ADDIS ABABAm Ethiopia (PAMACC News) - Promoting a robust infrastructure growth in Africa will be a key driver to the continent’s development agenda, experts say.

According to James Murombedzi, coordinator, African Climate Centre, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the solution pathways to the success of Africa’s development agenda lies in infrastructure development to permit for the full exploitation of the rich resource potential the continent is endowed with.

In a paper presented under the theme “China-Africa Linkages in the Agricultural Sector and Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities” in Addis Ababa, Murombedzi said that poor infrastructure development was a huge setback to agriculture growth, thus a constraint to the fight against rural poverty.

“There is need to push for infrastructure development in Africa. Investments in infrastructure are key drivers to the African rural development agenda,” he noted.

UN records show that Africa’s infrastructure financing needs are estimated at $135 billion per year. But currently, only around $77 billion is being funded, leaving a financing gap of almost $60 billion.

Close to 50% of the current financing is from governments and other public sources, with much of the rest made up by loans and grants from development partners, Murombedzi told media representatives in Addis Ababa.

 Investments, he notes, are required in order to increase the productivity of agriculture, irrigation, energy, transportation, and marketing.

“However, such investments should empower, not dispossess smallholder farmers and the vulnerable communities,” he cautioned.

Thus the need to partner with other development actors to better drive the Agenda 2063 and help Africa meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

“China and Africa can develop strong partnerships to promote these infrastructure development agenda,” he said.

Opening the ceremony of the Media Workshop on “Reporting Africa-China Engagements, Agriculture Developments, Climate Change, Industrialization, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2063”,Chen Xufeng Charge d’Affaires of the Chinese Mission to AU, said China was ready to accompany Africa in efforts towards bridging the infrastructure deficient  gap.

“China has today become Africa's largest development partner, main investor and engineering contractor. China-Africa cooperation faces new historic opportunities geared at accompanying efforts towards development especially in the area of infrastructure” Chen Xufeng said.

China he assured was firmly committed to promoting  cooperation with the African continent through common, intensive, green, secure and open development and supporting Africa’s efforts to address the main bottlenecks, namely lack of quality infrastructure, professional and skilled personnel and financial resources.

“China is ready to help Africa resolve three fundamental issues of employment, food and health by developing self-sustainable system of industrialization, food security, and disease prevention and control system, he noted.

China it was announced has completed a number of mega infrastructure projects including the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway, the Nairobi-Mombasa Railway in Kenya, and the Abuja-Kaduna Rail in Nigeria. Rapid progress has also been made in production capacity cooperation in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Republic of Congo as pilot and pioneering countries and a dozen of priority partners for production capacity cooperation. There is also the construction of special economic zones and industrial parks in Ethiopia, Zambia, Uganda, Republic of Congo and Egypt with encouraging results, creating a large number of jobs for local community, the ambassador said.

The workshop in Ethiopia accordingly was organized  for Africa and Chinese journalists by Oxfam International’s Africa –China Dialogue Platform, ACDP and the Wits Africa Reporting Project.

The workshop focused on the crucial sectors of agriculture, climate change and industrialization, SDG’s and Agenda 2063.

Oxfam authorities pointed to the fact that agriculture and climate change have direct effects on food security in Africa while industrialization is at the center of Africa/China promulgations.

“ Industrialization is seen as an antidote to the high levels of poverty in Africa, which is manifest in frequent cases of famine,” says Apollos Nwafor, Pan African Director, Oxfam International.

According to the coordinator Africa-China reporting project, Barry Van Wyk, the project is to enable and support journalists to tell the stories of how the lives and experiences of people and communities of Africa are being changed and impacted by the comprehensive phenomenon of Africa’s engagement and interaction with China.

KRIBI, Cameroon (PAMACC News) - Michael Wakam stood beside a palm tree in a bushy area in Kribi in the South region of Cameroon and looked dejectedly at the farm land in front of him that was once his.

“It starts from here right over there where you see that palm tree. From there, you move to the right extending to the middle of that building right up to where were are standing” he said showing a vast piece of land which he claimed was grabbed from him by a Chinese company commercial cultivation of rice and cassava.

“We agreed that the land will end right there in the middle of that tree but I came and discovered that they have extended to this level. They have encroached my land almost by one hectare. This is wrong and illegal” he said boiling with anger.

Michael’s story is familiar across Cameroon where locals continue to dispute land with International companies especially Chinese companies.

In September 2015, neighbouring communities of the Lokoundjé and Kribi II subdivisions living close to the farms of Hévéa du Cameroun (Hévécam), a sister company of Chinese group Sinochem International addressed a memorandum to the Cameroonian government in which they accused the company of the of grabbing farming lands, stepping beyond the limits of some of its land concessions. A situation which, according to them, deprived them of a livelihood generally provided by agricultural activities on the lands under dispute.  

“Government remained mute to our complaints and the land grabbing continued. This is 2017, two years after the memorandum and nothing has changed” said Michae. “We suspect that they bribed government officials to stay quiet” he added.

Company officials denied the allegations and stressed that the land was acquired from the indigenes in strict respect of the Cameroonian law.

“What always happens is that, villagers usually get excited and confused when this companies come with huge sums of money to buy and develop their land. They only realized that they did not bargain well when the companies start operating” said Nelson Ndi, a Cameroonian working with Camco, a Chinese company that deals in agricultural and construction machinery.

According to two studies carried out separately by Land Matrix, the global watchdog on large scale land acquisitions, and Deborah Brautigam, Director of China Africa Research Initiative at John Hopkins University in the USA, Cameroon is one of the top 10 African countries that have sold the most lands to Chinese agricultural investments.

With 10,120 hectares of lands sold to the Chinese company Shaanxi Land Reclamation General Corporation (operating under the name IKO), to farm maize and rice in the Center region of the country (Nanga Ebola and Ndjoré), Cameroon, Ethiopia and Mozambique have some of the most important Chinese investments in agriculture on the Continent. Cameroon however comes far behind Zimbabwe that sold 100,000 hectares to the Chinese company CWE to farm maize.

Way Forward

“We are thinking of organizing a solid resistance to these land grabbers and demonstrate our resolve to keep our lands. We do not care what happens” said Michael. A move that will certainly end up in violence and probably loss of lives.

The Cameroon Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mining and Arts (CCIMA) has proposed a more sustainable measure to settle the crisis which will possibly not please strong opponents of land grabbing by agro-industrial companies.

The President of the Chamber Christophe Eken, has exhorted the government to carry out a “land reform, to facilitate access to land ownership for investors, especially in the agro-industrial sector”. For businessmen, this reform is to be considered as a “priority”, if the government wants to “increase the competitiveness of the Cameroonian economy”.

Government is yet to react. The request comes in a context marked by civil society organisations blowing the whistle on the land grabbing operated by agro-industrial units, a practice which according to these NGOs, challenges the survival of neighboring communities.

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (PAMACC News) - Leading non-state actors and civil society groups from across Africa have called on African governments to kick-start the process of designing an African Rule Book for the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
 
The book, according to them, will help in galvanising a robust presentation of African perspectives in the Paris Rule Book which is being formulated.
 
The call was made today at the ongoing civil society consultative talks which precedes the 16th session of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN) in Libreville, Gabon.
 
Recognising the strategic importance of the Paris Rule Book to the implementation of the climate agreement, the non-state stakeholders urged African environment ministers to ensure that the continent is not left behind in the efforts at crafting the regulatory framework for the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
 
“We want an African rule Book for the implementation of the Paris Agreement that will better measure and manage climate action and support in the light of varying quality and level of information included in countries’ national climate plans (NDCs),” John Bideri, the Co-Chair of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) said.
 
“An African Rule Book will help in scaling up actions and support at the right pace as many of the NDCs submitted by countries are not ambitious enough to achieve the Paris Agreement’s objectives,” Bideri added.
 
The urgency of the call for an African Rule Book is further underlined by the latest UNEP Gap Report which revealed that the climate plans submitted by all parties to the Paris Agreement can only limit global warming to 3o degree C if fully implemented and the conditions highlighted in the submissions are met.
 
This alarming report, according to Yamide Dagnet of the World Resources Institute, justifies the readiness of civil society groups like PACJA and WRI to mobilise resources and partnerships capable of supporting the drafting of the African Rule Book by African governments.
 
The Paris Rule Book
 
At the recent UN climate negotiations in Bonn which featured the 46th sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 46) and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 46) as well as the session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement, negotiations on the key elements of the Paris Rule Book began in earnest.
 
According to Achala Abeysinghe, a long serving legal and strategy advisor to the Least Developed Countries Group (LDC), “The Paris Agreement is just an empty shell without the rulebook”.
 
The Paris Rule Book seeks to establish the rules and processes needed to provide the operational guidance for fulfilling the ambition of the Agreement and providing clarity on countries’ efforts to reach the global goal.
 
The rule book comes on the heels of the Paris Agreement which created an international framework that outlines what governments and wider stakeholders are expected to do strengthening the global response to climate change and limit the temperature increase to 1.5 - 2 degrees C.
 
It therefore seeks to flesh out how the global response will be orchestrated.
 
By 2018 negotiators are expected to reach an agreement on the rule book which will include details on how countries will communicate their efforts with regards to adaptation, climate finance, transfer of technology and capacity building, and how they will be held accountable for their commitments.
 
It will also establish how collective efforts will be reviewed, leading to scaled-up actions and support every five years; as well as create a facilitatory process for the implementation of the agreement and promote compliance.