Tag: development

The EU should better manage European development aid to reduce administrative costs, improve efficiency and deliver economies of scale, writes Stephen Tindale.

Tackling post-harvest loss in developing countries is not rocket science, writes Ertharin Cousin. Through efforts such as the Purchase for Progress (P4P) pilot project – partially funded by the European Union – the World Food Programme is trying to help smallholder farmers while cutting food loss and waste.

People are losing trust in their leaders. What the bottom half of humanity sees is a new apartheid that divides a global rich and predatory minority from the overwhelming majority’s growing poverty, joblessness and social inequality, writes Jay Naidoo.

The organisation that finances the prevention and treatment of the AIDS virus and other global killers is urging top donors to provide an additional $15 billion (€11.5 billion) to fight infectious diseases over the next three years or risk reversing a decade of advances in care.

Amazonian forest cleared in Ecuador, a mountain levelled in Peru, the Cerrado savannah converted to soy fields in Brazil and oil fields under development in Venezuela's Orinoco belt.

The EU should support rural public education programmes in Africa, with a special focus on women, to facilitate adoption of sustainable farming practices, says Hailemariam Teklewold, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

A UN rights official is urging the European Parliament to require that the EU monitor how Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies and other support for growers affect farmers in developing nations.

Threatened reductions in foreign aid from the European Union and its struggling governments could undermine efforts to combat malaria, a readily preventable disease that nonetheless takes a heavy health toll in poor nations, international health experts say.

Biofuels account for the largest source of new demand for agricultural production and have helped drive price volatility in grain crops like wheat and maize, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization says in a new report.

Wealthy countries' contributions to development banks are critical to emerging from the world economic crisis, with each euro given enabling significant additional private sector investment and growth, says Imoni Akpofure.

Instead of suicide bombers, it is possible to groom "nurses, teachers, beautiful housewives and good husbands" at Tora Bora, one of the "scariest" areas of Afghanistan and where Osama Bin Laden was long thought to be hiding, Mina Wali, founder of a private school in the disadvantaged area, told EurActiv in an interview.

The relationship between North Africa and Europe has always been a special one, and the EU has developed schemes to help the economic development of the region. Without liberalising agricultural imports, this development is unlikely to succeed though, writes Sinan Ülgen of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), an Istanbul-based think-tank.

The humanitarian disaster in Haiti and Pakistan is similar in magnitude, International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva told the Brussels press on 27 August, just after her return from devastated Pakistan.

Liberalising global agricultural trade without any regulation would threaten global food security as private investment funds would buy huge amounts of land in developing countries and produce for profit rather than to feed the poor, Jacques Carles, founder of Momagri, a French think-tank on agriculture, warned EurActiv in an interview.

"Local food is delicious," but the problems with the food system and its environmental impact - and the solutions to address them - are global, writes Sarah DeWeerdt in an April paper for the Worldwatch Institute.

Amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, resurgent violence and war in the Middle East, a row between Russia and the Ukraine over gas supplies which left Europe freezing, and skyrocketing expectations for the first Afro-American US President, EurActiv asked European Commission director generals to spell out their hopes for 2009.

A group of MEPs will head to ongoing UN negotiations in the Polish city of Poznań next week, urging world leaders to put development at the heart of a post-Kyoto climate deal in an attempt to combat rising mistrust between developed and developing countries over the issue.

With the Millennium Development Goals timetable now at the halfway stage, the Commission is ringing the alarm bells as latest figures show development aid is dropping in most member states, contradicting their pledge to step up their efforts.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have announced an initiative to fund the education of 16 million children in Africa by the beginning of the South African World Cup in 2010 "to leverage the tremendous impact of that event in Africa and around the world".

Consultancy firms are more concerned with billing hours to their clients than developing expertise within their own teams, according to research by the BI Norwegian School of Management.

Sport has become a global language and is internationally recognised as a way of reducing poverty and boosting development. The Commission has joined forces with FIFA to promote football as a factor for development in the ACP countries and the White Paper on Sport announces a more general use of sport as a tool in the EU development policy.

The Council has approved Commission proposals aimed at reinforcing welfare protection, equal opportunities and social dialogue at home and abroad.

Too much development aid is swallowed up by high consultancy fees, excessive administration costs, and poorly targeted actions that favour the interests of donors rather than the recipients, says a report from ActionAid.