confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
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Blue Lines
Both sides of the corporate coin were on parade this week. Dozens of
bankers and chief executives attended the United Nations Climate Summit
in New York on 23 September, which was a prelude to negotiations in
Paris next year for a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol
of 1997 (see United Nations | Africa: The
fire this century). They came bearing elaborate plans for voluntary
and 'market solutions' to global warming, with innovative plans for
solar power and wind production that could make African energy
producers into the greenest and most cost-effective on earth.
A day earlier, executives from some of the world's biggest power
companies told African delegates how new technology and investment
could overcome the continent's energy crisis within 15 years. The
African Development Bank says Africa's oil and coal producers could
raise the necessary US$300 billion if they reinvested just 5% of their
export revenue in that period.
Elsewhere, the United States' biggest companies were locked in
a three-way battle with anti-corruption activists and the New York
Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) about how to implement the
2010 Dodd-Frank law. This demands that oil, gas and mining companies
produce annual reports of all payments they make to African and other
governments for the extraction of those resources.
Last year a court in Washington threw out the SEC's first attempt to
set new rules for these disclosures and now Oxfam and other activists
are suing it for dragging its feet. Nor are Chinese companies
escaping scrutiny. On 24 September, the World Bank announced that for
the first time, it was debarring a state-owned company, China
International Water and Electric Corporation, from bidding for Bank
contracts for three years after a lengthy probe into its technical
capacity and working practices on a hydro-power project in Africa.