement.  The ACP group will also seek to optimise the impact and benefits of programmes for its Member States and pursue avenues to expand its scope, value and functions in ...

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In this OECD Development Centre Working Paper, Peter Draper of the South African Institute of International Affairs takes stock of the last decade of African development from an African perspective. He pleads for a recalibration of Africa’s regional integration models, a process whereby “champion countries” spearhead a less ambitious, but more effective agenda that addresses the region’s immediate development needs – prioritizing trade facilitation and regulatory cooperation in areas related primarily to the conduct of business and underpinned by a security regime emphasising the good governance agenda at the domestic level. He goes on to ...

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September 27, 2010

Combating poverty and inequality: Structural change, social policy and politics

Posted: 05:46 AM CEST

by ECDPM Editorial Team

in Cross-cutting issues

This United Nations Research institute for Social Development publication argues that many current approaches to reducing poverty and inequality fail to consider key institutional, policy and political dimensions that may be both causes of poverty and inequality and obstacles to their reduction. It proposes that the critical elements of a sustainable and inclusive development strategy include state-directed strategies that combine economic development objectives with active social policies and forms of politics that elevate the interests of the poor in public policy.

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This week’s European Voice includes a series of articles on the Africa-EU Summit being held in Libya from 29-30 November. The main article argues that there are longer-term developments that are re-shaping the EU’s relationship with Africa and that will be evident at the summit. The traditional donor-recipient relationship, long a source of tension, is changing. But ECDPM’s Andrew Sherriff notes that the “fundamentals” of a renewed partnership are still not in place, above all political leadership on both sides. “The failure to fulfill the promise” – the potential – “of the 2007 Joint Africa-EU ...

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September 18, 2010

Implementing effective country level governance

Posted: 03:41 AM CEST

by ECDPM Editorial Team

in Africa Change Dynamics, Africa-EU dialogue on governance

The World Bank’s Sina Odugbemi blogs from the Bank’s workshop reviewing the implementation of country level governance programmes funded by the Governance Partnership Facility (GPF) that the role of politics and political institutions in enabling or hampering development results are now clearly at the heart of the global agenda and in concrete practice in the field. Experiences from the health, education, transport, energy, and extractive industries sectors reveal what is possible if there is a willingness to experiment, an enabling environment for doing so, and the availability of resources.  However, the cases reviewed also make ...

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This paper by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute analyses the key provisions of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed between CARIFORUM countries and the EU in October 2008 and concludes that the aggregate negative impact of the EPA on Caribbean states will be modest if the region’s governments successfully implement the Caribbean Single Market Economy.

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The European Parliament’s Committees on Security and Defence, Foreign Affairs and Development recently held an exchange of views with Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator and Manuel Lopez Blanco of the EC’s Development Directorate on the EU’s security and development strategy for the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Currently under formulation, the strategy seeks to address the urgent need for accelerated development in fragile environments, where a vicious cycle of poverty, political conflict, weak states, drug trafficking, terrorist groups and progressive Islamic radicalization is increasingly taking hold, and in turn exacerbating insecurity. There ...

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The Partnership on Governance and Human Rights of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy makes space for the setting up of a “platform for dialogue on all governance issues of mutual interest”.  Efforts to set up the Platform over the last two years have resulted in position/concept papers being prepared by both sides.  The Informal Expert Group Meeting on the Partnership of April 2010 agreed that a workshop on the setting-up of the Platform should be organized in order to “to refine respective African and European positions on the content, format and modalities of the Platform, in ...

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September 10, 2010

The role of state-business relations in Africa’s economic growth

Posted: 14:31 PM CEST

by ECDPM Editorial Team

in Africa Change Dynamics, Economic Governance

Recent media coverage suggests brightening prospects for Africa, with some commentators discussing whether it could become the next BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Some argue current growth prospects have been inflated by rising commodity prices and the growing trade and investment links between Africa and emerging markets, notably China. However, the fact that African growth prospects had already turned around in the mid 1990s, long before the more recent upturn in commodity prices and growth spurt in emerging markets, should make us look again at what Africa has been doing right all along. Joint research ...

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Negotiations on the next EU Financial Perspectives and Instruments will begin next year. Providing an insight into the Commission’s perspective, the EC representative to the European Parliament’s Development Committee’s 30 August debate on the integration of the EU banana support programme into the EU’s Development Cooperation Financing Instrument said that the EC does not share the EP view to treat strategy papers as delegated acts in which the Parliament would be required to give its opinion. The nature of country support programming is being dealt with in negotiations on the EU’s comitology regulation (which sets ...

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