Yash Tandon

This meeting seeks to address one of the most difficult issues of our times – the question of sustaining growth and development in Africa while at the same time protecting the environment and ensuring that growth benefits entire communities and not just a small minority.

In the last two columns on Libya I made a distinction between colony and neo-colony, going beyond Nkrumah’s initial analysis of neo-colonialism to show that in our times, the contradictions between the neo-colonies and the Empire are increasing in intensity.

I ended the last column ’Whose dictator is Gaddafi?’ with the question: what now? How might things move forward in Libya?

The Cheche Reminiscences are wonderful recollections of a group of bright young dedicated youngsters (most of them in their mid-twenties) at the Dar es Salaam University (DSU) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who founded and were inspired by a journal called ‘Cheche’.

To put the West’s case bluntly and simply, it has apparently intervened in Libya to ‘protect the people’ from the ‘dictator’ Gaddafi. This begs the question: whose dictator is Gaddafi?

Like most people at the World Social Forum in Dakar in 2011, I share the exhilarating feeling of the ‘spirit’ of success, in defiance of all the challenges that the organisers faced.

Background: What are EPAs?

This surely is the time for solidarity. This surely cannot be an occasion to moan and complain about the past. Pakistan is in the middle of its worst flood disaster ever. The sheer scale of it is mind-boggling. An area the size of England is under the surging Indus River and the monsoon rains.

The 'Africa Development Indicators 2010' report on 'quiet corruption' is one more example of the World Bank's distractive politics.

Much of the discussion around Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) has created a sense of helplessness among concerned citizens, government circles and indigenous business interests who stand to lose if a comprehensive EPA is signed between the countries of Africa and the European Union.