An increasing number of countries have been supporting the extensive production and use of biofuels hoping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ensure energy security and help the rural poor. While the validity of such policy goals is largely shared, many critics doubt that biofuels are the solution and rather question the environmental, social and overall developmental impacts of biofuel expansion and related government support to the sector.

This paper examines the role of each of the above three policy goals in driving the biofuel industry and analyses the developmental impact of biofuels especially on weak economies. It also critically addresses some recent developments and measures taken to ensure the social and environmental sustainability of biofuels.

A general argument in support of trade remedies is that they act as an insurance policy that allows countries to take on deeper commitments in trade negotiations than they would otherwise be willing to make.  This paper reviews both the negotiating history of major trade liberalization initiatives and the largely unexploited history of the use of so-called “grey area” measures in the pre-WTO era to manage pressures on domestic economies emanating from international trade to shed light on the extent to which this argument holds true.

While antidumping laws were originally developed as the international trade analogue of domestic market competition or antitrust policies, most vestiges of competition policy measures disappeared early in their evolution. Nonetheless, the formal justification for modern antidumping practice remains founded on the bedrock of countering “unfair” trading practices and preserving competitive markets. Consistent with this formal rationale, antidumping law has been replaced by competition policy mechanisms in some instances, such as in the European Union’s internal market and in a number of bilateral free trade agreements.

Ethiopia is in the midst of a sustained growth surge that is becoming increasingly broad-based, building on major improvements in educational attainment, improved health outcomes, and infrastructure capacity in terms of access to power, transportation and telecommunications. The Government’s Growth and Transformation Plan sets ambitious targets for further improvements in these areas, together with significant reforms aiming to improve trade logistics, including through the roll-out of the authorized economic operator program across the growing number of export-oriented industry parks and a major improvement in the main export corridor to Djibouti. This industrialization push is taking place at a time when global trends are coming together to provide Ethiopia an opportunity to integrate its economy into the modern “Made in the World” system of production, including by attracting some of the labor-intensive production that is currently migrating out of China and other East Asian economies as wage rates rise in those regions.

The Government of Swaziland, through the Ministry of Finance and the Swaziland Investment Promotion Authority (SIPA) and with the support of the ACP Business Climate Facility (BizClim) organised a one-week event on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), consisting of a one-day conference and a four-day intensive training programme, from July 16 to 20, 2012.

These workshop proceedings summarise the presentations and discussions.

Public infrastructure development has been recognised by many as crucial to economic growth and prosperity on the African continent in general and in the East African Community in particular. The OECD underlines the substantial benefits Africa could achieve through the development of its infrastructure, measuring the potential impact as lying around 2% GDP. The positive impact in the East African region would be even greater than in most other parts of the continent.