Etisalat operates in about 10 African countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ivory Coast.

“Etisalat, like other telecom operators in Africa, is constantly evaluating good business opportunities which includes but (is) not limited to infrastructure sharing with other operators,” the statement said.

“No final decision has been reached at this point in time as (to) selling or sharing towers.”

On Wednesday, two sources told Reuters that Etisalat had invited bidders for its telephone tower operations in Africa.

The firm has about 4,500 towers in Africa, one source said, and wanted to sell them all in a single deal potentially worth around $500 million.

Reuters.

L’Afrique est en première ligne au sommet économique de Davos, en suisse, où des hommes d’affaires et acteurs du développement sont venus en masse. « Ils veulent prendre leur part dans la globalisation et dans la croissance mondiale, et je pense que c’est légitime », estime Gérard Mestrallet, le patron de GDF Suez, rapporte RFI.

L’Afrique semble bien partie pour devenir le continent de l’avenir. La banque mondiale a annoncé une croissance de 6% pour les deux prochaines années, alors que la récession est monnaie courante dans les pays occidentaux. La nouvelle génération de dirigeants africains croit en la renaissance du continent. Une dynamique incarnée par la ministre nigériane de l’économie Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, ancienne directrice de la Banque mondiale. Elle estime qu’ « il y a une nouvelle génération de leaders qui sont très conscients du fait que l’Afrique ne peut pas rester le continent des matières premières. Qu’il faut la transformer ».

Une économie de 1000 milliards de dollars

« Quelle est l’économie de 1 000 milliards de dollars qui a progressé sur les dix dernières années plus rapidement que l’Inde et qui va croître sur la prochaine décennie plus rapidement que le Brésil ? », a demandé Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. « La réponse est bien sûr l’Afrique sub-saharienne », a répondu l’ancien Premier ministre britannique Gordon Brown devant les participants de ce 42ème Forum économique mondial.

Le Premier ministre éthiopien a estimé que la croisance économique africaine a cru plus rapidemment par rapport à ces dernières années. Cela est une bonne raison de croire que « l’Afrique peut et voudra être le prochain relais de la croissance mondiale ». Selon lui, « nous pensons être là où l’Inde était au début des années 1990. Nous avons à peu près la même taille de population », a ajouté le chef du gouvernement éthiopien.

« La démocratie en Afrique en marche »

Le président guinéen Alpha Condé a souligné, quant à lui, que le continent était prêt à avancer, bien qu’il demeure handicapé par la faiblesse de son système éducatif et ses infrastructures délabrées. « Si nous poussons dans l’éducation et maîtrisons les nouvelles technologies, nous atteindrons en deux ou trois ans ce que d’autres ont mis 20 ans à atteindre », a-t-il assuré. Son homologue tanzanien Jakaya Kikwete a indiqué, pour sa part, « que l’Afrique a été victime d’erreurs politiques du monde développé. Nous faisons partie de l’économie mondiale, donc quoi qui se passe dans d’autres parties du monde, cela nous affecte également ». « Nous avons beaucoup d’anxiété avec la crise dans la zone euro. J’espère que ce sera réglé rapidement. Car si ça ne l’est pas, il y aura beaucoup de problèmes », a-t-il ajouté.

Les dirigeants du continent estiment également que des progrès ont été effectués dans le domaine de la démocratie alors que les experts ont longtemps indiqué que les économies africaines étaient minées par des gouvernements inefficaces et la corruption politique. « La démocratie africaine est en marche », a assuré le chef du gouvernement kenyan, Raila Odinga.

L’Afrique est capable de se nourrir seule

Les problèmes alimentaires du continent ont également été abordés. « L’Afrique est capable de se nourrir seule », a affirmé la ministre de l’Economie nigériane. Elle a les capacités de produire suffisamment de nourriture si l’ensemble de la chaîne de production agricole est améliorée pour éviter les gaspillages. « L’enjeu est de transformer l’ensemble de la chaîne de valeur agricole, en améliorant la recherche sur les semences, la production, le marketing, le transport et le stockage », a-t-elle expliqué. Le continent doit transformer « son approche de la chaîne de valeur pour mieux faire face aux perte de récoltes ». Certains spécialistes estiment qu’environ 40% de la production alimentaire est gaspillée au niveau de la production, de la distribution et des consommateurs.

Mais le problème n’est pas l’approvisionnement en nourriture mais l’argent, d’après le nouveau directeur général de l’organisation de l’ONU, José Graziano da Silva. « Les gens n’ont pas l’argent pour acheter des aliments », a-t-il indiqué. Il a également souligné la difficulté d’accéder aux personnes qui souffrent de la faim « parce qu’elles sont invisibles ».

Les Africains sont néanmoins très confiants pour l’avenir, d’après une enquête réalisée auprès des chefs d’entreprises pour le forum. Un optimisme payant pour un continent en constante évolution.

Afrik.com

I know, for most football managers, players, fans and supporters, loyalty to the Club is paramount. What is an English football club without steadfast loyalty? Criticism is fine whispered internally but public derision just isn’t football…or at least it certainly is not the Anfield way.

For a one-time Kemlyn Road regular, proud to be a black face watching John Barnes weave his magic and become adored by the harshest of football critics, The Kop, there are definite pangs of shame.

So proud and fearless was I in fact that I still chuckle at the memory of having to scuttle off early before the end of 90 minutes to avoid the less friendly elements of our own support on a rare rough day.

Back then we were kings of all we surveyed. Aldridge, Barnes, Houghton, Souey and co. were imperious and we knew it. Yet, more than once my ebony skin led to a confrontation, only for a friendly Liverpudlian to chastise my misguided agressor with the kindest of retorts – “Forget it, you idiot, he’s one of us”. That simple retort has carried me for as long as I can remember.

I only have to think of the feeling and I know, I am one of them and am immediately comforted.

It’s why, now that we run our own sports foundation, in the midst of the burning Caribbean Sun, I still remain loyal….gently chastising those local impoverished local youth we work with for carrying the fickle colours of other tribes, most notably Man. U, Chelsea and Arsenal.

You see, sport and football in particular, has such wonderful healing power, such unnerving ability to transcend differences that matters of race, creed and colour….class or circumstance, can easily be forgotten.

In truth, no one in professional, or for that matter semi-professional, association football really cares about anything other than the progress of a 430g air-filled sphere with a circumference of 70cm.

Everyone knows that everything rests on winning and losing. But even in this truth is a contorted reality, that most people of colour know only too well. As much as a healing force, I have heard credible arguments that sport could be the most detrimental of socially acceptable past times. For within its core. in the essential goal – to win or to lose – is a powerful twisting agent.

Imagine being a gifted young footballer, turning up for a trial as a right winger at your boyhood club only to be left on the sidelines never to kick a ball. Being so disillusioned that you almost give up the game, only to be redeemed by a friend’s father – who happened to be a coach at the local Second Division club.

As a replay of earlier trials unfolds, a glint of light appears with calls from the coaches for a left back. Fearful of never getting a chance to show his stuff off, he pretends that he was a natural left back. He shined, even though he’d never played the position in his life. He went on to become the club’s first team left back…even though they didn’t realise he was right footed for more than a year. So skilled that he now holds the club’s all-time appearance record.

A success of determination, undoubted skill and will that brightens the heart.

Yet, within this triumph is a telling truth, this black jewel could have and should have played for Liverpool. Offered terms more than once by the Anfield giant and some of the biggest clubs in the country, he preferred to play in lesser surroundings in large part because he was unsure just how he would have been received by players, officials and supporters of more prestigious clubs.

Those days are long gone……aren’t they. I mean, there’s no reason to think that people of colour are not getting a fair shake from the game now is there?

I mean, in a professional sport where 25% of the players are black, could there really be racial issues when 98 percent of the management is white. I mean, it’s football afterall, the only thing that matters is winning right!

Well, actually, wrong. Just three percent of the UK population is classified as Black. The astounding success of football players is one of the best examples of change there is. A quarter of all players is an amazing accomplishment given a management class that remains stubbornly white.

The banana throwing may have gone from the terraces but football’s hierarchy still remains uncomfortably uneasy with black professional managers. I suppose that’s partly because many prospective candidates are equally uneasy with their place in the game.

In less than four decades, the multi-racial face of the game has changed. Yet, the underlying reality is that people of colour in the English game are often forced to pretend. Forced to be a team player and in so doing….distort there natural instincts, stunt their growth and play for and to the largely white crowd.

Even amid this success of black players there is an equally unflattering statistic, that the six percent of Asian population is almost without any representation in the professional UK football ranks. How is it possible for our Asian brothers to be so unskilled at football? Or could racism be at play here, in some small way?

YES. It hurts doesn’t it. When the game we love, is so clearly flawed. Perhaps, what hurts more is the truth that change is not actually on the horizon. That things, aren’t really getting better. That Luis Suarez and…dare I say it….England captain John Terry…..can utter vicious taunts…..is, well, part of sport.

And, we of all know it is. If you can put a great player off his game…just a little, what’s the harm?.

The fact that the repeated slurs and forced changes in position and style of play and lack of opportunities, serves to twist the ideal of sportsmanship and pure beauty of the game we love is all fair in winning and losing. Isn’t it?

But what does it do to the character of the people of colour we have in sport today. My biggest concern and the driving force behind Sport in Black and White, a forum for change, is that the personality of many of our most alluring images is warped.

I believe racism in football has shattered the endearing character of many of our wealthiest and most notable figures. I am sorry to say, as someone that has mixed with black managers and players all my life, that character is sadly lacking in the majority.

The years of contorted striving to survive in a profession governed through a blindingly white prism has twisted egos and inflated personalities on both sides of the lens, as our bright and beautiful young men and women hide their lack of exposure and flaws.

The flashy bravado and bold unwittingly dense public pronouncements of black football professionals has left a huge void. Few have been able to cope with the demands of a sport that changes them beyond recognition. Fewer still have successfully been able to negotiate the minefield that is upper echelon football politricks.

I don’t want to blame racism in the game for everything but I do want to blame it for a lot. Most importantly, churning out, characterless individuals unable to organise themselves into a powerful lobby for change.

In what other industry would you find 25 percent of the workforce, crying behind the scenes about being abused and doing little or nothing to change that reality. You see, the de-characterisation of our black and Asian football family has led to a lack of credible representation on decision making bodies.

Just look over the pond at the US and see what has happened in sports such as basketball and football. The power of black athletes is supreme for one reason and one reason only. Education. While I abhor the enforced system of semi-professional skulduggery often called college sports, I believe it has had a powerful positive effect on producing intelligent well rounded characters. Characters able to decide their own fate.

If you watched as I did, when Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh manipulated proceedings a season or so ago, to take effective control of their own destinies, it was a telling moment. There stood businessmen, not athletes but players deciding amongst themselves what was in their own best interests.

How I wish for even small evidence of this in Europe or the UK. Players of colour, organised in their own interests.

You see, while we talk sport, we often forget that at the professional level it is a business and our black UK youngsters are ill-equipped to cope with the demands. Not just because of societal failings but because the sport we love has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Race is a weapon to be used and abused, if subtlety, against us from a very early age. It is good to see systems and programmes being put in place to tackle such issues…..yet at the professional level…it is clear…that little has changed in the management of the game to suggest real, effective empowering change is on the horizon.

Either, you become battle hardened and empowered by it or twisted and contorted like most of our sporting youth.

Let us not forget. That the world of sport mirrors society at large.

And there’s lots of research to show that people still feel threatened by me because I am black. Those good old stereo types I hoped I’d shed, continue to persist.

It hurts when I see that people of a different race see me as a potential danger to their safety and often choose to keep their distance even though I’m not a threat.

In one Michigan study I read it was found that 45 percent of US whites think blacks are lazy. That some 29 percent think blacks are unintelligent. The survey said that less than one in five think Blacks are hard working and 56 percent of whites felt blacks would rather live on welfare than work.

While the location and environment of the study could contribute to the results, so could the harsh reality in the US that the unemployment rate of African Americans is 15.5 percent, whereas the unemployment rate for whites is 7.6 percent This “reality” also perhaps contributes to the feeling of apparent racial superiority.

Change in society and sport is hard. It requires fortitude, focus and an iron will. Just ask the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who has waited some 19 years for a modicum of justice for the brutal killing of their son.

I am proud to say as chairman of the Sacred Sports Foundation, the organisation founded by my late brother Keith Alexander, that he had the character to enact change. His struggles as a player to both be successful and retain his own identity, helped build a fiercely intelligent character, with great wit and tremendous humility and determination. His success as one of the first Black UK professional managers in the English game is a testament to his spirit and ability to rise above even the most shocking cultural and racial discrimination.

Keith understood the impact of racism only too well from his own personal experiences and was actively working to ensure that the power of sport was utilised positively.

That is why we hope to be an active catalyst for change. Sport in Black and White will focus on actively looking for and implementing game changing solutions. We will be writing regularly on issues of importance to help spark the debate and to be a catalyst for change.

At a micro level the Foundation will continue to aim to positively change the lives of those we work with, providing opportunities for people of colour from all around the world. At a Macro level, we hope to influence and force our sporting family to actively debate and change those practices that have served to disempower large numbers of participants in the most socially life affirming activity there is. Sport!

ENDS

Delroy Alexander

Chairman, Sacred Sports Foundation

www.sacredsportsinc.com

chairman@sacredsportsinc.com

Delroy Alexander is the Chairman of the Sacred Sports Foundation, a not for profit charity based in the Saint Lucia. He is a seasoned sports administrator and is a former Chicago Tribune senior investigative business reporter and a Pulitzer Prize nominee journalist.

Founded by my brother and former Lincoln City and Macclesfield Town manager Keith Alexander, the Sacred Sports Foundation uses sport to work with disadvantaged Caribbean youth. As well as having partnered with the St. Lucia Football Association, the Foundation recently has secured important grants from the EU, UNESCO and the Australian Government among others.

In 2013, the Foundation expects to host a major conference, Sport in Black and White, focusing on actively looking for and implementing game changing solutions. We will be writing regularly on issues of importance to help spark the debate and to be a catalyst for chang

“Ces pays vont souffrir des revers si on ne prend pas en charge la crise de l’euro”, a déclaré Mme Lagarde, parlant des pays d’Afrique en général, et plus particulièrement de l’Afrique du Sud et du Nigeria, qu’elle avait visité juste avant les fête de Noël.

Jeune Afrique.

Lagarde was speaking during a trip to Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries and Africa’s newest crude oil producer, during which she met President Mahamadou Issoufou and praised his development plans.

Lagarde’s December 18-22 trip to Africa, which also included a visit to OPEC-member Nigeria, comes as concerns grow over the impact on developing countries of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis through a possible drop in global trade, workers’ remittances and investment.

She said many African countries were able to weather the 2008 and 2009 economic shocks well, maintaining health, education and infrastructure spending and recovering quickly to growth rates enjoyed int he mid-2000s.

“In short, they built up macroeconomic buffers and put their economies on a fundamentally stronger footing. This enabled most countries to maintain critical social and infrastructure spending when the crisis hit,” she said in a speech to Niger’s National Assembly.

“But, for many countries in the region, my main worry is that their capacity to absorb further shocks is less than it was three years ago,” she added. “This would be even greater cause for concern if the global slowdown turns out to be more pronounced this time around.”

She said a sustained growth slowdown in advanced countries could cut into demand for Africa’s exports.

“It may also inhibit private financing flows, remittances, and possibly aid. This is not a welcome thought for Niger. Aid flows are important and remittances have already been disrupted by the upheaval in Libya,” she said.

She said Niger, a top uranium supplier to former colonial master France and which began pumping oil earlier this year, could use its resource revenues to “promote more broad-based and inclusive growth” but needed to avoid pitfalls suffered by many other countries.

“There is the hard truth that relatively few countries have managed natural resource wealth well. Although, Niger has an advantage. You can benefit from the experiences of others,” said Lagarde, a former French finance minister.

She said Niger needed to ensure transparency, invest its revenues wisely, and diversify its economy to avoid the shocks associated with volatile commodities markets.

An IMF country mission in November forecast GDP growth could reach 14 percent in 2012, thanks in part to oil revenues.

Reuters.

Analysts expect at least a political agreement to be reached when the two weeks of talks wind up, with countries promising to start deliberations on a new regime of binding cuts in the gases blamed for global warming and environmental devastation.

Anything less would qualify the United Nations negotiations in the South African city of Durban as a disaster, they say.

The European Union plan envisages a new deal reached by 2015, and put into effect by 2020, imposing binding cuts on the world’s biggest emitters of the heat-trapping gases.

In Durban the two issues for the negotiators from nearly 200 countries are finding a way of updating the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts, and raising funding needed to help poor countries tackle climate change.

Key to any greenhouse gas deal will be China, the United States, India and Brazil – the world’s largest emitters which are not bound by the cuts regime in the Kyoto Protocol.

“We are seeing convergence and that’s what we need to achieve the outcome that we want to have,” Brazil’s chief negotiator, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, told a news briefing on Thursday.

Three U.N. reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction.

South African President Jacob Zuma has said Durban will be a failure if a Green Climate Fund, designed to help poor nations tackle global warming and nudge them towards a new global effort to fight climate change, is not put into force.

A group of 48 of the least developed countries has said it backs the European plan for a firm timetable, joining African nations and 43 small island states. Japan has said it shares “common ground” with Europe while Canada and several other developed countries have shown their support.

The EU, Japan and others have said that any deal that does not include all major players would not nearly be enough to head off a global problem.

The United States has said it will make its emissions cuts binding under an international agreement only if China and other developing countries that are big polluters back their commitments with equal legal force.

If the discussions hold to form, envoys will extend discussions and release their decisions on Saturday.

“These negotiations are running around in circles. If we don’t act now, some of us will die,” said Karl Hood, Grenada’s minister of foreign affairs and chairman of the 43-member Alliance of Small Island States.

Reuters.

Tout d’abord, le protocole de Kyoto est le seul texte contraignant les pays industrialisés à limiter leurs émissions de gaz à effet de serre jusqu’en 2012 et après ? Pour l’instant Il n’y a que l’Europe, soit 11% des émissions mondiales, qui accepterait de signer pour une deuxième période. Mais elle ne le fera pas seule. Or la Chine, les Etats-Unis, l’Inde, la Russie et le Japon qui représentent à eux cinq la moitié des émissions ne veulent pas en entendre parler.

Autres sujets très attendus des pays en voie de développement : le financement du fonds vert. Cent milliards de dollars par an à partir de 2020 pour aider les pays les plus vulnérables à s’adapter aux conséquences des changements climatiques. Mais pour l’instant les caisses sont vides. Tout comme pour le mécanisme REDD+ (Ressources pour le développement durable) adopté à Cancun pour rémunérer la déforestation évitée.

En période de crise, il va falloir valider des financements innovants comme la taxe sur les transactions financières. A plus long terme Durban pourrait poser les bases d’un accord global contraignant pour tous. La Chine n’y est pas opposée mais à partir de 2020.

En attendant comme l’a évoqué le président Jacob Zuma lors de son discours d’ouverture : « pour l’Afrique c’est une question de vie ou de mort ».

“The European economic slowdown is a problem for Africa,” WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told a news conference on the margins of an African Union conference for trade ministers in the Ghanaian capital.

Lamy said there could be a significant decline in the growth of African economies if the euro zone crisis continued to worsen.

“Africa is still dependent on trade with Europe, which is its first trade partner,” Lamy said. “The order of magnitude in what you find in economic research is that -1 percent for Europe’s growth equals -0.5 percent for Africa’s growth.”

Trade between the 27-nation European Union, the world’s largest trading zone, and its former colonies stood at 278 billion euros in 2008, according to the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat. The euro zone comprises 17 EU member states.

African countries export commodities and other raw materials including timber, tobacco, cocoa, cut flowers and oil to Europe, as well as textiles, while importing finished products including machinery, chemicals and vehicles.

Lamy said African countries needed to focus on intraregional trade to mitigate the impacts of the crisis.

“I have no doubt that it will impact Africa’s growth in years to come, which is one of the reasons why Africa has to try and become more dependent on other sources of trade than the EU market,” Lamy said.

Reuters.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria called off its next funding round after failing to secure the minimum $13 billion needed to fund its programmes. The fund said earlier this month it was cutting new grants for countries battling the diseases.

The public-private fund is the single largest donor body for HIV funding and provides more than 70 percent of funds for life-saving antiretroviral drugs in developing nations.

Southern African countries that rely heavily on Global Fund aid, including Swaziland, Malawi and Zimbabwe and Mozambique, are expected to see increasing fatalities and infections as a result of funding shortfalls. Stockpiles of life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) medication are also expected to drop.

“It is a disaster for Zimbabwe as a country,” said Faizel Tezera, international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres head in Zimbabwe.

“More than 86,000 people will be left without treatment and about 5,000 children will be affected,” Tezera told reporters.

Worldwide an estimated 33 million people are living and infected with HIV, with close to two-thirds of that total found in the sub-Sahara Africa.

AIDS activists said the situation in land-locked Swaziland, where approximately 26 percent of the population of 1.2 million live with HIV, was dire with dwindling stockpiles of ARVs.

Representatives from MSF and South African lobby group Treatment Action Campaign warned of an impending disaster.

“The quality of treatment will be heavily compromised,” said Safari Mbewe, spokesman for the Malawi Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.

Malawi, where about 10 percent or 960,000 of the country’s population live with the disease that attacks the human immune system, had pinned their hopes on new grants to cope with an estimated 70,000 new infections next year.

“It is catastrophic for our nations, especially women and children,” TAC spokeswoman Nokhwezi Haboyi said.

Some South African state facilities are already running short of ARV medication, even though 80 percent of money to fight HIV/AIDS comes from the government.

Patients who used donor funded hospices have recently been referred to public health facilities as many shut down due to loss of funding.

Reuters.

Une nouvelle variante de la maladie de la striure brune du manioc (CBSD) afflige de vastes zones d’Afrique de l’Est, expliquent dans un communiqué les experts du Fonds des nations unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO).

L’Organisation réclame de nouveaux fonds, notamment pour la recherche, la formation, la surveillance.

“L’apparition de la maladie dans des zones précédemment indemnes et le manque de continuité des fonds pour financer les travaux de recherche et de développement sur la CBSD dans la région sont venus s’ajouter à la menace déjà présente de la maladie de la mosaïque (CMD)”, estiment les experts de la FAO.

Au Rwanda par exemple, les spécialistes ont détecté en 2010 un taux d’infection de 15,7% des variétés locales et de 36,9% des variétés améliorées.

Le manioc peut assurer jusqu’à un tiers des apports caloriques totaux des habitants de pays comme le Burundi, l’Ouganda, le Rwanda ou la République démocratique du Congo (RDC).

“La maladie se manifeste de différentes façons en fonction des conditions locales. Dans certains cas, les symptômes se limitent aux racines et ce n’est que lors de la récolte qu’on s’aperçoit qu’une plante apparemment saine est attaquée, avec les conséquences qui s’ensuivent pour la sécurité alimentaire”, explique Jan Helsen, responsable de l’Initiative régionale du manioc de la FAO financée par l’Union européenne en Afrique orientale et centrale.

A court terme, explique l’agence onusienne, il faut “renforcer la surveillance”, “sensibiliser les communautés”, “former les agriculteurs à empêcher l’apparition ou la propagation de la maladie en éliminant les plants infectés”.

Parmi les mesures recommandées figurent aussi l’interdiction de la distribution de plants infectés entre districts et la récolte précoce du manioc, avant l’apparition de symptômes et de dégâts importants.

Depuis 2006, la FAO et le Secours catholique (CRS) ont lancé deux projets régionaux sur le manioc, respectivement financés par l’Union européenne et la Fondation Bill et Melinda Gates, afin d’aider les agriculteurs vulnérables. Les projets ont permis d’accéder à des plants sans virus.

Les chercheurs sont en train de développer huit variétés résistantes à la maladie et montrant un certain degré de tolérance à la CBSD. “Ces variétés pourraient être disponibles au cours des 18-24 mois prochains, à condition que l’on trouve des ressources” nécessaires, ajoute M. Helsen.

Jeune afrique