Africa

by Guy Arnold

  The EU has set out its targets for Africa. It will reinforce respect for human rights and democracy; develop local capacity and encourage the decentralization process (exactly what the EU is not doing on its own home ground). It will also encourage African countries to sign and implement the main international instruments of crime prevention. The EU–Africa Summit of 2014 in Brussels agreed on the necessity of encouraging partnership. This partnership must include equality based on mutual respect for institutions and the definition of mutual collective interests, and the developing of links based on political and commercial co-operation. And yet the EU–Africa relationship we are now being presented with is a programme based on the EU teaching Africa to support European values.

  At a time when the future of the EU is in question over its ability to ensure that its twenty-eight members have democratic rights enshrined in the EU, Europe instructs Africa to go in a different direction. Reading the conclusions of the 2014 Summit, one is struck by their one-sidedness: the EU instructs Africa about good governance. Must all these paths of duty be followed by one side only? Should it always be the EU instructing Africa, never its equivalent in reverse? Despite the end of the Cold War, the legacy of the imperial years, the EU has not learnt from China that attaching strings to aid agreements results in antagonism not dividends. What will finally reappear is a relationship that is entirely predictable: agreements that will be ignored and then replaced by further distrust; calls for aid that will be granted reluctantly by donors whose enthusiasm for action has lost its vitality or understanding of what it is that Africa rejects. In the disastrous breakdown that was taking place in the Middle East in 2015, there was growing consensus that a solution to the chaos would only be possible when ‘boots’ (troops) were put on the ground. Could there be an African equivalent to this: that the EU’s programme for Africa would only be acceptable if the EU controlled the politics? Meanwhile African countries can accept the package promised by the EU in April 2014 and the old aid game can continue as it did in the past. African countries may want assistance in some form, but do not wish the price to be unwanted interference in their development.

  The EU regards chaos and collapse in the western Sahel as a threat to its interests in the region. Its development policy, drawn up in partnership with the countries concerned, is therefore geared to tackling the root causes of the extreme poverty and providing conditions conducive to economic opportunity in which human development can flourish. But it will be hard for the policy to achieve any real success unless several other challenges are also acknowledged and tackled. The assumption that the EU development plan will work is based upon the belief that it will be accepted by the target countries. A ‘Big Brother’ role can be benevolent or bullying and despite the enthusiasm aroused by the New Partnership For Africa’s Development (NEPAD) concept at the turn of the century that was supposed to usher in a new era of a two-way relationship, in reality not much has changed. The EU launched programmes for Africa to adopt in return for aid. In other words, the old pattern of aid-giving remained part of a bargain that the West resurrected once it had accepted the role of China on the continent.

  When the AU replaced the OAU and the concept of a NEPAD was born, it was presented as a new bargain between the West – represented by the EU – and Africa. The EU makes plain what kind of behaviour it wants from Africa in return for aid, but does not make clear what else Europe wants from Africa. It is possible to examine the details of the new partnership and believe that they are solely about the African exchange of good governance in return for aid. Why is the EU so concerned about African democracy and human rights and what does it expect to gain from its concern? Does the bargain represented by the new partnership really change anything? In 2006 a European-African migration conference was held in Rabat, attended by fifty-seven European and African nations. It discussed the problems surrounding the movement of migrants from Africa to Europe. By 2015, however, the movement of migrants had accelerated and concern about the problem had become a leading European preoccupation. In all the statements about a new deal between Europe and Africa, much attention is paid to what Africa has to do, but, apart from aid, little about what it is that the EU wants out of Africa.

  In contrast, the Chinese make plain what they want out of Africa: resources and trade deals. But the EU still clings to a policy of good governance for aid. Despite the progress already made in Africa (in the countries where this is the case), the road towards good governance remains long. EU aims for Africa always appear reasonable, but the motives that drive them are nebulous. The EU claims that it will work towards building effective and credible central institutions that will define governance initiatives and will do this with the support of the African Peer Review Mechanism. It will reinforce respect for human rights and democracy. But will this approach work or is it no more than a repeat of the policies that led so many African governments to turn instead to the Chinese who did not lay down such conditions. Despite its pontificating about reforms, the EU does not appear to have examined the aid process of the last century that made China’s intervention in Africa so welcome as an alternative source of aid. Surely the EU wants resources and markets as much as does China?

  THE UNITED NATIONS, PEACEKEEPING AND AID

  In December 2015, as part of his African itinerary, Pope Francis visited the Central African Republic (CAR). UN peacekeepers patrolled the streets in Muslim districts of the capital Bangui, while thousands queued to cast their votes in a country that has known little peace for years. After two years of bitter strife between Christians and Muslims that has left thousands dead, there was hope that the people of this war-weary country might conduct elections that would bring a level of stability. However, the chances of achieving lasting peace were slim and there was fear that the military groups at the heart of the civil conflicts would not accept the decisions of the electorate if they went against their interests.

  In early 2013, mainly Muslim rebels from the Séléka group had seized power in a country that is largely Christian, which provoked reprisals from the Christian anti-balaka militias (originally village self-defence groups) and led to a cycle of religious and inter-communal killings. The result: some 1 million people from a total population of 5 million were driven from their homes. By the end of 2015, thirty candidates were competing for the presidency. Without an incumbent or opinion polls it was not possible to predict which way the election would go. Even as a referendum on a new constitution was being held, gunmen were attacking voters in Bangui and elsewhere in the country. The chances of the electorate getting a peaceful decision appeared doubtful. Militia warfare, religious and communal strife appeared to have become part of the national way of life. The Séléka withdrew from Bangui after their leader Michel Djotodia stepped down from the presidency in 2014; subsequently the Séléka factions entrenched themselves in the north-east of the country. No one predicted what the one million homeless would or could do. The election of 2015 was delayed and rerun in 2016, with former prime minister Faustin-Archange Touadéra finally being sworn in as president in March 2016, replacing Catherine Samba-Panza.

  The first job for the president (if he wishes to survive) should be to disarm the militias. The country has the base for economic development, but the uranium deposits have not been developed; cotton (once a staple export) has been neglected, while gold and diamond mines have been under the control of the militias. Across the Cameroon border about 12,000 refugees from the CAR are registered in a camp of 25,000.

  In such a situation what can the United Nations achieve in its peacekeeping role? Too often in a civil war it is the losers rather than the stronger side that appeal to the UN to intervene. And more often the question is constantly posed: what is the UN doing about the violence or civil collapse? In its Charter, the United Nations claims that it exists to keep the peace, yet peacekeeping depends upon the readiness of the Security Council to commit troops on the ground and to finance an operation in a poor remote country in which t
he major powers (the UN decision-makers) have little interest. Accepting the responsibility to intervene does not mean that the money to finance the operation is available, despite promises that were made when the crisis exploded. In other words, peacekeeping, let alone peace enforcement, can only be attempted when the UN is not constrained from action. The veto has always ensured that in a conflict action by one side can always be stymied by the other side. Another problem to be overcome concerns the behaviour of peacekeeping troops who are often hard to control and have objectives of their own to fulfil. Peacekeepers may act as UN observers, but are prevented from enforcing a peace. When peacekeepers have been committed to an operation and then fail to solve the problems on the ground, the UN is condemned (lack of back-up, lack of seasoned troops, lack of permission to act) and such failures do lasting damage to the image of the United Nations.

  Attempts at peacekeeping in Burundi have been attempted for years, both by the United Nations and, for example, by leading elder statesmen Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere, yet many thousands of Burundians have slaughtered one another during this time. The scale of the killings in Burundi (they could be described as genocidal) has been on a massive scale that was clearly beyond UN peacekeeping capacity. In Angola, in another example, the UN did little to resolve the pre-independence conflicts, although in this instance the major powers in the Cold War were supporting opposing factions. Later, however, UN or World Bank pressures could (and now still can) be employed to persuade this immensely rich country to spread some of its wealth to raise up the 20 million people who are desperately poor.

  With a build-up to violence on a scale that seems all too familiar to the onlooking world, why does the international community give power to the UN to take effective action in some of these cases? Effective action must mean giving the UN peace enforcement powers. Genocide in Rwanda in 1994 so frightened the principal UN powers – the USA, Britain and France – that reaction was frozen and the following years saw humiliated apologies from those who should have deployed the necessary force to stop the slaughter. The truth is that the tiny state of Rwanda did not concern the big powers.

  It is amazing that over the subsequent years between 100,000 and 200,000 Burundians were killed under the eyes of the meagre UN forces on the ground. Burundi, it should be pointed out, is a landlocked resource-poor country with an undeveloped manufacturing sector. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, with approximately 80 per cent of its people living in poverty. Famine and food shortages have been frequent occurrences, especially in the twentieth century. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 56 per cent of children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition.

  The United Nations Human Development Index ranks Chad as the fourth poorest country in the world (in 2015) with 80 per cent of the population living below the poverty line. However, in 2000 the discovery of oil raised hopes for a better economy. Foreign direct investment followed in 2004 (when the first oil was exported), though the subsequent fall in the price of oil on world markets acted to remind Chad that the economy should not rely exclusively on oil exports. Chad’s needs became apparent when it entered into an agreement with the World Bank in July 2006. In a memorandum of understanding with the Bank in July 2006, the government agreed to devote 70 per cent of loan finances to prioritize poverty reduction. A combination of civil war, poverty and corruption had crippled the development of the country and infrastructure demanded attention over much of the country: roads were unusable, and there was only one stretch of railway.

  DEVELOPMENT AND THE ECONOMY

  Africa lacks a continent-wide economy – and its individual economies are almost all dependent upon aid at some level. Selling its mineral resources and agricultural commodities has made up 90 per cent of the continent’s export activities, while African manufactured exports are on a barely noticeable scale. There are no obvious manufacturing centres, except in South Africa where the emphasis is on the mining activities, and Nigeria. In 1964, the year of its independence, Zambia toyed with the idea of adding value to its huge copper output, but pressures from the major copper-purchasing countries killed the idea before it could take off. Half a century later, Zambia still does not add value to the copper it exports. Exports remain traditional – mineral ores and agricultural commodities – and African complaints that external barriers prevent them from building a manufacturing export business are only partially justified. If African leaders had applied themselves to the task of building modern economies in the same way they had fought for independence during the 1960s and 1970s, the situation today would be very different: hard economic decisions were thus avoided as a result of Western insistence that developing countries should follow World Bank and IMF aid programmes. The apparently generous provision of aid has built into recipient countries an expectation that aid will always be forthcoming, and indeed aid is written into their annual budgets. An Africa without aid might at last begin the reforms that the continent requires if it is ever to meet the expectations of those who, in recent years, have claimed that the twenty-first century would belong to Africa. The key to progress must surely be self-reliance, but any self-reliance has been systematically destroyed on the one side by the Western aid programmes and on the other by the irresistible Chinese onslaught.

  At the beginning of 2012 Africa was judged to be the fastest growing economy in the world. However, there was also a parallel growth of debt. One criterion of economic progress was the growth of business borrowing from private sources. In 2014, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia offered for sale bonds up to a value of $1 billion and all were over-subscribed; and Kenya’s sale of $2 billion worth of debt was over-subscribed four times. Buying of debt by outsiders demonstrated an increasing confidence in these growing African economies. At the same time, $20 billion of debt sold to private sources also raised questions of validity. Such good performances raised fears of over-borrowing from countries with fragile economic bases. Private creditors became a new factor in debt and borrowing terms and showed growing outside confidence in investing and trading in Africa. Was Africa, as enthusiasts claimed, beginning to catch up? In fact, the obstacles to doing so were and remain formidable. Apart from aid, still too many of Africa’s economic initiatives were decided outside the continent by aid donors or the World Bank. As the new century began, the proportion of people living on $2 a day matched what it had been in 1990: in other words, no progress had been achieved.

  In 2000, AGOA – the African Growth and Opportunity Act – was launched to expand Africa’s access to US markets. However, its impact was quite limited. There was nothing new about AGOA’s conditions: participants should have market-based economies, be fighting corruption and eliminating barriers to US-backed investment and recognizing intellectual property rights. There was little indication of any US effort to equalize trade deals between the two sides. Emphasizing the need for democracy and human rights, the United States was strong on rhetoric but weak on deeds. Preaching to recalcitrant African leaders and emphasizing American exceptionalism portrayed a United States that lacked any sense of humility while lecturing Africa about its shortcomings.

  SOUTH AFRICA

  In 2010, it was suddenly proposed to invite South Africa to become a member of the BRICs club – a formidable group of leading economic powers, originally conceived in 2001: Brazil, Russia, India and China. But did this mean that its economy had stabilized and become the lead economy in the African continent? Membership of the BRICs group could be interpreted in two ways: it could either boost development, or it could act as a measure of how little development had taken place. In the case of South Africa, the boost for the country’s economy was never realized. Its inclusion (assisted by China’s support) was more an accident of geography than an economic reality. Given the size of the other BRIC states’ populations, trade, resources and GDP set against South Africa’s 50 million population, membership could just as easily have included Turkey or South Korea.

  Membership
of the BRICs group panders to South Africa’s sense of apartness on the African continent while enhancing its promise beyond its capacity. As President Jacob Zuma claimed, however, South Africa is now an equal co-architect of a new equitable, international system. In real terms, South Africa does not qualify. If it were a province of China it would be ranked as sixth largest in GDP. Linking South Africa with Brazil makes better economic sense. By 2012 its rate of growth stood at 3.5 per cent. South Africa and Brazil both sought Nigerian oil. The one exception to Russia’s generally poor trading record with Africa as a whole is South Africa. Trade between Russia and South Africa grew slowly in the post-Cold War era and both countries had to readjust their attitudes to one another once apartheid had been abandoned.