Swaziland@Newsletter 55
Published by Africa Contact (Denmark)

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_____________________________________


1. Swaziland opposition groups to boycott poll. Lunga Masuku, Manzini.
SAPA : South Africa Press Association (AFP), February 3, 2008.

2. Women still marginalised. The Swazi Observer, February 5, 2006.

3. Greatest threat to reform is a short memory. James Hall, Inter
Press Service (IPS), January 30, 2008.

4. Police, warders' unions lose. Sabelo Mamba, The Swazi Observer,
February 5, 2008.

5. The dark ages. South Africa's power crisis is having wider
repercussions. The Economist print edition (Johannesburg) 31 January
2008 .

6. Global: Doomsday seed vault for food security. 31 January 2008
(IRIN). News and analysis: http://www.irinnews.org

7. China in Africa: lending, policy space and governance. Martine
Dahle Huse & Stephen L. Muyakwa, Norwegian Campaign for Debt
Cancellation (2008): http://www.slettgjelda.no Norwegian Council for
Africa, http://www.afrika.no


______________________________________

1. Swaziland opposition groups to boycott poll. Lunga Masuku, Manzini.
SAPA : South Africa Press Association (AFP), February 3, 2008.

Opposition groups in Swaziland, Africa's last absolute monarchy, have
agreed to boycott parliamentary polls later this year, undertaking
instead to push harder for multi-party elections.

A dozen political parties, civic organisations and student groupings
met in Manzini at the weekend, endorsing the formation of a united
front within two months to challenge the status quo in the tiny
land-locked kingdom.

Mphandlana Shongwe, founder member of the People's United Democratic
Movement (PUDEMO), said taking part in elections would give the state
a sheen of false legitimacy. PUDEMO is one of six political parties
taking part in the broad movement.

"For the past 24 years we have been able to deny the state legitimacy
so we are proud of ourselves and we must not rest until we attain the
goals we set for ourselves," Shongwe told a rally on Saturday.
Boycotting the polls in their current format would send a message to
the world that change was required, he added.

"Does it mean we have to start butchering people before the western
world can realize that there was something wrong with the way the
country was governed?"

Any member of the front who wanted to stand in elections, likely to be
held in October or November, would have to resign from his party,
delegates concluded.

Political parties were banned in 1973 when the late King Sobhuza II,
father of incumbent King Mswati, determined that Westminster-style
democracy promoted hatred.

The constitution, rewritten in 2006, allows for freedom of association
but people can only stand for elections as individuals.

The parliament comprises 85 members, more than a third of whom are
handpicked by the king who also makes all government appointments.

The weekend meeting was initially divided over whether to boycott a
system of government some argue is fundamentally flawed, or to propose
an unofficial slate of election candidates to try to change the system
from within.

Meeting organiser Jan Sithole told the gathering pressure groups stood
little chance of making a difference if they remained fragmented.
"Because of our disorganization we have not been able to make an
impact on the country's politics," he said. "We have to claim a place
in the country's political terrain."

The front will be officially launched at a conference in early April
where a name and constitution would be adopted. All but two Swazi
political parties have agreed to be part of the front.

The last attempt to forge a united opposition failed when the
Swaziland Democratic Alliance collapsed three years into its existence
when its chairman broke ranks and took part in elections in 2003.

Swaziland, with a population of one million, is one of Africa's
poorest countries and also has one of the world's highest rates of HIV
infection.

______________________________________________________

2. Women still marginalised. The Swazi Observer, February 5, 2006.

Women are still regarded a marginalised population in the country in
as far as business is concerned.

This was an observation made yesterday by a group of business people
from different organisations in the country during a meeting with a
team of their Limpopo colleagues.

SME Director Michael Zwane said this was a challenge for government to
position itself in supporting initiatives by women. He said there were
women in other countries, like those from the Limpopo province, who
were a testimony that it was possible for women to be successfully
involved in such sectors as mining and construction.

The team from Limpopo is here to share ideas with their local
colleagues and possibly identify strategic partners out of the
interactions. There are women who are very productive in these sectors
and this is the right step towards business development, in turn,
leading to economic development, he said.

Manager of SA Greater Giyani Jewellery identified as N.B. Baloyi said
women engaged in businesses like construction and mining were still
not receiving the much needed support in some countries and Swaziland
was no exception.

She, however, stated that their government had taken the initiative to
embrace such women and support them, adding that other governments
could learn from that experience.

Baloyi said women need such empowerment and to be put into perspective
on the challenges that come with these. She stressed that women in
leadership positions in society should serve to represent the
interests of women, especially those in business for the benefit of
the larger economy.

Women should be the ones to say what women can or can?t do in any
environment. In our country, and in many others, women form a majority
of the population, about 80 percent and this is reason enough to have
them represented in the legislature. After all, women are only women
by gender but are very normal human beings, she said.

Baloyi added that even in big countries like South Africa and others
in the region, funding for projects initiated by women was still a
problem, and that Swaziland was not the only country that does not
have money. This is where international organisations and companies
come in to fund certain projects of interest, she said.

Also present at the discussions were presidents of business
associations, FESBC and ASBC, business people as well as officials
from the Swaziland Investment Promotion Authority (SIPA).

The team made a courtesy call to SA High Commissioner Mxolisi Mabude
before proceeding to the ministry of enterprise and employment where
they met the Principal Secretary Bertram Stewart. They also met a team
from the FSE&CC as well as the Swaziland Trading House CEO, Swaziland
Investment Consortium (SICO), Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary and
other local businesses.

Today they will visit other Swazi owned businesses like S&B
Restaurant, Business Womens Organisation and Swaziland Dairy Board,
before they depart for Lesotho tomorrow morning.

_______________________________________________

3. Greatest threat to reform is a short memory. James Hall, Inter
Press Service (IPS), January 30, 2008.

Did Swaziland learn nothing from last year?s devastating drought? Some
relief agencies and agricultural officials are shaking their heads in
dismay that 2007?s devastating crop failures did not spark reform in
the way land is utilised in this small country of less than one
million people.

"There was hardship from last year?s drought, but also an opportunity.
I fear we have lost the will to seize that opportunity because now the
drought appears to be over," said Nathan Dlamini, an agriculture
ministry field officer in the central Manzini region.

Eighty percent of crops withered and died in the fields of some
regions, and all four provinces experienced drought-related crop
failures last year. Rains ceased in Dec. 2006, and only resumed
sporadically after the key stage of the maize plant?s development had
passed. Maize is the staple food of the nation -- grown by four out of five
Swazis.

"At the crucial time in the maize plants development, there was no
nourishing water, because few of the farmers have irrigation," Ben
Nsibandze, chairman of the National Disaster Management Council, told
IPS. "There had never been such a widespread lack of rainfall in our
modern history," said Nsibandze, whose office gauges the number of
people affected by emergencies and provides data to local and
international relief organisations.

This year, rains have returned, and are steadily moistening fields and
gradually replenishing depleted lakes and reservoirs.

"No one is talking about water rationing any more," said Dlamini.
"Because of the electricity crisis everybodys attention has turned to
power shortages. We are lurching from crisis to crisis without doing
anything to fix fundamental issues," he said.

The effects of the great drought of 2007 still linger. Forty percent
of the population is dependant on some form of food assistance to
survive -- from school children whose only complete meal each day is
eaten at school and provided by the U.N. Childrens Fund (UNICEF) to
food-short families who receive monthly packages of maize meal, soy
blend, and cooking oil from the World Food Programme (WFP).

At the beginning of the planting season -- September though November
-- subsistence farmers were reluctant to commit their seeds to soil,
fearful of a repeat of the last year drought. Lack of rainfall had
persisted in areas like the eastern Lubombo region for 15 years.
Another reason was welfare dependence -- traditional leaders and
others are decrying the apathy of some farmers to grow crops because they
knew they would be fed by the WFP.

Late January finds the fields green again with two-metre high maize
stalks -- their brilliant translucent green leaves shading budding
cobs that signal plentiful harvests come May.

"Everything is back to normal -- nothing is being done to protect us
against the next drought, even though there was a big Agriculture
Summit last year to seek such solutions," Amos Ngwenya, a farming
implement dealer in Manzini, told IPS.

"We must find ways to ensure food security for the nation," said
Minister of Agriculture Mtiti Fakudze in August when he opening the
government Agriculture Summit in Manzini. Other government
officials, relief organisations, commercial farmers, and traditional
authorities echoed his sentiment.

Critics in the Swazi media have expressed concern that the summit was
another costly "talk shop" that provided a photo-op for politicians,
but would result in no concrete action.

This month, Swaziland Livestock Technical Services, an agricultural
consultancy firm, expressed dismay that even a long-overdue
preliminary report with recommendations is locked up in government.

"One reason farmers continue to grow maize is they find no market for
other crops. Maize can be stored and eaten by the farmer family
later, but not vegetables, eggs or milk, which government has
encouraged farmers to diversify into," said Ngwenya. "There was a lot
of talk at the agriculture summit about establishing markets for local
production and cut down dependency on imports from South Africa, but
that is all it was, talk."

Abdoulaye Balde, country representative to Swaziland for the WFP, told
IPS, "There are places where they should not grow maize. Other crops
would do better. But it is hard to break the cycle of growing the same
crops."

Over the years, Swazi farmers have remained conservative, but not
resistant to opportunities. Cotton was grown as a drought-tolerant
crop in the late 1980s, but failed to take off for lack of a
distribution system for the raw cotton fibre. In the 1990s, farmers
rode a boom in sugar cane prices and sugar became Swaziland?s top
export -- earning the nickname "the real Swazi gold."

Many farmers followed government suggestion to form cooperatives and
pool their land resources for sugar cane cultivation. The relevant
ministry even changed its name to the Ministry of Agriculture and
Cooperatives. But a drop in sugar prices dampened profits, prompting
grumbling that "you cannot survive on sugar cane."

While government concentrated its poverty alleviation efforts on
foreign direct investment in urban projects like manufacturing, no
dent has been made in U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) data showing
two out of three Swazis live in absolute poverty.

On small farms agricultural production remained identical in the 21st
century as when the nomadic Swazis settled down to cultivate fields in
the mid-1800s.

The answer may be to acknowledge that the single-family farms may
never be economically viable, and should be viewed as mere residences
where some family food is grown, weather permitting.

"The fields are too small. Over the years the population has grown and
arable land has been divided and subdivided. Even a bumper crop is not
that profitable because of size -- maybe ten surplus bags of maize
per household," said Dlamini.

If Swazis cannot achieve food security and end poverty by reforming
subsistence family farms, a solution may be found in Agri-Industry,
which employs farmers to cultivate fields and pays them wages to
support their families.

Two large-scale Agri-Industry schemes were announced late last year,
located in the drought-stricken southern and eastern areas of the
country. Both involve the cultivation of biofuel crops, which would be
distilled into ethanol and other biofuel products within Swaziland.
Three thousand people would be employed to grow biofuel fodder and
work the distillation plant. The government will provide the land, and
no farmers are to be displaced from their ancestral homes. In fact,
farmers were invited to grow biofuel crops to sell to the distillery.

"This may be the way to go. Turn subsistence farmers into wage earners
so they can support their families, while they remain at their rural
farmers," said Dlamini.

The success of the approach will not be seen until next year, when
biofuel production is scheduled to begin.

Meanwhile, Swaziland requires agricultural reform now as much as when
crops were failing a year ago.
_______________________________

4. Police, warders' unions lose. Sabelo Mamba, The Swazi Observer,
February 5, 2008.

A High Court full bench yesterday dismissed an application brought by
the Swaziland Police Union and Correctional Services Union, who wanted
to be lawfully registered as unions to bargain collectively on behalf
of its members.

Judge Mbutfo Mamba, reading the judgement, said the constitutional
provisions acknowledge or take cognisance of the fact that public
officers at times have access to or were entrusted with sensitive and
confidential; state information in the performance of their public
duties.

In their capacity as public officers, they are not ordinary
employees, he added.

Justice Mamba said whilst they remained human beings and workers,
their office was such that it is different from or dissimilar to any
other ordinary office that it may be deserving of special treatment,
commensurate with the dictates or needs of each particular situation.

He said members of both unions were members of the Disciplined Forces.

This is common cause, he said. They are human beings. They are
workers. But they are special too. Their name or appellation says it
all. They are the Disciplined Forces and the rest of us, the Civilian
Population.

Their office and the work they do and how they do it, sets them
apart. They are law enforcement agents. They are entrusted with the
responsibility to maintain law and order, he continued.

The police have the onerous obligations or duty to protect all of us.
Their shorter Siswati motto captures this rather well; Silihawu LeSive
-We are the Shield of the Nation, he said.

Justice Mamba, who was sitting with Justices Jacobus Annandale and
Qinisile Mabuza, said theirs is a specialised, highly sensitive
national or public office.

He said for the aforegoing reasons, he held that there was no conflict
or discord between the provisions of Section 32 (2) and Section 39 (3).

The submission that Section 39 (3) takes away that which Section 32
(2) gives is in my view incorrect, he said.

Section 32 (2) reads as follows: A worker has a right to freely form,
join or not to join a trade union of the promotion and protection of
economic interests of that worker, and collective bargaining and
representation.

Meanwhile, Section 39 (3) reads: In relation to a person who is a
member of a disciplined force of Swaziland, nothing contained or done
under the authority of disciplinary law of that force shall be held to
be inconsistent with or in contravention of any of the provisions of
this Chapter other than sections 15, 17 or 18.

The government had argued that the applicants were prohibited by law
to form or join a trade union, adding that such was sanctioned by the
constitution.

Justice Mamba said Section 39 (3) of the constitution makes whatever
was contained or done under the authority of the disciplinary law of
Disciplined Force not be inconsistent with the provisions of Chapter 3
of the constitution, other than the sections referred above.

The net effect of all this is that the constitution says that what is
done under or contained in a disciplinary law of a Disciplined Force
shall be deemed to have been accordance with the constitution or at
least not inconsistent with the provisions of Chapter III thereof, he
remarked.

Justice Mamba continued: The applicants have not denied that Section
18 of the Prisons Act and Regulation 19 of the Police Act constitute a
Disciplinary law of a disciplined force.

They have, however, sought to have these laws set aside on the
grounds that they are draconian and colonial and archaic and not
consistent with an open, just, honest and democratic society, which
Swaziland is.

This may be true but the constitution does not share this view. It
has said whatever, is contained in or done under those laws is or
shall be held to be inconsistent with the provisions of Chapter III of
the constitution.

It follows, I think, that if the prohibition or restriction may not
be inconsistent with the constitution, whether the prohibitions is
demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society or reasonable,
does not come into reckoning.

For these reasons, the High Court dismissed the unions? contentions on
these two pieces of legislation. There was no order made in respect of
costs.

Appearing for government was Deputy Attorney General Mzwandile Fakudze
and lawyer Mndeni Vilakati while lawyers Thulani Maseko and Paul
Shilubane represented the unions.

_______________________________

5. The dark ages. South Africa's power crisis is having wider
repercussions. The Economist print edition (Johannesburg) 31 January
2008.

At the big Sandton mall in northern Johannesburg, idle shoppers stroll
in darkness. They have been caught in one of the many blackouts that
have plagued South Africa for three weeks. Shops are closed, unable to
open their tills or process credit cards. Ice-cream shops watch their
merchandise dissolve; food stalls are unable to offer coffee or
anything hot to eat.

In Cape Town a power cut trapped tourists in the cable car that goes
up Table Mountain, and in Pretoria angry commuters whose trains
stopped running set them on fire. In Johannesburg, which is congested
at the best of times, the roads become gridlocked when the traffic
lights go out.

Most shocking of all, the country's largest gold, platinum, coal and
diamond producers shut down their underground mines on January 25th,
after being told that their electricity supply could not be
guaranteed. Five days later, having been promised a stable supply,
they resumed production. But they will have to limit their power
consumption to 90% of the usual level. On January 29th the authorities
said power cuts and rationing would continue until July.

The strange thing is that, until a few years ago, South Africa was
producing more electricity than it needed. The apartheid regime,
obsessed with self-sufficiency, went on a power-station building binge
in the 1970s and 1980s. A few unneeded power stations were even
mothballed. South Africa has long taken abundant, low-cost
electricity?some of the cheapest in the world, thanks to the huge coal
reserves?for granted. This makes the current mess particularly
galling?and all the more so because it could easily have been avoided.

The government knew a decade ago that supply would run short in around
2007. Because of a successful electrification programme and healthy
economic growth, power demand was catching up fast with a capacity
that had not increased much since the 1980s. But the government got
caught up in a policy debate about the appropriate role for the
private sector in electricity generation, so it was only in 2004 that
Eskom, the state-owned utility that generates 95% of the country's
electricity, got permission to start building again. It is now busy
constructing new stations and dusting off those that were mothballed,
which should add another 17,000 megawatts by 2014. But frustrated
South Africans have been warned that periods of occasional blackouts,
euphemistically known as ?load shedding?, will be a fact of life for
at least another five years.

Thanks to growing demand and rising equipment prices, Eskom's
projected investment over the next five years has ballooned to about
300 billion rand ($41 billion). To foot the bill, it plans to borrow
and to slap double-digit price increases on consumers. But
credit-rating agencies are talking about downgrading the company,
which would make borrowing more expensive. So Eskom has asked the
government to help by providing fresh capital or credit guarantees.
The government, for its part, wants private firms to provide 30% of
South Africa's new electricity capacity. But only one private project
is under way so far. After much delay a consortium led by AES, an
American energy company, won a tender to build two plants that will
supply about 1,000 megawatts. If all goes well they should be running
late next year.

In the meantime, the reserve margin?the excess of generation capacity
over peak demand?has shrunk to about 8%, compared with the
international standard of at least 15%. This is too little to cope
with maintenance or breakdowns, which are on the rise since the power
plants are being run too hard. Questions are being asked about Eskom's
ability to maintain its power plants properly and repair them quickly.
At the moment 20% of its generation capacity is unavailable because of
maintenance or repair work, which is why Eskom has had to start
rationing power. Until new power plants become available, South
Africans will have to cut back their electricity consumption. The
newspapers are full of power-saving tips.

The government says with a straight face that the economy, which grew
by 5% last year, will not be affected. But that is hard to believe.
Mike Schussler of T-Sec, a stockbroker, reckons that about 600m rand a
day of export revenues were lost when the mines stopped work. Large,
power-hungry industrial projects, such as the expansion and
construction of aluminium smelters by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, need
guaranteed electricity supplies in order to go ahead. Small
businesses, already hit by rising interest rates, cannot afford
generators and are struggling to cope with power cuts. Farmers are
losing perishable products when their fridges stop working. According
to Azar Jammine of Econometrix, a consultancy, the economy is unlikely
to grow by any more than 3% this year, a far cry from the 6% the
government says is needed to halve unemployment by 2014.

The impact is also felt beyond South Africa's borders. Eskom is
rationing the electricity it exports to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia
and Swaziland. The interruption of mining has pushed up the prices of
gold and platinum. The crisis is likely to affect global platinum
markets, where supply has been tight for a few years, particularly:
South Africa produces over 75% of the world's supply. Carmakers, which
buy over half of global platinum production for use in catalytic
converters, must be praying South Africa will soon emerge from the
darkness.

____________________________

6. Global: Doomsday seed vault for food security. 31 January 2008
(IRIN). News and analysis: http://www.irinnews.org

Should a major catastrophe hit the planet; a doomsday seed vault deep
in the Arctic ice will ensure that survivors never go hungry.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built by the Norwegian government for
the benefit of mankind, is named after the archipelago where it is
located. The Rome-based non-governmental organisation, Global Crop
Diversity Trust, will fund its operation.

The vault is hidden in a mountain deep in the Arctic permafrost at the
village of Longyearbyen, and will house more than 200,000 crop
varieties from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The
seeds will bolster food security should any natural or manmade
disaster affect agricultural systems or gene banks.

The first seed collection will go into the vault on 26 February 2008
and the managers expect regular contributions until the vault contains
seeds of most of the world's crops. Seeds can only be accessed once
the original seed collections have been lost.

Duplicate seeds of existing varieties are drawn from the collection
maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR), which holds 600,000 plant varieties in crop gene
banks in its centres across the world.

On 31 January, the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical
Agriculture (IITA), a CGIAR affiliate, shipped 7,000 seed samples from
more than 36 African countries to Oslo, en route to the Longyearbyen
village.

The samples include unique varieties of domesticated and wild cowpeas,
maize, soybeans and the Bambara groundnut, which the IITA has been
collecting since the 1970s.

Most of the IITA seeds are placed under the auspices of the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, which holds them in trust
for the benefit of the global community.

The seeds will be stored at -18 degrees Celsius in specially designed,
five-ply aluminium foil packages inside sealed boxes stored on high
shelves inside the vault. The low temperature and limited access to
oxygen will ensure low metabolic activity and delay aging.

Gene banks important

The CGIAR collections have helped plant breeders searching for traits
to combat destructive crop diseases and pests, such as the black
sigatoka fungus, which is devastating banana production in East
Africa, and grain borer beetle, which is destroying maize in Kenya.

They have also been used to help restore agricultural systems after
conflicts and natural disasters. Seed varieties from Afghanistan and
Iraq maintained at the CGIAR-supported International Centre for
Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Aleppo, Syria, have
helped revitalise crop diversity in these war-torn regions.

"Svalbard will be able to help replenish gene banks if they're hit,"
said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity
Trust. Iraq's gene bank, in the town of Abu Ghraib, was ransacked by
looters in 2003, but fortunately there was a duplicate at the CGIAR
centre in Syria.

In 2006, typhoon Xangsane seriously damaged the national rice gene
bank of the Philippines. "Unfortunately, these kinds of national gene
bank horror stories are fairly commonplace," said Fowler. "The
Svalbard Global Seed Vault makes the CGIAR's gene bank collections
safer than ever."

After the Asian tsunami disaster in 2004, the CGIAR-supported
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) used its collections to
provide farmers with rice varieties suitable for growing in fields
that had been inundated with salt water.

The gene bank at the CGIAR-supported International Centre for Tropical
Agriculture (CIAT) in Palmira, Colombia, was instrumental in providing
bean varieties to help farmers in Honduras and Nicaragua recover from
Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Biodiversity vital

Biodiversity is critical in building crop resistance to pests and
diseases, and enabling cultivation in harsher conditions like drought,
salinity and flooding, which will likely increase with global climate
change, particularly in poor countries.

Cowpeas and dozens of other crops, like cassava, yams, and millets,
are known as "orphan" crops, because they receive less attention than
they deserve relative to their value and importance.

According to researchers at the World Vegetable Centre in Taiwan, up
to 27 "orphan" crops with a value of US$100 billion are grown on 250
million hectares (618 million acres) in developing countries.

"So called 'orphan' crops like cowpea and groundnut are not minor or
insignificant crops," said Fowler. "They are of great importance to
regional food security. In addition, they are often adapted to harsh
environments and are diverse in terms of their genetic, agroclimatic,
and economic niches."

_________________________________________________

7. China in Africa: lending, policy space and governance. Martine
Dahle Huse & Stephen L. Muyakwa, Norwegian Campaign for Debt
Cancellation (2008): http://www.slettgjelda.no Norwegian Council for
Africa, http://www.afrika.no


Executive summary

The report findings show that Chinese lending is generally welcome in
Africa. The loans that China provides often contribute to financing
infrastructure and other projects that African countries need.

However, it is of concern that China is lending to countries that
already have large debts outstanding. It is not the lending per se
that is problematic, since it seems that China?s lending occurs in
resource rich countries. What makes China a risk to debt
sustain¬ability in poor countries is the lack of transparency in loan
contraction processes. Loan contracts between China and African
countries are not open to public scrutiny. This leaves a lot of power
in the hands of a few African leaders.

As our case study from Zambia shows, loan contracts are often made at
the highest political level, and because of the lack of transparency,
the agreements are not available to parliament, civil society or media.

The lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess how much debt is
being contracted and on what terms. It also increases the risk that
funds will not be used for the intended purposes and might turn out to
be cases of illegitimate debt in the future. The report concludes that
in order to prevent irresponsible loan contraction, there is a need
for responsible lending prac¬tices to be put in place.

The report also aims to show that the presence of China as a lender in
Africa provides an alternative to the traditional donors within the
development paradigm. Chinese non-interference policy implies that
China does not have any conditions attached to loans apart from the
requirement to support the one-China principle and to reject the
legitimacy of Taiwan as a country.

Traditional donors on the other hand, have applied conditionality
aiming to change African economic policy. Following the
recent debt relief initiatives, traditional creditors such as the
World Bank and the IMF have less resources to draw on, and their
leverage in African countries is diminishing as countries have
benefited from debt relief and graduated from debt relief programs
monitored by these institutions.

The presence of new lenders, includ¬ing China as an alternative on the
creditor arena, is also increasing the leverage that African countries
have when dealing with traditional creditors. In many countries policy
space has increased as a result of China?s presence as an alternative
to creditors that apply policy condi¬tionality.

While the non-interference policy might be positively affecting
countries because it opens up policy space, it also has negative
consequences. China seems to be less concerned with hu¬man rights
standards and environmental safeguards than other creditors. The
presence of China in states that oppress the population is also very
controversial, and China has been criticised for playing the role of a
bystander in contexts where the international community have urged
Beijing to use its leverage to influence oppressive regimes to improve
their conduct.

Although it is too soon to conclude, so far it would seem that China
is likely to have a negative impact on debt sustainability and
perhaps contribute to debt crisis in countries where governance is
week. Lack of transparency and accountability to the inhabitants does
not seem to stand in the way of Chinese lending if a country is able
to use natural resources as collateral for loans. The development of
responsible financing and framework for implementation of such is
therefore paramount to ensure the rights of future generations to
freedom from vicious circles of indebtedness.

Recent Chinese lending underlines the urgent need to establish
internationally recognised legal standards for responsible lending.
The need for transparency, accountability and inclusiveness in loan
contraction processes should be recognised by international society.
Our case study concludes that the public should have a right to know
about and question borrowing, from new and old lenders, before loan
agreements are signed. It also recommends that oversight and watchdog
institutions such as the parliament, the auditor-general and the
attorney general must have clear mandatory authority over the loan
contraction process.
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