Sam Akaki says the British Government and its development partners should hang their heads in shame for deploying rhetoric rather than action in fostering democracy in Africa
RHETORIC will not deliver the Millennium Development Goals, but concrete action and the establishment of independent democratic institutions in Africa just might.
In last week’s Tribune (August 1), International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander stated that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Gordon Brown are calling for a new “global partnership for development”. This would be comical if its implications were not tragic for developing countries, especially those in Africa, which have heard such empty promises before.
Before launching yet another initiative, Alexander should tell us what happened to the “Make Poverty History” campaign championed by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, managed by Alexander’s predecessor, Hilary Benn, and funded by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It is revealing that Alexander made so little reference to the crucial issues underpinning the vicious cycle of poverty, famine, disease, war and the exodus of refugees which has reduced Africa to the status of a terminally-ill patient only kept alive thanks to the life-support machine of Western food aid.
Alexander did not mention the June 16 report from the Africa Progress Panel, chaired by Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon’s predecessor, which disclosed that Britain and other G8 countries have only paid a miserable one-third of their Gleneagles promise to double their aid budget to Africa by 2015. There is a shortfall of a colossal £20 billion.
In their response to the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Annan and his team said: “G8 countries have done little to show how they will fund the shortfall of $40 billion in programmable aid and debt relief. The G8 has yet to present clear timetables outlining future aid provision or to provide increased transparency required to improve the quality of aid”.
And on the global food crisis, the Africa Progress Panel report said: “The panel welcomes the commitment of $10 billion [£5.1 billion] to support food aid and measures to increase agricultural input as a necessary first step. More needs to be done, however, to increase the supply of food to the world’s most vulnerable citizens and immediate measures must be taken to relax export restrictions on commodities such as rice.”
The tragic consequences of deploying rhetoric instead of action are all too evident in Darfur. The British Government and its development partners should hang their heads in shame. According to a report from more than 50 NGOs which focus on Africa, the UN-led peacekeeping mission to Darfur is on the “brink of failure” because barely a third of the troops promised to it have been deployed.
The report made clear that one year after UN Security Council Resolution 1796, co-sponsored by Britain and France, approved a 26,000-strong force to take over from the failing African Union-led operation in western Sudan, “only 9,479 uniformed peacekeepers had been deployed”.
Another report, backed by a group of elder statesmen including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former American President Jimmy Carter, as well as more than 30 aid agencies, think-tanks and human rights organisations, indicated that “104 helicopters, almost six times the number desperately needed by peacekeepers in Darfur, are flying in air shows and sitting in hangars across Europe”.
Yet, these are the same European countries which are seeking to pin all the blame on Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir and pushing the International Criminal Court in The Hague to arrest him on charges of “genocide, rape and war crimes in Darfur”. Some might think that leaders of the UN and the European Union, including Britain, should be in the dock alongside him for failing the people of Darfur.
Perhaps the gravest danger facing Africa is the obsession of the British and their allies with exporting and imposing Western liberal democracy and an accompanying market economy on a continent where the majority live on less than $1 a day.
It is unrealistic to expect a new country such as Zimbabwe or any other African nation to adopt almost immediately the sort of political system that evolved in Britain over centuries.
Also, with African presidents tending to double as the supreme institution of state – personally controlling the judiciary, parliament, military, police, civil service and central banks – it is delusional for the likes of Douglas Alexander to expect Africa to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Western governments need to do three things which would help Africa out of poverty. First, they must stop glorifying and promoting the privatisation of basic services, such as health, education and water, as the best way to end poverty. Second, Britain and its allies must stop putting such emphasis on imposing Western polices on Africa. Finally, the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office should make it a priority to encourage the growth of truly independent democratic institutions as a foundation for genuine democracy, lasting peace and sustainable development in Africa.
Only such democratic institutions would effectively manage and direct meagre resources to poverty reduction efforts, implement the building of social and economic infrastructures, administer justice and protect fundamental human rights without fear or favour. They would be best placed to negotiate effectively for fair trade, fight corruption, control the population explosion, protect the environment and organise free and fair elections.
It is only democratic and independent state institutions in Africa which can deliver the Millennium Development Goals by, say, 2050, not 2015 – an arbitrary date that serves rhetoric and gives false hope while millions are dying. Meanwhile, China is bribing African leaders with cheap loans in return for even cheaper raw materials to feed its growing economy, while turning a blind eye to horrendous human rights abuses across the continent. The West must take a moral lead.
There can be no better conclusion than to echo Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel, which said “The success in supporting African development will not only result in tangible benefits for her people, but ensure a more secure and prosperous future for the world. For G8 leaders, helping Africa to help itself is not a question of altruism; it is a matter of self-interest.”
Sam Akaki is director of Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa
