a political economy of south african AIDS:
The larger problem, however, is not just that the cost of anti-retroviral drugs like AZT has hampered treatment. It is, I want to argue, that the class/race/gender character of South African health and social policy under conditions of a failing free-market (known here as "neo-liberal") economic strategy is inhibiting prevention.
(...) The US vice president conducted a "full-court press"--in the words of a rabid US State Department official bragging to Congress in a February 1999 report--against Mbeki to drop the "offending language" in the Medicines Act. The pressure included various punitive trade and aid measures. South Africa's crime was not only its 1997 law, but also advocacy of similar global provisions in the form of a mid-ranking health official's 1999 speech to the World Health Organisation. Not only did Gore directly assault South Africa's ability to conduct economic policy-making and cheapen vitally-needed medicines, he was now also attacking the newly-democratized government's freedom of speech in international fora! Two crucial reasons seemed to motivate Gore: the broad principle that US companies with intellectual property rights should not concede any exception to their product hegemony; and campaign contributions by major pharmaceutical firms.
(...) The poli-econ of AIDS points out the need for a yet more profound struggle against the underlying assumptions and characteristics of South African-- and international--capitalism.

two articles on mozambique:
(first, in defense of the economic order:)
Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries. It's also an African success story. Here, such things are relative. To the immediate west, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe misrules his country toward calamity. Nigeria, Ivory Coast and others are beset by civil conflict and corruption. But Mozambique, scarred by 16 years of civil war and Soviet-style economics, turned itself in the right direction on its own. Optimism, however guarded, and Africa do sometimes go together.
(...) But hyperinflation and a stagnant economy forced leaders of the neo-Marxist liberation movement, Frelimo, to shift their approach. Starting in the early 1990s, the ruling party cut subsidies, opened to outside investment, privatized firms nationalized after independence in 1975 and got a grip on borrowing and the budget. An independent central bank brought inflation into single digits. According to the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index, Mozambique has reformed more than any sub-Saharan African country.
(...) The payoff is the highest average growth rate, at 8% over the last decade, among the continent's non-oil exporters. GDP per capita is a still tiny $320, but that's compared with $178 in 1992. Since 1997, poverty rates decreased more in rural areas (from 71% to 55%) than in urban (62% to 52%), according to the World Bank. Child mortality has declined to 152 per 1,000 live births from 235. And primary-school enrollment has risen to 71% from 43%. Once a leading recipient of food aid, Mozambique now exports maize, with 5.6% average yearly growth in farming in the last 15 years. Banks, telecom and tourist firms, many from neighboring South Africa, have come in.
(...) But neighbors in similar straits haven't put in place Mozambique's fixes. Inflation in Zimbabwe is 1,700%; nearby Malawi and Zambia, their economies distorted by subsidies on commodities, are growing haphazardly. "You need political will" to get it right, says Mr. Baxter. "Starting from a low base" or "being a former colony" -- oft-heard excuses for Africa -- has little impact on economic performance. What matters, as regional dynamo Botswana also shows, is governance.
(...) Erratic "Uncle Bob," as his deferential neighbors call Zimbabwe's 83-year-old Robert Mugabe, is a useful reminder that local politicians pose the gravest threat to Africa's future.
(...) In the meantime, having done the so-called first generation of market reforms, the government is dragging its feet on legalizing land ownership, fighting corruption and loosening a restrictive labor code to bring in more investment. "Now they're stuck," says Mr. Lima. "There is a strong socialist background here. If we want to perform, we need to be different."
(second, in response:)
(...) Africa observers often single out a storyline from one country - sometimes it's cheery, sometimes not - in order to apply lessons to the whole continent. But I'm having trouble seeing what Kaminski and others see.
(...) Kaminski's paean to private enterprise leaves me particularly cold. Because Mozambique's development is heavily concentrated in the southern capital, the vast majority of the country sees few of the benefits of growth. And much of the economic improvement over the last 15 years can simply be chalked up to the peace dividend. When hostilities ended - with one million dead - Mozambique had nowhere to go but up. The country currently ranks tenth from the bottom on the UN's Human Development Index (just ahead of Burundi, and well behind Rwanda). It used to rank as the very poorest country in the world. So, yes, I guess things could be worse.
(...) But, most importantly, all this talk about privatization and foreign investment is very much beside the point. As Kaminski concedes, one in six Mozambican adults is infected with HIV. "Appreciating the change for the better takes some imagination," he writes. But you cannot speak of "the change for the better" unless the discussion starts with HIV. It's the only yardstick that matters in Mozambique, and in the rest of southern Africa as well. Some 37,000 Mozambican children contracted HIV in 2006, a jump of 60% over six years before. Nearly four of every 10 adults in Beira, the country's second largest city, are HIV-positive. Those are apocalyptic figures, however creative your thinking.
(...) The luxury building is full of foreigners here on business; the more posh of the country's two shopping malls is on the ground floor. It looks as if the land where the Four Seasons stood will be developed in much the same way, except that Part of the site will be set aside for a new American embassy. I have yet to meet a Mozambican who cares that the hotel is gone or about what will take its place.

africa and philanthropy:
In addition to providing raw materials, labor, and markets for finished products, Africa also cleanses the conscience of Africanist scholars, evangelists and missionaries, the rock and roll musicians who want to save Africa through orphan adoption, and philanthropists with Mother-Theresa complexes. But at the top of the pack – Western politicians. Occupy Iraq and Afghanistan but do not forget to rescue the African from the clutches of war-lords, poverty, corruption, and disease. Africa has become the continent where the guilt-ridden come to score quick moral points. And we let them.
(...) When Tony Blair intervened in Sierra Leone, it was heralded as an emblem of humanitarian military intervention (one of the five tenets of what became known as the Blair Doctrine). Yet, as Blair prepares to leave office, the reality in Sierra Leone is far different from the success story that will become part of his legacy. . Sierra Leone remains one of the world’s poorest nations. As the BBC reports on its website, 60 percent of its budget is met through foreign aid, life expectancy is 41 years and 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Even with debt forgiveness Sierra Leone continues to import more than it exports – all testaments to a radical dependency and inequality in an otherwise resource-rich nation. This is a recipe for another civil war long after Blair is out of office.
(...)For Bush, as the United States foreign policy suffers defeat in the Middle East, Africa becomes the saving grace. Its working - the Washington Post recently applauded Bush for his War on AIDS. But according to Africa Action’s Salih Booker, since 2002 Bush’s AIDS Plan has been “more smoke than mirrors.” Instead of allocating the promised money through the Global Fund, he channels it through PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief which is “often influenced by restrictive and ideologically-based policy prescriptions, such as abstinence-only regulations.” Bush undermines his own efforts through what most experts understand as unworkable ABC programs (Abstinence, Being Faithful and as a last resort, Condoms).
(...) Worse is the AIDS-Industrial Complex. The US under Bush opposed the loosening of patent laws which would allow countries to manufacture or import generic drugs. Donated AIDS money is therefore being spent on expensive premium drugs. The pharmaceutical companies pocket the money then lobby against the loosening of patent laws. The system is locked into a cycle of profit making at the expense of the dying.
(...) In what other parts of the world call corruption, a study by Public Campaign found that in the United States, between 1999 and 2004 “health care related interests [have] contributed $162.3 million dollars to federal candidates and party committees.” In 2003 President Bush appointed Randall Tobias, CEO of Eli Lilly & Co (a large US Pharmaceutical company) to head the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.
(...) To put things in perspective consider the following: Africa as a continent, with an estimated population of 680 million people receives 4.5 billion dollars from the United States while the country of Israel, with a population of 6 million, receives about 3 billion. And as Bush spends about 4.5 Billion a year on AIDS in Africa, for the fiscal year 2008, he has asked congress for $624.6 billion to be spent on the military.
(...) According to an Oxfam report, for every dollar given to Africa in aid, the donors get two dollars back. Oxfam also reports that a “one percent increase in trade for Africa would bring $70 billion into the continent – five times as much as Africa currently receives in aid and debt relief.”
(...) Because of the US 49 billion and the EU 93 billion on farmer subsidies, Africa, as a result of cheaper international prices, loses more than it gets in foreign aid. A United Nations African Renewal article shows Mali received 37.7 million in US aid in 2001, but lost 43 million dollars through cheap market prices. The US was taking more with one hand and giving less with other.
(...) But we as Africans also have to take a good share of the blame. Instead of policies that would once and for all break our dependency, our leaders trade our long-term livelihood for short-term gains. In 2003, according to Patrick Bond, a political analyst based in South Africa, the African elite had $80 billion sitting in Western banks. At the same time African governments owed these same banks $30 billion. Or in another startling statistic, between 1970 and 1996, Africa lost $285 billion as a result of capital flight while incurring a $178 billion debt.
(...)