The 'New Alliance', backed by £600m of UK aid, is meant to improve food security, reduce malnutrition and lift people out of poverty, writes Aisha Dodwell. But it's all a huge con - delivering corporate welfare, attacking small farmers, enabling land grabs - and leaving a trail of poverty and human devastation. It draws praise from only a single review of its activities: its own.
… truth about the New Alliance and farmers in African countries? Aisha Dodwell Global … Now | 15th January 2016 Activism Farming UK Africa Corporations Aid … its full title, is about helping countries in Africa to improve food security, reduce …
A bill to quadruple the UK's aid funding to a profit-driven 'private equity' company owned by the government comes before MPs today for its third reading, writes Global Justice Now. Trouble is the investments do little or nothing for the poor, and instead entrench corporate power in health, education and infrastructure. Parliament should seize this last chance to reject the new law.
… healthcare in India Private education across Africa An upmarket shopping mall and luxury … were refocused on companies operating in Africa and South Asia and CDC started making … its strategy, making new investments only in Africa and South Asia, and investing directly …
Peter Mandelson is 'intensely relaxed' about growing inequality, but he shouldn't be. It's the result of a 'trickle up' economy which perpetuates and fosters injustice, violence and ill health, writes Global Justice Now, and corrodes democratic societies at their very foundations.
… there were 288 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $2 a day (205 … improvement in poverty rates in sub-Saharan Africa since 1981. Other continents have done …
Overtaken by massive regional trade agreements like TPP, TTIP, CETA and TINA, the World Trade Organisation has slipped into the background, writes Polly Jones. But this week it's back with a vengeance, with its first big meeting in two years. The US's plan is to globalise the investment protection regime set out in the TTP, and open a new era of corporate rule and the eradication of democracy.
… time in Nairobi and for the first time in Africa, and I will be there. While there are …
The failure of the UK's privatized electricity oligopoly - expensive, uncompetitive and slow to adopt renewable technologies - is being repeated across the global south, writes Christine Haigh: over £100 million of UK 'aid' is supporting energy privatization in the very countries that can least afford it.
… ambitious than anything ever attempted in Africa" , and "seen by many as being so …
Ecuador is the latest country to tear up 'free trade' agreements that have so far cost the country $21 billion in damages awarded to foreign companies by 'corporate courts', and yielded next to nothing in return, writes Nick Dearden. So the outgoing President Correa did the only sensible thing: in one of his final executive acts this month, he scrapped 16 toxic trade and investment treaties.
… example." Ecuador follows the lead of South Africa and Indonesia who are also in the …
Thanks to TTIP the corporate drive for free trade is once more facing critical public scrutiny, writes Alex Scrivener. But in the rush to oppose TTIP we mustn't lose sight of the context in which the deal is being negotiated - the hundreds of bilateral treaties that give corporations the right to sue in secret 'trade courts'.
… have the power to stop it. But in numerous African, Asian and Latin American countries, … EU Economic Partnership Agreements with African countries, have been multiplying at a … agreements that have been detrimental South Africa is also reviewing some trade …
COP21 is overwhelming, writes Kevin Smith at the end of the Summit's first week. It's huge, its complicated, everyone is running around in a constant frenzy, NGOs are squeezed out of key meetings, and all but the biggest countries struggle to keep up with the action. But still, negotiations are progressing. And amid the chaos, some truly wonderful, surprising, inspiring things are happening.
… happening is absolutely good! On Tuesday African heads of state launched the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI), …
If you're expecting COP21 in Paris to save the world's climate you're in for a disappointment, writes Alex Scrivener. For governments, climate is secondary to the really big issues - like endless economic growth and ever-increasing corporate profit. But there's still plenty campaigners can do to shame politicians, businesses and investors into meaningful action.
… scale at the Durban summit in 2011, where African countries were offered aid in exchange … an unfair EU deal. This was then presented as Africa as a whole agreeing to the European … proposal despite the fact that no other African country was closely involved in the …