By James Thompson

Note: For many years many people have prayed to divine beings to deliver human beings from a variety of cataclysms to no avail. Their prayers have been met with wars, famine, homelessness, racism, sexism, xenophobia and poverty. Perhaps it is time that prayers are addressed to those who can change the course of history. Divine beings do not cause wars, famine, homelessness, racism, sexism, xenophobia and poverty. Human beings are responsible for these societal ills.

Let us pray!

Dear humanity:

Let us gather our collective strength to battle the ills that persecute us.

Let us find the wisdom to discern the difference between the wealthy who oppress us and our fellow workers who share in our oppression.

Let us demand that the wealth that we workers produce be shared equally among all people.

Let us demand an end to all imperialist wars of oppression and prepare ourselves for a class war in which workers can prevail over their oppressors.

Let us demand an end to fascism, terrorism and efforts to achieve world domination.

Let us demand an end to famine, homelessness, homophobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia and poverty.

Let us utilize our collective political strength to overcome oppression in all its forms.

Let us demand democracy for working people and an end to democracy for the wealthy to the exclusion of all other peoples.

Let us work for education for all people, healthcare for all people, housing for all people and food for all people.

Let us work for collective human respect for our environment as well as respect for all beings on this planet.

Let us fight against the negative forces of the wealthy who seek to enslave all humans, animals and the environment for their selfish desires.

Let us demand an end to nuclear weapons. We must remember that all beings can be cremated equally.

Let us respect all sovereign nations until we achieve a socioeconomic system in which nations are irrelevant.

Let us respect all religions equally. Let us respect those who choose no religion.

Let us work for the unity of working people to achieve the above goals.

May it be so.

AfricaFocus Bulletin
October 20, 2015 (151020)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“Despite MTN having its headquarters located in South Africa, 55% of
the “management and technical fee payments” flow to “MTN
International” (MTNI)–a company which has no staff and is located
in Mauritius. The remaining 45% was paid to MTN Dubai–a subsidiary
which the company says it renders international financial services
and shared services to MTN Group.” – Quartz Africa, on new report by
amaBhungane and Finance Uncovered

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/td1510.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
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The “Africa Rising” narrative is dubious as a gross
oversimplification of African reality. But it does point to at least
one important reality: the growth of consumer markets that are
attracting much international attention. Particularly notable are
two ubiquitous consumer goods, one old (beer), one new (mobile
phones), which are producing enormous profits. The question is where
do those profits go?

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains several background documents
related to (1) the South African mobile company MTN and exposure of
its profit-shifting strategies in a new report, and (2) the giant
formerly South African beer company SABMiller (just being
purchased by a rival global giant Anheueser-Busch InBev). SABMiller
was featured in an ActionAid report in 2010, which is summarized
below. So, to understand the complexity of “Africa Rising,” consider
these tax tricks the next time you are drinking beer and browsing on
your mobile phone.

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

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on information and communication
technologies, visit http://www.africafocus.org/ictexp.php

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

Tax Tricks

South Africa’s ‘next president’ is entangled in another corporate
tax dodging allegation–this time it’s with MTN

Sibusiso Tshabalala

October 13, 2015 Quartz Africa

http://qz.com/522656/

For more detailed report, see http://amabhungane.co.za / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/od3s9fd

South Africa’s deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa–long seen as the
most likely next successor to president Jacob Zuma–has seen his
name caught up in another corporate tax dodging allegation, this
time with Africa’s largest mobile phone company MTN.

Last week Friday, amaBhungane, an investigative journalism
organization, and Finance Uncovered, a global network of
journalists, published a story alleging that Africa’s largest mobile
network, MTN, was involved in shifting millions of dollars from its
subsidiary companies in Nigeria, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana to
companies in Dubai and Mauritius in order to avoid its tax
obligations. This all happened under Ramaphosa’s watch, as he was
chairman of MTN’s board of directors, between 2001 and 2013.

In September last year, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reported
that Lonmin–a mining company which Ramaphosa was a board member of
between 2010 and 2013–was involved in a scheme to move profits
generated from its platinum mining activities in South Africa to
Bermuda.

While Ramaphosa, one of South Africa’s richest men, has taken a
strong public stance against tax avoidance as deputy president it
doesn’t seem to be in tune with his former life as a captain of
industry. It is also causing a revision to the expectation that he
is next in line when Zuma’s term ends in 2019.

According to the report, MTN subsidiary companies in Nigeria,
Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana paid “management fees”–which
according to MTN cover for elements like back office support,
technology transfer (to subsidiary companies) and use of the MTN
brand.

While it is common for telecom companies to charge their
subsidiaries management fees–as MTN itself argues in a response to
a set of questions asked by the investigative team–the bone of
contention is whether the large sums of money flowed to “real
offices staffed with people doing actual work to earn the money” as
the investigative report states.

MTN’s ‘management fees’

The investigative team reports that despite MTN having its
headquarters located in South Africa, 55% of the “management and
technical fee payments” flow to “MTN International” (MTNI)–a
company which has no staff and is located in Mauritius. The
remaining 45% was paid to MTN Dubai–a subsidiary which the company
says it renders international financial services and shared services
to MTN Group.

Territories like Dubai and Mauritius are better known as “tax
havens”–many multinational companies stash their profits here using
complicated payment systems to subsidiaries. The lure of a low tax
rate, or a sometimes a zero-rate tax regime, is hard to resist: it
means multinationals can cut the cost of doing business without
paying tax in the country they’re required to do so.

Chris Maroleng, MTN spokesman said the company has not been involved
in any tax avoidance scheme and that it had responded fully to the
investigative team’s claims.

“We have been able to prove that we’re tax compliant in all our
operational jurisdictions. We have not infringed any laws and we
have nothing to hide,” said Maroleng. He added that MTN had been in
contact with the amaBhungane and Finance Uncovered team for a
“protracted period” and that the company had satisfied itself with
all of its responses.

The deputy president’s office said it is referring all queries on
the matter to MTN.

Meanwhile, the Right 2 Know campaign, a South African organization
that advocates for freedom of expression and anti-corruption, has
played on a MTN ad-slogan from 2009 to signal their discontent. MTN
frequently used the South African slang word “ayoba” (loosely
translated as “cool”) in their ads. Now R2K–is calling for the
investigations against–has spun the slogan back to the company and
Ramaphosa. Their version: “Tax dodging is not ayoba.” (
http://www.r2k.org.za/2015/10/12/investigate-mtn-ramaphosa/)

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

Finance Uncovered Investigation: MTN’s Mauritian Billions

Finance Uncovered, 09 Oct, 2015

http://www.financeuncovered.org/ – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qhklzpa

The Finance Uncovered global network of investigative reporters have
today published a cross-border investigation into South African
telecoms giant MTN exposing how billions of rand from its
subsidiaries in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda have been shifted to a
shell company in the small island tax haven of Mauritius.

The two year investigation spanning five countries was published
today in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian, the Ugandan Observer and
Ghana Business News.

The reporting team

Finance Uncovered is a global network of journalists from over 55
countries across the globe. This investigation was undertaken by
Craig Mckune of amaBhungane in South Africa, George Turner and Nick
Mathiason from Finance Uncovered in London, Francis Koktuse in
Ghana, Emmanuel Mayah in Nigeria and Jeff Mbanga in Uganda.

A report in Nigeria will follow shortly.

MTN’s Offshore Payments

The reporting team discovered MTN revenue producing companies
operating in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Cote d’Ivoire made
substantial payments to offshore companies in Dubai and Mauritius.
These payments were counted as a cost of business for the operating
companies, lowering their profits and potential tax bill.

The enormous sums were purportedly for management and technical
services performed on behalf of these companies, as well as royalty
payments for the use of the MTN brand. In Ghana, these payments
accounted for more than 9% of the turnover of the company.

African journalists in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda working with
Finance Uncovered discovered that 55% of management and technical
fee payments are directed towards MTN International, a company based
in Mauritius. The Mauritius company has no staff and is little more
than a post box. The remaining 45% was routed to MTN Dubai, where
the company employs 115 staff who provide shared services to the
group.

MTN told reporters that MTN International remunerates companies in
South Africa for management services performed on behalf of the
company. They were unable to answer why the payments were made to
Mauritius first.

Company documents published by MTN said that money in MTN Mauritius
was used to repay external debts of the MTN group and dividends,
rather than pay for management services.

But after further questions were put to MTN, the company was forced
to admit that not all of the revenue was passed onto South Africa.
The company refused to disclose how much it kept in Mauritius.

The company said that MTNI is resident in South Africa for tax
purposes and the Mauritian entity gives no tax benefit to the
company.

MTN in Africa

Our revelations are particularly sensitive given the sheer size of
MTN. The South African listed firm is the largest cell phone company
in Africa with 227,503,000 subscribers worldwide. Almost one in four
mobile phones in Africa are part of the MTN network a total of 161m.

This means MTN is the largest company in many of the countries in
which it operates. It is also frequently one of the largest
taxpayers in African countries so they are particularly vulnerable
to profit shifting by the company.

Game over?

Our investigation has established that a number of African countries
have now challenged the offshore payments made by MTN. Authorities
in Nigeria and Ghana have frozen payments and the Ugandan
Authorities has placed a large tax bill on the company for
management fees paid over a 6 year period.

Ghana

Scancom, MTN’s subsidiary in Ghana, paid 758m Cedi (Rand 3.7bn,
$401m) in management and technical fees to MTN Dubai between 2008
and 2013 equivalent to 9.64% of the company’s revenue.

An agreement between the Ghanaian Investment Promotion Centre and
the company that allowed the management fees to be paid expired in
2013 and payments have been frozen. MTN is currently negotiating a
new agreement with GIPC.

Uganda

MTN Uganda paid 3% of turnover in management fees between 2003 and
2009 to MTNI in Mauritius. The Uganda Revenue Authority issued MTN
with a “notice of assessment” in 2011. This was for a number of tax
issues between 2003 and 2009, but a large portion was to do with a
dispute over management fees. The total tax bill from the URA was
R467m ($69m).

Nigeria

In 2013 the company disclosed that it had paid R2.5bn ($562m) in
fees to MTN Dubai between 2010 and 2013. The company made this
disclosure because the fee payments had been reversed following a
failure to come to a new agreement on management fees with Nigerian
regulators.

Despite these fees being paid to MTN Dubai, MTN confirmed to us that
these fees are then ‘on-paid’ to MTNI in Mauritius and that MTNI
Mauritius is the ‘ultimate beneficiary’ of the fees.

Cote d’Ivoire

MTN has confirmed to us that the company paid 12bn West African
Francs in 2012 and 14bn West African Francs (Rand 512.9m, $55.53m)
in 2013 in management fees to MTNI. The figure for 2013 is
equivalent to 5% of the revenue made by MTN in Cote d’Ivoire.

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

Finance Uncovered, “Can We Beat Tax Avoiding Multinationals?,”
Finance Uncovered, Oct. 18, 2015
[Brief excerpt. For full article visit
https://www.byline.com/column/39/article/499]

How the MTN case shows that OECD “solutions” for such tax evasion
will not work.

“Unfortunately the OECD proposals are unlikely to bring these
practices to an end, and could even make the whole process even less
transparent.

The OECD has embraced the arm’s-length concept and many of the
solutions it proposes are simply aimed at giving tax authorities
more and better tools to use in their transfer pricing
investigations. There will be better access to comparable data to
determine prices, bigger books of guidance for tax authorities, but
in the end tax authorities will continue to need to rely on complex
investigations and highly subjective analysis of the complicated
internal structures of multi-national companies.”

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

“Calling Time: Why SABMiller should stop dodging taxes in Africa”

by ActionAid, November 2010, Updated 2012

Summary by Malik Stan Reaves written for AfricaFocus Bulletin and
US-Africa Network, Oct. 20, 2015

Full report available at
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/tax-justice/calling-time-the-research

London-based SABMiller plc is the world’s second largest beer
company making more than $3 billion a year in profits. The origins
of the company date back to the founding of South African Breweries
in 1895 and it owns several African breweries. Its many brands
include Coors Light, Miller Light, Keystone Light (#2, #4, and #12
in sales in the USA), Castle, Kilimanjaro, and Lion (in Africa), and
Grolsch (in Europe and global).

The company has some 65 tax havens, and this ActionAid report
estimated it has used them to reduce their tax bills by as much as
1/5 in Africa. For example, its Ghana operations generate about $45
million a year, yet SABMiller paid no taxes for the two years before
the report and only for one year in the prior four years.

ActionAid estimated loses to governments in Africa of as much as $30
million a year, “enough to put a quarter of a million children in
school.”

To avoid paying taxes, SABMiller uses transfer pricing payments made
by its subsidiaries to sister companies in the corporation. “These
payments can reduce or even eliminate profits in one place at
a stroke of an accountant’s pen; a kind of financial alchemy that
also shrinks the company’s tax bill.”

ActionAid examined the accounts of eight SABMiller subsidiary
companies in Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia and
India, along with researching the tax systems in these countries.
ActionAid identified four “tax-dodging” techniques used in Africa.
Tax dodging or tax avoidance is seen by ActionAid as designed to
comply with the letter of the law though the practice is
irresponsible and unethical (whereas tax evasion breaks tax laws).
The report notes that there is no mention of tax in SABMiller’s code
of business conduct and ethics.

The first is a loophole in Dutch tax law which allows SABMiller’s
Dutch holding company for its African operations, Rotterdam-based
SABMiller International BV, to pay next to no tax on the royalties
they earn. “Six SABMiller companies in Africa paid this Dutch
company $37.5 million in royalties last year, according to their
most recent accounts. If the company’s African operations that do
not publish accounts also make payments at the same rate, the total
can be expected to be $65 million. This corresponds to an estimated
tax loss to African countries of $15 million.”

The second dodge involves millions in management fees paid yearly by
African subsidiaries to SABMiller companies in European tax havens,
mostly in Switzerland. Some fees are high enough to wipe out all
taxable profits.

In the third dodge, SABMiller subsidiary Mubex in Mauritius is used
by SABMiller breweries in other African countries as a purchasing
agent, even though the goods may not be produced in or even transit
through Mauritius. Mubex makes a profit, the amount of which is
unknown due to tax haven secrecy, and is taxed at 3% as against what
would be much higher rates in the countries where the beer is
actually produced.

In the fourth tax dodge, African breweries are able to borrow money
from Mubex, in Ghana’s case seven times what’s allowed in that
country, leading to interest costs that erase sizable amounts of tax
liability.

ActionAid calls on SABMiller to do three things:

1. Take a responsible approach to tax. Stop using tax havens to
siphon profits out of Africa, for example by ending the huge
payments for lucrative brand rights and management services to
Switzerland and the Netherlands.

2. Understand and disclose the impact of its tax planning. SABMiller
needs a tax code of conduct to explain how it applies its
sustainable development principles to its tax affairs. It should be
open and transparent about its use of tax havens and tax avoidance
techniques.

3. Be more transparent about financial information. Make public the
accounts of each of its subsidiaries – especially for companies in
countries where accounts are kept secret – and provide a country-by-
country snapshot of tax payments and other financial information.

It further lays out several recommendations for governments to shore
up their tax operations and policies.

Outcomes:

In June 2011, a meeting of tax authorities from several African
countries, supported by the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF),
considered the findings of the report. A multilateral tax treaty was
presented to ATAF’s council meeting the following year which would
“allow African countries to work together to investigate the tax
affairs of multinational companies operating across the continent”
(page 3, para 3).

Other Actions:

“Over 10,000 people across the world have taken action, asking
SABMiller to adopt a more responsible approach to its tax affairs in
the developing world. The company has been questioned in media
interviews, by ActionAid at its Annual General Meeting, and by
students at Edinburgh University, who voted to ban the company’s
beers from their student union.”

“Schtop tax dodging” beer mats found their way to Australia, Sweden,
the Netherlands, Ghana, South
Africa, Senegal and the United States.”

ActionAid charcterized SABMiller’s response to the outcry over its
practices as “a combination of denial and obfuscation,” including
ownership moves resulting in reduced transparency and shifting
exposure in Mauritius, but “increased royalty payments and
management service fees paid into tax havens across the continent.”

Given the “protests and occupations” in the 18 months since the
original publication of Calling Time, they noted that “corporate
attitudes towards tax have changed…increasingly aware of the
reputational issues… involved in governance around tax.”

Note:  The corporate malfeasance in this ActionAid report is
identified as tax avoidance rather than tax evasion. ActionAid is
thus not accusing SABMiller of breaking any laws but of being
unethical and irresponsible “in failing to acknowledge the impact of
its tax dodging on public revenues.” The term “illicit financial
flows,” not yet in wide use at the time of the ActionAid report, is
not a concept used in this report. To what extent some forms of
abusive transfer pricing may be illegal as well as illegitimate is a
still unresolved issue in the literature on the subject.

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

Beer & Mobile as Rising Retail Markets

“Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller to Join,” New York Times, Oct.
13, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/otmzfxt

“The research firm Euromonitor International estimated on Tuesday
that the combined Anheuser-Busch InBev-SABMiller would account for
29 percent of global beer sales, after selling assets to win
regulatory approval. It also would be more than three times as large
in terms of sales as its next closest competitor, the Dutch brewer
Heineken, according to Euromonitor.”

“Bud-SAB tie-up hinges on a scramble for Africa,” Reuters, Sept. 24,
2015
http://tinyurl.com/ngsavbz

“Africa is Budweiser’s lost continent. For SABMiller, it is the
jewel in the crown. Where Anheuser-Busch InBev is basically absent,
Africa generated 28 percent of SAB’s revenue and 30 percent of its
EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and
Amortization]
last year. That’s the key to a potential offer by the Budweiser
brewer for its $89 billion rival.”

“SAB and Castel, one of its partners, share around 55 percent of
Africa’s ‘formal’ beer market.”

“The Beerhemoth,” The Economist, Oct. 17, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/pwwjula

“The battle lasted one tumultuous month. In September SABMiller, the
world’s second-largest brewer, said it was the target of a takeover
by its bigger rival, AB InBev. There followed a volley of bids,
skirmishes in the press and tense private talks: between them, the
firms’ main shareholders include a big tobacco company, the dashing
scion of Colombia’s richest family and three Brazilian billionaires,
not to mention South Africa’s public-investment fund. On October
13th, one day before a deadline mandated by British takeover rules
(SABMiller is listed in London), the companies announced a tentative
deal.”

“The Mobile Economy: Sub-Saharan Africa 2015”
http://gsmamobileeconomy.com/ssafrica/

“The mobile industry in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to scale
rapidly, reaching 367 million subscribers in mid-2015. Migration to
higher speed networks and smartphones continues apace, with
mobile broadband connections set to increase from just over
20% of the connection base today to almost 60% by the end
of the decade. Falling device prices are encouraging the rapid
adoption of smartphones, with the region set to add more than
400 million new smartphone connections by 2020, by which
time the smartphone installed base will total over half a billion.”

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

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

Africa/Global: Health Challenges & Threats

AfricaFocus Bulletin
October 13, 2015 (151013)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Last week was the first week since March 2014 that no new cases of
Ebola were reported in the affected West African countries. And late
last month the World Health Organization announced official
guidelines for beginning antiretroviral therapy for all persons
infected with HIV even before they show symptoms of AIDS. Fully
eradicating either disease and building sustainable health system
remain  formidable challenges, however. At the same time, U.S.
policy to promote greater protection for large pharmaceutical
companies in trade negotiations poses a still rising threat to
global efforts to guarantee the universal right to health.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/rth1510.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

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This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains one short article on the threat
to health in the least developed countries from hard-line U.S.
policy on protection for pharmaceutical companies, followed by links
with short excerpts from other recent articles on Ebola, the cost of
medicine and the current dysfunctional pharmaceutical system,
HIV/AIDS, and a promising advance in  medical technology providing
cost-effective blood auto-transfusion in developing countries.

While progress has been made both on the long-term pandemic HIV/AIDS
and the West African Ebola epidemic more recently, neither battle is
completely won. Neither have the economic, personal, and societal
damages been repaired, nor the world’s health systems prepared for
new epidemics, nor the necessary resources invested to guarantee the
universal right to health.

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

The WHO Ebola Situation Report is available at
http://apps.who.int/ebola/ebola-situation-reports

Updates on AIDS are available at http://www.unaids.org

Frequent updates on the status of access to medicines are available
on the MSF / Doctors Without Borders website on this issue at
http://www.msfaccess.org/

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

LDCs be damned:  USTR and Big Pharma seeks to eviscerate Least
Developed Countries’ insulation from pharmaceutical monopolies

Professor Brook K. Baker, Health GAP and Northeastern U. School of
Law

HealthGap blog, October 12, 2015

http://www.healthgap.org/blog – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/pbhd94q

Professor Brook K. Baker, Health GAP (Global Access Project) &
Northeastern U. School of Law, Program on Human Rights and the
Global Economy
Honorary Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Univ. of KwaZulu Natal, SA

In November of 2001, at the height of the global AIDS pandemic,
every WTO member country in the world, including the United States,
voted unanimously in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and
Public Health that WTO Least Developed Countries members should be
granted an unconditional extension of any obligation to grant or
enforce patents, data protections, or exclusive marketing rights on
pharmaceutical products.  These countries desperately needed access
to affordable generic medicines and freedom from the pillage of Big
Pharma’s monopoly pricing.  This sensible and humane transition
policy was confirmed by votes of the WTO TRIPS Council and General
Council in 2002.

Fast forward to 2015, and LDCs are again seeking an extension of
that same no-pharmaceutical-monopolies policy, which expires on
January 1, 2016.  Their request has reportedly received approval in
nearly every capital of the world – except Washington D.C. (with
some weakening opposition from Australia, Canada, and Switzerland).
Nothing in the plight of least developed countries has changed –
they remain desperately poor, they continue to lead the world in
negative health statistics and early death, and they continue to
struggle with development challenges and inadequate capacity in
their industrial, technological, and administrative sectors.  More
to the point, they continue to need access to affordable medicines,
and, if possible, new manufacturing capacity and expertise to
produce at least some medicines on their own.

What the LDCs seek is simple: rather than another time limited
extension (even a relatively long 15 year one like the one they
first got), is an extension that lasts as long as they remain an
LDC.  Once an LDC member transitions to lower-middle income status,
its obligation to begin to process, grant, and enforce patents and
data protections on medicines would change.  But in the meantime,
countries that were still LDCs could import cheaper generics legally
from abroad or manufacture them locally with no intellectual
property restrictions whatsoever.

What does the United States Trade Representative want – what pound
of flesh is it seeking from LDCs for an further extension that is
guaranteed to them by paragraph 7 of the Doha Declaration and by
Article 66.1 of the TRIPS Agreement?  After all those documents
state that initial TRIPS transition periods, like LDCs had for
pharmaceuticals, were granted without prejudice to further
extensions and that WTO member “shall, upon duly motivated request
by a least-developed country Member, accord extensions [of LDC
TRIPS-compliance transition periods].”  In this context, “shall”
means “must,” no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts.”

Instead of acceding to these clear TRIPS mandates, the USTR is
unwilling to discuss an extension for as long as an LDC remains an
LDC and instead is demanding a more miserly, time-limited extension.
The US has been unwilling to state its position publicly.  Instead,
it has selectively listened to corporate “stakeholders” at home,
namely PhRMA and BIO, who oppose an unlimited extension because …
well, because of what they say to back up every IP monopoly demand:
“We need more profits, even from the poorest countries in the world,
in order to research the next generation of life saving medicines.”

Unfortunately, the USTR has not listened to access-to-medicines
advocates who wrote a letter urging US support for the LDC extension
over a month ago with no response to date.  Nor is the USTR
listening to other “key” US stakeholders including Senator Sanders,
and Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.),
Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Keith Ellison
(D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Sam Farr (D-Calif.), elected
officials who have all have expressed unequivocal support for the
LDC request.  Even the European Commission has voted unanimously in
favor of the unlimited extension.

At a meeting in Geneva with 15 Ambassadors from the LDC Group on
Friday October 9, Ambassador Michael Punke, Deputy United States
Trade Representative and U.S. Ambassador and Permanent
Representative to the World Trade Organization, and gave a
startling, unbelievably craven and subservient justification for the
US demand for a short-duration extension.  He said that Big Pharma
was disappointed with the additional intellectual property and
pharmaceutical protections the US secured for it in Trans Pacific
Partnership negotiations and thus that the US could not give ground
on the LDC extension.

Right, the poorest countries in world should get shortchanged on
their desperately needed access to more affordable generic medicines
because Big Bio did not get 12 years of data exclusivity monopoly
protections on their $100,000-plus per-patient-per-year biologics.

The USTR’s policy positions on the LDC extension request are deadly.
They cynically safeguard Big Pharma’s global monopoly empire with
potential catastrophic effects on LDCs ability to strengthen their
human and technological well-being.  At a time when we see migrants’
bodies washing onto European beaches, the USTR wants to make sure
that pharmaceutical capacity is stillborn in many of the countries
those migrants come from.  This dour and ethically demented policy
position cannot stand.

Is President Obama’s administration so out of touch with
humanitarian values and common decency that it wants the US to be
the sole country at the WTO to oppose a mandatory, unconditional
pharmaceutical extension for LDCs that is their legal right?

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

Links on Ebola (with very short excerpts)

(1)http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/q7trnqv

Amy Maxmen, “To Prevent The Next Plague, Listen To Boie Jalloh,” NPR
Goats & Soda, Oct. 8, 2015

“This is a landmark week in West Africa. For the first time since
the Ebola outbreak, there were no new cases reported in Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone.

There are many unsung heroes who deserve credit for this milestone.
One of them is Dr. Boie Jalloh, age 30. Ten days after he showed up
for his medical residency at 34th Military Hospital in Freetown,
Sierra Leone, he received a letter requesting his presence at the
hospital’s newly constructed Ebola unit.”

“To me, first and foremost, I wish the government and our
international partners would invest in medical education. We really
need more doctors and nurses here — we needed them before Ebola. You
can supply all the drugs you want, but people won’t be able to get
those drugs if there is only one health care provider for 10,000
people. [Note: According to the World Bank, the number is 1.8 —
compared to 100 in the U.S.]”

(2) http://www.eboladeeply.org / Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/obf26pm

Brooks Marmon, “In Liberia, Paying Tribute to Those Who Sang Against
Ebola,” Ebola Deeply, Sept. 22, 2015

Last week, the conference room of Monrovia’s Young Men’s Christian
Association (YMCA) was decked out in red, white and blue balloons:
the colors of Liberia’s Lonestar flag. The event? A tribute by the
Musicians’ Union of Liberia (MULIB) to the artists – singers, hip-co
stars, songwriters and other musicians – who joined the Ebola fight.

Bernard Benson, better known as D.J. Blue, the manager of Hott FM,
one of Liberia’s most popular radio stations, was the M.C. for the
event. He set the tone by noting, ‘We took Ebola from 100 percent to
0.0 … no one must underestimate what Liberian music did. It
resonated to every Liberian, to the people that matter.’ G. Bennie
Johnson, MULIB’s vice president, echoed his words, adding that
‘musicians have the power, real power, to do something good for this
country.’

Nearly a dozen videos accompanying Ebola awareness songs were
screened as part of the festivities.”

[see full article at link above for embedded videos.]

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

Links on Cost of Medicines (with very short excerpts)

(1) http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qchbgz5

MSF / Doctors without Borders, “The Cost of Medicine,” Alert, Fall
2015, pages 10-12 on “Fundamental Changes Needed in the Biotechnical
Innovation System.”

“A primary driver of biomedical innovation is public funding coupled
with the granting of patents and other intellectual property rights
that give pharmaceutical companies exclusive domain to make and sell
a new medicine or vaccine for a stipulated period of time. This in
turn gives companies monopoly control over the market for that
product, allowing them to charge high prices and inhibiting
competition that would drive down costs.

Companies therefore decide where to allocate resources based on the
revenues they believe a particular product could generate, not the
public health burden they could address. What this means in
practical terms is that public health priorities and needs rarely
determine how corporate efforts are directed. In the current
ecosystem, companies watching their profit margins and stock prices
are effectively dis-incentivized from focusing resources and
attention on diseases and conditions that primarily affect people in
the developing world, people who don’t represent a lucrative market.

From our vantage point, it’s a broken system that is both
inefficient and ineffective at responding to the most pressing
global public health needs. And our field teams witness these costs
on a daily basis.”

“In addition, there is a lack of transparency from the
pharmaceutical industry, so we don’t really know what the R&D costs
are for specific products, what proportion of a given product was
publicly financed, or how much it costs to manufacture. The accuracy
of industry-funded estimates on the cost of developing a drug is
questionable at best.

(2) http://www.msfaccess.org/ / Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/o7yj4ms

MSF Access, “TPP trade pact will deepen global crisis of exorbitant
drug prices unless dangerous terms are removed.” Press release,
Sept. 25, 2015

“As public outrage about exorbitant drug prices features in new
headlines in the US and around the world, negotiators and trade
ministers from the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries are
converging in Atlanta to potentially finalize the trade pact, which
has been negotiated in secret over a period of more than five years.
Recent leaked copies of the TPP’s intellectual property chapter
confirm the inclusion of harmful rules that will lock in high prices
and block affordable generic medicines for years.  MSF urges all TPP
countries to firmly reject provisions that will deepen the global
crisis of unaffordable medicines and health products.”

Also includes link to 4-page briefing paper on the TPP: “Trading
Away Health”

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

Links on HIV/AIDS (with very short excerpts)

(1)http://www.healthgap.org/blog – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qdbyf52

Health GAP,  “Celebration and Call to Action – New WHO Guidelines on
HIV Treatment and PrEP

“(September 30, 2015) Health GAP welcomes the World Health
Organization’s release of new global guidelines on HIV treatment,
recommending that all people living with HIV be started on HIV
treatment regardless of disease stage and encouraging expanded
availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to groups at
particularly high risk of contracting HIV.

Earlier guidelines recommended that health care providers wait until
people with HIV reached a certain level of disease progression
before starting treatment, despite the fact that years ago many
wealthy countries including the United States had already begun
providing treatment immediately upon diagnosis  to all people living
with HIV regardless of how advanced their disease. The shift in
guidelines comes after new results from the NIH-funded START trial,
which provided conclusive evidence of the benefits of immediate
initiation in May of this year.”

“Only 15 million people are currently on treatment and 37 million
are infected, meaning that an additional 22 million people are now
eligible for immediate treatment. HIV testing has to be
significantly increased, people need to be enrolled in treatment
when they test positive, and they will need durable connection to
quality care.”

“Unfortunately donors and major funders are acting as if additional
resources are not needed. Just a few days ago the US announced a
major initiative to expand treatment and to reduce infections among
young women, but it identified no additional resources. ‘Preliminary
estimates show that the US must add at least $300 million new
dollars each year over the next few years to existing global AIDS
funding to help meet the new treatment and prevention goals,’ said
Professor Brook Baker, Health GAP’s Senior Policy Analyst.”

(2) http://www.thelancet.com/ – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/nq5btzp

“Vancouver Consensus: antiretroviral medicines, medical evidence,
and political will,” The Lancet, August 8, 2015

“In 1996, the global HIV community gathered in Vancouver, Canada,
for the XI International AIDS Conference and shared the clear
evidence that triple-combination antiretroviral treatment held the
power to stem the tide of deaths from AIDS. The HIV treatment era
had begun. As we gathered again in Vancouver in July, 2015, it was
clear that a new transformative moment is upon us. The Vancouver
Consensus statement,1 which emerged at the recently concluded 8th
International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment
and Prevention (IAS 2015), signals the scientific affirmation that,
rather than limiting access to those who are immune compromised,
immediate access to antiretroviral medicines holds the power to
rapidly advance the fight to end AIDS.

The consensus—signed by more than 500 researchers, clinicians, and
civil society experts—is clear: ‘All people living with HIV must
have access to antiretroviral treatment upon diagnosis. Barriers to
access in law, policy, stigma and bias must be confronted and
dismantled. And as part of a combination prevention effort, PrEP
(Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) must be made available to protect those
at high risk of acquiring HIV. The strategic use of ARVs—through
treatment and other preventive uses—can save countless millions of
lives, reduce new infections, and move us vastly closer to our goal
of ending the epidemic. A new era of opportunity against this
epidemic has dawned, and we must seize it.’

…

Medical evidence is unambiguous. At this point, further delays
threaten not only millions of lives but also threaten a resurgence
of this pandemic. But if we act rapidly, we can drive down HIV
incidence, death, and long-term costs. Political will is needed to
complete the work of what can be one of the most effective public
health interventions in history.”

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

Links on technical advances for developing countries

Sisu Global Health (http://www.sisuglobalhealth.com/)

A recent start-up led by three women from Michigan, Sisu Global
Health was initially based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has
recently moved to Baltimore, near the Inner Harbor.

“The Hemafuse [now being tested by doctors in Zimbabwe and Ghana] is
a manual autotransfusion device is that used to retransfuse a
patient’s own blood during an internal hemorrhage, specifically
ruptured ectopic pregnancies or road traffic accidents. The current
procedure commonly used in Sub-Saharan Africa consists of salvaging
blood with a kitchen soup ladle and filtering it with gauze.
Compared to this soup ladle autotransfusion, Hemafuse takes 1/3 of
the time, 1/9 of the staff, and is significantly safer. The Hemafuse
functions much like a giant syringe to suction blood through a
filter when a handle is pulled up. When the handle is pushed down
the blood is transferred directly to a blood bag in a closed
system.”

“This device is surgical – meaning that it can intervene during a
pivotal moment in an individual’s care. Compared to most moments
when autologous blood transfusion occurs, the Hemafuse, as an
intervention, will be both more urgent and more evident in terms of
results. Its handheld, sleek design reduces both blood flow issues
and failure modes from a slippery, gloved hand mid-surgery. In many
of the surgical suites that we’ve been in, space is at a premium.
Improvements on hospitals and buildings are not keeping up with the
increase in patient admittance and population growth, meaning
smaller rooms for more people.

This device, as one Tanzanian doctor put it, will eliminate a
‘messy’ and sometimes futile process.

All opinions from these doctors point to the success of this device,
however, the glaring fact that autotransfusion, the recycling of a
person’s own blood, has been debated solely in Western countries. Of
all the published material concerning African healthcare, only 1-2%
have contributions from the continent’s own physicians.
Additionally, these articles and the repository services that
attempt to collect thousands of articles are often not
internationally indexed to include African medical papers. They come
from a continent that has been performing autotransfusion for years,
but whose voices have not been given the mechanism to be heard in
the medical community.”

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

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

Africa/Global: Climate Action Beyond Paris

AfricaFocus Bulletin
September 30, 2015 (150930)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“Temperatures over subtropical southern Africa have risen at more
than twice the global rate over the last five decades.” – CSIR,
South Africa. *** “To date, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals
across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have
committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.” – Arabella
Advisors, USA. *** “Kenya is emerging as a hotspot for off-grid
solar power. A 2014 study by M-KOPA Solar and InterMedia shows that
14 per cent of the surveyed population use solar as their primary
lighting and charging source.” – The Nation, Kenya

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1509.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/clim1509.php

While news media in coming months may focus primarily on the global
climate summit coming up in Paris two months from now, it is already
clear to everyone that governmental commitments to reduce carbon
emissions to be made in Paris will fall short of that needed to curb
global warming short of catastrophic results for the planet [See
http://tinyurl.com/nq3m2wt for summary and links to a report on the
“intended national determined contributions” (INDCs).]

Even more than the results in Paris, however, the race to save the
planet and to limit the damage to regions already most affected,
particularly those in Africa, will be determined by actions before
and after Paris, around the world. Shell’s decision to stop drilling
in the Arctic in response to massive public pressure is one example.
The quotes above point to a few of the other places that action
is making a difference and can make more.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains two short articles and one
excerpt from a longer report on different fronts of the fight for
significant action on climate change and climate justice: global
fossil-fuel divestment, Africa-based and Africa-specific research on
the rapidly mounting damage from global warming, and one example of
the accelerating growth of off-grid solar power, particularly in
East Africa (See M-KOPA website at http://solar.m-kopa.com).

Another relevant article not included here is “55GW of Solar PV Will
Be Installed Globally in 2015, Up 36% Over 2014; Solar will account
for roughly half of new electricity capacity out to 2020.”
GreenTechMedia, June 17, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/pkkkttq
Note that GreenTechMedia (http://www.greentechmedia.com/) is a
fundamental source for following global technological developments
in renewable energy.

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate
change and the environment, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

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

Measuring the Growth of the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean
Energy Investment Movement

Arabella Advisors, September 2015

[Excerpts only. For full report visit
http://www.arabellaadvisors.com/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/o6ng6p5]

Executive Summary

To date, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries
and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have committed to divest
from fossil fuel companies. The divestment movement has grown
exponentially since Climate Week in September 2014, when Arabella
Advisors last reported that 181 institutions and 656 individuals
representing over $50 billion in assets had committed to divest. At
that time, divestment advocates pledged to triple these numbers by
the December 2015 Paris UN climate negotiations. Three months before
the negotiations, we have already witnessed a fifty-fold increase in
the total combined assets of those committed to divest from fossil
fuels.

* Pledges have spread to sectors not traditionally associated with
divestment, including pension funds and private companies. In 2014,
foundations, universities, faith-based organizations, NGOs, and
other mission-driven organizations led the movement. Today, large
pension funds and private-sector actors such as insurance companies
hold over 95 percent of the total combined assets of those committed
to divest.

* While historically based in the United States, the divestment
movement now spans the globe. In 2014, 78 percent of divesting
institutions were US-based. Today, 57 percent are US-based.
Institutions that have chosen to divest represent more than 646
million individuals around the world.

* Climate risk to investment portfolios is helping drive the
exponential growth of divestment. Reports by Citigroup analysts,
HSBC, Mercer, the International Energy Agency, Bank of England,
Carbon Tracker Initiative, and others have offered evidence of a
significant, quantifiable risk to portfolios exposed to fossil fuel
assets in a carbon constrained world. The leaders of several of the
largest institutions to divest in the past year have cited climate
risk to investment portfolios as a key factor in their decision.

* Thanks to increasing commitments to invest and a proliferation of
fossil free products, more capital is flowing toward climate
solutions. Globally, investment in clean energy reached $310 billion
in 2014. Among those pledging to divest, many are also committing to
invest in climate solutions: those institutions and individuals that
have pledged to both divest and invest in clean energy collectively
hold $785 billion in assets. Other Key Areas of Growth:

* The faith community is making a strong case for the moral
responsibility to act on climate and to provide clean energy access
to the world’s poor, bolstering the divestment movement. Faith
leaders of diverse religions and creeds are demanding our world’s
leaders take meaningful action to curb climate change at the UN
climate negotiations in Paris in December. Many are also divesting
their own assets of fossil fuels: 126 faith-based organizations with
a collective $24 billion in assets have committed to divest.

* University commitments have nearly tripled in the past year, as 40
educational institutions with $130 billion in assets have pledged to
divest. A number of prominent universities have committed in the
last year, including the University of California, Georgetown, and
Oxford. The University of California is the largest higher education
commitment to date, with a $98 billion portfolio.

* Divestment by state and local governments worldwide is also
growing: The California General Assembly voted this month to divest
its $476 billion public employee pension funds from companies that
get at least half of their revenue from coal mining. Providence,
Rhode Island became one of the largest cities to commit to divesting
all its funds from top coal companies. In Australia, the city of
Newcastle— home to the largest coal port in the world—voted to
divest, as did the government of the Australian Capital Territory.

* Foundation pledges have grown rapidly since September 2014, as 116
foundations with over $10 billion in assets have committed to divest
from fossil fuels.

The surge in the divestment and investment movement comes at a
critical moment, as the world’s leaders converge on Paris in
December 2015 to negotiate an agreement to curb catastrophic
warming. The growth of divestment is adding to mounting pressure
globally for governments to make meaningful commitments to
transition to a clean energy economy. Divesting and investing in
clean energy has offered millions of individuals across the world an
opportunity to take direct action on climate. A large and mobilized
constituency is now demanding political and financial action on
climate, and this pressure will likely continue to build
irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations in Paris.

A History of the Divestment Movement

The fossil fuel divestment movement was born when climate advocates
decided to directly challenge the fossil fuel industry. Inspired by
the moral arguments of the historical anti-war and anti-apartheid
divestment campaigns, a group of students launched a coordinated
series of divestment efforts on half a dozen college campuses in
2011, calling on their administrations to divest endowments from
coal and other fossil fuels and invest in clean energy and “just
transition” strategies to empower those most impacted by
environmental degradation and climate change. By spring 2012, the
campaign had spread to an estimated 50 campuses. Since then,
students, alumni, and professors have launched sit-ins, rallies, and
occupations of administration offices on campuses around the world.

The movement gained steam as the moral arguments of the student
divestment campaigns converged with an increasing recognition of
financial risks associated with investment in fossil fuels. In the
summer of 2012, author and longtime climate activist Bill McKibben
published “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” in Rolling Stone,
forging a link between fossil fuel divestment and the need to keep
global warming under two degrees Celsius (2° C). Drawing on the
groundbreaking analysis “Unburnable Carbon” by the London-based
Carbon Tracker Initiative, he argued that a broad-based global
movement should directly confront the fossil fuel industry because
its viability is rooted in existing carbon reserves that cannot be
burned without severe consequences for the climate. McKibben,
350.org, and other leading climate organizers threw their support
behind the student divestment campaigns, launching a global
divestment effort.

The movement quickly grew beyond universities as new sectors
responded to the call to act. A diverse group of faith
congregations, environmental NGOs, municipalities, and health care
organizations signed on as early adopters of divestment. Led by the
Wallace Global Fund, 17 foundations—controlling $1.8 billion in
assets—launched “Divest-Invest Philanthropy” in response to the
movement’s charge that foundations should not hold assets in a
fossil fuel industry that worked in direct opposition to their
stated missions. Ten cities, led by Seattle, announced they would
also divest from fossil fuels. “Cities that do so will be leaders in
creating a new model for quality of life, environmental
sustainability, and economic success,” argued Seattle Mayor Mike
McGinn.

As the broader climate movement reached a crossroads in the fall of
2014, the divestment campaign won global recognition as a critical
component of climate action. In September 2014, the world’s leading
climate advocates converged on New York City for Climate Week, which
included the “People’s Climate March,” an unprecedented event that
saw 400,000 people take to the streets to demand that the world’s
leaders act on climate. The week of action coincided with the United
Nation’s Climate Summit, which sought to catalyze meaningful climate
action in advance of formal international negotiations to reach a
global climate treaty in 2015. During Climate Week, divestment
advocates announced that, as of September 2014, 181 institutions and
local governments and 656 individuals representing over $50 billion
in assets had pledged to divest from fossil fuels. A report by
Arabella Advisors (http://www. arabellaadvisors.com/) found that, in
just three years, the divestment campaign had mobilized billions of
dollars in capital and engaged a broad segment of society in its
efforts to accelerate the transition to a clean-energy economy.

The movement’s growth was heralded by world leaders and covered
widely in the global media. Prominently featured was a notable
commitment by the heirs of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller
to divest the Rockefeller Brothers Fund endowment. The divestment
and investment movement was recognized in the UN’s formal climate
summit proceedings as one of many important actions to catalyze the
transition to a clean energy economy. At the same time, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu issued a stark call to action on climate, calling for
“an end to the fossil fuel era” and an “apartheid- style boycott to
save the planet.” In a press conference announcing that the
divestment movement had exceeded $50 billion in total assets of
those committing, leading advocates set the bar even higher for
2015, pledging to triple the total assets by the 2015 Paris UN
climate negotiations. Since then, the total combined assets of those
committing to divest has increased, fifty-fold, expanding in scope
and scale in ways no one fully anticipated.

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

CSIR projects drastic temperature increase over Africa

11 September 2015

CSIR climate modellers believe that 2015 is on its way to be the
warmest year ever recorded. This is partially due to climate-change,
and partially due to a massive El Nino event currently developing in
the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures over subtropical southern Africa
have risen at more than twice the global rate over the last five
decades.

Moreover, further warming of between 4 – 6 degrees C over the
subtropics and 3 – 5 degrees C over the tropics are projected by the
end of the century under low mitigation, relative to the present-day
climate. This was revealed in a CSIR study using a regional climate
model integrated on a powerful computer-cluster at its Centre for
High Performance Computing (CHPC), to obtain detailed projections of
future climate change over Africa.

This study comes ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 21st Conference of the Parties (CoP 21),
due to take place in Paris, France in November 2015. This meeting
aims to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on
climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees C.

“If the negotiations fail to ensure a high-mitigation future, we are
likely to see rapidly rising surface temperature across the
continent,” says Dr Francois Engelbrecht, CSIR Principal Researcher
and leader of the study entitled, “Projections of rapidly rising
surface temperatures over Africa under low mitigation.”

Africa is particularly vulnerable to excessive temperature increases
due to the continent’s dependence on subsistence farming and rain-
fed agriculture. “For many regions, the impact of temperature
increases on the agricultural and biodiversity sectors may be
significant, stemming from temperature-related extreme events such
as heat-waves, wild fires and agricultural drought,” explains Dr
Engelbrecht.

Heatwaves are rare events over Africa under present day conditions.
The highest number of heat wave days occurs over the Limpopo river
basin region in southern Africa, the eastern interior and east coast
regions of South Africa and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa.
Drastic increased occurrences of heat wave days may be expected
across the continent under climate change, contributing to decreased
maize crop yield through the exceedance of critical temperature
thresholds increases in livestock mortality and adverse impacts on
human health. If a heat wave occurs during a drought, which dries
out vegetation, it can contribute to bushfires and wildfires.
Wildfires cause large financial losses to agriculture, livestock
production and forestry in Africa on an annual basis.

“Globally, Africa is the single largest source of biomass burning
emissions,” says Engelbrecht. “It is very important to understand
the impacts of increasing occurrences of fires on the African
savannas, as well as potential feedbacks to the regional and global
climate system”. Moreover, Engelbrecht and his co-authors point out
in the paper that general reductions in soil-moisture are plausible
to occur across the continent, as a result of enhanced evaporation
that occurs in response to increasing surface temperatures. “In the
subtropics, this effectively implies a longer burning season and a
shorter growing season”, says Engelbrecht.

Considering the fact that African temperatures in the subtropics are
projected to rise at 1.5 times the global rate of temperature
increase (an estimate that may be conservative) and the aim of the
upcoming UNFCCC negations seeking to keep global warming below 2
degrees C compared to pre-industrial temperatures – the Long Term
Global Goal (LTGG), Engelbrecht is of the opinion that the trends
and projections of rapidly rising African temperatures should be a
key consideration at the UNFCCC negotiations. “The relatively high
rate of temperature increases over Africa should be considered when
deciding on the suitability of the LTGG of the UNFCCC in terms of
climate-change impacts in Africa” Under low mitigation, the world is
likely to experience an increase in global average surface
temperature of 3 degrees C or more, and the relatively strong
temperature signal over Africa is of particular concern within this
context.”

The full paper, which has been published in Environmental Research
Letters, is available here: http://tinyurl.com/qxlzq59

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

“M-KOPA Solar connects 250,000 homes to power in East Africa”

Daily Nation, September 23, 2015

http://www.nation.co.ke – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/oyof6hz

In Summary

M-KOPA is one of the fastest growing power providers in the region,
connecting solar to over 500 new homes each day.

Each M-KOPA Solar home is calculated to save $750, compared to using
kerosene over a four-year period.

The battery-powered 8W home system has three lights, a phone-
charging facility and a chargeable radio.

By Edwin Okoth

A local ‘pay-as-you-go’ off grid energy provider has announced
connecting 250,000 homes across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to a
solar power system.

M-Kopa Solar which provides payment plan for supply of a solar
lighting system, a radio and phone charging apparatus said the
achievement was in line with its target to connect one million
customers by 2018 to its solar power systems.

The firm’s Managing Director and Co-Founder Jesse Moore said the
growth in connected customers was satisfactory as the region renewed
focus on renewable energy.

“Last September we celebrated 100,000 customers, and a year later we
are already at a quarter-million. With hundreds of great customers
coming on board every day, we are helping East Africa leapfrog over
the grid to enjoy cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable solar power,”
Mr Moore said.

Off-Grid Solar Power

Kenya is emerging as a hotspot for off-grid solar power.

A 2014 study by M-KOPA Solar and InterMedia shows that 14 per cent
of the surveyed population use solar as their primary lighting and
charging source.

M-KOPA is one of the fastest growing power providers in the region,
connecting solar to over 500 new homes each day.

The battery-powered 8W home system has three lights, a phone-
charging facility and a chargeable radio.

The savings generated by using off grid solar over kerosene are said
to be substantial for individual households and the broader East
African economy.

Alex Nduati, an Athi river resident became the plan’s 250,000th
customer when he purchased an M-KOPA III solar home system.

“I am so excited to take home a solar system that will give me much
more value than kerosene, and with M-KOPA’s daily payment plan it is
affordable for me. I purchased this system for my rural home where
there is no access to electricity,” Mr Nduati said.

Each M-KOPA Solar home is calculated to save $750, compared to using
kerosene over a four-year period.

This means that the combined projected savings by the 250,000
households using M-KOPA Solar is $187 Million.

The Nairobi-headquartered, M-KOPA Solar now has a network of over
1,500 direct sales agents and 100 customer service centres across
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

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

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

The Music of Malcolm X
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-music-of-malcolm-x

The Evidence Keeps Pouring In: Capitalism Just Isn’t Working
Published on
Monday, August 24, 2015
by Common Dreams

Paul Buchheit
62 Comments

(Photo: Jonny White/cc/flickr)

To followers of Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan, and to all the business
people who despise government, ‘community’ is a form of ‘communism.’
Even taking the train is too communal for them. Americans have been
led to believe that only individuals matter, that every person should
fend for him/herself, that “winner-take-all” is the ultimate goal,
and that the winners have no responsibility to others.

To the capitalist, everything is a potential market. Education,
health care, even the right to water. But with every market failure
it becomes more clear that basic human rights can’t be bought and
sold like cars and cell phones. The pursuit of profit, when essential
needs are part of the product, means that not everyone will be able
to pay the price. Some will be denied those essential needs.

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Global Failures

Capitalism hasn’t been able to control runaway global inequality. For
every $1.00 owned by the world’s richest 1% in 2011, they now own
$1.27. They own almost half the world’s wealth. Just 70 of them own
as much as 3.5 billion people.

Capitalism has not been able — or willing — to control the “race to
the bottom” caused by “free trade,” as mid-level jobs continue to be
transferred to low-wage countries.

Nor has capitalism been able to control global environmental
degradation, with trillions in subsidies going to polluters that
don’t even pay their taxes, and with corporations ignoring any
semblance of social responsibility as they seek ways to profit from
global warming.

Job Creation Failures I

With or without globalization, middle-class jobs are disappearing,
even higher-end positions in financial analysis, medical diagnosis,
legal assistance, and journalism. Artificial intelligence is making
this happen. Millions of Americans have had a role in the great
American productivity behind this technological takeover, but
capitalism allows only an elite few of us to reap the disproportional
profits.

Reports of job recovery are based on low-income jobs, many of them
part-time. Layoffs are cutting into the military and technology.
Gallup discounted Wall Street’s job-creating ability. As noted by
former Wall Street Journal Associate Editor Paul Craig Roberts, the
US rate of unemployment is 23 percent when long-term discouraged
job-seekers are included. That’s close to the unemployment rate of
the Great Depression.

Job Creation Failures II

Closely related to employment woes is the collapse of corporate
investment in new product R&D, from 40 cents per dollar in the 1970s
to 10 cents now. CEOs are choosing instead to spend almost all of
their profits on buybacks and dividends to enrich investors.

Health Care Failures

The capitalist profit motive allows the cost of a hepatitis pill that
costs $10 in Egypt to sell for $1,000 in the United States, and the
cost of a blood test to range from $10 to $10,000 in two California
hospitals (a 100,000% markup at the second hospital).

Patent abuse is one of the factors making this possible.
Pharmaceutical companies can tweak a drug with a minor change to
create a “brand new” drug with a new patent.

Another health-related scam that affects most of us is bottled water.
According to Food & Water Watch, about half of it is filtered tap
water with fancy names, as evidenced in one case by an actual “tap
water” label on a company’s product. Yet with the demise of community
water fountains, and the barrage of advertising for “safe and pure”
drinking water, unsuspecting Americans pay dearly: for the price we
pay for a bottle of water we would be able to fill up that bottle a
thousand times with tap water.

Housing Failures

Because of the “invisible hand” of the free market, in just 35 years
the investment wealth of the super-rich has gone from 15% of
middle-class housing to almost 200% of middle-class housing.

Education Failures

A remarkable story of privatization failure is told in the story of
charter schools in Florida, where Jeb Bush still holds dear to his
delusions of free-market educational success.

That’s just one example. In general, charters are riddled with fraud
and identified with a lack of transparency that leads to even more
fraud. Since 2001 nearly 2,500 charter schools have been forced to
close their doors, leaving over a quarter-million schoolchildren
between one bad business decision and the next. A report from PR
Watch summarizes the billions of dollars spent on charters without
accountability to the public.

Disposable Americans

Chris Hedges wrote: “Human life is of no concern to corporate
capitalists. The suffering of the Greeks, like the suffering of
ordinary Americans, is very good for the profit margins of financial
institutions such as Goldman Sachs.”

People become meaningless in a successful capitalist system.
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Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut
Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational
websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and
the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and
Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at
paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution insists that we will never stop struggling for peace and the well-being of all human beings, for every inhabitant on the planet regardless of skin color or national origin.