Poser: What was the gain in the expired Lome Conventions (from ACP-EEC/EU)?
Hint: Can we paint da pain of the extant Cotonou Agreement (ACP-EU)?
Enquiry: What is new about the current Africa-Europe Partnership, when both the AU and EU are acting as usual - shutting out the people?
Mystery I: Do politicians have pathological problems with "people-power", after pocketing da people's votes? In the year of our Lord 2007?
Mystery II: Are civil servants becoming "civil masters" after pocketing da people's pay? In the light of the power, popularity, and the rise & rise of civil society?
Truly amazing!
BACKGROUND
Let's have some small historical/situational background to this matter. Basically, the West is trying to wake-up and jerk up in the face of the so-called "Chinese" (and read: Indian & Asian) invasion of Africa - essentially for raw materials, eventually for trade expansion, and ultimately for global influence. Period. the West is merely responding to a real & perceived threat!
Otherwise, why was Africa undermined, underdeveloped and abandoned all theses decades? Is the continent not Europe's nearest neighbour? And historical staging post! But for the Chinese, will the Suez Canal today be back in Egypt's hands? But for European safe havens, will African leaders have found home for looted funds and other resources?
Yes, African leaders/rulers sucked up to the divide-and-rule policies and tactics of the West for so long. That was why none of the previous development assistance packages succeeded. Not the Lome Conventions. Not the even the current Cotonou Agreement. They were all programmed to fail, it seems! And many crusaders, experts and commentators - on both continents! - so charge. Well...
The brain drain, like the slave trade before it, blatantly favour the West. Bilateral trade is the same - with raw materials/commodities leaving Africa with no value added - and resold to it in hard currency as manufactures. Even for low technology items! The IMF/World Bank and both the Paris and London Clubs' loans simply went down the drains, mostly ending up in the West as looted wealth by mindless leaders!! Agriculture and Industry were deliberately neglected so the continent may be and remain a dumping ground!!!
Africa was borrowing to purchase, instead of borrowing to produce! And the sad debt trap subsists.
THE EMERGING DAWN
Happily, new leaders are rising on both continents. And the BRIC countries have jolted the world into long overdue consciousness, in the light of which neither Europe nor Africa can be or remain da same again!
One of the enlightening elements must be the vast chasm that has characterised both the meaning of "terrorism" and the means of fighting it. Notably after 9/11. Particularly on Iraq. Traditional allies have disagreed. Citizens and crusaders have disapproved. And the world be now at a crossroads!
With strong voter-power and the power of civil society, things are changing. The new leaders are becoming more realistic and parliaments more pragmatic. The EU, having enlarged, has now become more independent and forceful. In the US, for example, the Democrats now control the congress and oversight has become very vigorous, rigorous and even acrimonious. No matter.
One more enlightening element is the apparent routing of the neo-conservatives and their hold on the Bush White House. Taboo subjects are being unravelled, scandals are everywhere, and the Katrina mess is still with us! For the first time in US history, presidential election is being soap-boxed almost two years ahead of voting day, with everyone distancing themselves from the incumbent. What a revelation!
Africa is getting more democratic, and its new leaders more realistic. This is why they are more choosy, becoming more non-aligned, and even looking more and to the East. As for the citizens of this continent, they see no concrete economic benefit in the traditional and historical bonds with the West. In less than SIX years the world, led by the West, has spent trillions of dollars on the so-called war on terror. It has also lost lots of lives on all sides, making racial and religious intolerance one of the defining pains of modern immigration today! How much did we need to tackle POVERTY, which is at once one of da root causes of both immigration and terrorism?
We now have emerging leaders and a discerning global media that can move the world in this new direction. Hope rising!
THE NEW EU-AFRICA PARTNERSHIP STRATEGY
Many critics have torn the extant frameworks and agreements to shreds on both continents. It is sad, but a good sign. If the past efforts were good enough, they would not have brought both parties to this pass. The worst culprit had been the EU-ACP one. Only recently, the Director General of the Secretariat expressed serious reservations over the ongoing overdue/overdrawn negotiations for renewal and restructuring. Many others have no better assessment.
Recently, the EU Trade Commissioner criticised both Nigeria and South Africa for stalling the current rounds of negotiations on the so-called EPAs. Well, the AU doesn't think the old regime of divide-and-rule should subsist. All future dealings should be on equal footing. How can any party have a problem with that?
Europe and Africa, in a multipolar and multilateral world have huge possibilities and an amazing spectrum of mutually beneficial reservoir of resources. Europe has technology and finance, and Africa has human and natural resources. How can any party have a problem in combining these and joining forces for win-win outcomes? Yes, both have options: EU can go to other equally resource-rich regions, notably South America, but will contend with stiffer competition from the traditional and emerging forces/players there. Then the distance! Africa can go to the equally finance-rich regions, notably Asia, but will also contend with both competition and concerns about neo-colonialism and new imperialist exploitation. Then the distance! Both parties should simply get sensible and serious, and enjoy the precious gems of both worlds. And, yet, also play the best of other worlds as a golden bonus! This be the rational view.
Radical Action & Fresh Building Blocks
We must be prepared to think deep and far to make a new partnership work, and be worth its salt. Not much of the past commends or recommends itself. Previous deals have been too bland and too lopsided to work. Now we need bolder, better and balanced deals. Period.
1) De-couple Africa from ACP the "Cotonou Agreement" (CA)
Africa should withdraw from the "ACP block" arrangement in the CA because we have little in common with the political, economic or geographic activities/realities of either the Caribbean or Pacific regions. And we do not need the agreement or a European auspices to engage with our diaspora - which, in any case, extends beyond the two regions. All EU-Africa dealings should be collapsed into NEPAD and other exclusive platforms and instruments.
The gains of this move are are as self-made as they are apparent. The CA is dead. It should be buried. For the new partnership to work, Africa must not be diluted. The EU is one block, so is the AU. Period. This will clear out, in one fell swoop, all the bureaucratic and political bottlenecks and the ever present temptations to play the diverse ACP countries/regions against each other in power manipulations! It will definitely cut costs, quicken decision making, and secure impact of EU assistance to the three regions. This unbundling has been long overdue! No question.
2) Establish a "Brain Drain Mitigation" Compact
To make the present harmful brain drain a less painful phenomenon than the slave trade, and a better managed reality of our times, we need to formally acknowledge and harness it for the good of all. From science to soccer, academia to athletics, experts to inventors, Africa's brightest and best are in the West. Mutuality is the key.
A mitigation compact will help both continents harvest this critical resource for sustainable development. A credible census and user-friendly databank should foreground a golden basket of investments, aid, technical assistance, trade and exchange instruments/platforms for targeted interventions.
This compact should enrich the formulation of a futuristic "millennium immigration policy" for the West, beginning with Europe. We must find a way of moving people around the globe, just as we move capital, materials and services. The EU and AU must now lead the way.
3) Millennium Immigration Policy....Europe-Africa Migration (EAM)
Both continents must be honest enough to acknowledge that the immigration question is both pain and gain. Like the US, the EU should make a samba and a song of the huge contributions of the so-called "foreigners" to its economy. We do not hear enough of that, and do not hear that enough! The AU should openly acknowledge the huge benefits that home remittances of African immigrants bring to its economy, in these hard and parlous times. We do not hear enough of that, and do not hear that enough! Yes, it is a win-win of sorts.
Yet, the strains are there: Europeans feel "invaded" and "depleted of their resources". Africans feel "humiliated" and "unappreciated for their huge contributions". It is a lose-lose of sorts. The horrendous costs of illegal immigration (in EU resources/image and African lives/AU image) must now be converted into gains.
EAM should cover the following, among others:
* New labour needs, including Europe's demographic challenges
* Creative visa regimes
* Re-population of rural-Europe through strategic deployment of immigrants
* Vacation & Short-term Employment
* Work Experience & Placement Services
* EAM Job Centres with official scouts and head-hunters
* Returning-Residents package
* Self-employment & Professional Services Card
* Seniors Exchange Programme/Active Retirees
* Skills & Languages Training/Capacity Building, including satellite campuses
* EAM Volunteers Scheme
* EAM Guest Workers Programme
* Taxation
4) E-A Grand Alumni....Bonds beyond Words, Links beyond Frontiers!
We ought be baffled how less we use the various "former-this" & "ex-thats", spanning schools, business, diplomacy, charity, sports, religion(clergy/missionaries), professions, security services and media!
E-A Grand will be a multilevel platform to pool & pull the huge human resources, institutional relationships and organic multisectoral/multinational liaisons forged by expatriates, students, fellows and trainees - on both continents - over the decades.
From this pool we can do amazing things: People-to-People facilitation, investment drive, clever forward & backward-integration schemes, payback-give back protfolios, mobilisation on topical issues and UN Global Thematics. The possibilities are enchanting, exciting and endless!
5) Empower "Non-State" Actors (NSAs)
For decades all foreign aids and loans have gone to the state in Africa. Even foreign scholarships and fellowships were monopolised and hoarded by the bureaucrats and politicians. You got them only if you worked for government! Or were owned by government. I should know because I was the very first private sector recipient of the prestigious and highly coveted UK Chevening Scholarship Awards 20 years ago. It changed my life, and career! I was fortunate.
There are many many persons, companies and organisations whose dreams, ideas and projects would have helped change our countries, continent - even the world! - if they were not denied access to the huge foreign aid/loans ultimately squandered/looted by our governments. Pity.
NSAs must be what it says: any person or entity that is not the state. The Non Governmental players and stakeholders in Europe and Africa. Once they are sufficiently empowered, creative and courageous "oversight" and constant monitoring & evaluation will evolve and subsist. Value added governance will flower and thrive in Africa within a decade.
6) Liberate The Press & Liberalise ICT
Jointly, the EU and AU must ensure and enforce the Freedom of Information Law in all nations within the new partnership. This will strengthen the press in Africa, and further secure civil, human and people's rights across the continent. It will tighten the noose around dictators and corrupt leaders/politicians. Democracy cannot be taken for granted in these climes!
Next is to eliminate the so-called "digital divide" by collapsing costs, deploying solar & wind power for energy supply, expanding telecoms coverage/penetration, and tying specific funding to this intervention.
7) Subject New Partnership to...Gender Audit & Youth-Impact Tests
Both in compliance with UN Global Thematics and response to our demographic challenges, all aspects of the new regime of cooperation must be women & youth-friendly. It is self-elucidating case, an inexorable force.
8) Trans-African Infrastructure...10-Year Fast-Tracked Intervention
Inevitably, a robust commitment to Africa's economic & integration infrastructure must undergird any new EU-AU Partnership. Trans-African roads, railways, energy and maritime
infrastructure must be built....for economic advancement (to create jobs/wealth and eradicate poverty) and regional integration (to foster harmony and eradicate conflicts/wars).
An expedited 10-year agenda, catalysed by governments and powered by the private sector, is recommended and a sure bet. See the huge progress being made by GSM operators.
TODAY'S AFRICA IS READY FOR CHANGE.... RADICAL CHANGE!
With the friends and global goodwill this continent now attracts, and the pain felt by her large diaspora, our people are ready to take the bull by the horn. In Nigeria, for example, citizens feel utterly embarrassed, disgusted and agitated about the unpardonable levels of corruption, crime, underdevelopment and poverty. Citizen-Action is afoot! Other countries are doing same.
Happily, the peer review mechanism of NEPAD, the power of democracy and the Mo Ibrahim prize for leadership and good governance be a salutary convergence of potent forces for change. We are fully convinced that many African leaders are now credible agents of change. In a word, Africa is ready, able and willing to make and embrace change - real change.
EUROPE IS RICH ENOUGH TO ACT.....TODAY!
You know, when we tally the huge resources at the disposal of European governments and their private sectors, one cannot but agree with the Make Poverty History coalitions that we do not need to wait one more day to act...in support of Africa.
Look at the billions being flaunted in corporate mergers, consider the huge sums being written off in subprime and other financial losses/misadventures, see what has been and is being spent on the so-called war on terror, imagine the level of resources dedicated to illegal immigration! All these indicate one thing: Europe is generously/lavishly endowed with the wherewithal (as in technology, expertise, logistics and finance) to jointly lift Africa from poverty to prosperity! And there are huge profits plus healthy/sustainable returns to be gained by the private sector here. No question at all. So, folks, let's do it.
TOWARDS LISBON ....December 2007
The preparations for the EU-AU Summit set for Lisbon, Portugal, in December 2007 have been rather intriguing and lopsided. Not many in Africa know anything about the issues or content of the coming deal; and the summit seems overshadowed by the "Mugabe Invitation" debate! We, in Africa, are not robustly engaging in the process. Information is scant and, as usual, politicians and civil servants are failing our peoples. The media on both continents obviously have better things to do than dwell on the new partnership nitty gritty! The historical disconnect, apathy and gulf persist.
I can however report the valiant efforts of a northern organisation, the European Centre for Development Policy and Management (EDCPM), through which I get free briefings on the whole exercise. I have not found a comparable African player in the south! Check them out at http://www.ecdpm.org/ and be informed! Certainly the AU has a lot to learn from the EU. This, alas, is catch-up time!
JUMP-START & LEAPFROG with new MEDIA CAMPAIGN
There should be no pretence about the fact that this new partnership process is undermined by an apparent absence of popular participation. We must now get the media on board through an ambitious and wide-spread campaign on both continents, particularly in Africa. If well-managed and sustained, stakeholders and citizens will participate robustly. We must worry about the gap.
A NOTE ON WESTERN "HYPOCRITICAL" CONDITIONALITIES!
From the perhaps altruistic and certainly moralistic historical pedestal of the war on despots and dictators, the West regressively succumbed to embracing them unashamedly aorund the globe! My country, Nigeria, is a good example. Our crude oil is so "sweet" and natural gas so plentiful that western governments and their blue-eyed oil companies gleefully did business with every military regime for 30 YEARS! And both the London/Paris Clubs and IMF/World Bank lent bashfully and unconscionably (without accountability, transparency or any value added) to the despots! Oh, one small point: the safe haven for the loots? Well...in da WEST.
This pattern is repeated and replicated in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It is worst in Africa.
Now that we are starting afresh, the EU should abandon this hypocrisy. It was always a poorly veiled excuse to do nothing, or keep those nations down. Why does the West sell huge arms and luxury goods to the dictators, lend them huge sums to import consumer goods, but never cared about the people's voices or votes?
Each Block Their Bane! Both Africa and the West have their varying share of corruption, scandals and crime. For 13 years now in a row, the Court of Audits has refused to sign off on the EU Commissions accounts! That's unsettling. We recall also that, for years, there have been a zillion questions and queries on the EEC-ACP/EU-ACP regimes, including allegations of fraud, mismanagement and failures. It is time the EU frontally tackles the legendary web of opaqueness and celebrated complexities in its rules, policies, processes, systems and practices. The audit queries must be confronted and cleared NOW. They diminish Europe's moral standing and its global image.
Alas, the US is faring no better. The latest series of its Government Accountability Office reports are damning and chilling. So are numerous other findings, official or independent. From porks to contracts, policies to practices, Iraq to Katrina, roads to medicare, schools to churches, and Wall Street to Main Street, it is scandals and frauds galore! The american media is having a roll on the politicians. A web of class-action suits hovers all over, even as shareholders tackle the execs. Insurance companies are cutting corners while homeowners and pensioners are at their wits' end! Mind boggling stuff.
Bottom line? We all have work to do on corruption, accountability and good governance. And I do accept that the most work is on our side in Africa. At least in the West, the system works: In most cases, you get caught or outed, and you get punished. The AU has a lot to learn from both the US and EU. No question.
CONCLUSION
Europe and Africa are closer in all ways, it is hard to comprehend the distance and disconnect that characterise their extant relations. The truth be told, the two continents are drifting apart! There is hubris, there is rebuff, there is blackmail, there is resentment, there is mutual distrust. And these are pervading both official and unofficial realms. Too bad. Now is the turn of visionary leadership. This be the time for creative, proactive and innovative action - led by courageous actors. Overdue. Can Lisbon show da way?
My take on this new endeavour is this: By all means let's have a new partnership. But let's now craft it in the likeness/image of our peoples and our lands. Let's circumscribe the realities and then subscribe to a joint future of profitable mutuality. In doing so, economic empowerment through trade & investment must lead the pack, power the pact. Do this, and watch our peoples flourish. The setting is right, and the signs are good.
Welcome to tomorrow!
