Africa remains at the mercy of a self-interested international ruling class interested purely in maximising profit at all costs and consolidating its position, writes Yash Tandon. As the continent faces up to the enormous challenge of climate change and the creation of a sustainable ‘green economy’, it must look inwards and draw upon its own expertise and resources and resist the temptation to rely on compromised external ‘experts’, Tandon stresses.

Yash Tandon critiques the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) resolutions within the UN system to show how the forces of Empire have used 'humanitarian intervention' to advance their own interests. He also explains how the militaristic solutions advanced under R2P are part of a neurotic response to the various crises faced by the Empire.

NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) sustained assault on Libya ought to lead to calls for its leaders’ prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC), writes Yash Tandon, though ‘we know this will not happen’. A new regime run by ‘the people’, Tandon stresses, will merely see itself at the service of empire, helping to ensure access to oil, shore up Europe against refugees and bolster the region against forces deemed threatening such as Hamas and Iran; the challenge remains for Libyans themselves to sort out their differences and unite.

‘Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine’ should ‘be read by the younger generation of pan-Africanists from Cape to Cairo, so that they may dream, and also so that they may learn,’ writes Yash Tandon.

Yash Tandon explains the contradictions of ‘imperial finance capital’ in controlling neo-colonial states like Libya. While Gaddafi was being ‘accommodated’ by imperial powers, the ‘Arab Spring’ forced their hand, he says.

The World Social Forum should remain true to its founding aim of being an open space that builds alternatives to neoliberalism, writes Yash Tandon.

In November the European Union expects East African countries to sign a ‘comprehensive’ trade agreement. But Yash Tandon warns that the deal is not in Africa’s favour.

As the Pakistani people face up to the effects of terrible flooding, Yash Tandon expresses solidarity and stresses that if nature is cruel, a civilisation which puts ‘profits before humanity, and military security before food security’ is surely crueller.

The 'Africa Development Indicators 2010' report, with its emphasis on the 'quiet corruption' of public sector workers supposedly not fulfilling their roles, is the latest attempt by the World Bank to wash its hands of its primary role in Africa's continuing impoverishment, writes Yash Tandon.

Asymmetric negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between African countries and the European Union, with the power balance in favour of the latter, have created a sense of helplessness among ‘concerned citizens, government circles and indigenous business interests’ that stand to lose out if comprehensive EPA is signed. But all is not lost, says Yash Tandon – there’s ‘still plenty of scope and space to save the situation’.

Used to evoke poorer nations' continual domination at the hands of the rich of the world, the phrase 'global apartheid' gained prominence when used by former South Africa president Thabo Mbeki in 2001. Drawing on Africa's economic experience over the past 50 years, Yash Tandon stresses that while this is certainly a valid conceptual term, African states themselves have played a key role in intensifying their own countries' victimisation.

The 'failure of development' is to blame for the devastating effects of the recent earthquake in Haiti, writes Yash Tandon. Calling for democratic institutions accountable to the country's people to be put in place, Tandon argues that Haiti is ‘a microcosm of the disastrous outcome' of ‘development’ policies and the 'destructive effects of foreign interventionist policies’ in the affairs of the South.

Pambazuka Press is pleased to announce the release of Yash Tandon's new book 'Development and Globalisation: Daring to Think Differently'. The book is available for only £7.95 from the South Centre.

In an interview with Pambazuka News, Yash Tandon discusses the problems of 'development aid', his differences with Dambisa Moyo's arguments in 'Dead Aid', the importance of Southern countries' right to autonomy and his own book,

cc The media has presented the G8’s L’Alqila summit promise of US$20 billion for food security and agricultural development in Africa as good news, but a closer look at the figures shows that G8 countries actually take much more out than they put into the continent, writes Yash Tandon.

Yash Tandon is drawn into a state of melancholic nostalgia by fellow Ugandan Yasmin-Alibhai Brown's , which, despite its 'beguiling distractive title', has a 'serious political side'. In a 'beautifully carved memoir of a brave woman', Alibhai-Brown 'draws from forgotten sources a memorabilia of facts and foibles to spin out the multiple contradictions in a country that slowly, but painfully, metamorphosed from a colony to a politically independent neo-colony of Britain'. Alibhai-Brown's accounts of 'daily life caught in the maelstrom of national and global politics' are interspersed every few pages 'with a cornucopia of culinary delights'. 'It is a compelling odyssey worth reading, both for its political message and for its gastronomic delights', says Tandon.

cc Attending a conference on Kenya’s national dialogue and reconciliation in Geneva, Yash Tandon, notes that the issues of power sharing, ethnicity, and governance overshadow matters related to economics and welfare. He also ponders why, other than the 50-60 Kenyans present, he and Tanzania’s former president Benjamin Mkapa are the only attendees from East African countries. Given the ‘many daily cross-border interactions between the people of the region’, this lack of interest in Kenya, he says, demonstrates ‘a serious slip-up of the principle of solidarity among East African neighbours’. Help from European friends to Kenya has, Tandon suggests, allowed Uganda and Tanzania and the East African community ‘an exemption from their moral responsibility’.

cc Western civilisation has been going through a deepening crisis over the last 120 years, writes Yash Tandon, and it is deeper than most people realise or are willing to acknowledge. Focusing on the present systemic crisis – the most recent manifestations of which are the global financial crisis and the ecological crisis – Tandon sets out how progessive forces both in the South and the North could respond to the array of challenges the world currently faces. The time has come he says, for ordinary people to take back the right to think and plan their futures from the institutions, that have in part, been the authors of the situation we find ourselves in.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/394/Tandon_l_and_tmb.jpgThe following is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Yash Tandon's new book, Ending Aid Dependence, published by Fahamu Books, September 2008. For more information please visit, .

For far too long the debate on development aid has been constrained by conceptual traps and the limitations of the definitions provided by the donors. If the recipients or beneficiaries of aid are to own the process, as present trends in the development literature suggest, then the conceptual reframing of the issues must itself change its location from the North to the South.

The conceptual starting point is not aid but development. The horse of development must be put before the cart of aid. Growth, admittedly, is an important aspect of development, and indeed there is no need to labour the point (as some orthodox economists and the World Bank attempt to do defensively). But growth is not the same as development. In this [book], we have defined development, following in the footsteps of Julius Nyerere, the founding president of Tanzania and the first chairman of the South Centre, as ‘a long democratic process, that starts “from within”, where people participate in the decisions that affect their lives, without imperial interference from outside, and aimed at improving the lives of the people and realisation of the potential for self support, free from fear of want and political, economic and social exploitation’. We put it as a formula: Development = SF + DF – IF, where SF is the social factor – the essential well-being of the people; DF is the democratic factor – the right of the people to participate in decision-making that affects their lives; and IF is the imperial factor – the right of nations to self-determination and liberation from imperial domination.

This is in sharp contrast to the mainstream orthodox economists’ definition as Development = Growth + Wealth accumulation, where Growth = Open markets + Foreign investments + Good governance (as defined by the West), and the wealth accumulation by the rich is assumed to ‘filter through’ to the poor by market- driven forces.

The most critical aspect of our definition of development is its political economy and historical context. The developing countries have gained their political independence, but in most cases they are still trapped in an asymmetrical economic, power and knowledge relationship with the former colonial powers that con- tinue to dominate the process of globalisation, and the institutions of global governance (the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, WIPO, WCO, OECD, EU Commission, etc). The developing countries are making heroic efforts to disengage from this lock-in situation (demanding policy space, for example). Some of them (the so- called newly emerging industrialised countries of the South) have indeed succeeded or partly succeeded, but the bulk of the devel- oping countries are still trapped in the shackles of history. Africa, especially, is identified as a continent that has not fared well. From this trap, Africa and others can liberate themselves only if they take matters of development into their own hands – and do not leave it to aid and its delimiting and colonising conditionalities, such as the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and the World Bank, and now the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

In other words, the national project, the project for self-determination, is still on the agenda of political action for developing countries. Its counter, the imperial project, is also still alive, but gradually weakening. Its ideology – the Washington consensus and globalisation – crafted after the dominant paradigm of free market liberalism and Western systems of governance, democracy and the rule of law, has lost credibility and legitimacy. This is not to undervalue the importance of democracy or the rule of law. Without these there would be anarchy and oppression. But these values cannot be imposed on the developing countries from outside, and certainly not loaded on to the wagon called ‘development aid’, followed by sanctions against those who fall short of Western donor expectations. The experience of Zimbabwe, tragic in its consequences, is an example of the curse of Red Aid, swallowed by a government and a people who had sacrificed so much to win their political independence. It is for this reason that the case of Zimbabwe has been analysed in detail in this monograph.

The fundamental reason why the relationship between ‘aid’ and ‘development’ is not fully understood is because of the way both terms are defined in the OECD-DAC vocabulary, definitions which have also been adopted by the United Nations. These are self-serving, West-centric, value-loaded and arbitrary definitions. It is argued here, for example, that there is no good reason for excluding what I call Yellow Aid (or military and political aid) from the definition. This kind of arbitrary exclusion ignores the military and political assistance provided by countries in the South too, for example, the liberation of Southern Africa. Worse still, it places military aid under the carpet, outside of a rational discourse within its political and ethical context.

In this context, it is argued that the 0.7 per cent has acquired a ‘mythical’ status. It carries an ethical-moral dimension, and provokes a lot of passion, particularly among civil society and in the North. This is an understandable reaction from NGOs and civil society organisations that have a strong affinity with the South on grounds of solidarity, but they have an imperfect understanding of the structural problems with the aid architecture. For the developing countries, the 0.7 per cent is a weapon to hold the North to their promises, even when the last 40 years’ experience should have made them wiser. An extended and expanded version of the 0.7 per cent model is the ‘booster’ model of aid. This is based on the assumption that the resource gap in developing countries (in particular, Africa) should be filled by a massive dose of aid over a number of years until the countries take off, like an aeroplane. The proponents of both the 0.7 per cent and the booster models need to question the resource gap theory. They will then understand that the developing countries do not have a resource gap. It is a gap unwittingly or deliberately created, directly as a result of the activities of global corporations and the misdirected policies of the IMF and World Bank. The irony is that the booster aid is still packaged within the framework of the very conditionalities that are part of the problem and not the solution.

This monograph provides a new taxonomy for development aid – in five hues – in a more rational and comprehensive classification. Development aid is placed along a continuum from Purple Aid (based on solidarity) on the extreme left and Red Aid (ideological aid) on the extreme right. In between are Orange Aid (which is really not aid at all, and should simply be called commercial transactions); Yellow Aid (already explained above); and Green/Blue Aid (whose three components – the provision of global public goods, non-tied humanitarian and emergency aid, and compensatory finance – are segments of the totality of financial and technical and technological assistance that are genuinely developmental. These are part of the global good not only from the national (recipient) country’s perspective, but also from the global perspective. One implication of this classification, for example, is that global civil society in the North as well in the South might find they have more affinity with Purple Aid, and perhaps also with Green/Blue Aid, than with aid of the other three colours.

The body of the book consists of the seven steps that the developing countries need to take in order to exit aid dependence. The most difficult is the first step – the psychology of aid dependence. The dependence psychology has not only occupied the minds of leaders in many (if not most) developing countries, but it has also taken roots in mass psychology. It is not necessary to attempt to summarise the seven steps. Much more can be written on the subject than is contained in this monograph. The important point is that the process has to begin somewhere and very soon. It is an agenda that has to be captured by the people themselves at community and grassroots level. However, it also requires an enlightened and visionary leadership at national, regional, and continental levels.

It is argued here that the present aid and development architecture at the international level is an obstacle to the realisation of the national project. Three power asymmetries – economic power, political power and knowledge power – are deeply embedded in the existing structures. It is a continuing battle for the developing countries to try and secure policy space within the constraints imposed by these asymmetrical structures.

The present debate on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PDAE) is located in this larger context to explain the circumstances in which the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the World Bank and IMF are trying to retain their relevancy and legitimacy, both of which have been severely eroded as a result of the changing geopolitical and economic realities of the last decade or so. If the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF do not achieve what they hope for at the Accra conference on aid effectiveness (September 2008) and the Doha Monterrey Review Process (November–December 2008), then they could face oblivion within the next decade. For the DAC its oblivion is a historical necessity in any event. At best, it should remain as a body to coordinate policies for OECD member countries. As for the World Bank and the IMF, they can salvage themselves if they pull out of Red Aid, withdraw to their original missions, and give voice to those who have suffered most from the developmental failure of their policies and the financial volatility of the last two decades.

In this broad historical and political perspective, the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) of the UN and the fast evolving South–South relationship can play a very positive role. However, it faces many challenges, and its future is still largely uncertain.

At the end of the day, we need a truly heterogeneous, pluralistic global society that is based on the shared values of our civilisation, and the shared fruits of the historical development of the productive forces of science, technology and human ingenuity. Only on this basis can we build a global society that is free from want, exploitation, insecurity and injustice.

*Yash Tandon is the executive director of the South Centre, Geneva, an intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries. Dr Tandon’s long career in national and international development spans time as a policymaker, a political activist, a professor and a public intellectual. He has written over 100 scholarly articles and has authored and edited books on wide-ranging subjects from African politics to peace and security, trade and the WTO, international economics, South–South cooperation and human rights. He has also served on several advisory committees.

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/383/48881fruit.jpgA proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers, writes Yash Tandon. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.A proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers, writes Yash Tandon. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.
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Global food prices have been rising steadily since 2002 and since January this year by 65%. Global hot spots of unrest caused by spiraling food prices in the last few months include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, reported in March this year that despite real growth in some countries of the South overall there has been little progress in reducing the number of victims of hunger and malnutrition. Hunger has increased every year since 1996, reaching an estimated 854 million people despite commitments made at the 2000 Millennium Summit and the 2002 World Food Summit to halve it. Every five seconds, a child under 10 dies from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases. The situation, he said, is alarming.

Among the most popular suggested causes of the food crisis are:

- Global warming that has disrupted the balance of natural systems of air, water and weather patterns essential for food productioN;

- Rising fuel prices pushing up cost of e.g. fertilizers, transport, etc.;

- Conversion of food land to Biofuels;

- Increased consumption by rising middle classes in e.g. India and China;

- Dismantling of agricultural infrastructure in countries in the South that during 1980s and 1990s followed the Structural Adjustment Policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions;

- WTO Doha negotiations that could reduce applied tariffs on food products by further up to 36% increasing the vulnerabilities of many countries in the South;

- US farm policy;

- US and EU subsidies -- including the practice of “shifting boxes” in order to maintain subsidies, and EU CAP reform;

- Financial Speculation in the food sector

Before anybody goes deeper into an analysis of any of the above, it is necessary to tread the jungle of “probable causes” warily, for one could tread on sensitive toes. The issue is not only “hot on the streets”, it is also “hot in the board rooms.” Jacques Diouf, the Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), was treading carefully through this jungle when in describing the spiraling food prices as an "emergency", he blamed both the developing and the developed countries as the sources of the crisis. In the developing countries, he said, it was, among other factors, the steady migration of rural populations to the cities, adverse weather conditions such as an unexpectedly severe cold spell in China, droughts in Australia and Kazakhstan and floods in India and Bangladesh. And in the developed countries it was, also the diversion of farmland to produce biofuels, and speculation in the futures markets.

So, how do we traverse this jungle? Like all forest dwellers, it is important to equip ourselves with a set of simple guidelines before setting on the journey. In our view, there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy. These are:

1. The Principle of food sovereignty. This is not the same as “food security”. A country can have food security through food imports. Dependence on food imports is precarious and prone to multiple risks -- from price risks, to supply risks, to conditionality risks (policy conditions that come with food imports). Food sovereignty, on the other hand, implies ensuring domestic production and supply of food. It means that the nationals of the country (or at the very least nationals within the region) must primarily be responsible for ensuring that the nation and the region are first and foremost dependent on their own efforts and resources to grow their basic foods.

2. The Principle of priority of food over export crops produced by small farms sustained by state provision of the necessary infrastructure of financial credit, water, energy, extension service, transport, storage, marketing, and insurance against crop failures due to climate changes or other unforeseen circumstances.

3. The Principle of self-reliance and national ownership and control over the main resources for food production. These are land, seeds, water, energy, essential fertilizers and technology and equipment (for production, harvesting, storage and transport).

4. The Principle of food safety reserves. Each nation must maintain, through primarily domestic production and storage systems (including village storage as well as national silos) sufficient stocks of “reserve foods” to provide for emergencies.

5. The Principle of a fair and equitable distribution of “reserve foods” among the population during emergencies.

Sadly, and with dire consequences, the above quite commonsensical and, we believe, reasonable principles have not been followed by many governments in the South. They have been grossly violated through five main reasons, among other minor ones:

1. Distorted state policies on production and trade (e.g. removal of tariffs that made local producers vulnerable to imported food from rich countries that subsidized their own food production and exports).

2. Land grab by the rich commercial farmers, thus disempowering small producers and rendering them vulnerable to “market attacks.”

3. Effective loss of control over resources of food production, including land (even where nationals “owned” land) because of imported seeds, imported fertilizers, imported machinery, imported technical assistance, and imported banks, and also loss of control over water and energy through surrendering these to foreign corporations attracted by the lure of so-called FDIs (foreign direct investments).

4. Donor aid dependence, and bad advice that came with it from donors including the World Bank and the IMF during the heyday of the “Washington Consensus” (1975-2005).

5. Disruption of the infrastructure of food production (as described above) that came as a consequence of the above four factors.

Many countries have, as a result, lost their food sovereignty (even as they talked of “food security”), became food importers and “cash crop” or mineral exporters, lost control over the resources needed for production (land, water, seeds, energy, technology, etc), and became hostage to foreign supplies of food not only during periods of emergencies but also during “normal” times.

HERE ARE A FEW EXAMPLES OF THE ABOVE “EXISTENTIAL TRUTH” OF OUR TIMES

It is estimated that up to 15 million Mexican farmers and their families (in particular indigenous peoples) may have been displaced from their livelihoods as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and competition with subsidized American maize.

Just 10 corporations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80% of the $28 billion global pesticide market. Another 10 corporations, including Cargill, control 57% of the total sales of the world's leading 30 retailers and account for 37% of the revenues earned by the world's top 100 food and beverage companies.

In an increasingly liberalizing (globalizing) world, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have increased their control over the supply of water, especially in the South. In many cases, private sector participation in water services has been one of the “aid conditionalities” of the so-called “donor assistance” (ODAs) from donor countries and the IMF and the World Bank. Just three companies, Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Bechtel (USA), control a majority of private water concessions globally..

The biofuels industry is inherently predatory on land and resources, especially if it is generated out of food such as maize and Soya beans. It is estimated that to produce 50 litres of biofuels to run a car for one day’s long trip or three days city-run, it would consume about 200 kg of maize -- enough to feed one person for one year. This does not even take into account the cost of energy, water and other resources that go into biofuels production.

The Social Enterprise Development (SEND) Foundation in Ghana have criticised multi-national companies that are trying, using the “opportunity” of “food crisis”, to capture African agriculture through the so-called “Green Revolution” for Africa. FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) said that peasants have been evicted in several African countries so that palm oil can be produced from forests.

The heavy production and export subsidies that OECD countries grant their farmers - more than $349 billion in 2006 or almost $1 billion per day - mean that subsidized European fruit, vegetables lower grade meat, and chicken wings can be found in markets all over West Africa at lower prices than local produce.

CONCLUSION

A proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.

The analytical jungle needs to be carefully traversed. But in this jungle, watch out for animals that have sharp claws and powerful teeth. We thought “imperialism” was a “dirty word” not to be uttered in polite company. But under the title “Food Investment, not Imperialism”, an editorial in the London Financial Times of May 13, 2008 advocated foreign investments as a solution to the problem of food crisis. However, having expounded the virtue of what it called “cross-border farm investment” (read, FDIs), it goes on with what we cannot but agree. It says:

“The only exception is if investment in agriculture turns into imperialism. That is a practice with a long and unpleasant history, from the plantation agriculture of the European empires to the 1954 coup in Guatemala, assisted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, at least in part for the benefit of the United Fruit Company. A developing country can suffer if capital intensive cash crops are produced at the expense of labour intensive food.”

Bravo! There is sometimes wisdom that comes through looking at history from hindsight. Sadly, history is often forgotten by those who are in a hurry to sign free trade agreements (FTAs), Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), donor aid loans and grants, and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). The lure of money to balance the budget or to finance food imports is too powerful against the lessons of history. Only if our policy makers were able to exercise some foresight!

*Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of the South Centre, an Intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/