Africa’s consumers need urgent protection

CI’s new Head of Africa Onica Makwakwa stresses the importance of a strong consumer rights movement in Africa as its economy is predicted to grow.

Thoughts of my first 100 days as CI’s new Head of Africa have been dominated by the incredible support, dedication and commitment of CI members, not just in Africa but globally.

In true African style, CI members have called, written and visited to extend a warm welcome; wasting no time to express their readiness to work with the office and alongside their peers through the creation of regional hubs.

The success of the regional hubs initiative is important to the consumer movement as is the sustainability of consumer organisations in Africa. While the world is buzzing about Africa being the next “gold mine,”  a strong consumer movement is critical now more than ever in ensuring that interest in the African market is not borne at the expense of consumers.

The urgency of our movement has been further confirmed in many small group and individual meetings with CI members. For example, there has been a convening in Pretoria of select members who participated in the consultative workgroup on the creation of regional hubs.

There has also been the training on Consumer Protection Law and Standardisation hosted in conjunction with UNIDO with members from West Africa in Abidjan.

And there has been a workshop, Credit Reporting Financial Literacy Project, with members in Tanzania hosted by the Tanzania Consumer Association Consumer Advocacy Society and funded by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. 

For the new year, we have aspirations to strengthen and grow the consumer movement in Africa by focusing on building the capacity and sustainability of our consumer organisations while simultaneously advancing an agenda that is relevant to the African consumer in an innovative, effective and timely manner.

Africa’s consumer movement stands on the shoulders of incredibly dedicated leaders who are champions for consumers within their own countries and beyond.

For African consumers the future is NOW; and with it comes the challenge to seed growth and prosperity in the movement TODAY.

Consumer organisations in Africa are ready, but we continue to welcome the support of our brothers and sisters in the international community. We invite you to walk the journey with us and to share your own best practices. Follow us on Twitter @ci_africa.

Building support and leading advocacy for CI in Asia

Indrani Thuraisingham, Head of CI Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, reports on the activities of the region

It’s been a busy time in the Asia Pacific and Middle East region and I’m happy to be able to announce the completion of some important projects as well as the addition of two new members to the CI family.

First, welcome to our newest members:

• Consumer Rights and Services Organisation (CRSO), Afghanistan; and
• Yogyakarta Consumer Institute of Indonesia.

Second, I am excited to announce the upcoming release of our EU-funded video on the challenges faced by consumers in relation to sustainable consumption and production.

This six-minute video is a collaboration between CI and SWITCH-Asia, an EU-funded programme to promote sustainable consumption and production.

The video features stories from many typical households throughout Asia and their consumer habits as collected by SWITCH-Asia partners in China, India and Vietnam and the following CI members:  

• UBINIG, Bangladesh;
• Consumers Association of India;
• Foundation for Consumers, Thailand; and
• FOMCA, Malaysia.

The video will be shown at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil this month. It will be available for all to see on the CI website, and you can ‘like’ us on Facebook to keep up to date with this and all our activities for Rio+20..

Third, we successfully completed our seven-month programme of work in Nepal which looked at ways to develop the country’s consumer movement.

We found that getting more information into circulation through consumer education and awareness programmes and setting up clear and effective systems for redress are the best ways to boost consumer confidence and grow the country’s movement.

As part of the project, our office carried out training sessions, mapping of consumer organisations, exposure visits, and printing of IEC materials on consumer protection as well as organised the policy conference for government officials from the Department of Commerce and representatives of all of the consumer organisations in Nepal.

The programme was run under the auspices of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization through the EC-Nepal WTO Assistance Programme towards "making the consumer movement a viable market force" from September 2011 until March 2012.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that our office is currently leading CI’s work in two of the five global priority programmes as part of our new Strategy 2015. These are ‘Consumers in the Digital Age’ and ‘Consumer Justice and Protection’.

These two global programmes have a common agenda of engaging UNCTAD to revise the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection to include access to knowledge, competition, financial services and e-commerce.

CI’s Dr Jeremy Malcolm attended the recent UNCTAD XIII conference in Doha, Qatar, to advocate for the inclusion of both consumer protection and access to knowledge issues in the outcome documents of the conference.

There were heated debates with governments from some developed countries about their desire to remove important references to the global financial crisis and climate change from the outcome text. It was due to the persistence of civil society organisations such as CI that most of those references were reinstated.

In the end, the outcome documents made a strong statement for the consumer movement, in particular the civil society statement which reiterated the eight consumer rights, and called for the revision of the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection.

Valeria Schvartz - Rhoda Karpatkin advocate compares countries

Valeria Schvartz (Legal Assessor and Project Assistant, Union of Users and Consumers http://www.usuarios.org.ar/ in Rosario, Argentina) talks about her first two weeks as a Rhoda Karpatkin advocate through Consumers International.

A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to visit Brussels, where I met staff at BEUC, Test Achats and  Consumetenbond. I was received very kindly by members of each organisation, who took the time to brief me about their projects and how they achieve their work. The same happened here in London where I was very well received by everybody.

I’ve been reading a lot about junk food and children and adolescents and I believe that Consumers International is doing great in regards to this issue, especially in identifying advertising as one of the most influential factors in food and diet. Children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to advertising techniques.

I believe that food advertising should be given a regulatory level, at least in my country where the incidence of obesity is increasing rapidly. In my city we have a project that is attempting to make some progress in school canteens by swapping junk food for healthy options, such as changing a packet of chips for yoghurt.

Although I now have plenty of ideas to carry out in my country, it is sometimes impossible there, keeping in mind that we are a developing country.

I quite admire how people here get involved with organisations that protect their rights – they buy specialty magazines like Test Achats etc. In my country people are still unaware of their rights.  Here organisations are able to provide a good service because they are listened to by big industry and government, this does not occur in my country, we have no government support.

I hope that with time, things will change in my country and we can achieve greater benefits for consumers. Thanks to everybody for giving me the opportunity to learn so much about your concerns for consumer rights.

Luke at Egypt workshops

Luke Upchurch, Head of Media at CI, talks sugar prices and pyramids in Cairo.

I recently attended a two-day EC TAIEX workshop in Cairo, Egypt – a new initiative to promote consumer-group capacity building in non-European countries. It was a great couple of days, with some really enlightening input from leaders of the Egyptian consumer movement.

Efforts to establish consumer receipts as common practice, concerns over the rising price of sugar, and ideas for the numerous state-based consumer groups to form an association were discussed at length.

Together with presentations on lobbying techniques from BEUC, and institutional capacity from our member from Ireland, I was able to share CI's experience on coordinated campaigning, and lead a workshop on communications strategies for small-sized consumer organisations.


A busy couple of days. So packed in fact, that by the time I managed to get to the pyramids on the final afternoon, they had shut for the day! Six thousand years of history and I got there too late!

Empowering municipalities in Azerbaijan - Part two

CI’s Rosa Vercoe writes about the European Commission (EC)-funded project, Empowering municipalities to better serve their constituents in relation to social and environmental rights that have started in Azerbaijan.

Part two
'My second trip to Azerbaijan at the beginning of March 2009 was a real eye opener in terms of exploring the daily lives of ordinary people living in the Mugan area of the country - the region where our project is focussing its main activities.

The contrast between the capital of Baku and the little villages in the Mugan area was shocking. Baku, especially its centre, is an amazing cosmopolitan city combining a diverse cultural and historical heritage in terms of architecture with state of the art modern buildings made of marble and granite.

It was pretty obvious that moneyed people in Baku are not short of choices if they want to buy world famous designer stuff or flashy cars. In the city centre of Baku you can see boutiques of the same level as that of Knightsbridge in London.

But what sort of choices do the ordinary people of Mugan have?

Well, that is a big question and our project is addressing some of these issues. Let’s look at just a few of them.

The project stretches over five sub-regions, with the following distances from the country’s capital:

• Salyan - 130 km

• Sabirabad- 170 km

• Saatli - 185 km

• Neftchala - 180 km

• Haciqabul - 120 km

These sub-regions have a population of 483 514 in total. Surprisingly despite having an abundance of gas supplies in the country, this particular region suffer from a Cinderella effect – it is semi-steppe (the soil is high in salt, there are no forests and no local sources of potable water), where agricultural production is only possible with good irrigation systems in place. Potentially fertile soil is turning into a salted steppe terrain, without the necessary maintenance and development of the irrigation channels already in place.

There are no gas and water pipelines in this area… and in order to provide themselves with the potable water, people have to store water from a local river Kura in huge tankers, wait until it settles, and then boil it to make it drinkable.

As for gas, they have to buy regular supplies of gas in cisterns, which cost a lot for an ordinary family with children.

Getting supplies of potable water and gas for heating and cooking is a daily struggle for people living in the villages. Not only that… the electric grid equipment in the villages is out of date and electric power supplies is an on-off issue.

The state of the roads, or putting it bluntly- absence of the proper roads and local infrastructure, is another issue. Getting out and about requires having a strong enough car, petrol (of course!) and physical stamina. In the rainy seasons the roads are fully submerged in mud.

While looking at these villages, it makes you question that if the country has seven oil and gas pipelines that are able to move the country’s hydrocarbons in any direction in and out, why not install one mini-satellite pipeline to this particular area of Mugan to make local people’s lives more comfortable rather than the daily struggles they face? The daily struggle for access to potable water, energy, telecommunications, roads infrastructure, well-maintained schools and medical facilities…

The story about problems experienced by ordinary citizens, consumers in Mugan, can be so much longer. We want to ensure that our project will start bringing some positive changes into daily lives of Mugan people, that it will help to empower local municipalities with knowledge, expertise and technical support.

Five new municipal offices have already been set up and equipped with computers, printers and new furniture thanks to the EU assistance as part of our project. People whom I met and spoke to during the trip to the villages are truly enthusiastic about changing conditions, they are eager to support the project.

The local authorities have also expressed their support. If our project is able to bring some cardinal positive changes to the local municipalities’ functioning in two years’ time, which would result in improving living conditions of the people in Mugan that would give us a great sense of achievement.'

Part one again just in case you've missed it.

Empowering municipalities in Azerbaijan - Part one

CI’s Rosa Vercoe writes about the European Commission (EC)-funded project, Empowering municipalities to better serve their constituents in relation to social and environmental rights that have started in Azerbaijan.

[Pictured here on the left in a school with an oven heating system]

Part one
'Let’s start the story with the fact that I love Azerbaijan and its people. Whenever I land at Baku airport I feel as if I am back home again. Every time I visit this country for the project, I am met and greeted at the airport by our member organisation director, a very courteous and charismatic person with a great sense of humour and creative way of thinking, whose favourite expression is ‘No problem, it will be done’”. His name is Eyub Husseynov and CI has been working with Eyub and his team on EC project implementation since 2006.

For those who might not know much about Azerbaijan some information:

Some statistics first:

• Total population - 8,730.000

• In the capital Baku there is about 2 million people

• Urban population - 51,8%

Azerbaijan is the largest of the three countries in the South Caucasus, followed by Georgia and then Armenia, and is a predominantly Muslim country. Thanks to its key strategic position in the Caucasus and sharing borders with the countries like Russia, Iran, Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, Azerbaijan is able to put its weight in foreign relations. Abundance of oil and gas resources, setting up the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and gas pipeline to Turkey bypassing Russia is also an important factor in making the country a really strong player on the regional and international geopolitical scene. Azerbaijan has also benefited a lot from foreign investors with the BP as the country’s biggest investor.

The country is a member of the European Neighbourhood Programme (ENP) and is engaged in a range of the agreements with the European Union (EU) in terms of the economic, cultural and educational cooperation.

Evidence of the EU presence and a substantial financial assistance to the country for its further development, and socio-economic and legal approximation to the EU, was quite obvious during the EC kick-off meeting in January in Baku, which I was lucky to attend.

The conference signalled the launch of the 12 new EU projects run under two thematic programmes, ‘Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development’ (3 projects) and ‘’European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights’’ (9 projects).

Our project Empowering municipalities to better serve their constituents in relation to social and environmental rights is aiming to build capacity of the local municipalities in Mugan area, to make local citizens, consumers make aware of their responsibilities and rights as consumers as well as the municipalities’ responsibilities and rights.

The current problem is such that even the municipalities themselves are struggling to understand what their rights and responsibilities are, how can they work for the benefits of the population they are supposed to serve, what their terms of reference are, what they can and cannot do within the existing legislative framework of the country.

The project is accommodating a comparative research paper on the municipalities’ legislation with the objective of compiling some constructive recommendations on its improvement for the consumers’ benefits and a fair clear-cut balance of a decision-making authority between the local municipalities and executives.

One of the Project’s highlights was a study tour of the ICU team to Turkey with the purpose of sharing a good experience in running municipalities in a more advanced neighbouring country.

The Project envisages conducting a series of workshops and trainings on mediation and consumer rights, municipalities’ rights and responsibilities, fundraising and financial management training for the municipalities. The Project has also a component on consumer education provided by means of several publications on the subject, workshops and setting up Young Consumer Clubs as part of the extracurricular activities for the schools in the villages of Mugan. This is supposed to help the consumers to realise their rights as consumers within the existing legal framework. It is necessary to mention that part of the problem is that people do not have a sufficient access to the information.'

To be continued… more about the project in part two.