DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Jackson Urges Reforms on Eve of Clinton Trip

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 1998 (IPS) - U.S. civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson hopes that African nations will seize the opportunity during President Bill Clinton’s forthcoming trip to the region by pushing ahead with democratic reforms.

Jackson, Clinton’s special envoy for the promotion of democracy in Africa, told a gathering of African diplomats at a forum here Wednesday that African governments must adopt democracy and improved human rights in order to attract significant U.S. attention and investment.

“Unless there is a commitment to democratic institutions and to a free press and to human rights … a country is not investment-secure or investment-worthy,” Jackson told the forum, sponsored by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and African- American Institute.

Jackson, the first major black candidate for the U.S. presidency in 1984 and 1988, said that Clinton’s 12-day swing through Africa – which begins Sunday – offered a historic opportunity to set aside 400 years marked by slavery and exploitation to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

“Now is the time for reconstruction, for rebuilding, for renewal,” he declared. The importance of Africa to Washington, as shown by Clinton’s unprecedented trip as a sitting U.S. president, represents “an evolution of four centuries of struggle,” he argued.

For all that, U.S. politicians and media still do not fully appreciate how important Africa already is to U.S. interests, he added.

“The United States now imports more oil from Africa than from the Middle East, yet it still does not see Africa as a strategic trading partner,” Jackson said. “We export more products to Africa than we do to the former Soviet Union, including Russia, by 20 percent. Africa is a huge resource.”

Nevertheless, he contended, the continent will remain a largely underappreciated and untapped resource until democracy, from multi- party elections to strong institutional checks and balances, are in place widely.

He urged African leaders to see democracy not as “values out of the closet of some Western conspirators” but as the products of struggle by groups like the formerly enslaved African- Americans, who fought for full citizenship and voting rights in the United States.

Calling for democracy in Africa is largely a case of “preaching to the converted,” responded Zimbabwean Ambassador M. Tobias Mapuranga. But the question remains, he added, on what the United States will actually do to encourage democracy-building in Africa.

“Africa has embarked on the protracted process of building the institutions of democracy,” Mapuranga said. “The demise (last year) of the corrupt and autocratic regime in the former Zaire and the restoration of a democratic government in Sierra Leone are shining beacons on Africa’s difficult road” in that process, he argued.

Yet Africans are eager to see what concrete steps Clinton will offer during his trip to ensure that their countries will be given developmental assistance and debt relief as they push ahead with democratic reforms.

Indeed, many African leaders already see democracy and the campaign against corruption as essential parts of their own democratic projects, said Thelma Awori, assistant administrator and director of the UNDP’s regional bureau for Africa. The one thing which has connected Africa’s new democracies, she argued, is that “all consider good governance as a priority development issue.”

Ultimately, if good governance is pursued, African-U.S. relations can be based on beneficial aid and trade; and that relationship in turn “will logically lead to a commitment to debt reduction, investment, trade and growth,” Jackson said.

Mapuranga, however, cautioned that African nations reserve the right to develop democratic structures in accordance with their own traditions and basic economic needs.

He argued that if Jackson and the U.S. government preach “the gospel of democracy, (they) will find ready ears in Africa,” but he added that the challenge ahead is immense for Washington to show what it is willing to provide in return.