Archive for December, 2008
In today’s Business Daily, Jeffrey Sachs asks us to resist letting the “bad news can crowd out good news” and instead to take the time to recognize the many creative feats achieved by governments around the globe to fight poverty, disease and hunger this past year.
As he puts it:
“The point is not merely to make ourselves feel a little better, but rather to confront one of the world’s gravest threats: the widespread pessimism that today’s problems are too big to be solved. Studying the successes gives us the knowledge and confidence to step up our shared efforts to solve today’s great global challenges.”
He goes on to list creative new programs around the globe. Among them:
“Hats off, first, to Mexico for pioneering the idea of “conditional cash transfers” to poor households. These transfers enable and encourage those households to invest in their children’s health, nutrition, and schooling. Mexico’s “Opportunities Program,” led by President Felipe Calderón is now being widely emulated around Latin America.
Recently, at the behest of the singers Shakira and Alejandro Sanz, and a social movement that they lead, all of Latin America’s leaders committed to step up the region’s programs for early childhood development, based on the successes that have been proven to date…”
You can read his full op-ed here.
-Virginia Simmons and Chris Scott
[Photo: children in Mozambique, May 2008]
A recent Reuters piece examines the critical role African women play in agriculture, and how increasing gender equality in terms of land rights and micro-financing loans would increase Africa’s food production and family income.
The article highlights key leaders, like former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Rwanda’s Minister of State for Agriculture Agnes Kalibata, pushing for these changes in laws, global grants, and cultural practices.
Some excepts are below, the full article here.
“In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and security of tenure, women’s use of fertilizer and profits per hectare would nearly double. In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving women entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would boost business revenue by up to 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women’s income by $10 brings improvements in children’s health and nutrition that would require a $110 increase in men’s income.
…One powerful woman trying to change that is Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda’s minister of state for agriculture. She said government land reform and credit programmes specifically target struggling women farmers – many of whom are bringing up children alone after their husbands were killed in the 1994 genocide.
This has helped raise their incomes, leading to better nutrition, health and education for their children, Kalibata said. Women are also getting micro-credit loans, which they use to access markets and cooperatives or set up small businesses, such as producing specialty coffee for export.
“They are not like rocket scientists, they are women from the general population who finally feel empowered that they can come out and do some of these things,” explained Kalibata.
-Virginia Simmons
[Photo: Regina and her daughters posing at their stand in Mozambique, May 2008. Regina received a microfinance loan and now has a profitable small business that allows her to send her daughters to school and build a new home.]
Chris and I will be taking time off until January 5th, but you may see occasionally postings here on the ONE Blog before then. Please feel free to use the comments section below to talk about the past year and what you hope and plan to do for the fight against global poverty in 2009.
-Virginia Simmons
Due to the EU’s reaffirmation earlier this month to reduce CO2-emissions by 20% by 2020, on January 1, 2013, 10,000 E.U. power plants and energy-intensive factories will have to buy certificates for emissions of carbon dioxide.
It’s relevant to African countries in several ways, but particularly because it is likely that implementing this policy will generate extra resources for Africa to adapt to a changed climate and make progress towards the MDGs.
The policy creates a whole new stream of revenues for EU-governments and the tug-of war over how to use these revenues has already started. Usually, Africa is not on the top of the agenda for European politicians when they talk about spending. However in this case, several particularly good arguments support the idea that a significant part of these resources should be spent in Africa.
Most compelling is that African countries have contributed the least to the current climate change, yet they will be hardest hit and are the least prepared. (more…)
Today the New York Times ran an op-ed advocating for the incoming administration to adopt the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) as a central tool for development. The article explains that “The long-term engagement with the United States that is required for any country to earn a Millennium Challenge Corporation compact provides a platform for the kind of robust diplomacy that President-elect Obama has embraced. As he seeks to adapt American foreign assistance to a transformed world, one decisive step he can take is to signal his strong support of the corporation’s approach to global development.”
The piece, authored by the four non-government board members of the MCC (Lorne Craner, Bill Frist, Kenneth Hackett, and Alan Patricof), posits that the kind of aid MCC delivers – long-term aid given based on a clear set of indicators for projects defined by the recipient country, in which the recipient country takes responsibility for their development – works best. It also cites examples of the ‘MCC effect’; the idea that countries who are not yet compact-eligible will work independently to better their indicators due to the incentive of becoming eligible for large-scale support and funding.
We’ll continue to keep you updated about the position of the MCC within the new administration.
-Beth Adler, ONE Policy Analyst
Today we are very proud to announce that the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine have selected ONE to be the 2008 winner of the Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award. The award, given annually since 2003, seeks to honor individuals or organizations “from the rich world that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies toward the developing world.”
We are honored to receive this award which of course would never have been possible without the hard work and dedication of ONE members and activists around the world.
Some excerpts from CGD’s announcement below, and you can listen to the telephone press conference here.
Through its ONE Vote ’08 initiative , ONE mobilized 2 million supporters to sign petitions, raise awareness in their communities, and encourage the presidential candidates to explain how they would improve U.S. policies that affect poor people in developing countries. After the election, ONE pushed for President-elect Barack Obama and other newly elected officials to keep their commitments to the world’s poor in the face of the global financial crisis.
ONE Campaign advocates-often sporting ONE Campaign t-shirts-were visible at town hall meetings and election events around the country in 2008, catching the attention of candidates and voters.
ONE also hosted high-level panel discussions on global poverty at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Hundreds of students, activists, and convention delegates attended the convention events.
-Chris Scott
Washington Post—U.S. Won’t Support Zimbabwe if Mugabe Stays On, Envoy Says
The U.S. can no longer support a proposed Zimbabwean power-sharing deal that would leave Robert Mugabe — “a man who’s lost it” — as president, the top U.S. envoy for Africa said Sunday. A power-sharing agreement between Zimbabwe’s opposition parties and Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe with increasing severity for 28 years, is “not credible with Mugabe as president” because he appears unwilling to share control, said Jendayi Frazer, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs. The comments, which came days after Frazer echoed calls by President Bush and other world leaders that Mugabe step down, indicated a shift in U.S. policy toward a power-sharing deal signed in September.
LA Times—Zimbabwe can’t paper over its money woes
The LA Times looks at the truly astounding hyper-inflation affecting the Zimbabwe economy and its people. For instance, a pale blue bank note of Zimbabwean currency that says 1,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars really means 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s 10 quintillion, taking into account the 13 zeros Zimbabwe’s central bank has lopped off in the last couple of years to make the country’s currency somewhat more manageable. Every time the inflation gets out of hand, Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank scythes away 00000s. Inflation is soaring so fast in Zimbabwe that it’s hard to figure out what a Z$1-million note is actually worth on a given day, all with disastrous consequences for the economy.
-Steve Wilson
