AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 6, 2021 Africa/Global: People's Vaccine vs. Vaccine Apartheid
Despite the vast disparity in the pace of vaccinations for Covid-19, currently at over 20% having one dose in North America, 5% in the world, and less in 1% for Africa, the United States, other rich countries, and pharmaceutical companies are still rejecting growing demands to waive patents and transfer technology. See chart below and data by country at https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations.
March 22, 2021 Sahel: Questioning Counterterrorism?
“In the context of complex and protracted conflicts, it is time to
rethink the role of the international community and acknowledge its
limits. Today, success depends first and foremost on the willingness
(much more than on the capacity) of corrupt leaders to reform and
renew their social contract with citizens, especially in rural areas.
International efforts will fail as long as impunity prevails and
local armies can kill civilians and topple governments without
consequence.” - Chatham House Research Paper
March 8, 2021 USA/Global: Taxing the Tech Giants
“How should we determine the corporate tax a big tech company should
pay in each country where they operate? There are many ways that this
could be calculated, but most recommendations suggest looking at
their sales, their assets and the number of employees they have in
each country. In the absence of transparent reporting, collecting
such data is not easy, but we can get a useful estimate through
looking at a proxy indicator: the number of users they have in each
country. For example, in just 20 developing countries there are
nearly 1.5 billion internet users accessing Google, about 900 million
people using Microsoft on their desktops and over 750 million
Facebook users. For these companies, the number of users is a good
indicator of both their sales and their assets.” - ActionAid
February 22, 2021 Africa/Global: The Inequality Virus
“COVID-19 has been likened to an x-ray, revealing fractures in the
fragile skeleton of the societies we have built. It is exposing
fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: The lie that free markets can
deliver healthcare for all; The fiction that unpaid care work is
not work; The delusion that we live in a post-racist world; The
myth that we are all in the same boat. While we are all floating
on the same sea, it’s clear that some are in super yachts, while
others are clinging to the drifting debris.” – António Guterres,
UN Secretary General
February 8, 2021 Ethiopia: No End to War in Devastated Tigray
“It feels strange to write about a humanitarian crisis in this day and age with barely any pictures, videos or witness testimonies from the ground. But that is what the situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has come to. Since the conflict between the federal government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the regional government’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), began in November 2020, access to the region has been extremely limited. Internet and telephone connectivity was cut off as soon as the fighting began, disconnecting about 5 million people. Months later, the internet remains down and telephone communication has only been restored in a few main towns. Journalists and human rights monitors are still denied entry and cannot report to the world the full scale of the violence which has left at least hundreds of people dead and more than 470,000 displaced, according to the UN.” - Vanessa Tsehaye, Amnesty International
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AfricaFocus Archive:
by date | by place | by topic
January 26, 2021
Africa/Global: Distant Horizon for Vaccine Equity
December 14, 2020
Africa/Global: State of Tax Justice 2020
November 30, 2020
USA/Africa: Build Back Better on Africa Policy
November 30, 2020
USA/Global: On Climate, How Much Will Be New?
November 18, 2020
Ethiopia: Not Too Late to Step Back from War?
October 23, 2020
Nigeria: A New Generation Steps Up
October 13, 2020
Africa/Global: The Future's Not in Plastics
September 28, 2020
USA/Global: Millions Displaced by US Post-9/11 Wars
September 23, 2020
USA/Global: Overhauling U.S. Foreign Policy
September 14, 2020
India/Africa: Common Threads of Kanga and Vitenge
August 24, 2020
USA/Global: Divest from Violent Policing and Endless Wars, Part Two
August 24, 2020
USA/Global: Divest from Violent Policing and Endless Wars, Part One
August 3, 2020
Africa/Global: Preventing the Next Pandemic
July 20, 2020
South Africa: Covid-19 Response Failing; How to Do Better
July 6, 2020
Africa/Global: Not Pessimism or Optimism but Possibilism
June 22, 2020
Africa/Global: Fossil Fuel Viability to Decline Sharply
June 8, 2020
USA/Global: Racial Pandemic and Viral Pandemic
June 8, 2020
Africa/Global: Thinking Post-Covid-19
May 25, 2020
Africa: Remote Learning with African Storybooks
May 12, 2020
USA/Global: Contesting Health and Workers' Rights
April 27, 2020
Africa/Global: Pandemic Mobilization amid High Vulnerability
April 13, 2020
Mozambique: Cumulative Shocks, Local and Global
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