The Southern Africa Development Community Council of Non‐Governmental organisations (SADC‐CNGO) in collaboration with the Fellowship for Christian Councils in Southern Africa (FOCCISA) and The Southern Africa Trade Unions Coordination Council (SATUCC) will hold the 6th SADC Civil society Forum along the sidelines of the SADC Heads of State Summit in Windhoek, Namibia from 13 - 15 August, 2010. The purpose of the Civil Society Forum is to; reflect on civil society’s positions and attitudes around selected themes, agree upon a way forward and emerge with priority areas for action and come up with recommendations to input into SADC Summit. 

The Economic Justice Network will attend the 2010 Annual Review and Strategy Meeting of the Africa Trade Network (ATN) planned for the 23-26 July, 2010 in Yaoundé, Cameroun.  The meeting is organised by the Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) and Association Citoyenne de Défense des Intérêts Collectifs (ACDIC). This year’s meeting will take place against the background of continuing and mounting challenges as well as critical developments in global policy processes and regimes which threaten the developmental prospects of African countries and their people.  In the trade negotiations between the European Union (EU) and African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, the European Union has been applying, since the beginning of the year, renewed pressure for African countries to change their positions on the Economic Partnership Agreements.

By Mandla Mbongeni Hadebe

The World Bank Group on April 9, 2010 approved a US$3.75billion loan for the construction of South Africa’s 4800MW coal-fired power station, Medupi, which will have an estimated emission of 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per annum. The Medupi project consists of six 800MW units due to be commissioned progressively between 2012 and 2016. The station is already under construction and orders for most of the major components have already been placed. The World Bank’s contributions of US$3b is essential to complete the US$15.4 b project to this timetable, increasing Eskom’s total generating capacity by about 12%. This additional capacity is urgently needed to meet recent power shortfall and expected power demand in South Africa and throughout the Southern Africa region.

By Simon Vilakazi

Food insecurity has been deepened by; high food prices, climate change and the recent economic crisis. It is continuing to affect the world’s poor people in developing countries despite many attempts to address it. The United Nation’s Chief Executives Board established a High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF) under the leadership of the UN’s Secretary General. The HLTF brought together the Heads of the UN specialized agencies, funds and programmes, and relevant parts of the UN Secretariat, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Trade Organization[1]. This task team was mandated “to promote a comprehensive and unified response to the challenge of achieving global food security, including by facilitating the creation of a prioritized plan of action and coordinating its implementation[2]”.  It was established to speed-up global interventions to address the food insecurity challenge.