The main focus of this publication by Peter Kagwanja is the link between South Africa’s grand pan-African ambitions, especially in the area of peace, security and governance, and its own capacity to pursue these objectives. Specifically, the paper examines Pretoria’s involvement in Africa, and internal capacity to support its mediation, peacekeeping and strengthening the abilities of African institutions for peacemaking.

This increasing interest in Africa demonstrated by rising Chinese FDI to the continent, presents opportunities and challenges to the development prospects of sub-Saharan African countries. There is therefore a need to carefully identify and analyse these developments if sub-Saharan African countries are to maximize the positive effects of the opportunities and ameliorate the adverse effects of the challenges. This paper by Olu Ajakaiye, Raphael Kaplinsky, Mike Morris and Felix F. N’Zue, focuses on China–Africa investment relations drawing insights from the AERC scoping studies.

In the context of widespread interest in the impact of Chinese investment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this paper focuses on SSA’s engagement with large state-owned Chinese firms investing in SSA’s resource and infrastructure sectors. Evidence is provided on the extent of different types of Chinese investment, before focusing on the distinctive character of large-scale state-owned Chinese investors whose investments are closely bundled with aid and trade. The paper concludes that SSA countries should maximise the opportunities opened to them by their resource-base by adopting a similarly integrated and focused response to Chinese (and other large) investors who seek to draw on the continent’s natural resources.

A 2006 study by several Chinese research institutions showed that almost 90 percent of the country's top leaders in sectors encompassing finance, foreign trade, property development, construction, and stock trading were princelings, and China's ambitious $124 billion effort to provide basic health coverage for the vast majority of its 1.3 billion citizens by 2011 is a brimming opportunity for large global drugmakers.

A global trade deal at the WTO would lead to significant cuts in China’s already-low agricultural tariffs, new research shows, and Beijing and Washington continue to butt heads over a five-year-old US ban on imports of chicken from China.

China Development Bank plans Brazil, Russia, Egypt Offices, increasing its economic and political footprint in Latin America and elsewhere, and Beijing courts the Middle East with Arabic TV channel.

This week, the International Finance Corporation expects closer future cooperation with China to provide funding in Africa's growing oil and gas sector, China provides assistance to Ethiopia for Expo 2010, and FOCAC Media Seminar 2009 opens in Beijing.

Nearly 150 CSOs write to IFC urging consultations with individuals and communities directly impacted by its projects as it reviews three years of implementation of the Performance Standards. BIC was among a coalition of 150 organizations who signed onto a letter urging the International Financial Corporation (IFC) to ensure consultations with individuals and communities directly impacted by its projects in the review process of its Policy on Disclosure of Information and its Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability Policy (Policy & Performance Standards).

This report has been compiled by a group of African and international civil society organisations concerned about the lack of transparency in mining contracts, as well as the revenue that national budgets forego because of excessive mining tax concessions as well as multinational mining companies avoiding and evading tax.

The two companies are resisting calls from the Congolese government to change the terms of their contracts. This deadlock is threatening the entire renegotiation process. Faced with the refusal to negotiate these two contracts, the Congolese government is unable to conclude the renegotiation process. There is a risk of other companies, which have already renegotiated their contracts, to not honour commitments they have already made

On the eve of the upcoming upcoming fourth Ministerial Conference on Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Yves Niyiragira argues that it is in both Africa and China’s interests that African politics and governance remain stable and predictable over long periods of time so that all the Southern powers find it attractive to invest across the continent.

As global economic downturn staunches the flow of investment from China and the West, African interest in India as an alternative source of funding is growing. Renu Modi reports back to Pambazuka News on a recent conference aimed at fostering partnerships between India and Africa. African delegates at the conference highlighted the need to consider direct budget support for investments in development sectors such as health, capacity development and poverty alleviation, rather than simply focusing on high level project finance opportunities.

The Skoll Foundation is accepting applications for the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. The Foundation seeks social entrepreneurs whose work has the potential for large-scale positive change in the areas of tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and economic and social equity. Within these issues, we are particularly interested in applications from social entrepreneurs working in five critical subissue areas that threaten the survival of humanity—climate change, nuclear proliferation, global pandemics, conflict in the Middle East and water scarcity.

The links between the realisation of human rights and the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity are receiving increasing attention worldwide. Experience has demonstrated that exclusionary approaches to conservation can undermine those same rights of affected communities and can undermine conservation objectives. The ‘rights-based approaches’ (RBAs) to conservation presented in this document offer a number of positive ways forward, but they also raise a range of new challenges and questions.

Aid workers are finding it increasingly difficult to gain access and provide assistance to residents of the Somali capital because of the worsening conflict there, the United Nations refugee agency has reported. This week’s scheduled distribution of 4,000 aid kits in Mogadishu and surrounding areas had to be postponed because of security concerns, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told journalists in Geneva.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the country’s largest refiner, and CNOOC Ltd. agreed to buy a 20 percent stake in Angola’s offshore deepwater Block 32 for $1.3 billion from Marathon Oil Corp. Marathon, the fourth-largest U.S. oil company, will keep a 10 percent interest in the block, site of 12 announced petroleum discoveries, after the sale, which is expected to close by year- end, the companies said today in separate statements.

Any other group of activists might be in a mood to celebrate. The HIV-AIDS lobby has been among the most successful in the world, winning an impressive $10-billion in new annual funds and tripling the level of global support for AIDS programs since 2003. But instead, the AIDS advocacy groups are in a state of anxiety. Their future is looking increasingly difficult, despite all their recent gains.

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) was formed in 1997 to collaborate with civil society organizations in developing and transition countries to analyze, monitor, and influence government budget processes, institutions, and outcomes. The aim of the Partnership is to make budget systems more responsive to the needs of poor and low-income people in society and, accordingly, to make these systems more transparent and accountable to the public.

Only 20 percent of the world’s governments are providing adequate information for their citizens to begin to hold them accountable for managing the public’s money. This finding comes from the Open Budget Survey 2008, an extensive new survey of government budget transparency in 85 countries issued on February 1, 2009, by the International Budget Partnership (IBP). The Survey also found that nearly 50 percent of the 85 countries evaluated provide such minimal information that they are able to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending.

China has seen its fair share of anti-foreigner protests, from the Boxer Rebellion to the May Fourth movement, and, in more recent decades, more generically termed demonstrations against Americans, Africans, Japanese and the French. Yet for all the expat grumbling about living in China, public protests by foreign residents are virtually unknown, perhaps tempered by the awareness that we are here by choice, live in relative comfort, and would likely achieve little more than a swift deportation.