Washington DC — A new multinational naval task force is patrolling the waters off the coast of Africa to scare off pirates who have been regularly attacking commercial shipping vessels laden with oil, fertilizer and iron ore.For now, Combined Task Force 151 comprises three U.S. ships, but other nations, including the United Kingdom, are expected to join the effort that is focused on the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. In the meantime, naval forces from nearly two dozen nations are patrolling in the same waters — in some cases bilaterally — and are often providing escort to merchant vessels bearing their national flags.

Various navies that are already sailing in the region as a deterrent to pirates are expected to seek a mandate from their governments to join the task force under U.S. command. The USS San Antonio is the flagship for the operation, which includes a helicopter squadron, surgeons and U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement boarding teams specializing in maritime law, ship-borne searches and evidence collection.

The commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet — headquartered in Bahrain — says piracy is an international problem requiring an international solution. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney said CTF-151 “is a significant step in the right direction” to deter and disrupt pirates and eventually bring them to justice. At last count, pirates were holding nearly a dozen ships and more than 200 hostages.

At a January 15 briefing for reporters in the Pentagon, Gortney said the plan is to go after the pirates aggressively through a combination of surveillance and rapid response while still adhering to rules of evidence.

Gortney said a three-pronged approach is under way. The first prong involves recruiting additional navies to the region to work the counter-piracy mission.

U.S. Rear Admiral Terence McKnight is in charge of the naval task force, which became fully operational in January. “We are out there in force,” he said, working with coalition navies “to ensure commerce flows freely.”

The second prong calls on the shipping industry to share their best piracy-deterrent practices. Merchant ship captains have stepped up efforts to elude pirates by taking evasive maneuvers, lining their boats with barbed wire, deploying foam and even locking crews in the bridge out of reach of the attackers.

Pirates are in business for the money earned by holding the crews and ships for millions of dollars in ransom; they are not interested in the cargo.

As Obama takes over the presidency of the United States, Horace Campbell contextualizes an Obama presidency in the realities of Africa and the ongoing global finance crisis. He argues that “capitalism should not be reconstituted and rebuilt on the backs and bodies of Africans.” For Campbell, the crisis is not simply a cyclical crisis of capitalism; it is a fundamental shift in the global political and economic order. In light of this fast changing world, Campbell is also interested in the possibilities and our responsibilities in bringing about change in and for Africa.

Writing at the end of September 2008, the chief policy adviser to the candidate Senator Barack Obama spelt out the foreign policy goals as they related to Africa in this way:

“Barack Obama understands Africa, and understands its importance to the United States. Today, in this new century, he understands that to strengthen our common security, we must invest in our common humanity and, in this way, restore American leadership in the world.

“As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has engaged on many African issues. He has worked to end genocide in Darfur, to pass legislation to promote stability and the holding of elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to bring a war criminal to justice in Liberia and to develop a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia.”

From this broad outline the adviser (who had been trained in one of the elite African Studies Centers in the United States) went on to outline three goals of the candidate:

* One is to accelerate Africa’s integration into the global economy.

* A second is to enhance the peace and security of African states.

* And a third is to strengthen relationships with those governments, institutions and civil society organizations committed to deepening democracy, accountability and reducing poverty in Africa.

THE REALITY

The contradictions between the goals and the stated strategic objective of “investing in a shared humanity” brings to the fore the tensions and contradictions between the campaign of Senator Obama and the mindset of the thinking behind achieving goals for the United States and for the peoples of Africa. Between the time of the statement of this adviser in September and the elections in November, the realities of the global capitalist crisis had become very clear for the citizens of the United States. Citizens of Africa were always aware of the exploitation, hunger and death that came with capitalist relations of production. When Julius Nyerere had called for a revolution embedded in the African values of Ujamaa and self reliance, there was a political and ideological war against the peoples of Tanzania and any society in Africa that dared to be independent. Nationalization of the people’s wealth to ensure equal opportunities was rubbished by US policymakers.

Yet, in ten weeks between September and November 2008, the US government moved to nationalize banks, insurance companies and to invest billions of dollars (to bail out) the automobile industry. When the campaign ended and Senator Obama became President-elect Obama, it became clearer that neo-liberalism was dead or was dying. Neo-conservatives and the gurus of market fundamentalism were on the retreat, but in the Obama transition, there was no real break from the old mindset of US policymakers in relation to Africa. From the names and institutions that appeared in the transition process it was clear that the transition to an Obama Presidency will not, in the short term, reflect the kind of change that was promised in the election campaign. Instead of a future of sustainable peace and transformation, one saw a re-emergence and recycling of the same militarists such as Susan Rice emerging as a top official of the US foreign policy establishment. Lawrence Summers, who wrote the memo that it was more economical to dump toxic waste in Third World Countries, emerged as a major economic adviser.

A clear reading of five subject areas with international relations components in the transition team process indicates that Africa in general is likely to be a minor area of focus in their research process. These areas are:

1. State Department and Foreign Policy

2. International Economic Policy (USAID, World Bank, IMF, Treasury, Commerce, US Trade, OPIC, Ex-IM Bank, Agriculture)

3. Health/Human Services (HIV-AIDS)

4. National Security (DoD, AFRICOM and War on terror)

5. Energy (African oil)

In terms of operation, the team took its findings from each department and developed the Obama’s administration’s first internal white papers for each branch of government. Outside groups and entities with long-term interest in African resources were also submitting white papers on individual subjects into the transition team process. Hence, the final papers of the transition represented a product of both internal research and external contributions.

WHO TRAINED THESE POLICYMAKERS?

From the website of the transition process and the public relations web page of the Obama, one can see that the individuals and organizations that have been involved in the formulation of foreign and domestic policies were the same ones complicit in the think tanks, corporations, governmental agencies and Universities that devalued the lives of Africa. Of the eight major teams for the transition, this author zeroed in on the five areas of the transition that were directly related to the formulation of US policy under Obama.

The same lack of confidence that there will be a changed relationship with Africa emerges from the Cabinet choices that have been made by Barack Obama subsequent to the clarification of the road from transition to assuming power. Not even the African Americans who are touted to be the internal brains trust inspire confidence that there will be a change. The New York Time has reported that three persons- Valerie Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt and Dr. Eric Whitaker- are the closest advisers of Barack Obama.

While transition team operatives maintained that US policy towards Africa was at present a low priority (insofar as the US is preoccupied with the crisis of the economy and the questions of war and peace in Iraq and Afghanistan) there is no let up on the ground in Africa in the promotion of US ‘national interests’ through the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Treasury Department, the Department of Energy and a multitude of groups who are supporting AID projects. The day-to-day operations of the US bureaucrats continue to promote the neo-conservative and neo-liberal policies of the western imperial ideation system.

Examples of where these policies are being pursued include: The full speed attempt to militarize Africa under the guise of the so called war on terror. This is manifest in the transition pledge to continue the establishment of the US Africa Command and a US led international naval force off the coast of Somalia.

The second area where this is clear is that despite the fact that neo-liberalism and the market fundamentalism has been discredited in the USA, these policies are still being promoted by the IMF, the World bank and the host of US agencies that are now operating in Africa. In September 2008, when this global capitalist crisis was becoming evident to the world, Alan Greenspan testified before Congress. He said, “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

What Greenspan was politely saying was that the thinking behind the neoconservative oriented economic policies that had been promoted in the United States and overseas is wrong. During the hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), was not satisfied by the use of the word ‘flaw.’ Waxman wanted a stronger term. He then asked Greenspan to clarify his words:

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”This admission that for forty years the underlying assumptions, rationales and thinking which served as the foundation of the economic policies of the United States in the USA and overseas was wrong, must be discussed at every level in Africa. Will African governments be comfortable with accepting this statement that they were being bullied into adopting wrong policies? Or will African intellectuals, trade unionists, policy makers and ordinary citizens redouble the efforts to end the domination of the International Financial Institutions over the lives of the people?

Cotonou — A recent increase in violent crime threatens to further impoverish Benin by choking off small business, according to law enforcement and arms control officials.Police in Benin’s economic capital Cotonou link this year’s spike in armed robberies and violent crime to small arms trafficking, as well as the growing desperation of people who can no longer afford to cover their basic needs.In the past two months at least seven people have died and dozens more were seriously injured in a series of bank robberies, mostly in Cotonou. “People are looking for any means necessary to make ends meet,” the head of Cotonou’s police headquarters, Constant Sossou, told IRIN.

The average monthly income for employed persons in Benin is less than US$50, according to 2007 World Bank data. The price of rice and corn, two widely-consumed products, increased by 50 percent from 2006 to 2007.

Police commissioner Sossou said increased economic desperation has turned some to “brazenly violent and bloody” crime. “This has nothing to do with the fact that it is the end of year [when we typically face more crime]; this is a constant threat we face now.”

Police have not uncovered the culprits, or found the close to $1 million still missing from the year-end bank robberies.

Cape Town — The African Union (AU) has condemned the return of coups d’état to the continent, describing the phenomenon as “a very serious setback in the ongoing democratization process in Africa.”Government ministers attending a meeting of the AU’s Peace and Security Council in Addis Ababa this week issued three separate communiqués dealing with attempted or actual military takeovers during 2008.

In one, the council condemned the attack launched by renegade military elements on the residence of President João Bernardo Vieira of Guinea-Bissau on November 23, a week after legislative elections had been held in the country.

In another, the council welcomed the recent release of Mauritania’s President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi by the leaders of the August coup which overthrew him, but deplored the “obstinance” of coup leaders who are refusing to allow a return to constitutional rule.

However, it was in its response to Tuesday’s coup in Guinea that the AU noted what it called “the resurgence of the phenomenon of coup d’état, which constitutes a threat to peace and security on the continent…”

It said it strongly condemned the coup which followed the announcement of the death of President Lansana Conté.Citing the numerous ways in which the authors of the coup had breached Guinean and international law, it accused them of acting “in flagrant violation of the Guinean Constitution, the Algiers Decision of July 1999, the Lomé Declaration of July 2000, the Constitutive Act of the AU, the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council and relevant instruments of ECOWAS” (the Economic Community of West African States).

The Peace and Security Council asked AU’s policy-making bodies to give in-depth consideration to the issue, including ways in which to give early warnings of and prevent coup attempts. The next African Union summit of heads of state will be held in Addis Ababa from February 1 to 3.

The most clinically advanced malaria vaccine that is capable of reducing the incidence of malaria by more than 50 per cent in African infants and young children, may be licenced for use by 2011 if results of the final efficacy study commence early next year are anything to go by.Known as RTS,S/AS01, the new malaria vaccine candidate, studies show, can be safely incorporated into existing national immunisation programmes, without interference with commonly used childhood vaccines such as polio, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenza type b.

Cristian Loucq, of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) told Good Health Weekly in a telephone interview last week that investment in developing malaria vaccines was beginning to pay dividends.

“We are closer than ever before to developing a malaria vaccine for children in Africa. History has shown that vaccines are the most powerful tool to control and eliminate infectious diseases. Clearly, the world urgently needs a safe and effective vaccine to win the war against this terrible disease.”

The vaccine which works alongside standard infant vaccines of WHO’s Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI), has a favourable safety profile, and has consistently shown a significant efficacy level. We can begin to foresee the difference this scientific breakthrough could make in the lives of millions of African children who suffer and die from this disease year after year.”

In the view of Joe Cohen, a co-inventor of the vaccine and Vice-president of Research & Development, Emerging Diseases & HIV at GSK Biologicals. “The energy and motivation levels are at an all-time high, as the partnership finalizes preparations to launch the historic phase III trial early next year.”

Cohen said results from two new studies, conducted in Kenya and Tanzania, demonstrated that the vaccine, which reduced the risk of clinical episodes of malaria significantly over an eight-month follow-up period, could be the scientific breakthrough that would make in the lives of millions of African children malari-free.

The studies were earlier presented at the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Results from Phase II studies of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Biologicals’ malaria vaccine candidate RTS,S/AS demonstrate that it can provide significant protection against malaria infection and the progression of infection to clinical disease. For the first time, RTS,S/AS administered together with commonly used childhood vaccines has been shown to have both promising safety profile and efficacy profiles.

The Confederation of Africa Football has unveiled the shortlists for the Glo-CAF Awards 2008. CAF Director of Communications, Sulemana Habuba also announced innovations in the event with the aim of making it prestigious. The Media and Technical Committees nominated the shortlists for the two awards.The innovation Habuba said had led to the creation of the Glo-CAF Best Player on the Continent and the Glo-CAF Best Player across the World, according to cafonline.

The continental award will be decided by votes from coaches of the group phase clubs of the CAF-MTN Champions League whilst the coaches of the 53-National associations affiliated to CAF, voting for the best player across the world.The shortlist for the Glo-CAF Best Player on the continent are Mohamed Aboutreika (Al- Ahly, Egypt), Ahmed Hassan (Al-Ahly, Egypt), Flavio Amado (Al-Ahly, Angola), Tresor Mputu Mabi (T.P. Mazembe, DR Congo) and Stephen Worgu (Enyimba, Nigeria).

Mohamed Aboutreika (Al-Ahly, Egypt), Emmanuel Adebayor (Arsenal, Togo), Amr Zaki (Wigan Athletic, Egypt), Didier Drogba (Chelsea, Cote d’Ivoire) and Michael Essien (Chelsea, Ghana) make up the shortlist for the Glo-CAF Best Player across the world.The final three of the two categories will be named before the Awards Gala fixed for Cotonou, Benin in December 2008.Ms. Gladys Telavi, Executive Director of Legal Services of Globacom assured of her outfit’s commitment to the development of football on the continent by making the event memorable.This is the fourth time the Nigeria-based cellular giants will be sponsoring the annual event since 2008.Mali’s Frederic Kanoute won the flagship award held in Togo last year.

Africa has sufficient agricultural potential to become a food basket for the whole world, President Museveni of Uganda said. He said the continent could solve the current food crisis if the relevant production interventions are undertaken during the launch of the P4P at the United Nations.Purchase 4 Progress (P4P) is an initiative of the World Food Programme (WFP) which aims at transforming the way WFP purchases food in developing countries by giving priority to small scale farmers to sell their surplus produce to WFP at competitive prices while giving the food to those who have little or no food at all.According to a press release from the state house in Uganda, the programme which will initially target 21 countries, Uganda inclusive, aims at helping farmers to earn reasonable income and predictable market for their produce. It will initially target 350,000 households over a period of 5 years.The WFP is supported by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffet Foundation.President Museveni launched the programme jointly with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, Rwandese President Paul Kagame and the WFP Executive Director Mrs. Josette Sheeran.President Museveni said that 67% of the farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa have been practicing subsistence agriculture and not fully utilizing the region’s agricultural potential. He said that with the current food shortage in the world, it was time for African farmers to engage in commercialized agriculture and produce food beyond their subsistence needs. He, however, noted that interventions in terms of irrigation, the use of fertilizers and other forms of modern agricultural practices need to be emphasized to enable the region produce optimally.Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete welcomed the programme saying that it would help unlock the potential of farmers in rural Africa since they will be assured of the market for their produce. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda lauded WFP for its support to his country. He said that the organization has responded to the feeding needs of over 54,000 people in Rwanda. He also hailed their support through the School Feeding Programme and welcomed the Purchase 4 Progress Programme saying it was an appropriate intervention.Ms. Josette Sheeran, the Executive Director of WFP, said that in addition to purchasing their produce, WFP would facilitate farmers with modern farm inputs, equip them with modern agricultural skills to boost the quality and quantity of their output.Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Howard Buffet said they were committed to helping farmers in the developing world to better their incomes because they constitute a large part of the poorest of the poor in the world. They said that they committed their organizations to supporting Purchase 4 Progress Programme because its objectives are in line with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

Corruption has significantly improved in Nigeria and Mauritius over the last year, according to the Transparency International`s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The southern African country ranked 41 out of 180 countries with a score of 5.5 out of 10. Nigeria (2.7) jumped from 180 to 121.The CPI measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys. The 2008 CPI scores 180 countries (the same number as the 2007 CPI) on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean).According to the report released on Tuesday in Berlin, Botswana leads the league table of top 10 least corrupt African countries at the 36th position with a score of 5.8. Mauritius closely followed then Cape Verde at 47th spot with a mark of 5.1. Africa’s fourth went to South Africa at the 54th slot with a score of 4.9, Seychelles gained 55th and bagged 4.8 and then Namibia landed at the 61st position after scoring 4.5.Others are Tunisia (62) with a score of 4.4, Ghana ranked 67 and scored 3.9, Swaziland (72) and attained 3.6 followed by Burkina Faso at 80th position after it obtained a mark of 3.5.However, Somalia (180), Sudan (173), Chad (173), Guinea (173) topped the top 10 corrupt countries on the continent scoring 1.6 each but Somalia which managed only 1.0. Equatorial Guinea (171) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (171) followed them with a score of 1.7 each. On top of them was ailing Zimbabwe, which is lying at the 166th position and scored 1.8. The remaining medals for the other three corrupt countries went to Gambia (158), Angola (158) and Guinea-Bissau (158) after all three scored 1.9 each.On the global scene, Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden share the highest score at 9.3, followed immediately by Singapore at 9.2. Bringing up the rear is Somalia at 1.0, slightly trailing Iraq and Myanmar at 1.3 and Haiti at 1.4, according to TI website. The global anti-corruption watchdog said while score changes in the Index are not rapid, statistically significant changes are evident in certain countries from the high to the low end of the CPI. Looking at source surveys included in both the 2007 and 2008 Index, significant declines can be seen in the scores of Bulgaria, Burundi, Maldives, Norway and the United Kingdom. Similarly, statistically significant improvements over the last year can be identified in Albania, Cyprus, Georgia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, South Korea, Tonga and Turkey.

Cheap and high-speed web access via satellite will be provided to millions of people in Africa and other emerging markets by 2010. Google and Europe’s biggest bank HSBC partnering with cable operator Liberty Global would provide the services. Three billion people are to benefit from the project.A group called O3b Networks – stands for the “other 3 billion” people who do not have access to the internet – are helping to roll out the project. Reuters reports say the project will provide high-speed backhaul for telecoms’ operators and Internet providers, which can then sell services to businesses and consumers.South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel hailed the project at a conference in Germany on Monday. “The information gap is very real and clearly whatever we can do to close it must be encouraged,” Manuel told a news conference in Berlin on the U.N.-backed Millennium development goals.”Any initiative that can leapfrog over traditional means of getting information to people must be encouraged. Information is power and it supports democracy and it supports decision-making.”O3b networks said in a statement the satellites would be constructed by Thales Alenia Space and should be operational by the end of 2010. The company’s founder, Greg Wyler, told Reuters coverage would reach from Spain to South Africa, include most of South America, large parts of Asia and all South Pacific Islands. The project intends to offer fibre performance over satellite to parts of the world where it is not commercially viable or practical to deploy a fibre network.Because its satellites orbit earth at lower altitudes than those used to beam TV signals to homes, they work better for Internet access where latency — the amount of time it takes for bits of information to travel from source to destination — is an issue, Wyler said.The project is expected to cost $650 million until the launch, he said. Initial equity of $65 million has been raised, but the final mix of debt and equity has not been set. In some parts of the world, the company will compete with fibre-optic cables currently under construction — for instance, over a dozen cables have been announced connecting Africa to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.