Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan urged African leaders on Sunday to practise good governance and democracy to rebuild the continent, and told the world’s rich nations to keep their promises of aid.
Annan said peace and security, development, human rights and the rule of law were crucial for pulling Africa out of its quagmire of poverty and wars, but criticised G8 nations for not keeping their pledges on aid to the world’s poorest continent.
He challenged Africa to reinforce the progress made in recent years, a period that has seen wars end in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which last year held its first democratic elections in more than 40 years.
He said the task for Africa now was to focus on debt relief and fair trade.
”It is vital that Africa lead its own development process,” he told a gathering at the fifth annual Nelson Mandela lecture, which included Mandela, who marked his 89th birthday last week.
Annan asked the G8 group of rich nations to meet their commitment made at a summit in Scotland to increase development aid to Africa by $25-billion a year by 2010.
”The only promises that truly count are promises met,” he said. ”The G8’s track record, to be frank, is not very good.”
Annan is the chairperson of the Africa Progress Panel — an independent body focused on fulfilment of these promises.
Noting that aid alone will not end poverty in Africa, he urged African leaders to stop conflicts in many spots on the continent, including northern Uganda and Darfur.
Zimbabwe’s downward spiral
Beyond Sudan, other crises cried out for action by Africans and others, he said. ”The ever downward spiral of Zimbabwe, for example, is both intolerable and unsustainable, we all have a stake in resolving the crisis,” he said.
”Africans must guard against a pernicious, self-destructive form of racism that unites citizens to rise up and expel tyrannical rulers who are white, but to excuse tyrannical rulers who are black,” he said.
Annan said more than 300-million people south of the Sahara lived on less than $1 a day, and others were ravaged by disease, ”betrayed by their leaders, starved not only of food, but of opportunity and hope”.
But, he said, there is reason for cautious optimism on the continent, with inflation at historic lows in many countries, and 27 African economies projected to grow by more than 5% this year. Direct investment in Africa has risen more than 200% in the past five years, he said.
Exports are rising, and there are advances on debt relief such as in Nigeria, which used part of its windfall oil earnings to pay back $12-billion in debt and arrears to the Paris Club of sovereign lenders in a deal concluded last year, he said.
South Africa is also experiencing a ”virtuous cycle”, where, despite setbacks, much has been achieved in economic growth and social integration after decades of apartheid white rule.
Around Africa, civil society and ordinary citizens are demanding rights as never before, and governments are beginning to listen, he said. He cited the election of Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first woman president of an African state, as a victory for democracy. – Reuters