An African Agenda

by Zarina Geloo

The African group meeting at the World Social forum (WSF) plans a series of meeting and high visibility profiles to ensure that their voice is not lost among the other two thousand voices being raised at the World Social Forum meeting.

Nancy Kachingwe from Zimbabwe, coordinator of the African group said African were in danger of being ignored, again because they do not push their agenda 'far enough', and did not 'make enough noise' to ensure their concerns were not only raised, but addressed. There are over 200 African delegates at the WSF.

'All African delegates have been encouraged to split up and get into as many workshops, conferences and seminars as possible, so that there is an African voice on every agenda.'

The Africans felt that since the September 11 attacks on the United States, African issues had been relegated to the back burner.

Hassan Sunmunu a Nigerian trade unionist told fellow delegates to use the Forum to remind the world that September 11 was just one attack, Africa suffered daily attacks in wars, calamities, diseases and poverty.

Sunumu said AIDS and other eradicable diseases were decimating Africa's population. Under the scourge of neo liberal globalisation, African economies were being forced to open up further with intensified exploitation by multinational corporations.

Forced privatisation meant people were being deprived of their basic human needs such as clean water, education, sanitation and housing. With the IMF-sponsored Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) and the regime of the World Trade Organisation, African states were being deprived of all fiscal, monetary and economic policy options to intervene in the market to regulate it and provide their people with their basic human needs.

'Instead of posturing and talking big talk, lets get down to the nitty gritty and bring back sanity and dignity to Africa.'

Kachingwe said as a precursor to the WSF, the Africa group met in Bamako, Mali from 5-9 January to analyse, share experiences on political and cultural matters and present a common front to the WSF meeting.

It outlined Africa‚s position that the values, practices, structures and institutions of the currently dominant neo liberal order were inimical to and incompatible with the realisation of Africa‚s dignity, values and aspirations.

The Bamako meeting strongly recommended to African governments to develop and enforce national and regional regulatory systems to control capital movements. It also demanded that the developed countries take seriously their responsibility to control the capital market and create ways of increasing international liquidity to help finance the development of Africa and other developing countries.

According to studies, up to 300 million Africans lived on less than a dollar a day. Since 1987, the number of poor people in Africa increased by 80 million, in spite of the decade long economic reforms and structural adjustment policies.

During the last 20 years of the SAP, Africa exported 148 billion dollars, or 37.5 million dollars a day, to the developed world, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). At the same time, more than 1.6 dollars was exported for each dollar brought in from financial institutions.

Sarah Longwe, a gender activist from Zambia said while the focusing on Africa and its problems, people should also bear in mind that there had been very little progress in achieving and addressing the concerns of African women since the Beijing Conference.

Longwe who attended the Bamako meeting, underlined the need to link women‚s continuing economic and social exclusion to neo liberal globalisation that had worsened their situation. The Forum emphasised the need to build on African women‚s culture of resistance, imagination and talents.