Global governance of finance and African relations with the world

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Borders, informal cross-border economies and regional integration in Africa : an introduction

As multi-faceted institutions, borders have a bearing on continental integration in Africa. This is because they have an influence on who and what moves from one country to another. In this sense, any discussion of continental integration in Africa brings borders to the centre stage, because, while integration assumes the free flow of the factors of production, including people, borders sift and select who or what has the freedom of passage or not. This selectivity of African borders is antithetical to the goals and aspirations of the 1991 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (hereafter, the Abuja Treaty). The same is true for Agenda 2063, the African Union’s (AU) strategic framework designed to socio-economically transform Africa over the next half century. Automatic beneficiaries of the selective impact of borders are the so-called state actors and formal institutions and enterprises, which assume legal personhood; while their counterparts, the informal actors including informal cross-border traders, must always negotiate the border. T his brings to the fore the nature, logic and operationalisation of regional and continental integration in Africa. In this context, we are led to ask whether the informal actors and people at the grassroots, such as cross-border traders, are an objective reality at African borders, as well as to reflect on their role and actual or potential efficacy in the continental integration project. First, however, there is a need to define and clarify the concepts that drive the papers in this special issue of Africa Insight. These concepts are borders, the informal economy and informal activities, and regional integration. Borders are not just lines at the margins of nation-states, but also social and political institutions. This means that, beyond playing the ordinary role of managing migration and immigration, borders perform social and political functions that may not always be located at the physical border. The articles in this special issue tease out various and nuanced understandings of the term ‘border’ in relation to Africa and the journey towards regional integration. Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba, for instance, perceives the border as an arbitrary and artificial site of economic flows, which is essentially political, social, spatial and economic in construction. Flows are indeed evident at the border, as it marks the limits of national territory and controls the movement of people and flow of goods. For Inocent Moyo, the border is multifaceted, consisting of many and dynamic practices. Christopher Nshimbi picks up on this dynamic feature of the border, and adds to it the interrelations of inclusion and exclusion or inside/outside relations. This brings the conception full circle – from the border being a site of economic or human flow, to its marking of the limits of national territory. By logical extension, we then come back to borders not only being a site of flow, representing openness, but also a site of control of flow or movement, representing closure.http://www.ajol.info/index.php/aiam2019Political Science

A Formal Structure of Separation of Duty and Trust in Modelling Delegation Policy

There are considerable number of approaches to policy specification both for security management and policy driven network management purposes as reported in [20]. This specification sort security policies into two basic types: authorization and obligation policies. Most of the researches in security policies specification over the years focus on authorization policy modelling. In this paper, we report our approach in the design and Modelling of obligation Policy as delegation in information security by considering separation of duty and trust as pre-requisite conditions for delegation. The formal structures of the Delegation models developed was adapted from the Mathematical structures of Separation of duty (both Static and Dynamic SoD) in RBAC environment as described in [8] and [16]. Three factors of Properties, Experiences and Recommendation as described in [22] were used for the Trust Modelling. Future works proposed include the development of a formal model for revocation after delegation and integration of appropriate authorization policy with the model.Facultad de Informátic

Poverty and Inequality in Middle Income Countries: Policy Achievements, Political Obstacles

This collection offers a timely reassessment of viable ways of addressing poverty across the globe today. The profile of global poverty has changed dramatically over the past decade, and around three-quarters of the poor now live in middle income countries, making inequality a major issue. This requires us to fundamentally rethink anti-poverty strategies and policies, as many aspects of the established framework for poverty reduction are no longer effective. Featuring contributions from Latin America, Africa and Asia, this much-needed collection answers some of the key questions arising as development policy confronts the challenges of poverty and inequality on the global, national and local scale in both urban and rural contexts. Providing poverty researchers and practitioners with valuable new tools to address new forms of poverty in the right way, Poverty and Inequality in Middle Income Countries shows how a radical switch from aid to redistribution-based social policies is needed to combat new forms of global poverty.Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) at the University of BergenpublishedVersio

Politics of Financialisation and Inequality: Transforming Global Relations for Inclusive Development

Inequality remains one of the most fundamental challenges of the contemporary world. It has become a global phenomenon which affects the underclass, the deprived and the poor both in the global north and south. Despite the advancement in technology which has fueled economic growth and fostered cross-national mobility of factors of production, inequality and its twin, poverty, remain major issues of inquiry among scholars, consideration for policy makers and concern for the poor. Most studies on inequality have been preoccupied with the economic forces. This article locates the growing degrees of inequality in the world within the global politics of financialisation in which the transnational capitalist class (TCC) adopts a reactionary ideology of neoliberalism to further their interest through the creation of massive fictitious wealth, maintenance of stranglehold on domestic and international policy institutions and spreading of the illogic of the sanctity of the market. I argue that capitalism in its current form is unsustainable for the human society. Consequently, the structure of power that informs and maintains the current order must be transformed to foster inclusive development. Despite the resistance to such transformations by the members of the TCC at the core, the process is inevitable due to the internal contradictions within the system itself, the emergence of new loci of power from different regions of the world and increased revolutionary pressures from below. Overall, the article concludes that there is an inextricable link between financialisation and global inequality

Assessing species richness patterns and conservation threats (due to overharvesting and climate change) in South African Cycads, with emphasis on a population of Encephalartos tranvenosus Stapf and Burt Davy from the Soutpansberg Mountain, Limpopo Province

PhD (Botany)Department of BotanyCycads are regarded as the oldest living seed plants on earth and they have existed for about 300 million years. Ever since the awareness of the existence of this plant group, they have been facing high extinction risk. Currently they are referred to as the most threatened plant group in the world. Many ecological and anthropological forces are promoting extinction crisis of this taxonomic group. Africa is one of the centres of diversity of this plant group with 70% of the total number of the taxa in this group in Africa found in South Africa. Also South Africa is one of the global hotspots for cycads and it contains the third largest number of cycads after Australia and Mexico. Studies have revealed that there have been high threats and extinction risks among the cycad taxa in South Africa. The Soutpansberg Mountain is a major biodiversity hotspot in Limpopo Province in South Africa with high level of flora and fauna taxa. About 3000 vascular plants species are represented on this mountain. Biodiversity on this mountain has been under threat in recent times and there is need to investigate how cycads are facing risk on this mountain. The main focus of this study is to look at the extinction pattern in South African cycads and cycads endemic to Soupandberg Mountain in Limpopo Province in South Africa. v The first objective evaluated all African cycads over a decade using IUCN red list. Data from IUCN 2014 version was used to calculate the percentages of African cycads in each IUCN categories. The results were compared with those presented by Donaldson 2003. They showed that there have been significant decline and increase in extinction of African cycads over this period. It was also discovered that majority of this extinction crisis were trending in South Africa. The second objective used the IUCN red list to evaluate extinction pattern in South African cycads. The percentages of IUCN threat categories of South African cycads was calculated using IUCN red list. ArcGIS was used to construct distribution map for threatened and extinct South African cycads. The study revealed that the proportion of historically Extinct and Critically Endangered cycads is higher in Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga than the rest of the provinces in South Africa. The third objective of this research investigated extinction pattern of Encephalartos transvenosus Stapf & Burtt Davy (Modjadji cycad) on Soutpansberg Mountain. Indigenous knowledge and population ecology approaches were used to determine current threats Modjadji cycads are facing on Soutpansberg Mountain. The results showed that anthropogenic activities have caused a substantial decline of one important unprotected population of this species on Soutpansberg Mountain.NR

Regional Integration and Development in Africa: Rethinking Borders and Informality

Regional integration has been identified as one of the ways in which African countries can achieve economic development. It becomes necessary due to the nature and character of the state in Africa, where many countries are landlocked, deficient in size and limited in their capacity to drive structural transformation. While several factors have worked against the success of regional integration on the continent, a pertinent issue is the extent to which adherence to borders between and among African states continues to limit the free flow of production on the continent. Whereas many of these borders were artificially and arbitrarily drawn up by the victorious colonialistspost-World War I, post-independent African leaders have maintained them as sacrosanct lines. Notwithstanding the official restrictions, informal cross-border trade has continued in various forms, to the extent that today economic activities across the borders constitute significant sources of employment and livelihood for many Africans. Using both theoretical and empirical lenses, this paper argues that informal cross-border trade can foster regional integration in ways that are not captured by the dominant theories of integration. It concludes that, given the limited success of state-directed formal integration approaches, a non-conventional approach to integration (which involves non-state actors such as the private sector, informal cross-border traders and civil society organisations), should be explored for higher levels of integration in Africa

Beyond the fetishism of Gross Domestic Product: (Mis)governance and the challenges of poverty reduction in Nigeria

Over the last 10 years, Nigeria experienced an average of seven per cent per annum rate of economic growth measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). The country has been identified as one of the fastest growing countries in the world by various international development agencies. The recent rebasing of the economy actually turned Nigeria into the largest economy in Africa with a GDP of over US$500 billion. Despite this comparatively high rate of growth, poverty and inequality remain very high, as the growth has not translated into job creation. While the national rate of unemployment is about 27.4 per cent, youth unemployment is well over 60 per cent. At the root of this disconnect between growth and development are governance challenges in the form of corruption, state capture by corrupt elites and misdirected policies. This article examines the link between governance and the failure of economic growth to translate into inclusive development in Nigeria. It argues that the structure of governance hinders the translation of economic growth to achieving tangible results for poverty reduction in the country. The structure of governance can be broadly defined as over-centralisation of authority under a supposedly federal arrangement; prebendalism, centred on a petro-dollar economy; and patrimonialism, as evidenced by the politics of sharing national resources among the ruling elites and their cronies

Africa and the dilemma of transformation: exploring trade for the realisation of the right to development

Despite recent changes, many countries in Africa remain trapped in economic challenges such as the high level of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Scholars have linked the economic problems in Africa to several factors such as the colonial origin of the state, the nature and the character of the state, lack of good governance and the lack of structural transformation in the economies. The structural composition of trade in post-independent Africa has not departed significantly from the colonial structure. Most exports are still dominated by primary products and the direction of trade is mainly towards the West and increasingly Asia. Apart from the domestic challenges that continue to hamper the prospects of exploring the potentials of trade for development, there are global rules that affect the realisation of these potentials. This paper will argue that trade holds a great potential for realising the right to development (RTD). However, to achieve this, there are both domestic and global rules that need to be changed. Using the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific (EU-ACP) Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) as points of inquiry, this paper establishes the overarching influence that trade agreements have in determining the extent to which trade can facilitate the RTD in Africa