African leaders yesterday lashed out at rich nations for failing to tackle trade inequalities even as they make lofty pledges to boost aid.
The leaders, in Japan for a major development conference, urged industrialized nations to make it easier for them to export food, coffee and other products at fair prices.
“Pursuit of unfair trade practices by the big powers as well as difficult access for African products to markets of developed countries continue to penalize our states and significantly destroy their performance in the creation of riches,” Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore said.
PHOTO: EPA
Forty heads of states from Africa are participating in the three-day conference on economic growth, stability and climate change.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged yesterday to double aid to Africa by 2012 and to help the continent double rice production to ease food shortages.
In recent weeks and months, soaring prices for essential foodstuffs such as rice, wheat and corn in some of the world’s poorest nations have sparked demonstrations across Africa.
But some African leaders said their countries were more concerned about unfair trade deals than a lack of things to eat.
“There is a big problem of food in the world now and a problem of energy. In Uganda, there is a problem of a different kind. We have too much food and no market to export it to,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said. “Why? Because of bad policies in Europe, America and even in Japan.”
He said his country was facing “a real struggle” to get a fair deal for its natural resources, including agricultural and mineral products.
For example, a kilogram of unprocessed Ugandan coffee would be sold for US$1 at home but for US$14 in Britain after it has been refined, he said.
“I see some people here who are called donors,” Museveni told the conference audience. “Now, I really have a problem with that definition. Because I don’t know who’s helping who.”
Fair trade campaigners say that while poor countries have been forced to open up their markets, rich nations have kept unfair practices such as farm subsidies, while multinational companies fail to give farmers a fair deal.
Gabonese President Omar Bongo Ondimba urged Japan to boost direct investment in Africa and open up Japanese markets to African products.
“Japan can weave with Africa a strategic partnership which is mutually beneficial,” he said.
The gathering in Yokohama, near Tokyo, is seen as an effort by Japan to expand its influence in Africa, where China and India are also seeking closer ties and supplies of natural resources to fuel their rapid economic growth.
Japan also announced a US$2.5 billion initiative to help its companies do business in Africa, paving the way for private sector investment, which some African leaders said was sorely lacking.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS