Wednesday, November 24, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Natasha Odendaal.

Making headlines:

The number and quality of jobs created between now and 2020 will be the main indicator of the success of South Africa's ‘New Growth Path', said Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel when releasing the plan on Tuesday.
The strategy is geared towards growing employment by five-million jobs by that date. Should that jobs target be achieved, over one-half of all working-age South Africans would have paid employment and the narrow unemployment measure would decline from over 25% currently to around 15%. The two key variables that will affect this scenario are the rate of economic growth and the employment intensity of that growth. "In effect, we need both to maximise growth and to ensure that it generates more employment, mostly in the private sector, in order to reach our target," Patel explains.
To achieve this, some macroeconomic policy tweaks are highlighted, particularly surrounding plans to weaken the value of the rand. But on the whole, the emphasis lies in microeconomic reforms designed at increasing labour-absorbing growth without destabilising the economic platform that has already been developed.

An estimated 33,3-million people worldwide have the HIV virus that causes Aids, but a United Nations (UN) report states that the global health community is starting to slow down and even turn the epidemic around.
According to the 2010 global update by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids), the total number of HIV-infected people in 2009 was down slightly from the previous year's 33,4-million and at least 56 countries have either stabilised or achieved significant declines in the rates of new HIV infections. Yet while more than five-million of those who need life-saving HIV/Aids drugs are getting them, around two-thirds of the 15-million people in poorer countries who need the drugs, cannot get them.
UNAids executive director Michel Sidibe says: "For the first time, we can say that we are breaking the trajectory of the Aids epidemic. We have halted and begun to reverse the epidemic. Fewer people are becoming infected with HIV and fewer people are dying from Aids."

Energy deals took centre stage during a Southern African tour by Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping, but the growing ties between China and Africa are quickly moving beyond the traditional sectors of energy and infrastructure.
Xi, on visits to South Africa, Angola and Botswana, witnessed the signing of deals worth millions of dollars to build a power plant, a solar panel factory and to increase South African exports to China. Less visible during the State visits, but increasingly important, is trade in sectors besides resources. Chinese consumer goods are making huge inroads in African markets, and more Chinese firms are exploring manufacturing deals.
Frontier Advisory CE Martyn Davies says that "the key trend going forward, is that we're seeing hundreds of thousands, literally, of micro-Chinese entrepreneurs, procuring from China and selling at the grass roots to African consumers."

Also making headlines:

Egypt says that it is "amazed" by Ethiopia's suggestion that Cairo might turn to military action after a decade of contentious talks driven by anger over the perceived injustice of a previous Nile water-sharing treaty signed in 1929.
Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma says that the December 31 deadline for Zimbabwean immigrants to apply for the necessary permits to allow them to stay in the country, will not be extended.
British ambassador to Zimbabwe Mark Canning says that the country's political climate is not yet conducive to a free and fair general election, which President Robert Mugabe is aiming to hold by mid-2011.
And, the Côte d'Ivoire's Presidential hopefuls are exchanging increasingly hostile rhetoric ahead of Sunday's runoff vote, fuelling fears that violence could overshadow what is expected to be a tight race.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.