Dakar vs Davos

By Gamal Nkrumah
It is a revealing commentary on the subservient nature of Africa's relations with the rest of the world that the first public unveiling of the Millennium Africa Renaissance Programme (MARP), an economic recovery plan for the continent, took place this week at the Swiss resort of Davos where the world's political and business leaders annually meet in an informal setting. Significantly, MARP's first formal briefing began with the acknowledgment that, "the success of its implementation would require the buy in from members of this exciting and vibrant forum." This, critics of the plan insist, is a non-starter.
MARP, drawn up by South African President Mbeki in conjunction with his Nigerian and Algerian counterparts Olusegun Obasanjo and Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, proceeds from the premise that Africa is the most marginalised of continents, the remedy being to facilitate its integration into the world economy. Critics decry what they see as an ill-conceived and short-sighted strategy. Africa, they contend, is as integrated into the global economy as other continents.
The drive for MARP may be well-meaning, but it is questionable whether the African leaders' lobbying clout at Davos could successfully be deployed to channel sorely-needed foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into Africa. At Davos, James Wolfensohn, World Bank head, masqueraded as spokesman for the world's poor. Wolfensohn's Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) debt relief initiative was summarily dismissed by the authors of the Dakar Manifesto. "When people say globalisation, what we see is a structural fault of poverty. On the one side the powerful and wealthy, and on the other side the powerless and the poor." We must expect the poor, disfranchised and disempowered, will at some point say 'no'," said Mbeki in Davos.
Mbeki is scheduled to formally launch MARP next month. The need, if the initiative is not to lose impetus, is for a gesture acknowledging that MARP takes note of the vitally important issues raised by the Dakar Manifesto. Few question that African redevelopment, or "renaissance" as Mbeki would put it, must be given the fair wind it deserves. However, the way of going about it is of critical importance.
"Can globalisation deliver? Globalisation can deliver... but only if there is cooperation between North and South, rich and poor," Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa said at Davos. That is where he is wrong.
"There is no way that Africa can benefit from globalisation without industrialisation," Mkapa added. Yes, but the point is that Davos is hardly the forum in which African industrialisation can be seriously considered, let alone advanced.
Western officials' speeches at Davos were, as expected, peppered with the usual caveats and conditions. Ironically, Davos 2001 saw the largest ever African contingency so far. Ominously, Mbeki and Obasanjo spoke at the summit on Sunday in a special session chaired by Royal Dutch/Shell head Sir Mark Moody-Stuart. The oil multinational is accused, along with others such as Chevron, of perpetuating one of the most flagrant violations of human rights, the rights of oil workers and indigenous peoples in Nigeria's oil-rich River Niger Delta. The oil companies are likewise charged with instigating gross environmental damage and degradation.
The irony is that Africa is far more integrated into the global system than any other developed or developing region, MARP's critics argue. In 1990, the ratio of foreign trade to gross domestic product was for Africa 45.6 per cent and only 12.8 per cent for Europe, 13.2 per cent for North America, 23.7 per cent for Latin America and 15.2 per cent for Asia. Among the most vociferous critics of the MARP approach are a group of African scholar-activists based in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
"Africa was integrated into the global system from the very start, in the mercantilist phase of early capitalism in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries," argues the Dakar-based Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum and president of the World Forum for Alternatives. "The so-called marginalised countries are, in fact, the super exploited," Amin explains.
Last December, activists from around the continent met and came up with the Dakar Manifesto, which calls for the immediate and unconditional cancellation of Africa's debt, the termination of the International Monetary Fund-imposed structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in Africa, and the elimination of poverty reduction strategic programmes (PRSPs). The Dakar Manifesto's approach to development is that it must no longer be "elite-driven, but participatory, inclusive and democratic."
Both MARP and the Dakar Manifesto stress the need to re-examine and re-negotiate World Trade Organisation rules and agreements governing the access to Western markets of African products. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned in Davos that "the unequal distribution of benefits and the imbalances in global rule-making, which characterise globalisation today, inevitably will produce backlash and protectionism."
The Dakar Manifesto commences from the premise that Africa's fragmentation is a constant source of conflicts and economic constraints. Pan-Africanism and continental unity top their agenda. "African countries should speed up their economic integration. It is absolutely necessary to create an integrated African framework of sustainable endogenous development. Without integration, Africa has no chance to develop. The ups and downs of history have made Africa one of the most fragmented continents of the world."
The Dakar Manifesto stresses "a human-centred development" and "a development formulated and implemented by Africans themselves and according to their own priorities."
The Dakar Manifesto similarly notes that slavery, colonisation and the various forms of European exploitation of Africa are the roots of the continent's backwardness. Through the slave trade, Africa south of the Sahara was thoroughly integrated into the global system in a most destructive way by the early 17th century. The Dakar Manifesto raises the thorny issues of restitution and reparations for the slave trade and colonisation -- widely considered anathema to the West.
Africa lost hundreds of millions of its ablest and economically active population. Large pre-colonial state formations were likewise systematically destroyed and replaced by numerous warring petty fiefdoms. "Restitution of what has been stolen from Africa by sheer force and reparations for all the crimes inflicted on its people," states the Dakar Manifesto. In addition, it calls for the repatriation of illegally-acquired wealth by African leaders and its return to "the people that have been deprived of it. To achieve this objective, we have to use adequate legal action."
Such views contrast sharply with MARP, which embraces the World Bank's Strategic Partnership with Africa, the IMF-led Poverty Reduction Programmes and the Cairo Action Plan of European Union and African Partnership.
Critics argue that the very system of partnerships with Western organisations and international financial institutions spells disaster. "The collusion between African ruling classes and the global strategies of imperialism is therefore, definitely, the ultimate cause of [Africa's] failure," warns Samir Amin. He cites the Lomé Agreements between African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries with the European Union as classic examples of neo-colonial relations. "These agreements have indeed perpetuated the old division of labour -- relegating independent Africa to the production of raw materials, at the very time (1955-1975) when the rest of the Third World was embarking on the industrial revolution. [...] This neo-colonial plan for Africa is indeed the worst pattern of integration in the global system."
As the late Caribbean scholar-activist Walter Rodney detailed the catastrophic results of Africa's full historical integration into the global economy in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Amin and the authors of the Dakar Manifesto question the logic of the "bourgeois concept of making up for a historic backwardness" and "catching up" with the West.
Africa is the world's poorest continent with a GDP per capita barely 21 per cent of the world average and 6 per cent of that of the West. The widening gap between rich and poor is exacerbated by the digital divide. There are 0.31 Internet hosts per 1,000 inhabitants in Africa, 1.96 in Asia, and 20.22 in Europe. The comparative figure for North America is 168.68. Africa's rate of growth of GDP per capita in the 1990s was negative (-0.2 per cent) and Africa's share of global trade decreased accordingly.
At Davos Africa's leaders petitioned for the cancellation of the continent's debt. "The reimbursement of that debt is immoral: its service is diverting resources essential in the struggle against poverty, illiteracy and AIDS," says scholar-activist Eric Toussaint in Africa: from Resistance to Alternatives. "Often, this debt served to consolidate and even legitimise dictatorships that used it to oppress their own people, with the benevolence and complicity of Western countries," Toussaint adds. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, where the first ever World Social Forum convened as a people-oriented and anti-capitalist alternative to Davos, Samir Amin warned against "the subordination of the economies of Africa to the constraint of servicing the high external debt."
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor