As the power games of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) move to Kenya for a few days, hundreds of workers, farmers, consumers, students and other representatives from civil society are gathering at a public meeting in Nairobi on 1st March and a public rally in Mombasa on 3rd March to raise their demands on the key issues in the WTO negotiations.

The following are our positions and demands on some of the contentious issues in the current negotiations that will be on the table in Mombasa:

Agriculture: livelihoods for millions of African farmers at stake

The major subsidy powers, the EU and US, continue to distort world agriculture trade through the massive support to their farmers and dumping of cheap agriculture products in developing countries.

At the WTO Ministerial in Doha in 2001, WTO members agreed that export subsidies should be phased out and domestic support should be substantially reduced. Again in July last year the developed countries committed themselves to eliminate export subsidies. But so far we have seen nothing of that. There is still no end date for the elimination of the subsidies and developed countries have just kept shuffling around their domestic support measures to boxes that are supposedly non-trade distorting. African farmers are still suffering from dumping of agricultural products from the North.

In Mombasa, the rich countries will try to keep certain high tariffs and find all kinds of loopholes to be able to keep protecting their own agriculture. At the same time they are asking African countries to further open up their agricultural markets. African and other developing countries must have the right to protect their local production -- particularly since it is obvious that dumping from the rich countries will continue.

NAMA -- the death nail to our local industries

Kenya and other African countries have suffered from collapse of domestic industries resulting in closure of local factories and massive job losses, due to trade liberalization enforced by the IMF and the World Bank under the Structural Adjustment Programmes.

In the WTO negotiations on industrial tariffs (NAMA), the rich countries are pushing developing countries to further open up their industrial markets through drastic tariff reductions, and even elimination of tariffs in certain sectors, such as textiles, leather and foot wear. This would mean the death nail to already fragile and vulnerable local industries in African countries with increased unemployment as a result.

Tariff revenues in Kenya account for around 20% of the total government revenue. A drastic reduction of tariffs on manufactured goods would also mean a serious loss of government revenue for Kenya and other African countries, which would threaten governments' spending on basic social sectors. Trading away basic services and governments' policy space

It is the developed countries that are the ones benefiting from WTO rules on trade in services. Their powerful service corporations are already on the doorsteps in many African countries, looking for investment and market opportunities once service sectors are liberalized.

The rich countries keep pushing developing countries to open up their service sectors, even sensitive sectors like water, waste management, and also sectors that are critical for the local economy, such as financial services, banking and insurance.

At the moment, the pressure is high on developing countries to submit offers of which service sectors they are willing to liberalise. The rich countries want to speed up the negotiations and see 'a critical mass' of offers on the table, while developing countries are arguing that they do not have accurate analysis of their service sectors and are not yet ready to make offers.

Development must be put at the forefront!

Although the Doha Round was supposed to be a "Development Round", development issues in WTO have been put on the backburner for the last couple of years. It is of extreme urgency that all outstanding issues related to Special and Differential Treatment and Implementation are resolved -- if the WTO rules will at all serve the interests of African and other developing countries.

We call on Ministers, Trade Representatives and the WTO Secretariat present at the Mini Ministerial in Mombasa to:

* Put development in the 'Development Round'

* Ensure that developing countries have the right to protect their local agriculture production

* Ensure that export subsidies are eliminated through an early end date and that trade distorting domestic support by developed countries is effectively and rapidly being reduced

* Ensure that developing countries have the right to determine their own rate of tariff reductions and tariff bindings on industrial products

* Ensure that elimination of tariffs on certain industrial sectors is strictly voluntary

* Ensure that there is no pressure on developing countries to submit offers in the services negotiations -- developing countries need sufficient time to carefully analyse their service sectors before they can make any kind of offers.