This Africa Progress panel Report argues that African policy makers have critical choices to make. They can either invest their natural resource revenue in people to generate jobs and opportunities for millions in present and future generations, or they can squander this opportunity, allowing jobless growth and inequality to take root. In many African countries, natural resource revenues are widening the gap between rich and poor. Although much has been achieved, a decade of highly impressive growth has not brought comparable improvements in health, education and nutrition. The Africa Progress Panel is convinced that Africa can better manage its vast natural resource wealth to improve the lives of the region’s people by setting out bold national agendas for strengthening transparency and accountability. The Panel consists of ten distinguished individuals from the private and public sector who advocate for equitable and sustainable development for Africa.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
This paper examines the evidence for a 'resource curse' at subnational level. Natural resource extraction can have positive effects, generating profits, tax revenue for government, and economic linkages to other sectors. It can also have negative economic, environmental and social consequences, including changes in local relative prices that might crowd out other productive activities; deforestation; pollution and degradation; and the potential for social dislocation and displacement. This paper evaluates the evidence for how these effects accrue specifically to the subnational economy and whether government policy can lead to positive development impacts, while avoiding the challenge of unbalanced costs borne locally.
Sphiwe Mazibuko's 9 minute documentary exposes the intimidation and violence facing anti-mining activists on the Wild Coast and Zululand, in South Africa. Xolobeni residents have fought for 10 years to prevent an Australian company from mining their titanium rich dunes. The film documents how an unwavering response of the Pondo people to protect their traditional Wild Coast lands, where they have lived for over 1500 years, has been met by increasing intimidation and violence with activist lives threatened and attacked.
Southern African states are being alerted to the concessions on intellectual property rights that they can take advantage of within the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) by the Southern African Regional Programme of Access to Medicines and Diagnostics (SARPAM). SARPAM is communicating the flexibilities within the TRIPS to protect public health, including compulsory licensing and parallel importation, as they note that many of these concessions are not yet being used by African countries to access essential medicines. They article reports ways that states and activists have advanced use of these flexibilities. For example in 2002, Zimbabwe used of one of them after declaring a period of emergency to override anti-retroviral medicine patents to import generic medicines for HIV. The article notes that the issue still demands activism. In March 2016, for example, activists marched to the Johannesburg offices of the multinational pharmaceutical company Roche to put pressure on the company to lower the extremely high cost of a life-saving cancer drug.
This collection of writings draws together the thoughts of scholars, activists, historians and social commentators on post-extractivism in different contexts. As a system of thought and action, post-extractivism offers a new and radical approach to the problems caused by mining and extractivism in general. Founded in philosophies of Buen Vivir (Good Living) it proposes radical alternatives to current models of ‘development’ thinking that support an oppressively extractive, non-reciprocal relationship with Earth and each other, and suggests fields of action and transition to change the current status-quo.
The regulation of health technologies is a critical component of every country’s public health system and ensures that high-quality, safe health technologies reach the people who need them most. To harness momentum for regulatory harmonization, the Pan-African Parliament, New Partnership for African Development, and African Union Commission spearheaded the development of the African Union Model Law on Medical Products Regulation, which guides member states and regional economic communities in harmonizing regulatory systems and providing an enabling environment for the development and scale-up of health technologies. This paper outlines the measures for implementation of the law.
The China Africa Project is a multimedia resource dedicated to exploring various aspects of China’s growing engagement with Africa. Through a combination of original content and curation of third-party material from across the Internet, the CAP’s objective is purely informational. The site states that none of the blog’s authors or producers have any vested interest in any Chinese or African position.
As international development strategies struggle to address issues of human insecurity and socioeconomic inequality, inspiring alternatives are taking shape outside the traditional development discourse. The author argues that locating development strategies within the current neoliberal capitalist framework limits the possibility of success of development goals and strategies, largely designed by 'the North' and argued to be rarely successful in 'the South'. The author argues that these have potential to transform development policy in the South. This article discusses well-being economics, questioning the notion that high income and consumption constitutes genuine wealth, noting that income contributes up to the point of satisfying basic needs, after which human well-being is argued to rest on supporting the development of human potentialities through meaningful livelihoods, strengthening social relations and promoting ways of life in harmony with nature. She argues that this is being applied in the political philosophy of “buen vivir” (living well) in selected Latin American social movements and states to guide a development policy that is more inclusive of human security and their environments. The paper explores the manner in which the concept puts improvement of the quality of life, capacities and potential of the population and its harmonious coexistence with nature at the centre of the economic system, within constitutions, policies in selected countries and in relation to their impact.
The importance of the pharmaceutical industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, its claim to policy priority, is rooted in the vast unmet health needs of the sub-continent. Making Medicines in Africa, an open access book under a CC-BY license, is a collective endeavour by a group of contributors with a strong African and more broadly Southern presence, to find ways to link technological development, investment and industrial growth in pharmaceuticals to improve access to essential good quality medicines, as part of moving towards universal access to competent health care in Africa. The authors aim to shift the emphasis in the international debate and initiatives towards sustained Africa-based and African-led initiatives to tackle this huge challenge. The authors argue that without the technological, industrial, intellectual, organisational and research-related capabilities associated with competent pharmaceutical production, and without policies that pull the industrial sectors towards serving local health needs, the African sub-continent cannot generate the resources to tackle its populations' needs and demands.
In a statement People's Health Movement (PHM) and Medicus Mundi International (MMI) pointed out the weaknesses of the draft roadmap established by the WHO for an enhanced global response to the adverse health effects of air pollution. In it, they argue that this draft misses an analysis of the current economic and trade-related rules that would prevent the establishment of a robust plan of action. PHM and MMI see serious barriers for the transfer to clean technologies due to the continuing pressure for higher levels of intellectual property protection and investor state dispute settlements in trade agreements. PHM and MMI urge member states to insist on a more strategic and focused approach to the social and economic determinants of air pollution and to address these fundamental issues.