Africa goes into the big match at Gleneagles next month 1 to 0 up but with some dissention in the ranks. To win the final at the gathering of the world’s richest countries, it needs a 3 to 0 result.
The $40-billion debt forgiveness announced in London by finance ministers of the seven most industrialised countries is the first goal of the 18 developing countries that qualify as highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs).
Within a year this number will grow to 27 — 24 of them African: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
Appropriately, the announcement was made by British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who is a member of Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa. That body’s report sets the agenda for Britain’s chairmanship of the European Union, which started last weekend, and the G8 after the Gleneagles summit.
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, who was at the London meeting, welcomes the debt forgiveness but says it has to be part of a more comprehensive package including a better quality of development aid and a fairer world trading environment. These are the other two goals that Africa needs to score to win the championship.
Removing the debt of HIPCs stops the cash burn these countries have been experiencing. Manuel gives the example of Zambian debt repayments that increased, without more lending, from $58-million in 2000 to $188-million in 2002 and $247-million the following year.
But the poor countries need development aid to deliver services and meet the infrastructural needs of their people. Oxfam reported this week that the $40-billion from the debt write-off is about a quarter of what the HIPCs need if they hope to meet the United Nations millennium goal of halving world poverty by 2015. The NGO puts a figure of $50-billion a year — almost twice the target set by the Commission for Africa.
Manuel says a good start could be made by simply following up on the delivery of aid promised by the rich countries. He advocates a better quality of aid with donors and beneficiaries communicating regularly with each other. The millennium goals require countries to give 0,7% of their gross national product to overseas development aid (ODA). Only three countries — The Netherlands, Norway and Denmark — have reached this target.
Oxfam’s report says that on a level trade field — with the developed world’s barriers and subsidies removed — Africa could see $150-billion flowing into its coffers every year. This is in effect the glittering prize for President Thabo Mbeki and his African colleagues — Abdoualye Wade of Senegal, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt — invited to Gleneagles.
To the chagrin of the African team, Wade told a Paris-based magazine recently that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (Nepad) Secretariat in Midrand is a waste of money and should be closed. He says $15-million has been wasted. Nepad hasn’t moved an inch and doesn’t look like moving forward. This is not the first time the Senegalese leader has questioned the efficacy of Nepad, despite its acceptance by the G8 as the best hope for Africa.
Happily Wade’s remarks are offset by the favourable findings by new World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz on his four-nation safari last week. Wolfowitz paid tribute to new African leaders, such as Mbeki, for getting to grips with corruption. He said he found committed, energetic, effective and talented people in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and South Africa. This had convinced him Africa is on the move and will be moving faster. He welcomed the debt write-off and said the accent on developmnent aid had shifted from loans to grants.
These remarks by United States President George W Bush’s appointee is heartening not only to African leaders, but to Blair. The US is proving the biggest obstacle to meeting the Commission for Africa’s goals of ‘more and fairer trade†and a doubling of ODA to $25-billion a year by 2010. Bush has explained that Congressional year-by-year budgeting practice does not provide for long-term commitments.
This is not what Blair wanted to hear in the US capital. The US will argue at Gleneagles that its Millennium Challenge Account is providing a service to Africa similar to that proposed by Blair’s commission. And he will cite benefits to the sub-Saharan countries given access to US markets by the African Growth and Opportunity Act, now extended until 2015.