CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
|
West Africa |
DEVELOPMENT
In February this year, the UK‘s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, paid a week-long visit to West Africa. Together with his International Development Secretary, Clare Short, he visited Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal. The visit stemmed from a new partnership for Africa’s development which he, together with other western leaders, are trying to forge with Africa.
It seems the sceptre of 11 September 2001 is still haunting the world and the British Premier, Tony Blair, believes the only way to avoid another such occurrence is for the developed world to make a concerted effort to help the poor and to make the world a better place to live in. So it was that Blair came to West Africa to sell his new concept of partnership, designed to foster good relations between the developed world and Africa.
Blair had urged the developed world not to neglect Africa «lest it slips into the manufacture of drugs and terrorism and haunts the “secured” West, like Afghanistan had done.» He arrived in West Africa fully aware of how Africa has been blighted by war, famine, disease, hopelessness, and was entangled with debt servicing and structural reforms, which have left its citizens helpless in the face of a mounting crisis.
NEPAD
«I believe the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) creates an unprecedented opportunity for progress,» Blair told Ghana’s parliament on 8 February. Indeed, his message insisted on the necessity and the possibility of a greatly strengthened partnership between reforming African governments and the world’s richer countries. His tour and his message brought him in contact with a number of the crises confronting the sub-region — ethnic problems confronting Nigeria; an uneasy calm in Sierra Leone; and the peculiar problem of economic resuscitation currently taking place in Ghana and Senegal.
Originally developed by leaders of South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, and Algeria, the NEPAD was endorsed and adopted by the whole of Africa at the July 2001 OAU Summit in Lusaka. The new partnership is designed to place African countries — both individually and collectively - on a path to sustainable growth and development, and at the same time to help them participate actively in a globalising world.
The NEPAD is being put together by Britain, France, Canada and other western countries for presentation to the Group of Eight, the leading industrialised nations, in Calgary, Canada, in the spring of this year. It is a partnership based on shared responsibility and mutual interest, in which both sides commit themselves to the policy reforms required for Africa as a means of securing poverty reduction and development. This, according to Blair, should be the way forward.
A draft of the British plan being prepared includes: Forming a more effective rapid reaction force; building up African regional peace operations; tackling small arms proliferation; and taking punitive action against companies involved in exploitation of mineral resources in Africa.
Blair took the initiative of meeting Heads of State of Algeria, Benin, Senegal, Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon and Ghana; observers from the Secretariat of the Economic Community of West African States, the West African Monetary Union and the African Development Bank, in order to discuss the way forward for NEPAD. These discussions took place in Senegal.
Ghana’s example
Tony Blair’s visit to Ghana was the second time a British Prime Minister had visited Ghana since the country gained independence from Britain in March 1957. (The first was the visit by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in January 1960).
Blair told Ghanaians that he has been holding Ghana up as a model of good governance for other African countries. «I believe you are rightly proud of your democratic institutions, including the elections that took place just a year ago with a peaceful change of government. You can be proud of that,» he said.
Ever since Ghana’s independence, the UK has remained a major trade and development partner. Between 1997 and 2001, Britain sank nearly 100 million pounds sterling into various sectors of the Ghanaian economy. Specific areas included agriculture, roads, rural livelihood, water, human capacity building and local government.
In 2000, Ghana’s exports to the UK amounted to 100 million pounds sterling, and this increased by 31.43 per cent in 2001. Her imports from the UK were 169.4 million pounds sterling in 2000. Top items exported to the UK from Ghana included cocoa, spices, fish, vegetables and fruit.
Blair said he deplored the internal trade restrictions of developed countries that keep Third World products from their markets. «There is huge compassion and a willingness to tackle poverty and injustice across the world. But there is often scepticism that resources rarely get to those who need them,» he said. Accordingly, the developed world would not give assistance to countries where they will be misapplied. The UK and other development agencies are now increasingly allocating their aid resources in line with this new approach. It is also the thinking behind the new Poverty Reduction Strategy process, linked to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC).
With his sleeves rolled up, the British Prime Minister visited a cocoa farm in Ghana. He took advantage of the occasion to urge the European Union to give the developing world, greater access to its markets to fight poverty and secure a safer world.
This particular cocoa plantation benefits from a «fair trade scheme» organised by Comic Relief, an organisation in Britain, under which the farmers are guaranteed a fixed price for their crops. But the chocolate bars made from their produce have to be manufactured in Germany to escape punitive tariffs imposed by the EU that would raise the price by up to 10 pence if they were to be manufactured in Ghana.
Blair believes that such restrictions help to keep the developing world, poor and must be scrapped.
«When we get to the next round of the world trade talks, we have got to make sure that the developing countries like Ghana get access to their markets. It is a win-win situation. All the evidence shows that the developed countries must recognise that there is a mutual self-interest in this,» he noted.
Developed countries retain significant barriers to trade, particularly in agriculture. Access to EU agricultural markets is still restricted by the Common Agricultural Policy, including tariffs and seasonal levies. Although the market is open to tropical African agriculture and commodities, such as coffee and cocoa, tariffs of up to 300 per cent exist on some products.
Ghana and other developing countries do not have any restriction on exporting unprocessed cocoa, but the tariff placed on chocolate products means that Ghana and other similar countries, exports only unprocessed products, and gets very little from confectionery sold in the developing world. The situation makes the country prone to fluctuation in the commodity price.
Reforming Africa
Apart from trade, Blair is urging African governments to be strong catalysts in the new partnership deal. «Africans themselves must drive the process of reform», since development strategies imposed from the outside and without local leadership and commitment will fail. He said: «This is a big agenda. I believe that it has never been more timely or necessary to forge such a partnership. The NEPAD process creates real potential on your side. On our side, through the G8 and in the wider international community, there is a willingness and determination to work with you in new ways».
Whilst in Nigeria, Tony Blair paid tribute to a new generation of African leaders, who, he says are committed to reforming the troubled continent. «There is a new generation of leaders in Africa, who see it as their responsibility to make sure it happens,» Blair said. «What we actually need through this partnership, is a comprehensive plan where on both sides, we have obligations to help each other on trade, on aid, on investment, on conflict resolution, on proper governance, education, health and all other issues,».
If this is the dawn of a new era, then many Africans perhaps feel it has been long overdue. Developing countries have talked about uneven trade relations and strangulation by the developed world. Blair thinks now all these could change. Prime Minister Tony Blair has openly declared that he intends to make assistance to Africa, one of the key points of his second term in office. For him, Africa’s sorry plight is «a scar on the conscience of the world».
ENGLISH CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
PeaceLink 2002 - Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgement