Water vapour warming

A loss of water vapor in the Earth’s upper atmosphere may have slowed the rate of global warming over the past decade, suggests new research. Although the decade 2000–2009 was the warmest on record, average global temperatures leveled off during this period despite a continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

Now a team led by Susan Solomon of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, reports that water vapor concentrations in the stratosphere fell by 10 per cent from 2000, offsetting — by 25 per cent — the warming that would otherwise have occurred since then. The team used an atmospheric model and a range of recent observations of stratospheric water vapor to reach their conclusion. Using more limited data, they also found that water vapor in the stratosphere probably increased between 1980 and 2000, a period of rapid warming. The increase in water vapor between 1990 and 2000 may have amplified the rapid warming of that period by as much as 30 per cent, they say.

The study confirms earlier work showing that water vapor has an important role in warming. It also partly explains the drop in warming over the past decade.
Source:
Nature, “Water vapor warming“, accessed March 11, 2010

Shooting of terrorist Dulmatin overshadows key media conflict seminar

Texas Conservatives, Racists Win Curriculum Changes That Promote theSuperiority of U.S. Capitalism

March 12, 2010

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.

The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”

In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.

“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

Alabama Bus Drivers Defend Jobs, Education

Alabama bus drivers defend jobs, education

Published Mar 13, 2010 10:41 AM

BULLETIN: As we go to press, the following update was posted to the SDS Tuscaloosa, Ala., Facebook page: “On March 9 at 2:30 a.m., First Transit and ATU came to an agreement on a contract. This is great news because as most of you know, if there was no contract in place by today, the drivers would be locked out and scabs would be running the buses today. It hasn’t been voted upon yet by the drivers, and we have few details, but we will keep you updated. Go ahead and ride the buses, and when you do, thank your drivers and congratulate them on the change that their courage has created.”

By Minnie Bruce Pratt
Tuscaloosa, Ala.

A small, stalwart crowd rallied at the University of Alabama on March 4 in support of campus bus drivers fighting for their first union contract. A multinational group of protesters — including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and a U of A alumnae — defended education by supporting them. The rally was organized by Tuscaloosa Students for a Democratic Society and Students in Solidarity with Crimson Ride Shuttle Drivers.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1028 is in negotiation with First Transit, which was subcontracted by the university in 2007 to run the “Crimson Ride Shuttle.” Local 1208 has a majority African-American and substantially female membership. First Transit is a subsidiary of FirstGroup/First Transit International, which originated in the privatization of bus services in the United Kingdom, and now owns a controlling stake in Greyhound Bus Lines.

David Collins, a former Crimson Ride driver, initiated the union by contacting the ATU in New York. He was later fired as the bus drivers voted to unionize last May. The university pays First Transit $55 an hour to transport students; the drivers are paid $9.50 an hour. At the rally Collins pointed out the extreme discrepancy, arguing that the surplus is simply “pocketed by the company” as profits. He noted the drivers are doing skilled work, requiring them to have a Class B operator’s license.

In a video, “Empty Promises: ATU Crimson Ride Drivers Speak Out!” (available at vimeo.com), Local 1028 workers reveal how they were promised raises, bonuses, holiday pay and other benefits by the company, and have seen none of this materialize. Workers have to file for unemployment when the university is out for holiday or summer breaks.

One worker said: “Last year what I made was almost poverty level. I’ve been a bus driver since 1956, I’ve just turned 74, and it would be hard for me to go out and find another job.” Another worker said: “I can’t hardly eat or feed my family, barely put gas in the car. I’ve got nieces and nephews working in restaurants making what I do, and I’m supposed to be the bread and butter of my family.”

Another noted the attention the drivers give students: “We know who is graduating — and who is failing. We get them to their classes — and safely home from parties.”

At the rally, Caroline James, a junior psychology and communications major, said the Crimson Ride bus drivers were defending education by showing students the living struggle. She noted that in general students lack information on labor issues and labor organizing.

The local has gotten tremendous support in their struggle. On campus, the solidarity work for the bus drivers is being coordinated by Students in Support of the Crimson Ride Shuttle Drivers and SDS Tuscaloosa. The organizations set up teams to board the buses, leaflet other students, and speak out for the drivers while shuttling across campus. They were met with applause and pledges from students “not to ride.” In echo of the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, Collins said the local’s message to students is: “Boycott the buses — no one should ride the buses” until First Transit meets the ATU Local 1208 demands.

When First Transit was intransigent about negotiating, and university administrators said this was none of their business, the organizers mounted a ferocious call-in campaign to University of Alabama President Robert DeWitt. Hundreds of calls poured in and the administration finally made a statement that First Transit received adequate subsidies from the university to pay the drivers a fair wage, and if First Transit did not do so, the university would seek other transportation options.

Linking the rally to the March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education, SDS organizer Chapin Rose Gray stated: “Students and workers are all facing the effects of the economic crisis — students are facing tuition hikes and workers at schools are being hit with layoffs and pay cuts. Today, workers and students stood together to defend education against this crisis.”

Gray also noted the clear connection between the billions spent by the U.S. to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cuts, tuition increases and wage squeezes in education. SDS Tuscaloosa plans a related protest on March 20, the anniversary of the most recent U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Labor support is also strong and includes members of the ATU local in Jackson, Miss.; the West Alabama Labor Council; and International Association of Machinists Local Lodge 2003 in Daleville, Ala.

Alabama leads the Southeast U.S. in workers represented by unions, at 212,000 — 12.3 percent of the workforce and rising. It is the only Southern state with double-digit percentage union membership.

Professor Bob Robicheaux, chair of University of Alabama-Birmingham’s Department of Marketing, Industrial Distribution and Economics, echoed big business when he claimed that if Alabama loses its status as a “right to work” state, and instead has “strong organized labor,” the state will lose its “attraction” to U.S. and non-U.S. business. (Birmingham News, March 2)

But the Crimson Shuttle bus drivers, and Alabama union workers, are putting big business on notice that the real rights in question are the right to a living wage and the right to a job.

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Nigerians Demand To See President Yar’Adua

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
19:55 Mecca time, 16:55 GMT

Nigerians demand to see president

Yar’Adua, who returned to Nigeria on February 24, has not been seen in public for months

Thousands of Nigerian activists have staged a march to demand the sacking of the cabinet and a public appearance by ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua.

The police stopped around 5,000 protesters on Wednesday, who were led by prominent Lagos pastor Tunde Bakare.

Marching toward the presidential villa, demonstrators had planned to present their demands to Goodluck Jonathan, the acting president.

The secretary to the government of the federation, Yayale Ahmed, received the demands of the activists - which included the dissolution of the cabinet, divided over the health of Yar’Adua.

“The acting president has asked me to assure you that your demands will be looked into with immediate effect. You want to know the status of health of the president… you will not be denied of it,” Ahmed told the protesters on Wednesday.

Leadership confusion

Yar’Adua, 58, who returned to Nigeria on February 24 after spending 93 days in Jeddah, where he was being treated for acute pericarditis, has not been seen in public since his arrival.

His return threw the country into confusion and revived concerns of a leadership squabble just two weeks after Jonathan was installed as acting president.

Information Minister Dora Akunyili has advised her colleagues to invoke the relevant section of the constitution which paves the way for his removal from office.

She also accused Yar’Adua’s aides of lying about his health.

The protesters, who were blocked from gaining entry into the national assembly, also demanded the implementation of the report of a committee on electoral reforms.

Nigeria has a long history of flawed elections and activists have called for comprehensive electoral reforms ahead of the 2011 general elections.

“We will continue to mobilise Nigerians… to engage in public action, including protests and strike action until these demands are fully implemented in the interest of peace, security and genuine democracy,” Bakare told reporters.

Rural insecurity

Protesters also demanded ministers be fired days after attacks on three villages near the central city of Jos left up to 200 people dead.

Security concerns in rural Nigeria following deadly attacks on three villages outside Jos

Sunday’s massacre of predominantly Christian villagers was blamed on Muslim pastoralists.

The security forces faced heavy criticism over their failure to intervene to stop the latest killings when a curfew was meant to be in force.

Although troop reinforcements have been deployed, Jonah Jang, governor of Plateau State, said security lapses had worsened the carnage.

Jang said he had alerted Nigeria’s army commander about reports of movement around the area and had been told that troops would be heading there.

“Three hours or so later, I was woken by a call that they [armed gangs] had started burning the village and people were being hacked to death” Jang said.

“I tried to locate the commanders, I couldn’t get any of them on the telephone.”

Nigerian media reported that the country’s national security adviser was sacked on Tuesday. However, it was not clear whether the sacking was linked to the latest sectarian violence.

The chief of police for the Plateau State said on Wednesday that he had asked for extra help to control the level of violence in the area.

“We have requested for reinforcements and have been reassured by the special general that reinforcement is on its way,” Ikechukwu Aduba said.

Arrests made

Aduba said that 49 people were to be charged with homicide and conspiracy, and that they had already confessed to being on a revenge mission.

The violence came less than two months after sectarian killings in the region left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslims.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south.

The recent bloodshed is limited to central Nigeria, where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

The weekend killings add to the tally of thousands who already have perished in Africa’s most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions.

Nigerian media also reported that Jonathan Goodluck, the country’s acting president, had sacked Sarki Muktar, the national security adviser, on Tuesday.

Source: agencies

14 Killed in Pakistan Bombing

Saturday, March 13, 2010
17:19 Mecca time, 14:19 GMT

Deaths in Pakistan Swat blast

At least 14 people have been killed and 50 others wounded in a suicide attack in Pakistan’s Swat valley.

The blast on Saturday at a security checkpoint in Saidu Sharif town comes just a day after a twin suicide attack on a military convoy in the city of Lahore killed at least 49 people.

Speaking about Saturday’s blast, Qazi Jamil, a senior police official, said the attacker was trying to get into a government building used by police and security forces.

The Reuters news agency reported another official as saying the bomber had been travelling in a rickshaw when he detonated his explosives.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Lahore blasts a day earlier, which also targeted security forces, occurred in RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighbourhood in the city where several security agencies have facilities.

“Two suicide bombers attacked within the span of 15 to 20 seconds and they were on foot,” Tariq Saleem Dogar, the chief of Punjab police, said.

Serial blasts

Hours later, residents across Lahore were urged to stay at home after five blasts targeted the Allamma Iqbal Town area.

At least two people were reported killed in these explosions, which officials said were not very powerful.

“These were locally made, low-intensity bombs in which a very small quantity of explosives was used,” Mazhar Ahmed, a bomb-disposal official, said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s blasts, but the government blamed the Taliban.

A suicide car bombing targeted a police intelligence building in the same city on Monday, killing 13 people.

Pakistani authorities have said security crackdowns and offensives against Taliban strongholds have weakened the Pakistani Taliban.

Hashem Ahelbarra, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said the army offensives and recent arrests of the group’s leaders had been followed by a period of calm.

But he said the latest attacks seemed to point to a fresh spike in violence.

“Today’s attack in Lahore could be a clear message from the Taliban that although they were driven away from places like Swat, and their leadership is being hunted by the Americans and the Pakistani intelligence, they still have the capability to inflict maximum damage…,” he said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Out of step

Recent changes in the seasonal timing of biological events such as flowering and migration have been linked to warmer temperatures. Now a study shows that such seasonal shifts are becoming increasingly common in the UK and could wreak havoc across ecosystems as they disturb the delicate balance of nature.

A team led by Stephen Thackeray of the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, UK, looked at more than 25,500 records of the timing of biological events for 726 marine, terrestrial and freshwater species over a 30-year period from 1976 to 2005. During this period, all three of these environments experienced a warming trend of about 0.04–0.05 °C per year. Thackeray and colleagues found that over the 30 years under study, the timing of 84 per cent of spring and summer events moved forward. The shift was more rapid than suggested by previous studies, averaging almost 0.4 days per year.

Many organisms time their reproduction and migrations to coincide with maximum food availability. If warming is the cause of these seasonal shifts, the new study suggests that ‘trophic mismatching’, in which the arrival and reproduction of predators no longer synchronizes with access to food, could be more common in future.

Source:
Nature, “Out of step“, by Olive Heffernan, accessed March 11, 2010

US Denies Direct Military Aid to Somalia Transitional Authorities

US Denies Direct Military Aid to Somali Transitional Authorities

David Gollust | Washington12 March 2010

The U.S. State Department’s chief Africa diplomat said Friday the United State is not providing direct military aid to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the TFG. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson also told reporters the military position of the TFG is not as precarious as depicted in most news reports.

The United States has acknowledged giving military advice and in the past brokering delivery of some weapons to the transitional authorities, while also providing training and logistical support for African Union peacekeepers in Somalia.

But Assistant Secretary Carson says the United States has no military advisors or troops on the ground in Somalia and does not want to Americanize the long-running conflict there.

Carson spoke to reporters at the State Department with the aim, he said, of refuting recent press reports - including an account by the New York Times - that covert U.S. forces may stage air strikes or otherwise become directly involved in helping the TFG in a planned offensive against Islamic insurgents. “The United States does not plan, does not direct, and does not coordinate the military operations of the TFG and we have not and will not be providing direct support for any potential military offensives. Further we are no providing, or paying for military advisers for the TFG. There is no desire to Americanize the conflict in Somalia,” he said.

Fighting in the Somali capital Mogadishu has increased in recent days with insurgent fighters of the al-Shabab militia, said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, fighting government troops and African peacekeepers near the national palace.

The transitional administration of President Sheikh Ahmed Sharif is frequently described in news reports as controlling only a small area of the capital, but Carson said the tenacity of the TFG has long been understated. “I think the TFG has demonstrated an enormous capacity to survive. When Sheikh Sharif took office as the head of the TFG approximately 16 months ago, there were individuals who predicted that his government would fall within a matter of months and that he would not be able to reside and govern from Mogadishu. That has not been true,” he said.

At the same time, Carson said the long-term solution in Somalia is political not military, and that the TFG needs to widen its base to include major clans and sub-clans, along with Islamic moderates who want peace and denounce Al-Shabab.

The senior U.S. diplomat said a United Nations report this week that as much of half of the international food aid delivered to Somalia is being diverted to Islamist militants and others is a troubling allegation, but that the United States is still studying the document.

Officials say annual U.S. food aid contributions to Somalia are about $150 million a year, and that a similar amount goes to support the Ugandan-led African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM, formed in 2007.

Carson said direct U.S. aid to the TFG last year was about $12 million. He urged African states with an interest in regional stability to step up and contribute forces to AMISOM, which has never reached its authorized strength of 8,000 troops.

Find this article at:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/US-Denies-Direct-Military-Aid-to-Somali-Transitional-Authorities-87516492.html

Winnie Mandela Denies Maligning Former Republic of South AfricaPresident Nelson Mandela

Winnie denies maligning Mandela

Winnie Mandela, the former wife of ex-President Nelson Mandela, has denied giving an interview accusing him of letting down black South Africans.

Ms Madikizela-Mandela said the article, published in London’s Evening Standard newspaper this week, was a fabrication.

The article was written by Nadira Naipaul, the wife of Nobel prize-winning author VS Naipaul.

The Mandelas, who were both leaders in the struggle against South Africa’s minority white rule, divorced in 1996.

The article quoted Ms Madikizela-Mandela as saying her former husband had “agreed to a bad deal for the blacks”.

She was also quoted as saying that the Mandela name was “an albatross around the necks of my family”.

She was said to have expressed disappointment that her former husband had lost some of his revolutionary spirit after 27 years in jail.

But in a statement released on Friday through the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Ms Madikizela-Mandela said the article had been based on a “fabricated interview”.

She called it “an inexplicable attempt to undermine the unity of my family, the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the high regard with which the name Mandela is held here and across the globe”.

The Evening Standard defended its article saying Nadira Naipaul had visited Madikizela-Mandela at her home in Soweto near Johannesburg and spoken to her “at length about her experiences”.

The newspaper added: “We cannot understand Winnie Mandela’s denial of an event and conversation which clearly took place.”

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Johannesburg says there are few taboos in South African politics, but criticising Nelson Mandela is one of them.

Mrs Madikizela-Mandela is a senior ANC member and sits on the party’s influential National Executive Committee (NEC).

Mr Mandela became South Africa’s first democratic president in 1994.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8564871.stm
Published: 2010/03/12 16:39:11 GMT

Dreaded IMF on Africa: This Time It’s Different, They Say

International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC)

Africa: This Time It’s Different

Dominique Strauss-Kahn
12 March 2010

My final destination in this week’s visit to Africa was Zambia, where I sought the views not just of the government but also of the people—in a town hall with civil society, students, and the media. Zambia has one of the highest economic growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa: 6.3 percent in 2009 and the outlook for 2010 appears positive.

While recognizing that Zambia, just like Kenya and South Africa, has its own unique characteristics, I have pulled together some common threads from what I have been hearing in Africa over the past several days.

Three main themes come through:

First, Africa is a different place from how it is often portrayed in the popular media. Thanks to sound economic policies in many countries over the past decade or so, Africa has been able to withstand this crisis much better than has been the case in the past. The fact that the crisis hit Africa anyway does not mean that the policies were wrong. On the contrary, those policies helped to buffer Africa from the worst of the crisis, and they should now be strengthened. All three national leaders with whom I met—President Kibaki of Kenya, President Zuma of South Africa, and President Banda of Zambia—conveyed to me their strong sense of the policy agenda ahead.

Second, the issue of governance emerged loudly, clearly, and frankly in my discussions in all three countries. In fact, I get the impression that it would be almost impossible to have a public discussion in Africa without this issue coming up. That’s a good thing and, again, very different from the past. At the same time, talking about governance and doing something about it are two different things. One encouraging point is clear to me: civil society in Africa has found its voice—and it calls for accountability. It calls for transparency. It calls out against corruption. If governments are wise—and I think most will be—they will listen to that voice more and more. Not only can that help give them further moral and political standing in the eyes of their people, it will help them to govern more effectively.

Third, the question of Africa’s relationship with the world takes on an even greater importance in the 21st century global world than it did in the 20th century colonial world. I have said often now that Africa was an “innocent victim” of the crisis. And so it was. But nevertheless it was affected. Because global financial linkages with Africa are weak, the continent was hardly touched at first; but then the crisis deepened and Africa was hit hard in areas of investment, trade, and even aid (as crisis-hit donor countries sought ways to cut back on commitments). The lesson: no country is immune from global shocks.

In my discussions in Africa, people often raised the issues of global financial regulation, global imbalances, and the global economic shift that is taking place—from the West to the East. The role of China in Africa, for example, is a topic that came up in all three countries I visited. Zambia’s special relationship with China, of course, goes back to the 1970s and the building of the famous TAZARA railroad. Economic relations between the two countries have intensified since then, primarily in the mining and construction sectors. Chinese investment in Zambia, and in Africa, is to be welcomed. At the same time, it is important that all foreign investment in Africa should make economic sense from the African perspective—and be fair.

Finally, one other dimension of my discussions fell much closer to home: the role and reputation of the IMF. I found that the stereotype of the Fund as “the bad guy” persists in some quarters. I also found that there was not enough understanding—beyond official circles—of the major changes that the IMF has undertaken over the last couple of years: the tripling of our lending to sub-Saharan Africa, at zero interest rates, to help them weather the crisis; the streamlining of conditionality; the emphasis on countercyclical policy and the preservation of public spending, particularly for the social sectors. And more. This suggests to me the need for two things going forward:

* the IMF needs to strengthen even further its policy advice in Africa, and
* it must communicate and engage even more to counter the outdated image of the Fund, and to build a better understanding of who we really are today—and that the IMF is Africa’s institution.

I leave Africa recognizing that the IMF has a way to go in strengthening its partnership with the continent. But at the same time—and building on the meeting that I had with the African countries in Tanzania last year—I leave encouraged that the journey is well under way.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the Managing Director for the International Monetary Fund.