Africa Weekly
Sustainable Development Guidance Document |
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Edition 1:11 - Tuesday, 8 September 2009
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Editors Note: Welcome to the eleventh issue of IISD's Africa Weekly Sustainable Development Guidance Document. The Guidance Document replaces our Linkages Africa newsletter, and we aim to provide this service on a weekly basis. If you should come across a news article or have a submission for the next issue, please send it directly to richards@iisd.org. The Africa Weekly Sustainable Development Guidance Document is an exclusive publication of IISD for the AFRICASD-L list and should not be reposted or republished to other lists/websites without the permission of IISD (you can write to Kimo Goree for permission.) If you have been forwarded this issue and would like to subscribe to AFRICASD-L, please visit: http://enb.iisd.org/email/#africasd-l
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 26 August: UNDP/Tanzania: Tanzania has embarked on a US$4.2 million initiative to fight climate change by focusing on sustainable forest management. The initiative is part of the global United Nations programme called REDD (“Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”) that seeks to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon growth. [More information]
28 August: UNEP: Food Security: The World Agroforestry Congress held at the UN's Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, has offered some tree-planting solutions which could help the African continent deal with climate change and also provide a long-term solution to the continent's food scarcity problems. Dennis Garrity, the Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre, highlighted some of the Centre's most recent research, which is designed to increase maize production in Africa by up to four times by planting trees that act as organic fertilizers. [Press release]
31 August: UNDP: About 1 200 conflict-affected women and girls in northern Niger are benefiting from an economic recovery assistance programme that will promote cooperation among previously conflicting communities. With a UN Development Programme (UNDP) contribution of US$120 000, the women received cheques and training on setting up small businesses and designing strategies for reinsertion and building livelihoods. With 48 cooperatives of 25, the women are working on income-generating projects, including in the agriculture sector where they will be encouraged to grow their own food. [Press release]
3 September: World Climate Conference: World Climate Conference-3 (WCC-3), held from 31 August to 4 September 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland, brought together more than 2 000 climate scientists, sectoral experts and decision-makers established a Global Framework for Climate Services “to strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services.” The Declaration establishing the Global Framework was adopted by high-level policy-makers from more than 150 countries, including Heads of State/Government of Ethiopia, Monaco, Mozambique, Slovenia, Tajikistan, the Vice-Presidents of Comoros and Tanzania among others. [Press release]
3 September: World Bank/Mozambique: Poverty Reduction:The World Bank-led Communities and Small-scale Mining Initiative (CASM) and the Ministry of Mineral Resources of Mozambique are co-hosting an international conference that will highlight how artisanal and small-scale mining can further contribute to poverty alleviation particularly in rural areas. This year's CASM's annual international conference, to be held from 814 September in Maputo and Chimoio, will bring together artisanal and small-scale mining experts along with representatives from major mining companies, some 100 organizations and more than 50 countries, under the theme "Artisanal Mining: an Opportunity for Rural Development". [Press release]
4 September: COMESA/ESA/EU: The European Union has signed an interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with four countries from the Eastern and Southern Africa regional grouping (ESA). These countries are Mauritius, Seychelles, Zimbabwe, and Madagascar, while Zambia and Comoros have indicated they will sign at a later date. The deal offers the ESA countries that signed the agreement immediate and full access to EU markets (with transition periods for rice and sugar), together with improved rules of origin. ESA countries will open their markets gradually over the next 15 years, with a number of important exceptions reflecting their development needs. [Press release]
4 September: COMESA/Kenya: The Kenyan business community will soon sample new investment opportunities once the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) launches a regional procurement market. The move by the trade bloc, this month, will require the tendering systems of member states to be open to regional competitive bidding process. Project Manager for Procurement, Colas Ziki, said under the arrangement suppliers from member states, would be free to bid for tenders floated in the region for procurement of public goods and services. He said the States would be required to post information on public procurement not available within their localities onto a Comesa procurement website. Kenya’s Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) official, Henock Kirungu said the plan was on course following its approval by the Head of State and Government’s Comesa Summit in Zimbabwe in June. [More information]
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The African Union (AU) and its New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) will host the First Conference of African Ministers of Fisheries to facilitate information sharing in selected technical areas and engage at a political level to ensure dialogue and a concerted voice on critical development issues in the fisheries sector. The Conference will be held from 1-4 December 2009 at a venue to be announced. The Ministers’ Conference is part of the AU-NEPAD’s initiative funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), aimed at assisting AU member States to improve governance of their fisheries resources and optimize contribution of fisheries towards food security and economic growth.
The Conference’s theme is “ African Fisheries and Aquaculture: Contributing towards Agricultural Development and Economic Growth,” which is linked to the theme of the thirteenth AU Assembly and Heads of State and Government Summit (July 2009): “ Investing in Agriculture for Economic Growth and Food Security”. The key outcome areas and considerations of the Conference will be:
clear, evidence-based decisions on priority actions to scale up best practices in fisheries and aquaculture development in Africa within the Common African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) framework;
support for fisheries governance and policy reforms necessary to improve the role of sustainable fisheries in contributing to African countries’ economies and welfare; and
enable fisheries management arrangements that based on rational economic principles to be validated and established.
It is also expected that the outcomes will clearly link to and build on agriculture and rural development decisions and declarations made in the thirteenth AU Assembly and Heads of State and Government Summit. Core agenda items for consideration include the following: a report to chart progress 4 years after the Abuja Summit; options and context for fisheries policy and governance reform in Africa; African fisheries rent-dissipation and wealth-drain; and the role of African fisheries and aquaculture in CAADP.
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8-9 September: Promoting Financial Capability And Consumer Protection - A Step Forward Towards Financial Inclusion in Africa, Accra, Ghana. [More information]
8-14 September: Communities and Small-scale Mining Initiative (CASM) Annual Conference, Maputo, Mozambique.
[More information]
14-16 September: Africa Needs Workshop, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. [More information]
21 September- 2 October: Ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (COP 9), Buenos Aires, Argentina. [More information]
28-30 September: 13th Meeting of the Mediterranean Commission on Sustainable Development (MCSD), Cairo, Egypt.
[More information]
10-11 November: Fourth International Conference of the Egyptian Society for Environmental Sciences: impacts of climate change on natural resources, Ismailia, Egypt. [More information]
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The Africa Weekly Sustainable Development Guidance Document is a publication of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) < info@iisd.ca>, publishers of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin © < enb@iisd.org>. This issue was compiled and edited by Tallash Kantai and Richard Sherman. The Guidance Document is part of IISD Reporting Service’s African Regional Coverage (ARC) Project in partnership with South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), the UN Environment Programme’s Regional Office for Africa (UNEP ROA) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Director of IISD Reporting Services is Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI < kimo@iisd.org>. The Programme Manager of the African Regional Coverage Project is Richard Sherman < rsherman@iisd.org>. Funding for the Africa Weekly Sustainable Development Guidance Document has been provided by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, through the African Regional Coverage Project for IISD Reporting Service’s coverage of African regional meetings. IISD can be contacted at 161 Portage Avenue East, 6th Floor, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 0Y4, Canada; tel: +1-204-958-7700; fax: +1-204-958-7710. The opinions expressed in the Guidance Document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IISD. Electronic versions of the Guidance Document are sent to the electronic distribution list (in HTML format) and can be found on the Linkages WWW-server at < http://enb.iisd.org/africa/>. For information on the ARC, including requests to provide reporting services, contact the Director of IISD Reporting Services at < kimo@iisd.org>, +1-646-536-7556 or 300 East 56th St., 11A, New York, New York 10022, US.
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