(Johannesburg) -  The six-foot tall corn stalks on Kastul Baha's homestead are the envy of his pastoral village in northern Tanzania.

Baha was one of the fortunate farmers this crop season with $35 to buy a package of fertilizer to apply over his half-hectare field. He expects to more than double output to 10 bags of corn compared to four bags last year.

Even so, his expenses -- inputs, fuel and farming taxes -- really add up. Baha says he'll be lucky to feed his family and sell a small surplus at the local marketplace to break even.

"There is no way we farmers are able to make a living," Baha said, taking a breather from his second job as a doctor at a health clinic in Ayalabe village, about 100 kilometers outside Serengeti National Park. "Here, we're staying poor because there are bad agricultural policies and no budget help for farmers."

The global commodity price boom isn't bringing immediate benefit to the east African nation's majority of small-scale farmers. To the contrary, Tanzanians are likely facing more burdens as the country's import bill rises and pushes up the price of basic food items and producer costs, according to the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), a United Nations agency based in the Netherlands. The CFC works with developing countries to strengthen production and trade of commodities.

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The leaders of the world's most powerful nations have declared they will impose financial and other sanctions on leaders they describe as "those individuals responsible for violence" in Zimbabwe.

In a statement issued by the G8 Summit in Toyako, Japan, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States effectively rejected the government of President Robert Mugabe as illegitimate.

"We do not accept the legitimacy of any government that does not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people," the leaders said. Referring to this year's first round of elections in which Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won the most votes, they added: "It is important that any mediation process respect the results of the March 29, 2008 election."

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AFRICANS buy 36 billion bottles of Coke a year. Because the price is set so low?around 20-30 American cents, less than the price of the average newspaper?and because sales are so minutely analysed by Coca-Cola, the Coke bottle may be one of the continent?s best trackers of stability and prosperity.

?We see political instability first because we go down as far as we can into the market,? says Alexander Cummings, head of Coca-Cola?s Africa division. The ups and downs during Kenya?s post-election violence this year could be traced in sales of Coke in Nairobi?s slums and in western Kenya?s villages. Events in the Middle East, such as the 2006 war between Hizbullah and Israel, can dent sales in Muslim parts of Africa, though anti-American feeling usually wears off quite quickly.

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(Johannesburg) - The demand for full-blown sanctions against Zimbabwe grew louder this week with the announcement by a Munich-based company, Giesecke & Devrient, that it would stop supplying blank paper to make the country's bank notes after coming under pressure from the German government.

The decision followed hard on the heels of the decision by British supermarket group Tesco to stop buying produce from Zimbabwe "while the political crisis exists".

To date, "smart" sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the European Union and the United States have taken the form of travel bans and of freezing the foreign bank accounts of about 130 members of the ruling elite.

Moves to isolate the country may now be extended to sport. The International Cricket Council is set to discuss whether to exclude Zimbabwe from international competitions.

This week the United States was preparing to propose the imposition of international sanctions at the UN, including an arms embargo. A draft resolution, formulated by the American authorities, says the financial assets held abroad by Mugabe and 11 other Zimbabwean officials should be frozen.
 

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