Frankly, trying to address the ills facing the African continent in 40 pages is like trying to gather in a school of tuna with a butterfly net. You have to wonder what the Nordic Africa Institute, the sponsor of this work, was trying to achieve.
Nevertheless, Fantu Cheru’s treatise, 'Africa’s Development Agenda in the 21st Century: Reshaping the Research Agenda', is an earnest attempt to provide a roadmap for a new path towards African development. Cheru’s dispassionate lens briskly sweeps across the major issues of agriculture, urbanisation, globalisation, peace and conflict in a survey of all the ills that the continent faces. Unfortunately, he misses some of the major and perhaps most intractable ones.
He states that 'the development challenge in Africa is multidimensional and conventional development orthodoxies are inadequate to address it.' He then proposes five pillars of development for rebuilding Africa: reverse the failure in agriculture; reverse the decline in higher education; strengthen regional integration; expand the governance reform agenda; and prevent deadly conflicts. These dictums should strike even the most casual reader as both obvious and conventional.
Search as I might, I couldn’t find one exciting new approach to the challenges of development. There was scant mention of issues like corruption, HIV/AIDS, the possibilities for communication and bio-technologies, the impact of transnational drug and weapons flows, the dangers of China’s unique brand of self-serving ‘assistance’, reforming the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) agendas and the bilateral aid system, or the impact that climate change, economic meltdowns or the global jihad will have on Africa in the new century. What Cheru has given us is a policy paper that could have come directly off the World Bank’s website 10 years ago.
At this point one has to ask, what is Africa? Is it Botswana or Guinea-Bissau? Is it Swaziland or the Democratic Republic of Congo? Of course it is all of them. But they won’t develop in remotely similar ways. In fact, there should actually be a moratorium on the use of the word Africa in book titles related to development. Just that one modification would force well-intentioned thinkers like Famu to investigate more deeply and see what might actually work in a particular case, rather than what ought to work for everyone.
Famu should also pay more respect to the historical record. He calls the conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Angola 'the most deadly' without putting into the same category the war in the Congo, which has claimed several million deaths, or the wars in Mozambique, Sudan or even the wars of his own country Ethiopia with Eritrea. The section on conflict is the weakest in the text. In addition to committing factual errors such as claiming that Liberia’s President Samuel Doe was killed by supporters of Charles Taylor, rather than by Taylor’s arch-rival Prince Johnson (caught live on video tape), Famu submits that localising conflict resolution is the key to preventing conflict in African states in addition to 'changes in the social and political order'. Advice like this is veridical but hardly a reshaping of anyone’s agenda. He also promotes such dubious contrivances as the African Union inspired Panel of the Wise, which has accomplished nothing of significance since its creation in 2007.
If Africa must rely on the African Union or talk-shops like ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) to solve its endemic conflicts, then pity the poor African. Even in West Africa, where Liberia and Sierra Leone seem to be making baby-step progress, Guinea is heading in the opposite direction. What good has the African Union been in Guinea, or Guinea-Bissau or Equatorial Guinea, where thugs rule civil society and the word democracy is a tasteless pretence on the tongues of vampire elites?
In fairness Famu’s text has two strong recommendations: the need to assist urban slum dwellers who are multiplying exponentially but who rarely get a nod from the donor community; and the need to strengthen tertiary education, which has been embarrassingly ignored by the donor community. There is a great danger that with the newly inspired focus on reforming agriculture, the millions of young people growing up in urban slums will simply be left out of everyone’s ‘agenda'. It is certainly a lot easier to give a bag of seeds to an impoverished farmer than it is to find jobs for slum-dwelling, semi-literate, 20-year-old ex-combatants. One problem is that when the world thinks Africa it thinks poor peasant farmer, while the reality is that Africa, like most of the developing world, is urbanising at a rapid clip, and to say in an unplanned manner would not be ungenerous.
Brevity can sometimes be a virtue, but in the case of Professor Famu’s agenda it undermines its message by leaving out the urgency and anger.
Published by Pambazuka 12/03/09 Issue No. 460
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/books/60699
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
It's Africa's Downturn Next
In what he described as an impending ‘economic tsunami’ , Britain’s Development Minister Douglas Alexander has called upon the developed world not to forsake their promises and obligations to the world’s poor, regardless of the current state of the world economy. Speaking to the BBC yesterday Alexander warned that as many as 90 million people would be ‘pushed back’ into extreme poverty and that the very real gains in economic progress that many African countries have experience over the past few years would be in peril. His suggestion for action, in a move similar to one announced by Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, would be to set up special funds that would, in effect, be a special stimulus package for the world’s poor. Alexander also warned the developed world about the perils of protectionism and to encourage aid-on-top-of-trade to countries in the developing world.
These are bold and encouraging words coming from Britain, a country which has pledged to maintain its foreign aid commitments. The question for leaders of the G20 meeting London in April is whether the political risks of continuing their foreign aid outflows will be accepted by their constituents. Obviously, as the global crisis deepens, it will be harder and harder for Western politicians to continue to push foreign aid transfers through their legislatures, no matter how much pressure Bono or Jeffrey Sachs put on them.
On the ground in Africa, the effects of the global downturn were already being felt by the end of last last year as commodity prices fell and work was slowed or halted in Zambian copper mines and bauxite pits in Guinea. In countries with no social security or unemployment insurance and where private companies, not governments, supply essential services like energy, housing and health-care, the shutting of even a single mine can dramatically effect the lives of thousands of people.
We can certainly forgive the leaders of the G20 for turning their short-term focus on solving the international banking crisis and on stimulating their own economies. However, it must be said, that a real stress test of the moral character of the Western free-market system will take place when new aid budgets and trade policies are decided upon and announced in the coming years. After years of pounding the principles of free market economics and the glories of globalization into the heads of African leaders, it would be morally bankrupt to now turn our collective backs. Opponents of current policies might argue that this is a great opportunity for African leaders to wean themselves of foreign aid and begin to focus on developing real economies. There would certainly be nothing wrong with this outcome except that their dependence on natural resource exports and a lack of economic diversification make such a leap all but impossible in a world where commodity demand is shrinking and where trade barriers might start growing again.
Average Africans have much more to fear than fear itself. Who has the courage to stick by them?
(First published by the Harvard International Review, March 10th 2009)
These are bold and encouraging words coming from Britain, a country which has pledged to maintain its foreign aid commitments. The question for leaders of the G20 meeting London in April is whether the political risks of continuing their foreign aid outflows will be accepted by their constituents. Obviously, as the global crisis deepens, it will be harder and harder for Western politicians to continue to push foreign aid transfers through their legislatures, no matter how much pressure Bono or Jeffrey Sachs put on them.
On the ground in Africa, the effects of the global downturn were already being felt by the end of last last year as commodity prices fell and work was slowed or halted in Zambian copper mines and bauxite pits in Guinea. In countries with no social security or unemployment insurance and where private companies, not governments, supply essential services like energy, housing and health-care, the shutting of even a single mine can dramatically effect the lives of thousands of people.
We can certainly forgive the leaders of the G20 for turning their short-term focus on solving the international banking crisis and on stimulating their own economies. However, it must be said, that a real stress test of the moral character of the Western free-market system will take place when new aid budgets and trade policies are decided upon and announced in the coming years. After years of pounding the principles of free market economics and the glories of globalization into the heads of African leaders, it would be morally bankrupt to now turn our collective backs. Opponents of current policies might argue that this is a great opportunity for African leaders to wean themselves of foreign aid and begin to focus on developing real economies. There would certainly be nothing wrong with this outcome except that their dependence on natural resource exports and a lack of economic diversification make such a leap all but impossible in a world where commodity demand is shrinking and where trade barriers might start growing again.
Average Africans have much more to fear than fear itself. Who has the courage to stick by them?
(First published by the Harvard International Review, March 10th 2009)
Piggy Banks
On top of all the bad news surrounding international banking we can add to the list the findings of a just published report ( Undue Diligence : How Banks Do Business With Corrupt Regimes) from the anti-corruption NGO Global Witness.
The report, although dealing with somewhat dated material, nevertheless paints a devastating portrait of how some of the largest and formerly most prestigious international banks have been complicit in laundering the ill-gotten gains of the some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. Despite the existence of a whole host of regulations and public commitments to social responsibility on the part of institutions like Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, etc. the report condemns these institutions for doing the minimum amount of due-diligence and exploiting every loophole to avoid turning down lucrative deposits.
In my posting last week I made some comments about Equatorial Guinea which were responded to at length by someone from the EG Embassy in London. Although my Spanish is hardly fluent I was able to discern that I was being accused of slandering and perpetuating negative stereotypes about EG.
Lo and behold, but who should top the list of Global Witnesses’ list- of- shame but Equatorial Guinea and their partners in crime, first the now-defunct Riggs Bank, and more recently Barclays.
Management of the country’s vast oil wealth remains a ‘state secret’ according to President Teodoro Nguema Obiang. He has ruled since 1979 when he executed his brutal uncle to seize power, and has maintained his power through repression and human rights abuses. Members of Obiang’s family control key government ministries. Opposition parties are banned, and political prisoners are beaten and tortured in custody.
Meanwhile, the ruling family continues to enrich itself. At the end of 2006 Global Witness revealed that the president’s playboy son had bought a new $35 million dollar home in California. He has been reported as earning a $4,000 a month salary as the country’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
But not to appear as unfairly picking on EG, it should be noted that Gabon, Republic of Congo, Angola, Charles Taylor’s Liberia, Turkmenistan and their cohort of international deposit-takers also make the list.
The main recommendation of the report is that now that the world seems to be getting serious about regulating shameless bankers it should also close all the loopholes and address all the convenient ambiguities which allow resource riches from desperately poor countries to find their way into international bank accounts - now matter how desperately these shattered institutions might need them.
(First Published March 22, 2009 in Harvard International Review)
The report, although dealing with somewhat dated material, nevertheless paints a devastating portrait of how some of the largest and formerly most prestigious international banks have been complicit in laundering the ill-gotten gains of the some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. Despite the existence of a whole host of regulations and public commitments to social responsibility on the part of institutions like Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, etc. the report condemns these institutions for doing the minimum amount of due-diligence and exploiting every loophole to avoid turning down lucrative deposits.
In my posting last week I made some comments about Equatorial Guinea which were responded to at length by someone from the EG Embassy in London. Although my Spanish is hardly fluent I was able to discern that I was being accused of slandering and perpetuating negative stereotypes about EG.
Lo and behold, but who should top the list of Global Witnesses’ list- of- shame but Equatorial Guinea and their partners in crime, first the now-defunct Riggs Bank, and more recently Barclays.
Management of the country’s vast oil wealth remains a ‘state secret’ according to President Teodoro Nguema Obiang. He has ruled since 1979 when he executed his brutal uncle to seize power, and has maintained his power through repression and human rights abuses. Members of Obiang’s family control key government ministries. Opposition parties are banned, and political prisoners are beaten and tortured in custody.
Meanwhile, the ruling family continues to enrich itself. At the end of 2006 Global Witness revealed that the president’s playboy son had bought a new $35 million dollar home in California. He has been reported as earning a $4,000 a month salary as the country’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
But not to appear as unfairly picking on EG, it should be noted that Gabon, Republic of Congo, Angola, Charles Taylor’s Liberia, Turkmenistan and their cohort of international deposit-takers also make the list.
The main recommendation of the report is that now that the world seems to be getting serious about regulating shameless bankers it should also close all the loopholes and address all the convenient ambiguities which allow resource riches from desperately poor countries to find their way into international bank accounts - now matter how desperately these shattered institutions might need them.
(First Published March 22, 2009 in Harvard International Review)
The World Bank's Little Book of Horrors
The World Bank's 2008 Little Data Book on Africa (.pdf) might also have been called the Little Book of Horrors. It describes a world of human beings living at the extremes of poverty and at the edge of a precarious existence, particularly children under five years old.
I ran some of the data from sub-Saharan countries where there are more than 200 deaths per thousand for under-5-year-olds to try to get some correlations between:
- The amounts of aid flowing into a country as a percentage of GDP.
- The per capita GDP.
- And the number of deaths per thousand for under-5-year-olds.
I found that there isn't much of one. Both oil-rich Angola and Equatorial Guinea, which both have less than 1 percent of aid as a percentage of GDP, have about the same deaths per thousand of children under five as countries which are much more aid dependent.
What's striking is that these two oil-rich countries boast per capita GDPs far above the average -- less than $300 -- for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, with Angola at $1,069 and Equatorial Guinea at an astounding $7,470. If a measure of a country's performance is how it uses its wealth to protect its young, then both Angola and Equatorial Guinea have to be rated as failures, as they have the same or slightly worse mortality rates for under-5-year-olds than Liberia (per capita GDP $134) and Mali (per capita GDP $290.)
What's striking is that in the band of countries with under-five mortality rates greater than 200 per thousand, the amount of aid as a percentage of GDP runs from .3 percent to 43.8 percent. This suggests that massive amounts of aid in Africa might be good for some things but not necessarily for reaching one's 6th birthday.
(First published April 29th in World Politics Review)
I ran some of the data from sub-Saharan countries where there are more than 200 deaths per thousand for under-5-year-olds to try to get some correlations between:
- The amounts of aid flowing into a country as a percentage of GDP.
- The per capita GDP.
- And the number of deaths per thousand for under-5-year-olds.
I found that there isn't much of one. Both oil-rich Angola and Equatorial Guinea, which both have less than 1 percent of aid as a percentage of GDP, have about the same deaths per thousand of children under five as countries which are much more aid dependent.
What's striking is that these two oil-rich countries boast per capita GDPs far above the average -- less than $300 -- for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, with Angola at $1,069 and Equatorial Guinea at an astounding $7,470. If a measure of a country's performance is how it uses its wealth to protect its young, then both Angola and Equatorial Guinea have to be rated as failures, as they have the same or slightly worse mortality rates for under-5-year-olds than Liberia (per capita GDP $134) and Mali (per capita GDP $290.)
What's striking is that in the band of countries with under-five mortality rates greater than 200 per thousand, the amount of aid as a percentage of GDP runs from .3 percent to 43.8 percent. This suggests that massive amounts of aid in Africa might be good for some things but not necessarily for reaching one's 6th birthday.
(First published April 29th in World Politics Review)
Sarkozy's African Diplomacy
PARIS -- French President Niocolas Sarkozy made a whistle-stop at the Congolese parliament yesterday, in the midst of his three-nation tour of Central Africa. Last January, he ruffled feathers in Kinshasha by suggesting that Congo needed to share its mineral wealth with Rwanda as a step towards bringing peace to the Kivu region.
This time around, he soothed Congolese egos by praising President Kabila's breakthrough peace initiative with Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, which has resulted in a significant decline in violence in the region. He also suggested that Congo, with all its mineral wealth, could play a regional the leadership role.
Lest we forget what the visit is all about, though, Sarko's retinue is comprised of several business leaders, including the head of Areva, one of France's largest uranium processors. A country that gets more than 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power -- (18 percent of which it exports -- can hardly let all of Congo's uranium fall into foreign hands (China's for instance).
It's not clear whether Sarkozy will also seek to mend fences with Rwandan President Kagame in their feud of mutual recriminations over the causes of, and culpability, for the Rwandan genocide. French newspaper Le Monde certainly doesn't help things by continuing to refer to the Rwandan leader as "Tutsi President Paul Kagame."
Hopefully President Sarkozy was able to take in a concert at the Kinshasha Symphony Orchestra before he left town.
(First published in World Politics Review, March 27, 2009)
This time around, he soothed Congolese egos by praising President Kabila's breakthrough peace initiative with Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, which has resulted in a significant decline in violence in the region. He also suggested that Congo, with all its mineral wealth, could play a regional the leadership role.
Lest we forget what the visit is all about, though, Sarko's retinue is comprised of several business leaders, including the head of Areva, one of France's largest uranium processors. A country that gets more than 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power -- (18 percent of which it exports -- can hardly let all of Congo's uranium fall into foreign hands (China's for instance).
It's not clear whether Sarkozy will also seek to mend fences with Rwandan President Kagame in their feud of mutual recriminations over the causes of, and culpability, for the Rwandan genocide. French newspaper Le Monde certainly doesn't help things by continuing to refer to the Rwandan leader as "Tutsi President Paul Kagame."
Hopefully President Sarkozy was able to take in a concert at the Kinshasha Symphony Orchestra before he left town.
(First published in World Politics Review, March 27, 2009)
Development by Assassination in Guinea-Bissau
Reporting from Guinea-Bissau in Tuesday's NY Times, Lydia Polgreen cites an anonymous diplomat to the effect that as far as the locals are concerned, the tit-for-tat killings of the president and the head of the Army last week may "be the best shot at stability that Guinea-Bissau has had in a long time."
That is an astounding assertion. How bad must a country be for the killing of its two most powerful figures to be a cause for optimism? But Guinea-Bissau is no ordinary place. Ranked fifth from the bottom in terms of poverty and with no natural resources to speak of, the government's economic development plan seems to have been to forge alliances with Colombian drug traffickers who wanted new routes to move their product into Europe. Taking advantage of the archipelago's coastline and lack of any meaningful oversight, the South American, Nigerian and Asian drug gangs have all conspired to turn Guinea-Bissau into the world's first narco-state. (See Joe Kirschke's WPR series from September 2008: Part I here, Part II here, Part III here.)
Whether the killings were caused by tribal rivalries or were contract hits ordered by the drug barons, the bottom line is that the country's new leaders will have to decide quickly how they are going to deal with a destitute population, a non-existent economy and a drug pipeline estimated to be almost a billion a year.
(First published March 12, 2009 in World Politics Review)
That is an astounding assertion. How bad must a country be for the killing of its two most powerful figures to be a cause for optimism? But Guinea-Bissau is no ordinary place. Ranked fifth from the bottom in terms of poverty and with no natural resources to speak of, the government's economic development plan seems to have been to forge alliances with Colombian drug traffickers who wanted new routes to move their product into Europe. Taking advantage of the archipelago's coastline and lack of any meaningful oversight, the South American, Nigerian and Asian drug gangs have all conspired to turn Guinea-Bissau into the world's first narco-state. (See Joe Kirschke's WPR series from September 2008: Part I here, Part II here, Part III here.)
Whether the killings were caused by tribal rivalries or were contract hits ordered by the drug barons, the bottom line is that the country's new leaders will have to decide quickly how they are going to deal with a destitute population, a non-existent economy and a drug pipeline estimated to be almost a billion a year.
(First published March 12, 2009 in World Politics Review)
Africa Tunes in to Johnnie Carson
President Barack Obama's selection of career diplomat Johnnie Carson as assistant secretary of state for Africa seems an obvious, if somewhat unexciting, choice. Reaching once again into the Clinton-era dugout, Obama perhaps got the idea from current U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who was Carson's boss during the Clinton years. Unfortunately this particular era of U.S.-African relations was a disaster for millions in places like Rwanda, Somalia and Liberia.
Ironically, the Africans liked President Bush because they thought he was generous. President Obama will have to demonstrate the same level of generosity, while at the same time entering diplomatically into some of the most intractable conflicts on the planet. He will also have to lead without the blinding self-interest that marred the Clinton-era policies.
Nevertheless, Carson has served successfully as ambassador in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya, and can be assumed to be one of the more experienced and well-connected Africanists in the State Department. He will need to be. He will be facing a mind-boggling series of challenges ranging from Somali pirates to the effects of the global economic downturn on millions of ordinary Africans.
As he jets off to South Africa for the inauguration of that country's newly elected president, Jacob Zuma, Carson must be contemplating the millions of Africans who will be thrown back into dire poverty during the next year because of collapsing commodity prices; the conflicts in Zimbabwe, Kenya, the Sudan and Somalia, in which no real progress towards a resolution has been made; African giants Nigeria and Congo, which show many signs of impending turmoil and even collapse; and even continental stalwart South Africa, which may destabilize if President Zuma fails to placate the masses of South Africans who have yet to experience any benefits from the post-apartheid boom.
As is the case anywhere, the U.S. needs a strategy for Africa that balances our strategic interests (e.g., oil and counterterrorism) with our humanitarian goals (poverty reduction and democracy promotion). These need not be contradictory, but they may require some tough, and perhaps unpleasant, trade-offs.
In the short term, Carson's biggest challenge may be to avoid being seen in any photographs with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is also attending the ceremony. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir was on the guest list, but had to cancel at the last minute. Something about an ICC indictment and arrest warrant that may have spoiled the party.
(First published May 8, 2009 in World Politics Review)
Ironically, the Africans liked President Bush because they thought he was generous. President Obama will have to demonstrate the same level of generosity, while at the same time entering diplomatically into some of the most intractable conflicts on the planet. He will also have to lead without the blinding self-interest that marred the Clinton-era policies.
Nevertheless, Carson has served successfully as ambassador in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya, and can be assumed to be one of the more experienced and well-connected Africanists in the State Department. He will need to be. He will be facing a mind-boggling series of challenges ranging from Somali pirates to the effects of the global economic downturn on millions of ordinary Africans.
As he jets off to South Africa for the inauguration of that country's newly elected president, Jacob Zuma, Carson must be contemplating the millions of Africans who will be thrown back into dire poverty during the next year because of collapsing commodity prices; the conflicts in Zimbabwe, Kenya, the Sudan and Somalia, in which no real progress towards a resolution has been made; African giants Nigeria and Congo, which show many signs of impending turmoil and even collapse; and even continental stalwart South Africa, which may destabilize if President Zuma fails to placate the masses of South Africans who have yet to experience any benefits from the post-apartheid boom.
As is the case anywhere, the U.S. needs a strategy for Africa that balances our strategic interests (e.g., oil and counterterrorism) with our humanitarian goals (poverty reduction and democracy promotion). These need not be contradictory, but they may require some tough, and perhaps unpleasant, trade-offs.
In the short term, Carson's biggest challenge may be to avoid being seen in any photographs with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is also attending the ceremony. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir was on the guest list, but had to cancel at the last minute. Something about an ICC indictment and arrest warrant that may have spoiled the party.
(First published May 8, 2009 in World Politics Review)
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Liberian Rubber Workers Rejoice
Falling right behind coltan mining in the Congo and diamond
mining in Sierra Leone, being a rubber plantation worker in
Liberia has to be one of the most gruelling jobs on the planet.
That's why the recent announcement that the Firestone Agricultural Workers of Liberia (FAWUL) has secured a new contract which guarantees them modest raises and democratically elected representatives comes as a great relief.
For years the management of Firestone Liberia has been trying to undermine collective bargaining efforts and has employed brute-force at times to keep the workers from exercising their right to organize.
It is fair to say that conditions at the Firestone plantation in Liberia are one step above slave labor. It is also fair to say that the workers at Firestone are glad to have a job since there is precious alse to do in Liberia at the moment. This gives the company (owned by the Japanese giant Bridgestone) a lot of leverage in negotiations, but with the help of the United Steel Workers who represent Firestone workers in the United States, FAWUL was able to get the job done.
Whether Firestone actually abides by the contract is another matter since they are downright draconian about letting outside observers wander about their province. The good news for Liberia is that their Minister of Labor, Kofi Woods has been on Firestone's case for quite some time and is unlikely to let them backslide.
Mr. Woods, a charismatic labor leader with much international experience, might be one of the leading candidates to contest the presidency when the election cycle heats up next year. The world has fallen in love with President Ellen Sirleaf, but in Liberia there are many doubters and a tough customer like Woods may have a chance to unseat her.
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