This issue of ROAPE reflects on many of the dynamics that have underpinned revolution in North Africa and conflict and resistance in the Sahara. It also explores the external challenges to democratic deepening and the threat of return to authoritarianism posed by local reactionary class and social forces. The optimism of recent struggles for political reform and the ousting of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt are tempered by imperialist intervention and threat of counter revolution. The international financial institutions (IFIs) continue to apply pressure for continued policies that created the conditions for revolutionary upheaval in North Africa. Thus a so-called Marshall Plan of action agreed by the G8 for North Africa in May 2011 encouraged market reform, promotion of foreign investment, cutting food and energy subsidies and reducing public spending. Egypt's foreign debt, run up by dictator Husni Mubarak and his cronies, of almost US$32 billion has not been cancelled. And there has been little encouragement for the development of local domestic markets for sustainable development and expansion of regional trade. The G8 and the IFIs thus encourage continued neoliberal reform that helped erstwhile elites plunder national resources in Tunisia and Egypt. Patrick Bond in this issue examines recent IMF intervention in the region and what the implications are of the IFIs trying again to implement disastrous neoliberal policy. Economic subordination of Africa, however, is only one dimension of imperialism. North Africa is also experiencing ideological and military intervention. Neoliberal hegemonic debate highlights the generosity and benefit of globalisation. It stresses the need for Africans to ‘wait and see’, as development will inevitably emerge with patience and as local power holders create appropriate investment climates and deliver Western ideas of democratic governance. There is, after all, donor competition to boost overseas development assistance which will deliver Gleneagles promises made in 2005 to increase official development assistance (ODA) once the corner of capitalist recession is turned. This soft image of Western interest has been challenged by revolution in Egypt and Tunisia. The ‘Arab Spring’ has revealed Western collusion with the deposed autocrats, military support for the repressive and bestial state apparatus of law and (dis)order and IMF-style economic reform strategies that have worsened poverty and increased inequality.
The reality of imperial interests is most clearly demonstrated by NATO war planes rushing to bomb Libya to promote regime change. And in Côte d'Ivoire, French and UN troops have defended imperialist interests by promoting regime change with the ousting of Laurent Gbagbo. Whatever one thinks about the impact of the reactionary and brutal leaderships of Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi or Gbagbo, their removal by Western military force undermines the capacity of local forces to deal with local despots.
Imperialist military intervention has followed the attempt by the US and EU to ‘catch up’ with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Imperialist forces want African leaders with whom they can do business. Western corporations and governments had been able to do exactly that in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya but neither head of state was considered reliable or predictable. Washington and Paris have been unhappy with the unconventional and idiosyncratic behaviour of Qaddafi and with Gbagbo's refusal to repay debt and his flirting with non-Western oil companies. President Obama used warm words in the UK in May 2011. He offered long-delayed support to encourage democracy as a universal human aspiration and the removal of dictatorship. The contradiction is that declared support for political liberalisation took place alongside NATO bombing in Libya, with significant US military assistance. Imperialism requires political leaderships and forms of democracy in Africa that conform to Western interests (Chomsky et al. 2011).
Imperialist intervention uses the language of humanitarianism to justify its use of force. But it is unclear how the bombing of people and their homes, whether it is in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya helps to protect them. Military intervention is more likely to create the atrocities and casualties, death and destruction NATO and US policy makers say they are intervening to stop. Since the 2005 UN World Summit, the ‘international community’ has adopted the idea of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). The central rhetorical concern of R2P is the desire to protect people from human rights violations. In the wake of revolutionary struggles in Tunisia and Egypt, the intervention in Libya authorised by UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (2011) called for a ceasefire in Libya and an ‘end to the current attacks against civilians’, which might constitute ‘crimes against humanity’. The resolution imposed a no-fly zone over Libya, sanctions against the government and authorised ‘all possible force’ to protect civilians (UN 2011). R2P was used in the Libyan case as a pre-emptive rationale for intervention to prevent greater loss of civilian life after some had died in state violence, while in Syria thousands of civilians have actually been slain by security forces and repression in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia has reinforced state power against demonstrators calling for political reform.
The Security Council has effectively been privatised by the US, UK and France (Mazover 2011). The credibility and reputation of the UN as an impartial arbitrator for defence and promotion of human rights and defender of international law is further damaged. The institution was already struggling to project even-handedness after it orchestrated the theatre of lies justifying intervention in Iraq. And Secretary General Ban Ki Moon failed in Sri Lanka to question human rights abuses at the end of the country's civil war. Only 10 members of the Security Council voted for Resolution 1973 while five abstained – Russia, China, India, Brazil and Germany. In other words the ‘representatives’ of the majority of humankind did not support military intervention in Libya. Regional actors Egypt and Turkey were also not keen about the terms of military intervention. And although the Arab League initially supported the resolution it quickly changed its mind when the scale and ferocity of bombing commenced and the removal of Qaddafi was identified as the priority. The Arab League requested a motion for a no-fly zone over Gaza too, but this was not reported by international media or discussed by the Security Council. Ignoring the Arab League's suggestion to limit Israel's militarisation of the Middle East is not surprising, as the US had not set limits on Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and Obama's continued support for Zionism during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza 2008–2009.
Oil and political collapse
The Western media onslaught supporting NATO bombing against Qaddafi's regime presents the case as universal and one dimensional: it is about the enduring struggle for Libyans to realise human freedom. There has not been any questioning as to why Libya became the target of imperialist aggression in 2011 after Qaddafi had been rehabilitated as someone with whom the West could do business. And why were the French so keen to remove Laurent Gbagbo from office? One thing is certain: the interventions have not been about saving the lives of innocent civilians whether in Libya or Côte d'Ivoire. If international humanitarianism was the concern of Obama and Cameron, Sarkozy and Berlusconi there would certainly be more than just a condemnation of Syrian atrocity and more than just a mild rebuke of dynastic rule in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. To understand military intervention we need to understand a little more about the imperial project in North and West Africa.
After World War II, Eisenhower viewed the Middle East as the ‘most strategically important region of the world’ (cited in Chomsky et al. 2011). US foreign policy is not reducible to oil and energy demands but it is an important dimension of it. Libya, moreover, has an important geo-strategic position on the North Africa coast, seen increasingly by the EU as crucial in its strategy to maintain ‘fortress Europe’ in the defence of borders from African immigration. Libya was also seen as a stable authoritarian regime that opposed radical Islamism. Libya is the seventeenth largest world oil producer and the third largest in Africa. It is likely to also have the largest oil reserves on the continent (and significant natural gas reserves) and its crude oil is of high quality low sulphur content with 85% of production exported to Europe, and 5% to the US. One important dimension of the Libyan conflict is that eastern Libya where the rebellion originated is also the centre of oil production and refining and the rebellion has challenged persistent underdevelopment from the authoritarian Libyan regime. A key question, however, is why the rebellion erupted in eastern Libya in 2011, why are the EU and Washington supporting the ‘rebels’ when little is known about them and why are some authoritarian states tolerated and not others?
Since 2006, US State Department rhetoric has not distinguished between stability and democracy. As George W. Bush once noted, the difficulty for the US is its dependence on oil imports from countries whose populations are hostile to the US. Washington is particularly concerned about a Shia belt of resistance in the northern Gulf where most of the Middle East oil is located. And of course the US 5th fleet has its base in Bahrain. But why has Washington's view of Libya come full circle? Qaddafi was the personification of evil from the 1970s but became an ally against terror from 2003. In May 2006 the US restored diplomatic relations only to lead the charge against Qaddafi in 2011. It should not be forgotten that Qaddafi crushed an armed Islamist opposition in Benghazi in the early 1990s and he issued perhaps the first international warnings against Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in 1998.
Networks of secret police and informants make doing research and uncovering the character of politics and society in Libya very difficult. Alison Pargeter in this journal (2006) reviewed internal struggles for political and economic reform in Libya and the contradictions of challenging authoritarian politics. One such obstacle for the Libyan government was oil price volatility and the difficulty Qaddafi had ensuring the delivery of spoils politics at a time of economic decline. How could wealth be distributed without alienating local tribal and regional interests? And how could this be done in one of Africa's biggest countries – 1.7 million square kilometres with a population of less than 7 million people? Benghazi rebels are unhappy that Qaddafi failed to invest in the oil producing regions – a problem that is not peculiar to Libya. The difficulties of what has been called a ‘curse of resources’, the underperformance of countries where high levels of income accrue from resource rents, was exacerbated in Libya following attempts to rebuild after 11 years of UN sanctions between 1992 and 2003.
Sanctions against Qaddafi may have served the regime in the short term. The extent of international opposition to his Jamahiriya or ‘State of the Masses’ had a unifying effect on the people of Libya. Yet the economic cost of sanctions for Libya was at least US$30 billion and there was a political cost too. As Luis Martinez has noted, ‘The revolutionary artifice of the Jamahiriya crumbled under the impact of sanctions. The revolution was lost to view, amidst violence and corruption’. ‘The Jamahiriya became an empty shell’, national disenchantment grew and ‘The ‘tribalisation’ of the government gave rise to unease over the bases of the national community: was Libya a nation-state, or a state of tribes?' (Martinez 2007, pp. 1–2). Imperialist intervention now offers the spectre of dividing Libya between pre colonial Tripolitania in the west and Cyrenaica in the East. The Benghazi opposition denies this is part of their agenda although it is difficult to see just what the opposition agenda is other than ridding the country of Qaddafi and aligning a new government to Western interests.
Qaddafi flirted with political reform and sanctioned economic liberalisation in the 90s and early 2000s. He was resistant to accusations that Libya had funded terrorist attacks, notably the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 and the DC10 UTA Flight 772 that exploded over Niger en route to Paris from Brazzaville in September 1989. The ‘conversion’ of Libya from a rogue state to an ally in the US war on terror followed 9/11 (Martinez 2007, p. 4). Qaddafi halted Libya's programme of Weapons of Mass Destruction and supported the defeat of Saddam Hussein. Qaddafi understood very well the difficulties of appeasing Western interests and also of preserving his tribal power base enforced by a strong security apparatus (not a national army). Political and economic reforms, especially following the appointment in 2003 of reformist Prime Minister Shukhri Ghanem, a close associate of Seif al Islam Qaddafi, were short-lived. The PM was sacked in March 2006 after overseeing trade reform and an influx of foreign banks to Libya, but Qaddafi and state bureaucrats were wary of losing positions of power and economic largesse. Domestic reform needed to be extensive enough to assure international capitalist interests that Libya was ripe for business, but they could not be so extensive that they undermined Qaddafi and local power brokers. And the confidence held by the international community in the reforming zeal of Seif Qaddafi was short lived as he mounted vicious attacks against local dissent.
Opposition in Benghazi offers Washington the opportunity for regime change. It offers an opportunity to install a Tripoli government that will be predictable, will accept neoliberal reform, the opening of Libya's oil and gas sector and a military platform in a geo-strategically crucial part of Africa.
The colonial roots of crisis in Côte d’Ivoire
French and UN intervention in Côte d’Ivoire is comparable with the bombing of Libya. In both cases there is a prioritisation of economic interest of the West and a failure to understand local politics. And in both interventions there has been rhetoric of a humanitarian emergency. As Mark Duffield notes, the post cold war period highlights how the idea of ‘emergency’ has provided the basis for new forms of trusteeship, intervention and international sovereignty to be reasserted in formally independent nations: ‘Emergency has provided a means of penetrating the world of peoples, ignoring existing laws or conventions, colonising new countries and deepening a presence within existing spheres of operation’ (Duffield 2007, p. 48).
The end of the cold war erased any vestige of neutral humanitarian assistance and replaced it with interventions dictated by Western interests. This was evident in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Afghanistan and Kosovo where: ‘The new humanitarianism involve[d] a shift in the centre of gravity of policy away from saving lives to supporting social processes and political outcomes’ (Duffield 2001, p. 67). And we have noted how the UN in Libya is integrated as an advocate for Western interests and NATO militarisation. This has also been the lamentable outcome of intervention in Côte d'Ivoire.
The attention of the world media and international community to the politico-military conflict in Côte d'Ivoire has evaporated since Laurent Gbagbo was deposed. And there has been very little attempt to explain or interpret the nature and the causes of the conflict which date back at least to 2002. Laurent Gbagbo's presidency certainly expanded ethnic division and tension. It also fuelled corruption and the absence of governmentality, strengthened para-military militias and the power of warlords that institutionalised forms of neo-patrimonial politics.
But preoccupation with the authoritarian character of Gbagbo's politics only emphasises the internal dynamics of conflict. There is a broader set of imperial interests that shaped Gbagbo's politics and the way in which UN and French intervention emerged to depose him. Those interests relate to the political economy of natural resources and the historically defined geo-political and geo-economic dynamics at the international level. Côte d'Ivoire was a French protectorate in the 1840s and a colony after the carve-up of Africa at the Berlin Conference in 1884.
The colony was central to the consolidation of Francafrique and the extraversion of the colonial economy involved the establishment of agricultural monocultures of cocoa, coffee, palm oil, and groundnuts for export on the international markets. Agricultural labour was forcibly recruited between 1910–1940 from Upper Volta with the collaboration of traditional leaders. Workers were brought to toil on plantations in the South with the complicity of syndicates of landowners (Amin 1967).
The French model of colonial ‘assimilation’ created African elites. They were trained in French universities and became the representatives of colonies in the French parliament. A hierarchical mosaic of ethnic political identities was moulded on the premise of the superiority of the Akan ethnic group over the Kru, Gur and Mande groups. Independence in 1960 consolidated the cult of personality of Felix Houphouët-Boigny. It was organised around the one-party Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire, Parti Démocratique de la Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI), reproducing a social compromise with colonial roots and challenging the emergence of a nation state identity. The Africanisation of political cadres and the partial and uneven distribution of economic benefits in post-independence Côte d’Ivoire strengthened the role of political and intellectual domination of landowners of the Baoulé aristocracy. At the same time it enhanced the colonial division of labour, incentivising foreign workers to settle permanently, with access to land, education and health services. Eighty per cent of Côte d’Ivoire's workforce in the first decades of independence was drawn from surrounding countries (Campbell 2003, p. 30). By the 1970s, this post-colonial pact was using labour from neighbouring states in large and medium plantations. These agricultural export crops helped to produce 7% rates of growth – similar to Japan and Brazil (Fauré 1982, p. 45).
A series of ‘privileged’ economic and political relationships with France locked the Ivorian economy into the economic and military embrace of the colonial power. Eighty per cent of import–export trade was with France, preserving unlimited profit repatriation to the ex-colonial power. There was also a consolidation of military cooperation with Paris, training of African security forces and the presence of pre-deployed French troops in Côte d'Ivoire. France in addition held 65% of Côte d'Ivoire's foreign exchange in Paris. These constraints shaped the neo-colonial character of the post-colonial regime.
Dependence upon agricultural exports made Côte d'Ivoire vulnerable to the vagaries of the international market. Falling prices for raw materials fuelled the economic recession of 1983–84 and increased debt. This led to structural adjustment and selective austerity measures to avoid exacerbating a fiscal crisis of the state. The Caisse de Stabilisation et de Soutien des Prix des Produits Agricoles (CAISTAB), the public sector organisation that regulated and stabilised agricultural goods and prices, was dismantled, depriving thousands of small and medium producers of subsidies and protection from market instability. State income declined and this undermined the capacity for patronage, ultimately eroding the base of power of the PDCI. Dissent grew, especially among among young unemployed, trade-unionists and public functionaries.
In 1994 the devaluation of the Franc CFA further reduced the prices of cocoa and coffee on the international markets. This enhanced the burden of debt, which increased from 196% of GDP in 1990 to 243% in 1998. It undermined rates of investment which decreased in the same period from 20% of GDP to 8% (Akindes 2004, p. 19).
Ethnicity, imperialism and political transformation
Economic austerity and neoliberal restructuring of the 1980–90s culminated with the death of Felix Houphouët-Boigny and the transition to multi-party politics. The post-Houphouetist phase is built around three political personalities: Konan Bedié, leader of the Houphouetist socio-political block; Laurent Gbagbo, prophet of the rupture with Houphouetism and leader of the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI); and Alassane Ouattará, representative of Northern Muslim populations and founder of the Rassemblement des Républicains (RDR). The struggles for political domination in a context of economic austerity and externalisation of the fragmented economy encouraged one political contestant in particular to articulate a xenophobic and reactionary ideology. The notion of Ivoirité was introduced by Konan Bedié in 1993 with the goal of eclipsing his political competitor, Alassane Ouattará, and besmirching his credibility by referring to his Burkina Faso origins. Article 35 of the Constitution of 2000 indicates that someone can be considered Ivorian only if they have been born in Côte d'Ivoire and both parents were Ivorian. The candidate to the presidency of Côte d'Ivoire must also have Ivorian origins and be born of Ivorian parents (Constitution de la Republique de Côte d'Ivoire, Article 35, 2000).
The idea of Ivoirité, however, went beyond the pragmatic agenda to gain electoral support. It was also a strategy to maintain the privileged positions of hegemonic groups. The rhetoric of Ivoirité generated a preoccupation with the dichotomy between indigenes and immigrants. The elections of 2000 were held despite the contested exclusion of Ouattará on the base of Ivoirité and led to Laurent Gbagbo's victory. This event marked a watershed in the politics of Côte d'Ivoire.
After the 2000 electoral defeat Northern populations agitated for and engaged in military opposition. The Forces Nouvelles were comprised of mercenaries coming from Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso and financed and armed by France through the cooperation of Blaise Compaoré and Amadou Toumani Touré, respectively presidents of Burkina Faso and Mali. Incursions began with looting in the north-west part of the country and established a force of occupation.
International diplomacy brokered peace between the forces in Linas-Marcoussis in January 2003. With France's intermediation Gbagbo was forced to accept the presence of two ‘rebels’ in his Cabinet as ministers of defence and the interior. In Abidjan, however, Gbagbo initiated an anti-French campaign. Paris was accused of interference in the political sovereignty of Côte d'Ivoire and groups of patriots and militias were encouraged to respond to the French attempt at destabilising the country.
Military conflict culminated with France bombing the headquarters of the Ivorian air force and led to attempts at a negotiated settlement mediated among others by the erstwhile president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in 2004. Through a series of diplomatic agreements in Accra, Pretoria and Ouagadougou, a plan emerged for disarmament of warring factions and a commission to prepare for internationally assisted elections through UN resolution 1633, 2005. Notwithstanding an agenda aimed at demilitarisation, the country was still geographically fractured into two parts: the South in the hands of the Ivorian army and pro-Gbagbo paramilitary militias, and the North controlled by the Forces Nouvelles. The northern forces survived through continuous looting of local populations, check-point extortion and the exploitation of natural resource trade in the Moyen Cavally on the border with Liberia that included forestry exploitation and wood smuggling. The possibility of developing a new electoral roll in a demilitarised country was almost impossible. The task of identification of those with the right to vote could not be implemented in the north. Local councils were empowered to develop lists of eligible voters with reports that identity cards were sold for 15,000 Francs CFA (€25). Yet elections took place amid numerous reports of fraud in the northern areas. France, the UN, the EU and the African Union nevertheless promptly declared Ouattará the legitimate electoral winner and president elect. The Constitutional Court, however, revoked the verdict, proclaiming Gbagbo president of Côte d'Ivoire.
Laurent Gbagbo had antagonised French geo-strategic and economic interests. Most of the cocoa produced in Côte d'Ivoire traded through Burkina Faso. Gbagbo favoured non- European and non-US oil companies to explore in the newly discovered oilfields at the border with Ghana and off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. He had encouraged involvement of Chinese, Indian and Russian companies. Additionally he refused to make a payment of US$2.3 billion on Côte d'Ivoire's dollar bonds to foreign investors, to pay the interest on the country's foreign debt. And he pursued nationalisation of foreign banks that had suspended their operations. The refusal to pay the debt heavily impacted on the value of eurobonds that had fallen from 62.875 cents to the dollar before the elections to 16.646 afterwards. Western powers had become anxious about Gbagbo's facilitation of Chinese, Indian and Russian access to Côte d'Ivoire's natural resources. And this was in a context where the US had been exerting enormous pressures for greater military and resource control of West Africa through the development of United States African Command (Africom) and the linked establishment of an anti-terrorism alliance. In this context of external intervention the notion that Gbagbo was deposed as part of an African solution to an African problem is misleading. Gbagbo may have been arrested by Ouattará forces responding to internal pressures, but that took place in an international context of hostility to Gbagbo and French and UN military intervention.
During the political and military crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, France declared itself the even-handed arbiter of the conflict representing its role in the area as one of peace-keeper. Yet French capital continued during the conflict to preserve monopolistic control of trade and transport (Bolloré), of construction, production and distribution of water and electricity (Bouygnes), of telecommunications (France Telecom), of insurance and the banking sector (Societé Generale, Paribas and Crédit Lyonnais). Defending French corporate interests and the attempt to reassert financial control of state funds through the BCEAO (Banque Centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest) appear to be crucial motivations behind the removal of Gbagbo – although, of course, the rhetoric was of a humanitarian intervention. Testimonies of local activists and NGOs reported that the French army, the Licorne, and the United Nations troops in Côte d'Ivoire were heavily involved in the bombing of civic areas and the provision of logistic and intelligence assistance to the rebels from the north. This helped facilitate the attack in Abidjan on Gbagbo's residence that led to his arrest.
In January 2011, shortly before Ouattará's seizure of power, Bloomberg announced that ‘Eurobonds may be Africa's best performing sovereign debt if the dispute is resolved’. In the words of Stephen Bailey-Smith, a London-based market strategist at Standard Bank: ‘what we need is a Ouattara government that is seen as a completely new start and one that has a leadership that is clearly more attuned to the needs of international financial capital’ (Bloomberg Businessweek 2011). Clearly such statements reveal the confidence of international investors that Ouattará would help with the interests of international capital. In such a context the international coup d'état against Laurent Gbagbo and the installation of Ouattará, ex-Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, confirmed the cementing of a US–France alliance in continuity with the intervention in Libya.
The geo-political and geo-economic centrality of Côte d'Ivoire in the African continent is further displayed by the potential of 200,000 barrels of oil a day projected to be produced by the end of the decade. In this context such intervention fits extremely well with the priorities of US energy policy of having reliable governments in each of the states that provide oil for them – Nigeria, Angola and Gabon.
While the Ivorian conflict is labelled as resolved, evidence on the ground suggests otherwise. There continues to be ethnic persecution with indiscriminate murders, mass killings and rapes pursued not only by militias but also by Northern young people that joined the march to Abidjan. The future for Côte d'Ivoire remains problematic as ethnic conflict persists and the space for privatisation and neoliberal expansion looms large.
Military intervention in Côte d'Ivoire and Libya confirms that imperialism will strike with force when economic and geo-strategic interests are threatened. It has done so under the guise of humanitarian intervention. The use of force by actors from outside Africa reduces the opportunity of local conflict resolution or pan-African diplomacy and it supports the entrenchment of domestic class and social forces that deepen neoliberal hegemony.
The articles in this issue examine many of the details of imperialist intervention in North Africa as well as the tremendous strength of local and national forces that drove the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Angela Joya offers an analysis of the Egyptian revolution and the tension between the continuing role of the military and challenges that confront a radical transformation after the ousting of the erstwhile ruling National Democratic Party. Rabab El-Mahdi, whose paper was written before these events, provides an important part of the background to them through her analysis of the increasing frequency and strength of the Egyptian labour movement's strike actions after 2006. Sami Zemni and Koenraad Bogaert remind us of the need to go beyond the rhetoric of the reforming Moroccan monarch to examine the consequences of recent neoliberal ‘urban renewal’. And Habib Ayeb, in his briefing later in the issue, details the emergence of the revolution in Tunisia and the importance of understanding the context in which it developed.
The other papers in this issue are not concerned with recent events in North Africa, but they do nevertheless deal with similar issues in different contexts, namely imperialist intervention, post-transition trajectories, and the implications for Africa of its insertion into global neoliberal markets. Dan Connell examines Eritrea's post-independence trajectory a decade on, during which time military mobilisation and political repression have trumped the democratic political possibilities opened up in the immediate post-war period. The final paper in this issue, by Lone Riisgaard, looks at sustainability initiatives in the production of cut flowers for the EU market, in which the predominance of less stringent standards has to date benefited growers and workers outside Africa.