Africa, Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines

DEVELOPMENT: British Answer for Africa Raises Questions

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, May 8 2004 (IPS) - The Commission for Africa appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair met for the first time this week to look for solutions to the many problems of the continent. Instead, it seemed only to invite questions about itself.

Blair has appointed several commissioners that include himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown and secretary of the Department for International Development Hilary Benn.

Commissioners from Africa include Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zanawi, Tanzanian President Ben Mkapa and South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Among other members are actor and singer Bob Geldof who led the Band Aid concert for Africa 20 years ago, Canadian finance minister Ralph Goodale and former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Michel Camdessus.

The commission set up in February this year has the declared aim of producing a set of recommendations in advance of the G8 summit to be hosted by Britain next year.

G8 comprises the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

If there is one thing Africa does not lack, it is reports and recommendations. There are several by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), besides volumes generated by independent institutions.

Effective action over the recommendations was envisaged through the “vision and strategic framework” of The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Why does Africa need a Commission set up by Britain?

“I will ask you, why preach us every Sunday, preach, in spite of the fact that the Bible has been with us for 2,000 years,” Mkapa said in defence of the commission after its first meeting Tuesday. “It is as simple as that.”

But going by other views offered after the inaugural meeting, it is not as simple as that. Blair said “it is actually an attempt to get an agenda that we can agree as a Commission, that we can then take out, that we can mobilise public and civic support behind and eventually get action from governments in both the developed and the developing world in Africa in order to affect change.”

Meles acknowledged that “most of the solutions that we are likely to come up with are going to be there already on the table.” The issue, he said, is “to put them together in a new way, in an effective way and to create a political will.”

Geldof hoped the “end conclusion might be some sort of Marshall-type plan (to rebuild Europe after World War II).”

Benn said the commission will seek to recognise Africa’s potential, to “talk about that potential, and to demonstrate in the end this is going to be about Africa solving its own problems and Africa determining its own future, and the question is how can the rest of the world help that process to happen.”

But ominously as a civil society group sees it, Goodale has spoken of the Commission as a platform to push privatisation in Africa. “We have seen the consequences of failed new market policies over the past 20 years, and this may become essentially a plan for more privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation,” Peter Hardstaff from the World Development Movement told IPS.

Any more money that the Commission manages to raise from the meeting of the G8 “will be wasted if the failures of structural adjustment are not recognised,” Hardstaff said. “Extra funds will not help if basic policies are more of the same.”

The Commission would have more credibility “if it were actually doing what it should do like raising aid to 0.7 percent (of gross national income, GNI), supporting WTO (World Trade Organisation) reforms and regulating British arms dealers,” Hardstaff said.

These are among a list of 15 things WDM has said Britain could do usefully for Africa without setting up a Commission – and which it is not doing.

Others include finding the two billion dollars needed to cancel Britain’s share of all remaining Third World debt, withdrawing support for European Union moves to force a free market in water services on many African countries, and passing legislation to make British multinationals accountable to British courts for their activities in African countries.

WDM called the Commission an “unnecessary diversion from real action for Africa” and accused the British government of “sidelining genuinely African initiatives and ignoring African governments when their demands conflict with those of big business.”

The group says that “the discredited G8 Action Plan for Africa sets out a blueprint for the continent which is free-market, free-trade, privatised, deregulated and genetically modified.”

WDM says “this is the exact opposite of the consensus that is developing in Africa, the latest symptom of which was the brave refusal of African countries to give way to EU demands for a raft of new free trade agreements at the WTO ministerial in Cancun, Mexico last September.”

The Commission will be served by a secretariat staffed by British civil servants. It will seek to work on issues around finance and trade, health, education, governance, conflict, culture and environment.

One of the Commissioners from Africa may be made responsible for overseeing liaison with African civil society.