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Africa-Caribbean-Pacific - European Community

News round-up

Three months after the signing of LomV and with continued upheavals in Eastern Europe and encouraging developments in Southern Africa, the Joint Assembly and the ACP-EEC Council of Ministers met, within a week of each other, in the Pacific- firstly in Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), then in Suva (Fiji).

Meeting point: Manuel Marin

Manuel Marin, Vice-President of the European Communities has been in charge of Development for sixteen months. He has already taken up strong positions on a number of issues: on structural adjustment (“a horrible notion”) and on the “moderating” role the Commission can play on the subject, on ACP debt and the relatively simple solution to the problem as far as debt to the Community is concerned, on the consequences of the Single Market of 1992 which may be a gamble but not an inevitable peril, on human rights and the need to tread warily on the subject, on programming which must be carried out fully.

Country reports

BOTSWANA: Botswana used not to be considered as an outsider, even, in the race for development, yet today it is seen as one of the African countries which gives rise to real hope of progress. Its recipe for success, as its leaders explain and as can be observed, lies in the careful management of its natural and financial resources in the frame work of a long-term economic strategy.

ZAMBIA: Long bound up with the fortunes of copper. Zambia is now living the bitter experience of a single mineral-producing and highly centralised economy. Copper, the price of which is determined by exogenous factors, has proved to be a fickle friend. Nevertheless, economic development, through the country’s enormous agricultural potential, could still take off. Given new breath.

Dossier: Refugees

Exodus: the phenomenon is as old as the hills, and the solution as elusive as ever. Refugee numbers have doubled in the 1980s while funds for their care and resettlement have been halved. Our Dossier looks at an issue which the UN High Commissioner for Refugees believes could endanger future world security.