Sub-Saharan Africa has natural resources that aids the development of renewable energy, it has lots of sun, plentiful wind, and much potentially sustainable biomass. With the development of small-scale affordable renewable energy technologies, such systems have been promoted by major aid agencies keen to prevent deforestation and excessive reliance on fossil fuels, that – even where they are plentiful, have not usually led to widespread economic development.

African universities must undertake strategic collaborations, boost innovation and develop entrepreneurial initiatives, targeting the needs of students to remain relevant in the future, a higher education conference in Nigeria has been told. These concerns formed the core of discussions when public and private sector tertiary education experts gathered over Zoom and in-person in Lagos to discuss the future of African universities at the second edition of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) International Week conference.…

THE NEED for a proactive effort to improve the teaching and researching of physics in sub-Saharan Africa, as a foundation for critically important scientific work, has been highlighted in a new report from the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and the UK-based Institute of Physics (IOP).…

Malawi, one the world’s largest producer of burley leaf tobacco, is making significant efforts to reduce child labour within its tobacco left sector, but the problem is still endemic.

A key sensitivity is that Malawi’s economy heavily relies on tobacco leaf, which contributes to 52% of the total export value for the country, according to the Malawi ministry of finance 2020 annual economic report.…

Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera has been honoured as a ‘Champion of Higher Education in Africa’ by the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM).

This consortium of 129 African universities within 38 countries said it decided to honour President Chakwera for his government’s efforts in promoting inclusive higher education in Malawi and in other African countries.…

The delinking of Malawi’s oldest institution of higher learning, the University of Malawi (UNIMA) into three separate universities has been accomplished, 11 years after former President Bingu wa Mutharika mooted the idea to UNIMA Council in 2009.

Mutharika only managed to delink Bunda College in 2011 to create Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) before his death in 2012 and his successor President Joyce Banda shelved the process.…

Mozambique’s tobacco leaf and processing sector is facing tough times. Cyclones such as this January’s Eloise, and Idai in 2019 have wreaked significant damage on tobacco plantations. Covid-19 has caused processing disruption and harmed legitimate distribution, encouraging an increase in black market cigarette sales.…

Malawi’s higher education may have suffered through Covid-19, but the pandemic has encouraged efforts to build online and distance learning (ODL) operating through special satellite centres run by universities and colleges.

Out of Malawi’s 19 tertiary institutions, five have made serious progress in such services, with Mzuzu University, in northern Malawi, leading the way, pioneering ODL in 2006, when the institution was just eight years old.…

The Malawi government has ordered the ruling council of the University of Malawi (UNIMA) to push ahead with delinking its constituent colleges, despite the project being suspended on January 20.

The council voted on that day to suspend the creation of independent universities from its colleges, claiming that a 2017 decision authorising the process was not in line with Malawi law at the time and hence ‘ultra vires’.…

A University of Malawi (UNIMA) Council’s decision to suspend a planned delinking of the university’s constituent colleges into independent universities has generated fears that the plan – hatched over six years ago – will ultimately be frustrated. After a consultative process President Lazarus Chakwera, last November, last year had given assent to a final bill on the delinking of UNIMA.…

Malawi universities and colleges have been closed for three weeks from Monday January 18, following a second wave of Covid-19 that has taken a heavy toll, with daily reports of increasing infections and deaths.

This includes two cabinet ministers who died earlier this month – public works minister Sidik Mia and local government minister Lingson Belekanyama.…

The Internet has hardly developed a reputation for honesty, but blockchain technologies where different computers log transactions in separate units, connected to a web of entries (blocks), are tough to falsify.

Of course, blockchain’s most high-profile use has been to underpin the reliability of cryptocurrencies, but the principle of this unchangeable and autonomous web of ledgers has so many potential uses – the tobacco sector has been exploring them.…

Malawi is set to reopen its universities and colleges on September 7, with a phased re-launch, the country’s new education minister Agnes Nyalonje has announced in the capital Lilongwe, ending a six-month lockdown forced by Covid-19. The first students to be readmitted physically to Malawi’s higher education facilities will be students who are approaching final examinations, with other students being readmitted from September 28, although the exact timetable will need to be approved case-by-case by the education ministry.…

MALAWI universities are counting the cost of a Covid-19 lockdown that has been in place since March 23, which the government has now said will end on July 13. The resulting closure of public and private universities across the country left tertiary institutions reeling, although students have told UWN that they are happy that a resumption of their studies is now in sight.…

Malawi’s higher education sector will not be open for business as usual this week (from July 13), despite earlier government recommendations that the country’s Covid-19 lockdown (in place since March 23) be lifted. This is because the country is facing spiralling infection rate and death rates from the coronavirus.…

Kenya will start to grow genetically modified cotton this year, becoming the first country to do so in Eastern Africa. The move is significant as it is likely to inspire other counties in the region start to grow Bt cotton hybrids that are resistant to African bollworm and other pests.…

MALAWI’s government has said it has entered into talks with the USA government after the USA Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency issued an ‘withhold release order’ on imports of products containing Malawi tobacco over concerns that child labour continues in the southern African country’s leaf production and processing sector.…

EVERY manufacturing and agricultural industry has an impact on climate change – and the tobacco sector is no different. Faced with long-standing criticism of the health impact of its products, the tobacco industry is now facing attacks that its work generates carbon emissions and hence climate change.…

MONEY service businesses (MSBs) are having a tougher time operating in compliance with international AMF/CFT rules, especially those in emerging market countries, where they have to deal with a double challenge of tighter controls and derisking by banking partners.

MSBs throughout the Middle East, for instance, have been hit by derisking from correspondent banks as well as designations by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).…

AFRICA is without doubt the continent to watch for airport and air traffic control investment in the future. It is the world’s second most populous continent (home to more than 1.2 billion people), and according to Airports Council International (World) – ACI World – Africa was the fastest growing region for air passenger traffic in 2017 and 2018, which rose 6.3% in 2017 year-on-year and 10.8% in 2018 to June year-to-date, year-on-year.…

WITH Malawi’s persistent cycle of poverty where half of its 18 million population (2017 World Bank data) live under the poverty line and nearly 1.5 million children employed as labourers, according to International Labour Organisation (ILO) data, including on tobacco farms – meaningful reforms to prevent these abuses have progressed slowly, experts say.…

MAJOR universities from six African countries will next year (2019) be able to develop their services through each receiving USD20 million grants from the World Bank, via a regional rural development research initiative, with the money designed to turn these institutions into regional hubs for agricultural learning.…

MALAWI, a major African tobacco exporter, is seeking to modernise its leaf production through a comprehensive new law, which is now under discussion in its parliament.

Felix Thole, acting chief executive officer of the Tobacco Association of Malawi, said that the crafting of a new Malawi law, a Tobacco Bill, is expected to further improve the fortunes of the industry, including through the introduction of an ‘Integrated Production System’ (IPS), formalising contracting with growers, as a statutory requirement.…

EDUCATIONALISTS have called upon Kenyan universities to include social justice and transformation in their teaching curriculum, to prepare graduates to serve their societies selflessly and diligently.

At a conference called ‘Touching Hearts, Teaching Minds and Transforming Lives’, staged at Tangaza University College, in the capital Nairobi, delegates were told Kenyan students are not fully prepared for the society they are expected work and serve within, upon graduation in the current system.…

CORRUPTION saps economic competition that drives productivity improvements and grows emerging market economies – this is a key reason behind the establishment of the Commonwealth Africa Anti-Corruption Centre (CAACC). Another is the established link between the perception of risk from corrupt practices in a country and foreign economic investment.…

THE IMPORTANCE of Brazil as the world’s top supplier of internationally-traded tobacco leaf and manufactured products has been waning for the past decade, with India, notably, improving its position. New statistical analysis released by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) shows that this market share fall for Brazil also represented a decline in volume sales, given the global trade in tobacco leaf and products has shrunk since 2013 – until 2016, the year for which the latest data is available.…

WITH tobacco being a key driver of Zambia’s agriculture sector and a past reliable source of export earnings, a recent decline in leaf production has taken a heavy toll on this southern African country’s economy. Indeed, Zambia saw its agricultural foreign exchange earnings (of all farm-based products) fall by USD100 million in 2017, according to Zambia’s agriculture ministry.…

Kenya is likely to become the second country in east Africa after Rwanda to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, for commercial purposes, according to Capt. Gilbert Kibe, director general of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA).

Speaking during a ‘Drones East Africa Conference’ held in Nairobi on June 20-21, Kibe briefed delegates on draft regulations that will open Kenya skies to UAVs: “The policy procedures and regulations for remotely piloted aircraft systems…have been approved and will provide a roadmap to the industry,” Kibe told delegates at the event, organised by the International Quality and Productivity Centre (IQPC).…

Demand is growing for a major international programme designed to support developing countries build up their tax audit capacity and – critically – the funding is there to meet that need. Launched as a joint initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in July 2015 after an initial pilot phase, Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) sees tax experts work side-by-side with local officials in developing and emerging markets.…

KENYA’S EDUCATION MINISTER CALLS FOR LESS GOVERNMENT MEDDLING IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT

Kenya’s education minister has called for African governments to pull away from direct management of their country’s universities, saying such meddling is unnecessary and can hinder the development of effective management.…

While many economies in Africa are growing fast, there is a consensus amongst accountants that the continent has to build its business reporting and administration to make sure this growth is sustainable. Indeed, the third African Congress of Accountants (ACOA), staged in Port Louis, Mauritius, from May 11 to 14, heard that this essential work is needed now, even as some countries remain marred by severe socio-political unrest, economic instability, poverty, famine and disease.…

The Open University of Tanzania (OUT) is reaching out to higher education institutions in other neighbouring countries to establish collaborations that will encourage more foreign students to enroll for distance learning.
University vice chancellor Professor Tolly Mbwette said the institution’s board hoped to spread its influence regionally: “We are now the largest distance learning university in the region and our plan is to take distance learning to most countries in East Africa and those under the Southern African Development Community [SADC] by 2016.”…

ECUADOR, an important confectionery exporter to the European Union (EU), has struck a new bilateral free trade agreement with the EU, which will eliminate tariffs on imports to Europe. The new trade deal is supposed to take effect in late 2016, and until then a system of preferential tariffs will be in place.…

NURSING is always a challenging profession, but the chance to use life-saving health skills in the wake of natural disasters and civil conflicts is valuable to many nurses.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) tap a UK International Emergency Trauma Register (UKIETR) database established by UK-Med, which includes the details of nurses and doctors available to be flown into disaster zones where local health services have been overwhelmed.…

PLANS to exploit Malawi’s oil and gas potential are continuing apace despite a border dispute with neighbouring Tanzania that affects some of the exploration sites.

Geological investigations have indicated that conditions are favourable for oil and gas to exist beneath Lake Malawi and the Lower Shire Valley in southern Malawi, both part of the East African Rift System.…

THE WORLD’S tobacco trade is not always a straightforward affair, being held up by export and import licence applications, port dues, quality checks, corruption and unusual red tape. A new World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Facilitation, struck last December, is designed to ease some of these difficulties.…

MALAWI’S government is working furiously to win back international donor support suspended over a multi-million euro corruption scandal involving dozens of officials and ministers close to the country’s leader, Joyce Banda, southern Africa’s first female president. Bill Corcoran reports from Lilongwe.…

Botswana’s first private university, the Malaysian-owned Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (Limkokwing Botswana), has continued to flex its muscles in this diamond-rich Southern Africa nation, taking advantage of a fast growing tertiary education sector. Botswana’s college and university student (aged 18-24) enrollment has grown from 11.4% in 2007/08 to 16.4% in 2012, or 46,613 students.…

The Malawian government has welcomed the United States’ decision to restore preferential treatment to sub-Saharan African clothing and textile companies under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). However, it says serious challenges have undermined the sector’s ability to take advantage of a provision in existence since 2000.…

A SALUTARY lesson learnt by the western world since the financial meltdown in 2008, is that there is no easy formula for ensuring economic growth. Despite the resilience of the United States and European institutions, markets and skills, restarting the economic engine has proved sluggish.…

EXPERTS representing accounting bodies from around the world urged accountants in Africa to help reduce corruption and mismanagement in their governments through effective bookkeeping and auditing, as the continent moves towards sustainable growth. The 2^nd Africa Congress of Accountants (ACOA) gathered in Accra, the capital of Ghana, from May 14-16.…

IF there is one paint ingredient that marketers agree should be left off the label, it has to be lead. General and scientific opinion agrees this metal causes health problems and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), working with the UN Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) has embarked on plans to eliminate architectural and household lead paints in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2020.…

SOUTH Africa’s paint and coatings industry is expected to increase in value from 560.0 million in 2009 to USD712.47 million in 2016, according to market analysts Frost & Sullivan. But the sector has faced tough times since the global financial crisis hit in 2008, and is only now recovering from the recession that hit South Africa as a result, and that recovery has been slow.…

BY WACHIRA KIGOTHI, IN NAIROBI, AND WANG FANGQING, IN SHANGHAI

China’s powerful clothing and textile industry is looking for continued growth in sub-Saharan Africa, whose local manufacturers and brands are worrying about how to deal with the competition.

According to William Gumede, a senior research fellow at the University of Witwatersrand’s school of public and development management in South Africa, Chinese domination of Africa’s textile markets and its industry has promoted significant job losses.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, IN CAPE TOWN

SOUTH Africa has deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) to rival that of Australia, and the country is poised to take advantage of this increasingly strategic resource, according to Mintek, the government’s mineral technology organisation.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, IN CAPE TOWN; MOHAMMED YUSUF, IN NAIROBI; AND KEITH NUTHALL

A BOOK launched at last December’s Durban international climate change conference has focused on the growing potential for sugar to be a biofuel feedstock in Africa. ‘Bioenergy for Sustainable Development and International Competitiveness:

The Role of Sugar Cane in Africa’ was written by 44 authors representing 30 organisations in 16 countries and was published by Routledge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD Bank is planning to spend USD25.6 million improving the efficiency of pharmaceutical supplies to help Malawi defeat its continuing HIV/AIDS epidemic. A programme includes disposing of pharmaceutical wastes in sealed pits or incineration, while large quantities of unused pharmaceuticals are returned to suppliers if possible.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN and ALYSHAH HASHAM

THE SMALL West African country of Guinea Bissau has seen its share of bloody coups, and is known as a cocaine smuggling hub between Latin America and Europe. Continued lawlessness and corruption in the country helped forced the European Union (EU) to withdraw support from security sector reform in 2010.…

BY BILL CORCORAN

Mozambique’s fledgling tobacco leaf industry faces tough challenges

Mozambique’s young tobacco leaf industry is growing despite sometimes difficult climactic conditions. It mainly grows Burley – which is under pressure from World Health Organisation guidelines. And Zimbabwe competition is a potential complication.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SIGNIFICANT benefits to tobacco and tobacco product companies will present themselves if a deal on the long-running Doha Development Round is clinched next year at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). And some diplomats at the WTO’s base in Geneva are asking if agreement is not reached next year, whether the current negotiations will be scrapped.…

BY MINI PANT ZACHARIAH

BOB DYLAN was spot on: "One man’s loss always is another man’s gain." The stringent anti-smoking laws passed in India as a result of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) framework convention on tobacco control’s have stubbed out cigarettes from public places.…

BY MINI PANT ZACHARIAH

BOB DYLAN was spot on: "One man’s loss always is another man’s gain." The stringent anti-smoking laws passed in India as a result of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) framework convention on tobacco control’s have stubbed out cigarettes from public places.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and ALYSHAH HASHAM

CANADA – long a difficult jurisdiction for the tobacco sector – became tougher still on July 5, when a national ban on manufacturing and selling most flavoured cigarettes, cigarillos and blunt wraps came into force.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IF a global poll was taken to identify the best known international organisation, the Egmont Group would be lucky to get a mention, despite it linking 116 financial intelligence units (FIU) worldwide.

It is partly to raise profile that the group last June appointed its first chair, Luis Urrutia, who heads Mexico’s FIU.…

BY BILL CORCORAN and ALAN OSBORN

IT is now some five years since a group of London-based multinationals, among them British American Tobacco (BAT), set up a group aimed at improving the conditions for doing business with and through Africa – named the Business Action for Improving Customs Administration in Africa (BAFICAA) initiative.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A KILLER disease is decimating fish stocks in the Zambezi river valley, threatening rural livelihoods in Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned. Its ‘global information and early warning system’ (GIEWS) says the disease ‘epizootic ulcerative syndrome’ (EUS) (caused by a fungus ‘aphanomyces invadans’ with "a high rate of mortality") is spreading through the Zambesi system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IT has long been outmoded and inaccurate to split the world into two camps: industrialised developed economies, and largely agricultural developing countries. The growth of the 1990s and the current decade means there is a wide range of social and economic sophistication and wealth amongst the poorer of these two old-fashioned categories.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

"THE STONE Age did not end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil," said Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani in 2003, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia. Six years on Mr Yamani’s words appear to ring true more than ever before – with alternative fuels becoming a viable petroleum substitute.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo, EMMA JACKSON and LEAH GERMAIN

TIME was when counterfeit personal care products were commonly crude fake perfumes pedalled in markets and workplaces during the Christmas and other festive periods to bargain hunters who knew they were buying rubbish.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A BOUNTY of cheap carbon free energy is lurking beneath many developing countries in the shape of geothermal power generation, with new technology making it cheaper and easier to source than ever before. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Kenyan power company KenGen have carried out a demonstration project testing advanced seismic and drilling techniques to make geothermal power plants cheaper to build.…

BY CLEMENCE MANYUKWE

ZIMBABWE tobacco farmer Kobus Joubert looks to the heavens gloomily as he prepares to sleep by the roadside next to his Chegutu farm. Those who know him say they have only seen that look when there is an impending drought.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

A NEW initiative to improve the health, wealth and environment of Africans is being driven by the Kyoto Protocol’s international trades in carbon credits. This allows wealthy developed countries to scale back their emission reductions, if they can invest in slashing greenhouse gas pollution abroad.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

THE WIDESPREAD implementation of new technological developments in Malawi’s flue-cured tobacco process could enable local producers to dramatically increase their output and its quality, according to industry experts.

Results from tests run during Malawi’s latest tobacco curing season using a new method of heating have shown a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency over standard methods, and an improved quality of the end product compared to traditionally cured tobacco.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

THE WIDESPREAD implementation of new technological developments in Malawi’s flue-cured tobacco process could enable local producers to dramatically increase their output and its quality, according to industry experts.

Results from tests run during Malawi’s latest tobacco curing season using a new method of heating have shown a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency over standard methods, and an improved quality of the end product compared to traditionally cured tobacco.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

"TEA is known to be good for you, now it is also getting better for the environment:" so said UN Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director Achim Steiner, when launching renewable power initiatives in east Africa. UNEP is coordinating two Global Environment Facility (GEF)-financed projects greening tea production in the region, where it is a pivotal industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IT is common currency amongst extreme British Eurosceptics that business and government on the continent of Europe is a cesspit of dishonesty and corruption, against which Britain shines like a beacon of virtue and decency.

Allowing "Europeans" who lack Britain’s traditional sense of fair play and transparency control over the laws and regulations mandated by the "Mother of Parliaments" is heresy to such folk.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

ONGOING recruitment of South African nurses to the UK is pushing South Africa’s already hard pressed public health system close to the brink of collapse and putting patient care at risk, the country’s lead nursing union and health experts have warned.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

AFRICA’S tobacco leaf producers are facing troubled times.

Instead of capitalising on crop and currency woes in rival Brazil, too many producers across the world’s poorest continent are battling drought and low selling prices.

Brazil’s problems should have opened a door of opportunity for leading African producers to claim back at least part of the world leaf market lost to south American and other producers when Zimbabwe’s crop collapsed amid the violent seizure of white-owned farm land.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

THE FORTEEN countries of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) have their AML/CFT work cut out. Under-funded, lacking resources, short of political will and working in a region that leaks money like a sieve…it is a demanding context for the group’s daunting tasks.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS in Johannesburg

DROUGHT-HIT and AIDS-ravaged southern Africa is faced with a looming humanitarian crisis with almost 12 million people in need of food aid. But genetically modified (GM) crops remain off the menu for most African governments who remain reluctant to allow their farmers to do business with GM giants Monsanto and Syngenta.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg

THE PAINT and coatings industries in the Southern African states of Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho and Zambia are closely linked to that of the regional economic giant South Africa in the that the major manufacturing plants are located in the industrialised area of South Africa’s Gauteng province with branch offices in the neighbouring states acting as agents for the parent companies in South Africa.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL tea production hit a new record high in 2004, growing 2% to reach an estimated 3.2 million tonnes, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has reported. The expansion was mainly due to increases in Turkey, China, Kenya, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, offsetting declines in other major producing countries, notably India and Bangladesh.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

DROUGHT-HIT and AIDS-ravaged southern Africa is faced with a looming humanitarian crisis with almost 12 million people in need of food aid. But genetically modified (GM) crops remain off the menu for most African governments who remain reluctant to allow their farmers to do business with GM giants Monsanto and Syngenta.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg

THE PAINT and coatings industries in the Southern African states of Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho and Zambia are closely linked to that of the regional economic giant South Africa in the that the major manufacturing plants are located in the industrialised area of South Africa’s Gauteng province with branch offices in the neighbouring states acting as agents for the parent companies in South Africa.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HIV and AIDS are so-ravaging southern Africa that local life expectancy rates are tumbling to where 30-year-olds are considered old men. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has reported cataclysmic falls in life expectancy in Zambia, where 32.7% HIV infection rates for adults aged 15-49 has cut average mortality ages from 47.4 in 1990 to 32.7 in 2002.…

BY RICHARD HURST
MONEY laundering is all about fake respectability, transforming the seedy and ill-gotten into the legitimate and well-earned; so in Africa, where better to launder criminal money than through the continent’s most developed economy, South Africa.

Mike Savage, partner at Ernst & Young South Africa, said that the biggest problem facing African governments wanting to seriously tackle money laundering is to pinpoint the movement of funds that are moved across porous borders in a bid to cover tracks and conceal sources.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is facing a mass attack on its sugar export subsidies at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). They have been formally challenged by both Australia and Brazil, with the Ivory Coast, Congo, Madagascar, Columbia, Canada, Kenya, Barbados, India, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Jamaica, Swaziland, Fiji, Guyana and Mauritius expected to line up behind them in support.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE MALAWI government is seeking a strategic equity partner for its largest textile plant, David Whitehead & Sons, which it owns the entity through its para-statal the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation. Peter Kaleso, the Malawian minister of commerce and industry said that his department had been engaged with local and foreign consultants to find a buyer.…

BY RICHARD HURST
THE MALAWIAN government has announced that it has set up a Malawi Oil Exploration Company to explore for crude oil deposits in its territory. Charles Kaphwiyo director of the Malawian geological surveys said that exploration is expected to begin on Lake Malawi where earlier research had signalled potential hydrocarbon resources.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
CIGARETTES have changed a great deal in recent years though not all smokers may realise by just how much. Once it was commonplace to roll your own, using local tobaccos. Today the market is dominated by filters and international brands, many of them ranking among the world’s best-known consumer products.…

BTY MARK ROWE
THE TOBACCO industry has not been exempt from the problem of young children working in developing countries. But in the past 12 months BAT has taken significant steps to address the question of child labour. Earlier this year it helped launch the Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation, which supports community-based initiatives to address the issue.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has approved the lending of Euro 300,000 to help finance a Euro 1.8 million feasibility study into the viability of extracting strontianite ore at Kangankunde, in Malawi, southern Africa, and then processing it into marketable strontium carbonate.…

BY RICHARD HURST
USA President George W. Bush has approved 35 African countries as eligible for tariff preferences regarding clothing and textile exports to America under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), with Zimbabwe and Gambia being notable sub-Saharan African pariahs from the move.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A HOLISTIC global campaign against HIV/AIDS has been agreed by Rome-based UN agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Fund for Agriculture Development and the World Food Programme. The trio will work to minimise the effect on food production of AIDS epidemics in countries where the disease is particularly widespread, namely Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.…