False promises to Africa from Blair and the G8

In a small corner of Mali far from the fanfare of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, social movements and civil society activists will meet from 6-9 July to discuss international political and economic mechanisms which constrain the national policies of developing countries of the South. “Faced with the G8, which plays the role of a totally illegitimate world board of directors, African social movements are organising themselves to formulate alternatives to current neo-liberal policies and are firmly resolved to show their determination,” writes Barry Amanita Toure.

Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, has decided to make Africa one of the priorities of the next G8 summit to be held from the 6th to the 8th of July 2005 in Scotland. The report of the Commission for Africa, written for the occasion, recommends among other things doubling aid for Africa, cancelling poor countries’ debts “as quickly as possible”, removing rich countries’ customs barriers against African products as well as strengthening “good governance” in our countries. One can only support Mr. Blair’s initiative to finally bring to the G8 governments’ attention this set of problems that social movements throughout the world have raised for years.

However, being an African social movement, we find it difficult to have faith in all this talk. Are the governments of the world’s richest countries suddenly gripped by a guilty conscience in the face of the disastrous consequences of policies they have imposed on Africa for years? Is there a real will to change or was this report only meant to hoodwink the British electorate?

We must admit that a close look at rich countries’ current policies towards Africa tends to make us sceptical. In the nineties, the IMF, the World Bank and the G8 had already promised to write off the poorest countries’ debts, an initiative called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. This initiative received a huge amount of publicity: the international press announced 90% debt cancellation and even 100% after the Cairo Euro-African summit (April 2000).

Debt reduction linked to this initiative depended on the implementation of structural adjustment programmes, dubbed War on Poverty Strategic Framework. However, upon close analysis the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative turns out to be one more ‘publicity stunt’ on debt cancellation. If we look at the debt levels of those countries which ‘benefited’ from this initiative, we see that, not only has the debt not been reduced but it has even increased.

Our States, being the good students of the IMF and the World Bank that they are, have meanwhile privatised our countries’ public sectors and have disengaged themselves from the health and education sectors, thus contributing to the growth of poverty. The report emphasises the importance of “good governance” in African countries but our governments will soon have nothing to manage, given that all of the State’s functions are now being carried out by the private sector.

On the other hand, doubling of aid to Africa is without a doubt indispensable given the pauperisation of our countries (more than 300 million Africans live on $0.64 a day), but care would have to be taken to ensure that this aid is really destined for African countries and not business enterprises from the North. In fact, aid is often used to fund lucrative contracts involving donor country enterprises implementing projects totally ill suited to the local context.

In speeches, rich countries pretend to contribute to the development of Africa but in reality, Europe and the USA are negotiating free enterprise deals that impose the opening up of African agricultural markets and competition between our economies and those of the North. How will African farmers be able to compete with American and European farmers when the latter benefit from substantial export subsidies? How will a local enterprise be able to continue selling its product in the face of massive importation of goods produced at much less cost by multinational companies? It therefore appears that G8 countries resort to double speaking and that they have unfortunately got us used to vain promises that are never followed by concrete action.

Due to the importance of this year’s G8, which is meeting once more to make false promises to Africa, we feel that it will be very important to mobilise African social movements and civil society to take firm action to reject Blair and the G8’s fraud.
This is why, as has been the case each year for the past four years, the Coalition for African Alternatives Debt and Development (CAD Mali) is organising the People’s Forum in Mali.

This year, it will be held in Fana from the 6th to the 9th of July 2005 so as to run concurrently with the G8 summit. This People’s Forum is a critical opportunity to inform and sensitise African social movements on international political and economic mechanisms, which constrain the national policies of developing countries of the South. Faced with the G8, which plays the role of a totally illegitimate world board of directors, African social movements are organising themselves to formulate alternatives to current neo-liberal policies and are firmly resolved to show their determination.

* Mrs. Barry Amanita Toure is chairperson of CAD-Mali (Coalition for African Alternatives Debt and Development)
E.mail : [email protected]

* This article was translated by Andrew Tichaenzana Manyawu ( [email protected]) For the French version of this article please click on the link below.

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