COOPERATION ANDTRADE

AFRICA – CHINAThree-Nation Tour

The continent is a ‘golden groundfor foreign investors’.

China will, as always, attach impor-tance to Africa’s concerns and interests,visiting Chinese Foreign Minister YangJiechi said in Windhoek, Namibia onJanuary 5th, where he had arrived onthe 4th for a three-day visit, the thirdleg of his three-nation African tour,which also took him to Cote d’ Ivoireand Niger, Xinhua (6 ⁄ 1) reported.Yang hailed Africa as a ‘‘goldenground’’ for foreign investment, andvowed to work with Chinese firms toensure they comply with local labourlaws.

‘‘Africa is a fertile place for foreigninvestors and it is a golden ground forAfrica to attract foreign investors,especially for infrastructure which isthe blood and muscle of a country,’’Yang said. The arrival of Chinesecompanies and workers has sometimesstirred conflict with locals, with Nami-bians complaining that some Chinesefirms fail to respect the minimum wageand other labour laws, reports AFP(5 ⁄ 1).After his talks with Namibian counter-part Utoni Nujoma, the two ministerssigned a technical cooperation agree-ment that included a $3.2m loan forprojects that Namibia can decide uponlater.

In December China and Namibiasigned a deal on animal health, whichwill allow Namibia to export fish andbeef to China later in 2012, and Chi-nese firms have also sought greaterstakes in uranium mining. China has inrecent years expanded its aid to Nami-bia, building roads, schools and hospi-tals in remote areas, although the costsare not made public. According to lat-est figures from the Business Journal ofthe Namibia Chamber of Commerceand Industry, 27 Chinese state compa-nies are active in Namibia in construc-tion, mining, engineering, informationtechnology and financial services.According to a World Bank reportpublished in December, about 35,000Chinese nationals live in Namibia.

‘‘Given the major changes in the inter-national situation and internationalrelations, to further enhance unity andcooperation between China and Africais of strategic importance. It will notonly serve the common interest of

China and Africa, but also contributeto the development of developing coun-tries as a whole and make internationalrelations more democratic’’, Xinhuaquoted Yang as saying. The profoundand complex changes in the interna-tional landscape will also bring chal-lenges to China-Africa relations, henoted, but he said that China standsready to work with African countriesto remove interference from the outsideand address the various problems con-straining the development of bilateralrelations.

Meanwhile, on January 11th, Nami-bia’s competition commission said ithad cleared the way for Taurus Min-eral, a subsidiary of state-owned ChinaGuangdong Nuclear Power HoldingCompany (CGNPC), to buy a control-ling share in Australia-based ExtractResources, which holds exploration li-cences for the massive Husab uraniumdeposit in west-central Namibia.

The central bank governor of Sudan,Mohamed Khair meanwhile has askedChina to use the yuan currency andSudanese pounds rather than US dol-lars in their commercial exchanges.Beijing has been hoping for wideruse of the yuan in its internationaltrade but the dollar remains thedominant currency in global transac-tions.

Energy-hungry China is the largest for-eign investor in Sudan’s oil sector, withtwo-way trade between the countries val-ued at $10bn in 2010, according to awebsite of the Chinese embassy. (sourcesas referenced in text) Records to be set p. 19331

SOUTH SUDAN –SUDANFierce Oil Dispute

The Juba government warns of the‘huge’ economic impact if Khartoumblocks exports.

South Sudan’s Oil Minister said onJanuary 10th that Sudan was siphoningoff his country’s oil, threatening toinstigate legal proceedings against anycountry or company involved in buyingthe allegedly stolen crude.

Since landlocked South Sudan secededin July 2011 – taking with it 75% ofSudan’s oil production of 470,000 bar-rels per day – the two countries havefailed to negotiate a fee for the Southto export its oil using Sudan’s infra-structure. Crucial facilities including thepipeline and Red Sea export terminalremain in Sudan, leaving the two statesarguing over how much the Southshould pay to use the infrastructure,reports AFP.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir saidon the 4th that South Sudan was nego-tiating in bad faith with Khartoumover oil fees and was threatening to‘‘block’’ a pipeline transporting thecrude. Previous rounds of talks endedwith the parties still wide apart.In November Sudanese officialsannounced the country would take23% of the South’s vital oil exports aspayment in kind, and Bashir on the 4thsaid that was being done on a monthlybasis.

Juba’s Oil Minister, Stephen DhieuDau, said in December that any sale ofsouthern oil confiscated by Sudanwould be ‘‘an illegal act.’’

Oil revenues make up almost all of theJuba government’s income, while Khar-toum lost the vast majority of its exportearnings, which came from petroleum.

‘‘The magnitude of the fiscal shock isexpected to significantly increase in2012 as the full extent of the oil reve-nue loss will be felt throughout thewhole year. The loss of oil revenue willlikely roughly double in 2012,’’ theWorld Bank says of Sudan’s economy.

‘‘Rather than view the New Year as anopportunity for renewed cooperation,the government of Sudan unilaterallydecided to impose economic sanction[s]by blocking exports of our crude andstealing our oil’’, DhieuDau told journal-ists in Juba. According to Sudan Tribune(10 ⁄ 1), he accused Sudan of five issuesrelated to the export of its crude oil:

• ordering foreign oil companies to divertSouth Sudan’s crude oil entitlement forDecember 2011 into refineries in Khar-toum and El-Obeid.

• diverting South Sudan’s monthly produc-tion of 550,000 barrels for December tobuyers of its own entitlement.

• beginning the construction of a new pipe-line to permanently divert 13% of what hecalled ‘‘Dar Blend’’.

• preventing two ships carrying 1.6m barrelsof crude oil belonging to South Sudan, aswell as preventing one additional vesselfrom leaving Port Sudan.

• and preventing two other ships fromentering the port to take possession of1.2m barrels of Nile Blend Crude pur-chased from South Sudan by internationalbuyers.

Macar Aciek Ader, an undersecretaryat South Sudan’s Oil Ministry told apress briefing in Juba the world’s new-est country would incur ‘‘huge eco-nomic’’ damage if Khartoum continuedits stance. South Sudan is one of thepoorest regions in the world, with oilaccounting for around 98% of the gov-ernment’s annual budget.

Bidding Process

Meanwhile, two days before the latesttalks between Sudan and South Sudan

December 15th 2011–January 15th 2012 Africa Research Bulletin – 19367

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were due to open in Addis Ababa,international oil companies gathered onJanuary 15th to study six explorationblocks that Sudan opened for biddingahead of talks aimed at resolving thelong-running oil fee dispute. More than150 foreign and local industry represen-tatives as well as government officialsmet at a Khartoum hotel to begin aprocess expected to conclude in Maywhen bid winners are announced, �AFP reported (15 ⁄ 1).‘‘We are offering six blocks with verygood potential,’’ Petroleum MinisterAwad Ahmed Aljaz told the gathering,where potential bidders received anintroductory briefing on each of theblocks, and on Sudan’s oil industry.

‘‘We welcome all companies from allnationalities without any stringsattached,’’ Aljaz said.

Gregory Channon, a director of States-man Resources Ltd, a small firm listed onCanada’s TSX Venture Exchange saidthe fee dispute between Sudan and SouthSudan was ‘‘a matter of negotiation’’between the two sides and not relevant tothe bidding for the blocks in the north.

South Sudan’s top talks negotiatorPagan Amum said that Juba believedits position in the negotiations hadbeen strengthened after it inked its firstdeals with foreign oil companies on the13th. The deals, which replace contractssigned with Khartoum under a unifiedSudan, cover oil production in the twokey petroleum states of Unity andUpper Nile in the south. Amum, headof South Sudan’s ruling SPLM party,said the government of Sudan had no‘‘legal, economic or commercial’’ basisto charge the south anything more thantransit fees for its crude.

At a news conference on the 15th,Khartoum officials said they want $7bnin compensation, but South Sudan hasoffered only $5bn.

Sabir Mohamed Hassan, Khartoum’schief negotiator on economic issues,did not say directly how much oilSudan had confiscated nor what it isdoing with the seized barrels. (sources asreferenced in text) Oil: difficult talks p. 19355

SOUTHERN AFRICARising Tide of Human Traffic

Difficulties in identifying the rootcauses and a lack of political willcontribute to this almost hiddenscourge.

At any given time, an estimated130,000 people in sub-Saharan Africaare engaged in forced labour as a resultof trafficking. It is a fraction of the

global figure, which the InternationalLabour Organisation (ILO) puts at2.5m, but this highly lucrative and con-cealed crime is on the rise in Africaand traffickers usually operate withimpunity.

Southern Africa has many of the condi-tions traffickers capitalize on: endemicpoverty and unemployment that createa demand for better opportunities, andhigh rates of regular and irregularmigration that mask the movements oftraffickers and their victims. The regionhas no shortage of protocols, frame-works and action plans for dealing withhuman trafficking, but the net result ofall these agreements has been no morethan a handful of prosecutions.

The key international framework forcombating this crime is the 2000 UNprotocol to prevent, suppress and pun-ish trafficking in persons, also knownas the Palermo Protocol. Twelve of theSouthern African Development Com-munity (SADC) 15 member states haveratified the protocol, which committedthem to enact legislation to makehuman trafficking a criminal offence.More than a decade later, only six havepassed comprehensive laws. Severalothers have partial laws or, in the caseof South Africa, bills waiting to bepassed, while five countries lack anyspecific legislation.

Ottilia Maunganidze, a researcher onthe International Crime in Africa Pro-gramme at the Institute for SecurityStudies in Pretoria says merely passinglegislation is not enough. Mozambiquehas passed legislation, but has neverprosecuted a case. ‘‘Criminalisation hasto happen in practice,’’ she told of ameeting of experts and government offi-cials mainly from the SADC who gath-ered in Johannesburg, South Africa,recently to look at ways of turningcommitments to counter human traf-ficking into action. This means develop-ing national action plans that involvesocial workers, medical professionals,public prosecutors and the police; estab-lishing a central anti-trafficking unit;allocating resources to assisting victims;and signing bilateral and multilateralagreements with the countries victimsoriginate from and pass through.

SADC countries adopted a 10-yearstrategic plan of action to combat traf-ficking in persons in 2009 that incorpo-rates many of these measures. There isalso a protocol on gender and develop-ment with a deadline of 2015 to put inplace measures to eradicate trafficking.Maunganidze says this is ‘‘probablyvery idealistic’’, and cites the difficultyof identifying and addressing some ofthe root causes of trafficking, as well asthe limited resources and political willso far devoted to responses.

Trafficking for forced labour is growingand is even more hidden than that forthe purpose of sexual exploitation,according to Bernardo Mariano-Jo-aquim, regional representative of theInternational Organisation for Migra-tion (IOM). Criminal syndicates areusually engaged in these activities, andmany people still lack a clear under-standing of what trafficking is, addingto the difficulty of detection and prose-cution.

‘‘You have to connect the dots, youneed proactive intelligence and interna-tional cooperation’’, says Johan Krugerof the UN Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC). (IRIN 12 ⁄ 12)

IN BRIEFAfrica: A slump in the amount of moneymigrants sent home during the global finan-cial crisis appears to have ended with offi-cially recorded remittances to the developingworld reaching an estimated $351bn in 2011,an 8% increase from 2010.

‘‘Growth of remittances in 2011 exceededour earlier expectations in four regions,especially in Europe and central Asia... andsub-Saharan Africa,’’ write lead economistsat the World Bank’s Migration and Remit-tances Unit in a brief released in earlyDecember.

Money sent home by migrants now repre-sents three times the amount of officialdevelopment aid to countries receiving assis-tance and is crucial to alleviating poverty,according to the World Bank. But the newsis not all good. The ongoing debt crisis inEurope and high unemployment in manydeveloped countries ‘‘is affecting employ-ment prospects of existing migrants andhardening political attitudes toward newimmigration’’, the World Bank economistsnote. (UN Integrated Regional InformationNetworks 6 ⁄ 12)Africa – Turkey: Turkish exports to Africancountries have hit a record, according to theTurkish Exporters’ Assembly (TIM).Exports to Ethiopia were up 311%, to SouthAfrica 229%, to Angola 206%, to Nigeria199%, to Ghana 172%, to Kenya 142% andthose to Egypt were up 35%. (Anatolia newsagency, Ankara 1 ⁄ 12)Burundi: Burundi has received a Euro 27.5mgrant from Germany to help improve energyand clean water supplies in the coffee pro-ducing nation. Burundi’s authorities say thelandlocked country needs an additional 270megawatts over the next five years to meetthe high demand in electricity. (Reuters, Bu-jumbura 6 ⁄ 12)Cameroon, CAR, Nigeria: More than 2,000Nigerian cattle grazers migrated to Cameroonand the Central African Republic betweenJanuary 2009 and July 2011 due to the recur-ring conflicts between farmers and grazers inthe North-East region. Dr Walia Hamman,the North-East Coordinator of the NationalLivestock Development Projects, told theNews Agency of Nigeria (NAN) combinedefforts by the federal government and theaffected states to get them back had failed.

Continental Developments19368 – Africa Research Bulletin

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