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Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Business
- Daily Maverick
SA praised for achieving second G20 ministerial declaration on SDGs
The Skukuza declaration noted that a host of global challenges and crises – including the economic slowdown, aid cutbacks and trade protectionism – had significantly hindered progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. South Africa has been commended for – largely – achieving a second G20 declaration last week to intensify measures to try to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, including by reducing illicit financial flows (IFFs), especially from Africa. The G20 Skukuza Development Ministerial Declaration from the meeting, which ended in the Kruger National Park on Friday, 25 July 2025, included two 'calls to action' – one for national and international measures to improve social protection, especially for low-income countries, and another to curb illicit financial flows. The declaration stressed the need to set floors (minimal levels) for universal and national social protection systems, which should primarily be financed through domestic resources, supported where necessary by international cooperation as well as non-government sources. The declaration also called for stepping up domestic resource mobilisation, including by combating illicit financial flows – particularly from Africa – especially the outflow of taxes from multinational companies to tax havens. 'Big achievement' Norwegian Minister of International Development Åsmund Grøver Aukrust, who attended the Skukuza meeting, said it was a big achievement to have secured a second ministerial declaration – just a week after the G20 finance ministers' declaration – 'when we're living in a world with very clear attacks on multilateralism'. 'So I would really like to honour the South African G20 presidency for bringing countries together and showing that multilateralism is still functioning and it's still possible to get agreements among very different countries,' he told Daily Maverick. This was a special achievement at a time of 'lack of trust among countries and brutal wars on all continents'. Norway is not a G20 member, but President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited it to participate in all the meetings of South Africa's G20 presidency this year. French support France is a member of the G20, and Thani Mohamed Soilihi, the country's Deputy Minister for Francophonie and International Partnerships, who is responsible for international development assistance, attended the Skukuza meeting. He said France fully supported South Africa's G20 priorities on development, including greater social protection; fighting illicit financial flows to mobilise more domestic resources to finance development; and how to protect global financial goods. He stressed the need for the rest of the global community to step up its efforts to address health issues, especially after the withdrawal of the US from international development assistance, mainly by shutting down its US Agency for International Development (USAid). Soilihi said it had been calculated that the shutdown would cost 14 million lives by 2030. Soilihi noted that the G20 development ministerial gathering had been a perfect place to talk about development issues because it included countries providing development assistance as well as the ministers responsible for development at home. He also convened a side meeting of several ministers of France's Paris Pact for People and the Planet ('4P'), which seeks innovative solutions to development problems. So far, 73 countries are members. US absent The US attended the G20 finance ministers' meeting in Zimbali near Durban on 18 July and thereby adopted its declaration, but did not attend last week's development ministerial. Norway's G20 sherpa, Henrik Harboe, agreed that the absence of the US would affect the impact of the declaration, but added 'that's just a reflection of where we are in the world, that the US did not participate in multilateral agreements this year.' He said it was nonetheless a great achievement that those who attended had agreed to the declaration. He noted, however, that Argentina had insisted on adding a footnote to the declaration, reserving its position 'on certain elements', but nonetheless not blocking its adoption. The chairperson's statement from the meeting included a declaration from Argentina reserving its position on 'all references to the 2030 Agenda' (which set the SDGs). Argentina added that it believed that addressing illicit financial flows lay beyond the scope of the G20 development working group and was better addressed in other G20 mechanisms. SDG challenges and crises The Skukuza declaration nonetheless noted that a host of global challenges and crises – including the economic slowdown, rising debt vulnerability, barriers to gender equality, aid cutbacks, domestic resource gaps, global supply chain disruptions and trade protectionism – had significantly hindered progress toward achieving the SDGs. 'Currently only 35% show adequate progress with 18% being on track and 17% making moderate progress,' it said, adding that financing the SDGs would now require 'a quantum jump from billions to trillions of dollars'. The ministers adopted a call to action towards 'inclusive, resilient, and sustainable development through Universal Social Protection Systems with special priority on Social Protection Floors'. These nationally defined social protection systems and floors should include access to health services and safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene; basic income security; nutrition and education for children; basic income security for those unable to earn sufficient income; and for the elderly. The declaration also called for stepping up Domestic Resource Mobilisation – raising development at home – by combating illicit financial flows ; implementing effective tax, customs and excise systems; and increasing national savings, trade and investment. 'Efforts to strengthen domestic resource mobilisation continue to be severely undermined by IFFs, base erosion and profit shifting and harmful tax competition, which erode the revenue bases and deprive governments of vital resources for sustainable development, particularly in the context of declining Official Development Assistance,' the declaration said. Call to deliver The ministers called on developed countries to deliver fully on their aid commitments. The Call to Action on illicit financial flows is a set of 10 voluntary and non-binding high-level principles for combating them, including addressing tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax crimes and tackling illicit financial flows; and promoting international cooperation for the recovery of stolen assets. The ministers also agreed that a road map for implementing these measures should be drafted, to be presented to the 2027 G20 presidency for further consideration. The ministers failed to agree on and so did not adopt a call to action on the third main deliverable, which South Africa had hoped for from the development ministerial, to establish an Ubuntu Commission of experts to decide how to protect and strengthen Global Public Goods. Global Public Goods are those which benefit all citizens of the world, says the IMF. They can include a stable climate, scientific knowledge, and disease control. Asked if the consensus on a declaration – especially on illicit financial flows – had been achieved at the cost of avoiding concrete agreements, Norway's Aukrust noted that there was no clear definition of illicit financial flows which everyone agreed on, and that complicated efforts to address them – as did the fact that a 'lot of creative tax planning is going on in the world' and there were also still tax havens and differing tax regimes among countries. 'And those who can buy expensive lawyers can then create company structures that avoid tax.' He noted that some of these tax schemes were illegal, while others might be strictly speaking legal, but were still draining resources from developing countries. 'The fact that we now have a sort of a game plan for doing G20 work on this, that's very important in itself,' but he suggested it would be hard to reach consensus on a road map because of differing perspectives on illicit financial flows among G20 countries. He also noted that the G20 development meeting had operationalised and advanced some of the conclusions from the recent Financing For Development Conference in Seville, Spain. 'And that's very positive.' 'Special victory' for SA He said that this had been a special victory for South Africa because former President Thabo Mbeki had chaired the United Nations Economic Commission panel, which investigated illicit financial flows from Africa, and reported in 2015 that they were causing an outflow of capital from Africa of at least $50-billion a year. But there had since been little progress on illicit financial flows, so it was a major achievement that the G20 as a whole had now agreed to tackle the problem. Norway's G20 sherpa, Henrik Harboe, was a member of Mbeki's IFF panel back in 2015. Asked if Norway and other aid donor countries could step up to fill the aid gap caused by the withdrawal of the US, Aukrust said the problem was that it was not just the US, but several European countries that were reducing aid. 'So we need to think differently and we need to think smarter. We need to have more private investment and we also need to work more for domestic resource mobilisation. And these are all the key factors in Norway's development policy and issues that we are bringing to the table, combined with still being a large and reliable partner.' He stressed that Norway itself was not reducing its own development aid, constituting one percent of its gross national income, beyond the 0.7% target set by the OECD, which few countries were meeting. Soilihi said 'We need to channel more resources because there's been a financing shock, and this is why we want to work as a group, first with the European Union, because we have the capacity to bring meaningful financing when we work together, and second of all, within the community of the 4P, which is a political community of now 73 member states from all continents, all revenues, all income levels, and we have with this group a powerful tool to bring meaningful solutions to the table, bridging the gap between the North and the South.' Soilihi noted that the G20 member states produced 75% of global trade and 90% of global GDP. DM
Mail & Guardian
21-07-2025
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Mozambican children die after US funding cuts: Who bears responsibility?
Sign outside the offices of an organisation in Mozambique that was defunded by USAid. Photos: Jesse Copelyn After the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) abruptly terminated billions of dollars' worth of overseas aid grants, the health system in central Mozambique was left in tatters. Earlier this year, I travelled to two badly hit provinces of the country to describe the toll. In In a In the midst of all this chaos, I was often curious to know from people on the ground who they held accountable for this situation and who they believed needed to solve the problem. My assumption was that they would call for the Mozambican government to help them out. I was surprised to find that in the affected villages I visited, this was far from anyone's expectation. For most, it was simply unthinkable that their government could do anything to save them. 'You mentioned the government,' one community leader said after I asked whether the state should intervene. 'But even these chairs we're sitting on are stamped with USAid logos. So what help can we expect from the government?' Sign on the back of a chair in an organisation in Mozambique. The more I learned about governance in Mozambique, the more understandable this attitude became. Throughout the country, core government functions have been outsourced to a combination of foreign governments, aid agencies, interstate bodies and private companies. For instance, many of the country's essential medicines are procured by a large international financing body, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Until January, the transportation of these medicines to hospitals was overwhelmingly financed by US aid agencies, as were the pay cheques of many health workers. Outside of the healthcare sector, the story is similar. The main highway I travelled on was built and paid for by Chinese corporations and banks. To keep hydrated I relied on bottled water supplied by private companies because the taps either didn't run or produced contaminated water. In many of the impoverished rural settlements, there was virtually no state infrastructure, and people received no financial support from the government. Instead, they primarily depended on aid organisations. The country's national budget has historically been heavily supplemented by foreign bodies, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union, though much of this support was suspended in 2016-17. Even national defence has been partially outsourced. When Islamist militants began rampaging through the northern province of Cabo Delgado, the government struggled to contain it and contracted Russian and South African mercenary groups. When that failed, they authorised a military intervention by the Southern African Development Community and invited a parallel mission by the Rwanda Defence Forces. It is thus no surprise that Mozambicans have virtually no expectation that their government will come to the rescue when facing an emergency. Instead, they look outward. As one community leader in a rural village told me, 'Here, we depend on Trump.' Cash-strapped and corrupt Mozambique has The government is deeply cash-strapped. The South African government spends 10 times more per citizen than the Mozambican government does. A large chunk of its spending goes towards paying off debt. Mozambique simply doesn't have the money to build an effective health system, though had it spent its limited budget reserves more effectively over the years it could have developed a health system that was at least a bit more independent of donor support. Instead, the country's budgetary resources have often been wasted on corruption. Mozambique ranks 146th out of 180 in the world on One clear example of this is the As a result of those decisions, the country was swallowed by debt. And when the extent of the corruption was publicised in 2016, the IMF pulled its financial support for Mozambique. A The country's governance crisis is further demonstrated by the An ambulance parked in the grass in the Dondo district of Sofala Province. Even during the brief one-week period I spent in central Mozambique, signs of corruption and mismanagement filtered into my interactions with officials. For instance, before I embarked on a multi-day tour of one province, government officials told me that someone from the provincial health department would need to accompany me on my trip. This was apparently to make formal introductions to district-level officials that I hadn't asked to meet. For this apparently vital service, the man would need to be paid a per diem of roughly R500 a day for two days, they said. The civil servant in question was a very senior person in the provincial health department. Despite facing a collapsing health system in the wake of the US cuts, he was apparently ready to drop everything he had going for the rest of that week to follow me around. When I explained that I wouldn't pay a government official to stalk me, I was told that saying no wasn't an option. This is unfortunately the way things are done around these parts, said a local who helped arrange the tour. Neither GroundUp, Spotlight nor I paid the bribe. US responsibility Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that defenders of the current US government have often resorted to arguments about moral responsibility when justifying the decision to abruptly slash aid. It is reasonable to ask why the American taxpayer should bear any of the brunt of Mozambique's public health system when so many of its problems have been caused by the Mozambican government itself. But it's not so simple. The Moreover, Mozambique didn't develop its high level of dependency in isolation. For more than two decades, the US actively took responsibility for core functions of the country's health system. Until January, the US government continued to sign numerous contracts with local organisations, pledging millions of dollars to help run life-saving health programmes for years into the future. The health system was consequently built around these commitments. If the US was going to take that much responsibility for the wellbeing of some of the world's most vulnerable people, then it had a duty to at least provide notice before pulling the plug. Instead, it chose to slash the funds instantly, and in a manner that needlessly maximised damage and confusion. Stop-work orders were issued overnight, which required that people who were doing life-saving work down their tools immediately. Organisations decided to adhere to these instructions rigidly in the hope that their funding would be reinstated. At that point the Trump administration said it was only pausing aid funding pending a review, and no one wanted to give the reviewers a reason to terminate their programmes. The consequence was complete chaos. Orphaned children in extremely rural parts of Mozambique waited for their case workers to bring them their medicines, but often they simply never came. Many of these children had no idea why they had been abandoned. When certain case workers decided to defy the stop-work order and continue their work voluntarily, they had to do so in secret. To add fuel to the fire, the Trump administration routinely provided contradictory information to its former recipients and to the public. The initial executive order signed in January said all foreign development assistance would be suspended for 90 days, pending a review, and might be restored after this time. Then US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver stating that the suspension wouldn't apply to life-saving humanitarian services. He told the public that organisations providing these life-saving services could instantly resume their work under this order. Yet the organisations themselves received different instructions from their USAid officers. Rather than immediately continuing their work, they were told to submit revised budgets that only covered life-saving services and to wait for approval. Organisations rushed to submit these budgets by the deadline. But in the end, the green light never came and their funds remained frozen. This was not only the case in Mozambique; In the meantime, Rubio Later on, the organisations received explicit termination notices, ending their programmes. Despite this, US embassies and several large media outlets continued to reference Rubio's order as if it was actually implemented en masse. Even as I write this, the on-again, off-again US aid story is unfinished. This mixed messaging created an enormous amount of confusion for staff of these organisations and the recipients of their work, ultimately for no clear benefit to the American people. There was simply never any reason to act this callously toward health organisations to whom USAid had pledged its support. In contrast to the rampant corruption that has plagued the Mozambican government, these organisations were heavily audited to continue receiving funding. The work they were doing was clearly making a material difference to some of the poorest people on Earth. In the far-flung settlements that I visited, villagers told me about how their lives had been transformed by these organisations. Many were only put on life-saving HIV treatment because of them. Whatever arguments one may want to advance about the importance of self-sufficiency and national responsibility, none of this justifies the US government administering the aid cuts in such a callous and confusing manner. This story was originally published by
Daily Maverick
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Was Trump's Africa summit just outsourcing America's immigration problem?
The US president reportedly asked the five African nations at his summit to accept third-country asylum seekers. United States (US) President Donald Trump hosted a mini-summit with five African leaders in the White House last week. It was surprising that he met with African leaders at all, given his stance towards the continent. His choice of countries was also interesting — why Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Gabon? Trump told the delegates his administration was 'committed to strengthening our friendships in Africa through economic development efforts that benefit both the US and our partners. And we're shifting from aid to trade,' noting that he had just scrapped the US Agency for International Development (USAid). As to the five countries in attendance, he said they all had 'great land, great minerals, oil deposits', and that he wanted to discuss security. Trump encouraged the leaders to invest more in defence and to 'keep pursuing the fight against terrorism, which is a big problem in Africa'. 'Immigration will also be on the agenda, and I hope we can bring down the high rates of people overstaying visas, and also make progress on the Safe Third Country Agreements.' The supposed wealth of these five countries in critical minerals has been offered as the main reason for their invitation. Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani said his country had 'minerals, rare earths, rare minerals', including manganese, uranium and probably lithium, and was the second-largest African iron ore producer. Liberian President Joseph Boakai also said his country had many minerals and asked for US help in surveying them. Trump added an unintentional comic note by commending Boakai for his 'beautiful English'. He asked where Boakai had learnt to speak it — seemingly unaware that English is Liberia's official language. The country was, after all, founded in the 19th century by free slaves from the US. Critical minerals Gabon's President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema also stressed that his country had oil and gas and critical minerals, including manganese, and invited the US to invest in processing it locally, including building the necessary electricity capacity. He said that if the US did not invest, others would. And he appealed to Trump to help Gabon stop maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. Senegal's President Bassirou Diomaye Faye noted that the US was conducting a geological survey in Senegal to help assess the potential of minerals. He added that thanks to US companies, Senegal had discovered oil and about 950 billion cubic metres of gas. So critical and other minerals, and oil and gas, were clearly a factor in the choice of the five. So was security in a chronically insecure region. Some believe the US is looking for countries to host its military bases after Niger's junta forced out the US hub at Agadez. Trump also boasted about the recent US-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. Most of the African leaders thanked him for this, urging him to fulfil his intention to likewise broker peace in Sudan and Libya. But was immigration to the US — a key domestic issue for Trump — the real heart of the matter? The Wall Street Journal reported that before the summit, the US administration sent the five countries requests to accept deportees from the US whose home countries refused them or were slow to take them back. According to an internal document seen by The Wall Street Journal, the African countries would have to agree not to return transferred asylum seekers 'to their home country or country of former habitual residence until a final decision has been made' on their claims for asylum in the US. This arrangement appears similar to that between the former Conservative United Kingdom (UK) government and Rwanda, but which was scrapped last year by the Labour government, which said the deal had not deterred migrants to the UK. Reports say America previously tried to persuade Nigeria to accept an agreement with Venezuelan deportees — but Abuja refused. This might suggest that Trump is turning to smaller, perhaps more pliable, countries to try to persuade them to accept asylum seekers or deportees. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen — convicted of crimes ranging from child rape to murder — had arrived in Eswatini on a Safe Third Country deportation flight from the US. On 4 July, the US deported eight men convicted of violent crimes to South Sudan. It is unclear how the five African governments responded to Trump's request, and none mentioned it in the public part of the meeting. Two overlapping goals Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Research Officer Zenge Simakoloyi said Trump's summit seemed mainly to have two overlapping goals: to test the waters on processing asylum seekers offshore, and to diversify US critical mineral supply chains away from China. Nigeria's rejection of the Venezuelans suggested that externalising the US immigration problem would be difficult, he said. According to Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, ISS Migration Senior Research Consultant: 'There are no good precedents for outsourcing asylum processes.' She noted that the Australian effort to do so had cost at least A$1-billion annually since 2012, and had 'failed to achieve all its objectives, including stopping people smuggling'. Simakoloyi noted that countering China in African trade and mineral access was a hallmark of US foreign policy in Africa, as evidenced by the Lobito Corridor carrying minerals from Zambia and the DRC to be exported from Angola. He suggested Senegal's President Faye could serve the US as a diplomatic bridge to the Sahel's juntas, as Senegal had established a rapport with Mali and Burkina Faso's military governments. Trump's shift from aid to trade and investment in Africa is in principle a good idea, though the abrupt termination of aid has caused significant distress on the continent. (Unconfirmed reports this week suggest that Pepfar – the US programme against HIV/Aids — may be reinstated.) But how the US trades and invests in Africa will be critical. As Gabon's Nguema told Trump: 'We also want our raw materials to be processed locally in our country so that we can create value and to create jobs for youth so that they stop dying. They are crossing the sea, the ocean to go to other countries.' That would be a more constructive and ethical approach to relations than outsourcing the asylum process and dumping criminals from other countries onto Africa. DM
The Herald
17-07-2025
- Politics
- The Herald
US aid workers 'lobbied for weeks' to save food stocks from destruction after Trump cuts
His administration announced plans to shut down USAid in January, leaving more than 60,000 tonnes of food aid stuck in stores around the world, Reuters reported in May. The food aid stuck in Dubai was fortified wheat biscuits, which are calorie-rich and typically deployed in crisis conditions where people lack cooking facilities, 'providing immediate nutrition for a child or adult', according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP says 319-million people face acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9-million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine, primarily in Gaza and Sudan. After Jeremy Lewin and Kenneth Jackson, operatives of the budget-slashing department of government efficiency were appointed acting deputy USAid administrators and began terminating food security programmes, USAid staff were barred from communicating with aid organisations asking to take the biscuits, two sources said. A state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was 'entirely false' that USAid staff were barred from communicating with aid groups, and that 'there was no direction given not to engage'. Reuters, however, reported that a January 25 email sent by Jackson emphasising a 'complete halt' to all foreign assistance banned USAid staff from any communications outside the agency unless approved by their front office. 'Failure to abide by this directive will result in disciplinary action,' said the memo reviewed by Reuters. US secretary of state Marco Rubio told legislators on May 21 no food aid would be wasted as USAid staff were waiting for Lewin to sign off on a deal to transfer the 622 tonnes of biscuits to the WFP for distribution before they began expiring in September.
TimesLIVE
17-07-2025
- Business
- TimesLIVE
US aid workers 'lobbied for weeks' to save food stocks from destruction after Trump cuts
With 1,100 tonnes of emergency food rations nearing expiry in a US government warehouse in Dubai after President Donald Trump's aid freeze, it took a warning of 'wasted tax dollars' for a top US official to eventually agree to a deal for the supplies to be used, sources told Reuters. The deal saved 622 tonnes of the energy-dense biscuits in June — but 496 tonnes, worth $793,000 (R14.2m) before they expired this month, will be destroyed, according to two internal US Agency for International Development (USAid) memos reviewed by Reuters, dated May 5 and May 19, and four sources familiar with the matter. The wasted biscuits will be turned into landfill or incinerated in the UAE, two sources said. That will cost the US government an additional $100,000 (R1.8m), according to the May 5 memo verified by three sources familiar with the matter. The delays and waste are further examples of how the freeze and then cutbacks, which led to the firing of thousands of USAid employees and contractors, have thrown global humanitarian operations into chaos. A spokesperson for the state department, which is now responsible for US foreign aid, confirmed in an email that the biscuits would have to be destroyed. But they said the stocks were 'purchased as a contingency beyond projections' under the administration of former president Joe Biden, resulting in their expiration. Trump has said the US pays disproportionately for foreign aid and he wants other countries to shoulder more of the burden.
