The Africa-EU Strategic Partnership: Joint Africa-EU Strategy and Action Plan

The Lisbon Summit, which brought together the European Union and Africa in Lisbon during the past weekend, has offered a unique opportunity to address the common contemporary challenges for both continents, in the year that we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the European integration and the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the independence of Africa. The results of the summit come under a Joint Strategy and Action Plan. The purpose of this Joint Strategy is to take the Africa-EU relationship to a new, strategic level with a strengthened political partnership and enhanced cooperation at all levels.

Access the Joint Strategy and Action Plan here.

GAPMINDER

Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. This is a amazing project, indeed. In its website you can access different powerful tools and resources which demonstrate the power of statistics and counter established dogmas:

• The Gapminder World 2006 enables you to explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries by the indicators you choose;
• You can also watch videos from of lectures and Gapcasts;
• You can also choose to watch interactive presentations or download pdf-format world maps on different themes.

A must see and a truly meritorious endeavour.

2007/2008 Human Development Report: Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world

The 2007/2008 Human Development Report entitled Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world will be launched later today in Brasilia, Brazil. According to the report, Climate change is the defining human development challenge of the 21st Century. Failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem. The most polluting countries in 2004 were the USA and China. In what concerns human development, Iceland, Norway and Australia are the countries which present better indicators. At the bottom, we can still find countries such as Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone, which still have a long way to go in improving most human development indicators.

Access the full report here.
Access the summary here.
More on the Human Development Report here.

2007 AIDS epidemic update + What should be the world's top priorities?

Out last week, the UN 2007 AIDS epidemic update lowered the UNAIDS and the World Health Organization estimates of how many people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. According to the report, about 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, compared with an estimate of nearly 40 million in 2006. The U.N. bodies said that better methods of data collection and increased data availability from countries show that HIV/AIDS is not quite as widespread as previously thought. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most seriously affected region, with AIDS remaining the leading cause of death there. Downward trends in HIV prevalence are occurring in a number of countries, where prevention efforts aimed at reducing new HIV infections since 2000 and 2001 are showing results. In most of sub-Saharan Africa, national HIV prevalence has either stabilized or is showing signs of a decline (Figure 2). Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and Zimbabwe have all seen declines in national prevalence, continuing earlier trends. In South-East Asia, the epidemics in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand all show declines in HIV prevalence.

Access the report and further documentation here.

When global warming has become the world's top priority, others are starting to question whether it should be the world's top priority, in opposition to fighting hunger, poverty and/or HIV. Although when can question his conclusions, economist Bjorn Lomborg makes a persuasive case for prioritizing the world's biggest problems, asking "If we had $50 billion to spend over the next four years to do good in the world, where should we spend it?" His recommendations - based on the findings of the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus - controversially place global warming at the bottom of the list (and AIDS prevention at the top).

Will Money Solve Africa's Development Problems?

The John Templeton Foundation is conducting the second in a series of conversations about the "Big Questions" and has called on leading scientists and scholars to answer the question 'Will Money Solve Africa's Development Problems?'. The essays are available online at the Foundation's website.

People-to-people lending

The recent credit-crunch affecting present and prospective homeowners, especially in the USA, is reinforcing the role of social-lending (or people-to-people lending) as opposed to mainstream credit markets. Social lending has been offering borrowers cheaper credit than they could get elsewhere, as lenders in this credit model are not seeking solely to maximise returns. Intriguing is that social lending firms have been capable of assessing risk better than they mainstream counterparts, presenting default rates lower than the major banks.

Visit these social firms: Prosper and Zopa.

World Development Report (WDR) 2008

The World Bank's 2008 'World Development Report' (WDR), the 30th in the series, underlines the role of agriculture as a fundamental instrument for sustainable development and poverty reduction and provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture-for-development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report thus addresses three main questions:

• What can agriculture do for development?
• What are effective instruments in using agriculture for development?
• How can agriculture-for-development agendas best be implemented?

Access the full report here.

The World Food Day - numbers and facts

We are celebrating today the World Food Day, with 150 countries around the world organizing special events, conferences, contests, sports activities and a global candlelight vigil on this year's theme, “The Right to Food”. However, some numbers and some facts demonstrate how nutrition and food are still a great challenge (source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations):

- our planet produces enough food to feed its entire population, but there are still 854 million undernourished people in the world, of which 820 million in developing countries, 25 million in countries in transition and 9 million in industrialized countries;
- of these people, 400 million of them are hungry children whose lives will be forever blighted by lack of nutrition in their first months;
- fifty-five percent of the 12 million child deaths each year are related to malnutrition;
- to reach the World Food Summit goal of reducing hunger by half by 2015, the number of hungry people needs to fall by 22 million a year. Currently it is falling by only 6 million a year;

More information on the World Food Day here.
The FAO Hunger Map here.

Feed me Better School Dinners

In 2005, British chef Jamie Olivier has launched the Feed me Better School Dinners campaign to ban the junk in school meals and get kids eating fresh, tasty nutritious food instead. The campaign manifesto asked for five things: Guarantee that children receive a proper, nutritionally balanced meal on their plates; Introduce nutritional standards and ban junk food from school meals; Invest in dinner ladies: give them better kitchens more hours and loads of support and training to get them cooking again; Teach kids about food and get cookery back on the curriculum; Commit long-term funding to improve school food. The consequent web petition had, after four weeks, over 270,000 signatures. PM Tony Blair then announced he was taking immediate action to set up a School Food Trust and pledged £280 million to improve school meals. Since then, school meals have to contain a basic level of nutrients and schools are forbidden to sell junk food. A grass-roots campaign with a big impact on pupils health!!

More info on the campaign here.

CIDA City Campus

In 2000 Mr. Taddy Blecher and three partners formed the CIDA City CAmpus, a Johannesburg-based almost-free business school for students who cannot afford mainstream higher education. Charging students only a 21$ a month fee, CIDA now collects income from notable sponsors, such as Dell, JPMorgan, Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey. Students help to run the school and many teachers offer their services for free. Students are also required to volunteer for community work when they go back home during the holidays. In a country where good education is still an illusion for most poor South Africans, this is the kind of initiative that can have profound positive impacts on the communities and Mr. Blecher is now a local heroe.

More information on the CIDA here.

6th European Round Table on Poverty and Social Exclusion - Ponta Delgada, 16th and 17th October

The Portuguese Presidency of the European Union is organising the 6th European Round Table on Poverty and Social Exclusion, to be held in Ponta Delgada, Azores, on the 16th and 17th October. This discussion forum, which will be open to national and local public authorities, European institutions, NGO's and academics, will discuss the importance of minimum social standards as a key element of strategies for overcoming poverty and exclusion, bearing in mind the need to adapt it to the realities and options of each country. Poverty combat and social exclusion is another controversial issue in the European Union, to which major differences in both national policies and inequality levels at local and national levels have to be considered. It is, however, a a fundamental policy area if we are to promote full European integration.

More information here.
Programme here.