Washington Post: Slowed funding threatens AIDS fight, group says
A new report by Doctors Without Borders warned that slowed funding from international donors, including the United States, is imperiling recent dramatic gains in treating AIDS patients in the developing world. The report highlights the fact that after years of expansion, funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has leveled off, and less of its budget is dedicated to treatment. This, in hand with the global economic crisis and a number of other factors are causing financial support to taper, undermining progress in nations such as Uganda, where some clinics are refusing new patients.

The Economist: The HIV travel ban is lifted
After 22 years of America banning HIV-positive people from entering the country without “hard-to-get waiver,” President Obama has announced that he will do away with the rule. Starting in 2010, HIV-positive people will be able to travel to America and will also be able to apply for citizenship. According to the economist, reversing the travel ban may help Mr. Obama “combat HIV/AIDS domestically by emphasizing that it is a national disease, not one brought in by foreigners.” Here the Economist focuses on how this plays into President Obama’s policies towards homosexuality rather than contextualizing it within the fight against HIV/AIDS.

ABC News: Will Promising New Malaria Vaccine Deliver?
A new vaccine offering the best hope in the fight against the killer disease malaria could be on the market for African children in three to five years — but according to ABC News, the real challenge may be in making sure that it’s available in some of the poorest, most remote areas of Africa. With many life-saving medications in Africa, such as anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS, “getting them out to people has been nearly as difficult to deal with as manufacturing the drugs themselves.”

Financial Times: G20 ministers seek to counter skepticism
The Financial Times reports that finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 leading nations will attempt this weekend to flesh out the group’s plan for stronger and more balanced growth as the world emerges from recession. Meeting for the third time this year, the finance ministers’ gathering in St Andrews, Scotland, will seek to counter the lingering skepticism that the new framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth is another example of “toothless international posturing that will have little practical impact.”

Reuters: China adopts “malaria diplomacy” as part of Africa push
Reuters reports that China is working to improve and enhance the use of the best proven anti-malaria drug, artemisinin, to fight the disease both on its own soil, where the deadly disease has been sharply pruned back, but in Africa as well. China pledged to help Africa fight malaria at the triennial Forum on China and Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2006 and has since set up 30 anti-malaria and prevention units. Already, a Chinese-backed eradication program on a small island off Africa has proven a huge success.

Business Day: Food subsidy scheme for poor homes a blessing for small-scale farmers
A food subsidy scheme announced in Kenya this week could help create demand for farm produce and offer a lifeline to smallholder farmers who form a large pool of food suppliers to the poor. The scheme also means that Kenya is now in the league of some of its African peers who have implemented such plans to create social equity and cushion the poorest of the poor against hunger. According to Business Day, the plan could create an incentive to smallholder farmers whose principal clients, the poor, will have their purchasing power enhanced by the cash.

Reuters—Africa aid can boost global economy: World Bank
Development aid to Africa can boost domestic demand on the continent and help wean the global economy from over-reliance on personal consumption in the United States, a senior World Bank official said on Thursday. “We need to look at a multi-polar world, because the dependence on U.S. consumption will have to shift,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director at the Bank said. “There are other countries that can provide consumption. When you look at Africa, it has around a billion consumers. When you invest in Africa you provide trade and services to these people.”

Los Angeles Times—Massive malaria vaccine trial has begun in Africa
A massive Phase 3 trial of a malaria vaccine is now underway in Africa, with 5,000 children enrolled already out of a target population of 16,000. If results are favorable, marketing approval could be sought as early as 2012, making it the first commercial vaccine available for the disease, researchers said Tuesday in announcing the trial at the 5th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Pan-African Malaria Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Guardian—Rich countries call on African bloc to keep climate talks on track
Rich countries piled pressure on Africa not to derail climate talks after the poorest countries in the world shocked the UN by walking out of the official negotiations in Barcelona, demanding that their concerns be met. The African bloc complained that rich nations’ carbon cuts were far too small to avoid catastrophic climate change, and refused to participate until more was done. The move forced the UN to abandon several sessions and reschedule others to give rich countries more time to debate emissions cuts.

Reuters—U.S. wary on Doha deal, World Bank says go for it
The United States will not agree to a deal in world trade talks unless other countries make better offers to open their markets, two U.S. trade nominees said yesterday. But a forthcoming study from the World Bank argued that proposals now on the table in the Doha round—which would make it easier for developing countries to trade—would bring huge gains to the world economy and World Trade Organization members should stop quibbling over further concessions.

Deutsche Press Agency—Don’t back-track now on AIDS, Doctors Without Borders warns Western donors
Cutting funding for HIV/AIDS treatment would condemn millions of poor people to death, international medical NGO Doctors Without Borders said Thursday, amid signs they said of Western governments starting to back-track on their commitments. Two major funders of AIDS treatment in poor countries – the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) – are considering scaling back or freeze their funding levels, Doctors Without Borders said in Johannesburg.

The Guardian: African nations make a stand at UN climate talks
African countries have said they are prepared to provoke a major UN crisis if the US and other rich countries do not start to urgently commit themselves to deeper and faster greenhouse gas emission cuts. The move by developing countries reflects “their deep and growing frustration over the slow progress that industrialized countries are making towards agreeing cuts.” According to the Guardian, this week’s UN negotiations in Barcelona are shedding light on the growing split between rich and poor countries, which threatens to blow the talks fatally off course.

The Guardian: US puts climate debate on hold for five weeks despite plea by Merkel
In the latest obstacle on the road to the UN summit in Copenhagen next month, the US Congress ruled out passing a climate change law before 2010. The delay caused a last-minute push by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who have repeatedly said US legislation is crucial to a deal on global warming. According to the Guardian, Merkel used a historic address to a joint session of Congress today to urge America to act on climate change, stating that success at Copenhagen rested on the willingness of all countries to accept binding reductions in carbon emissions.

The Christian Science Monitor: Is fight against hunger a matter of security?
Kanayo Nwanze, the new head of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development is bringing increased attention to hunger and food insecurity as an international security issue, a dimension that is raising new interest in tackling the matter. Rural hunger and food security are increasingly cropping up in venues ranging from the US Congress to G8 summits. According to Nwanze, it is the emergence of food as an international security issue that raises the odds that “the international community will help developing countries come up with sustainable answers to food production challenges.”

Reuters: Only 15 pct of G8 food aid pledge is new-sources
Reuters reports that only $3 billion of the $20 billion promised by a G8 summit over the next three years to boost agriculture in poor countries appears to be new money. According to one diplomat, “In the $20 billion figure people have included all sorts of things, double counting stuff, putting in loans and grants: the real new money is $3 billion at best.” Despite the announcement of increased investment at the G8 meeting in Italy last summer, anti-poverty campaigners warned that the pledges announced by rich countries were proving elusive.

Reuters: Brazil, others squeeze China in scramble for Africa
Though China has now eclipsed the United States as Africa’s biggest trading partner, they are by no means the only country involved in what Reuters is calling the “21st century scramble for Africa.” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has visited the continent six times in his four years in office and the country has increased its trade with Africa from $3.1 billion in 2000 to $26.3 billion last year. However, according to Reuters, it is not only Brazil and China that are muscling in on Africa. “The two other members of the so-called BRICs grouping — India and Russia — are also setting up stall in a region that for generations European powers regarded as their own back yard.”

Daily Nation: Kenya: Locally-Growing Moringa Tree Key in Fight Against Malaria
A malaria treatment derived from a locally-growing Kenyan shrub is one of only a few herbal cures being presented at an international conference in Nairobi this week. The tree is competing alongside malaria medicines developed by some of the world’s best scientists with the backing of global pharmaceutical giants. In a presentation at the Pan- African Malaria Conference, the tree extract, in combination with other herbs, has been seen to cure even drug-resistant malaria and has been endorsed after trials by the World Health Organization, according to a researcher at the National Research Institute for Chemical Technology in Nigeria.

Reuters: US urged to set 2020 target to save climate deal
The United States came under pressure on Monday to follow other rich countries and set a 2020 goal for cutting greenhouse gases to rescue chances for a climate deal due next month in Copenhagen. At a final preparatory meeting in Barcelona before the UN summit in December, some African countries threatened to walk out, saying rich countries had to deepen their emissions-cutting targets. The head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said a U.S. number was essential and that the country could not come “empty-handed to Copenhagen.”

The New York Times: AIDS: Panel Warns That Without New Direction, Epidemic Will Remain Out of Control at 50
In an analysis being published today, a panel of AIDS experts predicted that unless there is a drastic change in approach, the AIDS epidemic will still be out of control on its 50th anniversary in 2031. According to the report, the fight against AIDS in developing countries is facing a drastic funding shortfall amid rapidly rising treatment and prevention costs during the global financial crisis. However, the authors of the study emphasized that the funding contraction also presents an opportunity to do better with less and save more lives by eliminating waste, while improving the efficiency of medical care.

The Guardian: Global warming could create 150 million ‘climate refugees’ by 2050
A new report from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) warns that Global warming will force up to 150 million “climate refugees” to move to other countries in the next 40 years. The EJF claimed 500 million to 600 million people – nearly 10% of the world’s population – are at risk from displacement by climate change and around 26 million have already had to move. “The majority of these people are likely to be internally displaced, migrating only within a short radius from their homes. Relatively few will migrate internationally to permanently resettle in other countries,” said the report’s authors.

Business Day: Why Aid Never Reaches Poor People (Op-Ed)
Advocacy organization Oxfam emphasized recently that “it is time for G20 leaders to stand up and deliver the money needed to protect poor people,” as heads of the world’s biggest economies met in Pittsburgh in September. However, according to Business Day, the real problem is that aid is actually rising but much of it never reaches poor countries. In fact, “most of it is given away in unrestricted grants to hand-picked activist groups, with little accountability and transparency – and, worse, little evidence that the programs are helping the poor.”

AllAfrica.com: Africa: Food for Thought on Food Security (Op-Ed)
President of Oxfam America, Raymond C. Offenheiser writes a guest column for AllAfrica.com in which he highlights the startling fact that for the first time in our history, over one billion people in the world suffer from daily hunger. Investing in farmers, he believes, is the most effective way to address the issues of hunger and poverty and to prepare for likely increases in food prices. Writes Offenhesier, “Investing in agriculture is a powerful poverty reduction tool. It can also contribute to overall economic growth by increasing efficiency in the marketing chain – reducing the share of poor people’s income spent on food, and enabling them to purchase other goods and services, like education, health care, and housing.”

Global Brief: Who’s To Lead?
With issues of climate change, the increasing price and decreasing availability of food and escalating energy costs coming into play at full force, Global Brief poses the complicated question of who is ultimately going to lead world affairs in the 21st century. The publication believes that central to the question of who leads in the process of politics “is the maxim that that good leadership requires good citizenship.” If crisis is to be opportunity, and not a portent to catastrophe, then an unwavering moral commitment to equity, an effective civil society and an aggressive and innovative approach to governance will be central to who leads, and to who gets what, when and how.

The New York Times: As Donors Focus on AIDS, Child Illnesses Languish
Chief of health at UNICEF, Mickey Chopra, is trying to put diarrheal diseases back on the global health agenda, highlighting the fact that 1.5 million young children die each year in developing countries from this plight – more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Chopra’s observation lies at the heart of a wider debate over whether the United States and other rich nations spend too much on AIDS, which requires lifelong medications, compared with diarrhea and the other leading killer of children, pneumonia, both of which can be treated inexpensively.

The Times: EU countries fail to agree on fund to help developing nations go green
Nine Eastern European countries have refused to commit to an international fund to pay developing countries to go green, despite a plea from the Danish Prime Minister and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Germany was leading another group of countries, including France, that argued it was bad tactics for the EU to show how much it was prepared to pay this far in advance of the talks. Said Brown, “Unless we have a plan for funding the action we are taking on climate change we will not get agreement in Copenhagen.”

ABC News: U.S. Food Aid Contributing to Africa’s Hunger?
Ethiopia gets 70 percent of its aid from the U.S., but according to a new report by the aid organization Oxfam International, the help “may actually be exacerbating the cycle of starvation.” U.S. law requires that food aid money be spent on food grown in the U.S., at least half of it must be packed in the U.S. and transported in U.S. ships, which the report claims is far more expensive and time consuming than buying food in the region. According to an Oxfam spokesperson, “You can’t just deal with the problem. You need to treat the underlying causes, otherwise you’ll be locked into this endless cycle of foreign food donors.”

The Economist: Falling fertility
The Economist reports that the fertility rate in developing countries is falling and families are shrinking in places— such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India—“that people think of as teeming with children.” The fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less—the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called “the replacement rate of fertility”. Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the world’s fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate. This new finding is significant, according to the Economist, as it means “that worries about a population explosion are themselves being exploded—and it carries a lesson about how to solve the problems of climate change.”

Reuters: African nations appeal for quick Doha trade pact
A South African minister said Thursday that African nations will ask developed states to speed up work to conclude the Doha round trade talks and to make early concessions on reducing cotton subsidies that hurt poor farmers. According to Reuters, Trade ministers from Africa, who are meeting in Cairo this week, have said that continuing delays on a new global trade deal was crippling African development, especially in the wake of the global economic crisis.

UPI.com: Supercomputer hunts HIV vaccine targets
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, as part of the International Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology Consortium, are using the world’s fastest supercomputer to analyze vast quantities of genetic sequences from HIV infected people in the hope of identifying possible vaccine target areas. Said one of the researchers, “At this scale we can begin to figure out the relationships between chronic and acute infections…and it is these interconnections where a specially-designed vaccine might be most effective.”

The Guardian: Climate change will devastate Africa, top UK scientist warns
One of the world’s most influential scientists, Professor Sir Gordon Conway, argues in a new scientific paper that Africa is already warming faster than the global average and that people living there can expect more intense droughts, floods and storm surges. In addition to less drinking water and food shortages, Conway predicts that diseases such as malaria will spread and the poorest will be hit the hardest as farmland is damaged in the coming century. Conway did, however, hold out some hope that east Africa and the Horn of Africa, presently experiencing its worst drought and food shortages in 20 years, will become wetter.

The New York Times: Harnessing World Cup to Change Children’s Lives
FIFA has combined with the global NGO streetfootballworld to create Football for Hope, a festival which will take place in the second half of the month-long World Cup, which starts in June 2010. Some 32 organizations from around the world — the same number of nations as in the World Cup — have been chosen to take part, “based not on their football prowess but on the success of projects to address social issues like homelessness in London, landmines in Cambodia, gang violence in Colombia and South Africa’s scourge of AIDS.”

The Globe and Mail: Food summit should plant a seed for change (Editorial)
Columnist Eric Reguly editorializes that the UN food summit in November must not be solely a talking shop, but rather it should “break from the politically correct agenda of trying to please all the UN donor countries and suggests some out-of-the-box strategies.” Reguly quotes Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), who hopes that wealthy countries will be pushed into making good on the commitments they made last summer, at the G8 summit in Italy, to spend $20-billion on food development.

The Guardian: Why we need a world environment organization
German chancellor Angel Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy have called for the creation of a world environmental organization within the UN system “with real political clout.” In a letter to the UN secretary general they emphasized that we must overhaul environmental governance and use Copenhagen climate talks in December to progress the creation of a world environmental organization. According to the Guardian, “many ministers of environment have known for some time that solving environmental challenges and seizing opportunities will prove impossible without political clout and effective institutions.”

AllAfrica.com: Congo-Kinshasa: Pros and Cons to Huge Chinese Investment
China has just closed a deal to build a road network stretching for 4,000 km and a railway system spanning 3,200 km in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a much needed development in a country the size of Western Europe and the second largest in Africa but with only 200 km of tarred road. However, according to AllAfrica.com, “concerns abound about a nine billion dollar Chinese investment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially around environmental consequences and transparency.” And, on the Chinese side, investors complain not only about the lack of security in the DRC but about their own government not providing enough support.

Plus News: AFRICA: Using DOTS for TB, HIV and other chronic diseases
Malawi’s successful use of a well-known tuberculosis treatment system to scale up antiretroviral treatment for HIV could improve chronic disease management in other African nations, experts say. The system, called directly observed treatment short course (DOTS) has been used to successfully deliver TB treatment in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Politico: Bill Gates: Foreign aid works
Bill and Melinda Gates came to Washington on Tuesday to launch their new campaign entitled “Living Proof: Why We Are Impatient Optimists” which promotes “the simple but seldom-proclaimed message: Foreign aid works.” The project will make the case for lawmakers and taxpayers to continue to fund foreign aid, using videos and multimedia to tell success stories from around the world. Among the programs singled out by Living Proof are PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which has helped to deliver 88 million insecticide-treated bednets.

The Guardian: Europe puts figure on green aid to push climate change deal
European heads of state will formally recommend this week that rich countries should hand over around 100 billion Euros a year to nations such as India and Vietnam by 2020 to help them cope with the impact of global warming. According to the Guardian, the move marks a victory for the UK and Gordon Brown, who appears to have won arguments with member states including Germany over whether Europe should commit to climate funding ahead of the Copenhagen talks.

Daily Champion: Nigeria: Global Fund Grant Puts Bednets in Every Home
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Federal Ministry of Health of Nigeria announced today that a newly signed agreement will provide the resources for 30 million bed nets, half the number needed to meet universal coverage by December 2010. Together, the newly signed malaria grants amount to the largest single malaria initiative ever signed by the Global Fund.

The Monitor: Uganda: Food Prices to Stay Up
The World Bank has warned that global food prices are going to stay up for an unforeseen future due to growing demand and low food yields. In the global update on food security released Tuesday, the World Bank said global food prices are now increasingly being driven by events outside the food sector, including lower remittances and migration back to rural areas, which have lowered purchasing power and pressured household budgets.

Forbes.com: More Food On Less Carbon
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations says that to satisfy the needs of people everywhere, our planet must more than double its food output by 2050. Meeting this ambitious goal, and also addressing climate change in a meaningful way, will require farmers and ranchers to confront the twin challenge of producing more food while emitting less carbon.

The Washington Post: Gateses to lobby U.S. for global health funds
Bill and Melinda Gates will make a personal appeal to Washington officials tonight, asking them to continue funding global health initiatives despite the recession and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025. The presentation and the corresponding campaign “Living Proof” are meant to show Americans that U.S. funding is saving lives and that child deaths worldwide can be cut from more than 9 million to 5 million a year in the next 15 years.

The Times: Barack Obama must attend Copenhagen climate summit, says Lord Stern
UK Climate Chief Lord Stern of Brentford threw down the gauntlet to the US Administration, claiming that the world “desperately needs” President Obama to attend the United Nations meeting in Copenhagen if an effective deal on tackling climate change is to be reached this December. According to Stern, American leadership is urgently required if this historic opportunity presented was not to be squandered, emphasizing that the president’s “leadership would make an enormous difference.”

AFP: Forum seeks to assess world well-being
International experts Tuesday debated ways to measure the world’s well-being, in line with G20 calls for statisticians to take into account people’s happiness and not just their economic output. The four-day forum in the South Korean investigates ways of “going beyond GDP” to produce a new set of data to better measure the quality of life. An official attending the forum told experts on the environment, development, business and social issues that without such new indicators, a “crisis of confidence” could erode trust in institutions and in democracy itself.

Vanguard: TB: Expert worries over drug resistant strains
Worried by the incessant increase in tuberculosis cases in Nigeria, a medical expert has warned of the probability of increase in incidence and management of Multi- Drug Resistant (MDR) and extra drug Resistant (XDR) tuberculosis in the country. Blaming the surge on inappropriate therapy, HIV and poor case detection as factors fueling the epidemic in Nigeria, a group of doctors at this week’s Biannual Doctors’ Forum emphasized that simple measures can reduce transmission of the diseases, but community mobilization is required to improve detection.

Foreign Policy: How Microloans Change the Lives of Millions
In response to a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, which argued that microlending “doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty,” Foreign Policy highlights the emerging microfinance field, contending that “lending to the poor is just one facet of microfinance.” The article further argues that helping the poor save, before or along with providing credit, “might be the missing piece to help solve the poverty puzzle.”

Business Day: Maternal Health Needs New Approach (Op-Ed)
Journalist and policy expert, Priya Shetty spotlights the need for improved maternal health in the developing world, arguing that is has “languished for decades” to the point that half a million women die every year from pregnancy and childbirth problems. As a major component of the Millennium Development Goals, Shetty maintains the solution lies in stimulating research to identify the best ways to solve maternal and child health problems, so as to create robust evidence-based policies.

The Guardian: Bob Geldof and Bono’s legacy in Africa is a lasting and positive one (Op-Ed)
In an op-ed for the Guardian, ONE’s Jamie Drummond writes that a quarter of a century after Live Aid, the fight against poverty is working. He highlights the advocacy work of ONE as well as the important role that activists Bono and Bob Geldof have played in ensuring that issues such as debt cancellation and the deeper structural causes of poverty remain relevant. Drummond also mentions the new problems emerging that will need to be addressed, including climate change.

The Guardian: Experts want African aid funds channeled away from HIV
Top scientists are demanding a controversial overhaul of health spending in Africa, arguing that the billions of pounds targeted at HIV during the past 20 years have led to a neglect of other killer diseases and basic health problems such as diarrhea. According to an HIV epidemiology researcher at Harvard, “What most people really need are things such as clean water and family planning. Even tuberculosis and malaria get far less money than HIV. In some cases these sectors have inadvertently been hurt by the focus on HIV.”

The Nation: New global trend hope for disease prevention
Reversing a downward trend, immunization rates are now at their highest ever and vaccine development worldwide is booming, according to a new assessment released by United Nations. However, at the same time, the report authors are calling on donor nations to address a funding gap that leaves millions of children still at risk, particularly in the poorest nations and communities, where preventable diseases take their deadliest toll.

The Los Angeles Times: Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa
The L.A Times spotlights “a new kind of refugee” emerging in Africa: Those forced from their home regions not by war or persecution, but by the climate. Experts say climate change is quietly driving Africa’s displacement crisis to new heights, with more than 10 million people worldwide having already been driven out of their homes by rising seas, failing rain, desertification or other climate-driven factors. According to a professor at Oxford University, “Climate change is going to set back development and food production in sub-Saharan Africa at least a decade and perhaps two or three.”

Reuters: World trade talks should focus on poor: Gaddafi
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called on Friday for the removal of ‘unjust’ rich-country farm subsidies and more emphasis on helping the poor in world trade talks. Gaddafi, who chairs the African Union and has ruled Libya for 40 years, also urged the creation of a world economic council, saying the Group of 20 did not go far enough. According to Reuters, Gaddafi’s also maintained that “the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round of negotiations should remove agricultural subsidies that put poor African farmers at an economic disadvantage.”

The Guardian: HIV and Aids: debate or denial?
Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre highlights a new Aids denialist documentary entitled House of Numbers, which argues a number of points, including the fact that HIV doesn’t cause Aids, but antiretroviral drugs, or poverty, or drug use do and that HIV probably doesn’t exist. Goldacre raises the question of whether it is legitimate to discuss the strength of the link between HIV and Aids, arguing that while he does not wholly support the film, its stirring of a debate about AIDS and disease in the developing world may not be is an entirely bad thing.

USA Today: Unity doomed apartheid. Next up: climate change (Editorial, Desmond Tutu)
In an editorial for USA Today, Archbishop Desmond Tutu emphasizes that as the decisive Copenhagen climate talks near, Africa is making itself heard on the issue of climate change. Tutu echoes the call of the African Union’s chief negotiator who said last month that Africa will not only demand fair compensation for climate damage from industrialized countries, “but would also demand that rich nations cut emissions and hold global warming to as few degrees as humanly possible.”

The Economist: One of Africa’s most successful countries sets a trend that more can follow
The Economist explores democracy in Africa, highlighting the successful democratic system in Botswana. Calling it “one of Africa’s most successful countries,” the paper outlines a number of factors that have helped democracy and government in Botswana succeed. Although “there is a long way to go before all the rest of Africa follows Botswana’s example…more Africans these days accept that being able genuinely to choose their leaders is the least bad way to freedom and prosperity. Botswana is proof of it.”

The Times: Do starving Africans a favour. Don’t feed them (Op-Ed)
The Times Africa bureau chief editorializes that despite the devastating famine in Kenya and Ethiopia, sending food and emergency relief will make things worse in the long term. Instead, aid organizations should focus on improving education, donating to charities that “ring-fence funding for education – meaning if they don’t do it, don’t give.” Writes the author, “With education Africans can and will rid themselves of the incompetent and corrupt leaders that we have kept in power through foreign aid for decades.”

TIME Magazine: Back to the Land: The New Green Revolution
TIME Magazine explores the global resurgence of farming, remarking that with fears of food shortages, a rethinking of antipoverty priorities and the crushing recession, there is a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favor of greater support for agriculture. According to TIME, farmers are receiving more aid and investment by governments and development agencies than they have in decades in a renewed global quest for food security and rural development. The G8 summit in Italy last July declared “there is an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger” and pledged $20 billion for agriculture.

Reuters: Africa should protect children from AIDS: Machel
Nelson Mandela’s wife Graca Machel said Thursday that African leaders should be more serious about protecting the continent’s children from AIDS and it is time for them to change state spending priorities. At her launch of the Campaign to End Paediatric HIV/AIDS (CEPA), Machel emphasized that “No matter how small our budgets, we must do something. We will not get there (HIV reduction) with African leaders who don’t get moved by people dying.”