DIEYE Cheikh Tidiane Dièye

Cheikh Tidiane Dièye collabore pour Pambazuka News.

The hopes and illusions of world trade liberalisation for women in Africa

> Pambazuka News

http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-A (...)

Africa has faced ten years of unfettered liberalisation that, argues Cheikh Tidiane Dièye, has left the continent on its knees. Women, more than any other group, suffer the weight of the constraints of poverty largely brought about by the world trade system. It is women that must play a crucial role in winning the struggle for a better trading system.
Even though over the last twenty years many African nations have adopted sometimes draconian economic reforms, the benefits of trade liberalisation that were promised have not materialised. On the other hand, developed nations have enjoyed 70% of the wealth generated by trade liberalisation. In some respects, world trade regulations, defined for the most part by industrialised countries during the Uruguay Round agreements between 1986 and 1994, have only increased Africa’s economic problems.
Before an “ambiguous consensus”1 was reached at Doha, which was at the heart of the launch of the round of multilateral negotiations that tool place at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the “battle of Seattle” or “Seattle showdown”2 revealed to the world the growing dissatisfaction of developing countries with regard to the WTO, whose way of working did not appear to respond to their profound desire for economic progress and development.  read

date of on-line publication : 22 September 2006