Weekly Compass highlights – Great Insights, Volume 5, Issue 3 (May/June 2016)
Towards European development diplomacy in the #EUGlobalStrategy Weekly Newsletter, 13 May 2016 Unless heads of State decide otherwise, the EU will have a new Global Strategy for foreign and security policy by the end of June. One of the building blocks of the EU Global Strategy is development diplomacy. The latter, in line with the new 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development Goals, focuses on prosperity, human dignity and sustainability. Both the EUGS and the 2030 Agenda provide the opportunity to design a sound and effective EU development diplomacy. To achieve this, the EU and its Member States need to keep in mind three key principles: development is political; the EU Global Strategy needs thoughtful wording; and the added-value of EU action on development-related issues needs to be considered. CAADP’s future? Focus on informal private sector and politics! Weekly Newsletter, 29 April 2016 Two weeks ago, Francesco Rampa, Head of ECDPM’s Food Security Programme, attended the 12th CAADP Partnership Platform in Accra. The annual event is where all stakeholders get together to discuss progress on CAADP (the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme). He came back disappointed. In most countries, he says, CAADP still fails to deliver on the agricultural transformation commitments of the African Union Malabo Declaration. In his latest blog, Rampa discusses the future of CAADP and points out that it needs to focus more on the results on the ground, putting the private sector, including smallholder farmers, at the forefront of the transformation. This, he says, “requires a better understanding of the politics around agriculture and the informal parts of African food value chains.” Extractives sector in Madagascar - How to support civil society? Weekly Newsletter, 22 April 2016 Civil society and local communities are confronted with a series of challenges when large-scale mining companies settle in remote areas, particularly regarding socio-economic and environmental implications. ECDPM’s Isabelle Ramdoo and independent exper Aimée Randrianarisoa analyse the difficulties faced by civil society in Fort Dauphin and Tuléar in Madagascar when engaging and leading collective action to negotiate and facilitate dialogue with the mining industry. Their Discussion Paper calls for targeted support to civil society and proposes several actions to be taken, particularly by the development community. The paper is available in French only. ECDPM will release a new paper (in English) in the next few weeks on the partnership between civil society and mining companies, including in Madagascar. Political economy of regional integration in Africa Weekly Newsletter, 15 April 2016 There are numerous regional organisations and policies in place to support regional integration in Africa. By and large, however, the reality on the ground does not match political ambitions. So what blocks or drives regional integration in Africa? Our multi-disciplinary team looked at six of Africa’s largest regional organisations: the African Union (AU), COMESA, EAC, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC. The case studies analyse the commitments of these organisations in different sectors, ranging from peace and security, to transport and infrastructure, food security, climate change, gender, trade, energy, conservation and industrialisation. More than 200 people were interviewed. See the full studies, or our synthesis and summary brochure. We also have a video explaining the 10 key messages from the study.
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