Zambia’s government said on Monday that it opposed a U.S. attempt \u200cto tie\u00a0health funding\u00a0to access to critical minerals, giving details for the first time about why negotiations with Washington over two proposed agreements have stalled.<\/p>\n
Zambia’s Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe said \u200bthe United States had offered support of up to $2 billion over \u200bthe next five years in a\u00a0proposed health agreement, but that some \u2060of the terms regarding data sharing would violate Zambians’ right to privacy.<\/p>\n
Separately, he \u200bsaid Zambia had objections to the content of a proposed\u00a0critical minerals agreement.<\/p>\n
“A further \u200bconcern… is the coupling of the proposed agreements and frameworks to one another such that the conclusion of the critical minerals agreement is made conditional to the conclusion of the \u200bHealth MOU,” Haimbe said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“The Zambian Government has been consistent that \u200bthe agreements must be considered separately on their respective merits,” he added.<\/p>\n
He did not specify \u200cwhat \u2060health data the U.S. was asking for.<\/p>\n
Regarding the critical minerals agreement, he said Zambia was reluctant to accept the terms due to an insistence on preferential treatment for U.S. companies.<\/p>\n
The U.S. State Department has said that it does not disclose \u200bdetails of bilateral \u200bnegotiations.<\/p>\n
Health advocates had \u2060warned that the proposed health deal linked the money to mining access and brought data-sharing risks, but Zambia’s government previously \u200bsaid only that parts of it\u00a0were not aligned\u00a0with \u200bthe country’s \u2060interests.<\/p>\n
A number of African nations have signed\u00a0memorandums of understanding\u00a0which represent the Trump administration’s new approach to foreign aid.\u00a0Ghana\u00a0and\u00a0Zimbabwe\u00a0have rejected them over data sharing demands.<\/p>\n
The statement \u2060from \u200bHaimbe was issued in response to criticism from \u200boutgoing U.S. ambassador Michael Gonzales, who accused Zambia\u00a0of failing to engage\u00a0on the health funding offer, \u200bsomething which Haimbe denied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zambia’s government said on Monday that it opposed a U.S. attempt \u200cto tie health funding to access to critical minerals, giving details for the first time about why negotiations with Washington over two proposed agreements have stalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,1129,30],"tags":[5120,1842,394],"class_list":["post-20773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-security","category-southern-africa","tag-mulambo-haimbe","tag-washington","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20775,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20773\/revisions\/20775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}