US, EU hail election of İstanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu

Ulas Atesci 

The victory of Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu, in the June 23 re-run in Istanbul of the March 31 municipal elections has provoked an enthusiastic response from imperialist foreign policy circles and newspapers in America and Europe. Echoing the CHP’s own election rhetoric, they all present this outcome as a powerful blow for democracy against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP).

There is little doubt that İmamoğlu was the beneficiary of growing social discontent, amid a serious economic crisis in Turkey and new US war threats in the region, particularly against Iran. İmamoğlu beat AKP candidate Binali Yıldırım by 800,000 votes, after leading by only 13,000 on March 31. However, the wave of support for İmamoğlu from the powers that have been waging imperialist wars in the Middle East for decades, and that tacitly backed a failed coup in Turkey itself targeting Erdoğan in July 2016, should be taken as a warning.

İmamoğlu is not a progressive or left-wing alternative to the AKP. The parties backing him—the far-right Good Party, the Kurdish-nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and countless pseudo-left groups—are orienting not to social opposition among workers, towards which the CHP is bitterly hostile, but to the Turkish bourgeoisie and its maneuvers with imperialism.

After the election, the US embassy in Turkey wrote on Twitter: “In an impressive display of participatory democracy, Istanbul residents went to their voting stations to cast ballots and make their voices heard. We wish Ekrem İmamoğlu the best as he leads Europe's biggest city.”

The New York Times, a mouthpiece for CIA operations including the recent, failed US-orchestrated regime change operation in Venezuela, again hailed the Istanbul election result, after publishing an editorial endorsing the CHP as the “democratic” opposition in the March 31 elections.

It cited Soner Cagaptay, the head of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The vote, Cagaptay said, “shows democracy is resilient and elections still matter. … Imamoglu won with a landslide—a 10-point lead—even though Erdogan mobilized all the state resources in this election.” He added, “Nothing sticks to İmamoğlu. He became the new Erdoğan.”

The Washington Post published an article titled “A mayoral election provides a glimmer of hope for Turkey” and advised Erdoğan: “The Istanbul election gives Turkey’s president a chance to pick a different route.”

The European imperialists shared Washington’s enthusiasm. European Parliament Rapporteur to Turkey Kati Piri tweeted: “Landslide victory for mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu—great news for Istanbul & for Turkey’s democracy. Tebrikler!!!”

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert stated Berlin’s “satisfaction” with the result, calling it a “good signal for Turkey.” The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) published a statement, signed by more than 50 SPD politicians, hailing the “candidate of our sister party, the CHP.” European Affairs Minister Michael Roth (SPD) tweeted: “How encouraging sign for Turkey, where democracy is alive. It is important that the EU and Germany turn to the Turks more strongly.”

The German press also hailed the results. “The period of Erdoğan is ending,” Die Welt titled, while state broadcaster Deutsche Welle commented: “Turkish democracy is still alive.”

In fact, the CHP is the party of the traditional Kemalist bourgeois elite that dominated the Turkish Republic till the beginning of this century. Historically, the CHP is complicit in all its crimes: repeated military coups, the violent suppression of the working class, and the oppression of the Kurdish minority. In these elections, it formed the so-called “Nation Alliance” with the Good Party, a recent split-off from the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose leader Meral Akşener, presided over savage repression of the Kurds as Interior Minister in the 1990s.

TÜSİAD, Turkey’s leading big business federation, issued a statement on June 24 hailing İmamoğlu’s victory and declaring, “The success of Turkey’s biggest city is the success of Turkey.” It also called for the “normalization” of Turkish political life and a reconciliation between the AKP government and the İmamoğlu administration in Istanbul, Turkey’s economic capital.

İmamoğlu heard his marching orders from big business loud and clear. Immediately after the June 23 election, he addressed Erdoğan, saying: “Mr. President, I am ready to work in harmony with you.” His party called for focusing on a “main agenda” until the next elections in 2023.

Despite mounting allegations of corruption and favouritism under the previous, AKP-led İstanbul municipal governments, such as funding pro-AKP charitable foundations, İmamoğlu indicated he would not press his advantage against Erdoğan. He told CNN that he did not think the allegations referred to “Erdoğan as an individual.” He added, “Extending the hand of peace [to Erdoğan] would be to the benefit of the country.”

The CHP is keenly aware of the explosive social anger in the population and is making demagogic statements to try to keep this anger under control. Addressing his supporters in İstanbul last week, İmamoğlu declared: “We are equal. The rich and the poor, we are equal.”

But that is easy for İmamoğlu to say, because he is a millionaire, according to his official financial statement. He also has close relations with the Koç Group, Turkey’s largest corporate conglomerate and the most influential part of TÜSİAD.

İmamoğlu is reportedly considering appointing his advisor, Yavuz Erkut, to be the general secretary of the İstanbul municipality, i.e. the second man in the city’s administration. Erkut was the CEO of TÜPRAŞ, Turkey’s biggest and strategic industrial company, which operates four oil refineries in the country. The AKP privatized the company, selling it off to the Koç Group for a price equivalent to the profits it has achieved over several years.

In the meantime, pro-opposition media organs like the daily Sözcü have tried to blacken the struggle of about 4,300 TÜPRAŞ workers in Kocaeli, Aliağa, Kırıkkale and Batman who occupied their refineries to protest their contracts, defying repeated intimidation from police.

İmamoğlu has lost no time in signaling the utterly reactionary and anti-working class character of the CHP. In the beginning of April, he sent out a tweet honoring the NATO-trained army officer, Colonel Alparslan Türkeş, who founded the far-right MHP and was at the center of planning coups and fascistic violence against the left and the working class in the 1970s.

İmamoğlu’s praise for virulent enemies of the working class is not limited to Türkeş. Almost four years ago, on December 31, 2015, he honored Hasan Karakaya, a radical Islamist columnist of the notorious daily Yeni Akit, after his death. Karakaya had congratulated an AKP official who attacked protesters after the mining disaster in Soma killed 301 miners in 2014.

The supposedly secular CHP’s İmamoğlu competed with the AKP on Islamist propaganda during the campaign. He went to break his fast during Ramadan in front of the media, like his rival Yıldırım, and boasted about establishing alcohol-free recreational facilities and gender-segregated swimming pools in his previous term as mayor of a district of İstanbul. İmamoğlu began his term in office last week with public prayers.

The CHP-led opposition and İmamoğlu are not a progressive alternative to the AKP, but the favored representatives of influential sections of the Turkish bourgeoisie closely linked to imperialism. They are trying to set a new trap for workers and youth, aiming to direct opposition into safe channels controlled by the ruling establishment. Whatever hopes workers and youth are encouraged to place in İmamoğlu and his allies will be rapidly disappointed.

Australian central bank cuts cash rate to record low

Mike Head

Driven by concerns about a deepening world slump and trade war, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) this week cut its official interest rate to an unprecedented 1 percent.

It was the second 0.25 basis point cut in two months—a sign of fear in ruling circles of the intensifying impact of the global turmoil on the domestic economy, which is highly vulnerable to reduced international trade and investment.

The RBA’s cash rate is now at a record low, well below the “emergency” level of 3 percent to which the bank slashed the rate during the 2008-09 world financial breakdown.

With world trade already being shrunk by the US trade and economic war on China, the RBA has followed central banks internationally in slashing rates to try to further boost the financial markets while lifting debt-fuelled consumption spending.

Internally, the recessionary slide has been compounded by the collapse since 2017 of a six-year property bubble, plus declining real wages since 2012, soaring household debt and worsening unemployment. Working class households are already experiencing a “per capita recession”—output per person has fallen for the past nine months.

The RBA held off interest rate cuts throughout the campaign for the May 18 federal election. This helped both the Liberal-National Coalition government and the opposition Labor Party to peddle lies about a supposed economic recovery.

All the election promises, made by the Coalition and Labor alike, of increased social spending and tax cuts for “ordinary workers” were based on these false forecasts, as the Socialist Equality Party warned.

The reality that all the capitalist parties sought to hide from view includes the fact that employment levels have fallen by 219,000 to less than 12 million over the past year—taking the combined rate of joblessness (10.3 percent) and “under-employment” (9.2 percent) to near 20 percent.

According to Roy Morgan monthly surveys, nearly 2.6 million workers are either unemployed or only working part-time or casually and needing more work. This estimate is more reliable than the official Australian Bureau of Statistics unemployment rate for May of 5.1 percent, plus 8.5 percent under-employed.

The major corporate job cuts over the past year include an estimated 70,000 jobs lost so far in the construction industry.

While Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his senior ministers played down the latest RBA rate cut, there were expressions of alarm in financial markets.

HSBC’s chief economist in Australia Paul Bloxham said the rate cut suggested the central bank had serious concerns about the economy. “For us, the key message from this is that the RBA must be quite worried about growth—back-to-back cuts suggest they have felt a sense of urgency.”

In his rate cut statement, RBA governor Philip Lowe referred to “the uncertainty generated by the trade and technology disputes” that was “affecting investment and means that the risks to the global economy are tilted to the downside.”

“The main domestic uncertainty” was that “consumption growth has been subdued, weighed down by a protracted period of low-income growth and declining housing prices.” House prices were still falling nationally, even though mortgage lending rates were at “record lows.”

Lowe raised the possibility of further rate cuts, saying the RBA board would “continue to monitor developments in the labour market closely and adjust monetary policy if needed.”

At 1 percent, the cash rate is already below the official inflation rate of 1.3 percent. This means that aged pensioners and others who depend on savings to live are seeing their retirement funds shrink in real terms.

Because of government welfare means tests, this particularly affects between 400,000 aged pensioners and 627,000 part-aged pensioners, as well as thousands of welfare recipients. The government has kept its “deeming rate” for average income earned on part pensioners’ assets at 3.25 percent, despite five RBA interest rate cuts since 2015.

While pensioners and welfare recipients are being punished financially, the country’s “big four” banks are reaping a bonanza, including by not passing on the full RBA rate cuts to mortgage holders, credit card customers and other retail borrowers.

An analysis by the comparison website Mozo estimated that the four banks would pocket an extra $547.6 million per year by not passing on the last two rate cuts in full. That is on top of raking in $18.8 billion between 2008 and 2019 by repricing mortgages above RBA rate movements, according to a report earlier this year by Macquarie Bank.

Because other central banks are slashing rates, the RBA’s cuts have not had the desired effect of lowering the value of the Australian dollar to make exports of raw materials and agricultural products more competitive. After the latest cut, the Australian dollar fell from $US69.75c to $US69.57c, then rose back to $US69.85c.

Warnings are being sounded about the disintegration of the post-war economic order as the US moves to reassert its global supremacy at the expense of its main rivals, China, Europe and Japan. Australian capitalism would be devastated in any all-out economic war because it depends heavily on exports to China and investment from the US.

At an economic forum this week, held in the wake of the acrimonious G20 summit in Japan, prominent economist Ross Garnaut said Australia must come to terms with the looming reality that the global trading system is “breaking down.”

Former Australian Trade Minister Craig Emerson said the way nations were approaching trade disputes was “almost without precedent” since World War II. He said both the US and China were “flouting the rules,” but expressed particular worry at the Trump administration’s readiness to “dismantle” the World Trade Organisation.

For now, the Morrison government is trying to exploit the slump to justify handing huge income tax cuts to the wealthiest layers of society, claiming that these will stimulate spending.

The government is rushing a three-stage tax package through parliament, having struck deals with four “crossbenchers” in the Senate. The government is being aided by the Labor Party leadership of Anthony Albanese, who has declared that Labor will back “successful” people, “wealth creation” and a closer partnership with the corporate elite.

The first stage of the package consists of one-off tax rebates of $1,080 for those on incomes between $41,000 and $90,000—offered on the calculation that they will have to spend the money quickly because of their financial stress. This is hardly likely to be enough, however, to halt the globally-driven slide into slump.

By far the biggest benefits of the tax package, moreover, will go to those taking home more than $200,000 a year—that is, the top 5 percent of income recipients. Such incomes are more than four times the median wage of taxpayers, which was estimated last year to be just under $45,000. This is line with the worldwide enrichment of the financial aristocracy at the expense of the working class.

Germany’s Deutsche Bank slashes 20,000 jobs

Dietmar Gaisenkersting 

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest financial institution, plans to slash up to 20,000 jobs. The onslaught will affect more than a fifth of the bank’s 91,500 employees.

The bank informed its supervisory board and the regulatory authorities about its planned jobs massacre last week. Details were leaked to the media over the weekend. The final decision could be taken on July 7, when the supervisory board is due to meet.

The plans confirm that workers in the service and banking sectors, like their counterparts in industry, are paying with their jobs, wages and working conditions for the preparations for trade war and military conflict.

The details of the planned layoffs are still being finalised, and some of the figures could change. But media reports suggest that the main target will be the loss-making corporate and investment division, where 38,000 workers are currently employed, many of them outside Germany. “The trade in securities—above all with shares and government bonds—is to be reduced significantly outside Europe and closed completely in some areas,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung, based on sources in the financial sector.

However, important parts of the bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt will also be affected, as well as the research department, where experts analyse capital markets. The bank has been attempting to reduce personnel in the private and business banking divisions for some time.

Due to financial reasons, the job cuts will take place over several years. Buy-outs, early retirement packages and so-called social plans for laid-off workers are being prepared. In this, the bank’s board of directors can rely on the loyal cooperation of the trade unions and works councillors, especially Verdi. Over the past three years, they have signed off on the destruction of 13,000 jobs, including 7,000 in the past year alone.

It was revealed on Friday that the trade unions have agreed to another 2,000 job cuts at Deutsche Bank’s subsidiary Postbank. Some 1,300 jobs will be cut due to the integration of Postbank into Deutsche Bank, and a further 750 jobs will go in Deutsche Bank’s private and business banking divisions in Frankfurt and Bonn.

“In order to meet our ambitious growth and cost targets, it is crucial that we organise our platform as efficiently and unified as possible,” wrote Frank Strauss, director of private banking, in a letter to employees justifying the job cuts.

This is by no means the last stage of the jobs massacre. “We will continue to lay off over the coming years,” Strauss told the DPA news agency. He can be assured of the trade unions’ support in this initiative. They repeatedly sign on to job-cutting programmes, merely urging that there be no compulsory redundancies.

As always, the announcement of layoffs led to an increase in the bank’s share price, with a three percent rise on Monday. However, Deutsche Bank’s share price is at rock bottom. The bank has faced one crisis after another since the outbreak of the financial crisis 11 years ago. Prior to the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank had a share price of more than €90 [$US102] per share. At the beginning of June, it reached a record low of €5,80. The share price has lost three-quarters of its value over the past five years. It currently stands at €6,77.

The drastic drop on the stock market is not only the result of the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank’s highly speculative business operations and the multi-billion bonus payments to top managers. Between 2015 and 2017, most of the bank’s multi-billion losses resulted from fines arising out of criminal speculation conducted in the United States.

In 2016, the US Justice Department imposed a fine of $14 billion on Deutsche Bank. The reason was fraudulent practices on the sub-prime mortgage market prior to 2008. The Obama government deliberately targeted Germany’s only major bank of international significance after the European Commission had imposed a fine of €13 billion on Apple.

These fines intensified the German government’s drive to establish Europe as a world power independently of the United States. This plan includes the need for a strong international bank. In February 2019, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier presented the national industrial strategy 2030 to the press. It calls for the creation of “national champions,” of large and strong actors capable of competing with rivals from the United States and China.

The German government then sought to create such a strong actor in the banking sector by encouraging the merger of Deutsche Bank and Kommerzbank. However, this failed in late April due to high financial risks.

Following the failure, Deutsche Bank chief executive Christian Seving was nonetheless well aware that he had to meet the demands of the government and shareholders. “Deutsche Bank will continue to review all alternatives to increase the profitability and returns for its shareholders over the long-term,” he said. He then announced a radical restructuring of the country’s largest bank at its shareholder meeting in late May. “We are ready to take tough measures,” stated Seving, who has led the bank since last year.

The 20,000 job cuts then followed. The costs of trade war, in which every imperialist power wants to secure an advantage at its rivals’ expense, will be borne by the working class. Deutsche Bank is the most spectacular example of this process, but by no means the only one.

Last year alone, 32,000 jobs were lost in Germany’s banking sector, more than any other previous year. Whereas some 765,000 people were employed in Germany’s banking sector in 1997, the total is now just 565,000. The number of credit institutions has declined from 4,500 in the year of German reunification (1990) to 1,800 today, and the wave of consolidations is continuing unabated. A total of 53 bank mergers occurred in Germany last year alone.

The jobs, wages, and social achievements of bank employees can only be defended if they organise themselves independently of the works councils and trade unions, and make contact with the tens of millions of workers around the world whose wages, jobs, and workplace benefits are being threatened for the very same reasons.

German minister of defence to head European Commission

Peter Schwarz 

After weeks of wrangling, European leaders agreed on Tuesday to nominate a new European Union leadership.

The new head of the EU Commission will be the current German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen. The European Central Bank (ECB) will be headed by the current director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde of France. The President of the European Council will be Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and the new EU High Representative, the bloc’s chief diplomat, will be Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell.

The President of the Commission still needs to be ratified by the European Parliament, where there is considerable resistance to von der Leyen. As the 751 European parliamentarians from 28 member states vote by secret ballot, the proposal could still fail in the parliament.

Yesterday, however, the European Parliament elected Italian David Sassoli as its new president and thus filled the fifth top job of the EU with a Social Democrat, as proposed by the heads of government. Von der Leyen and Lagarde come from the conservative camp, Michel is a Liberal and Borrell is a Social Democrat.

The proposal of the heads of state and government is a clear political signal. It stands for the expansion of the EU into a military superpower under German-French domination.

The dispute over the new leadership of the EU has shown how deep the contradictions, rifts and conflicts currently are in the EU. They run between North and South, East and West, between different economic and foreign policy interests and parties. They are so sharp that compromise and unanimous solutions seem increasingly impossible.

On June 20-21, the regular EU summit in Romania failed to agree on a successor to Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the European Commission. Chancellor Angela Merkel had insisted on the German Manfred Weber, who was the lead candidate of the conservative European People's Party (EPP) for the European elections, while French President Emmanuel Macron strictly rejected Weber.

When it became apparent that Weber could not command a majority among either the heads of state and government or the European Parliament, Council President Donald Tusk drafted a new proposal, in consultation with Merkel and Macron on the side-lines of the G20 summit in Osaka. The new lead candidate for President of the Commission was to be the Dutch Social Democrat, Frans Timmermans, and the EPP should be given the posts of President of the Parliament and the EU High Representative. The Council presidency would go to a liberal.

But this proposal failed at a special EU summit on June 30 due to the fierce resistance of the East Europeans. They will not forgive Timmermans, who as EU Commissioner made a legal ruling against Poland and Hungary. Despite 19 hours of negotiations, which lasted until the morning hours of Monday, no solution seemed in sight. The summit was postponed to Tuesday.

The surprise suggestion that Ursula von der Leyen should be appointed Commission President was then described by many commentators as a “miracle.” All the heads of government could unite on von der Leyen because, more than anyone else, she stands for the arming of the European Union to become a military power that can oppose both the USA and China.

The 60-year-old doctor and mother of seven is one of the most ambitious and ruthless politicians in Germany. Her father, Ernst Albrecht, was state premier of Lower Saxony for 14 years. Von der Leyen herself has been a member of the Merkel government since 2005, first as family minister, then as labour minister and since December 2013 as minister of defence.

Since she took over the defence portfolio, German military spending has risen from 30 to 45 million euros. She enjoys good links with NATO and was a leading figure in pushing the alliance’s military march to the border with Russia. That is why she also enjoys the support of the Eastern European governments. At the same time, she is pushing forward the project of a European army, which is also supported by Macron, and is involved in the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) mission in the Central African Republic and Mali, where Germany works closely with French troops.

According to several reports, von der Leyen was proposed for the Commission chairmanship by Macron and not Merkel. For the French president, it was particularly important to secure the ECB leadership for France. The German candidate to head the ECB, Jens Weidmann, president of the Deutsche Bundesbank, is a strict supporter of a restrictive monetary policy. Macron wanted to prevent this at all costs.

As head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde is also responsible for austerity programs. As a member of the so-called troika, the IMF has worked on all the austerity dictates that have ruined the Greek people. Lagarde had also proposed a debt reduction for the heavily indebted country, which was strictly rejected in Berlin.

Prior to joining the IMF in 2011, Lagarde spent four years as French Finance Minister in the conservative government of François Fillon. She was later condemned for authorizing 403 million euros in compensation to the dubious businessman Bernard Tapie.

The proposal of the heads of state and government would considerably strengthen the predominance of Germany and France in the EU. If von der Leyen is confirmed by the European Parliament, she would be the first German Commission chair since Walter Hallstein 52 years ago.

Charles Michel, who is to become Council President, is also considered a confidant of Emmanuel Macron. Like Macron's party La République en Marche, he too belongs to the liberal grouping in the European parliament. As Belgian Prime Minister, Michel had been in coalition with the nationalist New Flemish Alliance. He is therefore credited with working more closely with far-right parties such as the Italian Lega, which significantly increased their weight in the European elections.

The future EU High Representative Josep Borrell looks back on a long career in the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). From 2004 to 2007, he was President of the European Parliament. A year ago, the newly installed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had appointed him Spanish Foreign Minister. Borrell is a strict opponent of Catalonia's independence, the region of his birth.

The slate proposed by the European heads of state and government means a clear shift to the right, towards militarism and stronger German-French supremacy in Europe. It will not resolve the conflicts within the EU but will further aggravate them. This applies not only to the Eastern European member states, which are no longer represented at all in the EU’s leading offices, but also to the relationship between the Western European powers.

For example, the conservative media in Germany expressed outraged at the nomination of Lagarde. Die Welt commented, “With the nomination of Lagarde, EU governments have missed their last chance of returning to the Stability Union.” Like today's ECB chief Mario Draghi, she stands “for a course that benefits debtor rather than creditor nations.”

Bombing of detention center in Libya kills at least 44 refugees

Bill Van Auken

Scores of African refugees were killed or wounded when the detention center in which they were being held in a western suburb of the Libyan capital of Tripoli took a direct hit in a bombing early Wednesday.

Libyan officials reported that 44 of the refugees had been killed outright and another 130 wounded, but the death toll was expected to rise as bodies were still being pulled from the rubble and many of those wounded suffered grievous injuries. Survivors of the bombing were seen late Wednesday still huddled near the bombed-out detention center, terrified of another attack and having no means of seeking safety.

Photographs published by the Libyan media showed a horrific scene, with the floor of the detention center, located in a hanger-style building, littered with bodies, severed limbs, clothes, bags and mattresses, and the walls covered in blood.

Bodies laid out after bombing of migrant dentention center east of Tripoli. Credit UNHCR

The attack was the bloodiest single incident in a renewed civil war that has gripped the country for the past three months, killing at least 700 people and displacing an estimated 90,000.

The Tripoli-based government blamed the attack on warplanes supporting the Libyan military strongman “Field Marshal” Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have laid siege to Tripoli since April in a bid to topple the UN-backed President Fayez Serraj, whose weak puppet regime is dependent upon a collection of Islamist militias for support.

Haftar’s forces, with their strongholds in eastern and southern Libya, claim to act in the name of a rival government located in Tobruk based upon a House of Representatives elected in 2014. They insisted that the damage was done by a mortar attack by militias supporting the Tripoli regime. Borrowing a page from the Pentagon, a statement issued in the name of Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) stated, “Our air forces are meticulous in their targeting and take into account all the measures that protect civilians.”

The LNA had announced on Monday that it would carry out increased airstrikes on the Libyan capital as “traditional means” of besieging the capital were not working, according to Al Jazeera. It warned civilians to stay away from areas of “confrontation.”

Of course, the African refugees, detained against their will and under inhuman conditions by the Libyan regime and its militia backers, had no means of heeding this advice. The hangar where they were imprisoned was located adjacent to military facilities belonging to the militias in the eastern Tripoli suburb of Tajoura.

After its roof was damaged in an attack two months ago, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued a warning about the dangerous position of the prison.

“We called for an urgent evacuation then; they remained detained inside that center and sadly people have paid the tragic price of that with their lives last night,” Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for the Mediterranean and Africa at the UNHCR, told Al Jazeera.

The LNA’s escalation of its airstrikes follows the fall of the town of Gharyan, about 50 miles south of the capital, to militias backing the Tripoli regime. The LNA had taken the town in April and had been using it as a base for its siege of Tripoli.

The reversal of fortunes for Haftar’s army followed Turkey’s more aggressive intervention in support of the government of President Serraj, providing it with arms and flying armed drones out of the Tripoli airport on its behalf. The LNA claims to have destroyed three of these drones on the tarmac.

The LNA, meanwhile, has received major military support from the dictatorship of Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, as well as from the Persian Gulf oil monarchies of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Both Egypt and the UAE have sent warplanes to provide air cover for the LNA. The aim of these regimes, which constitute Washington’s closest allies in the Arab world, is to install a military-dominated dictatorship along the lines of what exists in Cairo.

While the US and European powers are all formally committed to supporting the puppet regime of President Serraj in Tripoli, President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Haftar, after he had launched his offensive in April, discussing what the White House described as their “shared vision” for Libya.

Haftar, a former general in the Libyan army who turned coat after being captured during Libya’s war with Chad in the 1980s, was brought by the CIA to the US, living for 20 years near the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He was sent back to Libya to join the US-NATO war for regime change in 2011 that ended in the toppling and lynch mob murder of the country’s long-time ruler, Muammar Gaddafi.

Last week, it was reported that militias loyal to the Tripoli regime captured US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles after taking control of an LNA base. The missiles were in shipping crates whose markings indicated that they had been provided by Washington to the UAE.

The United Nations Security Council held a closed-door meeting late Wednesday on the latest atrocity in Libya but was unable to produce a statement condemning the attack because the US representative refused to sign on without approval from Washington. This under conditions in which various governments and agencies have denounced the slaughter of refugees as a crime against humanity.

The hypocrisy of these denunciations is breathtaking. The mass killing that took place outside of Tripoli is the direct outcome of policies pursued by all of the major imperialist powers in their drive to lay hold of Libya’s oil reserves, the largest on the African continent, and in their global war against refugees.

The US-NATO rape of the country in 2011, carried out under the false banner of “human rights” and preventing an allegedly imminent massacre of dissidents in the eastern city of Benghazi, killed tens of thousands of Libyans and destroyed the country’s infrastructure and institutions, setting the stage for eight years of unending conflict and civil war.

Meanwhile, the fate of those slaughtered in Tajoura, along with that of thousands of others held in concentration camps throughout Libya, is the direct result of a reactionary campaign waged by the major European powers. They have trained, armed and financed the Libyan coast guard to intercept refugees seeking to escape war, oppression and poverty by crossing the Mediterranean. Those who are captured are returned to concentration camps in Libya, where they are imprisoned under conditions that have been described as tantamount to torture, in many cases held for ransom, sold into slavery or murdered.

A particularly foul and crucial role in this imperialist onslaught has been played by an entire coterie of pseudo-left organizations, politicians and academics in Europe and America who amplified and embellished upon the phony pretexts of “humanitarian” intervention to justify a war of imperialist aggression against a former colonial country.

German chemical company BASF cuts 6,000 jobs

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Last week, chemical company BASF announced it was cutting 6,000 jobs, half of them in Germany. The moves were in reaction to the demands of the financial markets and investors to drastically reduce personnel costs and increase profits in the face of growing trade-war measures

In a press release, the company said the “organizational reorientation” was creating “more profitable growth” for BASF. The administration will be streamlined and processes simplified. The company, which has around 122,000 employees worldwide, wants to achieve “savings of €300 million”.

The so-called “excellence program” is aimed directly against blue and white collar workers and should significantly increase profits. By increasing synergies, “from the end of 2021, an annual contribution of 2 billion euros will be achieved.” Immediately after the announcement of the job losses, BASF’s share price rose significantly.

The majority of the jobs being cut in Germany will affect the company headquarters in Ludwigshafen, where 40,000 people are employed. BASF CEO Martin Brudermüller wants to implement massive savings in all areas—in production and logistics as well as in research and development—and to sell off BASF subsidiaries.

Management is justifying its action by pointing to the first signs of a general economic downturn, declines in sales in the auto industry and the negative effects of the trade dispute between the major BASF sales markets of the United States and China. BASF is using these developments to drastically intensify the exploitation of the workforce and to maximise profits.

BASF after-tax profts amounted to 4.7 billion euros over the past year. But the investors and financial oligarchs were not satisfied. They said the billion-dollar gains were 20 percent below the average of recent years and demanded a radical cost-cutting program.

Last autumn, CEO Martin Brudermüller, who had been in his post for about a year, announced a significant reduction in staff as part of a comprehensive restructuring of the company. But that was not enough for the shareholders. At the BASF shareholders’ Annual General Meeting (AGM) in early May, they demanded the job cuts be extended and accelerated.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported that investor representatives at the AGM said the company had “a growth and profitability problem” which needed to be addressed. The FAZ commented, it was “a warning shot that should not be ignored”.

The company’s main rival, Bayer, has demonstrated what activist investors can achieve. Last week, the notorious American hedge fund Elliott announced that it now holds a stake of about 2 percent in Bayer. The hedge fund, managed by US billionaire Paul Singer, “only has to play with the idea of a break-up and already the share price increases,” writes the FAZ. The newspaper regards the recently announced job cuts at BASF as a “flight forward”.

This is not an isolated case. In recent months, the industry competitor Bayer has announced the reduction of 4,500 jobs, Thyssenkrupp wants to reduce 6,000, Siemens 2,700.

A study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) last autumn concluded that a hasty conversion of production to electro-mobility in the German auto industry would endanger 600,000 jobs and ruin a large proportion of the suppliers, including the chemical industry. Last week, Ford announced the reduction of 12,000 jobs in Europe. General Motors has announced 14,000 layoffs, Volkswagen 7,000, Jaguar 4,500 and Tesla 3,000.

But these measures still do not go far enough for the shareholders. In an article, the magazine Capital calculates that the reduction of 6,000 jobs at BASF is far from sufficient. BASF CEO Brudermüller has already signaled that he can imagine many further measures to “increase synergies, reduce interfaces and achieve more flexibility and creativity”.

A central element of the new corporate structure should be a “Corporate Centre” in which nearly 1,000 specialists analyze all areas of the company and advise the Executive Board in its decisions. In parallel, a unit called “Global Business Services” is to be set up, which aligns all corporate divisions even more closely with the financial interests of investors.

As a first step to reassure investors, Brudermüller promised a noticeable increase in dividends at the Annual General Meeting in May. The company said it is committed to its “ambitious dividend policy of increasing the annual dividend” and is paying 2.9 billion euros to its shareholders this year.

The BASF board received its most important support from the trade unions. The IG BCE union and the works council are ready to support the cuts program and justify it to the employees. They merely demand they be involved in all decisions at an early stage.

The chairman of the works council and deputy chairman of the BASF Supervisory Board, Sinischa Horvat, announced that he, together with his works council colleagues, would immediately start negotiations with the management board in order to “continue the existing site agreement.” He emphasized that the current works agreement excludes redundancies until the end of 2020. But everyone knows that the phrase “excludes redundancies” is code for accepting job losses.

The IG BCE in the Ludwigshafen district also spoke immediately of an “entrepreneurial decision”, that is to say, a decision that is not objectionable and that is implemented in partnership with the company management, the union and the works council.

BASF is also receiving support from the parties in the Bundestag (parliament). This was made clear by Kerstin Andreae, economic policy spokeswoman of the Greens in the Bundestag. A month ago, she called CEO Brudermüller a “role model for other managers”. For this reason, for several months he had also been a member of the party’s economic policy advisory board. “The verve with which he campaigns for climate protection” made Bruderüller unusual, said Andreae, “even if he, like any CEO, is driven by the shareholders’s claims.”

The global war on refugees

Will Morrow

A series of events in the past two weeks have prompted mass outrage at the systematic mistreatment and brutalization of refugees by capitalist governments all over the world.

Hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their opposition to Saturday’s arrest of Carola Rackete, the 31-year-old German sea captain of the refugee rescue ship Sea Watch 3, by the Italian government and its fascistic interior minister, Matteo Salvini. Rackete’s supposed “crime” was to rescue 52 African refugees, including pregnant women and children, stranded in the Mediterranean Sea on June 12, and provide their safe transfer to the Italian territory of Lampedusa.

For over two weeks, the Sea Watch had sailed through the Mediterranean in search of a port in the European Union (EU) to land. No EU government, including France, Germany and Spain, would accept the few dozen refugees—leaving the crew with no choice but to land at Lampedusa, in defiance of the Italian government’s illegal ban on all maritime arrivals of asylum seekers.

The ordering of Rackete’s release by Italian judges last night was a response to the immense outpouring of popular support for her in the working class. As of yesterday, a fund set up by a German comedian to support Sea Watch’s legal fees had raised more than 800,000 euros, and another on Facebook over 400,000 euros, from more than 25,000 donors. Over 330,000 people signed a petition calling for Rackete’s immediate freedom.

The Italian ruling, however, is in no way a retreat from the crackdown aimed at all those trying to save refugees. Rackete is to be expelled from Italy and remains under legal threat. Italy has charged Pia Klemp, the captain of the Juventa ship that saved 14,000 people, and who was arrested in 2017, for “aiding and abetting illegal immigration.” She faces 20 years in prison.

With disgusting hypocrisy, European officials, including German Social Democratic President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, have mildly criticized Salvini and shed crocodile tears for the refugees. But everyone knows that it is the EU, with France and Germany at the forefront, that has erected “Fortress Europe” with barbed wire and machine guns, ended rescue missions in the Mediterranean, and turned Europe’s southern sea into a vast cemetery. Salvini only states most bluntly and crudely the policy of the entire EU.

In 2015, the EU announced “Operation Triton” while training Libyan militias as a coast guard to catch refugees fleeing to Europe and return them to concentration camps in Libya, where there is documented evidence of torture, rape, killings and the selling of refugees into slavery. While the EU ended its rescue operations, crew and ship captains from humanitarian NGOs have been persecuted and had their sailing rights stripped.

In the last three years, at least 14,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. A report published last week by the Spanish pro-refugee organization Caminando Fronteras found that at least 1,020 people had drowned in 70 shipwrecks in the Strait of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain alone from January 2018 to June 2019.

Eighty years after governments internationally turned back Jews fleeing the Nazi regime to a near-certain death in 1930s Europe, the EU is adopting a policy of mass murder to send refugees a message: trying to exercise their legal and democratic right to asylum in Europe will likely lead to death by drowning.

In the United States, the Trump administration has created a network of immigrant concentration camps inside the country and along the US-Mexico border, where conditions are so abusive that Dr. Lucio Sevier, a pediatrician who visited centers housing children in Texas last week, said they were more akin to “torture facilities.”

Yesterday, Democratic Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez reported on a trip to a detention center in Texas in which women were kept in cells without water and told by border guards to drink out of toilets. A day earlier, a secret Facebook group was revealed by ProPublica in which fascistic border guards posted violent jokes about immigrants and sexual threats against Cortez before her visit.

The popular revulsion and opposition to Trump’s fascistic immigration policies was expressed in a demonstration by more than 200 American Jews outside an ICE detention center in New Jersey on Sunday, chanting “Never again means now!” Thirty-six were arrested, with one young arrested protester reporting she felt “good” because her grandparents, who fought against the Nazis, “would want me to stand up against concentration camps.”

The global assault on refugees extends far beyond Europe and America. On June 27, US President Trump hailed the anti-immigrant policies of the Australian Liberal/National coalition government and Labor Party opposition. Trump declared “much could be learned” from the bipartisan Australian policy of Operation Sovereign Borders, which utilizes the military to intercept and block all refugees attempting to reach Australia, in violation of international law.

The fact that the attack on refugees is a universal process shows that it is not due to the fascistic personalities of individual politicians, like Trump and Salvini. It is a particularly foul manifestation of a new, historic breakdown of the capitalist nation-state system. Tens of millions of men, women and children are fleeing the social breakdown and mass killings produced by a quarter-century of war in the Middle East and Africa, waged by the United States and its EU imperialist allies.

There are more refugees today than at any time since World War II. A UN report published last week stated that the number of people forcibly displaced around the world has almost doubled from 43.3 million in 2009 to 70.8 million in 2018. Every minute in 2018, 25 people were forced to flee their homes. Just under 1 percent of humanity, one in every 108 people, are refugees.

In 1940, two years before Europe’s fascist regimes launched the “Final Solution” genocide of the Jews, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky warned: “Today decaying capitalist society is striving to squeeze the Jewish people from all its pores; seventeen million individuals out of the two billion populating the globe, that is, less than 1 percent, can no longer find a place on our planet! Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”

Today, capitalist governments, facing a deepening crisis of the global order and mounting domestic political opposition, are promoting the types of nationalism and xenophobia that characterized the fascist right in the 1930s. The universal adoption of draconian anti-refugee policies is the means by which the extreme right is being rehabilitated by the ruling elites all over the world.

As with anti-Semitism in the 1930s, the authoritarian measures directed against refugees are aimed against the working class as a whole. The concentration camps that are today deployed against refugees can be used tomorrow against workers and political opponents of war and militarism, austerity and social inequality.

The powerful support for refugees in the working class can and must be mobilized. But the only means to prevent a renewed relapse into barbarism and war is to arm the opposition to fascistic attacks on refugees with a conscious socialist and internationalist program. This means rejecting all attempts to scapegoat immigrants for the social crisis produced by capitalism and defending the right of every worker to live wherever he or she wants—with full citizenship rights, including the right to travel and work.

Only the taking of political power by the working class internationally can free society’s resources from the control of a corporate oligarchy and guarantee a high standard of living for every person in the world, free from poverty and oppression.

Nominate: The Aurora Prize for Humanitarian Work 2020 – USD1Million Cash

Application Deadline: 31st October, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries

To be taken at (country): Yerevan, Armenia

About the Award: On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity will be granted annually to an individual whose actions have had an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes.
Nominations are open for the 2020 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, a global humanitarian award granted by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors. The Aurora Prize is seeking the stories of selfless individuals who demonstrate exceptional courage, commitment and impact at personal risk for the sake of others.
Anyone can nominate a candidate who they believe has risked their life, health, freedom, reputation or livelihood to make an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes.

Mission: The Aurora Prize aims to recognize and support those who risk their life, health, freedom, reputation or livelihood in order to save and aid individuals that suffer as a result of today’s tragedies, especially man-conceived disasters and crimes against humanity.

Offered Since: 2015

Type: Contests/Award

Eligibility: Any individual or group of people that perform(s) an extraordinary act of humanity may be nominated to receive the Aurora Prize. The Aurora Prize Laureate is recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made in preserving human life in the face of adversity, risking their health, freedom, reputation or livelihood.

Selection Criteria: Nominations are carefully vetted and reviewed through a rigorous process. The Laureate is determined by the Selection Committee based on the following criteria:
Courage: The extent to which the Nominee’s actions demonstrate:

• Courage in helping others survive
• Having overcome significant risks for the sake of helping others survive
• Going beyond the call of duty of professional obligations for the sake of helping others survive

Commitment: The extent to which the Nominee’s actions demonstrate:

• An explicit intention to help others survive
• A direct involvement in helping others survive
• Being motivated by altruistic intentions

Impact: The extent to which the Nominee’s actions demonstrate:

• An impact of saving lives on the Nominee’s community, country or globally
• A long-term effect in saving lives
• Inspiration to others to save lives, directly or indirectly
• Saving lives of a large number of individuals

Any members of the public, including members of national assemblies, governments, academic and other institutions, can nominate candidates for the Aurora Prize.

Number of Awardees: 1

Value of Award: The Aurora Prize Laureate will be honored with a US $100,000 grant. In addition, that individual will have the unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by selecting an organization that inspired their work to receive a US $1,000,000 award.

How to Apply: Visit Award Webpage to apply

Visit Award Webpage for details


Award Provider: 100Lives by IDeA Foundation initiative.

Bayer Foundation International Fellowship Programme 2019 – Germany

Application Deadline: 14th July, 2019.

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award: The Fellowship Program consists of five scholarship programs that offer tailored financial support. Important requirements for the support: The project to be supported must be innovative and international. Scholarships are granted to students and young professionals (up to two years after graduation) from Germany wishing to realize a study or research project abroad or to foreign students/young professionals pursuing a project in Germany.

The Bayer Science & Education Foundation supports students and young professionals that would like to study or work outside of their home country with the Bayer Foundation Fellowship Program, which consists of five scholarships.

1. Life Sciences: Students and young professionals in the fields of biology, molecular biology, bioengineering, bioinformatics, chemistry, biochemistry, pharmaceuticals and computational life sciences can apply for the Otto Bayer Scholarship.
2. Medicine: Students and young professionals in the fields of human and veterinary medicine, medical science, medical engineering, public health and health economics can apply for the Carl Duisberg Scholarship.
3. Agro Sciences: Students and young professionals in the fields of agro sciences, digital farming, agronomy, crop sciences, green biotechnology, environmental sciences and sustainability can apply for the Jeff Schell Scholarship.
4. Biology and Chemistry Educators: Student teachers in biology and chemistry (up to Master’s degree level) can apply for the Kurt Hansen Scholarship. Here, the focus is on study projects, internships, summer courses as well as supplemental courses of study.
5. Apprentices: Apprentices and young professionals in non-academic professions can apply for the Hermann Strenger Scholarship. Here, foreign assignments like projects, internships, supplemental courses or on-the-job assignments in the following fields are in focus:
   • Careers in healthcare
   • Technical or scientific occupations
   • Business administration

Type: Fellowship, Research

Eligibility:All applicants should have a high level of commitment, dedication and an innovative project plan. Scholarships are granted to students and young professionals (up to two years after graduation) from Germany wishing to realize a study or research project abroad or to foreign students/young professionals pursuing a project in Germany.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The financing generally covers the cost of living, travel expenses and project costs. Each applicant is asked to set up an individual cost schedule to be approved by the Foundation Council.

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of course

How to Apply: The following application documents are required for the Otto Bayer Scholarship, Carl Duisberg Scholarship, Jeff Schell Scholarship and Kurt Hansen Scholarship:

• Confirmation letter from the foreign host institute/university on the planned project from September 2019 to August 2020
• A description of the project (duration of 2-12 months) with financial plan within the timeline of September 2018 to August 2019. The project can consist of special study courses, laboratory assignments, research projects, summer classes, internships, Master’s or PhD programs.
• Most recent transcripts
• Any additional documents that would enhance the application
• Job application photo (no photo of your passport, please)
• CV
• The amount per fellowship is individual, but limited per 20.000€ per request.

For the Hermann Strenger Scholarship, applicants must submit the following:

• Confirmation letter from the foreign host institute/university on the planned project from September 2019 to August 2020
• Most recent transcripts with good to excellent grades
• A description of the project (duration of 2-12 months) with financial plan. The project can consist of
  special study courses, laboratory assignments, research projects, summer classes or internships
• Job application photo (no photo of your passport, please)

Apply Here

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Bayer Fellowship Program

Morland Writing Scholarship 2019 for African Writers (£18,000 Cash Prize)

Application Deadline: 30th September, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: The Scholarships are open to anyone writing in the English language who was born in an African country or both of whose parents were born in Africa.

To be taken at (country): Candidate’s home country

Eligible Works: The Scholarships are meant for full length works of adult fiction or non-fiction. Poetry, plays, film scripts, children’s books, and short story collections do not qualify.

About the Award: It can be difficult for writers, before they become established, to write while simultaneously earning a living. To help meet this need the MMF annually awards a small number of Morland Writing Scholarships, with the aim being to allow each Scholar the time to produce the first draft of a completed book. 
At the end of each month scholars must send the Foundation 10,000 new words that they will have written over the course of the month. Scholars are also asked to donate to the MMF 20% of whatever they subsequently receive from what they write during the period of their Scholarship. This includes revenues as a result of film rights, serialisations or other ancillary revenues arising from the book written during the Scholarship period. These funds will be used to support other promising writers. The 20% return obligation should be considered a debt of honour rather than a legally binding obligation.

The Foundation will not review or comment on the monthly submissions as they come in. However, each Scholar will be offered the opportunity to be mentored by an established author or publisher. In most cases the mentorship will begin after the book has been finished and the Scholarship period has ended. At the discretion of the Foundation, the cost of the mentorship will be borne by the MMF. It is not the intention of the MMF to act as editor or a publisher. Scholars will need to find their own agents and publishers although the MMF is happy to offer advice.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: The only condition imposed on the Scholars during the year of their Scholarship is that they must write. They will be asked to submit by e-mail at least 10,000 new words every month until they have finished their book or their Scholarship term has ended. If the first draft of the book is completed before the year is up, payments will continue while the Scholar edits and refines their work. 

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholars writing fiction will receive a grant of £18,000, paid monthly over the course of twelve months. At the discretion of the Foundation, Scholars writing non-fiction may receive a grant of up to £27,000, paid over a period  of up to eighteen months.

Duration of Scholarship: The Scholars may elect to start at any time between January and June in the year following the Scholarship Award. Their payments and the 10,000 word monthly submission requirement will start at the same time. The Foundation may exercise its discretion to offer non-fiction writers a longer Scholarship period of up to 18 months.

How to Apply: To qualify for the Scholarship a candidate must submit an excerpt from a piece of work of between 2,000 – 5,000 words written in English that has been published and offered for sale,. This will be evaluated by a panel of readers and judges set up by the MMF. The work submitted will be judged purely on literary merit. It is not the purpose of the Scholarships to support academic or scientific research, or works of special interest such as religious or political writings. Submissions or proposals of this nature do not qualify.

They should be sent by e-mail to scholarships@milesmorlandfoundation.com Please do not submit anything in hard copy or by terrestrial post.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details


Award Provider: Miles Morland Foundation

Pan African “Teach a Man to Fish” Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education 2019

Application Deadline: 16th August, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of the), Congo-Brazzaville (also known as Republic of the Congo), Côte d’Ivoire (commonly known as Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

About the Award: The Pan African Awards reward the very best projects which are using enterprise and entrepreneurship to innovate in the field of education. The awards are generously supported by The Saville Foundation, a charitable foundation based in South Africa. Teach A Man To Fish manage the awards using their expertise in enterprise education and highlight inspirational models and projects through their large network of educational organisations and schools.
Participants must follow these guidelines:

• Is your education or training project based in Africa?
• Does your organisation actively demonstrate the success of their entrepreneurial approach to education? See above for our meaning of ‘entrepreneurship in education’.
• Is your education project innovative and inspiring?
• Does your organisation have a large network of young people?
• Can you show that your project has had a positive impact on young people and your community?

Type: Contest

Eligibility: The main criteria for becoming successful are:

• They’re entrepreneurial- they have innovative ways of tackling problems in education, they generate their own income, or they empower future generations of entrepreneurs.
• They’re sustainable- they are financially, socially and environmentally sustainable in the future and that look beyond donations and subsidies as their primary source of income.
• They create Impact- they achieve measurable results in terms of educational achievement and economic outcomes for participants and the wider community.

Number of Awardees: Three (3)

Value of Award: 

• First prize of $15,000, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes of $5,000.
• Alongside winners will also benefit from enhanced visibility and enhanced sponsorship and donor opportunities.
• In addition, applicants that reach the shortlist stage will be invited to apply for the Future Partner Prize. For this prize, organisations are required to submit ideas on how they could partner with Teach A Man To Fish to take the School Enterprise Challenge programme to a wider audience. Winners will receive a cash prize and will work further with Teach A Man To Fish to become a future partner.
• For exceptionally high performing organisations, it is possible to win both a top prize and the partner prize.
• All winners will also win a fully funded spot for one delegate at the annual Education That Pays conference.

Duration of Award: Not stated

How to Apply: Applications are now open. To get your application ready:

1. Read about the competition, eligibility criteria and application tips in the Application Guide (Link below).
2. Review the Terms and Conditions (Link below)
3. APPLY NOW

Visit Award Webpage for details