Tuesday, November 16, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Brad Dubbelman.

Making headlines:

South Africa is in the process of developing a "multidimensional package" to deal with its critical economic challenges of unemployment and poverty, as well as to help it cope with prevailing global economic imbalances, including destabilising capital inflows, said Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Monday.
Briefing the media on the outcome of last week's Seoul Group of 20 summit, the Minister said that the package would draw on a "full range of tools", not just "macroprudential" ones, and would emerge "sooner rather than later". Details of the plan, which would be aligned to the country's emerging ‘New Growth Path', would be communicated during his February Budget address to Parliament.
The measures will seek to elevate South Africa's growth rate to around 7% a year over a sustained period and will involve both macroeconomic and microeconomic policy measures, including industrial-support programmes and job-support programmes.

Chinese companies eyeing African mineral resources must stop making closed-door deals and become more transparent in their investments, said World Bank MD Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Tuesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of one of China's biggest mining conferences, she said that investors in Africa need to work more with local communities in order to avoid conflicts and eventually even reduce costs. "Africa has an investment deficit and there is room for everyone," she said. "But investment needs to have sound principles whether it is from China, Europe or the US."
Okonjo-Iweala urged miners to consider a more "value-added" approach to investment in Africa, creating local jobs rather than just stripping away their resources and shipping them home. The "dysfunctional relationship" between investors and local communities actually raises the cost of investment by forcing companies to spend heavily on security, she told delegates, citing the activities of oil companies in the Niger Delta as an example. Acknowledging that African governments are also responsible for the problems, she added that "transparency works both ways."

South Africa's future is threatened by the transition from social justice to cronyism and wealth accumulation, said Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution chairperson Sipho Pityana on Monday.
Speaking at the Our World Our Responsibility Donor Conference in Cape Town, Pityana warned that this threatened the Constitution's progressive vision, as well as the country's democratic foundations and its prospects for future prosperity.
The conference explored the relationship between local and international philanthropists, and how civil society could channel funds from philanthropically minded people and entities to transform the country's socioeconomic landscape. The result was a government committed to developing a system that met its democratic constitutional mandate. However, Pityana explained, civil society structures have been stripped of much of their intellectual and strategic capacity, as well as financial and other resources.

Also making headlines:

The United Nations' chief peacekeeper in Sudan says that there have been no major new build-ups of troops near the north-south border, dousing rumours of military escalation ahead of a sensitive referendum on southern secession.
Guinea's electoral commission says that veteran opposition leader Alpha Conde won 52,5% of the votes in the November 7 Presidential runoff.
South Africa's ruling African National Congress is to appoint two independent researchers to investigate the nationalisation of mines.
And, Madagascar will vote tomorrow in a long-awaited referendum on a new constitution, in a crucial step towards restoring political order on the island.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.