Category: Global Partnerships

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | ASTANA (IDN) – Kazakhstan’s “biggest and probably most ambitious event” EXPO 2017, which concluded in the capital city on September 10 after three months, is leaving behind some far-reaching legacies.

One of the legacies is ‘Nur Alem,’ the world’s largest spherical building with the diameter of 80 and height of 100 meters. It is the world’s first ‘complete sphere’ building and hence called the Sphere. Integration of photovoltaic elements into the façade allows conversion of sunlight energy into electric one. Two wind generators are also provided for at the upper part of the sphere. Watch Our Video for an interview with Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko on the legacies of EXPO 2017 Astana

By Jutta Wolf

BERLIN | BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Seventy-nine countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) are determined to speak with one voice as they prepare to negotiate a major partnership framework with the 27-nation European Union (EU).

The new accord will follow on the current ACP-EU Partnership Agreement (also known as the Cotonou Agreement), which covers trade, development cooperation and political dialogue between the two parties until 2020.

Leading up to the launch of negotiations for the post-Cotonou period in 2018, there is a clear common interest in aligning future ACP-EU cooperation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

By Samantha Sen

LONDON (ACP-IDN) – The Brexit question as seen by the small and poor group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries is far simpler – and potentially far more lethal – than those the more usual Brexit debate engages with. It belongs less to debate on knock-on effects rolling into the future than to questions of physical survival here and now. When a fifth of Fiji exports head for the UK, when a Caribbean island lives off bananas sold to Britain, new spokes in buying and selling can hit the people, and even all of the people, of a small nation.

By Robert Kibet

NAIROBI (IDN) – Providing financial resources to the more developed among the developing countries is a very difficult bias to overcome, according to Angel GurrIa, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Gurria was speaking to IDN during the Second High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) which ran from November 28 to December 1 in the Kenyan capital.

“There is a problem with the flows of money that include aid,” said Gurria. “Who’s better to spend it? A country like Kenya that has expertise and larger companies or a country that is very poor and underdeveloped? Those countries with a higher level of GDP per capita tend to attract more because they can have large projects and a greater spending capacity.”

By Bernhard Schell

DUBAI (IDN) – The rise of emerging economies in the Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (ECIS) region has boosted South-South cooperation, according to a new report.

The study by the UN Office for South-South Cooperation and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is the first of its kind. It explores how mutual support has intensified over the last twenty years, following the region’s fundamental changes in economic, political, and social structures.

The study covers 31 countries and territories, highlighting the wealth of South-South Cooperation (SSC) in the region. It cites many interesting examples of SSC, and provides concrete suggestions to national policy-makers and other relevant stakeholders on how to catalyse SSC to achieve development objectives and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

PARIS (IDN) – Sweden’s Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Director General of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida), has been appointed as the new Chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

Petri Gornitzka replaces outgoing DAC Chair Erik Solheim, who recently became Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She will start her new role on a part time basis from July 11, 2016 and take up full-time duties in the autumn.

Analysis by Kalinga Seneviratne

BANGKOK (IDN) – Pointing out that three tiny South Pacific nations – Kiribati, Tuvalu and Marshal islands – are “destined to slip below the waves altogether”, feisty Fijian Prime Minister Josaia Bainimarama has appealed to the international community to help Fiji and the other South Pacific island states build resilience to the impact of climatic change, which he described as the “terror of the extreme weather events”.

Addressing the opening of the 72nd UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) sessions (May 17-19) as outgoing chair, Bainimarama said: “History will judge the industrial nations very harshly if they leave small and vulnerable nations to their fate without extending the appropriate helping hand. We have not caused global warming. They have.”

He told ministers and senior officials from over 65 countries in the Asia-Pacific region that the industrial nations “must use a portion of the wealth they have derived from the carbon emissions of their industries to assist those of us who aren’t as wealthy as they are and are bearing the brunt of the crisis they created”.

Analysis by Kingsley Ighobor

NEW YORK (IDN | Africa Renewal) – To many Africans, Japan is a country acclaimed for economic and technological prowess. Johnson Obaluyi in Lagos, Nigeria, says Toyota, the ubiquitous automotive manufacturer, comes to mind whenever Japan is mentioned. For Kwesi Obeng, a Ghanaian living in Nairobi, Kenya, it is technology. Beageorge Cooper, a consultant for the World Bank in Monrovia, Liberia, says she thinks of Japan as “a former world economic power”.

But it’s a different matter when Africans are asked about Japan-Africa relations. “I will have to read up on that,” says Cooper. “I think we are importing their Toyotas,” recollects Obaluyi. “They support research into tropical diseases in Africa,” says Obeng.

Such scant knowledge of the full gamut of Japan-Africa relations hardly reflects the true picture on the ground, considering that it was as recently as 2013 that Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced a whopping $32 billion five-year support for Africa’s development projects.

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – Canada has joined the IMF, World Bank and several other countries in cutting aid to Mozambique over concerns about the country’s finances.

CTV News reported on May 9 that Mozambique had more than $1.3 billion in undeclared debts, which raised concerns among donors over its financial management. Fourteen donor agencies and countries, including the U.K., Portugal and Switzerland, are freezing a portion of their development assistance.

Canada’s high commissioner in Mozambique said on Twitter on May 9 that general budget support has been frozen – that’s aid that goes directly to Mozambique’s government. Development assistance provided to NGOs and multilateral organizations like the UN remains in place.

In the midst of freezing aid, banks that saw dollar signs in the developing economies of Africa are being blamed for a looming fiscal crash in Mozambique over so-called “tuna bonds”.

Emblematic of the easy lending by western banks, 24 fishing boats meant to be a modern tuna fleet are gathering rust in the port of Maputo.

Analysis by Jaya Ramachandran

PARIS | NEW YORK (IDN) – Revitalizing the global partnership is Goal 17 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic Summit at the UN headquarters in New York.

It urges developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance (ODA) commitments, including the commitment to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of the Gross National Income (GNI) given as ODA to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent to least developed countries.

“ODA providers are encouraged to consider setting a target to provide at least 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries,” says one of the Goal 17 targets endorsed by the world leaders.