AFRICA SPECIAL-To save Africa we must listen to it

COLTRANE · (#1 (**permalink**))

[align=left][/align]

[align=left]Africa special: the big picture - Their fault or our fault? The blame game doesn't help. More important is our attitude: we must now acknowledge that Africa will make its own future. By Richard Dowden

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Omdurman in 1998, I asked the British ambassador to Sudan whether he was prepared to apologise at next day's memorial ceremony. It was barely a battle, more of a slaughter in which British howitzers and Maxim guns killed and wounded some 27,000 Sudanese. There were 175 British casualties. "Yes, of course," he replied, "but then we'd also have to apologise for building the roads, the schools, the hospitals and the university, setting up the government institutions and creating a nation state called Sudan."

Two opposing narratives inform our understanding of Africa. The first tells of a continent undeveloped and underpopulated until Europeans discovered it and opened it up to trade and the benefits of science and civilisation. Until outsiders came, sub-Saharan Africa had no writing and no wheel. Its inhabitants belonged to thousands of ethnic groups which, outside the West African Islamic kingdoms, ruled themselves according to custom. Once colonial rule had been established, Africa's population leapt from 120 million in 1880 to 165 million in 1935. With the benefits of peace, stability, western education and science, it rose to 330 million by the 1960s. The colonialists left Africa's economies in reasonable shape, but after independence they sank back into anarchy and poverty. The cause: tribalism and corruption.

The other narrative goes like this: the continent flourished until Europeans started prowling around its coasts in the 16th century looking for loot. The loot they found was human - slaves - and over the next two and a half centuries, millions of Africans were ripped from their land and shipped across to the Americas to labour in mines and on plantations. That impoverished Africa and made Europe wealthy. The slave-trade wealth was invested in Europe, creating the industrial revolution. This in turn gave Europe a further advantage over Africa and a sense of superiority which Europeans interpreted as racial. That gave the impetus for imperialism and colonialism. Europe carved up Africa so it could more easily exploit Africa's mineral wealth and cheap labour.

Then, after most of Africa won political independence in the 1950s and 1960s, Europe kept its former colonies dependent and continued to manage the international trading system to its own advantage and against Africa's. As part of the cold-war divide, appalling dictators were propped up because they were "our" dictators. Furthermore, the western powers bound Africa's economies to them through loans that in time became unpayable, at the same time giving a pittance in aid to individual African countries. Those loans, this narrative says, are modern slavery. The thread in the cord that binds Africa in poverty and weakness is made in Europe and it is strong and long-lasting.

The first, colonial, narrative pretty much informs British government policy to this day - as recently as January, Gordon Brown said that Britain had nothing to apologise for from its colonial past. The second narrative induces post-imperial guilt and drives the aid industry. In Africa, you often hear the first rather than the second, evidence perhaps that the most damaging effect of imperial rule was not political or economic but psychological. It destroyed Africa's belief in its past and itself.

There are elements of truth in both narratives. The ambassador's dilemma was real. For ill and good, Europe and Africa are deeply intertwined. And yet, despite two world wars and a Depression between them, Europe has prospered while African countries fill all the bottom places in the league table that measures the quality and length of human life.

Europe's historical impact on Africa cannot alone explain Africa's failure to function and prosper. The thread that bound Europe to Africa also bound it to parts of Asia and South America. But no one in India or Argentina would claim that their nation's shortcomings today were a result of colonialism - not directly, anyway. They are bigger than their history and have come to terms with the past. Europe's imprint on Africa was, on the surface, quicker and lighter than in both Asia and Latin America, yet Africa is perceived to have suffered so much more.

And in the post-colonial period the global trading system has been the same for Asia and Africa. How, for example, has Vietnam, a country that has suffered more than a bit from colonialism and neo-imperialism, become one of the world's most successful coffee producers, elbowing aside established African growers, whose production has stagnated?

Despite colonialism, Africa remains powerfully itself, moulded by its harsh environment. To give three examples: its uncertain climate and virulent diseases make its societies conservative, more concerned with short-term survival than minded to take risks for long-term development. The lesson learned is that you keep to traditions and respect your elders because they have experience and wisdom. Africa's two most stable and vibrant democracies, Ghana and Kenya, have both chosen conservative old men, not dynamic young ones as presidents. Second, family and a sense of belonging are more important than individualism. No man is an island. And third, Africa is altogether a more spiritual place, strongly aware of deeper forces in the world than the price of bread. That gives it a certain fatalism but also immense resilience and solidarity in harsh times.

These elements all play in making Africa what it is today, but the key to understanding Africa's situation in a global context lies in its politics and in the relationship between its elite and the outside world. Africa's elites and their European allies have played a crucial role in the impoverishment of the continent, from the time of the coastal kings of West Africa who caught and sold slaves to the slave-traders in the 18th century, through the African armies that helped the Europeans conquer Africa in the 19th, and on to the ruling elite today who put their ill-gotten gains in London banks.

But why should Africa's elite ruling class have served the continent so badly? The Europeans ruled for long enough to destroy or undermine Africa's own power structures, but too briefly to replace them with other political structures that united the people in nation states. Africans had had no part in creating the states that were suddenly handed to them at independence along with European-designed flags and national anthems.

There was no return to traditional systems of rule because the colonial-created states bore no relation to previous political or economic entities, although at local level, kings and chiefs have retained significant influence. Power was seized from the departing Europeans by those whom the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe called "the smart, the lucky and hardly ever the best". They held on to it whatever the cost - even if it meant destroying their country. Robert Mugabe is not untypical of the dictators who ruled in Africa's first four decades.

But the problem goes deeper than poor leadership, lack of elections and bad policies. It lies in the shape of African states. The Europeans created them by drawing lines on the map, cutting across ethnic groups, cramming them into artificial borders. Most of these European-created entities have at least a dozen languages; Nigeria has three huge language groups and more than 400 other tongues. Imagine if Europe, which has only 20 languages, had to elect one centralised government. And imagine if the French were Muslim and the only wealth was oil and it was under the Germans. In the light of what history suggests Europeans might make of such a predicament, Africa is quite a peaceful continent.

Africans are trapped between their own past and imported western political systems and could not, until recently, integrate the two strands of their history. On the surface, Africa has the trappings of states, governments and institutions recognisable worldwide. Beneath the surface, old networks still rule.

That is why although almost all African countries have elected leaders these days, the problems continue. Even without those networks and pre-colonial allegiances, however, Africa's states do not have administrative structures that reach from the government to the people. Even if governments are committed to delivering books to schools or drugs to clinics, few outside Botswana or South Africa could deliver them. There is simply a lack of human capacity and infrastructure.

So how should we relate to Africa today? Policies - a fairer trade system, less debt - are important, but more important is attitude. First, acknowledge, and not just with lip-service, that Africa will make its own future. Even among the most politically correct modern Europeans, Africans can spot traits of thought inherited from imperial forebears. Because our image of Africans is one of poverty and victimhood, we also think they are weak. We want to save Africa, so we do not think to understand or listen to it.

Second, history is important, as was painfully illustrated by the UK government's handling of Zimbabwe. Jack Straw, Clare Short and Tony Blair thought they could bawl Mugabe into submission from the moral high ground. History had moved on, they said, claiming Britain's responsibility for Zimbabwe ended at Lancaster House in 1979. But every bolt they threw at Mugabe was returned with even more force. And like it or not, Africans appreciated his stand against British public bullying. The megaphone policy failed and it also wrecked the relationship between Blair and South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, crucial for British policy in Africa. These mistakes were made because the government did not bother to study African attitudes.

I hope the Commission for Africa persuades the rest of the world to adopt some good new - or old - ideas for supporting the continent. But nothing happens quickly in Africa. Do not expect quick results. That is the third lesson. It will take decades.

Richard Dowden is director of the Royal African Society[/align]

[align=left]This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition[/align]

COLTRANE · (#2 (**permalink**))

New bank law to help return of stolen cash

Blair pledges to ratify UN anti-corruption convention

Patrick Wintour and Ashley Seager
Saturday March 12, 2005
The Guardian

The prime minister, Tony Blair, said yesterday that Britain would change its banking laws to speed up the return of funds stolen from Africa by corrupt leaders.
At the launch of the report of the Commission for Africa, he acknowledged that it required Britain to go further in combating corruption and money laundering.
The report recommends that banks be obliged to inform African countries when they see suspicious transactions, as well as to freeze and confiscate assets without needing a criminal conviction.
Asked if Britain needed to go further, Mr Blair said: "Yes. We will do what is necessary from our perspective and we have got to get it done."
The Department for International Development said it was amending the serious and organised crime bill to ensure that Britain ratified the UN convention against corruption, so becoming the first G8 nation to do so.
The convention can come into force only if 30 nations ratify it. So far, 19 have done so.
Assets can be returned now under British law, but the convention, subject to the right legal procedures, would require assets to be returned.
Mr Blair also endorsed angry remarks from Bob Geldof, founder of the commission, by attacking corrupt and undemocratic African leaders.
Mr Geldof had called for the Ugandan president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, to stand down at the end of his term of office and called Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, a thug.
British ministers have been struck by how a new generation of African leaders is determined to speak out against corruption by their fellow leaders.
But Britain is anxious that the corruption issue does not dominate the G8 agenda for fear it should look as if the west is blaming the victim.
Mr Blair said Africa represented the fundamental moral challenge of our generation.
He said: "There can be no excuse, no defence, no justification for the plight of millions of our fellow beings in Africa today.
"There should be nothing that stands in our way of changing it. Africa can change for the better and the blisteringly frank report shows how.
"It should be an obscenity that haunts our daily thoughts that 4 million people will die in Africa before their fifth birthday."
It was Africa's responsibility to sort out its governance, but the west needed to provide more aid, he said.
"When I think of Africa, I fear my own conscience and I fear the judgment of future generations, when history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering around us. How could wealthy people so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away and busy themselves with other things?"
The chancellor, Gordon Brown, said the world had to recognise that, without an early injection of funds, the promise to halve poverty would not be met as planned in 2015, but in 2150.
"Africans are praised for the virtues of patience, but 150 years is too long to wait for justice. So the question that has to be asked today is, If not now, when? If not us, who?"
He, too, called for an antidote to corruption, though some observers questioned whether the report did enough to set out how private sector investment would expand.
"Unless we deliver, it'll just be another report," said Myles Wickstead, director of the commission.
Most charities and non-government organisations welcomed the quality and breadth of the report's analysis and agreed with its central conclusion that lots of money was needed quickly. But they also said the British government needed to get its own house in order.
"Taken together, the findings of the commission would offer real hope if they were acted on by the world's richest countries," said George Gelber, head of policy at the charity Cafod.
"The report increases the pressure on the G8 countries to commit more money and introduce greater reform on trade if they are to live up to their promises on tackling poverty in Africa."
Christian Aid said the report challenged all countries in the rich world and Africa, but also Mr Blair and Mr Brown.
"To make this a reality, the rule books on trade, aid and debt must be rewritten - including some sweeping changes to current UK government policy," said Charles Abugre, the charity's head of policy.
He said the UK supported trade liberalisation by African countries, whereas the report argued that it could be damaging for poorer countries.
John Hilary, policy director at War on Want, went further: "The commission has slammed the UK government's harmful policies towards some of the world's poorest countries. The UK's policies of trade liberalisation and privatisation are revealed as part of the problem facing Africa, while reluctance to crack down on corporate corruption is highlighted as another key failing.
"Tony Blair must now respond with a thorough overhaul of UK policies towards Africa across the full range of issues identified by the commission,"
Save the Children said it was happy overall with the report's strong recommendations that international institutions and rich countries be prevented from imposing policies on poor countries that harm children.
The TUC said it was pleased that its lobbying had succeeded in getting strong rights for workers written into the report.

Special reports
Development
Debt relief
Fair trade

COLTRANE · (#3 (**permalink**))

I believe this is Africa's best chance for a generation ...

Our report is an ambitious call for action, but it's rooted in the real world

Tony Blair
Saturday March 12, 2005
The Guardian

I am an optimist about life and politics. I don't go along with the view, fashionable in some quarters, that politics doesn't produce real change or that there are no great causes left. If we have the political will and courage, we can transform lives. I believe that there is no more noble cause than galvanising the world to help transform the lives of millions of our fellow human beings in Africa.
The plight of Africa and its people is not new. Nor are well intentioned plans to tackle its problems. So I can understand why there is a degree of scepticism in some quarters about the Commission for Africa and the likely impact of its report that we published yesterday. I don't share it and neither do my fellow commissioners.
There are three reasons why we believe we stand at a moment of real opportunity for Africa - the ambition and scope of the report, the breadth of experience and influence of its authors and, perhaps most important, what is happening in Africa itself and the attitude of the wider world to the changes taking place.
When people read the report - and I urge everyone to do so for themselves - I think what will stand out is the robust analysis of the problems and the comprehensive and ambitious nature of the solutions proposed. This is not a report couched in the usual diplomatic language. It is remarkably blunt about the failures of governments and policies in Africa and the wider world. It identifies, for example, the problem of corruption in Africa itself and the broken promises on trade in the developed world as major causes of the parlous situation of so much of Africa. The report won't make comfortable reading in many capitals, including ours.
The commission was tasked with producing a comprehensive and fresh analysis of the reasons for Africa's poverty and stagnation, which have made it the only continent getting poorer in recent decades. This is what we have done. But it also comes up with specific, practical and costed solutions for each of these reasons, which build on what is already working in Africa. This is, without doubt, an ambitious call for action but it's rooted in the real world.
What also makes it different is that this report and, crucially, the programme for action have been agreed not just by experts but also by people who understand what is needed to deliver political change. Some have in their hands the direct levers of power. Some know how to galvanise others to action. Gordon Brown, Hilary Benn and I are committed to this cause. We will do all we can to deliver the additional aid, lift the debt burden, remove unfair trade barriers and provide leadership through our presidencies of the G8 and European Union. But the breakthrough we want, and which this report demands, will require all countries, developed and African, to act together in a real and sustained partnership.
The prospects for this partnership are undoubtedly increased by the grassroots pressure here in Britain, and all developed countries, on governments to seize this opportunity to deliver real change in Africa. The Make Poverty History campaign, yesterday's Red Nose Day and the response to the tsunami underline how people look far beyond national boundaries and recognise the world's interdependence.
The lesson of the past few years is that we can't, for our national interests, ignore other countries and continents. Famine and instability thousands of miles away lead to conflict, despair, mass migration and fanaticism that can affect us all. So for reasons of self-interest as well as morality, we can no longer turn our back on Africa.
I believe leaders in the developed world are increasingly recognising this, which is why I am so hopeful we can make dramatic progress this year. But what's happening in Africa itself is also having a huge impact on people's perceptions. Because no matter the scale and range of problems Africa is facing, we are also seeing how, with the right leadership and the right help, individual countries are overcoming the immense challenges they face.
Africa is changing - and for the better. There are plenty of bad news stories in Africa, as this report makes clear, but they can also overshadow the progress taking place. Mozambique and Ethiopia are just two countries that are enjoying sustained economic growth and growth, which is feeding through to their people. Tanzania, with Britain's help, now has universal primary education. Uganda has reversed the infection rate for Aids.
Democracy is taking root. Thirty years ago there were three democratic heads of state in Africa. Now there are 30. And while conflicts still scar too much of Africa, there are far fewer today than even a decade ago. A new generation of leaders in Africa - committed to democracy, to clean government and to improving life for their citizens - is in place, with whom the rest of the world can work in partnership.
I don't underestimate the problems we face. But I genuinely believe this is the best chance for Africa for a generation. I can promise that Britain will use its G8 and EU presidencies to press other countries to sign up to the call for action we will unveil today. The G8 summit in Gleneagles in July, the UN millennium summit in September and the trade talks in Hong Kong in December are three vital occasions to build international support.
There is a huge amount to do to build up Africa's capacity for good government; to support Africa's efforts to prevent and settle conflicts; to fund basic education and healthcare; to encourage investment; to remove trade barriers and unfair agricultural subsidies; and to increase aid substantially and use it wisely. The report has specific, costed recommendations in each of these areas.
What we set out yesterday is an immensely ambitious challenge to Africa and the world. It is also clearly deliverable. Whether we do is now up to the leadership of Africa and the developed world. There is no certainty of success. But it won't be for want of trying.
· The Commission for Africa was launched by Tony Blair in February 2004

COLTRANE · (#4 (**permalink**))

http://www.commissionforafrica.org/e...wsstories.html

COLTRANE · (#5 (**permalink**))

Main recommendations from Commission for Africa

Associated Press
Friday March 11, 2005

A 17-member international commission chaired by the prime minister, Tony Blair, has made a series of recommendations for addressing Africa's problems. Following are the main points of the Commission for Africa's report released today.
· Immediate $25bn (£13bn) a year increase in international aid to Africa, followed by further $25bn a year from 2010. Specific recommendations made for spending in key areas of education, health and infrastructure.
· Debts of poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa to World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank be written off, but recipients must be committed to good governance and use the money to deliver "development, economic growth and the reduction of poverty".
· Donor countries "should aim to spend" 0.7% of their gross national product on development aid.
· British proposal to raise money for Africa on the world capital markets endorsed, but countries opposed to that - United States has rejected the mechanism - asked to focus on other ways to contribute.
· Western nations called on to "agree immediately to eliminate trade-distorting support to cotton and sugar and commit by 2010 to end all subsidies and all trade-distorting support in agriculture".
· African governments called on to commit to transparent governance and ratify the UN Convention against Corruption in 2005.
· Governments, states and banks in rich countries also said to have a duty to tackle corruption, including repatriating illicit African funds held in overseas accounts, and more transparent business dealings with African governments in a bid to cut bribery.
· Negotiations on an international arms trade treaty must open no later than 2006.
· Western nations called on to fund at least 50% of the African Union's peacekeeping budget.

COLTRANE · (#6 (**permalink**))

More special reports
Aids
Famine
G8
Oil
Water
Equatorial Guinea
Kenya
Libya
Rwanda
South Africa
Sudan
Tanzania
Conflict in west Africa

COLTRANE · (#7 (**permalink**))

[align=left]This time, get Africa's priorities right
Leader
Monday 14th March 2005[/align]

[align=left][/align]

[align=left]As you read this, Tony Blair's 17-member Commission for Africa, originally proposed by Bob Geldof, will be publishing its report. For a few days, we shall hear fine words, see heart- rending pictures and marvel at Mr Geldof's passion. But we have been here before. Remember Live Aid? Remember the UN's Millennium Development Goals? Remember Mr Blair's speech about the "scar on the conscience of the world"? After all that, each sub-Saharan African gets just $30 a year in aid from the rest of the world (and only $12 if you strip out western consultancy fees, debt servicing and one-off emergency donations). Is there any reason to believe that this time it will be different? The modern western mind has a short attention span; it prefers the immediate and the contingent to the long-term and the remote. Even the green movement, which can frighten us with warnings of tempests, heatwaves and droughts, blows in and out of fashion. If disease, conflict and poverty continue to plague Africa, that will have no obvious effect on most European or American lives, despite vague fears about terrorist breeding grounds.

It is all very well for our politicians to visit Africa, have themselves photographed with orphaned children, and declare themselves appalled. But the Africa Commission's recommendations require them to stand firm against powerful commercial interests and producer lobbies. Take the issue of corruption, which everyone agrees bears some of the responsibility for Africa's plight. The point, as Michela Wrong explains (page 22), is that Africa's elite take the money out of the continent and salt it away in London and Zurich bank accounts. This explains why highly corrupt societies in Asia, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan (where regimes keep the money they arrogate "in-house"), can achieve high economic growth while their equivalents in Africa cannot. The Africa Commission demands that the developed countries repatriate such funds. But London's banks hold some $6bn from Nigeria and Kenya alone. Will the government make them cough up? It hasn't so far, despite requests from new and apparently less corrupt rulers.

[/align]
[align=left][/align]
[align=left]The commission also calls for western companies "to be more transparent in their activities in developing countries". They could start with more transparency at home, but that will come from regulation, not exhortation. And the commission wants negotiations to begin on controlling the arms trade. Will Britain, one of the biggest exporters of arms, be cheering for that? As Mark Thomas reports (page 35), the Department of Trade and Industry appears to be easing controls not only on arms exports themselves but also on the bribery they nearly always involve. And inevitably the commission wants tariffs against African goods, particularly cotton and sugar, lowered and subsidies to western farmers and industries stopped. If Africa could take 1 per cent more in world trade (taking its share of global trade to a still paltry 3 per cent), it would earn roughly $70bn more annually: that's three times what it now receives in aid. Yet the most dedicated free marketeers in the west find it hard to face down "feather-bedded" domestic producers when jobs and profits are threatened.

Even the commission's proposal to spend $500m a year for ten years on African universities, and another $3bn on centres of technological excellence, could prove more contentious than it looks. Are western electorates really going to be overjoyed when another continent offers a whole new set of opportunities for high-tech outsourcing?

In other words, the best intentions will not be enough if western politicians won't make enemies on Africa's behalf, and persuade their electorates to make sacrifices. Africa is already doing better, partly because of the development of communications technology. Growth in mobile phones is running at 65 per cent a year and is enabling millions to play an active role in a market economy, giving them accurate, speedy information on the prices of goods and the availability of buyers. Along with deregulated radio, telephony also makes democratic debate easier and rigging elections harder. So the potential is there and the old excuse, that aid would be wasted, no longer washes. But aid will flow, we are told, only if Africa adopts "good governance". Fair enough, if good governance means spending on health, education and water services; for the US and IMF it tends to mean creating a more friendly environment for multinationals, with money going to big building projects and fees being charged for schools and doctors. Africa got its economic priorities wrong in the past, but so did western donors. If Mr Blair's commission can change that, it will have been worthwhile.

[/align]