AFRICA NEWS
BULLETIN @ 20h00
Radio
XYZ93.1FM
STORIES
1.
FOCUS:Africa must stop dancing to other
countries’ tune”—CSO Activist
2.
EAST AFRICA: UN Security Council Mission
visits Burundi 21 January
3.
CENTRAL AFRICA: CEMAC Common bank card
to be launched 29 January
1.
Africa must stop dancing to
other countries’ tune”—CSO Activist
The
Secretary-General of Ghana’s General Agricultural Workers Union, Kingsley
Ofei-Nkansah, has urged African countries “to stop dancing to other countries’
tune”. Speaking as a guest on the “Africa in Focus” Show with E.K.BensahJr, he
urged Africa to be more proactive of what it can do in Ghana and try to connect
agriculture with industry.
Joining
Ofei-Nkansah for the discussion was civil society activist Sylvester Bagooro,
Programmes Officer at the Political Economy Unit of Third World Network-Africa.
Along with Ofei-Nkansah, he was in Nairobi last December in the thick of
discussions.
The WTO was
created in 1995 to help facilitate global trade liberalisation, and many
African countries have been battling with it since they joined.
According to
Bagooro, the WTO sets the rules for the Multilateral Trading System across the
globe, and set up to see how countries can trade among themselves.
Bagooro says
that “over the 14 year period when they launched Doha, there was no development
in Doha. It was called Doha work programme. The WTO Secretariat just added the
word development — an editorial tag to appease anger of developing countries.”
In his opinion, Africa lost out.
For his part,
Ofei-Nkansah explained that at the WTO, “the processes were not democratic at
all. Civil society had limited space to express itself, and poor developing
countries were not in the room taking decisions. And in fact, there was quite a
bit of arm-twisting, black-mailing; divide and rule by big players at the WTO.”
Ofei-Nkansah
believes “we have a huge problem with market access because it entails us to
lower our tariffs beyond a certain point, and allow free trade. Unfortunately,
the powers that be…Japan, the US, EU continue to maintain high tariff barriers,
while we…are forced…to lower quite a bit of the tariffs already.”
2.
EAST AFRICA: UN Security
Council Mission visits Burundi 21 January
Members of the UN Security Council are scheduled to arrive in Burundi’s
capital Bujumbura today, with the prime objective of meeting embattled
President Pierre Nkurunziza; the Foreign Minister and other representatives of
political parties and civil society organisations.
Concerned by the fact that the dialogue led by the East African
Community has remained dormant, Council members in their meetings with
Burundian officials are likely to raise the issue of how to renew dialogue
between stakeholders in the peace process.
3.
CENTRAL AFRICA: CEMAC Common
bank card to be launched 29 January
From 29 January, citizens of the six-member regional group CEMAC
will wake up to a new regional bank card that will allow them to withdraw money
and make payments through electronic terminals of the six countries that make
up the group.
This information was revealed by the MD of GIMAC (Electronic
Inter-banking group of Central Africa) ValentinMbozo’o who says the GIMAC card
will be launched on 29 January in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde.
CEMAC is a regional grouping that comprises Cameroon; Congo; Gabon;
Chad; Equatorial Guinea and Central African Republic.
ENDs
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