We’ve just concluded a very busy week in Japan with our participation in the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Yokohama. More than 40 African heads of state attended the meeting, which has been held every five years since 1993.

ONE was involved in a number of high profile events throughout the week aimed at turning up the pressure on the government and engaging the broader Japanese public on issues of extreme poverty. This included several print and television interviews, the launch of a campaign film featuring major Japanese and international personalities all speaking Japanese (watch this space for more), bilateral meetings with African leaders and Japanese officials (including Prime Minister Fukuda), and guest editing a special Africa edition of Asahi Shimbun, the world’s second largest circulation newspaper. We also used the occasion of TICAD to publicly launch ONE in Japan – the first country after the US – with a Japan specific action. You can check out the ONE Japan website at www.one.org/jp. Finally, we participated in a human sculpture event where the internationally renowned artist Anthony Gormley gathered over a thousand volunteers in a park to create the outline of a human body which he then photographed. All these events together have helped create a very important public debate in Japan.

You can also read a paper we released in advanced of TICAD titled, “Turning Consensus in Action” which makes recommendations to the Japanese government and the G8 on improving health, agriculture, education and aid delivery in Africa.

The final outcomes of TICAD fell short of our hopes. Prime Minister Fukuda made a headline-grabbing announcement that Japan would double its ODA to Africa, but details revealed that the announcement was not as good as it sounded. Japan will only be doubling its bilateral aid (which amounts to an increase of roughly $1 billion) and over a long, five year time period (between 2008 and 2012). They did make positive commitments on infrastructure and investment, announcing $4 billion in low interest loans to Africa for infrastructure development and a $2.5 billion facility to help Japanese firms invest more in Africa. On the agriculture front, Japan said it will help African nations double rice production within a decade.

Japan announced a new contribution to the Global Fund, but again, it was less than we hoped for, totaling only $560 million in “the coming years.” This amounts to an additional $100 million more per year. We were hoping for at least $1 billion over three years, which would represent a true doubling of their current support.

While we’re disappointed with the outcome, we’re going to continue to push hard for more from Japan before the G8 Summit in July. We’ll be watching closely next week when officials convene for a high level meeting on food security in Rome. Prime Minister Fukuda will be in attendance and we think this is an area ripe for more Japanese leadership.

-Ben Hubbard

In an op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, two American health workers argue that the Senate must reauthorize PEPFAR before July’s G8 meeting.

Dr. Albertino Mualique is a soldier in one war that the United States is actually poised to win, and he needs a surge to definitively gain the upper hand. But some members of the Senate want to abandon him just when he most urgently requires their support. The 28-year-old doctor is battling tirelessly against the AIDS epidemic in Mozambique, one of 10 countries most afflicted by HIV. In the two rural districts where he works, he is the only physician for more than 150,000 people, nearly 25 percent of whom are infected with the virus…

The new PEPFAR must reaffirm our commitment, not just to the 2 million people already on treatment, but to the millions more who are dying right now from lack of access to care. But just seven senators are currently blocking a floor vote on the legislation, jeopardizing our ability to reach those millions in need just when they are starting to believe that AIDS is not a death sentence….

PEPFAR is one of the few positive faces of the U.S. in the world and arguably the United States’ most effective foreign policy in the past seven years. Before the critical G8 meeting in July, the Senate must reauthorize the program at the $50 billion funding level necessary to redouble our efforts to prevent the 7,000 new AIDS infections and 6,000 deaths occurring every day. Those heroic health care professionals so valiantly working under the harshest conditions must be particularly supported. Our global leadership is at stake.

Read Wendy Johnson and Jennifer Kasper’s full Seattle Post-Intelligencer op-ed here.

A post by Alex Evans, cross-posted from his blog Global Dashboard.
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Next week, the UN is holding a major summit on food security in Rome – I’ll be there throughout (and blogging regularly on what goes on). Ahead of the kick-off, I’ve updated the Global Dashboard page on where to get briefed on food prices, and put out a scene-setter press release through Chatham House that sets out a few thoughts on what the summit needs to achieve.

This week’s already seen a couple of new items on food prices that are worth a look, starting with a new annual FAO / OECD outlook report - which this year looks all the way out to 2017. It finds that although prices will come down in the short term (which you already knew, since you read it here on Global Dashboard on March 18th), nominal prices over the medium term will remain “substantially above” levels over the last ten years. In other words, it’s not just a blip.

Also worth a look is World Bank President Bob Zoellick’s ten point plan for food prices, published in the FT this morning. His article confirms that he’s well ahead of the curve on understanding the need for an integrated approach to scarcity issues:he says collective action is needed on “the interconnected challenges of energy, food and water [which will be] drivers of the world economy and security”. (I’ll be publishing a paper on how the multilateral system needs to be reformed to cope better with scarcity issues just before the G8 in early July.)

What will actually happen at the summit is currently anyone’s guess. It’s fair to say that FAO haven’t been very proactive in briefing the media on likely outcomes or what they’re hoping for, which puts them in the rather hazardous position of allowing high expectations to emerge without really managing them. Another risk is that a major spat over biofuels could erupt: Ahmadinejad and Chavez will both be at the food summit, and would like nothing better to embarrass the US over its support for ethanol – and while US subsidies for corn-based ethanol are certainly problematic, it’s hard to see these particular interlocutors opening up much political space on Capitol Hill as legislators contemplate the Farm Bill.

But on the upside, great progress has been made on financing the immediate humanitarian needs (after Saudi Arabia stunned everyone by coming up with half a billion dollars last week – a coup for WFP head Josette Sheeran and for UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Sir John Holmes, who’s invested much time encouraging Gulf countries to contribute). This, together with the prospect of some short term relief on prices, gives policymakers a chance to look ahead towards the longer term challenges as well as short term crisis management.

It’s also hard to remember a time when the UN system and the international financial institutions have worked together as closely or as effectively as they seem to have been doing on the UN’s food task force – a great story, given how fragmented the international system usually is, but one that’s gone largely unreported. Even so, the real work in pulling together the longer term agenda is still in front of us…

-Alex Evans

The World Bank will offer $1.2 Billion UDS in food aid, setting aside grants for the countries most at risk.

From BBC News.

“It is crucial that we focus on specific action,” said World Bank president Robert Zoellick.

“These initiatives will help address the immediate danger of hunger and malnutrition for the two billion people struggling to survive in the face of rising food prices.”>

Countries will be able to access money to provide food for schools and other core services as well as to buy essential items such as seeds and fertilizer.

UPDATE: See the WorldBank’s press release here.

Last week, fellow ONE field organizer Kim Smith and I traveled with FORGE to the Meheba Refugee Camp in northern Zambia.

In addition to building the world’s largest library in a refugee camp, schools, a women’s center, and assistance for refugees, FORGE, also has a micro-finance project that works to empower refugees and help with business skills.

Recently, the FORGE Microfinance Institute helped invest in agricultural loans to select farming refugees and provided much needed and expensive fertilizer for corn crops. Already is has proven to be a huge success as the farmers that received the fertilizer loan are having record corn growth.

We also paid a visit to another loan recipient, Bobo, a refugee turned baker. The first day we stopped in at his bakery, Bobo was not there and we were told that he closed his shop to travel around and stock up on corn and flour. The next day we returned and we spoke with him about his business.

Originally Bobo received a small loan to start his business. He did very well and when his rent went up in the market, he applied for another loan to build his own free standing bakery that allowed him to be profitable, pay back his loans, and provide for his wife and daughter. When we asked about the global food crisis and rising prices, Bobo took out all of his receipts and showed us the dramatic increase in the price of corn and flour. Being a successful baker and businessman, Bobo was fortunate enough to be able to stock up on his ingredients as prices continue to rise.

-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Field Organizer

The U.S. Government Accountability Office will release a report today saying that the United States’ and multilateral agencies efforts to reduce hunger in sub-Saharan Africa have been “insufficient.” The report comes one week before a special United Nation’s summit in Rome on the global food crisis.

From today’s Washington Post:

“To see that chronic hunger in Africa is getting worse despite our actions shows that the international community must retool its strategy to combat it,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), chairman of the subcommittee on African affairs, who led the request for the report. “Rather than simply sending more food aid to Africa, the U.S. and the international community need to address the factors that contribute to food insecurity.”

A spokeswoman for USAID said the agency was aware of the report but said it would decline comment until its official release this morning. The report comes on the heels of another released by the GAO last year sharply criticizing U.S. food aid programs. That report called them “inherently inefficient” because they rely on the sale of American-grown food that is costly to transport overseas, as opposed to food purchased closer to the troubled regions themselves.

-Virginia Simmons

Yesterday, I attended John McCain’s speech at the University of Denver. I was accompanied by two other ONE members, Matthew McAllister and Lydia Van Vleet. Before the speech, we spread the word about ONE with those sitting around us. It was great to share information about an organization that we are so passionate about and it was awesome to see the people we talked to show their support and thank us for what we were doing.

An hour and half later, after speaking with several campaign organizers and state senators about ONE, it was time for the speech. Senator McCain walked out and immediately recognized us in our ONE shirts. He stopped to thank us for coming as he shook our hands. Before he started his speech, he took a moment to recognize us as he said: “As I always do, I’d like to recognize our young people from the organization called ONE [...] the epitome of what young America is all about.” (Link to clip on CNN.) On his way out, McCain stopped to thank us for coming. Overall, it was a great experience and I was proud to represent the ONE Campaign.

-Allie Mills, ONE CU-Boulder and Denver ONE

P.S.: This morning we were pleasantly surprised to see the picture above on the front page of the Denver Post. Apparently the Associated Press passed the picture around and a number of papers including the Denver Post and the Washington Post picked it up.

In an opening speech at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Japan would double its foreign aid and business investments to the African continent.

“As part of Japan’s pledge to double investment in Africa, Fukuda announced a $2.5 billion scheme that will directly finance businesses in Africa and guarantee the financing provided by Japanese banks for businesses there.

Fukuda also stressed the need for a network of roads in Africa, vowing to give up to $4 billion of yen loans to the continent over the next five years to improve its infrastructure.”

Read the full Reuters’ piece here.

-Virginia Simmons

Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) are the latest singers of the Lugar-Sununu letter to the Senate Majority and Minority leaders. That letter asks Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to do everything in their power to get PEPFAR, America’s primary vehicle for fighting HIV/AIDS in the developing world to the Senate floor for a vote. These two additional voices show those who blocking action on PEPFAR that there is strong bipartisan support for continuing America’s moral leadership against killers like AIDS, TB and malaria.

But there’s still more to do. If you live in Texas, Idaho, Kansas, Utah, Mississippi, Wyoming, Iowa, Alaska, Colorado, Arizona, South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Nevada or Missouri, we need you to write to your senator or senators and ask them to sign the Lugar-Sununu letter and get PEPFAR going: http://www.one.org/pepfarletter

If you’re not in one of those states, you can still ask your senators to co-sponsor PEPFAR here: http://www.one.org/pepfarsenate/

Lugar-Sununu Letter Signers:
Dick Lugar (R-IN)
John Sununu (R-NH)
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
Gordon Smith (R-OR)
Bob Corker (R-TN)
Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Mel Martinez (R-FL)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Norm Coleman (R-MN)
John Warner (R-VA)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Arlen Specter (R-PA)

-Aaron Banks, ONE.org

I just watched the first installment of a web show, called “The Global Wire” produced by our great colleagues at the Center for U.S. Global Engagement. The series is hosted by veteran CNN reporter Frank Sesno and the first show features Sen. Chuck Hagel.

It delves deeper into the global challenges facing the next president than your average talk show usually manages to accomplish and I found Sen. Hagel’s comments striking. In one case, he relates his view on foreign assistance programs, saying that the “mentality of [foreign assistance] has to be changed in understanding that we’re not just a nation that goes and flies over countries and sprinkles $100 bills and then just sends sacks of oats and meal and corn because we’re benevolent people. We are benevolent people. We’re the most generous country in the history of man, by any measure. But there’s something more to it than that. It is an investment in stability and security.”

The next show of “The Global Wire” features former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, which I’m told will be posted in early June. While you’re waiting, definitely check out the interview with Sen. Hagel.

J. Mark Brinkmoeller, ONE U.S. NGO Partnerships & Faith Relations