En stribe kendte navne, flere af dem internationale, vil søge at tegne et billede af et pulserende Afrika i fremdrift, som ikke længere er en slags temapark for velgørenhed, men byder på lovende muligheder på næsten alle fronter – også handel og investeringer.
Det sker når Ulandsfagligt Selskab under Dansk Ingeniørforening (DI) og Center for Afrika-studier under Københavns Universitet indbyder til en stor Afrika-konference, der finder sted fredag d. 2. november i DIs lokaler på Københavns havnefront.
Konferencen holdes på engelsk, så resten af omtalen her er på engelsk:
International conference on “The new Africa – no longer the hopeless continent?”
In recent years, many African countries have experienced remarkable economic growth, raising the prospect of a brighter future for the African continent.
However, much of the growth is attributable to rising commodity prices, and it is still an open question if the export of natural resources stimulates an economic transformation that benefits the population at large.
The combination of rising mineral wealth and continuing poverty could be explosive, and the situation poses many questions for development agencies and the civil society.
However, it also opens up opportunities for business development for national and international enterprises.
The focus of the conference will be on ‘The new Africa’ – the challenges of inclusive growth and job creation, and the opportunities presented by factors such as the falling costs of communication technology.
Talks will be given by invited key national and international experts on Africa, in an interaction between academia and industry with the aim of highlighting the myths and realities behind the new Africa.
The conference is of interest to participants working with inclusive and sustained growth in Africa – whether for development agencies and civil society organisations or industry.
Praktiske oplysninger
Venue: IDA Meeting Centre, Kalvebod Brygge 31 – 33, Copenhagen.
Fee: DKK 200 for members of the Danish Society for International Development; others DKK 400; DKK 100 for students.
Registration: www.ida.dk or phone 33 18 48 18 (Monday to Friday 10:00 to 14:00.
Chairperson: Holger Bernt Hansen, Professor Emeritus, University of Copenhagen.
Dagens program
(subject to change):
08:30 – 09:00
Registration
09:00 – 09:10
Welcome by Anne Christensen, Chairperson, the Danish Society for International Development.
09:10 – 10:00
The new Africa: Achievements and challenges by Professor Stephen Ellis, University of Amsterdam.
10:00 – 10:20
Coffee break.
10:20 – 10:50
Africa and Maersk can grow together by Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen, Group Lead Advisor, CSR Group Sustainability, A.P. Moller – Maersk Group.
10:50 – 11:30
Aid, Growth and Development by Professor Finn Tarp, The World Institute for Development Research (WIDER) / United Nations University (UNU), Helsinki.
11:30 – 12.00
Sustainability in the water sector through private sector innovations and partnerships by Louise Koch, Programme Manager, Global Business Development & Communication, Grundfos.
12:00 – 12:30
The role of the diaspora (afrikanere uden for kontinentet) and its contribution to development in Africa by Dr Bevyline Sithole.
12:30 – 13:30
Lunch.
13:30 – 14:00
Africa in the Intersection between Security and Development by Birgitte Markussen, Ambassador, Head of Department for Africa, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
14:15 – 15:15
China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The case of human resource development by Professor Emeritus Kenneth King, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh.
15:15 – 15:45
Coffee break.
15:45 -16:30
The information society and the role of female entrepreneurs in Western Africa by Coura Fall, Coordinator for GOREeTIC and member of the multi-stakeholder advisory group in the UN Internet Governance Forum, Dakar Senegal.
16:30 – 17:00
Doing business in Africa by Ib Albertsen, Senior Investment Manager, IFU – The Industrialisation Fund for Developing Countries.
17:00 – 17:15
Closing and presentation of conclusions by Stig Jensen, Director of Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen.
Yderligere oplysninger hos:
Mogens Jensen
E-mail: [email protected] eller tlf. 26 74 15 17
CV (levnedsbeskrivelse) for speakers
• Professor Stephen Ellis is the Desmond Tutu professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the VU University Amsterdam, and a senior researcher at the Afrika Studie Centrum in Leiden. He has worked as the editor of the newsletter Africa Confidential and is also past editor of African Affairs, the journal og Britain’s Royal African Society. In 2003-2004 he was director of the Africa programme at the International Crisis Group. In 2008, he was commissioned by the Dutch government to write a book that would sketch the new context for policy. This was published as Season of Rains: Africa in the World.
• Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen. Prior to joining the Maersk Group in 2009, he worked as a consultant on CSR issues with PwC. Earlier, he has worked and lived in South Africa and worked throughout Africa on human rights and capacity building of civil society organizations. His educational background is a master degree in philophophy.
• Professor Finn Tarp is Director, UN University-Wider, Helsinki, Finland (Ranked sixt place in the Global Development Think Tanks Ranking in 2011). He also holds the Chair of Professor of Development Economics at the Department of Economics, Faculty of Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. Finn Tarp is an international expert on issues of development strategy and foreign aid, with an interest in poverty, income distribution and growth, micro- and macroeconomic policy and modelling, agricultural sector policy and planning, household and enterprise development, and economic adjustment and reform. In his capacity as Director of UN-WIDER Finn Tarp holds responsibility for the ReCOM programme on Research and Communication on Foreign Aid.
• Louise Koch is Programme Manager at Grundfos LIFELINK, a Grundfos business unit, focusing on solutions for sustainable water supply in developing countries. Louise Koch has a background in anthropology and innovation, which she brings into play in her daily work with global business development, partnerships and communication at Grundfos LIFELINK. In her presentation, she will focus on barriers for sustainable water supply in developing countries and how Grundfos LIFELINK through innovation and partnerships create new and far reaching models for water supply.
• Dr Bevyline Sithole has worked in Southern Africa, Sweden, Indonesia, Australia and now in Denmark. You could say she is a good example of an African woman in the Diaspora! Bev is a Trustee of Shanduko (the Centre for Agrarian Research), Zimbabwe; an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at the Charles Darwin University, Australia; am the Founding Director of the Aboriginal Research Practitioner’s Network in Northern Australia; and have been an invited as guest Lecturer to the Centre for African Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Recently, Bev participated in a UNEP Process called GEO 5 as a Lead Author for the Africa Chapter on Options for Policies that Worked in Africa. Bev’s interests are broad as is her academic background which is interdisciplinary.
• Birgitte Markussen, Ambassador, is Head of Department for Africa in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2008 – 2010, she was Danish Ambassador based in Burkina Faso and accredited in Niger and covering Chad and the Central African Republic. In 2008 – 2010 she was Deputy Head of the Department for Environment, Energy and Climate Change in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the COP 15 International UN Conference on Climate Change held in Copenhagen. She has served as Deputy Head of the embassy in Kampala. She has had a number of special assignments including Co-chair of the OECD/DAC International Working Group on Environment and Change (ENVIRONET) and Member of the Review Panel of the OECD/DAC first guidelines on Managing for Development Results.
• Kenneth King is professor emeritus, University of Edinburgh, where he was Director of the Centre of African Studies for 20 years. In 2006-7 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Hong Kong. His recent book: China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa will be out in the autumn of 2012.
• Coura Fall graduated in Computer Sciences with another specialisation in management. She is a member of Bokk Jang and Coordinator for GOREeTIC, a francophone advocacy network for internet access in Africa. Since 2009, she has been an advisory member in the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group in the Internet Governance Forum, a 50 member group that advises the Secretary General of the UN on internet governance issues, including the gender dimension. She represented the African Civil Society on the information Society.
• Ib Albertsen, Senior Investment Manager, holds a Master in Economics. He has been working with private sector development in emerging markets through business-to-business linkages for the last 20 years. Postings include Egypt (1996-2000), Bangladesh (2006-2008) and Tanzania (2010-2011). Ib Albertsen works at IFU (Industrialisation Fund for Developing Countries), sourcing, structuring and closing new investments in South East Asia and East Africa.
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