"Best way to help Africa is
to leave it alone?"
THURSDAY POSTCARD 18 MARCH 2004
The previous week I participated
in a controversial debate:
"The Best way to help Africa is to leave it alone".
It was
held at the Royal Geographical Society in London, sponsored
by The Evening Standard of London and organized by
Intelligence Squared, a Public issue debate organisation.
The debate was well attended and
the organizers admitted that
it was the largest meeting they had ever organized. It was a
ticket -only event and they had more than 1000 people willing
to pay but the space could only accommodate 800 people.
It may be because the British
public is very much interested
in Africa or the controversial nature of the topic attracted
people. Or it could be that the presence of Mrs Clare Short,
the former Secretary of State for International Development for
the UK who resigned from Tory Blair's government after initial
prevarication and blew the whistle on the continuing blatant
lies of Blair about the unjust war against Iraq and recently
upped the stakes by exposing British Intelligence dropping un
wanted milk in the coffee of gentleman Secretary-general of the
UN, Mr. Kofi Annan.
Whatever the reason (s) the
debate was all-ticket sold. I was
arguing for the motion along with Richard Dowden, former Africa
Editor for The Independent and The Economics and now Director
of the Royal Africa Society and also Mathew Parris, a former
Conservative Member of Parliament and leading right wing
Newspaper columnist.
Clare led the other side
supported by veteran journalist and
writer and Nelson Mandela's friend and biographer, Anthony
Sampson, and Lord Maulding, a former Senior Civil Servant and
Diplomat, now head of St Antony's College Oxford, as genuine
representative of the Patrician English gentleman.
It was a strange line up because
ordinarily there was more shared
between Richard, Clare and Sampson and myself than with Mathew
Parris who is an unrepentant Afro pessimist whose understanding
and expectation of Africa has never gone beyond Joseph Conrad's
'Dark continent'. The more he traveled in Africa the more
evidence
he claimed to gather for confirming Conrad. Is that the only
evidence or is that the only thing he is looking for?
I had agreed to argue for the
motion not because it was controversial
but because of a firm conclusion I have reached after more than
two and a half decades of being a strugglist. Aid does not and
cannot develop any society. Development must be the direct
result
of people's efforts to take control of their own destiny because
nobody owes us a living: we owe it to ourselves. The argument
is not whether Africa needs help or not but that it is too weak,
fragmented and vulnerable to be able to decide where and when
it needs help now. In this situation Aid has created an
artificial
atmosphere of a few 'good guy states' that are kept in power
by donor funds and external support without any accountability
to their own peoples.
We lost the debate but I believe
not the arguments. If we had
won the debate that night most of the NGO type audience would
have to lose their jobs. Since our misery is their carreer one
does not expect them to commit suicide individually and
collectively.
It would have been interesting to see what the result would have
been if majority of the audience were Africans.
The argument is manifold but a
few quick pointers.
One, nobody can point to any
society whose development has been
the result of external help that remained sustainable.
Two, Aid creates Aid dependence
and Aid addiction that undermines
Africa's capacity to help itself.
Three, a situation where Aid
becomes the biggest component of
the annual budget of a country's recurrent expenditure and
almost
all of its capital expenditure undermines democracy and
accountability
to citizens. If our governments are not in power due to our
taxes
why should we expect them to be accountable to us? They will
be accountable to those who are paying the pipers. That is why
our leaders troop to London, Washington, Paris, Brussels and
other non-African capitals to show their masters they are 'good
guys'. Unfortunately the same apply to our successful NGOs too.
Four, it is immoral that
governments that cannot build roads,
schools or hospitals but are ready, willing and able to wage
all kinds of unjust wars without needing IMF/World Bank should
turn round to make a claim on the outside world to help them
feed, clothe, educate and make their people healthy.
Five, most African states do not
need aid; they need proper
government that respects its people and put their interest above
personal and cliquish interests. Why should anybody give Aid to
Nigeria for instance? It has more than it needs but has not got
what it deserves in leadership? It needs a government that
governs
not rulers that just preside!
So if the West really wants to
help Africa there are a number
of things it can do.
One, Western governments and
financial institutions should remove
all obstacles to free and fair trade which benefits them at our
expense be it IMF/World Bank, WTO or other unfair multilateral
agreements.
Two, it should accept that the
debt owed by all African and developing
world is odious and should be written off immediately for
everybody,
not just favorite strong men rulers who they hope will act or
are acting as their foremen in Africa. It does not make for
sustainable
development for Uganda for instance to have HIPC if the rest
of East Africa and the great Lakes region is denied it. Uganda's
growth and development will be constrained as we have seen in
recent years.
Three, the west should show its
true commitment to free trade
by removing all the trade and tariff barriers that continue to
prevent Africa and other poorer countries from competing fairly
in their markets. For instance the grotesque subsidy enjoyed
through the Common Agricultural policies of the European union
that protects its unproductive and uncompetitive farmers in the
industry or the protectionist measures of US government that
advantages its industry.
Four, globalisation should be
truly global in terms of the freedom
of labour to move across continents without any hindrances.
Remittances to Africa are now more than total budget for Aid
collectively and in some countries it may even be more than the
national budget. Let these largely illegal immigrants in Europe
and America be legalized and they will help develop their
countries.
Five, the West can begin to
repatriate the hundreds of billions
of stolen money and other assets from Africa in their Bank
vaults,
museums, treasuries.
Six, what about paying
compensation for the historical exploitation
of Africa through slacvery, colonialism, neocolonialism and now
recolonisation.
And finally, what about adequate
costing of the pros and cons
of who is actually aiding whom and the beneficiary to pay the
loser compensation. For example Nigerians, Ghanaians, Sierra
Leoneans and in recent years Zimbabweans have become a
backbone of the British National Health Service (NHS) as
Doctors, midwives, nurses, and auxillary staff.
So who is aiding whom?
Without asking these
uncomfortable questions and offering
honest answers to them, Aid to Africa will only be a case of
someone beating you and at the same time offering you a
handkerchief to wipe your tears. Do you thank him or whack
him back?
Tajudeen Raheem:
<Tajudeen28@yahoo.com>
or <Tajudeen@padeap.net>
"Forward Ever Backward never"
Kwame Nkrumah
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