Africa, my Africa!
Welcome to this special edition of the WRM bulletin looking at Africa through the eyes of Africans. To many people in the world, Africa is an exotic continent filled with (Read More)
Issue 133 – August 2008
FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE
A great deal of attention is focused on Africa today, but hidden beneath all the talk about fighting poverty there are ambitious plans to exploit its enormous wealth. This widely heterogeneous continent, home to almost 900 million people, artificially divided into 53 states by European colonialism, is now under siege in the face of new advances by corporate globalization, while serving as the stage for the battle between the imperialists of old – the United States, European Union and Japan – and the economic and political expansion of China and India. It would seem that the future of the continent and its peoples is being decided in the distant seats of the world’s wealth and power.
Within this framework, WRM is also focusing its attention on Africa -not in order to talk about Africa, but rather to listen to what Africans themselves have to say. That is the whole purpose of this edition of the bulletin: to open up a space where Africa can speak about Africa.
We have created this blog where you can make comments on every article. We encourage and invite you to do so!
OUR VIEWPOINT
AFRICA SPEAKS OUT!
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The rights of indigenous peoples in Africa
It is difficult to analyse the question of indigenous rights in Africa without engaging with the question of statehood, and it is impossible to address the latter without considering its (Read More)
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Women’s Voices
“Mr. Chairman, Honourable Delegates; We, women representatives from different organisations in Africa, representing farmer’s, Community Based Organisations, Landless Peoples Movements, Pastoralists and Youth, from Western, Southern and Eastern Africa, meeting (Read More)
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African Friends of the Earth
Members of FoE Africa from Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius, Tunisia and Swaziland met for five days in Accra, Ghana reviewing issues that confront the African environment. (Read More)
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Central Africa: Management of protected areas and participatory approaches
“Co-management: a situation in which two or more social actors negotiate, define and guarantee amongst themselves a fair sharing of the management functions, entitlements and responsibilities for a given territory, (Read More)
CORPORATE INTERESTS vs. PEOPLES LIVELIHOODS
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Oil, Environment and Disaster Economics
Simple lessons are not necessarily easy to learn. For example: oil is a non-renewable and limited resource (1) Oil and conflicts appear to be twins in today’s world. When people (Read More)
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A Green Revolution for Africa: disaster in the making
Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star. -Confucius Introduction A recent World Bank report caused ripples around the world because it blamed agrofuel (Read More)
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Tree Plantations in Africa: A co-ordinated onslaught to grab what remains of Africa’s natural capital?
In the past For hundreds of years, it seems the African continent has been viewed as a kind of take-out convenience store by countries in the North – at first (Read More)
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Logging in Liberia: reform process or business as usual?
Liberia has just emerged from a civil crisis. The sanction on the exportations of Liberian Timber was lifted in 2006 by the United Nations Security Council UNSC. The timber industry, (Read More)
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The problems faced by Gabon’s forests and the communities that depend on them: a menu of logging, dams, oil, mining, parks, railways, roads, ports
In Gabon, forests and the communities that depend on them for survival face a range of different problems. The logging industry is one of the most serious. On the one (Read More)
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Uganda: Forests, communities and women
The current development patterns and inequities in the country present a number of forest management challenges. Industrialization today is synonymous with cutting down of natural forests like what has been (Read More)
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An overview of the problems faced by Mozambique’s forests, forest-dependent peoples and forest workers
Mozambique is a country rich in forest resources, with a total forest area of approximately 40.6 million hectares and 14.7 million hectares of other wooded areas (DNTF, 2007). Most provinces (Read More)
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Democratic Republic of the Congo: The search for consensus on the Itombwe forests
The Itombwe Massif lies northwest of Lake Tanganyika (28º02′ – 29º04′ E, 2º41’ – 3º52′ S), stretching over a vast area of 1,600 km2 that encompasses the territories of Mwenga, (Read More)
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Democratic Republic of the Congo: Deforestation of protected areas for mining operations in the province of Katanga – The case of the Basse Kando Reserve
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the second largest tropical rainforest in the world, second only to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. The country’s forests have recently drawn (Read More)
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The impact of Forest Conservation policies on forest dependent communities in SE Madagascar. Lessons for sustainability of Madagascar’s New Protected Areas
Madagascar is one of the world’s most impoverished countries. 70% of the population lives below the poverty line, the majority working in subsistence agriculture in isolated rural communities, relying on (Read More)
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Current status and conservation of mangroves in Africa: An overview
Introduction The inter-tidal forest communities called mangroves occurring in tropical and subtropical areas in the world cover most of the coastal regions of Africa and have been playing significant ecological, (Read More)
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Uganda: The price of living near Mount Elgon National Park
Mt. Elgon is an extinct volcano that is the fourth highest mountain in East Africa. The Bagisu and Sabiny are the two ethnic tribes around the mountain. It has a (Read More)