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SACU has released a new paper explaining what they are and what they do: The Southern African Customs Union is the oldest customs union in the world;having been established in 1910. It consists of five Member States: Botswana,Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. SACU plays a key role in Southern Africa, particularly for smaller member states who are (somewhat) dependent on SACU revenue
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Clippings from Southern African news: 129 cases of Typhoid recorded in Kabwe, Zambia in a week US$1.8 million to strengthen the capacity of Angolan NGOs to fight malaria in the country (in a somewhat garbled story that doesn't seem to identify the donors, unless I'm missing something. Although there is a passing reference to a certain oil company...) Botswana's president had an unfortunate
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The Herald is reporting that Chiefs and village leaders are appealing to the Government of Zimbabwe to take urgent action to address the severe food shortages in Masvingo where drought last year wiped out 80% of the maize crop. Warning signs emerged months ago that this would be a particularly bad year for the area and would likely push thousands into crisis. 400,000 people are now in urgent need
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There has been much uproar in recent weeks and months over an alleged oil deal in Zambia involving the former president of the country and various individuals and groups out of Nigeria that now appear somewhat shady. Now the focus has shifted to Malawi where, according to local publications, another dodgy government-to-government oil deal has apparently been uncovered, this time involving the
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Land rights remain, unsurprisingly, a hot topic in Southern Africa. One of the arguments I hear again and again is that secure individual land tenure is a prerequisite for farmers (including small-scale and large-scale commercial farmers) to invest in farming activities and avoid exploitative practises that will, for example, cause soil erosion. My sense of it, based on quite a lot of time spent
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1. Do African researchers and non-African researchers of Africa care about different things? This analysis suggests that African researchers care about jobs, others about institutions and aid: http://www.cgdev.org/blog/african-economists-care-about-jobs-non-africans-care-about-institutions 2. Important analysis from Duncan Green on inequality relating an event in Durban: Brazil v South Africa:
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The government of Botswana has refused a request from their counterparts in Malawi for President Banda to fly with Botswana's president to an upcoming African summit in the USA. Banda sold her presidential jet when she came into office in a gesture of solidarity with poor people in the country. On subsequent trips, Malawi has requested the hosting nations to provide transport. Now the Malawian
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Six million people in southern Africa are staring serious, severe food insecurity and hunger in the face and repeated appeals appear not to be achieving results. Angola, Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe have lots of problems. Apart from their unique situations - infrastructure and people recovering from civil war in Angola (complete with landmines), the lasting impact of controversial land
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Sometimes one reads something that just resonates. That's how I feel about this piece by J at WhyDev? Especially this bit: Whether you're local or expat, whether you're on the tail end of the cold chain, injecting babies with live vaccines all day or, or whether you're sitting in a cubicle editing the notes from life-saving meetings, you need to understand that you're part of a machine that
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