In The News

Readying for Development

Nevine Khalil December 12, 2003
President Hosni Mubarak traveled from Cairo to Geneva for the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with one message: African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American states must work together to develop their capacities as "IT-savvy" states. President Mubarak envisions a well-integrated system of cooperation, where nations can help each other's development through...

Terror Takes Toll on Kenya's Tourism Industry

William Wallis December 8, 2003
Kenya's tourist industry used to be able to count on the Christmas season as a peak time of year. Now, after two terrorist attacks in recent years, UK and US officials are telling their citizens not to go, and people are heeding the warning. Hotels are seeing occupancy of 10-25% only, and the whole economy is being dragged down as a result. Kenyans feel unfairly singled out, for, as they...

China Steps Up to a Global Threat

John Gittings December 5, 2003
World AIDS Day on December 1 was marked in China by an unprecedented openness on the subject of HIV-AIDS. One of the nation's top leaders, Premier Wen Jiabao, visited patients in AIDS wards and proclaimed a new commitment to providing medical treatment for HIV-infected people and to prevention measures and education about the HIV virus. Veteran China watcher John Gittings writes that...

A New Opportunity in Cancun's Failure

Balakrishnan Rajagopal December 3, 2003
The failure of September's global trade talks in Cancun may have indicated disagreement on a global level, but the unified voice of a small coalition of countries showed that smaller scale negotiations can be very effective. The emergence of the G-22 bloc of smaller countries, says development expert Balakrishnan Rajagopal, harkens back to the Bandung meeting of 29 formerly colonized...

China Eases Foreign Entry into Bank Sector

James Kynge December 1, 2003
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), announced a loosening of regulations on foreign banks and finance companies on Monday. These changes are largely assumed to be a response to US and EU accusations that China engages in unfair trading practices, which violate their commitment to the WTO. Wen Jiabao is traveling to Washington...

Difficult Times for Coffee Industry as Demand Falls

Tony Smith November 25, 2003
The international market for coffee is not good for the world's millions of coffee farmers. Facing prices at a 30-year low and production increases that outstrip demand, hundreds of thousands of coffee farm workers in Central America and Brazil are being forced off the land or into production of more profitable, yet harmful, coca production. Some former farmers are moving north to find work...

An Indigenous World

Moisés Naím November 25, 2003
Despite the spread of disease and exploitation, the rise of global forces has not been all bad for the estimated 350 million indigenous people around the world, says Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim. In fact, in can also empower them. Across Latin America, Naim says, "constitutional changes… have given indigenous peoples far more political advantages than ever before." Globalization...