Development policies & partnerships
Under this title, an important forum on small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) gathered in Lisbon, Portugal on 6-7 June 2011. The conference was organized by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Brussels based international Association, EMRC , involved in promoting public and private partnership with the African private sector.
The Lisbon forum wanted to highlight the specific difficulties encountered by African SMEs which are...
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Konstantina Papadimitriou is the head of Policy and Campaigns at ActionAid Hellas (www.actionaid.gr) which is notably active in lobbying the European Parliament. A number of the group’s suggestions have been supported by Greek members of the Parliament, and the group is responsible for finalizing news relating to Greece in reference documents* for CONCORD, the European NGO confederation for development. ...
Development policy in Greece is in the hands of a true connoisseur. Athanasios Theodorakis, former Director-General for Development at the European Commission, is the head of the Directorate General for International Development, Cooperation - Hellenic Aid. He is undertaking major reforms with the aim of focusing development aid on the ACP countries, instead of concentrating principally on either the Balkans or the Caucasus - Georgia,...
The European Commission has reaffirmed its commitment to contributing to the $100 billion a year needed to combat climate change in developing countries. But is it enough?
The fight to halt the climate change trend has been given a financial boost thanks to the European Commission’s assessment that the 2020 target of $100 billion a year for climate actions in developing countries is an achievable target.
“Challenging but feasible...
The ACP group and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Brussels on 24 March. It signals an ACP drive to forge new links with organisations other than the European Union (EU). Secretary General of the ACP group, Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas and Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) said that future cooperation between the...
The new support programme for microfinance institutions (MFIs) has just been launched. The main aim is to strengthen the capacities of more than 100 MFIs in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
“We believe that microfinance as a support tool for generating revenue - for informal micro-companies or marginalised peasant farmers for example - can contribute to development and help reduce poverty,” explains Alessandra...
EU member states are becoming increasingly inward-looking and eager to promote aid policies which prioritise foreign or domestic policy objectives. These are the main conclusions of the annual AidWatch report by CONCORD, released on May 19th in Brussels.
Despite being the world’s biggest aid donor, only nine countries met their EU aid targets in 2010, with the bloc as a whole falling short by a whopping €14.5 billion. Italy alone...
With €53.8 billion (0.43% of its GDP), the European Union’s official development aid (ODA) reached a record level in 2010, up by €4.5 billion on 2009. “The EU remains incontestably the world’s leading donor,” declared Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, while admitting that it has failed to honour its pledge to jointly allocate 0.56% of its gross domestic product to ODA in 2010, rising to 0.7% in 2015. In...
Structured dialogue with civil society fosters South-South cooperation. The potential for South-South cooperation took centre stage on 31 May 2011 at a public meeting held at the European Parliament on the theme ‘Organising Inclusive Ownership – The EU's Structured Dialogue to strengthen cooperation with Non State Actors in the South’.
Cooperation between Benin, Bhutan and Costa Rica was first put in motion by the Dutch...
Faced with the increased incidence of wars in certain ACP Group regions, often reducing their development efforts to zero, conflict prevention was recognized as a priority in the cooperation agreements signed in Cotonou in 2000 between the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and their principal partner, the European Union. These provisions assumed particular importance with the entry into force of the European External Action Service on 1...
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