DURBAN, South Africa — South Africa was once seen as a beacon of African growth and an example for the rest of the continent to follow. But while the country is still the only African member of the G-20, it faces a series of recent challenges — from a downgrading of its credit rating to junk status to allegations of corruption at the highest level — as it is set to host the 27th World Economic Forum on Africa.
About 1,000 business, civil society and government leaders from more than 100 countries have now descended upon the port city of Durban on the country’s Indian Ocean coast for the three-day summit. The group includes 10 heads of state, including South Africa’s own embattled President Jacob Zuma.
The theme for this year’s gathering is “achieving inclusive growth,” a challenge for a continent with both a growing middle class and consumer culture and some of the poorest populations on the planet.
Here are some of the issues Devex will be watching this week:
The future of Africa is an urgent global concern in every dimension — moral and humanitarian, as well as economic and geopolitical. But amid all the discussions of policy and politics, the real question is: What are we doing about it? Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar weighs in from the World Economic Forum on Africa in Durban.
Business and government leaders gather for the forum at a time when millions of Africans are facing starvation — specifically in South Sudan, Somalia and Northern Nigeria. While drought has brought Somalia once again to the brink of famine, conflict has fueled the dire situations in Northern Nigeria and in South Sudan, where a famine has already been declared.
While there will be some discussion about the famine, little of the formal program focuses on the issue. One session, however, will be looking at solutions for how farmers can accelerate food production to meet growing demand both locally and abroad. Devex will also be asking some of these questions, including in conversations with the Rockefeller Foundation and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the technical body of the African Union.
While agricultural resilience is important, the root cause of much of the suffering related to hunger is conflict. In South Sudan warring factions have often targeted aid workers, prevented access to people in need, and stolen goods intended for the hungry. In Northern Nigeria Boko Haram has displaced many of the farmers who used to feed others but now find themselves in need of support. So Devex will also be looking at issues of governance and fragility.
Governance and conflict
While the continent has incredible potential for growth, much of that growth will be limited if there is a lack of good governance. Countries with weak institutions that are entangled in conflicts or teetering on the brink must be shored up in order to create the type of inclusive growth that is the central focus of the forum.
Devex will be looking to explore the Partnering Against Corruption Initiative and how business, government and society together can try to drive responsible leadership and thereby attract more business to the continent. Part of the conversation at the summit will look at how digitization can be used as a tool for civic participation to help enhance government accountability.
Devex will also be at a conversation about efforts underway to address conflict and fragility with Donald Kaberuka — the former president of the African Development Bank and a special envoy at the African Union Peace Fund — Forest Whitaker, a UNESCO special envoy for peace and the founder and CEO of the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative, and others. Devex will also be speaking with Vasu Gounden, the founder and executive director of the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes to get his insights.
Good governance is set to be a pervasive issue, particularly as the host nation’s president potentially faces 783 charges of corruption, fraud and racketeering. What progress might be made on these issues remains to be seen.
Employment, skills-building and future of work
Providing formal jobs for roughly 1.2 billion people who live on the continent lies at the core of Africa’s future development. While studies show the percentage of unemployed youth has slowly decreased in sub-Saharan Africa since 2012, more than one-quarter of north African youth, those between the ages of 15 and 29, were without work in 2016, according to research by the International Labour Organization.
The unemployment outlook remains largely mixed across countries. In South Africa, for example, half of youth are unemployed, the highest on the continent. Not only does unemployment remain problematic, but the poor quality of employment leaves too many living in “working poverty.” Roughly 65 million of Africa’s youth live in moderate to extreme poverty and earn less than $5 per day.
Low enrollment rates in secondary and tertiary education translates to a large number of unskilled workers who often resort to informal employment opportunities or low-skilled jobs. With a rising youth population, experts including the AfDB vice president of agriculture, human and social development will attempt to answer the question: How can government and business leaders introduce new technologies to expand access to education, counter this working poverty trend, enact policy change and foster skills for future jobs?
An increased push for regional integration, industrialization and trade
Trade and investment in Africa remain potential drivers for development and growth on the continent. Industrialization has become a buzzword in Africa, as countries scramble to find solutions that incorporate current technologies to meet the needs of its people. Although technology has the potential to generate breakthroughs in agriculture and health care by improving efficiency and expanding the reach of businesses and organizations, it often accentuates constraints mostly due to limitations around capacity and connectivity.
A country’s ability to industrialize also relies on its means to convert natural resources into finished goods, a weakness for Africa where an estimated $35 billion is spent on food imports, according to AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina. Following the 2016 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting — with the theme was “mastering the fourth industrial revolution” — this year’s Africa meeting seeks to refocus attention on the urgency of economic diversification, revitalization of manufacturing and harnessing human innovation to achieve sustainable growth. A session titled “Green, Growth or Both” will take a look at the possibility of large-scale infrastructure projects to accelerate industrial development while adhering to international environmental regulations.
Health systems and pandemic preparedness
Ebola, malaria, cholera, meningitis, and HIV/AIDS are among a list of epidemic and pandemic-prone diseases that threaten African public health security. Africa’s health care challenges are unique to the region, with a need for continent-specific medical solutions. Though recent advancements in the creation of a malaria and Ebola vaccination have been made, African health care systems still lack local capacity for expansive health research, products and services. Africa remains the poorest continent with the highest disease burden. To help build the capacity of health systems, this regional conference has prioritized topics ranging from improved access to health care, to redesigning health policies, to new strategies to combat disease in the wake of rapid urbanization.
Alongside these discussions, Devex will also be talking with the director of the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention — a public health institute created by the African Union Commission and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to learn more about the organization’s five year strategic plan to improve surveillance, emergency response and prevention of infectious diseases.
As the publishing date for the European Commission’s Omnibus Simplification Package proposal draws closer, a coalition of major business associations representing over 6000 members, including Amfori and the Fair Labor Association, has called on the EU to uphold the integrity of the EU sustainability due diligence framework.
Governments have also joined the conversation, with the Spanish government voicing its strong support for maintaining the core principles of the CSRD and CSDDD.
Their call emphasises the importance of preserving the integrity of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
These powerful business voices have been complemented by statements from the UN Working Group on Business & Human Rights, alongside 75 organisations from the Global South and 25 legal academics, all cautioning the EU against reopening the legal text of the CSDDD.
Additionally, the Global Reporting Initiative has urged the EU to maintain the double materiality principle of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, meanwhile advisory firm Human Level published a briefing exploring the business risks of reopening level 1 of the text.
Concerns stem from fears that reopening negotiations could weaken key human rights and environmental due diligence provisions, undermine corporate accountability and create legal uncertainty for businesses.
The European Commission’s Omnibus proposal is expected to be published on 26 February.
“Landmark Court Ruling Delivers Devastating Blow To Flagship Carbon Offset Project”, Friday, 31 January 2025.
A keenly-watched legal ruling in Kenya has delivered a huge blow to a flagship carbon offset project used by Meta, Netflix, British Airways and other multinational corporations, which has long been under fire from Indigenous activists. The ruling, in a case brought by 165 members of affected communities, affirms that two of the biggest conservancies set up by the controversial Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) have been established unconstitutionally and have no basis in law.
The court has also ordered that the heavily-armed NRT rangers – who have been accused of repeated, serious human rights abuses against the area’s Indigenous people – must leave these conservancies. One of the two conservancies involved in the case, known as Biliqo Bulesa, contributes about a fifth of the carbon credits involved in the highly contentious NRT project to sell carbon offsets to Western corporations. The ruling likely applies to around half the other conservancies involved in the carbon project too, as they are in the same legal position, even though they were not part of the lawsuit. This means that the whole project, from which NRT has made many millions of dollars already (the exact amount is not known as the organisation does not publish financial accounts), is now at risk.
The case was first filed in 2021, but judgment has only recently been delivered by the Isiolo Environment and Land Court. The legal issue at the heart of this case was identified in Survival International’s “Blood carbon” report, which also disputed the very basis of NRT’s carbon project: its claim that by controlling the activities of Indigenous pastoralists’ livestock, it increases the area’s vegetation and thus the amount of carbon stored in the soil.
The ruling is also the latest in a series of setbacks to the credibility of Verra, the main body used to verify carbon credit projects. Even though some of the participating conservancies in the NRT’s project lacked a clear legal basis and therefore could not ‘own’ or ‘transfer’ carbon credits to the NRT, the project was still validated and approved by Verra, and went through two verifications in their system. Complaints by Survival International prompted a review of the project in 2023, which also failed to address the problem.
Caroline Pearce, Director of Survival International, said today: “The judgement confirms what the communities have been saying for years – that they were not properly consulted about the creation of the conservancies, which have undermined their land rights. The NRT’s Western donors, like the EU, France and USAID, must now stop funding the organization, as they’ve been funding an operation which is now ruled to have been illegal…
The lawsuit accused NRT of establishing and running conservancies on unregistered community land, “without participation or involvement of the community,” including not obtaining free prior and informed consent before delineating and annexing community lands for private wildlife conservation.
The complaint reads, in part, “(NRT), with the help of the Rangers and the local administration, continue to use intimidation and coercion as well as threats upon the community leaders where the community leaders attempt to oppose any of their plans.” The case was brought by communities from two conservancies, Biliqo Bulesa Conservancy (which is in the NRT’s carbon project area and where 20% of the project’s carbon credits were generated) and Cherab Conservancy, which isn’t.
These two conservancies, the court has ruled, were illegally established. Permanent injunctions have been issued banning NRT and others from entering the area or operating their rangers or other agents there. The government has to get on with registering the community lands under the Community Land Act, and has to cancel the licences for NRT to operate in the respective areas. The NRT’s carbon offset project is reportedly the largest soil carbon capture project in the world.
“Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive : France advocates for indefinite postponement, to the detriment of social and environemental justice,” 24 January 2025
According to a document made public by Politico and Mediapart, the French government, via the Minister of Economy Eric Lombard, intends to bring to Brussels an agenda of all-out deregulation which, in addition to suspending the application of the text “sine die”, would call into question entire sections of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. This irresponsible position risks precipitating the unravelling of a text necessary in the face of the climate and social crisis, a text that France nevertheless declares to have supported.
[…] The instrumentalization of the simplification of the law to weaken a directive is dangerous and unacceptable for European democracy.
According to the document published this morning in the press, France would request an indefinite postponement of the application of this directive, a significant increase in the application thresholds, or even the removal of the clause that would allow in the future to specifically regulate the activities of financial actors. These numerous modifications would lead to an exclusion of nearly 70% of the companies concerned, even though only 3,400 of the 32 million European companies (i.e. less than 0.1%) were covered under the previous thresholds according to the NGO SOMO.
In reality, as during the negotiation of the text, France is merely echoing the demands made by several employers’ organisations hostile to the duty of vigilance, including AFEP and Business Europe. In doing so, France is actively contributing to undoing the progress achieved by citizens in recent years.
For our organisations, human rights and environmental associations and trade unions, the position expressed by France is irresponsible and incomprehensible. Last week, more than 160 European associations and trade unions repeated their opposition to a questioning of European Sustainable Finance legislations.
We call on the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and the Bayrou Government to reconsider this position as soon as possible and to reiterate France’s support for the European duty of vigilance, for the other texts of the Green Deal which are vital for people, the climate and biodiversity, and for respecting their implementation timelines.