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Africa: G8 Reaction, Perspectives
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Jul 13, 2005 (050713)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Outside of British officialdom," writes Sanjay Suri of Inter Press
Service from the Gleneagles summit, "celebrations of increased G8
aid for Africa were confined mostly to a population of two - rock
stars Bob Geldof and Bono." Non-governmental groups in the Make
Poverty History campaign, in contrast, were generally skeptical.
As noted in the Inter Press Service article (available at
http://allafrica.com/stories/200507110210.html), Geldof
graded the summit as "10 out of 10 on aid; eight out
of 10 on debt." The bizarrely extravagant claim contrasted with other commentators who
stressed that not only was the aid commitment for 5 years in the
future and far short of the total needed, but also that it largely
consisted of repackaging of previous announcements with uncertain
delivery dates.
More than a third of the 32-page G8 communique itself was devoted
to Africa, but almost all consisted of very general statements
without specific timetables or commitments (see
http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2005gleneagles/africa.html).
Meanwhile, Reuters reported on July 12 that the World Food Program
was in immediate need of an extra $12 million to feed nearly one
million people in Niger, largely because most of an earlier $4.2
million request was received late from donors.
(see http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12546031.htm)
In addition to questions raised about the policy commitments made
by the summit, Geldof's remark reinforced many African
commentators' dismay at the spectacle of stars from the
West presuming to put themselves forward as the principal
representatives for Africa, reinforcing a paternalistic stance that
is itself part of the problem.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a statement from African civil
society organizations at the conclusion of the G8 summit, a summary
of financial commitments by individual G8 countries, and two
commentaries raising broader issues of the meaning of the summit
and the Live8 phenomenon appearing in the weekly Pambazuka News.
Additional critical commentaries and editorials are available on
the Pambazuka website at http://www.pambazuka.org
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today contains excerpts from
a report from the Royal African Society in London, entitled "The
Damage We Do to Africa."
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
The 2005 Summit Of The G8: Disappointed But Resolute
ActionAid (London)
July 8, 2005
Joint Statement from African Civil Society Organisations at the
Conclusion of the 2005 Summit, Gleneagles, Scotland 6-8th July
As the G8 Summit comes to an end on the 8th July, we
representatives of some of the largest continental organisations
and national networks headquartered in several African cities,
bringing together women's organisations, labour, researchers,
development and advocacy NGOs across Africa note the following;
Firstly, we express our total solidarity with the British people
and our deep sorrow for the victims of the terrorist attacks on
London yesterday.
Simply put, we are disappointed in the outcomes of Gleneagles. The
resolutions fall far short of our expectations for a comprehensive
and radical strategy to make poverty history in Africa. The Summit
has simply reaffirmed existing decisions on debt cancellation and
doubling of aid. The debt package only provides only 10% of the
relief required and affects only one third of the countries that
need it. A large component of the US$50 billion pledged is drawn
from existing obligations. Further, both packages are still
attached to harmful policy conditionality. "Today, the G8 missed a
historic opportunity to write off the debt of over 62 least
developing countries," said Hassen Lorgat of South Africa's
SANGOCO.
Our work has just begun. Over the next six months, we shall
intensify our campaigns for;
- Total and unconditional debt write-off for all of Africa failing
which debt repudiation becomes the logical conclusion for African
Governments.
- The G8 to meet the 0.7% GNI target for international development
assistance and front load those commitments without donor imposed
policy conditionality.
- The WTO to recognise the right of African states to redress and
protect their fragile economies without losing their right to
access industrialized countries markets
- Remove OECD market access constraints and end subsidies that
lead to dumping of products on Africa markets, crowding out African
farmers and producers.
Above all, Africa must look within for change. "The message from
Gleneagles is clear to us in Africa. We will intensify our call to
our Governments that have not secured debt cancellation to strongly
consider repudiating their unjust and odious external debt," said
Justice Egware of Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for
All in Nigeria. The HIPC conditionalities do not suit the needs of
most of our countries. Further, we urge them to exercise their
right to protect our economies and essential services like health
and education.
This year, we have been an integral part of a historic global
campaign to end poverty. We will continue to mobilize
internationally through the Global Call to Action Against Poverty
and other global campaigns. The millions mobilized in Africa and
around the world should not be disappointed. We will stay our
course and remain vigilant until we secure the conditions for
Africa's renaissance.
Signed by the following African and regional civil society
organizations and networks:
African Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) - Harare
African Women Development and Communication Network
(FEMNET)-Nairobi
Mwelekeo wa NGO (MWENGO) - Harare
Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations
Institute (SEATINI)
Pan African Literacy and Adult Education (PALAE)
Africa Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA)
South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO) - South Africa
Le Conseil des ONG du STnTgal (CONGAD)
Eco-news Africa - Kenya
Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All - Nigeria
Endorsed by
ActionAid International, Fahamu-UK and Justice Africa - UK
Africa Action, Foreign Policy in Focus, TransAfrica - USA
G8 Communique, July 8, 2005
http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2005gleneagles/africa.html
Annex II
Financing commitments (as submitted by individual G8 members)
The EU has pledged to reach 0.7 per cent ODA/GNI by 2015 with a
new interim collective target of 0.56 per cent ODA/GNI by 2010. The
EU will nearly double its ODA between 2004 and 2010 from ? 34.5
billion to ? 67 billion. At least 50% of this increase should go to
sub-Saharan Africa.
Germany (supported by innovative instruments) has undertaken to
reach 0.51 per cent ODA/GNI in 2010 and 0.7 per cent ODA/GNI in
2015.
Italy has undertaken to reach 0.51 per cent ODA/GNI in 2010 and
0.7% ODA/GNI in 2015
France has announced a timetable to reach 0.5 per cent ODA/GNI in
2007, of which 2/3 for Africa, - representing at least a doubling
of ODA since 2000 - and 0.7 per cent ODA/GNI in 2012.
The UK has announced a timetable to reach 0.7 per cent ODA/GNI by
2013 and will double its bilateral spending in Africa between
2003/04 and 2007/08.
A group of the countries above firmly believe that innovative
financing mechanisms can help deliver and bring forward the
financing needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. They
will continue to consider the International Financing Facility
(IFF), a pilot IFF for Immunisation and a solidarity contribution
on plane tickets to finance development projects, in particular in
the health sector, and to finance the IFF. A working group will
consider the implementation of these mechanisms.
The US proposes to double aid to Sub-Saharan Africa between 2004
and 2010. It has launched the Millennium Challenge Account, with
the aim of providing up to $5 billion a year, the $15 billion
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative to address
Humanitarian Emergencies in Africa of more than $2 billion in 2005,
and a new $1.2 billion malaria initiative. The US will continue to
work to prevent and mitigate conflict, including through the
5-year, $660 million Global Peace Operations Initiative.
Japan intends to increase its ODA volume by $10 billion in
aggregate over the next five years. Japan has committed to double
its ODA to Africa over the next three years and launched the $5
billion 'Health and Development Initiative' over the next five
years. For the "Enhanced Private Sector Assistance (EPSA) for
Africa" facility, Japan will provide more than $1 billion over 5
years in partnership with the AfDB.
Canada will double its international assistance from 2001 to
2010, with assistance to Africa doubling from 2003/4 to 2008/9. As
well, the 2005 Budget provided an additional C$342 million to fight
diseases that mainly afflict Africa. The C$200 million Canada
Investment Fund for Africa, will provide public-private risk
capital for private investments and Canada will provide C$190
million to support the AU's efforts in Darfur, as well as C$90
million for humanitarian needs.
Russia has cancelled and committed to cancel $11.3 billion worth
of debts owed by African countries, including $2.2 billion of debt
relief to the HIPC Initiative. On top of this, Russia is
considering writing off the entire stock of HIPC countries' debts
on non-ODA loans. This will add $750m to those countries debt
relief.
Source: 10 Downing Street
White men in dark suits, ageing rockers and the AU summit
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
July 6, 2005
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=28836
How I wish I could write this article from beginning to end without
mentioning the G8, Tony Blair, Geldof or any of the other busy
bodies running around like headless chickens claiming they want to
help Africa. I will try and try very hard.
One of the difficulties with becoming flavour of the moment is that
you forget what you want for yourself as others divest you of the
power to help yourself. Everybody loves Africa now and is going to
desperate lengths to show why they are our new best friends!
It is like South Africa after the release of Nelson Mandela from
prison. Suddenly we could not find any supporters for the loathed
apartheid system anymore both inside and outside of South Africa.
Even the Boer Nationalist Party that institutionalised apartheid
became anti apartheid. Everywhere Mandela went powerful politicians
in powerful countries in Europe and America who had shielded the
apartheid regime from international sanctions and prevented censure
of the racist regime in multi lateral forums including the UN
Security Council, Commonwealth, EU, etc were all queuing up to have
their pictures taken with the Great Madiba. They all reinvented
their political CVs to show how all along they had been fighting
for his release and an end to apartheid. One of the worst of this
latter day friend of South African Liberation was Margaret
Thatcher, who as British Prime Minister resisted any criticisms of
apartheid South Africa, invited Botha on a state visit to London
and described the ANC as a 'typical terrorist organisation like the
IRA.'
Africa is in a similar situation now. It is difficult to know how
to react to this sudden show of concern for a people that have been
so marginalized and humiliated for such a long time. It is like
being offered a handkerchief by the same person who is beating the
hell out of you.
After last Saturday's multi-city parties the whole world is now
programmed to look up to eight white men in dark suits meeting in
far away Gleneagles, Scotland, to save Africa. None of them is an
African.
Yet a much bigger assembly of another powerful group of people, all
of them heads of state from across Africa, were meeting in the
Libyan city of Shirte deciding on the future of Africa without a
similar focus in the global media.
It is these people through their action and inaction who have the
power to change things for the better or worse on this continent.
Anybody who really cares about helping Africa needs to know what
these group of unfortunately, all men, have been saying to
themselves.
The fifth ordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union has
just ended in Shirte. The leaders amongst other pressing issues had
to address themselves to the dances for poverty and pledges for
action from outsiders about Africa. They welcomed the initial debt
relief package for developing countries out of which 15 African
countries will benefit. However they called for universal debt
cancellation that benefits all African countries, not just a select
few.
This is a logical consensus given previous experience of African
countries scandalously competing among themselves about who is more
connected in Washington, London or Paris. Individually they sold
out but collectively we may regain some dignity and credibility.
They have to avoid being played against each other. The separate
deal for debt relief for Nigeria is potentially one of those divide
and rule tactics. It may limit Nigeria's capacity to talk on behalf
of Africa and also neutralise it in bloc negotiations, whether in
the WTO or in the IMF/World Bank. My own suspicion is that they
have agreed to throw this carrot at Nigeria as an advance
compensation for her not to get the much-coveted UN Security
Council permanent seat, which will more likely go to South Africa.
Significantly, the AU summit did not dwell so much on aid but
rather called for the abolition of unfair trading rules that rig
international trade against Africa and asked for a clear timetable
for the abolition of these subsidies. One can see that the African
leaders are not taken in by various pledges on aid and rather want
us to trade our way to prosperity instead of being aided to remain
dependent. This contrasts with Prophet Blair's breakthrough in
getting a calendar on aid targets. The AU is saying we need some
fair-trade not some aid.
These are the messages that the African leaders invited to the G8
as side salads will be taking to Gleneagles. I really wish that
these leaders would stop ridiculing themselves by appearing like an
NGO lobby group at the Summit of Rich White Men. From next year
they should have a face-to-face summit to review any progress on
mutually agreed targets. After all that is what the mutual
accountability principle in the African Peer Review Mechanism is
all about. It is about us judging ourselves and also mutually
judging each other with our so-called international partners.
Apart from the response to the G8, the AU summit made numerous
decisions on a variety of issues that have direct impact on Africa
and Africans in more of a way than anything a group of ageing
rockers and an exclusive club of white men will do for Africa.
One of those defining issues is the call by the Brother Leader,
Muammar Gadaffi, which President Museveni immediately supported,
for an all-African Union government and a dismantling of all
barriers to freedom of movement for Africans across Africa. While
many dismiss this as hasty and too ambitious I would like to remind
them to rewind to the reaction to Gadaffi's call for an
acceleration of the integration process through a review of the OAU
charter at an Extra ordinary summit in the same city of Shirte in
September 1999. Then as now the idea was initially dismissed as
far-fetched but within three years we had the African Union. Its
institutions are now taking shape and at this summit the Libyan
leader was upping the stakes for the AU to rise up to the next
phase of the struggle for unity without which we will remain
beggars and vulnerable to extra African powers. There is no point
in asking the rich countries to open up their markets to us when we
close ours against each other. We cannot sustainably globalise
without Africanising.
*
Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African
Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa.
([email protected] or [email protected])
Bob Geldof and the Livingstone connection: Africa not yet saved?
Patricia Daley
July 6, 2005
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=28858
Bob Geldof is only the latest in a long line of Europeans who have
appointed themselves as spokespersons for Africans, writes Patricia
Daley. With a distinct brand of humanitarianism they have acted to
serve the demands of global capitalism, suppressing African voices
and aiding the exploitation of the continent.
Bob Geldof's rally against poverty in Africa seems to have incurred
admiration from well-meaning whites and indifference or resentment
from Africans. The questions the critics pose are: who gave this
pop star the authority to speak for us; why does he represent
Africa in such a one dimensional way? Can't he and his supporters
see the realities on the ground? Can't he see that Africans want to
speak for themselves? Geldof seems to believe that his mission is
noble. To him and his supporters, the moral argument is clear: the
West is rich, Africa is poor; the West has the means to help Africa
out of poverty. The argument is so simple that only the easily
cynical would seek to dispute it. Through his celebrity status
Geldof hopes to mobilise western public opinion to put pressure on
the leaders of the capitalist world to be more benevolent to
Africa.
To understand the Geldof phenomenon, we need to look historically
at the role that Africa has played in the European imagination and
in global capitalism. Geldof's crusade and attitude is not new. He
is only the latest in a long line of European men whose personal
mission has been to transform Africa and Africans. David
Livingstone, the celebrity of his day, embarked on a similar
crusade in the late 19th century, painting Africa as a land of
'evil', of hopelessness and of child-like humans. His mission was
to raise money to pursue his personal ambitions.
'Darkest Africa' occupies a special place in the white man's
psyche; it remains a place where he [and she] can achieve heroic
status. Therefore, does it not make sense that African voices are
silenced? Michel Foucault's treatise on the relationship between
power and knowledge may be old hat in academia, but still relevant
in the real world. Sir Bob would lose his authenticity and thus his
power if he was to give space to the multiplicity of African
voices; many of which would certainly challenge his stance.
It may seem amazing that in the twenty-first century, with
increased mobility, greater communication and an African heading
the United Nations that many westerners are more comfortable with
European interlopers translating Africa for them. Perhaps, only
then could some be persuaded, as one famous Irish comedian was, 'to
give money to those bloody niggers'. Africa remains the object of
western desires not the subject of its own destiny.
Livingstone's and Geldof's humanitarianism fits well with the
demands of global capitalism, serving to obscure distinct phases in
the exploitation of Africa. Livingstone's redemption of the African
savage was very much tied to colonial conquest and exploitation of
the continent's resources; a mission that Livingstone supported in
the marriage of commerce and Christian morality. The consequence
for most of Africa was dispossession, forced labour,
de-humanization, oppression and genocide, as in the Congo Free
State.
Geldof's Live Aid also occurred at a time when neo-liberal policies
were being forced on recalcitrant African countries. The results
are fully documented: collapse of health and education services,
increased unemployment and privatization, leading to greater
impoverishment of the masses. All this occurring while westerners
bathe in the glory of their collective benevolence to the 'lost
continent'. Geldof was even rewarded for his chivalry with a
knighthood.
How convenient for Live 8 - an upsurge of western popular goodwill
- to occur at the same time as a new scramble for African
resources? With the threat from China, Africa's oil and other
strategic minerals are even more critical to the continuance of
western economic dominance. One just has to consider the
significance of Africa's resources in the west's push for peace
settlements in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It is beneficial to western capital for Africans to be seen as the
architects of their own misery. Mugabe, thug as he is, is no worse,
and certainly less so, than many other leaders in Africa's
post-colonial history, yet his vilification fits into the discourse
of corruption and self-inflicted harm and justifies the prevailing
view that Africans cannot be trusted with their own destiny. Racism
is not often used in explanations of the west's attitude towards
Africa, yet it remains a fundamental component of the west's
interaction with Africans nowhere is it more visible than in the
diaspora. How can one claim to want to save a people, when one is
complicit in the marginalization of their relatives? The irony has
not been lost on Africans.
Geldof, like Livingstone before him, represents the cultural arm of
global capitalism. The inequalities he rallies against are
reproduced by the very capitalist system he supports. How many
artists, fading or otherwise, would turn down the promotional
opportunity of playing to an audience of the magnitude predicted
for Live 8? In the cultural as well as in the development industry,
African poverty serves as a vehicle for wealth creation.
Those people, whether on the right or the left, who are conversant
with the realities of Africa, know that aid will not 'save' the
continent and deliver the promised land; that the problem in Africa
is not poverty but impoverishment and that Africa needs freedom not
redemption. Africa's creativity has to be released through true
democracy and not the compromise of 'good governance' and western
tutelage.
Livingstone's and Geldof's suppression of African voices, whether
deliberately or inadvertently, aids the continued exploitation of
the continent. Geldof has the capacity to transcend Livingstone's
shortcomings, if only he would listen to Africans and engage with
issues of reparations and the politics of truth. He would certainly
get more diaspora Africans among his London audience, despite their
lack of appreciation for rock music.
After Live 8, when African resources are delivering wealth to
western trans-nationals and African people suffer further
degradation, be it wars, hunger or political oppression, they are
likely to find little external support. After all, a whole
generation of western civil society will say, "did they not receive
debt relief?" "Are they so incompetent or corrupt that they could
not make good use of our bountifulness?" In Africa, people will
continue to live and die and a luta continua
* Dr Patricia Daley holds the posts of University lecturer in Human
Geography, and Fellow and Tutor in Geography at Jesus College,
Oxford. She is an African from Jamaica.
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