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tralac’s Daily News Selection
The selection: Tuesday, 8 March 2016
Concluding today, in Addis: a learning and validation workshop for the second edition of the OSBP Sourcebook. Partners include the AU, Nepad Agency, JICA, ICA. [OSBP Source Book, September 2011 edition]
Negotiating the CFTA: two updates
Starting tomorrow, in Accra: the ECOWAS/UNCTAD stakeholder consultation on the African Continental Free Trade Area
ECA-TWN CFTA colloquium: 'Civil society urged to scrutinise Africa’s CFTA negotiations' (UNECA)
Establishing a continental free trade area will allow African countries an opportunity to change the structure of their trade and civil society has a role in ensuring transparent and inclusive negotiations and implementation of the agreement. Speaking at the ECA–TWN colloquium on the CFTA, Mr David Luke, ECA’s Coordinator of the African Trade Policy Centre, cited ECA research which indicates that a “50% increase in intra-African trade above a 2012-baseline can be achieved by 2022 if a continental free trade is in place by 2017”. Delegates noted that for the CFTA to have a broader impact, it should be accompanied by complementary services, industrial development and agriculture sector reforms for enhancing food security, rural development, productivity and enhanced participation in agro-value-chains. Mr Luke called upon CSOs to strive for the realization of these principles using the tools of “impact assessments, audits, studies and other analytical and grassroots inputs”, as well as “engaging and mobilizing the media” to provide advocacy channels for concerns.
Today is UN Women’s Day – an infographic, two policy reports:
Women’s resilience: integrating gender in the response to Ebola (AfDB)
For the purposes of this report, particular attention is paid to women’s labour force participation (or lack thereof), as well as their access to financial services, land tenure, healthcare, and decision-making in both the home and nation. This report suggests that the EVD crisis in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has most likely impacted women in the following ways: i) increased infection rates among women because of their traditional roles as caregivers, cross-border traders, and marketers; ii) compromised the livelihoods of women marketers due to the closure of community and national markets; iii) compromised the livelihoods of women who dominate the agricultural, retail trade, hospitality and tourism sectors.
Addressing gender gaps in Africa’s labour market (ILO Africa)
In sub-Saharan Africa, over 60% of all working women remain in agriculture, often concentrated in time and labour-intensive activities, which are unpaid or poorly remunerated. Reversing the employment gender gap is a pressing priority, says a new ILO report. In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, time-related underemployment for women is as high as 40 or 50% of total employment while women continue working fewer hours in paid employment and still perform the vast majority of unpaid household and care work.
Women at Work: Trends 2016 (UN)
The ILO report, Women at Work: Trends 2016 examined data for up to 178 countries and concludes that inequality between women and men persists across a wide spectrum of the global labour market. What’s more, the report shows that over the last two decades, significant progress made by women in education has not translated into comparable improvements in their position at work.
Financial inclusion of women in five charts (World Bank Blogs)
Code of conduct for business in the East African Community (East Africa Business Council)
By committing to this Code, we pledge to treat our stakeholders with respect, to run our businesses responsibly, to act in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and to be actively involved in promoting integrity and corruption prevention. The EABC Code of Conduct for Business will be managed by a Code secretariat hosted by EABC. The Code secretariat will have the following duties: [Download]
EAC: 4th Annual Secretary General’s Forum for Private Sector, Civil Society and Other Interest Groups
Addressing the participants during the official closing session on 4th March, 2016, Dr Ramadhan Mwinyi, Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, East African, Regional and International Cooperation, Tanzania noted that the forum was the best practice of how to engage dialoguing parties for the East Africa integration agenda. “This being the 4th year of consistent dialogue is testament of the commitment of all stakeholders to an all-inclusive sustained engagement in the EAC integration process,” said Dr. Mwinyi.
Kenya: Country economic memorandum - from economic growth to jobs and shared prosperity (World Bank)
As for manufacturing, the puzzle is not why Kenya does not have a manufacturing sector - it does have one - but why this sector has not been able to expand. Factors highlighted by Rodrik (2015), such as the way globalization and trade have worked to the disadvantage of African countries, are part of the story. But the economy has also struggled to develop the deep public-private networks of regulation, facilitation, skills, and infrastructure, which advanced manufacturing economies need. It is revealing that Kenya does well in sectors where networks are somewhat easier to establish, as in banking and telecom, but struggles with the more intensive network capabilities needed for modern manufacturing.
The clogged “exports engine” is what differentiates Kenya from the peer countries, in particular those outside the Africa region. Kenya’s goods exports have been relatively low within the peer group. In 2012, exports of goods were 12% of GDP, while the successful East Asian countries have been producing and exporting several times more (Figure 1.6). The weakness of the export sector has been exacerbated in recent years. Kenya was one of the few countries in the group that recorded a decline in the export-to-GDP ratio between 2005 and 2012. Several factors are suspected to be the culprits for this trend: high cost of transport (partly caused by inefficiencies in getting goods to and from Mombasa port), appreciating real exchange rate, and weak manufacturing sector. [Table of contents: Kenya’s growth story, From economic growth to jobs and shared prosperity, Raising investment through savings, Manufacturing or Services: where does the key to rapid growth lie?, Non-renewable resources for sustainable development]
Industry in Tanzania: performance, prospects, and public policy (UNU-WIDER)
Sustained and more rapid export growth of the type envisaged in the Tanzania Mini-Tiger Plan 2020 will need an ‘export push’—a coordinated set of public investments, policy reforms, and institutional changes focused on increasing the share of industrial exports from both manufacturing and tradable services in GDP. The public actions needed to achieve an export push range from maintaining a competitive real exchange rate to public investments in trade-related infrastructure and skills to institutional and regulatory reforms. A full discussion of the changes needed in Tanzania to achieve an effective export push would require a paper in itself. Here, the focus is on only two key areas—special economic zones and trade logistics. [The author: John Page] [Download]
South Africa: economic sectors, employment and infrastructure development briefing (GCIS)
Going forward, we will upscale revitalisation of local industrial parks from four to 20 locations. All these industrial parks are located in former homelands or are adjacent to large townships. This intervention will unlock economic activities and link small township businesses into established domestic and global Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) supply chains. It will also focus particularly on labour-intensive sectors such as clothing, textiles, footwear and agro-processing. [South Africa current account deficit widens as exports drop (Bloomberg)]
Swaziland: Budget 2016/2017 (Ministry of Finance)
In the medium term, Swaziland Railways plans to expand the Matsapha Inland Clearance Depot, also commonly called the Dry Port, to meet the growing business which has been growing between 15 and 20% per annum. Implementation of Lothair-Sidvokodvo Connection is planned to start. This project will improve the country's access to Mpumalanga and Gauteng Provinces in South Africa. It will also help to reduce the traffic congestion at the Oshoek-Ngwenya border. It will increase cargo transportation from 6.5 million tonnes per annum to 14.6 million tonnes per annum.
Kenya: 'Discreet charms of the Budget Policy Statement' (commentary by Jason Lakin, The EastAfrican)
Promoting agriculture-climate-trade linkages in the Eastern African Community (CUTS International and partners)
Until 2019, the project will bring together, inform, train and move to advocacy action hundreds of stakeholders from the government, businesses, civil society, media, academia and farming communities. Soon, teams of national experts engaged by the project will analyse the interplay of agro-processing with climate change, trade and food security in each EAC country. Findings of their research studies will later inform sensitization, training and advocacy activities towards developing lasting policy solutions for climate-aware, trade-driven, food security-enhancing agro-processing development. The still infant agro-processing industry in East Africa has been earmarked in the EAC Industrialization Policy as having huge potential for poverty reduction, growth and regional integration. But, the region’s success in realising this potential will partly depend on its ability to factor in the ever-increasing challenges posed by climate change, and work in synergy with its own trade agenda. [Inception meeting 29 Feb-01 March, project details]
FAO report to the WTO Committee on Agriculture 2016 (WTO)
The propensity at the world level for substantially lower import bills in 2015 encompasses many of the most economically vulnerable nations, such as those in the groups of LDC Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs), and those geographically situated in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, their food import bills appear set to decline by more than the global average, with falls ranging between 22 and 23% among these country groups. As for LDCs, lower bills would not necessarily come at the expense of volumes, as imported food quantities could rise above the previous year’s levels, in contrast to the global trend.
Urgent need to transform key food producing regions in Africa by 2025 (Phys)
The research is the first to allocate timeframes for changes in policy and practice in order to maintain production levels and avoid placing food security and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers at risk. Study lead author Dr Julian Ramirez-Villegas from the University of Leeds, who is working with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, said: "This study tells where, and crucially when, interventions need to be made to stop climate change destroying vital food supplies in Africa. We know what needs to be done, and for the first time, we now have deadlines for taking action." The study examines region-by-region the likely effect of different climate change scenarios on nine crops that constitute 50% of food production in sub-Saharan Africa.
Related: Jaime de Melo: 'Next steps towards a workable and effective climate regime' (E15 Initiative Blog), Ethiopian farmers need urgent assistance amid major drought, warns UN (UN), Space, markets and employment in agricultural development: findings from rural sites in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi (PLAAS), 4th World Coffee Conference in Addis: inequality in global coffee market discourages farmers (Ethiopian Herald), Are China and Brazil transforming African agriculture?: open access special issue in World Development (zimbabweland), Indian dream of plentiful food from African farms runs into trouble (Daijiworld), India: Will it be an El Niño or La Niña monsoon? (LiveMint)
A glimpse behind the curtain: Consumer Price Indexes in Africa (World Bank Blogs)
Even though Africa’s poor have more pressing concerns than to fuss about the technicalities of inflation measurement, CPIs do matter for our understanding of poverty on the continent. So what are the problems with Africa’s CPIs? Poverty in a Rising Africa reviews what we know about CPIs in the region, drawing on metadata collected by the ILO and other sources. A few things stand out: [The author: Isis Gaddis]
SADC: statement by outgoing SEAC Chairperson, Prof Gerhard Tötemeyer
The USAID Southern Africa Trade Hub is in transition: an update (SATH)
The Annual Bank Conference on Africa: managing the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in Africa (13-14 June, Oxford University)
SA, Nigeria to boost trade ties? (IOL)
Eight issues that Buhari's economic summit must address (Daily Trust)
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