Zambia's image... as presented to the British Parliament by Mark O’Donnell on 16 March 2012

I would like to thank you for being given an opportunity to meet with you and to discuss some of the challenges that I believe stand in the way of Business and Development in Zambia.

By way of introduction I was born in Zambia and have been in business for 35 years in Zambia. I have built up a company which by Zambian standards is considered large with some 1,800 employees. My company has investments in Hospitality, Retail, Construction, Manufacturing and Property Development.

I have lived through the era of extreme socialism, which created an excessively protected economy, and I witnessed the introduction and implementation of the Free Market. The transition in the 1990’s from a protected economy where 80% of all economic activity was controlled by the State to a privatised Free Market was harsh to say the least. Having said this, I believe this was the right thing to do and that there was no other way of transforming the economy.

PRESS RELEASE: Almost half of all investment into developing countries goes through tax havens, ActionAid reveals

The report, How Tax Havens Plunder the Poor, shows how tax havens can often allow companies and investors to avoid tax on the resulting profits and gains and deprive the world’s poorest countries of much-needed tax revenue.

The research also shows that foreign investments into developing countries are more likely to be routed through a tax haven than investments into developed countries.

Mike Lewis, ActionAid’s tax expert who carried out the research, said: “As we have seen with recent cases like Google and Amazon, tax avoidance is a huge issue in developed countries. But evidence shows that poor countries are losing even more from tax avoidance, and are least equipped to protect fragile public revenues.

“Developing countries are being deprived of billions of dollars of tax revenue by wealthy corporations and investors using secretive tax havens. Tax havens are one of the main obstacles in the fight against global poverty. Their secrecy and harmful tax regimes leach money out of developing countries that could be used to end hunger and provide hospitals, schools and clean water.”

Japan seeks to remake Asia-Africa relationship

Acutely aware of China’s strong presence in resource-rich Africa, Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is beefing up its relations with the continent. Participants at a high-level donor conference hosted by Japan this week stressed the need for closer engagement, not through the traditional grants and assistance loans that have hitherto defined the relationship, but rather through trade and investment led by the Japanese private sector.

“Africa’s growth is registering, on average, more than six percent annually, and the continent represents a growing population and important regional market,” Mokoto Ito, spokesperson for African development at Japan’s foreign ministry, said at the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) that concluded today in Yokohama, capital of the Kanagawa Prefecture.

“Japan can play an active role by investing in infrastructure and providing industrial technology to boost manufactured goods through capacity building,” Mokoto added.

His words clearly reflect Japan’s domestic interests – for instance, Africa’s natural resources are vital for Japan’s energy needs that are heavily dependent on gas and oil imports. They also point to a sense of competition with neighbouring China, whose trade receipts with the African continent hit 138.6 billion dollars last year according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), far outstripping the 30-billion-dollar bilateral trade partnership between Japan and Africa.