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In a major move president Biden backs suspending IP protection for Covid vaccines, therapeutics and tests. In fall 2020 India and South Africa submitted a resolution to WTO to suspend IP protection for Covid vaccines, therapeutics and tests, From the Indian perspective this decision comes a bit late when India has already vaccinated over 1 billion people using the Astra Zeneca Oxford vaccine. The Oxford vaccine was made available to Indian manufacturing companies to make locally in a way the could be done at low cost to meet needs of over 1 billion people in India. From the perspective of pharmaceutical companies this is giving away technology even if this was a public health emergency, as shown in this editorial from WSJ.

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As a civil rights campaigner Harry Belafonte's efforts were legendary. NYT gives these black and white pictures of Belafonte in an anti Apartheid protest outside the South African embassy in 1964, addressing a civil rights rally in New York in 1960, with Sidney Poitier at a civil rights rally (he studied theater at the American Negro Theatre with Poitier), and checking on free primary education in Kenya in 2004 for UNICEF.

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The head of India's leading information technology company WIPRO, Abidali Neemuchwala,  says he took the risky path by choosing an assignment to South Africa when his peers were heading for the United States as engineers. That assignment gave him a chance for higher level activities, better perspective, and ways he could stand out.  He tells how these early experiences helped shape him for the job he has today.

The best way to tell when one is taking a risky path, he says, is when all your peers are not looking at doing what you have chosen to do. Its different, and it has made all the difference for Neemuchwala. In 1994 South Africa was entering the Mandela era after Apartheid, and presented something very different from the United States. Mr Abidali chose this risky and different path, with new opportunities as well as a leap into the unknown. 

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Countries in South Asia such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, as well as other countries in Africa and Asia, Latin America face debt repayment problems. These countries need debt restructuring and restructuring of payments by the International Monetary Fund in the current environment of surging inflation, depreciating currencies, and need to first support essential food imports and essential supplies including medical supplies. This report in The Guardian says IMF's Kistalina Georgieva is sensitive to the needs of these countries as they face surging inflation. Georgieva talks about the need for central banks to raise interest rates till other solutions are found.

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Casey Phair was born in South Korea and came to New Jersey when she was one month old. She plays for South Korea and at 16 she is the youngest player in the World Cup Women 's Soccer in 2023. She plays for a Development Academy that trains young aspiring players in South Korea. More of these academies are cropping up all over the world. Then there is Giulia Dragoni of Italy also 16 years, three Philippines players are teenagers. Linda Calcedo of Columbia is at 18 years the youngest goal scorer. Alyssa Thompson in the US team at 18 years is hoping to replace older players such as Alex Morgan. More talent is coming into the women's soccer game all over the world and the US lead is shrinking. Much of this talent starting at younger ages and players getting better facilities. Countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa are drawing on young players of ethnic links to their home country practicing in the US. This was clear when the Philippines beat New Zealand, Nigeria beat Australia, and the US hung on to a draw with Netherlands. France held to a draw against Jamaica. ...

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This article by Jose Cordoba points out that Castro's biggest success may have come not in Latin America where many of the guerilla movements failed, but in Africa. In Angola the movement supported by Castro helped end Portuguese rule, and in South Africa Nelson Mandela credits Castro with helping the struggle to end Apartheid. Ironically most of the eulogies to Castro come from Latin America. The effort to end right wing dictatorships may be one of the reasons why Castro is seen positively in Latin America. 

This article points out that in the end in countries such as Venezuela and Cuba the movement he led resulted in development and modernization being stifled, even though this was not its intention. In a world that is rapidly changing Castro's Cuba and Chavez's Venezuela have fallen behind to an amazing degree.

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Boosting vaccine production for the Indo-Pacific region that includes Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam with production done through Biological E in Hyderabad will be discussed at the meeting with Biden. Japan will fund the project, and Australia will handle the distribution. This will be part of a followup to a March 12 virtual meeting of Quad leaders. This effort to meet the vaccine supplies challenge for the Asian region covering south east Asia and its population of 600 million will be one of the major outcomes of Quad countries collaboration, making it a peacetime collaboration that supports development in the region without burdening the financial position of any country.  The other part of US- Indian collaboration and Quad collaboration centers on two related themes after healthcare and pandemic. The immediate challenge is to tackle the breakdown in the supply chain for semiconductors. The US and Europe can no longer depend entirely on a supply chain based in Taiwan. The narrowest part of the Taiwan Straits which separates Taiwan from the Chinese mainland is only 81 miles wide, which makes continued dependence on chip production on Taiwan an unreliable option and the need to build a new supply chain for Japan, EU and US. Plans will be made to address this in the talks. The Biden administration has already taken action with Intel Corp making a U turn and bringing chip manufacturing back home to the US with $50 billion investment planned. India and other Asian countries may form additional options for semiconductor manufacturing. The third part of the Quad effort will center on US and Japan ramping up infrastructure building capabilities with India to build infrastructure across Asian countries and in Africa that will be financed in a way that will not have some of the liabilities of the Chinese initiative called Belt and Road. Loans given by Chinese state banks and contracts including manpower from Chinese contractors are now seen as not meeting the needs of Asian and African countries. These loans most of the time cannot be repaid as in Zambia, and other parts of Africa, and in Pakistan, leading to interest accumulating on debt and making future infrastructure development extremely difficult. The use of manpower from China also means no learning curve for infrastructure is formed for local companies and infrastructure comes without new jobs jobs being created.  For most of the period 1900 -1950 the British built Asian and African infrastructure. During the period 1950 onwards the US assumed a major role, as did the Soviets. This changed after belligerent Reagan administration policies and wars in the Middle East sapped the funds that could have gone to infrastructure building that would improved living standards in Asia and Africa. Mr Biden wants to see this change and this is what he meant when he said at the UN General Assembly today- " we want relentless diplomacy to take the place of relentless wars." He means every word of this and the diplomacy is between allies and also adversaries, but mostly with allies such as Japan, the EU and India to build a better world. That he has to do this quickly Biden is aware of that, which is why he said "the next 10 years will determine our future."   ...

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A infratest survey shows 91 % of Germans support taking in refugees in the current war in Eastern Europe. 53% of Germans support German government's strong response, and 27% think it doesn't go far enough. 14% say it goes too far. How much has changed since as recent as February 2022 is shown by the change- only 20% supported arms deliveries to Eastern Europe just one month back, this has risen now in March to 61%, and 45% feel that German government did not act soon enough.

A lot has changed in Germany's view of Russia, and also of China, in a few weeks in 2022. This also appears to be the prevailing sentiment in all of Western Europe and most of Eastern Europe. From the Baltics to Scandinavia, across, Italy, Spain, France, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, there is a remarkable shift in thinking. This also appears to have affected world opinion from Latin America, South East Asia, South Asia, to Africa.

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The meeting of G7 leaders and of leaders from India, Indonesia and Argentina, South Africa, ended with a sense that economic sanctions the preferred tool against the Russian invasion are not working after 3 months. Discussions with India, Indonesia and other poor countries show the need for the developing countries for access to their large populations of oil at reduced prices from the recent skyrocketing prices. With oil and energy purchases made by China and India and other poor countries for reasons of price discounts from $125 per barrel oil, Russia is able to sell oil in other markets making up in price for the drop in volume. 

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About 60% of Swiss voters in this Sunday's referendum on keeping Covid passes and restrictions in place favor keeping them. The referendum vote is likely to provide $6 billion for increasing nurses pay and benefits, which is a good thing as nurses are exhausted after 2 years of non stop work.  Vaccination rate is 65% of people vaccinated in Switzerland. In the US state of Michigan the vaccination rate is 58%, resulting in a surge in cases. Vaccination rates had stalled in Germany and Switzerland resulting in a surge in cases. New variant from South Africa adds to the problem of the unvaccinated in Europe and the US.

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How huge wildfires are affecting the stratosphere 6 to 31 miles above the earth and creating a swirling vortex of smoke reaching 21 miles high that is spreading across the planet. Circling twice around the world according to some studies. This resulted in fire induced thunderstorms in Portugal, South Africa and Argentina.

Wildfires in California have sent plumes of smoke 10 miles high altering air quality in places as far as Europe. Fire seasons are getting longer in many parts of the world as a result of this.

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Two of three obese people live in developing countries. About 29% of the global population is obese in 2013, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Between 1980 and 2013, obesity increased by 47% for kids and 27% for adults in the global population. Dr Murray of IHME says no country was the exception. Diet and inactivity are the principal culprits. About 37% of world's men and 38% of women are obese. Obesity increased rapidly first in developed countries, becoming noticeable by 1980 and slowing since 2006, and now is growing fast in developing countries. Germany is a surprise No. 8 on the list. The U.S. No. 1 ranking tells a lot about the misguided priorities of living in the U.S., lack of education on healthy eating and healthy living, and not putting healthy habits at the top of things to do above making more money. An extreme case is South Africa where 42% of women are obese. The most obese countries are by rank - U.S., China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan, Indonesia. Middle Eastern and North African countries have high obesity rates for children. The study is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation....

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Eri Machii, founded AfriMedico, a nonprofit organization designed to deliver medicine to remote regions in countries in Africa. She worked in Niger under a Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers program after two years working as a pharmacist. There she learned about the dangers in Africa in remote villages where travel and delivery expenses were high and infrastructure lacking. She devised a method of Okigusuri for Africa where as in traditional Japan medicines were left in a kit in villages and people paid only for what they used. Payment is done by cell phone using the M-Pesa money transfer system. Maichii learned about okigusiri as a system used in Japan throughout its history in places where infrastructure was lacking, lack of universal health insurance, and large families living together. She found that this was true for distant villages in countries like Tanzania where she implemented the system under AfriMedico. 20 volunteers helped found the organization and Tanzania pharmacist network helped guide them in setting it up. Large amounts of medicine taken at one time reduce the cost of transport. Use of the system of medikits in urban areas helped subsidize the village use. This is a system that has great potential for medicine delivery in many parts of Africa and Asia that have the same problem of access to basic medicine kits- so that treatment can be done earlier in the process for quicker less costly recovery, improving general health conditions. One can think of Indonesia, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West and East African countries as having potential for wider use of this system. As people pay for only the medicines used using cell phones the system has wide applicability from cost and access point if supported by private and governmental agencies in these countries.   ...

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By preventing serious illness in patients two pills for coronavirus from Pfizer and Merck can change the course of this pandemic. Pfizer will give a royalty free license to Medicines Patent Pool, an organization backed by the United Nations for its coronavirus pill. Merck has also given a royalty free license to Medicines Patent Pool for it pill. This organization will then grant a license for the manufacture of the coronavirus pills to poor developing countries. India is included in the list of countries yet China, Russia and Brazil are excluded for the Pfizer license.  Merck has given Indian generics manufacturers approval to make the pill. This will provide supplies of the pill to 105 developing countries, South Africa will also make the pill to provide it at $10 a course in Africa. Pfizer will begin manufacturing of large quantities in 2022 with 50 million planned for 2022 and 21 million in the first half of 2022. Pfizer pill will be made available in 95 countries. The Merck pill is called Molnupiravir. Pfizer pill is called Paxlovid with 30 pills taken over the course of 5 days. Pfizer pill is effective in studies when given to people who had not been vaccinated. It has to be given within 3-4 days of getting coronavirus confirmed through a test which makes testing critical for its use. ...

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NYT provides an extraordinary display of working age population demographic data in graphics for the world and individual countries to 2050. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and African countries are given the opportunity to make progress similar to South Korea, Japan and China over the next 25 years. India with 1.4 billion people and a determined federal government can set the stage for the type of progress that can modernize the country and build a level of infrastructure that compares with the best in Europe, the US and Japan.

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Prime minister Modi of India says India has take a step forward for bringing in the people of the Global South into G20 discussions. India, he says, has set a path for getting development to the last mile, the last person in the public who in previous years was left out. This was done through digital infrastructure for bank accounts for hundreds of millions of people, cooking gas stoves for women in rural areas, housing, tap water for every one of India's households, sanitation including toilets, road infrastructure. Much of this was done at low cost with technologies that can be transferred to  a billion people in Africa and 700 million in other parts of Asia such as the Philippines and Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. This is the lasting achievement of the G20 first in Jakarta, Indonesia, and now in New Delhi, 24 months of leadership of Modi and Widodo of Indonesia as partners. It is also why Mr. Modi was in Jakarta just one day before the G20 Summit for ASEAN meeting that brings India into close relations with ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations).  ...

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The boost to investor perceptions for India with Modi's election, and to Indonesia with Widodo's election are major changes in the second half of 2014. The first half saw the dented confidence in Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey and South Africa. To this can be added Russia with Putin's response in Ukraine and western sanctions. China with Jinping's response to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong for restoration of the pledge of free elections by 2017, appears to be losing investor confidence, especially with investors seeing this as adopting the Putin Way. This is happening with a gradual movement towards restoration of trade relations with Iran.

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China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, countries that are part of the G-20 are not part of the G-8. Without the developing countries no real progress can be made on climate change or on emissions control. Climate change was a key focus of this summit in Itlay for the G-8 but with India and China only on the sidelines and acting more as an opposition excluded from the main deliberations the whole climate change agenda had to be shelved. The European countries lose influence in an enlarged summit so the G-8 keeps going along. Sweden holds the rotating Presidency of the EU, so the Swedes are there also. And so is Portugal in away with Manuel Barroso representing the European Commisssion. Except Japan, Asia is not represented, and no country from Africa or Latin America is represented. The European club looks like an anachronism and it is. Merkel and Sarkozy say they know this, but there is too much resistance in Europe to giving up this privilege. When the Guardian reported that Italy may be left out in future meetings of an expanded summit. the Italian press and the Italian prime minister Berlusconi denounced the report. Other countries that lose influence in an expanded arrangement are Canada and Japan. ...

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The English translation of the PM's speech at the Ayodya Temple is shown here from the Press Information Bureau of India. It covers the ancient paths and ancient traditions that were given to the lands south of the Himalayas on which the basis of a Just Society that serves the needs of all the peoples of the region can be laid down. Through the concept of Ram Rajya which in the Treta Yuga formed the social concept of a good and Just Society akin to what Abraham Lincoln laid down for America in the words "for the people, of the people, by the people." A reminder of what the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe are striving for after the pandemic. The task of modernity was done through modernization and Empire by Japan and failed yet now revived without Empire, through Communist leadership against the Empire of Japan in China which is in its current formation with an embrace of modernity and science. And now in India and Indonesia, all of South East Asia of over 2 billion people marking out a path to modernity and embrace of science and technology with the united efforts of the whole people with everyone's efforts, of Sabka Prayas- into the future for new generations venturing out, to today's children setting out on this journey. ...

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Protests by US members of Congress against the surcharge fees charged by the IMF on loans to countries such as Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine, South Africa, and other countries that is causing additional distress during the pandemic. Fund estimates are that almost $4 billion in extra fees will have been collected in addition to interest charges by the IMF. The US pays the largest share of IMF revenues. Letters went to Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary from members of US Congress saying that the fund was a lender of last resort but intended to do this "without resort to measures destructive of national and international prosperity."

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The lack of economic opportunities for an increasingly urbanized African younger generation is a major challenge. The median age of 19 makes Africa the world's youngest continent. Megacities are growing up in places such as Lagos and Kinshasha as millions leave subsistence farming to go to cities. Unlike Asia and Latin American countries men and women are coming to shantytowns in cities at a time when Africa is much poorer for a similar level of urbanization that Asian and Latin American nations reached decades earlier. In 1993 this WSJ analysis and graphs show the Asian emerging economies and sub Saharan Africa had similar GDP per capita of $2415, by 2019 this was $4000 for Africa and $12,000 for Asian emerging economies. Latin America was at $10,000 in 1993 and in 2019 was at about $15,000. The gap widened considerably between Asia and African countries. Asian emerging economies increased GDP to 5 time from the same starting point as Africa in 1993, Africa doubled GDP over the period of 25 years to 2019. Latin America started from a much higher point and increased GDP by only 50% over 25 years. Asian economies that performed better over this period did better because of stable even entrenched governments such as in Singapore with Le Kuan Yew and in China with stable successive governments under CPC leadership of prime minister Deng. The difference in Asia was a commitment across all classes and groups to development, a sense of development as a way to make up for the years lost under colonialism of foreign powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A sense of correcting historical injustice and wrongs. This is a missing ingredient in the processes unfolding in Latin America and Africa in the last 25 years. ...