Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blairdelivered a speech today at the Times CEO Summit Africa in London, claiming that with the right support and policies, Africa can end its dependence on aid within a generation. With Africa’s new-found confidence and optimism, the continent is now at the position to overcome its challenges and focus on the future.
To help illustrate Africa’s changing attitudes toward aid from foreign governments, he used a powerful statistic from ONE’s new report, “Small Change, Big Difference,” an analysis of UK foreign aid, during his remarks:
“And aid has helped with governance too: according to a report released today by the global campaigners ONE, by 2015 UK aid alone will help 44.9 million more people to vote in freer and fairer elections.”
Mr. Blair, who founded the Africa Governance Initiative, works with African countries at critical turning points –- like Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Liberia –- to advance good governance and alleviate poverty. Read more about his organization here.
Back by popular demand, here’s another set of beautiful landscape photographs from Africa. We asked some of our camera-savvy ONE staffers to send us their best stuff. These photos range from natural land formations to animals to dramatic skylines. Scroll through to see all the photos:
Balancing rocks near Harare, Zimbabwe. There are large naturally formed rocks sprinkled all over the countryside of Zimbabwe. Many have strange shapes and still manage to perfectly balance on top of one another. Photo credit: Tzviatko Chiderov/ ONE.
Calling all students! You may want to listen closely here, because we’re about to announce something pretty big. Major, in fact. Cue Jesse Eisenberg, actor, activist and all-around cool kid:
You heard it here first, folks. ONE is joining forces with Chegg, a leading social education platform for students, in a nationwide search to send eight all-star student advocates on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa. This unique internship program and trip will be an opportunity to become fully immersed in the issues faced by millions living on less than $1.25 a day in sub-Saharan Africa. You will get to experience the fight against extreme poverty and disease from the frontlines -– and come back fully energized to lead your peers as the next generation of advocates on campuses across the country.
This week, First Lady Michelle Obama will make her first official state visit to Africa with her two young daughters, Sasha and Malia, and other members of her family (unfortunately, Bo the dog won’t be going). Over the next five days, they’ll be traveling to Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa and Gaborone, Botswana, to see the sights, engage with African leaders and of course, help strengthen our relationship with Africa.
This week, ONE, with partners ActionAid, Alliance to End Hunger, Women Thrive and others, hosted a reception on Capitol Hill to celebrate the recent successes of US investments in agriculture to strengthen global food security.
Following the Chicago Council’s Annual Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, the reception was a huge success. It brought together Congress, the Administration, civil society and agriculture researchers to raise the profile of the multilateral Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), and bring recognition to the great work that the US government and our partners have been doing to help improve the lot of small-scale farmers in Africa.
We were honored to have leading anti-hunger advocate Ambassador Tony Hall emcee the event. There were also keynote addresses made by Samuel Gatembeyi, a small-scale farmer from Rwanda, assistant secretary of international markets and development at the US Department of the Treasury Marisa Lago, and Julie Howard, deputy coordinator of Feed the Future.
In January, I wrote a blog post on the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. In the post, I argued that the world has started to notice Africa’s huge economic growth potential.
The International Monetary Fund has now delivered a further upbeat assessment of Africa’s growth potential in its 2011 World Economic Outlook Report published earlier this month. The report states that after having grown by only 2.8 percent in 2009 and 5 percent in 2010, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) economies are expected to grow by 5.5 percent in 2011 and 5.9 percent in 2012.
The report goes on to say that in a regional ranking, SSA comes second only to Asia. SSA’s economic growth is projected to be higher than Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States.
We’re kind of in love with this: researchers at the University of Illinois have come up with a way to teach sustainable development education to those in Africa, despite literacy or language barriers. Using two minute animated clips that can be sent and downloaded via cell phone, these videos depict animated characters demonstrating how to do various agricultural tasks. The videos cover a range of topics, from teaching viewers in Haiti (in light of recent cholera spikes) how to make water safe for drinking and cooking to how a farmer in Nigeria can protect his crops from insects.
As University of Illinois professor and development member Barry Pittendrigh says, “This is a very different paradigm from some other current development projects, where US-based educators are flown to another part of the world, interact with people in the field for a few weeks to several months, and leave. From a financial perspective, this is a much cheaper way to do international development.” Cheaper, no language barriers involved, and widely accessible? Sounds good to us!
Big thanks to ONE friend Jaclyn Schiff for sharing this with us!
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
