http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/features/94055#.VPBvnftnfj8.mailto

http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/features/94050#.VPBLkzyuLrw.mailto

AfricaFocus Bulletin
February 24, 2015 (150224)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

When President Obama addressed the White House Conference on
Countering Violent Extremism last week, the media buzz focused on
his message that it was a counterproductive error to equate Islam
and terrorism. Some critics also pointed out the contradictions in
trying to win hearts and minds by parsing language while continuing
to fuel terrorism with drone strikes and collaboration with
repressive regimes. Virtually invisible, however, was the deep
collateral damage from the “financial war on terror,” which
continues to impede remittances from Somali immigrants needed both
for survival and economic development in their homeland.

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Earlier this month, the last American bank providing services to
Somali money transfer operators began to cut off remaining accounts,
having tried unsuccessfully to meet demands from U.S. agencies to
tighten control of “risks” that money might go to terrorists. The
threat is not new, and the administration has pledged to take
action, but the “financial war on terror” continues to take
priority, leaving calls for urgent action by the administration
unanswered.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excepts from a new report on this
issue from three non-governmental groups: “Hanging by a Thread: The
Ongoing Threat to Somalia’s Remittance Lifeline.” The full report,
which includes sections on the UK and Australia as well as the
United States, is available at http://tinyurl.com/mvnwwaw

For additional background on the threat to remittances from the
“financial war on terror,” with a particular focus on the UK, see
this AfricaFocus Bulletin from a year ago (http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/som1402.php).

For a February 6 letter to Secretary of State Kerry from Keith
Ellison and other members of Congress calling for urgent U.S. action
on the crisis, see http://tinyurl.com/ls9r6cf

For an article on the high cost of remittances, see
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/remi1404.php

For additional AfricaFocus Bulletins on migration-related issues,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/migrexp.php

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Somalia, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/somalia.php

For a summary and links for recent developments in USA/Somalia
relations, see the February 23 post from Africa Militarism Watch (
http://tinyurl.com/mp9gx3b)

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Hanging by a Thread

The ongoing threat to Somalia’s remittance lifeline

Joint Agency Briefing Note, 19 February 2015

Adeso (African Development Solutions, Nairobi,
http://adesoafrica.org/)

Global Center on Cooperative Security (London,
http://www.globalcenter.org/)

Oxfam (Oxford, http://www.oxfam.org)

[Link to Adeso press release and full report:
http://tinyurl.com/mvnwwaw]

Every year, Somalia receives approximately $1.3bn in remittances –
money sent from the Somali diaspora to loved ones back home.
Remittances account for between 25 and 45 percent of Somalia’s
economy and exceed the amount it receives in humanitarian aid,
development aid and foreign direct investment combined. As Somali
money transfer operators lose their bank accounts, Somali families
are losing their only formal or transparent channel through which to
send money. Somalia needs long-term support to build sustainable
financial institutions as well as urgent help to maintain its
current remittance flows.

Introduction

As Somali families visit their local money transfer office to pick
up money from relatives in Minneapolis, Toronto, London, Melbourne,
Nairobi, Copenhagen or elsewhere, they are hoping that this is not
the month that their funds fail to arrive. Money transfer operators
(MTOs) estimate that over 80 percent of the start-up capital for
small businesses in Somalia is sent by the diaspora. Money received
from abroad is also used to meet basic needs, including food, water,
shelter, and  education. Additionally, most remittance recipients
provide support to poorer relatives.

The Problem

Somalia is not only one of the most remittance-dependent countries
in the world, it also faces a unique set of challenges in its effort
to maintain remittance inflows. Unlike the remittance industry in
many countries, Somalia’s money transfer system is relatively
affordable and accessible to customers. Somalia does not have a
functioning commercial banking system: Central Bank of Somalia
currently has very limited correspondent relationships with foreign
banks, little to no commercial banking services, and inadequate
supervisory capacity to oversee the sector. Foreign banks and MTOs
are basically absent.

That leaves Somali MTOs – a group of companies that grew out of
informal hawala networks – as the only formal, practical, and
regulated set of institutions through which to send money to
Somalia. To operate, MTOs require bank accounts in countries from
which money is sent. Unfortunately, in recent years, Somali MTOs
have found it increasingly difficult to access banking services in
the  USA, the UK, Australia and elsewhere. Banks are exiting sectors
viewed as high-risk, including the money transfer sector, and they
have branded Somalia as a particularly risky destination for money
transfers because of its weak financial regulation and the presence
of groups listed as terrorists. Despite the significant efforts that
Somali MTOs have made to comply with Anti-Money Laundering and
Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations, most
international banks view Somali MTOs as high-risk customers. The
decreasing access to banking services and the increasing cost of
compliance has reduced MTOs’ profits and limited their ability to
further expand their service and coverage.

The risk of legal money flows being significantly curtailed and in
some contexts, potentially cut off completely, remains a terrifying,
and all-too-real prospect. As Somali MTOs lose their banking
arrangements, remittances to Somalia could decrease in volume and go
underground. This would defeat the object of upholding AML/CFT
regulations, and would create a system that regulators and law
enforcement officials cannot penetrate, increasing the potential for
abuse. Informal business networks, supported by couriers carrying
hundreds of thousands of dollars, would likely replace the current
formal systems that are accountable to regulators and the
communities they serve. Families that depend on remittances would
suffer, while the criminal networks that seek to exploit the system
would benefit.

Since July 2013, governments, MTOs, and banks in the UK and the US
especially have made some strides toward solutions. US and UK
policymakers have increasingly prioritized the flow of remittances
to Somalia. Somali authorities have taken important steps toward
effectively regulating money transfers, and the use of mobile money
transfer technology continues to expand in Somalia. Much of this
progress has come in response to political pressure and public
campaigning.

This briefing reviews international efforts to facilitate
remittances to Somalia since July 2013, identifying successes but
also some significant gaps in the response. It focuses on the US and
the UK as the two countries with the highest populations of Somali
diaspora and where the threat to the remittance system is most
acute. It also covers recent events in Australia, where the future
viability of the Somali remittance industry now seems uncertain, and
where the Australian government has begun working with MTOs and
banks to address these challenges.

The recommendations in this paper have a worldwide application,
particularly as they relate to the role of G20 countries in
fulfilling their commitments to financial inclusion.

Box 1: The humanitarian situation in Somalia

Rising food prices, poor rains, displacement, conflict, trade
disruption, and reduced levels of humanitarian aid have combined to
create a poor food security situation which some have compared to
the situation in 2011 that resulted in famine. More than 730,000
people in Somalia are dependent on aid for survival. At the time of
writing, an estimated 202,600 children under the age of five are
acutely malnourished, including almost 38,200 severely malnourished
children considered to be at death’s door. This is in a context of
long-term chronic poverty and lack of services, with one in every
five children in Somalia dying before their fifth birthday. Only 30
percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, and
there are more than 1.1 million internally displaced people in
Somalia and 1 million refugees.

[end box]

With one out of every three Somalis saying that without these
remittance flows they would not be able to pay for food, school or
basic healthcare, further strain on this vital lifeline would throw
many more families into crisis and undermine efforts to foster a
stable and peaceful Somalia. The fact that this money is immediately
available for recipients to spend on their most immediate needs, or
to invest in the most promising opportunities, makes it all the more
important to Somalia’s recovery.

The economic obstacles facing the Somali people, including their
need for a sustainable financial system, require long-term
solutions. That should not, however, dilute the urgency with which
the current Somali remittance system must be strengthened. The
Somali government must lead, but the US, UK and Australian
governments, the G20 and its member governments, the Financial
Action Task Force, and the World Bank must all act swiftly to
maintain the financial lifeline between Somalia and its diaspora
population.

The impact on women in Somalia as the main caregivers in their
families is particularly great. Although statistics are scarce, it
appears that more than half of Somali women receive remittances.
Remittances are often the only funds that female caregivers are able
to access and control, making them a vital tool for women’s economic
empowerment, which in turn boosts the ability of women to claim
their social and political rights. Studies have found that whenwomen
receive and control remittances, they are more likely to invest the
funds in overall household well-being through increased expenditures
on health, education, and nutrition. However, control over
remittances is not a given for women recipients. This is critical,
in particular for women who are relying solely on remittances for
family survival.

Since the start of the civil war, women have taken on greater roles
in terms of being providers for their families, starting small
businesses (for which investment from the diaspora is crucial), and
at the same time providing primary care for their children. Some
women who receive remittances choose to go beyond the simple day-to-
day management of the money and invest part of the resources in
income-generating activities in order to mitigate the irregularity
and precariousness of this source of income. If remittances were to
be curtailed, women and their families would bear much of the shock.

——–

‘People’s entire lives are dependent on these remittances, and until
the day that Somalia can take care of its own people, we remain
dependent on them.

This is not just extra money: this is money that I need to survive
on a daily basis. Not only am I dependent on it, but more than ten
relatives – my entire extended family – are as well. I have sick
relatives who need medication, and children that I am trying to
provide an education for. This money is vital for that. If I did not
receive this money we would not be able to survive and I am scared
to even think about what could happen.’ – Hawa Abdullahi Warsame,
Badhan, Somalia

—–

Remittances to Somalis from the United States and the US Government
Response

Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, several large US
banks responded to tougher money laundering regulation and
enforcement by closing the accounts of MTOs. Somali remittance
company executives had warned throughout the early 2000s that the
US–Somalia money transfer corridor was under threat. However, it was
not until the height of the 2010–2011 Horn of Africa drought, when
Sunrise Community Bank announced it would close Somali MTO accounts,
that Somali communities and humanitarian agencies mobilized at
scale. Thankfully, MTOs were able to survive, relying on a number of
small- and medium-sized banks around the US to process their
business. However, this episode exposed an alarming lack of
foresight on the part of the US government, in stark contrast with
its public recognition that a closure of formal mechanisms to
transfer money to Somalia would be disastrous for US and Somali
interests.

Box 3: US government bank regulators: Singing from the same
songsheet?

The public commitments to support MTOs made by Treasury Department
policy makers in 2014 are encouraging, but a great many governmental
actors need to buy into Treasury’s message if the banking
environment is going to change. The Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network (FinCEN) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) are
two bodies within Treasury which establish their own regulations.
FinCEN additionally supplies data in criminal investigations and
OFAC conducts enforcement actions for violations of its rules. The
agencies that supervise and insure banks – the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve Board – as well as the
National Credit Union Administration, maintain their independence
from Treasury Department policy makers (including the OCC, which is
housed within Treasury). They each have direct contact with
financial institutions and, through their examinations and
enforcement actions which aim to guarantee the soundness of the
financial system, regulate the risk of money laundering.

Finally, criminal prosecutors have become increasingly important
players in recent years. The US Department of Justice, through an
effort called Operation Choke Point, has aggressively targeted banks
that maintain relationships with customers it views as high-risk. US
attorneys prosecuting federal crimes frequently work hand-in-hand
with state prosecutors, who are independently responsible for
upholding state law and whose influence is significant in certain
jurisdictions where international banks conduct high volumes of
business, such as New York.

These government actors have different objectives in their
engagement with banks. While some of them coordinate with Treasury
Department policy makers, none of them are responsible or
accountable for US foreign policy, despite wielding great influence
in that realm. The distance between diplomatic channels and the
regulation of banks has greatly complicated efforts by the Somali
government, and to a lesser extent the UK government, which have
made a powerful case that the discontinuance of Somali MTO bank
accounts undercuts the countries’ shared policy goals.

[end box]

Over the past three years, the US government has taken some modest
but important steps to help put Somalia on a stronger financial
footing. The formation of a National Security Council-led
interagency working group on remittances to Somalia demonstrates
that the government has come to appreciate the consequences of a
disruption in remittance flows. The US Treasury Department and USAID
have collaborated with the Central Bank of Somalia to help improve
its public financial management system and to pave the way for the
country to develop a banking system and become financially self-
sufficient. The Treasury Department is helping the Central Bank
build its supervision unit, a much needed capacity for any country
that aims to connect to international financial networks. President
Obama also signed into law the Money Remittances Improvement Act, a
common sense measure that streamlines oversight of the money
transfer industry and may yield a marginal increase in access to
banking services for MTOs.

Perhaps most promising is the Treasury Department’s September 2014
promise to clarify expectations for banks dealing with high-risk
MTOs; a promise which reflects real political commitment to
addressing the systemic challenges facing the most difficult-to-
serve money transfer corridors. Treasury’s Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network November 2014 statement on banking for money
service businesses, including MTOs, helpfully emphasized that banks
are not expected to regulate the money services industry or know
each individual remitter.

Still, the system facilitating remittances from the US to Somalia
remains in critical condition and the US government remains
startlingly unprepared to manage the potential fallout. Most Somali
MTOs have no bank accounts in the major population centres they
serve. Until recently, this forced them to keep large amounts of
cash on hand and to truck it across state lines in armoured
vehicles. MTO executives say this has kept them from expanding
services to smaller Somali communities and made it difficult to
maintain their existing presence and rates. And the situation has
now become even worse: Merchants Bank of California, the principal
bank facilitating remittances to Somalia, announced that it would
close all Somali MTO accounts on February 6 2015.

At the time of writing, Somali MTOs are closing most of their branch
locations, leaving many Somali migrants without a legal way to
support their loved ones. Without US government intervention or a
new bank’s involvement, Somalia and the greater Horn of Africa may
be poised to suffer a sharp economic decline and an acute
humanitarian crisis. To date, the US government has offered no
assurance that it is prepared to take the necessary steps to keep
money flowing legally and transparently to people who need it.

——

‘It’s kind of scary to the community here and abroad. People are
wondering why, if it’s legitimate, would the US government make it
difficult for them to send money to their loved ones. This part of
East Africa has been in conflict and they don’t need their life to
be more difficult. People are already dying of hunger. Sometimes
even in normal years lives are fragile because the infrastructure is
limited. So people depend on each other greatly. If the government
and [MTOs] work together, they can fix it.’ – Sadiq Yusuf Mohamud,
Minneapolis, MN, USA

Recommendations

The Somali Federal Government and other Somali authorities should:

Improve financial management and transparency:

[see detailed recommendations in full report]

Somali Money Transfer Operators should:

[see detailed recommendations in full report]

The US government should:

* Take emergency measures to ensure that Somali migrants in the US
can continue to send money freely and legally to their loved ones in
Somalia. We have called for the US government to prepare for the
possibility that Somali MTOs will be forced to close branch
locations and reduce the flow of remittances because of a lack of
banking options. That moment has now arrived. There are a number of
different ways the US government can maintain the continued flow of
remittances to Somalia through formal channels, such as: – preparing
a special regulatory regime, including safe harboursfor banks doing
business with licensed and regulated Somali-American MTOs; or –
preparing an agreement with a public financial institution, such as
the New York Federal Reserve, to facilitate remittances to Somalia.

* Develop an outreach programme to educate and clarify policy for
bank examiners to emphasize the importance of banking for MTOs. Bank
examiners face negative repercussions if money laundering takes
place in the banks they monitor. They do not benefit from
maintaining accounts for companies they view as risky, even if they
are compliant with US regulation. The examiners have no incentive to
protect access to banking for companies or organizations that
promote financial inclusion. The OCC, the FDIC, and the Federal
Reserve strategies to remedy this problem should include
modifications to the examiners’ handbook and examiner training.

* Clarify expectations for banks dealing with MTOs. In his 8 October
2014 blog post, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Daniel
Glazer, pledged that the Treasury Department will work with federal
banking agencies to update the guidance for banks dealing with MTOs
and that that this guidance would emphasize that, ‘with sufficient
controls, banks can effectively manage high-risk money
transmitters.’ To make a difference, this guidance should be
specific enough on what constitutes ‘sufficient controls’ to give
banks confidence that they can comply with the law and avoid
enforcement and prosecution.

* Clearly communicate the US government’s objectives in
extraterritorial application of US AML/CFT laws. The US government’s
aggressive approach to the prevention of money laundering has
included imposing hefty fines on foreign banks conducting business
in US dollars. This has convinced many banks that maintaining
accounts for money service businesses, particularly smaller
companies serving higher-risk destinations, is not worth the risk.
In order to reassure responsible banks that it is safe to do
business with money transmitters, the US government should announce
its intention to only enforce against the worst conduct by foreign
banks – which is generally what it has done thus far.

[full report also contains recommendations for UK, Australia, other
countries with significant Somali diaspora population, and the World
Bank]

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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AfricaFocus Bulletin
February 18, 2015 (150218)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in
2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private
capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into
the programme, African governments are required to make important
changes to their land and seed policies. … [for example] Despite
the fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced
and disseminated through ‘informal’ seed systems (on-farm seed
saving and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no
recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of
farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling
seeds.” – Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and GRAIN, January
2015

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
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Countless reports by global and African agencies highlight the
critical role for agriculture in African development. Almost all
agree that small farmers are key to addressing poverty and food
insecurity. But many policies, such as those described in this new
report from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and GRAIN,
lead in practice to empowerment of agribusiness giants rather than
small farmers. By imposing legal frameworks based on Western
industrial agriculture, powerful interests make a mockery of
international pledges to help small farmers.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the report “Land
and Seed Laws under Attack: Who is pushing changes in Africa?” (full
report available at http://tinyurl.com/m5g8zje)

For summary talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on
food and agriculture issues, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-ag.php

There are a host of reports on specific cases of land grabs and
sometimes on successful challenges to them. The sources cited below
are only a sampling.

For a report by Nigerian and international groups on a recent
contested case of land grabbing in Taraba state in eastern Nigeria
(a rice plantation under the control of U.S.-based agribusiness firm
Dominion Farms), see http://tinyurl.com/pr463qr

For a recent case in Senegal, researched by ActionAid, visit
http://tinyurl.com/mrhhuy4 For more information on ActionAid work on
land rights, visit http://tinyurl.com/pdt7kny

For a case in Ghana, where Herakles Farms abandoned its investments
after community protests, see the report by the Africa Faith and
Justice Network (http://afjn.org; direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/mfftstg).

In addition to the organizations cited in this report, and the cases
just cited, AfricaFocus particularly recommends, for case studies
and current information on the status of land grabbing in Africa,
the website of the Oakland Institute at
http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/land-rights-issue The Oakland
Institute and other groups are active in a campaign to have the
World Bank stop promoting land grabs through its “doing business”
ratings. Visit http://ourlandourbusiness.org/ for more details.

For extensive research on seeds and food sovereignty in Africa, see
also the website of the African Centre for Biosafely (
http://www.acbio.org.za/)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ebola Perspectives

[AfricaFocus is regularly monitoring and posting links on
Ebola on social media. For
additional links, see http://www.facebook.com/AfricaFocus]

New and of particular interest:

Jina Moore, Buzzfeed, February 12 http://tinyurl.com/mjagccr – map
showing Liberia “very close” to end of Ebola. Total number of days
since last case over 21 in all counties except Montserrado
(Monrovia)

WHO, Situation Report, February 11 http://tinyurl.com/lygs4b5
Not quite as optimistic. “Total weekly case incidence increased for
the second consecutive week, with 144 new confirmed cases reported
in the week to 8 February.” Cases up in Guinea and Sierra Leone,
although still low in Liberia.

Shawn Radcliffe, Healthline, “Ebola Crisis Eases in Africa. Now
What?” February 12 http://tinyurl.com/n8p7csf
Need for vigilance, plus long-term planning for recovery of
economies & building sustainable health systems

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Land and Seed Laws under Attack: Who is pushing changes in Africa?

Report

Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA; http://afsafrica.org)
and GRAIN ( http://www.grain.org)

[Full text of report at http://tinyurl.com/m5g8zje and
http://www.grain.org /e/5121]

January 2015

Who is pushing changes in Africa?

…

A battle is raging for control of resources in Africa — land,
water, seeds, minerals, ores, forests, oil, renewable energy
sources. Agriculture is one of the most important theatres of this
battle. Governments, corporations, foundations and development
agencies are pushing hard to commercialise and industrialise African
farming.

Many of the key players are well known. They are committed to
helping agribusiness become the continent’s primary food commodity
producer. To do this, they are not only pouring money into projects
to transform farming operations on the ground — they are also
changing African laws to accommodate the agribusiness agenda.

Privatising both land and seeds is essential for the corporate model
to flourish in Africa. With regard to agricultural land, this means
pushing for the official demarcation, registration and titling of
farms. It also means making it possible for foreign investors to
lease or own farmland on a long-term basis. With regard to seeds, it
means having governments require that seeds be registered in an
official catalogue in order to be traded. It also means introducing
intellectual property rights over plant varieties and criminalising
farmers who ignore them. In all cases, the goal is to turn what has
long been a commons into something that corporates can control and
profit from.

This survey aims to provide an overview of just who is pushing for
which specific changes in these areas — looking not at the plans
and projects, but at the actual texts that will define the new
rules. It was not easy to get information about this … We did
learn a few things, though:

* While there is a lot of civil society attention focused on the
G8’s New Alliance for Food and Nutrition, there are many more actors
doing many similar things across Africa. Our limited review makes it
clear that the greatest pressure to change land and seed laws comes
from Washington DC — home to the World Bank, USAID and the MCC
[Millennium Challenge Corporation].

* Land certificates — which should be seen as a stepping stone to
formal land titles — are being promoted as an appropriate way to
“securitise” poor peoples’ rights to land. But how do we define the
term “land securitisation”? As the objective claimed by most of the
initiatives dealt with in this report, it could be understood as
strengthening land rights. Many small food producers might conclude
that their historic cultural rights to land — however they may be
expressed — will be better recognised, thus protecting them from
expropriation. But for many governments and corporations, it means
the creation of Western-type land markets based on formal
instruments like titles and leases that can be traded. … So in a
world of grossly unequal players, “security” is shorthand for
market, private property and the power of the highest bidder.

* Most of today’s initiatives to address land laws, including those
emanating from Africa, are overtly designed to accommodate, support
and strengthen investments in land and large-scale land deals,
rather than achieve equity or to recognise longstanding or
historical community rights over land at a time of rising conflicts
over land and land resources.

* Most of the initiatives to change current land laws come from
outside Africa. Yes, African structures like the African Union and
the Pan-African Parliament are deeply engaged in facilitating
changes to legislation in African states, but many people question
how “indigenous” these processes really are. It is clear that
strings are being pulled, by Washington and Europe in particular, to
alter land governance in Africa.

* When it comes to seed laws, the picture is reversed. Subregional
African bodies — SADC, COMESA, OAPI and the like — are working to
create new rules for the exchange and trade of seeds. But the
recipes they are applying — seed marketing restrictions and plant
variety protection schemes — are borrowed directly from the US and
Europe.

* The changes to seed policy being promoted by the G8 New Alliance,
the World Bank and others refer to neither farmer-based seed systems
nor farmers’ rights. They make no effort to strengthen farming
systems that are already functioning. Rather, the proposed solutions
are simplified, but unworkable solutions to complex situations that
will not work — though an elite category of farmers may enjoy some
small short term benefits.

…

* With seeds, which represent a rich cultural heritage of Africa’s
local communities, the push to transform them into income-generating
private property, and marginalise traditional varieties, is still
making more headway on paper than in practice. This is due to many
complexities, one of which is the growing awareness of and popular
resistance to the seed industry agenda. But the resolve of those who
intend to turn Africa into a new market for global agroinput
suppliers is not to be underestimated. The path chosen will have
profound implications for the capacity of African farmers to adapt
to climate change.

This report was drawn up jointly by the Alliance for Food
Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and GRAIN. AFSA is a pan-African
platform comprising networks and farmer organisations championing
small African family farming based on agro-ecological and indigenous
approaches that sustain food sovereignty and the livelihoods of
communities. GRAIN is a small international organisation that aims
to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for
community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

The report was researched and initially drafted by Mohamed
Coulibaly, an independent legal expert in Mali, with support from
AFSA members and GRAIN staff. …

Initiatives targeting both land and seed laws

G8 New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition – Initiated by the G8
countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US

– Timeframe: 2012-2022

РImplemented in 10 African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, C̫te
d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and
Tanzania

The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was launched in
2012 by the eight most industrialised countries to mobilise private
capital for investment in African agriculture. To be accepted into
the programme, African governments are required to make important
changes to their land and seed policies. The New Alliance
prioritises granting national and transnational corporations (TNCs)
new forms of access and control to the participating countries’
resources, and gives them a seat at the same table as aid donors and
recipient governments. As of July 2014, ten African countries had
signed Cooperative Framework Agreements (CFAs) to implement the New
Alliance programme. Under these agreements, these governments
committed to 213 policy changes. Some 43 of these changes target
land laws, with the overall stated objective of establishing “clear,
secure and negotiable rights to land” — tradeable property titles.

The New Alliance also aims to implement both the Voluntary
Guidelines (VGs) on Responsible Land Tenure adopted by the Committee
on World Food Security in 2012, and the Principles for Responsible
Agriculture Investment drawn up by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD and UN
Conference on Trade and Development. This is considered especially
important since the New Alliance directly facilitates access to
farmland in Africa for investors. To achieve this, the New Alliance
Leadership Council, a self-appointed body composed of public and
private sector representatives, in September 2014 decided to come up
with a single set of guidelines to ensure that the land investments
made through the Alliance are “responsible” and not land grabs. As
to seeds, all of the participating states, with the exception of
Benin, agreed to adopt plant variety protection laws and rules for
marketing seeds that better support the private sector. Despite the
fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced and
disseminated through ‘informal’ seed systems (on-farm seed saving
and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no
recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of
farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling
seeds.

African governments are being co-opted into reviewing their seed
trade laws and supporting the implementation of Plant Variety
Protection (PVP) laws. The strategy is to first harmonise seed trade
laws such as border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety
release systems and certification standards at the regional level,
and then move on to harmonising PVP laws. The effect is to create
larger unified seed markets, in which the types of seeds on offer
are restricted to commercially protected varieties. The age old
rights of farmers to replant saved seed is curtailed and the
marketing of traditional varieties of seed is strictly prohibited.

Concerns have been raised about how this agenda privatises seeds and
the potential impacts this could have on small-scale farmers.
Farmers will lose control of seeds regulated by a commercial system.
There are also serious concerns about the loss of biodiversity
resulting from a focus on commercial varieties.

…

The World Bank

The World Bank is a significant player in catalysing the growth and
expansion of agribusiness in Africa. It does this by financing
policy changes and projects on the ground. In both cases, the Bank
targets land and seed laws as key tools for advancing and protecting
the interests of the corporate sector.

The Bank’s work on policy aims at increasing agricultural production
and productivity through programmes called “Agriculture Development
Policy Operations” (AgDPOs).

Besides financing AgDPOs, the World Bank directly supports
agriculture development projects. Some major World Bank projects
with land tenure components are presented in Annex 2, with a focus
on the legal arrangements developed to make land available for
corporate investors. These projects are much more visible than the
AgDPOs and their names are well known in each country: PDIDAS in
Senegal, GCAP in Ghana, Bagrépole in Burkina. …

Initiatives targeting land laws

African Union Land Policy Initiative

…

The African Union (AU), together with the African Development Bank
(AfDB) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), has been
spearheading a Land Policy Initiative (LPI) since 2006. Mainly a
response to land grabbing on the continent, the LPI is meant to
strengthen and change national policies and laws on land. It is
funded by the EU, IFAD, UN Habitat, World Bank, France and
Switzerland. LPI is expected to become an African Centre on Land
Policies after 2016.

The LPI is designed to implement the African Declaration on Land
Issues and Challenges, adopted by the AU Summit of Heads of State in
July 2009. …

One important undertaking of the LPI is the development of a set of
Guiding Principles on Large-Scale Land-Based Investments (LSLBI)
meant to ensure that land acquisitions in Africa “promote inclusive
and sustainable development”. The Guiding Principles were adopted by
the Council of agriculture ministers in June 2014, and are awaiting
endorsement by the AU Summit of Heads of States and government.

The Guiding Principles have several objectives, including guiding
decision making on land deals (recognising that large scale land
acquisitions may not be the most appropriate form of investment);
providing a basis for a monitoring and evaluation framework to track
land deals in Africa; and providing a basis for reviewing existing
large scale land contracts. The Guiding Principles draw lessons from
global instruments and initiatives to regulate land deals including
the Voluntary Guidelines and the Principles for Responsible
Agricultural Investments in the Context of Food Security and
Nutrition. They also take into account relevant human rights
instruments. But because the Guiding Principles are not a binding
instrument and lack an enforcement mechanism, it is far from certain
that they will prove any more effective than other voluntary
frameworks on land. They are, however, widely accepted and supported
on the continent as the first “African response” to the issue of
land grabbing.

[For more on other similar initiatives see full report]

Initiatives introducing seed laws

Under the rubric “seeds laws” there are various types of legal and
policy initiatives that directly affect what kind of seeds small
scale farmers can use. We focus on two: intellectual property laws,
which grant state-sanctioned monopolies to plant breeders (at the
expense of farmers’ rights), and seed marketing laws, which regulate
trade in seeds (often making it illegal to exchange or market
farmers’ seeds).

Plant Variety Protection

Plant variety protection (PVP) laws are specialised intellectual
property rules designed to establish and protect monopoly rights for
plant breeders over the plants types (varieties) they have
developed. PVP is an offshoot of the patent system. All members of
the World Trade Organization (WTO) are obliged to adopt some form of
PVP law, according to the WTO’s Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). But how they do so is up to
national governments.

African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) draft
PVP Protocol

– Draft PVP Protocol to be implemented in the 19 ARIPO member
states: Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique,
Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe,
Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

ARIPO is the regional counterpart of the UN’s World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) for Anglophone Africa. It was
established under the Lusaka Agreement signed in 1976. In November
2009, ARIPO’s Council of Ministers approved a proposal for ARIPO to
develop a policy and legal framework which would form the basis for
the development of the ARIPO Protocol on the Protection of New
Varieties of Plants (the PVP Protocol). Adopted in November 2013,
the legal framework was formulated into a Draft PVP Protocol in 2014
during a diplomatic conference.

The Draft PVP Protocol establishes unified procedures and
obligations for the protection of plant breeder’s rights in all
ARIPO member states. These rights will be granted by a single
authority established by ARIPO to administer the whole system on
behalf of its member states.

The Protocol is based on the rules contained in the 1991 Act of the
UPOV Convention. It therefore establishes legal monopolies
(“protection”) on new plant varieties for 20-25 years, depending on
the crop. Farmers will not be able to save and re-use seed from
these varieties on their own farms except for specifically
designated crops, within reasonable limits, and upon annual payment
of royalties. Under no circumstances will they be able to exchange
or sell seeds harvested from such varieties. …

The Protocol is hotly contested by civil society. AFSA, for
instance, is on record for vehemently opposing the ARIPO PV Protocol
on the grounds that it, inter alia, severely erodes farmers’ rights
and the right to food. On the other hand, industry associations have
been consulted extensively in the process of drafting the ARIPO PVP
Protocol. …

[For more on other similar initiatives, see full report.]

Seed marketing rules

The second category of seed laws consists of rules governing seeds
marketing in and among countries. A number of current initiatives
aim to harmonise these rules among African states belonging to the
same Regional Economic Community. But through harmonisation, states
are actually being encouraged to “liberalise” the seed market. This
means limiting the role of the public sector in seed production and
marketing, and creating new space and new rights for the private
sector instead. In this process, farmers lose their freedom to
exchange and/or sell their own seeds. This legal shift is
deliberately meant to lead to the displacement and loss of peasant
seeds, because they are considered inferior and unproductive
compared to corporate seeds.

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was established
in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller
Foundation. It is currently funded by several development
ministries, foundations and programmes, including DFID, IFAD and the
Government of Kenya. AGRA’s objective is to “catalyse a uniquely
African Green Revolution based on small- holder farmers so that
Africa would be food self-sufficient and food secure.” AGRA focuses
on five areas: seeds, soil health, market access, policy and
advocacy and support to farmers’ organisations.

On seeds, AGRA’s activities are implemented through the Programme
for Africa’s Seed Systems (PASS). PASS focuses on the breeding,
production and distribution of so-called “improved” seeds. AGRA’s
action on seeds policies and laws, however, is carried out through
its Policy Programme, whose goal is to establish an “enabling
environment”, including seed and land policy reforms, to boost
private investment in agriculture and encourage farmers to change
practices. This specifically includes getting the public sector out
of seed production and distribution.

AGRA’s seed policy work aims to strengthen internal seed laws and
regulations, reduce delays in the release of new varieties,
facilitate easy access to public germplasm, support the
implementation of regionally harmonised seed laws and regulations,
eliminate trade restrictions and establish an African Seed
Investment Fund to support seed businesses.

In Ghana, for example, AGRA helped the government review its seed
policies with the goal of identifying barriers to the private sector
getting more involved. With technical and financial support from
AGRA, the country’s seed legislation was revised and a new pro-
business seed law was passed in mid-2010. Among other things it
established a register of varieties that can be marketed. In
Tanzania, discussions between AGRA and government representatives
facilitated a major policy change to privatise seed production. In
Malawi, AGRA supported the government in revising its maize pricing
and trade policies. AGRA is also funding a $300,000 seeds project
for the East African Community that started in July 2014 and will be
implemented over the next two years. Its objective is to get EAC
farmers to switch to so-called improved seeds and to harmonise the
seed and fertilizer policies of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and
Uganda.

[For more on other similar initiatives, see full report]

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
February 11, 2015 (150211)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The destruction of the earth’s environment is the human rights
challenge of our time. … The most devastating effects are visited
on the poor, those with no involvement in creating the problem. A
deep injustice. Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who
conducted business with apartheid South Africa were aiding and
abetting an immoral system, today we say nobody should profit from
the rising temperatures, seas and human suffering caused by the
burning of fossil fuels.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1502.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1502.php

Please view and distribute widely this powerful short video by
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlh_ptOljkg

While the actual impact and potential threat of climate change
threaten the entire planet, Archbishop Tutu’s remarks reiterate the
further truth that while some profit from causing the destruction,
it is the most vulnerable countries and the most vulnerable within
each country who bear the disproportionate burdens.

As noted in the articles by Deirdre Smith and Naomi Klein cited with
links immediately below the transcript of Tutu’s remarks, that is
why the hashtags #divest and #BlackLivesMatter must be linked.

The differential value given to different lives, by race and place,
matches the hierarchy of economic and political power in today’s
world. That reality, established over centuries, is not new. But
while one may or may not agree with Naomi Klein that climate change
can be the essential catalyst for new urgency in resolving these
interlinked crises, the linkage cannot be denied. Nor can anyone
safely ignore Archbishop Tutu’s reminder that “time is running out.”

The divestment movement is only part of the campaign for climate
justice, just as it was only part of the struggle to end apartheid.
But the momentum is growing, and contributes to the pressure for
governments to act and for investors to turn their attention to
clean energy. On February 13 and 14, groups around the world will be
participating in “Global Divestment Day” calling for full divestment
from fossil fuels and investment in a clean energy future (See
http://gofossilfree.org/divestment-day/ for details).

See below for summary talking points from AfricaFocus, links to
other relevant climate justice groups (including the Pan African
Climate Justice Alliance), recent news articles on renewable energy,
and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on related issues.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Climate Change

Sep 22, 2014

Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlh_ptOljkg

Transcript of Archbishop Tutu’s remarks on climate change:

“The destruction of the earth’s environment is the human rights
challenge of our time.

Over the 25 years that climate change has been on the world’s agenda
global emissions have risen unchecked while real world impacts have
taken hold in earnest.

Time is running out.

We are already experiencing loss of life and livelihood due to
intensified storms, shortage of fresh water, spread of disease,
rising food prices, and the creation of climate refugees.

The most devastating effects are visited on the poor, those with no
involvement in creating the problem. A deep injustice.

Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who conducted business
with apartheid South Africa were aiding and abetting an immoral
system, today we say nobody should profit from the rising
temperatures, seas and human suffering caused by the burning of
fossil fuels.

We can no longer continue feeding our addiction to fossil fuels as
if there is no tomorrow. For there will be no tomorrow.

We are on the cusp of a global transition to a new safe energy
economy. We must support our leaders to make the correct, moral
choices.

* Freeze further exploration for new fossil sources. We cannot
maintain a livable temperature and climate for humanity if we burn
more than a fraction of the fossil fuels already discovered.

* Hold those responsible for climate damages accountable. Change the
profit incentive by demanding legal liability for unsustainable
environmental practices.

* Encourage governments to stop accepting funding from the fossil
fuel industry that blocks action on climate change.

* Divest from fossil fuels and invest in a clean energy future. Move
your money out of the problem and into solutions.

There is a word we use in South Africa that describes human
relationships: Ubuntu. It says: I am because you are. My success and
my failures are bound up in yours. We are made for each other, part
of one family, the human family, with one shared earth.

God bless you.”

************************************************************

Key articles on the link between #divest and #BlackLivesMatter

* “Why the Climate Movement Must Stand with Ferguson,” by Deirdre
Smith, August 20, 2014

http://350.org/ / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/m8focoy

It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy in
Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the climate
crisis.

It’s all over the news: images of police in military gear pointing
war zone weapons at unarmed black people with their hands in the
air. These scenes made my heart race in an all-to-familiar way. I
was devastated for Mike Brown, his family and the people of
Ferguson. Almost immediately, I closed my eyes and remembered the
same fear for my own family that pangs many times over a given year.

In the wake of the climate disaster that was Hurricane Katrina
almost ten years ago, I saw the same images of police, pointing
warzone weapons at unarmed black people with their hands in the air.
In the name of ‘restoring order,’ my family and their community were
demonized as ‘looters’ and ‘dangerous.’ When crisis hits, the
underlying racism in our society comes to the surface in very clear
ways. Climate change is bringing nothing if not clarity to the
persistent and overlapping crises of our time.

* “Why #BlackLivesMatter Should Transform the Climate Debate,” by
Naomi Klein, December 12, 2014

http://www.thenation.com/ / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ojojt4f

Taken together, the picture is clear. Thinly veiled notions of
racial superiority have informed every aspect of the non-response to
climate change so far. Racism is what has made it possible to
systematically look away from the climate threat for more than two
decades. It is also what has allowed the worst health impacts of
digging up, processing and burning fossil fuels–from cancer
clusters to asthma–to be systematically dumped on indigenous
communities and on the neighborhoods where people of colour live,
work and play. The South Bronx, to cite just one example, has
notoriously high asthma rates–and according to one study, a
staggering 21.8 percent of children living in New York City public
housing have asthma, three times higher than the rate for private
housing. The choking of those children is not as immediately lethal
as the kind of choking that stole Eric Garner’s life, but it is very
real nonetheless.

If we refuse to speak frankly about the intersection of race and
climate change, we can be sure that racism will continue to inform
how the governments of industrialized countries respond to this
existential crisis. It will manifest in the continued refusal to
provide serious climate financing to poor countries so they can
protect themselves from heavy weather. It will manifest in the
fortressing of wealthy continents as they attempt to lock out the
growing numbers of people whose homes will become unlivable.

******************************************************

AfricaFocus Summary Talking Points

* Global warming and environmental damage from the fossil-fuel
industry already affect all of us, although responsibility lies
primarily with the rich industrialized countries and the newly
industrializing powers. Africa is the most vulnerable continent, but
extreme weather and sea-level rise have hit New Orleans and New
Jersey as well as Lagos.

* When industries make decisions based on short-term profits,
encouraged by government subsidies to established industries, they
systematically discount damages from “externalities.” Visible
results include the devastation of oil-producing areas in the Niger
Delta and of coal-producing areas, whether in South Africa or West
Virginia. The longer-term consequences in rising temperatures and
more extreme weather will be even more devastating.

* Action to combat climate change depends in part on decisions made
in international conferences, where the primary obstacles to action
are the rich countries and the newly industrializing powers. But
efforts at many other levels are also of decisive importance.
Fossil-fuel divestment campaigns, as they grow and multiply, can
affect investment choices. So can technological innovation. Notably,
clean energy can already be more cost-effective than large-scale
fossil fuel plants in supplying distributed energy access to Africa.

For more from AfricaFocus on Climate Change and the Environment,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

********************************************************

Key Organizational Contacts on Climate Change and Fossil-Fuel
Divestment

Divestment Student Network (USA)
http://studentsdivest.org/

Climate Justice Alliance (USA)
http://www.ourpowercampaign.org/cja/

Go Fossil Free
http://gofossilfree.org

350.org Africa
http://350africa.org/

Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)
http://www.pacja.org

*************************************************************

Notable recent reports on economics of renewable energy

* “Renewable energy costs to drop 40 percent in next two years”
02/02/15, new report on worldwide develoopment from International
Renewable Energy Agency
http://tinyurl.com/kvoo34c

* “Africa’s quiet solar revolution,” survey by Christian Science
Monitor, Jan 25, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/mnf5mtz

* “Africa’s Largest Wind Farm,” Dec. 24, 2014, construction
beginning at Lake Turkana
http://tinyurl.com/pau6fyv

* South Africa’s Eskom in crisis over high costs and low efficiency,
renewable projects offer new options.
http://tinyurl.com/qbjgpg5 (Jan 16 article on Eskom) and
http://allafrica.com/stories/201501211312.html (new study on savings
from
renewable energy in South Africa)

* Slow start for renewable energy in Niger Delta, Feb 2, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/mqzd5ao

**************************************************************

Recent AfricaFocus Bulletins on Climate Change

(1) Fossil-Fuel Divestment

November 11, 2014  Africa/Global: Fossil-Fuel Divestment Growing
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/cc1411b.php

The latest international scientific statement on the disastrous and
potentially irreversible damage from climate change is unambiguous,
as is the imperative for drastic action to curb greenhouse gas
emissions. But political obstacles to moving from rhetoric to action
are virtually unchanged, despite massive demonstrations coinciding
with the UN climate summit in late September. The dispersed fossil-
fuel divestment movement, however, although still too small to curb
the industry, is growing rapidly.

Mar 10, 2013  Africa/Global: Fossil-Fuel Divestment
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/div1303.php

The fossil-fuel divestment movement now gaining momentum on college
campuses to fight climate change frequently evokes the precedent of
the anti-apartheid divestment campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s. But
there are other Africa connections that are also beginning to be
made. Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change and
extreme weather events. American and other multinational companies
have a long history of environmental destruction in areas such as
the Niger Delta. And while many African countries look to fossil-
fuel exploitation to fund their development, the experience of the
“resource curse” shows that the profits may fuel gross inequality
and capital flight rather than development.

(2) Renewable Energy Prospects

September 22, 2014  Africa: Climate Action & Economic Growth
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/clim1409.php

It is still conventional wisdom to pit action to curb climate change
against economic growth. But the evidence is rapidly accumulating
that this is a false dilemma, buttressed by vested interests in the
fossil fuel industry and a simplistic concept of economic growth.
According to a report just released by the Global Commission on the
Economy and Climate, falling prices for renewable energy and careful
analysis of both costs and benefits of low-carbon vs. high-carbon
investment strategies point to a clear conclusion: saving the planet
and saving the economy go hand in hand.

August 18, 2014  Africa: From Kerosene to Solar
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/sol1408.php

The largest marketer of solar lamps in Africa, which recently passed
the one million mark in lamps sold, has set an ambitious target for
the industry. “”Our mission is to eradicate the kerosene lamp from
Africa by the end of this decade,” proclaims Solar Aid. Although
achieving this goal would require the pico-solar market to emulate
mobile phone industry’s exponential growth path, it may not be as
utopian as it sounds. According to market research company Navigant
Research, “Off-grid solar lighting for base of the pyramid (BOP)
markets, the leading solar PV consumer product segment, is
transitioning from a humanitarian aspiration to big business.”

June 30, 2014  Africa: Clean Energy Most Cost-Effective
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/ces1406.php

“From off-grid LED lighting to ‘Skinny Grids,’ we can now provide
energy access with a fraction of the amount of power we used to
need. More importantly, we can unlock affordable initial
interventions — like lighting, mobile phone charging, fans, and TVs
plus a small amount of agro processing — to help people get onto
the energy ladder today rather than forcing them to wait decades for
a grid extension that may never come. … It’s important to
understand that we aren’t just imagining this clean energy market
growth — it’s already happening.” — Justin Guay, Sierra Club

January 21, 2014  South Africa: Renewables Rising, Coal Still King
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/coal1401.php

“South Africa [is] the world’s sixth-largest coal exporter, seventh-
largest coal producer, and thirteenth-largest CO2 emitter, with per-
capita emissions twice the global average. Ninety-four percent of
the country’s electricity comes from coal … The country’s abundant
solar and wind resources offer a promising renewable energy
alternative. But entrenched political interests connected to the
ruling party are fighting to expand coal’s role in the national
economy.” – Adam Welz, “The Future of Coal”

(3) Destructive Impact of Fossil-Fuel Production

February 26, 2014  Africa: Tracking Toxic Pollution
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/env1402.php

The damages produced by modern economies, termed “externalities” by
economists, most often do not figure in the market signals shaping
corporate profits and therefore corporate decision-making. The
result, both in advanced economies or around the world, includes not
only the massive threat to our common future through global warming,
but also extraordinary levels of toxic pollution disproportionately
affecting the most vulnerable. Of the top ten toxic threats around
the world identified in a new report, three are in Africa: the
Agbogbloshie Dumpsite for e-waste in Ghana, the entire Niger Delta
region in Nigeria, and the now-closed but still deadly lead mining
site in Kabwe, Zambia.

Aug 12, 2011  Nigeria: Past Time for Oil Cleanup, 1
http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/nig1108a.php

The fact that the environment of the Niger Delta, and that portion
of it known as Ogoniland, has been devastated by oil pollution for
decades should not be news. It has been repeatedly exposed by
Nigerian and international activists in print, court testimony,
photographs, and films, and punctuated by the 1995 martyrdom of Ken
Saro-Wiwa and his fellow Ogoni activists. But this month, for the
first time, a comprehensive scientific survey of oil pollution in
Ogoniland has concluded that the pollution is even more pervasive
than many previously assumed. Simultaneously, in response to a
class-action suit in London, Shell Oil has accepted responsibility
for two massive oil spills in Ogoniland in 1998.

Aug 12, 2011  Nigeria: Past Time for Oil Cleanup, 2
http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/nig1108b.php

“Shell faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars after
accepting full liability for two massive oil spills that devastated
a Nigerian community of 69,000 people and may take at least 20 years
to clean up. Experts who studied video footage of the spills at Bodo
in Ogoniland say they could together be as large as the 1989 Exxon
Valdez disaster in Alaska, when 10m gallons of oil destroyed the
remote coastline.” – Guardian

(4) Other Recent AfricaFocus Bulletins On Climate Change

November 11, 2014  Africa/Global: Climate Change Summary Report
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/cc1411a.php

“The world’s top scientists and governments have issued their
bluntest plea yet to the world: Slash carbon pollution now (at a
very low cost) or risk ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts
for people and ecosystems.’ Scientists have ‘high confidence’ these
devastating impacts occur ‘even with adaptation’ — if we keep doing
little or nothing.” – Joe Romm, Editor, Climate Progress

December 15, 2014  Africa/Global: Postponing Climate Decisions
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/clim1412.php

“It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy
in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the
climate crisis. … In the wake of the climate disaster that was
Hurricane Katrina almost ten years ago, I saw the same images of
police, pointing war-zone weapons at unarmed black people with their
hands in the air. … When crisis hits, the underlying racism in our
society comes to the surface in very clear ways.” – Deirdre Smith,
350.org, August 20, 2014

November 18, 2013  Africa: Time to Pay for Climate “Loss and Damage”
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/clim1311.php

“The U.S. delegation negotiating at the U.N. international climate
change conference in Poland is pushing an agenda of minimising the
role of “Loss and Damage” in the UNFCCC framework, prioritising
private finance in the Green Climate Fund, and delaying the deadline
for post-2020 emission reduction commitments, according to a State
Department negotiating strategy which IPS has seen.” Inter Press
Service

Dec 13, 2012  Africa: Time for Climate Justice
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/cl1212.php

The latest international conference on climate change has concluded
in Doha, with the predictable “low-ambition” results. Meanwhile,
reports proliferate on the disastrous consequences for Africa and
the entire planet if governments do not begin to overcome their
lethargy in slowing carbon emissions and preparing for adaptation to
the changes from global warming already built into the global
system.

Oct 3, 2012  Southern Africa: Climate Threat to Zambezi Basin
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/zam1210.php

According to a new study released in September, “There will be a
significant reduction in the amount of water flowing through the
[Zambezi] river system, affecting all eight countries it passes
through. The water that feeds the river is expected to decrease by
between 26 percent and 40 percent in another four decades. But when
the rains do fall, they will be more intense, triggering more
extreme floods.” Nevertheless, says the author of the study,
planning for existing and new dams does not yet take account of the
impact of climate change in reducing power generation and capacity
for flood control.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
February 5, 2015 (150205)

(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“Commercial activities are by far the largest contributor to illicit
financial flows (IFFs), followed by organized crime, then public
sector activities. Corrupt practices play a key role in facilitating
these outflows. The sources of IFFs are from within our continent,
and the fundamental responsibility for eliminating the sources rests
with the governments of African States. Therefore, the Panel calls
for the African Union to take leadership in ensuring that Africa
takes the necessary measures to curtail and indeed eliminate all
avenues for IFFs.” – High Level Panel on on Illicit Financial Flows
from Africa, February 2015

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1502.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

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The evidence on Africa’s losses from illicit financial flows has
been accumulating and gaining greater prominence in recent years, as
has the wider realization that rich countries as well are losing
billions to evasive tax maneuvers and money laundering by large
corporations and the super-rich. See
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php for talking points and a
number of earlier reports.

What is new about the latest report is not only that it comes from a
panel appointed officially by the African Union and the Economic
Commission on Africa, and that it has now been adopted officially by
the African Union. It is also that it not only reviews the data, but
also proposes specific steps that can be taken by existing African
government agencies, as well as reforms such as enactments of new
requirements for information disclosure both in Africa and around
the world.

Notably, the same technical mechanisms that have been used to track
funds of drug traffickers and terrorist networks can now be used, if
there is political will, to track monies lost to illicit financial
flows and tax evasion.

The report stresses that the largest portion of such flows are based
in common commercial mechanisms such as mispricing of imports and
exports, which can be checked with improvement of customs and trade
monitoring databases. The report called for a crackdown by customs,
tax, business and anti-corruption authorities and emphasized that
African governments must take the lead, with measures that are
practical and can have meaningful effects.

Civil society organizations such as Tax Justice Network Africa,
Action Aid, and Oxfam took part in the launch of the report. But
they stressed that implementation would be the key issue. With this
report having been adopted by African leaders, there are clear
guidelines for action.

Rich countries are also essential to effective action, which
requires such measures as full disclosure of corporate ownership and
sharing tax information.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the foreword
by the Panel chair Thabo Mbeki, and from the first section of
recommendations (on the commercial component).

For a good summary of the report, see the Feb. 2 article in The
Guardian (http://tinyurl.com/plqj8kv).

The full 126-page report is available at
http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00035250.html

In a Feb 2 article in the Daily Nation (http://tinyurl.com/ms2sqko),
Charles Onyango-Obbo summed up two important implications of the
report: (1) Stopping the activities that bleed Africa through
illicit flows requires smart states, not muscular police and
soldiers. (2) In turn, it means hiring tech-savvy people, and those
who know numbers and the way the new global economy works.

A very clear article detailing how trade mispricing works and can
be checked, using the case of India, appeared in the Indian Express
on Feb. 3 (http://tinyurl.com/ooksj3x).

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins  on illicit financial flows and
related issues, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Report of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from
Africa

Commissioned by the AU/ECA Conference of Ministers of Finance,
Planning and Economic Development

Foreword

The 4th Joint African Union Commission/United Nations Economic
Commission for Africa (AUC/ECA) Conference of African Ministers of
Finance, Planning and Economic Development was held in 2011. This
Conference mandated ECA to establish the High Level Panel on Illicit
Financial Flows from Africa. Underlying this decision was the
determination to ensure Africa’s accelerated and sustained
development, relying as much as possible on its own resources.

The decision was immediately informed by concern that many of our
countries would fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals during
the target period ending in 2015. There was also concern that our
continent had to take all possible measures to ensure respect for
the development priorities it had set itself, as reflected for
instance in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Progress
on this agenda could not be guaranteed if Africa remained
overdependent on resources supplied by development partners.

In the light of this analysis, it became clear that Africa was a net
creditor to the rest of the world, even though, despite the inflow
of official development assistance, the continent had suffered and
was continuing to suffer from a crisis of insufficient resources for
development.Very correctly, these considerations led to the decision
to focus on the matter of illicit financial outflows from Africa,
and specifically on the steps that must be taken to radically reduce
these outflows to ensure that these development resources remain
within the continent. The importance of this decision is emphasized
by the fact that our continent is annually losing more than $50
billion through illicit financial outflows.

This Report reflects the work that the High Level Panel on Illicit
Financial Flows has carried out since it was established in February
2012, particularly to:

*  Develop a realistic and accurate assessment of the volumes and
sources of these outflows;

* Gain concrete understanding of how these outflows occur in Africa,
based on case studies of a sample of African countries and;

* Ensure that we make specific recommendations of practical,
realistic, short- to medium-term actions that should be taken both
by Africa and by the rest of the world to effectively confront what
is in fact a global challenge.

It would not have been possible for our Panel to do its work without
the enthusiastic support of all our interlocutors as we worked to
discharge our mandate. I would like to take this opportunity to
convey our sincere and warm thanks to all those for everything they
did to contribute to the success of the work of our Panel.

…

Objectively, it is practically impossible to acquire complete
information about illicit financial flows, precisely because of
their illicit nature, which means that those responsible take
deliberate and systematic steps to hide them. This also means that
ECA and everyone concerned should continue to carry out research on
this matter, including making generally available all new relevant
information that will inevitably emerge.

Despite the challenges of information gathering about illicit
activities, the information available to us has convinced our Panel
that large commercial corporations are by far the biggest culprits
of illicit outflows, followed by organized crime. We are also
convinced that corrupt practices in Africa are facilitating these
outflows, apart from and in addition to the related problem of weak
governance capacity.

All this should be understood within the context of large
corporations having the means to retain the best available
professional legal, accountancy, banking and other expertise to help
them perpetuate their aggressive and illegal activities. Similarly,
organized criminal organizations, especially international drug
dealers, have the funds to corrupt many players, including and
especially in governments, and even to ‘capture’ weak states. All
these factors underline that the critical ingredient in the struggle
to end illicit financial flows is the political will of governments,
not only technical capacity.

Further, illicit financial outflows whose source is Africa end up
somewhere in the rest of the world. Countries that are destinations
for these outflows also have a role in preventing them and in
helping Africa to repatriate illicit funds and prosecute
perpetrators. Thus, even though these financial outflows present
themselves to us Africans as our problem, united global action is
necessary to end them. Such united global action requires that
agreement be reached on the steps to be taken to expedite the
repatriation of the illicitly exported capital. This must include
ensuring that the financial institutions that receive this capital
do not benefit by being allowed to continue to house it during
periods when it might be frozen, pending the completion of the
agreed due processes prior to repatriation.

It also means that concrete steps should be taken to give general
universal application to such best practices as might have developed
anywhere in the world. This includes the relevant actions and
initiatives that have been taken by such institutions as the OECD,
the G8 and G20, the European Parliament and the African Tax
Administration Forum.

Correctly, the United Nations is leading the process to engage the
international community to design the Post-2015 Development Agenda,
the successor programme to the Millennium Development Goals. As was
foreseen in the Millennium Development Goals, giving credibility to
the Post-2015 Development Agenda will require realistic expectations
about the availability of resources to finance this agenda – ”a new
and real commitment to the objective of financing for development.

Our Panel is convinced that Africa’s retention of the capital that
is generated on the continent and should legitimately be retained in
Africa must be an important part of the resources to finance the
Post-2015 Development Agenda.

We do not say this to support the entirely false and self-serving
argument against capital transfers from the rich to the poor regions
of the world, including Africa – a historically proven driver of
equitable global development.

Rather, we are arguing that there exists a very significant and
eminently practical possibility to change the balance between the
volumes of domestic and foreign capital required for meaningful and
sustained African development. The radical reduction of illicit
capital outflows from Africa, short of ending them, is precisely the
outcome Africa and the rest of the world must achieve to produce
this strategically critical new balance.

As a Panel we are convinced that the goals of ending poverty in the
world, reducing inequality within and among nations, and giving
practical effect to the fundamental objective of the right of all to
development remain vital pillars in the historic process to build a
humane, peaceful and prosperous universal human society.

We commend this humble Report to our immediate Principals, the
African Finance, Planning and Economic Development Ministers, all
the other African authorities and the people of Africa, as well as
to the rest of the world, as a contribution to what must be an
honest, serious, concerted and sustained African and global effort
to build a better world for all.

Thabo Mbeki, Chairperson

*************************************************************

Recommendations

The recommendations set out here serve as our humble contribution to
addressing the complex issue of the illicit outflows of capital from
Africa. As we noted in the Foreword, despite the challenges of
gathering information about illicit activities, available
information shows that our continent is losing in excess of $50
billion to $60 billion a year through illicit financial outflows.

Commercial activities are by far the largest contributor to illicit
financial flows (IFFs), followed by organized crime, then public
sector activities. Corrupt practices play a key role in facilitating
these outflows. The sources of IFFs are from within our continent,
and the fundamental responsibility for eliminating the sources rests
with the governments of African States. Therefore, the Panel calls
for the African Union to take leadership in ensuring that Africa
takes the necessary measures to curtail and indeed eliminate all
avenues for IFFs.

Although the sources of IFFs are within our Continent, the
mechanisms for moving IFFs often involve non-African private and
public actors and are sometimes the result of policies and laws
adopted by intergovernmental bodies and governments outside our
Continent. It is therefore necessary for African governments to
engage with these non-African actors to ensure that their practices
do not facilitate the illicit outflow of funds from Africa.

The ultimate goal of these recommendations is to eliminate IFFs from
Africa. Given that the international community will shortly launch
the Post- 2015 Development Agenda, the timing of this Report is
fortunate. The Post- 2015 Development Agenda should reflect the
recommendations contained in this Report. Indeed, the Common African
Position on the Post-2015 Development Agenda already calls for
action against IFFs.

The biggest cross-cutting challenge found through our country case
studies is the lack of appropriate capacity to ensure that illicit
outflows are curtailed. In many cases, this does not entail
acquiring additional resources but better using existing capacities.
Take Nigeria, where capacity exists within the Customs Agency, but
the authority to monitor some exports has been transferred to
another agency.

Given that most measurable IFFs are trade based, actions set forth
in the recommendations below for improving capacity and
accountability to curtail trade-related IFFs should be given
primacy. African States should take primary responsibility for
mobilizing resources for tackling trade- related IFFs (and, indeed,
other types of IFFs) from Africa.

A. The commercial component of illicit flows

1. Trade mispricing

African countries should ensure that they have clear and concise
laws and regulations that make it illegal to intentionally
incorrectly or inaccurately state the price, quantity, quality or
other aspect of trade in goods and services in order to move capital
or profits to another jurisdiction or to manipulate, evade or avoid
any form of taxation, including customs and excise duties.

The first step in revenue collection is to ensure that all
corporations, big and small, are registered for tax purposes. In
addition to existing registration requirements, countries may
consider a provision in the respective acts regulating the
registration of companies or small businesses to the effect that no
registration shall take place without proof of tax registration. In
some countries, one cannot open a business bank account without
proof of registration for tax. To avoid unnecessary delays in the
registration of companies, the relevant agencies must have adequate
capacity to process such registrations. We recommend further that
the databases of the companies’ registration office and the tax
authority be linked.

African States’ customs authorities should use available databases
of information about comparable pricing of world trade in goods to
analyse imports and exports and identify transactions that require
additional scrutiny. States should also begin collecting trade
transaction data and creating databases from that information, which
can then be searched and shared with other States so that a more
robust dataset of local and regional comparables is available.

2. Transfer pricing

The ‘arm’s-length principle’ is currently accepted as the
international standard to combat transfer pricing, but its effective
implementation depends on the availability of comparable pricing
data on goods and services. The Panel calls on national and
multilateral agencies to make fully and freely available, and in a
timely manner, data on pricing of goods and services in
international transactions, according to accepted coding categories.

African countries should establish transfer pricing units as a
matter of extreme urgency. These units should be appropriately
situated in revenue authorities and should be well equipped in
accordance with global best practices. Establishing transfer pricing
units may entail the training of a selection of existing revenue
officers in this specialized area. We have been informed that those
African countries that have established transfer pricing units have
been and are willing to continue training other countries’
officials. In this case, a small investment in training can have a
major positive impact on revenue collection.

African States should require multinational corporations operating
in their countries to provide the transfer pricing units with a
comprehensive report showing their disaggregated financial reporting
on a country-by-country or subsidiary-by-subsidiary basis. African
governments could also consider developing a format for this
reporting that would be acceptable to multiple African revenue
authorities.

3. Base erosion and profit shifting

The practice by which multinational corporations shift profits to
subsidiaries in low-tax or secrecy jurisdictions is one of the
biggest single sources of illicit outflows. In many cases, those
subsidiaries exist on paper only, mostly with one or two employees,
while the bulk of the activities of the company occur in another
country. While we recommend that African countries support the OECD-
led response to this problem, which focuses on improving access to
the information of these multinational corporations, we know that
the challenge is a bit more complex for African countries.

We also recommend that there should be an automatic exchange of tax
information among African countries. Africa must strongly call for
an automatic exchange of tax information globally, subject to
national capacity and to maintaining the confidentiality of price-
sensitive business information.

4. Related recommendations

Transparency of ownership and control of companies, partnerships,
trusts and other legal entities that can hold assets and open bank
accounts is critical to the ability to determine where illicit funds
are moving and who is moving them. African countries should require
that beneficial ownership information is provided when companies are
incorporated or trusts registered; such information is updated
regularly; and such information is placed on the public record.
Beneficial ownership declarations should also be required of all
parties entering into government contracts. False declarations
should result in robust penalties.

Double taxation agreements can contain provisions that are harmful
to domestic resource mobilization and can be used to facilitate
illicit financial outflows. We recommend that African countries
review their current and prospective double taxation conventions,
particularly those in place with jurisdictions that are significant
destinations of IFFs, to ensure that they do not provide
opportunities for abuse. The use of the Model Double Taxation
Agreement developed by the African Tax Administration Forum is
recommended for consideration.

Regional integration arrangements should be used to introduce
accepted standards for tax incentives to prevent harmful competition
in the effort to attract foreign direct investment.

African countries are encouraged to join the African Tax
Administration Forum and to provide it with the necessary support,
including giving it political standing in African regional processes
such as the AU/ECA Conference of Ministers of Finance.

The extractive sector is a primary source of IFFs in Africa, but it
is not the only source of IFFs. African countries and companies
operating in extractive industries in Africa should join voluntary
initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Africa should also push for mandatory country-by- country and
project-by-project reporting requirements immediately in the
extractive sectors and in the near term across all sectors.

5. Institutional support for these measures

African States should establish or strengthen the independent
institutions and agencies of government responsible for preventing
IFFs. These include (but are not limited to) financial intelligence
units, anti-fraud agencies, customs and border agencies, revenue
agencies, anti-corruption agencies and financial crime agencies. All
such agencies should render regular reports on their activities and
findings to national legislatures.

African States should create methods and mechanisms for information
sharing and coordination among the various institutions and agencies
of government responsible for preventing IFFs, with such
coordination being led by the country’s financial intelligence unit.

Banks and financial institutions have a major role in preventing and
eliminating IFFs. Robust regimes should be put in place for the
supervision of banks and nonbank financial institutions by central
banks and financial supervision agencies. Such regimes must require
mandatory reporting of transactions that may be tainted with illicit
activity.

[See full report for additional recommendations.]

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org