Deborah Toler: A SECOND LOOK
When Theodore Roosevelt visited sub-Saharan Africa in 1909, after he had already stepped down as United States president, he took an elephant gun and a team of taxidermists and brought home 512 animal specimens for the Smithsonian Institute.
When President Bill Clinton – the first USpresident to visit this region since Jimmy Carter 20 years ago – comes to Africa this month, he’s bringing a high-powered delegation and is hoping to bag a “free trade” agreement designed to help US multinational corporations at the expense of African economies.
In pushing the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act as part of his administration’s proposed “economic partnership with Africa”, Clinton says he envisions “a dynamic new Africa … making dramatic strides toward democracy and prosperity”. His envoy, Vernon Jordan, recently told a trade group in Ethiopia that, by adopting Clinton’s plan, the world will soon be speaking of “African economic lions” in t he same way we speak of the Asian tiger.
Heaven forbid. Americans’ attention span may be short, but not that short. Aren’t these the same Asian tigers – Indonesia, Thailand, Korea – who required a multi-billion dollar bailout to avoid world economic implosion? Does sub-Saharan Africa, even more vulnerable than the Asian tigers, need the kind of help Clinton envisions?
The answer, simply, is “no”. Written with the help of American corporate interests, the administration’s proposed “North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) for Africa” could end up draining Africa’s new-found vitality and creating a new round of depen dency on the West.
Nafta has led to widespread collapse of small and medium-sized businesses in Mexico, massive lay-offs, crippling currency devaluation, a flood of cheap food undercutting local production and escalating political and social conflict since its passage in 1 993.
Under Clinton’s plan, an African government would have to open its borders to the free movement of goods and services, as the US has promised to do for Africa. The only problem is, the gross national product of the US dwarfs that of all countries of sub- Saharan Africa combined. African national, regional and local markets would be overwhelmed, as they have been in Mexico.
And in order to facilitate private investment in Africa, “Naftrica” calls for providing technical assistance to help African nations carry out “serious economic reforms”. These “reforms” will parallel those of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) aust ere structural adjustment programme which are currently wreaking social, political and economic havoc with the Asian tigers, as well as with post- Nafta Mexico.
With its call for rapid privatisation and liberalisation of markets, Naftrica would create a financial windfall for US corporate big-game hunters in Africa.
The repeal of trade protections for local industries and farmers, proposed tax breaks for foreign corporations and reduced import and corporate tax rates are great for multinationals – hardly so for local African markets.
This is already happening under world trade agreements, with African farmers being driven out of business by subsidised grains coming from the US and the European Union.
The proof of the one-sidedness of this “partnership” is what the US is willing to give up – not much. It has offered debt relief for the “poorest reforming nations”, yet continues to use its influence to delay implementation of debt reduction under the I MF/World Bank framework for highly indebted poor countries. As long as the bulk of sub-Saharan Africa’s crippling $200-billion debt is ignored, ef forts to create its own economic infrastructure are bound to fail.
Rather than enhance African prosperity, Naftrica could seriously derail it.
What Africa needs, more than being turned into another toothless trading prey for American multinationals, is real solutions to the real economic problems it faces.
First among them is debt forgiveness. Debt payments by sub-Saharan nations today claim 80% of these countries’ foreign exchange earnings, making it impossible for them to sustain the investments they would need to escape from poverty. Current US aid, as small as it is, should be applied toward debt relief.
The US should also support African solutions to regional economic development and social problems through the United Nations – for example, the Southern African Development Community’s solutions to regional food security issues – and promote a permanent African seat on the UN security council.
Lastly, African nations should be allowed to protect their fragile agricultural resources from subsidised US and other First World competitors.
In the absence of such meaningful steps, Clinton’s Africa safari becomes nothing more than a recolonisation of Africa by the West under the auspices of “free trade”. Africa deserves a better deal.