22 October: UN: IDPs: The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has pledged the UN’s full support to help Africa address the needs of some 14 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) driven from their homes by fighting and prevent the conflicts that caused their plight. “In seeking to bring peace and prevent conflict across the continent, the African Union (AU) is an indispensable partner of the United Nations,” he said in a message to an AU special summit on refugees, returnees and IDPs.
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22 October: UN-HABITAT/Brazil: World Urban Forum: The UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) Executive Director, Anna Tibaijuka, and Brazil’s Permanent Representative, Ana Maria Sampaio, signed a Conference Agreement to facilitate the organization of the Fifth Session of the World Urban Forum to be held in Rio de Janeiro from 22-26 March 2010. The Agreement, signed in Nairobi, lays the foundation for a successful World Urban Forum which is expected to attract around 15,000 participants. The Fifth Session of this premier conference on cities will focus on “The Right to the City: Bridging the Urban Divide,” and will culminate in a global debate on the future of cities.
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21 October: AfDB/Malawi: The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group and the government of Malawi have signed a US$ 60 million (UA 38.42 million) loan and grant agreement to enable the country improve its road network.
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21 October: ECA: Governance: Good governance in Africa is everyone’s job, not just the compliers of reports or even government officials, a governance expert said. “The burden is upon all of us to claim ownership of this report,” said the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s (UNECA) Chief of the Public Administration Section, Said Adejumobi. Adejumobi made his comments during a press launch of the second edition of the African Governance Report (AGR II). AGR II is an overview of the state of governance in 35 African countries. It is the most comprehensive report on the subject for Africa. It assess and monitors progress countries are making on issues, identifies capacity gaps and makes policy recommendations on improving governance on the continent.
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20 October: AfDB: African workers send home more than US$40 billion to the region each year but restrictive laws and costly fees hamper the power of remittances to lift people out of poverty, according to a new report by the UN’s rural poverty agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). “Sending Money Home to Africa” will be presented at the Global Forum on Remittances 2009, organized by IFAD and the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Tunis, Tunisia, on 22-23 October 2009. Globally remittances top US$300 billion per year, outstripping foreign direct investment and development assistance combined.
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20 October: FAO: Food Security: Faced with rising world hunger and unacceptable poverty, and in response to calls for greater coherence and coordination, members of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Committee on World Food Security (CFS) have agreed to wide-ranging reforms. The reform aims to make the CFS the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform dealing with food security and nutrition and a central component in the evolving Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition.
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20 October: ECA: Population and Development: Africa has made laudable progress towards the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD/PoA) and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to a recently published review of the ICPD/PoA. The five yearly-review (ICPD@15) urged African leaders to translate their growing political commitment into concrete actions so as to overcome the many obstacles that are undermining the achievement of the MDGs and the implementation of the ICPD/PoA in the coming five years.
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19 October: UN: Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro opened a gathering in the Rwandan capital bringing together the eight pilot countries taking part in the UN initiative that seeks to better coordinate development activities at the country level and avoid duplication. Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay and Viet Nam volunteered in 2006 to participate in the “One UN” programme, which aims to speed up development operations to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets for tackling poverty, hunger and other social ills by 2015. The creation of these pilot projects was suggested in Delivering as One, a report by the UN High-Level Panel on System-wide Coherence that was released November 2006.
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16 October: USAID/COMESA: USAID/East Africa’s Acting Regional Director, Larry Meserve, and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa’s (COMESA) Secretary General, Sindiso Ngwenya, recently signed an Integrated Partnership Assistance Agreement to increase regional economic growth, integration, and stability in the COMESA Region. COMESA is comprised of 19 countries with a population of 389 million. The USAID– COMESA partnership began in 1998 and has contributed to many successes including the implementation and expansion of the 14 member COMESA Free Trade Area and harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) requirements for dairy and maize. The new Assistance Agreement, with estimated total funding of $30 million through 2012, supports COMESA’s work to forge “an integrated regional economic community achieving high standards of living for its people.”
[Press release]
