Book Launch: Climate Change in Africa

Nov 4th, 2009 6:10 PM EST
By Joseph Powell

Last night ONE was lucky to attend the launch of Camilla Toulmin’s new book Climate Change in Africa, which provides a timely reminder of the damage being done to the continent by shifts in climate. The direct impacts include a rise in harvest failures in recent years as unpredictable water cycles and expanding drylands make the life of African farmers harder. In the Horn of Africa for example there have been 3 crop failures in the last 4 years, meaning in Ethiopia alone 6.2 million people are now in need of food assistance.

Toulmin highlighted the likely rise in conflict as resources such as water become scarcer, and the devastating impact that rising food and fuel prices can have on the poorest sectors of society. More indirectly the global demand for biofuels has seen large tracts of prime African farmland bought up by companies growing non-food crops.

Of course much of the recent debate has been around how Africa can adapt to climate change and that was also high on the agenda. Toulmin suggested realistic interventions such as diversifying farm production and argued that “it is absolutely vital to reach a deal at Copenhagen”. She estimated that anything up to $130 billion may be needed for adaptation costs in Africa alone and that the financing of this will be central to a good agreement.

Discussing the book, former Chief Scientist from the UK’s Department For Overseas Development, Sir Gordon Conway stressed that climate change would affect agriculture more than any other sector, with clear implications for the majority of sub-Saharan Africans. As a development issue, he argued, there will be little of greater importance over the coming decades.

As policy makers prepare to meet to negotiate a global climate deal next month Toulmin’s book provides a powerful case for ensuring that they keep the poorest in mind and take special consideration of Africa. Not only does climate change add yet another challenge for those struggling to combat extreme poverty and disease by exacerbating the conditions of poverty, but it threatens to erode the gains that have been made in recent years.

New video: Be ONE of us!

Oct 15th, 2009 9:07 AM EST
By Sergius Seebohm

What is ONE? What would you say if you had to explain it to your neighbour? We often say ONE is an advocacy group. We say ONE is lobbying politicians to fight poverty and preventable disease. And we often say ONE is a about a spirit of being a community of people around the world who strongly believe that where you live should not determine if you live.

All right. A long explanation. And not very visual. The team of ONE Germany tried to tell about the strong community that ONE can be – a community of left and right, student and manager, housewife and movie star. With a video spot.

The story: A man and a woman are talking in a restaurant. He talks about Africa, bragging a bit about what he knows about achievements and success stories by the poorest countries. But he can’t really tell what he wants to. The lady at his table seems to know everybody in the room and they keep being interrupted. By the waiter, the newspaper man and also by really famous actors and singers including Bono, Benno Fuermann, Michael Mittermeier, Katja Riemann, Jan Josef Liefers, Rea Garvey, Minh-Khai Phan-Thi, Cherno Jobatey, Jana Pallaske. At the end she asks him: Ok, and what are YOU actually doing about Africa?

And there it is: what ONE is about. Anybody can join to encourage policy makers around the world for more and better efforts in the fight against extreme poverty.

We shot this spot in just ONE day with such tremendous help from so many people – it is hard to thank them adequately. They contributed their skills and work just to help ONE: the extras, the technical crew, the production, Anne von Keller and Philip Mauritz who are starring in the spot, our director Benjamin Quabeck, Bono and as much as 8 famous German artists. We probably had the most impressive cast of all film productions in Germany this year!

A great thank you should also go to the movie theatre group CineStar. Thanks to their support we will be able to show the spot on 437 screens across Germany. A great thanks to MTV which will also screen our spot and to the social network studiVZ/meinVZ for their continued support.

All of this comes at a crucial point in time: the parties CDU/CSU and FDP won the German elections and currently are negotiating their common policies in a government coalition. With the support from more and more Germans who support ONE we might be able to convince them to make the fight against poverty a strong part of German politics for the next four years. More and more people will join. Be ONE of us.

Germany voted

Oct 14th, 2009 4:39 PM EST
By Sergius Seebohm

…but what do we expect to see from Germany’s development policies over the next 4 years?

School children in Tanzania write messages for the new German government.

The general elections in Germany on September 27 resulted in heavy losses for the Social Democrats (SPD). The market liberal Free Democrats (FDP) gained the most and will now form a coalition government with Chancellor Merkel´s Christian Democrats (CDU), which lost some voter confidence but remains by far the biggest party.

The coalition negotiations of FDP and CDU/CSU started on October 5 and are still ongoing. They will result in an agreement on ministerial appointments, as well as an agreement about the general framework of the new government policies for the next 4 years. The coalition contract will probably be signed in late October or early November. FDP leader Guido Westerwelle will possibly become foreign minister and vice chancellor and Angela Merkel will remain Chancellor.

The ONE team in Germany has launched various actions to support advocacy and awareness-raising in this critical phase while the new government team is straightening out their course for the coming years.

One example of this is ‘The Article ONE’ - a summary of our demands for the next German government that was presented by Bob Geldof and others to the media earlier this year. It alludes to the first article of the German constitution which compels any form of public authority to focus on human dignity. So far, the Article ONE has been signed by several thousand ONE supporters, many high profile personalities, and by more than 110 current members of parliament from all parties.

The Article ONE petition will soon be handed over, together with handkerchiefs carrying messages from our recent trip to Tanzania. This will mark the end of ONE’s Germany election campaign – but certainly not the end of our activities. Our advocacy work with Germany’s new government will just be beginning!

1GOAL

Oct 12th, 2009 2:07 PM EST
By David Cole

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown with Queen Rania al Abdulllah of Jordon and famous faces from the football world at the 1GOAL global campaign launch in London © 1GOAL

Last week 1GOAL held its global launch, with an event hosted in London by 1GOAL co-chair Queen Rania of Jordan and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. They were joined by a variety of speakers via satellite including FIFA President Sepp Blatter in Zurich, President Zuma in South Africa, Prime Minister Zapatero in Madrid, as well as a special message from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The football World Cup, taking place next year in South Africa, is the world’s biggest single sporting event. It is a moment when millions will come together to share the passion of football. The 1GOAL campaign, a partner to ONE, aims to ensure that the lasting legacy of the tournament is that every child can be learning in school by 2015.

President Jacob Zuma of South Africa talked about the importance of education and said “We support the footballers and their fans in calling on all world leaders to do their part to ensure every child can go to school. We need to see action at the World Cup and beyond. By acting now, together we can ensure education for all.”

1GOAL is supported by some of the leading members of the football world and its governing body, FIFA. England international footballer Rio Ferdinand said, “Children from every country deserve a chance at a better life and we want our leaders to make sure they get the education they need to break the cycle of poverty. Musicians have led influential campaigns against poverty; it’s time for the football world to do our part.”

P.S.– Check out photos from the global launch here.

Party conference season continues

Oct 7th, 2009 12:20 PM EST
By David Cole

Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks at the ONE event.

Last week ONE was at the Labour Party conference, where we held an event to launch our ONE Vote campaign as well as celebrating 1Goal and the fact that the football World Cup will be held in Africa for the first time ever next year.

We were lucky to be joined by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who spoke about the issues. Two footballers also spoke, South African captain Aaron Mokoena and John Utaka, who plays for Nigeria and Portsmouth. They were followed by Glenys Kinnock, Minister for Europe, and Douglas Alexander, the Minister for International Development.

The ONE team is now in Manchester for the Conservative Party Conference, which started earlier this week, and we’re getting ready to host a reception this evening. We’ll be blogging more about the event soon so please stay tuned.

G20 Pittsburgh’s over - so, how did it go?

Sep 30th, 2009 8:46 AM EST
By Mikiko Imai

The summit of G20 leaders in Pittsburgh last week, a year after the Lehman shock, was always going to be about economic recovery and on whether we need to regulate banker’s bonuses. So, did they talk development, at all? The short answer is yes. First, they reaffirmed previous commitments that they have made to the poor. Second, the leaders called on the World Bank to develop a new trust fund to support the new Food Security Initiative agreed at L’Aquila G8 Summit in July. Third, they agreed to review the capital needs of the multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank’s soft loan arm, the International Development Association (IDA), and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

But, there were some clear omissions too. On climate change, even though some G20 leaders committed to scaling up its assistance at the UN High Level Summit on Climate Change just a few days ago, the G20 as a group failed to call for resources to help the poorest countries adapt to the harmful impacts of climate change, and tackle its causes.

This Summit was another opportunity to recognise Africa as part of the solution to the global economic recovery. We thought that the best way to underscore the important role that the continent plays in today’s world is for the G20 to agree to hold an upcoming G20 Summit in Africa. With the G20 becoming the new G8 and the next several hosts already queued up (Canada in June 2010, South Korea in November 2010, and France in 2011), unfortunately, there will be no “G20 Africa Summit” any time soon. One thing is sure though – regardless, ONE will urge these leaders to keep the challenges of Africa and the world’s poor as an important issue on their table.

Read ONE’s analysis of the G20 here

ONE’s Reaction to the Pittsburgh G20 Communique

Sep 28th, 2009 8:19 AM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Overall, the Pittsburgh G20 Summit appears to have made some progress towards reshaping global power structures to make them more representative, but it still has some way to go before it becomes a truly representative global decision making body.

I spent the summit with our US Government Relations Director Tom Hart, who said:

“Moving from the G8 to the G20 is a seismic shift: it brings many more of the world’s people to the table, but the new expanded world body must now start addressing the needs of the poorest countries, especially in Africa. For nearly a decade now, Africa has been squarely on the G8’s agenda, even if delivery on their commitments has been mixed. During this transition time, African development must not fall through the cracks. One way to show the world will not forget Africa would be to hold an upcoming G20 summit on the African continent.”

As I posted earlier here, we passed our petition, in which 75,000 ONE members worldwide call for a G20 Summit to be held in Africa, to the US delegation at the summit.

Below are some key points in the summit’s communique that are relevant to Africa:

• Agriculture - The G20 called on the World Bank to develop a new trust fund, as a way to implement the G8’s food security initiative announced at the L’Aquila Summit in Italy in July. This multilateral fund will support the set of principles championed by the White House to make aid for agriculture more effective, coordinated and geared towards the strategies developed by poor countries themselves.
• Climate change – The G20 failed to call for resources to help the poorest countries adapt to the harmful impacts of climate change, and tackle its causes. It was disappointing that there was no mention of the urgency of addressing these needs.
• African Development Bank – The G20 have reaffirmed the commitment to make sure the multilateral development banks have enough finance, especially the World soft loan arm, the International Development Association (IDA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). The African bank has increased its lending to respond to the financial crisis by as much as US$4bn and now needs support to replenish its coffers. ONE welcomes Canada’s announcement of an extra US$2.8bn in loan guarantees for the Bank.
• World Bank and IMF- Both International Financial Institutions took steps towards increasing representation of developing countries.

Amazing Mural Unveiled

Sep 25th, 2009 9:20 AM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Earlier this week, I attended the unveiling of a giant 200-foot mural created by the “Moving the Lives of Kids” (MLK) Community Project in downtown Pittsburgh.

ONE’s petition asking the G20 to hold a future meeting in Africa covers 100 feet of the wall. The MLK team, including nearly 20 local artists and 30 children from the community, painted the wall in less than five days. When we arrived for the unveiling and press conferences (and as it started to pour down rain) they were putting on the final finishing touches.

(If you’re in Pittsburgh, the mural is on Ross Street between 3rd and 4th.)

Liberia retold

Sep 18th, 2009 3:49 PM EST
By Helen Palmer

This week I went along to the London launch of a new book called “Long story bit by bit: Liberia Retold”. Tim Hetherington is a British photographer who now works for Vanity Fair magazine based in New York. In 2003 he travelled behind rebel lines in Liberia as the country’s civil war was coming to a head. He’s been returning ever since, documenting the process of how a shattered country tries to put itself back together again.

I spent time in Liberia in 2003 and 2004 with Oxfam, so the book has a special resonance for me. The overriding memories I have of the country are of the extreme stoicism of a people forced to endure the unimaginable. Most women I spoke to had been raped; most people had lost family members and homes, often repeatedly. I’ll never forget visiting an impromptu refuge in the capital Monrovia where displaced families were camping on the floor of a vast temple. It was squalid and flea ridden, and yet in the middle of the room we found and filmed a man ironing creases into a crisp white shirt. Tim’s photographs capture this spirit of survival and dignity, as well as the brutality of the war. The book includes the personal testimonies of a range of individuals – from infamous female rebel fighter “Snake Girl”, to anti corruption fighter Frances Johnson-Morris, or environmental activist Silas Siakor. It also naturally focuses on the story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female elected Head of State. So while its images are often shocking, it also makes for inspiring reading.

-Helen Palmer

Homework for Hillary

Aug 21st, 2009 11:24 AM EST
By Nora Coghlan

U.S. Secretary Clinton visited a diverse swath of countries and discussed a wide range of topics on her 11 day tour of sub-Saharan Africa, but some key messages and themes emerged. In countries as different as Kenya, Nigeria and Cape Verde, Clinton highlighted the importance of good governance, transparency and accountability in laying a foundation for development; in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) she focused on violence against women; in Liberia and South Africa she talked about the importance of overcoming these barriers and investing in women to become leaders and drivers of change across the continent; and in Angola and Kenya, trade and agricultural development topped the agenda, with the Secretary speaking at the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum in Nairobi and signing an agreement with Chevron, USAID and the Cooperative League of the United States of America to help develop Angola’s agricultural sector.

Clinton’s travels built on U.S. President Obama’s visit to Ghana in July, marking the earliest trips to sub-Saharan Africa by any President and Secretary of State in history. Similar to President Obama’s African visit, Secretary Clinton made no substantial announcements of new U.S. funding or sweeping new policy initiatives (though there were small packages to DRC to combat sexual violence and to Angola to spur agricultural development and combat HIV/AIDS).

President Obama’s trip was billed as the beginning of a conversation between the U.S. and Africa, an effort by the Administration to integrate Africa into its regular foreign policy dialogue. Secretary Clinton’s trip expanded on this theme, further highlighting the Administration’s intent to revamp its relationship with the continent as partners, not patrons, and to encourage good governance and accountability from African governments. As Secretary Clinton noted at the end of her trip, she was leaving African with “an even greater level of commitment” than she had before.

… I think it is important to underscore the commitment that both President Obama and I have to elevate our relationship with Africa. As you know, very early in his term he came to Africa. He considers himself a son of Africa. He spoke out about what he hoped to see happening in African countries.

Shortly after the President’s historic speech, I have made this 7-nation, 11-day trip through Africa to amplify and emphasize our commitment to a partnership with Africa, working to help individual African countries and governments and democracy on the rule of law, on development, on security. And I intend to work very hard, along with our team in the State Department and USAID, to follow through on the dialogues that we have had across the continent.

So what now?

The Administration has taken its first step to elevate Africa and its development as a foreign policy priority. But now that they’re both back in Washington, it’s our job to make sure that they do their homework and push this agenda into action. The FY2011 budget is an opportunity for this. If the President and Secretary Clinton stick to their commitments, we should expect to see budget increases for agriculture, food security, and maternal and child health.

Further down the road, we’ll continue to look for the Administration to amplify its use of non-aid tools by adopting a more comprehensive African trade and investment strategy, by improving the quality and transparency of our development assistance, and by supporting African efforts to improve governance and transparency. Theirs is a bold and broad agenda that has transformative potential – we are looking for continued action from both President Obama and Secretary Clinton.

-Nora Coghlan