Obama's "New Alliance" initiative to eradicate hunger purports to be a golden egg for Africa. But will it come to anything, asks Gamal Nkrumah As the gloves come off in the battle to save the Euro, the West is caught by a mood of incertitude. The 38th G8 summit convened 18-19 May in Camp David, Maryland, was dominated by the European sovereign debt crisis. Africa, though, featured prominently on the agenda. US President Barack Obama announced an implausible initiative to ensure food security in Africa. He pledged to lift 50 million out of abject poverty within a decade. He also disclosed that giant transnational corporations have pledged $3 billion to help turn his dream into reality. Africans have form on this routine. During the past five or six G8 summits, promises to eradicate poverty failed to materialise. With these G8 gambits failing, a hastily constructed effort by mistrusted transnational corporations aroused the suspicion of many Africans. Obama invited four African leaders to attend the G8 summit. The Ghanaian president, one of the invitees, underlined the critical importance of food security in buttressing social welfare and democracy and depreciating the vagaries of social unrest and political instability. "When you talk about food security and nutritional security you are at the same time talking about health security, economic stability and political stability. And without these elements you will struggle with democracy," President Mills declared. With Western nations themselves facing crippling austerity programmes, it is unclear how Obama's food security initiative for Africa can succeed under the current circumstances. Many dismissed Obama's "New Alliance" as a political gimmick. "The New Alliance is neither new nor a true alliance," admonished Lamine Ndiaye, Oxfam's pan-Africa head of economic justice. "The rhetoric invokes small-scale producers, particularly women, but the plan must do more to bring them to the table," Ndiaye said. Frustration with unfulfilled promises by G8 leaders in the past is rife. Three years ago at the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, Obama urged the world's wealthiest nations to pledge $22 billion to poor countries. His call fell on deaf ears. "The role of the private sector can only be to supplement the small farmers. There are the pressing issues of the lack of, or poor rural roads, water supply systems, irrigation infrastructure -- all of these require public investment," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zennawi, another of the African invitees, told G8 leaders at Camp David. Obama, however, stood his ground. "Because of smart investments in nutrition and agriculture and safety nets, millions of people in Kenya and Ethiopia did not need emergency aid in the recent drought," Obama expounded. Yet the question remains, can the G8 properly harness the pool of African talent, mass of underutilised fertile land and fabulous mineral and hydrocarbon deposits? Economic transformation is still a much-anticipated, long- awaited dream. Corruption and economic mismanagement threatens to erode the gains of democratic reforms and social turmoil threatens several African nations. A profound mismatch exists between the aspirations of Africa's teaming millions and the precarious world of African multi-party political intrigue. Obama's "New Alliance" overlooks the obstacles that hold back investment in Africa. The plan he devised is both too sweeping and too feeble to achieve what it intends to do. New French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is likewise grappling with a credibility conundrum in Africa. "With Africa we should have a partnership of equal to equal," Fabius told reporters recently. But Fabius's statement is based on a misreading of the nature of the relationship between France and its former colonies in Africa. First, semantics aside, the French political establishment does not appear to have grasped the contemporary political mettle in Africa yet. Second, with the failure of France's neo- colonial Françafrique policy in Africa, few Africans expect a radical transformation of France's Africa policy overnight. It will be hard for the French to step back from their traditional approach. But that is what Paris should do. However, the new Socialist French President François Hollande's status as a progressive nonconformist was enhanced immeasurably by his appointment of an equal number of men and women in his cabinet, a first for France. Moreover, he assigned Moroccan-born Najat Belkacem to the prestigious post of France's first women's rights minister. Hollande also designated French-Algerian film director Yamina Benguigui as minister for French nationals overseas. The turnover of top French officials is set to change the face of Françafrique. France, as Fabius extrapolated, is in dire need of redefining its African policy. In an unprecedented development, Hélène Le Gal, the first woman to be in charge of France's African diplomatic portfolio, has raised eyebrows across the continent. Le Gal was nominated French ambassador to Rwanda in February earlier in the year, but Rwandan President Paul Kagame declined to accept her nomination, sparking a diplomatic row between Paris and Kigali. It all makes for sensationalist drama. Kagame rejected Le Gal on the pretext that she had close links with former French foreign minister Alain Juppé who was French foreign minister during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Amorality has for long been viewed as a characteristic of France's African diplomacy. And as the former colonial power struggles to affirm its position on the African continent, and jostles for advancement of its interests, the choice of Le Gal has left many African leaders -- and in particular the Francophones -- rather rudderless. Ideologically, Le Gal is a pragmatist, but her style is somewhat abrasive. Significantly, Le Gal served as a diplomat in Israel before being promoted to head the central and eastern Africa desk in the French Foreign Ministry. So is it more of the same, or a new effort by the French under Hollande to radically change Françafrique? Staffing counts. Le Gal is by no means a newcomer on the African scene. Her record as a distinguished diplomat is impressive, though dubious. The G8 Summit was originally scheduled to take place in Chicago, but the venue was changed due of fears that protest groups and anti-globalisation activists would sabotage security arrangements at the summit, which also coincided with a NATO summit in the same city. NATO leaders deliberating in Chicago came to the conclusion that they endorse a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. NATO leaders having ratified a preposterous plan to hand over combat command against the Taliban to Afghan forces by mid-2013, NATO leaders hurried to O'Hare International Airport to head home to their respective countries. The security situation in Syria, Sudan and the rest of Africa was not seriously appraised at the Chicago summit The Abdusters Media Foundation, a Canada- based anti-consumerist organisation that helped launch the Occupy Wall Street movement, threatened to stage mass protests to "Occupy Chicago". Silver-tongued Obama was as loquacious as ever, meanwhile. "As Afghans stand up, they will not stand alone," he assured NATO leaders. In the same breath, he berated the nonchalance and irresponsibility of Afghan troops. "The Afghan forces will never be prepared if they don't start taking responsibility," Obama cautioned. He alluded to a "messy process" of withdrawal in Afghanistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin was conspicuously absent from Camp David. His prime minister, ex-president Dmitri Medvedev, represented Russia instead. Putin's pretext was that he was "busy" preparing for his first visit abroad since his (re)election as Russian president -- to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. By Russian standards that is no insignificant conceptual leap in foreign policy priorities. It indicates that Russia now views China, with an economic growth rate of 10 per cent, as far more important a trading partner for resource rich Russia than the ailing European economies, Japan and the United States.
