Search Results for: Malawi

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 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 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
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 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.…