Gaborone: Botswana will host a two-day global summit on sustainability in Africa next week in Gaborone from May 24-25. Botswana's President Ian Khama will host several heads of state including Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of iberia, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and Prime Minister, Aires Ali of Mozambique.

Brussels:  The  European Union on Tuesday gave China and India a month to comply with a new airline carbon emissions fee coming into effect across the bloc, or face penalties for flights in and out of Europe. EU Commissioner for  Climate Change Connie Hedegaard said all EU airlines and "nearly all" world airlines had agreed to hand over emissions data required under a controversial carbon levy on air travel that took effect January 1.

Nairobi: Parliament has been asked to speed up laws on the management of community land and mineral resource-sharing to avert conflicts between the government, explorers and the locals. Kenya is witnessing intensified activity in its mining and oil exploration sectors following the discovery of huge deposits of  titanium and niobium near Mombasa and gold in Trans Mara district.

Tunis: This is the twelfth volume of Gender, Poverty and Environmental Indicators on African Countries published by the Statistics Department of the African Development Bank Group. The publication also provides some information on the broad development trends relating to gender, poverty and environmental issues in the 53 African countries.

Nairobi: The private sector lost its jobs creation momentum last year as economic growth decelerated for the first time since the 2008 post-election crisis dip, official data released on Tuesday indicates. Though it maintained its position as the second largest source of new jobs, a drastic drop in the growth of agriculture output capped the private sectors ability to create new jobs at 47,000 or 3.4 per cent compared to 56,000 the previous year reflecting 2011’s slowdown in the pace of economic activity to 4.4 per cent from 5.8 per cent the previous year.

New Delhi: As a new world order is emerging, the developing world is increasingly becoming an important driver of the world’s economy, said Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. He was speaking at the inaugural session of ‘New Focus Markets: LAC & Africa’, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi on May 15, 2012.   Elaborating further, he said Asia’s share of the global economy in terms of purchasing power parity has risen from 7 per cent in 1980 to 25 per cent in 2010.

Cairo: Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri underlined on Monday the importance of water as being a source of cooperation among African states and not of conflicts, urging all of them to make the best use of water to achieve hoped-for development and to have a roadmap for the development of Africa to start from Cairo as soon as possible.

Johannesburg: South Africa has performed better than its Brics counterparts in the latest World Bank logistics survey, which examines global trade logistics performance in 155 countries. In its ‘Connecting to Compete 2012: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy’ report, the World Bank said that South Africa’s logistics performance indicators (LPIs) reached a score of 3.67, which ranked the county at an overall place of 23, up from a ranking of 28 in 2010.

Cape Town: It is my privilege to launch our Manufacturing Competitiveness Enhancement Programme (MCEP). As I announced when we launched the Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) programme for 2012 to 2014 on 2 April at the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) one of the key focus areas of our programme involves providing both encouragement and assistance to our manufacturers, especially in downstream labour intensive sectors to invest in raising their competitiveness.

Nairobi: The last one year was relatively hostile to most Kenyans. The impact of rising food prices and inflationary pressure meant that basic household products such as maize flour, sugar, and rice  got out of reach for a growing number of the population. Considering that agriculture and agro-related manufacturing contribute to at least 45 per cent of Kenya’s gross domestic product, it is important that sustainable linkages be put in place to buttress shocks arising from price increases.