Development Strategies for African States

In March 2018, 44 African Countries committed to the launch of a common market for Africa - the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA. This aspiration for an “integrated continent” is a key pillar of Africa’s Agenda 2063 towards Africa`s development.
1. Assess the feasibility of implementing the Continental Free Trade Area across the African Continent. [15 Marks]
2. What are the likely implications on African capital markets if the continental free trade area is fully implemented?  [20 Marks]
3. Discuss the opportunities likely to arise from the United Kingdom`s exit from the European Union from an African markets perspective.  [15 Marks] 

Here follows the long-planned continuation of the theme. That will be fully published in the future in a book form.
It addresses colonialism that had not been mentioned before, together with an update of data on the situation in African countries.
A perspective of the future develops, always shadowed by the usual cataclysms that, although they can reach the whole world, have particular violence in Africa.
It should be noted, however, that not everything is catastrophic on the African continent.
Gradually, improvement of this collective disgrace situation become more frequent, either due to the progressive awareness of the African political class that it must work for the common good, due to the fact that the populations are tired of successive wars and demand peace or for a, until now, practically nonexistent, commitment to the resolution of conflicts on the part of the great powers, both African and Western, instead of trying to profit from them.
And for that very reason, it is possible to see promising signs of a paradigm shift, revealing the boiling that is now occurring in many parts of the African continent.
In which African peoples, especially young people, use new technologies to develop new businesses occupying specific niches in their countries' economies.
Or situations in which large international companies take advantage of favorable conditions to invest in a sustainable manner. Establishing new directions.

Observers view the expansion of China’s relationship with African countries not only from its perspective as a multifaceted endeavour but also from the nuances extant in the academic and non-academic professional circles. The factors underlying the relationship have created debates across diverse academic disciplines including trade and finance, development, Peacekeeping and global security, diplomacy as well as in the areas of geopolitics and technology transfer. These discussions and debates emerged after China’s aid and investments in Africa increased with incredible annual surges; thus
attracting global attention. Drawing on the background of those discussions, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate by producing the perceptions (pros and cons) of individuals unrelated to official voices and state policies with regard to China’s exploitations of African resources and the oft cited Chinese policy of ‘no strings’ attached.
Keywords: China-Africa relations, development, FDI, ‘no strings’, US, West

La dissémination du néopatrimonialisme en Afrique a été de pair avec une transformation de l'Etat Africain en un prototype global de l'Etat 'anti-développemental'. La distinction analytique entre pratiques néopatrimoniales au sein de l'Etat et néopatrimonialisme intégral restaure la neutralité axiologique du concept. Ceci permet également de renouer avec les travaux qui en Asie du Sud Est, en Amérique Latine et, de nos jours dans les espaces post-soviétiques et en Asie centrale, soulignent la pertinence  d'une telle dichotomie.
La seconde facette des réajustements étudiés tient à la mobilisation du néopatrimonialisme afin de rendre compte des relations entre élites dirigeantes, administration et milieux d'affaires. La réussite de l'île Maurice permet de poser les fondements d'un recadrage. Les débats autour de l'émergence de l'Afrique, incitent également à faire appel à de nouveaux outils d'analyse, et en particulier à la notion de capitalisme de connivence (crony capitalism), afin de souligner que l'Etat africain n'est plus systématiquement au centre des processus d'accumulation.

Political regimes, systemic practices and emergence  in African and Post-Soviet states

During the 1990s the dissemination of neopatrimonialism went along with a transformation of the African state into a global prototype of the anti-développemental state. The anaytical distinction between systems within which neopatrimonial practices are regulated or ringfenced (neopatrimonialism within the state) and situations of thoroughly neopatrimonial rule (predatory) enables to restore the axiological neutrality of the concept. This also enables to reconnect with debates and concepts which, in South East Asia, Latin America, and, today, in the post-Soviet states, endorse such a dichtomy.
The mobilisation of neopatrimonialism in conjunction with the study of the state-business nexus also calls for adjustment. The achievements of Mauritius help to set the basis for conceptual clarification of what a developmental state is about. Current debates on 'emerging' Africa, also call for the adoption of new tools, especially the notion of crony capitalism which highlights that the state is no longer the only source of accumulation.

Few strategic concepts are as difficult to grasp as the paradox of strategy in environments and epochs of high unpredictability. And all analogies employed to clarify such strategic concepts are incomplete. But, at the very least analogy conveys depictively what may be difficult to grasp analytically. Based on the belief that all people are creative sense-makers of their various worlds, strategic analogies described below are entrusted to the reader’s ability to interpret analogically, and have largely avoided a crude translation of analogy to strategy. Bluefins are an endangered species, while Barracuda have thrived for over 50 million years and continue to prosper. Africa will demand extraordinary levels of strategic agility. Those who actively make this part of their DNA will be most likely to flourish.

The African Union – NEPAD Continental Business Network 5% Agenda is an international initiative aiming at scaling up substantially public and private investment in African infrastructure assets.

The first "5% Agenda for Africa" high-level panel was co-hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), Ai, NEPAD and IGD with DFIs and African and global institutional investors during the World Bank annual meetings held on 12 October 2017 in Washington D.C.

Panellists in attendance included: Hubert Danso, Africa investor; Pierre Guislain, African Development Bank; Symerre Grey-Johnson, NEPAD; Ibrahim Kane, FONSIS; Gavin Wilson, IFC Asset Management Company; Chuck Burbridge, Teachers’ Pension Fund; Joshua Franzel, Center for State & Local Government Excellence; Nic Firzli, World Pensions Council; Ian Cameroon, Washington State Investment Board.

This paper outlines a strategy that encourages that creates a new economy in South Africa that is based on youth; innovations and inventions. The traditional economy has not been able to cater fully for the growing labour supply in terms new jobs. At the same time this economy must focus on growing the average household income of the black families who currently represent the lowest average household income in South Africa. In order for wealth and incomes to spread the new business ventures must be based on both integrated Value Chains and Supply Chains; which are owned; operated and controlled by new generation black entrepreneurs.

Over the past decade, Africa has become become associated with the discovery of a stream of new oil fields, mostly located in deep and ultra-deep offshore West Africa. Booming demand for Africa's natural resources has also triggered a more recent but fast increasing demand for agricultural and mineral commodities, a spillover effect of the speedy internationalisation of the economies of China, India and Brazil. Decades of debates on Africa's 'commodity curse' have become suddently replaced by a new global overlay, extolling the virtues of upgrated terms of exchange and new opportuities for growth linked to the diversification of international players and development templates. The paper argues that fairer 'transactions' and emphasis on government-to-government interactions leave open the debate on the  translation of additional revenues and opportunities within African societies. Fairer transactions are not intrinsically conducive to fair societal translation. The window of opportunities generated by the current commodity boom carries intrinsic limitations. For Africa’s commodity exporting countries, new resources mean unprecedented opportunities for the restructuring of their economies, so as to reduce dependency on higly volatile prices of (essentially) non-renewable commodities. Opportunities for change, however, are paradoxically emerging at a time time when external and short term inducements to undertake structural reforms have never been so weak. Africa's commodity-based growth should not simply result in an acceleration of resource 'stripping' associated with a boost to the 'paradox of plenty'

Cinquenta anos depois da onda independentista o continente negro ainda continua em moldes dinâmicos bastante caóticos e em muitas regiões o retrocesso é bastante visível. O que terá acontecido para que assim seja? Porque os Libertadores não conseguiram fazer singrar? Que valores e modelos devem os países africanos devem seguir para atingir patamares de outros pontos do globo que passaram pelo mesmo processo de independência e hoje são referências económicas, políticas e sociais mundiais? Será um problema político ou terá outras dimensões? Realidades pós-Coloniais: Em África o pós-independência pode-se caracterizar pelas seguintes realidades: a) Colonas: Mesmo depois das independências em alguns países africanos onde não houve uma ruptura profunda, além da conquista do poder pelos autóctones, as realidades colonas remanescentes do processo eram determinantes.

In this 20 minute podcast I discuss the WTO Doha Development Agenda negotiations. I offer an explanation for the current deadlock, focusing on the trade issues, the key players such as the United States, the European Union, the G20 and the major developing countries, as well as African Group. I end by discussing the prospect of a Doha Lite agreement and alternative ways forward for global trade liberalisation such as bilateralism and regionalism.