Developing country leaders rallied in Paris, highlighting the urgency for reform of the global financial architecture to counteract economic, environmental and social adversities, and to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals.
“Predictable, affordable and sustainable financing is critical to allowing African countries to get back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Acting Executive Secretary, Antonio Pedro, said at the Sustainable Debt Coalition event organized on the margins of the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris.
The Summit was convened by French President Emmanuel Macron to develop a roadmap to ease the debt burdens of low-income countries while freeing up more funds for development and climate financing.
The Sustainable Debt Coalition, launched by the Government of Egypt at COP27, aims to address critical financing challenges faced by emerging markets and developing economies, particularly the debilitating impacts these have on climate action and development. It introduces a fresh consultation pathway that intersects debt, climate, and developmental concerns, fostering dialogue for innovative solutions.
In Paris, African Leaders call for affordable financing to recover economies and put the SDGs back on track
School furniture for 15 primary schools
The official handing over of school furniture to 15 Primary Schools in Tigray took place at the Hawzen Woreda, Koraro Primary OPS representatives, and the Neighbourhood Relation Committee (NRC). The procured furniture items comprise 3,000 desks and 240 blackboards. The procurement of school furniture was funded through the World Bank-financed project: Response – Recovery – Resilience for Conflict-Affected Communities in Ethiopia.
At the handover ceremony, Zegeye Araya from the education bureau on behalf of the regional government emphasized its commitment to ensure access to basic services in the region. He also appreciated the implementation process of the project which involved the community and the regional office and paid due attention to environmental and social factors.
Millions of Ethiopians have been devastated by the fighting in the north, and villages like those in Tigray now lack access to essential services. Educational facilities have suffered significant damage, with schools, furniture, textbooks, and laboratory equipment destroyed, forcing many children out of school. Consequently, approximately 2.4 Million school-aged children have been affected.
USAID donates medical equipment worth $84,000 to restore basic health services in Afar
The United States Agency for International Development in Ethiopia (USAID/Ethiopia), through its Health Workforce Improvement Program (HWIP), donated more than US$84,000 (4.5 million Birr) worth of medical equipment to help restore basic health services in health facilities in Afar Region that were affected by the northern Ethiopia conflict. During an event at the Regional Health Bureau compound in Samara, USAID/Ethiopia Acting Deputy Mission Director Thomas Staal handed over the equipment to Yassin Habib, Head of the Afar Regional Health Bureau.
Acting Deputy Director Staal also visited Dubti Hospital, which was impacted by the conflict, to see USAID’s post-conflict support to revive its essential health services. The USAID Health Workforce Improvement Program worked with Dubti Hospital and other health centers in the region to build their capacity to plan, recruit, and manage their respective health workforce.
“Trumpists” And Globalisation
In 2017, Donald Trump rode his “anti-globalist, America First” campaign message all the way to the United States presidency. In essence, Trump declared anything and anybody who was not blatantly an American nationalist a “globalist.” A number of political analysts adamantly stressed that the key reason why Donald Trump and his message mavens deployed the term in that manner was to shield the candidate against predictable charges that it was preposterous for a billionaire, and one truly given to the gilded lifestyle, to get to the White House by pretending to save the common folk.
Manfred Steger in his book titled “Rethinking Globalism” stated that at its most basic level, globalism is very simply a philosophy dedicated to bringing people closer together all over the world. It is fundamentally about learning from each other’s successes or failures and promoting cooperation as well as prosperity. Self-styled “anti-globalists” have tended to flatten the definition conveniently into something more specific – in the sense of defining it as whatever it is that they oppose in the world.
On the left, anti-globalism has focused on trade deals and the abuses of hypercapitalism by a wealthy few individuals and multinational corporations. On the right, especially in the United States, anti-globalists run the gamut from Americanists, who would prefer a world led and dominated by the United States, to libertarians or small-government conservatives. They all like to misconstrue globalism as a movement for a “world government.”
Manfred Steger noted that there are also far-right critics who view globalism through the lens of conspiracy theories that purport to identify shadowy cabals pulling the strings of world events. These conspiracy theories, over the centuries, have at various points been anti-Catholic, anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic or all of the above. It is difficult to tell where exactly on the conservative-to-far-right spectrum President Trump himself places his anti-globalism. To be sure, his anti-globalism bears little resemblance to the left’s anti-globalism, not least because his administration is filled with the plutocrats they abhor. He also very much seeks to project the U.S. hegemony they abhor as well. But again, none of these anti-globalist definitions of “globalism” truly capture the spirit of the philosophy at its root.
It is true that international cooperation doesn’t equal world government. The pursuit of international cooperation and the attempt to shape an equitable form of global governance do not equal world government. There are problems to solve that are bigger than any one sovereign state. And as regards global governance, one can have a de facto version of it, traditionally called imperialism, or a more enlightened, better balanced one. That is the one the democratic world is struggling to establish today.
Quinn Slobodian in his book titled “Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism” stated that any constructive vision of globalism, which we have always embraced, simply means finding ways to bridge the cultural and political, even civilizational, divides between governments on areas of common need or concern. To bridge those gaps, this inclusive kind of globalism dispenses with the belief that any one area of the world is by nature superior to the others and that it has all the right answers. It also militates against the Trumpian notion that nothing positive can be gleaned from other cultures or governing styles.
Quinn Slobodian noted that in the 20th century, this kind of globalism saw a shift toward flexible supra-national forms of cooperation and alliances. Extending that arc of cooperation goes well beyond the oft maligned EU. The 21st century is seeing a plentiful rise of city and other sub-national governments as global actors.
John Ralston Saul in his book titled “The Collapse of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World” stated that in contrasts to the zero-sum worldview of the “Trumpists”, there is no upward or downward transfer of power in globalism. There are simply ever more actors at the table to work with and learn from each other. And there are many more stages to act on. According to him, our globalism is also, contrary to the narrowly defined leftist version of the critique, far from the multinational hyper-capitalism of today and the heinous colonialism of the preceding era.
