South Africa

JOHANNESBURG – Service delivery protests have reached a record height, with 107 protests this year, the latest data released by research company Municipal IQ shows. Last year, 105 service delivery protests were recorded, which was a big increase from only 27 protests in 2008. Since Municipal IQ started compiling the report in 2004, the calmest year was 2006, when only two service delivery protests were recorded. Municipal IQ MD Kevin Allan says that, given that 48% of the 2010 protests took place in informal settlements, which are now a strong feature of the urban landscape, it is likely that issues of poverty and inequality will continue to drive protests in the future. The company’s yearly municipal productivity index (MPI) also showed that the productivity levels of municipalities across the country have dropped. “It is worrying that we can see the recession feeding through into this year’s MPI results, in large part due to diminished spending by municipalities and shrinking revenue bases. This is of especial concern given that service delivery protests have become an apparent fixture on the South African landscape,” says Allan. Only two local municipalities with either a rural or a former homeland legacy managed to score in the top 40% of MPI local municipal results. Allan says that the results underpin the imperative for turnaround strategies that ensure local service delivery in the most impoverished South African municipalities.

PRETORIA – Latin America’s largest economy, Brazil, is expected to become one of South Africa’s top-20 trading partners, says a top South African official. The countries aim to boost bilateral trade by $1-billion over the next 12 months. Trade has grown from about $500-million in 2000, to a peak of $2,5-billion in 2008, but dropped sharply during the global recession. In 2010, it rebounded to $1,76-billion. Despite growth over the last decade, Brazil is still only South Africa’s 32nd export partner. Brazil’s Foreign Trade Deputy Minister Welber Barral says that the low trading figures between the two countries create room for future growth. South African Trade and Industry acting deputy director-general Riaan le Roux says that Brazil could become one of the country’s top-20 trading partners in the short term. Brazil will be hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, and Le Roux points out that, with South Africa having successfully hosted the most recent soccer World Cup, great opportunities could be explored, not only in the trading of products, but also in the transfer of skills, expertise and services. “The world has seen its global economic poles shift over the past three years, and there are still great benefits that can be reaped from south-south trade.” Further, Brazil, South Africa and India, which formed the tripartite grouping IBSA, aim to increase trade between the three countries to $15-billion by 2014.

Africa & the world

CANCUN – Countries differ on the future of a $20-billion carbon market after 2012, casting doubt on any overhaul of the scheme at UN climate talks in Cancun. The Kyoto Protocol allows rich countries to meet greenhouse gas emissions limits by paying for carbon cuts in developing countries, earning carbon offsets in return. No new emissions limits have been agreed after the first phase of the protocol ends in 2012, stifling investment in the offset scheme, experts have told the November 29 to December 10 climate talks. Some market participants and countries want a formal, UN decision in Cancun to commit to proceed with the market after 2012, regardless of whether any new targets are agreed. "We want a clear indication in Cancun, we leave it to the parties to decide how," says Henry Derwent, chief executive of the International Emissions Trading Association, a lobbying group. "A clear decision would be great. In the absence of that investors will look at intent. The more we hear people saying this must go on, it points in the right direction," he adds. The Kyoto carbon offsetting scheme, called the clean development mechanism (CDM), was worth $20-billion in 2009. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gases by about 5% by 2012, compared with 1990 levels, but no successor has yet been agreed. Several countries say at the UN Cancun conference that the CDM's survival is vital, including Algeria, Brazil, Mexico and Papua New Guinea. But they differed on other issues, including whether to widen the scheme to include new carbon-cutting technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), much favoured by oil-exporting countries, but opposed by Brazil.

TRIPOLI – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has warned the European Union (EU) that Africa will turn to other trade partners if the EU continues to impose terms for cooperation. Gaddafi’s warning, at an EU-Africa summit attended by senior European officials, echoes complaints from some other African leaders, who say Europe is trying to make them open their borders to trade but not giving enough in return.
“Our choice now is to cooperate with our brothers in the EU but, if that cooperation fails, Africa has other choices,”
Gaddafi said during opening remarks at the summit in Tripoli. “Let every country and every group govern itself.
Every country is free to serve its own interests. Africa can look to any other international bloc, such as Latin America, China, India or Russia.” A leaked internal document from the African Union this month showed some governments on the continent felt that trade deals being offered by the EU were one-sided. It said the bloc was asking African countries to liberalise their economies to comply with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules but was not doing enough to help them develop their own economies. “We do not benefit from the WTO and we call for its abolition,” Gaddafi said.

BALTIMORE – Efforts to treat everyone in Africa infected with HIV are virtually futile, and public health experts should, instead, focus on preventing new cases, a committee of experts reports. Currently 22,5-million people in Africa live with HIV, but this number will rise to more than 30-million by 2020 – far more than can be treated with current resources, according to the report from the US Institute of Medicine. At least 12-million of them will need treatment, but only seven-million will likely get those drugs, the committee of international Aids experts appointed by the institute says.
“The number of people that are infected with HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to far outstrip the available resources for treatment by 2020,” Dr Thomas Quinn, of Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, and the National Institutes of Health, says.