EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson kicked off the conference with remarks at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

By MacKenzie C. Babb
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
06 February 2012

More than 400 global policymakers, development chiefs and technology leaders have gathered in California for a three-day conference to discuss using connection technologies, like the Web and mobile phones, to advance sustainable development in the fields of health, the environment, agriculture and economic growth.

The February 2–4 conference at Stanford University, “Rio+2.0: Bridging Connection Technologies and Sustainable Development,” was sponsored by the U.S. government in preparation for the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“As Rio+20, the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit, approaches in June, we have a chance to learn lessons, build partnerships and put in place innovative strategies that can reshape the economic and environmental future of our entire planet,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said February 3 during her conference keynote address. She added that the collaboration offers “the rarest of opportunities to truly change the world and make a difference that will benefit billions of people.”

Jackson called on participants at the conference to find creative ways to apply existing and cutting-edge technologies to advance sustainable development around the world.

She said communications technologies, such as the Internet, SMS and mobile phones, have proven effective in helping underserved communities around the world gain access to information, better jobs and an improved quality of life.

“In my travels as administrator, I have been to parts of the world where it seemed like everyone had access to a cellphone, but not everyone had access to clean water,” Jackson said. “The opportunities are there to use that technology to make a difference.”

She said connection technologies have the potential to bring together stakeholders from across the spectrum, helping governments, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector and individuals share information about sustainable development.

The administrator added that new technologies allow laws, regulations and compliance assistance to be made available on the Internet and on mobile phones and also simplify the process of reporting environmental violations and corrupt practices.

“Through broad public and private collaboration, made possible through new technology, we can show the world how to build 21st-century urban communities where the environment, health, social inclusion and economic prosperity all go hand in hand,” Jackson said.

She was joined at the conference by several State Department leaders, including Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Robert Hormats; Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Kerri-Ann Jones; and Senior Advisor for Innovation Alec Ross.

Other U.S. government participants included Deputy Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics Ann Bartuska; the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Senior Counselor and Chief Innovation Officer Maura O’Neill; and Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley.
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Peace Corps volunteer Jessica Jackman joins Ukrainian students for a picnic to celebrate the end of the school year.

Washington,
February 2, 2012

A U.S. Peace Corps volunteer is helping her Ukrainian community take advantage of the sun’s power by working with them to build two greenhouses equipped with solar-powered heating and irrigation systems.

“The basic objective of the trade mission is to make significant progress on increasing U.S. private-sector investment in power infrastructure projects that have the potential to increase overall development in these countries by significantly reducing the cost of doing business,” Jim Wilson, senior coordinator for trade promotion and commercial policy in the department’s Bureau of African Affairs, said in a recent interview.

The trade mission specifically hopes to determine “if U.S. power developers would be able to invest in generating facilities and fuel supply that help address the needs in Africa for reliable, affordable electricity,” Wilson said.

The February 6–17 trade mission is being led by Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson. The trip will include a brief stop in Kenya. The Corporate Council on Africa is co-sponsoring the mission.

Wilson said that a trade mission of this type is important because of the huge “constraints that the lack of reliable electricity place on African development. It’s almost like a tax that is paid where companies in Nigeria or Mozambique either can’t get reliable power or have to pay a very high price with backup generators and expensive diesel fuel to be able to have security of supply.”

If African businesses could have access to power as companies in the United States and Britain do, they could produce products that would be more affordable for local markets and for export abroad, he said.

Each country selected for this trade mission presents significant opportunities for investment in electric power. The four governments have all been taking measures to make the regulatory and legal environments in their nations more attractive to private investors, Wilson said.

“It’s not easy for a private company to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a project that is going to have a 20-year-plus life cycle,” Wilson said. “And there are political sensitivities everywhere to prices for basic public services like electricity, for example.”

Past impediments to energy-infrastructure development by the private sector in Africa have included uncertain legal and regulatory regimes, inconsistent support of production costs that was reflected in mandated electricity prices, and the insufficient availability of long-term financing from U.S. banks.

This trade mission aims to bring companies “to take a look again at the changing environment in Africa, see the improvements, see what’s now possible to do that might not have been possible to do two years ago or five years ago,” Wilson said.

Wilson said the State Department established specific criteria for participation by potential private investors: “The companies needed to be in a position to move forward with investments in energy infrastructure in Africa, whether they be investments in the power-generation sector, which most of the companies are, or fuel supply, which is another important requirement for meeting the challenge of providing reliable, affordable electricity for Africa.”

Wilson added that there are several other African nations that the delegation would like to have included on this mission, but there is insufficient time.

Joining Carson in the U.S. delegation are representatives of Anadarko Petroleum, Caterpillar, Chevron, Energy International, General Electric, Pike Enterprises, Strategic Urban Development Alliance LLC, Symbion and Zanbato Group.

In addition, Wanda Felton, vice chair of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and representatives from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources will participate in the mission.

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Students in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, brainstorm ideas for the Apps4Africa Climate Challenge.

By Louise Fenner
IIP Staff Writer
Washington,
January 27, 2012

Innovative ideas for managing grain supplies in Tanzania and for helping hospitals in Nigeria prepare for natural disasters won top prizes in the Apps4Africa Climate Challenge. But the competition isn’t over yet. It moves to Southern Africa starting February 1.

Apps4Africa challenges software developers to create applications for mobile phones and computers to help communities cope with the impact of climate change. The competition encompasses three regions of Africa, and the first two regions — East Africa and West and Central Africa — competed late last year. In addition to Tanzania and Nigeria, there are winners from Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda.

The U.S. State Department is sponsoring the competition in partnership with private sector and nongovernmental organizations. The results of the Southern Africa competition, which lasts through March 21, will be announced in April.

The first two regional competitions had a combined total of nearly 200 entries, said AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Science & Technology Fellow Jeffrey Fox, who coordinated the Apps4Africa Climate Challenge for the State Department.

The State Department and Appfrica International, the software development company that ran the contests from its offices in Uganda and the United States, screened the entries to make sure they addressed climate change adaptation, and then sent the relevant submissions to five independent judges. The winning applications were chosen based on their technical ingenuity and their ability to have a measurable impact on climate change adaptation.

“So many [applications] sounded like incredible ideas,” said Fox. “There were a lot of very strong entries.” In the East Africa competition, the winning applications “support ‘climate-smart’ agriculture, which in the region is a huge issue,” he said.

In the West and Central Africa region, “the [application] winner dealt with disaster management and health care” — issues that frequently came up during local brainstorming sessions held in connection with the competition. The sessions brought together software developers, students, nongovernmental organizations, business people and others to identify climate problems and propose solutions.

“Applications that address the challenges that are most important locally are the ones that end up being selected,” he said.

WINNERS IN EAST AFRICA AND WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA

In the East Africa competition, first place went to The Grainy Bunch, a national grain supply chain management system that monitors the purchase, storage, distribution and consumption of grain across Tanzania.

Mkulima Calculator of Kenya took second place with an application that will help farmers decide when to plant crops and how to select the best crops for a given location using climate and weather data. Third place was awarded to Agro Universe, a mobile and Web-based app from Uganda that creates a regional marketplace, helping communities prepare for pest- and drought-induced food shortages by linking these communities to farmers with available produce.

In the West and Central Africa competition, first prize went to HospitalManager, a Web-based application from Nigeria that will help hospitals plan for increased patient loads following extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves. Hospitals can identify patterns in patient visits during weather emergencies and use real-time climate forecasts to prepare for such situations and save more lives.

Second place went to the Eco-fund Forum, a Web-based app from Senegal that helps communities share successful strategies for adapting to local impacts of climate change. The third-prize winner was Farmerline, a mobile and Web-based app that will help farmers in rural Ghana obtain information they need to increase yields in the face of changes in the growing season and climate variability.

The top three winners in each region receive cash prizes, and private partners are contributing follow-on support. The competition is open only to residents of Africa, but people and organizations outside of Africa can register as mentors and provide their expertise to applicants.

See the Apps4Africa website for more information.

Secretary of State Clinton is welcomed by Liberian Foreign Minister Toga Gayewea McIntosh upon arrival in Monrovia January 16 to attend the inauguration of President Sirleaf.

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
IIP Staff Writer
Washington
January 18, 2012

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton completed a four-nation visit to Africa to promote democracy, good government and economic reforms, and to demonstrate a U.S. commitment to a post-conflict return to peace.

Clinton led a U.S. delegation to the January 16 inauguration of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at the start of her two-day trip, which included visits to Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Cape Verde. U.S. Senator Christopher Coons of Delaware and General Carter Ham, the commander of the U.S. Africa Command, accompanied her.

Clinton was pleased to attend Sirleaf’s second inauguration “because I’ve known Ellen for a long time,” Clinton told U.S. Embassy staff in Monrovia January 16. “I have a great deal of admiration and appreciation for the work she is doing, along with her other colleagues in government.”

In her inaugural address, Sirleaf invited opposition leaders to come forward and to participate in helping to govern Liberia. Sirleaf, who was first elected to office in 2005, shared in the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to stabilize the country and promote women’s rights.

“There has to be a recognition that in elections sometimes you win and sometimes you lose,” Clinton said. “I have done both of them, and I think it’s important that the lessons that we have learned over more than 235 years of trying to perfect our union be understood by other democracies and countries that are really making such strides.”

Clinton said that it doesn’t matter if you always win in politics, but it does matter that you put the common good of the nation ahead of any personal and political interests. But she added that it is important for any healthy democracy to continue to allow opposing opinions.

“At the end of the day you have to agree upon certain values and then work together to fulfill them,” she said.

The United States’ relationship with the people of Liberia goes beyond elections, Clinton said. The work includes security issues, health care and education.

“It’s a whole-of-government effort, because that’s what it takes to support this extraordinary journey that Liberia is on, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure they get to the destination of democracy, prosperity, peace and security safely,” Clinton said.In Côte d’Ivoire, Clinton met with President Alassane Ouattara to showcase U.S. support for national reconciliation and strengthening democratic institutions after legislative elections in December 2011.

Clinton told Ouattara during a press conference after their January 17 meeting that she admired the progress that the country is making in a steady return to peace and reconciliation as well as continued economic and social development.

“This is an exciting time for Côte d’Ivoire, as it is for West Africa as a whole,” Clinton told reporters. “We have seen successful elections in Nigeria, the restoration of a civilian government in Niger, the establishment of the first elected government in Guinea.”

“And yesterday [January 16], I had the privilege of representing my country, as did President Ouattara, at the inauguration of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf for her second term after another free and fair election,” Clinton said. “Securing these gains for democracy, prosperity, peace and security for the people here as well as for your neighbors will take consistent hard work.”

After consultations in Côte d’Ivoire, Clinton traveled to Togo for meetings with Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé at the presidential palace in Lomé. It was her first visit as secretary of state. She said national elections to be held later in 2012 will be an important milestone.

“The United States will be a partner to the government of Togo as it builds on its recent democratic gains, brings dissenting voices to the table for an inclusive dialogue, increases political participation of women and carries out a successful constitutional reform process,” Clinton said, according to news reports.

Clinton met with Prime Minister José Maria Pereira Neves of Cape Verde to discuss cooperation on issues including counternarcotics, good governance, economic reforms and Cape Verde’s second Millennium Challenge Corporation compact.

Remarks by U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Trade and Development

at the Second Working Session
of the 8th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference

*As Delivered*

“For the United States, the starting point of any discussion of trade and development is to remind ourselves that trade and development are mutually reinforcing, and deeply complementary.

“Despite the vigorous and at times stormy debates within this organization over how these terms fit together, we must never lose sight of the reality that trade has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, expanded individual opportunity, and contributed enormously to an acceleration of economic development across our planet.

“The WTO provides us with some amazing examples of trade’s power to promote development. In the ten years since China joined the WTO its exports have increased from $266 billion to $1.5 trillion. Indeed, the IMF projects that a handful of advanced developing economies will alone provide 52% of global economic growth (excluding the US) between now and 2016.

“This growth also presents us with one of the biggest challenges confronting our work on trade and development. A ‘one size fits all’ approach does not accurately reflect the realities of the world we live in. Developing countries are not the same, and pretending that they are contributes to the deadlock in our discussion on many of these important issues.

“The United States has no illusions about the difficulty of addressing this problem. But we do need, urgently, to start having an honest conversation about it.

“Likewise, we believe we need a more honest discussion about the relationship between trade rules and development.

“There is a lot of focus in discussions on development about exceptions and special flexibilities for developing countries. This is perfectly appropriate. But we need to take care not to focus so much on the exceptions that we lose the value of the rules, particularly given the importance of South-South trade.

“The challenges confronting LDC Members continue to merit particular concern and attention, and we are pleased that this Ministerial Conference will produce a number of Decisions intended to better integrate LDCs into the multilateral trading system.

“For our part, the United States remains firmly committed to Aid for Trade, and has obligated about $10 billion in trade-related assistance since 2005. Several of our initiatives, including the Millennium Challenge Corporation and Africa trade hubs, demonstrate our firm commitment to addressing the trade-related development concerns, particularly of LDCs.

“We also welcome the bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress reflected in new legislation, introduced this week in the Senate and earlier this year in the House of Representatives, to extend the third-country fabric provision of the African Growth and Opportunity Act tariff preference program and to add South Sudan as a potentially eligible beneficiary.

“The WTO should continue to make important contributions in food security, and we join other Members in calling for the end of food export restrictions for purchases of humanitarian food aid by the World Food Program. We fully support the elimination of all food export restrictions and will seek disciplines in the agriculture committee to address concerns from Net Food-Importing Developing Countries.

“Mr. Chairman, thank you for your time.”

# # #

U.S. and Cotton Four Countries Meet at WTO Ministerial

USTR Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Carol Guthrie

December 17, 2011 

United States, “Cotton Four” Countries Celebrate New U.S. Cotton Initiatives, Continued Partnership at 8th WTO Ministerial Conference

Geneva, Switzerland – United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Trade Ministers and WTO Ambassadors from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali – the “Cotton Four” or “C-4” countries – held a meeting Friday on the margins of the 8th WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss cotton issues, including new initiatives announced by the United States. Attending the meeting were Ms. Madina Sephou, Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Small and Medium Enterprises for Benin; Mr. Mahamat Allahou Taher, Minister of Commerce and Industry for Chad; and WTO Ambassadors from Burkina Faso and Mali.

The new U.S. proposals to help boost trade for least developed country (LDC) Members of the WTO, particularly African cotton-producing countries, include expansion of duty-free-quota-free treatment for upland cotton grown in LDCs; multi-year renewal of the West Africa Cotton Improvement Program (WACIP), a successful technical assistance program for West African cotton producing countries; and additional help for countries seeking to make maximum use of existing U.S. trade preference programs such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Speaking on behalf of the C-4 group, Chadian Minister Allahou Taher thanked the United States for support already given to the African cotton sector through WACIP and AGOA, and for the new initiatives, saying that once implemented, they will have a very important impact on African farmers.

More information about the new U.S. initiatives, as well as existing cotton and other programs, is online at http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/fact-sheets/2011/new-us-initiatives-boost-trade-and-investment-opportunities-l.

During the meeting, Ambassador Kirk and C-4 officials reaffirmed their mutual commitment to working for positive outcomes on cotton at the WTO, and noted recent successful collaboration on cotton language in the consensus statement to be issued at this week’s Ministerial Conference. Ambassador Kirk said, “The new cotton initiatives announced by the United States this week are part of the Obama Administration’s broad and steadfast commitment to work with the C-4 and other least developed countries to boost their economic growth and development. We look forward to further coordination in Geneva, in Washington, and in all of the C-4 capitals as these new initiatives are implemented.”

# # #

By Stephen Kaufman
IIP Staff Writer,
Washington,
15 December 2011

U.S. Trade Representative,
Washington, DC,
December 14, 2011

In advance of the 8th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk today announced steps aimed at enabling Least Developed Country (LDC) members of the WTO to benefit more fully from global trade. Building on already robust programs providing preferential access to the U.S. market for LDC exports, as well as ongoing contributions in Aid for Trade and trade-related capacity, new, additional initiatives include:

• renewal of a successful technical assistance program for West African cotton producing countries,

• expansion of duty-free-quota-free treatment for certain cotton grown in LDCs, and

• additional help for countries seeking to make maximum use of existing U.S. trade preference programs.

More information on these new measures can be found on the attached fact sheet, “New U.S. Initiatives to Boost Trade and Investment Opportunities for Least-Developed Countries.” (PDF file)

“For decades, the United States has been a strong partner to least-developed countries. We want to see these partners have a greater stake in global trade and overcome constraints inhibiting faster progress,” said Ambassador Kirk. “This is why, even before the announcement of these new initiatives, the United States has been one of the largest single-country providers of trade-related technical assistance, and why President Obama has made partnerships with developing countries, including LDCs, a key component of his trade agenda. We look forward to pursuing new trade initiatives in close cooperation with our LDC partners at the WTO Ministerial Meeting this week and in the future.”

Earlier this year, the United States also announced a new African Competitiveness and Trade Expansion initiative, as well as a Partnership for Trade Facilitation through USAID. The U.S. Administration has also announced that it will work energetically with the Congress in 2012 to enact legislation extending AGOA’s “third country fabric” provision to 2015, thereby sustaining existing benefits available to African exporters of apparel.

The United States already offers duty-free treatment to many countries’ products, while promoting high standards of accountability, transparency, and good governance. U.S. programs make special efforts to link trade and economic opportunity for countries ravaged by disaster or violence. The United States also leverages public-private partnerships to achieve the maximum impact for communities in poor and developing countries.

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