Access to medicines and the TRIPS Agreement: what next for sub-Saharan Africa?

When the proposal for an international intellectual property (IP) rights protection was included as an item in the agenda for negotiation in the Uruguay Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, it was strongly opposed by developing countries including Brazil, India, Argentina and others. The developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs) from Africa, realising the difficulties the Agreement would put them in, had vigorously campaigned against the inclusion of IP rights protection within the multilateral trading system. One of the chief areas of concern for the developing countries and LDCs was the difficulty of accessing affordable medicines under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime. While the resistance was gradually eroded and eventually neutralised during the long drawn Uruguay Round of Negotiations, the developing countries and the LDCs gained a few concessions in the post-TRIPS era in the form of Doha Declaration, which in their opinion would have given them the opportunity to invoke the emergency provisions of the Agreement in times of need to access essential medicines for their citizens. This was not to be the case, as the ground realities were difficult to manoeuvre and there were more impediments to invoking the flexibilities than originally perceived. This article will suggest that the best option available for sub-Saharan Africa is seeking an outright amendment of the TRIPS Agreement, as working within the parameters of the Agreement to achieve the goal of access to affordable medicines is not a viable option. It will also be argued that unless it acts urgently to seek the amendment it may be too late, as it could find itself left behind by both developing countries from other continents and patent-holding developed countries alike.     

Developing land use/land cover parameterization for climate–land modelling in East Africa

Regional climate modeling studies now have numerous choices in selecting land use/land cover (LULC) products to provide land surface parameter information. The various LULC products were developed with different objectives, methods and data sources. Not all new LULC products have land classes that match the land class types defined in climate models. More importantly, when used in regional climate models, simulation results can vary significantly depending on the LULC products. Thus, developing appropriate LULC parameterization for climate models becomes critical depending on objectives and efforts. The objective of this paper is to develop the most accurate LULC scheme possible for East Africa for implementation in the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS). A crosswalk procedure, based on assessments of various LULC products, was performed connecting land class types in RAMS and the newly created LULC scheme. No simulations are discussed here; rather, we present an outline of the procedures that were carried out to take advantage of the strengths of currently available LULC products, Africover and Global Land Cover 2000, for the purpose of conducting regional climate simulations.     

A knowledge economy or an information society in Africa? Thintegration and the mobile phone revolution

Much has been written about the impacts of new information and communication technology in Africa and its transformational socio-economic impacts. The penetration of mobile phones in particular has been particularly marked in recent years. This paper seeks to interrogate the hypothesis of transformation by examining the ways in which Africa is integrated into the global mobile phone value chain, and then the uses to which this technology is put on the continent. There is a fundamental distinction between having a knowledge economy and an information society. While mobiles are having significant, and sometimes welfare-enhancing impacts, their use is embedded in existing relations of social support, and also conflict. Consequently, their impacts are dialectical, facilitating change, but also reinforcing existing power relations. While Africa may be an information society, it is not, as yet, developing a knowledge economy. Mobile phone usage then represents a form of thin, rather than thick, integration (“thintegration”) in the global economy, which, because it does not lead to high value-added exports, does not fundamentally alter the continent's dependent position.     

ICT: performance evaluation of community development worker’s in South Africa on e-skills*

ABSTRACT

Community development service practitioners have been increasingly burdened with a broader range of responsibilities and ICT could enhance their productivity. Therefore, it is prudent to incorporate information communication technology (ICT) skills into the skills matrix required by the practitioners in order to deliver the service effectively. Furthermore, ICT use is prevalent in almost every organization, therefore, ICT can also serve as a major factor in flexibility of delivery of community development service to the communities, but only if the practitioners possess adequate skills in using ICT tools (software applications) in retrieving, presenting and disseminating valuable and adequate information within the workplace to the parties involved. The study determines the current work conditions, level of performance and expertise in the use of ICT among community development workers (CDWs) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, by evaluating their abilities and experiences, with a view to identify the areas to enhance their effectiveness. Determining the competency of their use of ICT applications is not an easy task; thus a survey methodology was adopted, with a sample of 189 CDWs (63% female and 37% male). Respondents were given the opportunity to rate of their own current ability to use common computer software applications.     

Interannual variability of NDVI over Africa and its relation to El Niño/Southern Oscillation

The array of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) products now being derived from satellite imagery open up new opportunities for the study of short and long-term variability in climate. Using a time series analysis procedure based on the Principal Components transform, and a sequence of monthly Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)-derived NDVI imagery from 1986 through 1990, we examine trends in variability of vegetation greenness for Africa for evidence of climatic trends. In addition to the anticipated seasonal trends, we identify signals of interannual variability. The most readily identified is one that periodically affects Southern Africa. It is shown that the temporal loadings for this component exhibit a very strong relationship with the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Index derived from atmospheric pressure patterns in the Pacific, Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, and with anomalous Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR). However, we have also detected a second interannual variation, affecting most particularly East Africa and the Sahel, that does not exhibit a consistent ENSO relationship. The results show the teleconnection patterns between climatic conditions in the Pacific Ocean basin and vegetation conditions at specific regional locations over Africa. The comprehensive spatial character and high temporal resolution of these data offer exciting prospects for deriving a land surface index of ENSO and mapping the impacts of ENSO activity at continental scale. This study illustrates that vegetation reflectance data derived from polar orbiting satellites can serve as good proxy for the study of interannual climate variability.     

Communication for reconstruction and development: The information highway as basic infrastructure in the new South Africa∗

Abstract

The development of technological capabilities was the cornerstone of the Brazilian policies for the information industries in Brazil during the 1980s. Liberalisation promoted since the early 1990s aimed at the fulfillment of the local demand with up‐dated products and services. This article examines the repercussions of these changes on local firms’ strategies towards technology and what have been the consequences on the industrial structure of the sector. The analysis suggests that ‘core competencies’ of local firms have been severely harmed and that foreign firms’ reactions to the policy changes have been less significant than what had been anticipated.     

Long‐term monitoring of land cover changes based on Landsat imagery to improve hydrological modelling in West Africa

The spatial and temporal variability of land cover changes is a fundamental parameter to integrate when modelling water resources in order to reproduce the relations between rainfall and surface flow more precisely. This is particularly important in West Africa, where the land cover has been changing for more than 40 years under the combined impact of climatic effects and human activities. In this study, we evaluated the potential of Landsat imagery to monitor the vegetation cover in the upper Niger watershed (120 000 km²) using archive images from MSS, TM and ETM+ sensors covering three periods of time around 1975, 1985, and 2000. Because of the heterogeneity of the acquisition dates, the spatial and spectral resolution of the images, and the scale of analysis, we chose a simple system of classification. Pretreatments were applied to reduce variations between the images. Vegetation indices (NDVI) were then calculated and subsequently thresholded using the same land‐cover classification system. The thresholds were then optimized by automated recursive calculations of confusion matrices and control parcels. Our results revealed that although the accuracy was not perfect, it was nevertheless possible to estimate changes using an unconventional spatio‐temporal scale. The resulting changes were characterized by a moderate trend to deforestation with a corresponding increase in bare soils, soils with sparse vegetation, and shrublands. The spatial layers produced were then combined with a soil map to incorporate changes in surface conditions in the hydrological modelling of the Niger River.     

Estimating burned area for Tropical Africa for the year 1990 with the NOAA-NASA Pathfinder AVHRR 8 km land dataset

The international scientific community recognizes the long-term monitoring of biomass burning as important for global climate change, vegetation disturbance and land cover change research on the Earth's surface. Although high spatial resolution satellite images may offer a more detailed view of land surfaces, their limited area coverage and temporal sampling have restricted their use to local research rather than global monitoring. Low spatial resolution images provide an invaluable source for the detection of burned areas in vegetation cover (scars) at global scale along time. However, the automated burned area mapping algorithm applicable at continental or global scale must be sufficiently robust to accommodate the global variation in burned scar signals. Here, the estimation of the percentage of a pixel area affected by a fire is crucial. In a first step, an empirical method is used which is based on a function between the change in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the surface area affected by fire. Next, a new statistical method, based on the Monte Carlo algorithm, is applied to compute probabilities of burned pixels percentages in different neighbourhood conditions.     

Are ICT investments paying off in Africa? An analysis of total factor productivity in six West African countries from 1995 to 2002

In the past two decades, we have seen increasing debate about information and communication technology (ICT) as an engine of growth that could lift developing nations out of poverty. Many African nations have implemented market liberalization and invested huge sums of money into their ICT sectors. But few studies have been conducted to assess the effectiveness of these investments. Demonstrating ICT sector performance is especially important because of challenges of the development of ICT policy and the United Nations agencies inability to state firmly if there are benefits to these investments. In this article, we investigated the total factor productivity (TFP) of the ICT sectors in six West African countries from 1995 to 2002. While the findings demonstrate positive growth in TFP, there is cause for concern. TFP growth in the ICT sector has been declining, and these countries are not yet able to take advantage of scale efficiencies. Careful attention must be given to future ICT investment strategies and performance management of existing ICT infrastructure if continued growth is to be achieved. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Recent land‐cover/use change associated with land degradation in the Lake Baringo catchment,Kenya, East Africa: evidence from Landsat TM and ETM+

Many parts of East Africa are experiencing dramatic changes in land‐cover/use at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, due to both climatic variability and human activities. Information about such changes is often required for planning, management, and conservation of natural resources. Several methods for land cover/change detection using Landsat TM/ETM+ imagery were employed for Lake Baringo catchment in Kenya, East Africa. The Lake Baringo catchment presents a good example of environments experiencing remarkable land cover change due to multiple causes. Both the NDVI differencing and post‐classification comparison effectively depicted the hotspots of land degradation and land cover/use change in the Lake Baringo catchment. Change‐detection analysis showed that the forest cover was the most affected, in some sections recording reductions of over 40% in a 14‐year period. Deforestation and subsequent land degradation have increased the sediment yield in the lake resulting in reduction in lake surface area by over 10% and increased turbidity confirmed by the statistically significant increase (t = ?84.699, p<0.001) in the albedo between 1986 and 2000. Although climatic variations may account for some of the changes in the lake catchment, most of the changes in land cover are inherently linked to mounting human and livestock population in the Lake Baringo catchment.