Tuesday, November 9, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.

Making headlines:

Pyongyang's media says that an influential group in South African President Jacob Zuma's ruling party has been stepping up its support for North Korea, ahead of the President's trip to the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in South Korea's capital this week.
Zuma will be seeking investment from South Korea and support for a call to limit the harm to emerging market currencies that have soared in value as investors faced with minimal interest rates in crisis-hit developed economies seek higher returns elsewhere. South Korea has tried to ensure a smooth G20 meeting and will not want to spoil its hosting of a major diplomatic event by pressing Zuma on the actions of a faction in his party. But Seoul is also apprehensive of any support given to the North's leaders.
In the past few months, the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) sent a delegation to a conference in Pyongyang and was quoted by the North's official media as calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-il the "great guardian" of peace. ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambu confirms the ANCYL delegation to the World Festival of Youth and Students in June but denies the contents of the report by the North Korean news agency. He adds, however, that the ANCYL has "never said anything except declare support for North Korea".

World Bank president Robert Zoellick's surprise call for a new global currency system with gold as a reference point, highlights the depth of unease about a weakening dollar that is fuelling trade and currency tensions. It may be aimed more at drawing China into the international monetary system than at actually reverting to an anchor role for gold, which most economists and central bankers see as unrealistic.
Timed to fuel debate ahead of this week's Group of 20 world economic summit in Seoul, Zoellick's proposal for a coordinated system of floating currencies, including China's yuan, is a departure from 20 years of US dogma about leaving exchange rates to markets. It comes at a time when Washington and Beijing are at odds over global economic imbalances, the yuan's exchange rate, and the US Federal Reserve Bank's renewed decision to create more money to buy Treasury bonds.
Zoellick has called for "a cooperative monetary system" that would include the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound sterling and the yuan, which would move "towards internationalisation and an open capital account. "The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values," he said.

The need for improving infrastructure throughout Africa to boost intra-African trade and bolster development was highlighted at the infrastructure investment world conference in Sandton on Monday.
Africa Project Access MD Paul Runge said that the cost of moving goods within Africa was "prohibitively high", and supply chain management and freight logistics was a particular problem area. He did, however, highlight that there were some successes that have been achieved with regard to infrastructure, such as ports, roads, bridges and railways, and emphasised that the infrastructure project pipeline for Africa is larger than ever before.
This is largely owing to recovering demand for natural resources and commodity price increases following the global economic crisis.

Also making headlines:

A mining ban in the troubled eastern Democratic Republic of Congo prevents the tin and tantalum industry from meeting tough new US rules against "conflict minerals".
The outcome of Guinea's landmark Presidential vote could take five days to emerge, raising concerns that the delay could fuel tensions among rival factions.
The deputy head of a media group founded by a son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been arrested in an apparent escalation of a power struggle inside the country's ruling elite.
And, US President Barack Obama announces a US-Indian partnership to promote food security in Africa.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.