The Great Debate UK

from Global News Journal:

Iran’s Ahmadinejad tells UN capitalism’s dying

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a U.N. General Assembly session on poverty this week that capitalism is on the verge of death and that it's time for a new economic system.

"The discriminatory order of capitalism and the hegemonic approaches are facing defeat and are getting close to their end," Ahmadinejad said at a summit meeting assessing progress on achieving U.N. goals to drastically reduce poverty by 2015.

"The undemocratic and unjust governance structures of the decision-making bodies in international economic and political fields are the reasons behind most of the plights today humanity is confronting," he said, according to an English translation of his prepared remarks.

Ahmadinejad usually draws a large crowd for U.N. speeches but Tuesday's address was delivered to a virtually empty hall.

It was unclear whether the unusually low attendance was due to waning interest in Ahmadinejad five years after he first addressed the assembly or if it was the fact that he was one of the first speakers in the morning session, which began at 9 a.m. EDT. (Many delegations are routinely tardy for U.N. meetings.)

What is Cameron offering India?

- Mark Kobayashi-Hillary is the author of several books, including ‘Who Moved my Job?’ and ‘Global Services: Moving to a Level Playing Field’.  The opinions expressed are his own. -

Prime Minister David Cameron has loaded a 747 full of British business leaders and government ministers, all on a charm offensive aimed at securing deeper trade ties between the two nations. But what is he offering the Indians?

The Prime Minister is appealing to the ‘special relationship’, the centuries-old tie of the British Empire and Commonwealth. It’s true that many links remain. The Indian accounting, legal, and parliamentary systems all maintain similarities to the British systems, because the British were instrumental in creating these institutions.

But for how long will the old ties bind us? When will the empire strike back?

Many supposedly British brands are actually owned by Indian firms. Jaguar Land Rover cars, the steel manufacturer Corus, the Tetley tea you may have enjoyed over breakfast this morning. India is already a pervasive part of British life, and not just in the form of chicken vindaloo on a Friday night.

India was relatively untroubled by the global economic slowdown. Instead of hyper-growth, the economy grew at a gentler rate, but there is the difference. Their economy is still growing, and now at an accelerating rate. India is one of the famed BRIC nations, the bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, and China lumped together because of their fast-growing economies and huge populations.

And size does matter. There are 1.1bn people in India, and the labour force is approaching half a billion. The potential for more Indian companies to work with the UK is enormous, as is the market opportunity for British firms that can find a way to take their goods and services to the Indian people.

from Africa News blog:

Does Africa respect its writers enough?

The reception would have done justice to royalty or a movie star when Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe paid a rare visit to his homeland recently, some 50 years after penning his book “Things Fall Apart”.

That book has a firm place on school syllabuses in much of Africa and is studied around the world. Achebe, now 79, has been acclaimed as the father of modern African literature and as the continent’s greatest living writer – his books being very accessible as well as giving a penetrating insight into the struggles of his people.

Achebe’s Igbo community in southeastern Nigeria wanted to mark his homecoming in style and Reuters Television’s Africa Journal programme was there to follow it.

Achebe delighted people with readings from his classic novel, which has sold more than 10 million copies and tells the story of Okonkwo, who finds himself and his traditions pitted against newly arrived British colonialists in the 19th century.

“Knowing that Chinua Achebe with his talent unsurpassed, in the literary world as far as I am concerned, certainly in Nigeria, unsurpassed certainly in Africa, knowing that he comes from my neck of the woods is actually an inspiration to me,” said musician Onyeka Owenu.

The region has a reputation for producing internationally acclaimed writers, including Ben Okri and more recently Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the prize winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun.

from Africa News blog:

Time to stop aid for Africa? An argument against

Earlier this month, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argued that Africa needs Western countries to cut long term aid that has brought dependency, distorted economies and fuelled bureaucracy and corruption. The comments on the blog posting suggested that many readers agreed. In a response, Savio Carvalho, Uganda country director for aid agency Oxfam GB, says that aid can help the continent escape poverty - if done in the right way:

In early January, I travelled to war-ravaged northern Uganda to a dusty village in Pobura and Kal parish in Kitgum District. We were there to see the completion of a 16km dirt road constructed by the community with support from Oxfam under an EU-funded programme.

The road is bringing benefits in the form of access to markets, education and health care. Some parents say their daughters feel safer walking to school on the road instead of through the bushes. Many families have used the wages earned from construction work to pay for school fees and medical treatment. This is the impact of aid.

Having lived and worked in east Africa, I have witnessed the positive effects of aid. But done badly, it can be very limiting and even has the potential to create more harm. To avoid this, it must be provided within an enabling environment in which it is used as a catalyst for change and not as an end in itself. Governments must show leadership through an accountable system.

For individuals, access to resources – including aid - is like an investment. Aid can build up poor people’s assets, support good governance and enhance skills and capacities to bring about transformation. But it can become a bane when it makes communities dependent, lazy and hopeless. Governments, aid agencies and the United Nations need to ensure the delivery of aid is well planned and coordinated, leading to higher self-reliance among poor communities.

Aid is also beneficial when trade is fair. There are several examples in Africa, like the case of coffee farmers in Uganda, where aid has been used effectively to improve the overall quality of the coffee seeds, thereby giving farmers better prices for their produce. When they have access to markets at home and abroad, they generate income which is ploughed back into increased output, better access to health and education, and overall improvement in the quality of their lives. To make this happen, developed countries need to stop procrastinating and put in place fair trade practices.

Aid works well if governments are accountable – in other words, when they are responsible and encourage active citizenship. On this continent, civil society is still weak and needs to be nourished. But stopping aid will not resolve frustrations about poor governance, which is partly a result of weak public scrutiny. Aid should be used to help fight corruption and promote accountability through active input from ordinary people.