Really appreciated Makeda Tsgaye's article about the need for accountable African leadership and governance. Throwing more money at the "problem" of Africa will make little difference to the lives of most Africans. Africa has most of what we need already to manage and develop ourselves, the missing ingredient is accountable governments.

I could not but agree more. Being born in Belgium and having lived the events of Congo in the 60's, I know all about it and the involvement of the CIA in the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the manipulation of the Belgian doctors of the population, preparing for the Genocide that is still going on as I am writing this e-mail. It is appalling how ignorant the majority of the people are including the murderous moron we have for a President.

I commend the editor of Pambazuka and in particular Mary Ndlovu for a brilliant article "Zimbabwe's Tsunami" and consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity of reading it. Well done.

Her simple but powerful articulation of issues pertaining to the unfortunate Operation Murambatsvina will offer those not familiar with the historical perspective of Zimbabwean politics and economics a thorough lesson on Zimbabwe 101. It is such articles that must be preserved for future reference as we struggle with where to next?

I am an admirer of Mary Ndlovu and her approach to sensitive issues. She looks at all angles and avoids the mistake of being biased or persuaded by one school of thought. She lets history unfold and be told in a way that provokes action and enables Zimbabweans from all persuasions to unite and fight the common enemy in our midst.

The sequence of events, motives and repeated repression of a people by those entrusted with their welfare is hard to understand but Mary offers the kind of narrative that works through a jigsaw puzzle. We need to only find the critical missing pieces to make the picture complete and she provided hints on where we may look.

She also remembers to carefully analyze contemporary Zimbabwe where life is a constant nightmare. With citizens like Mary, we can only hope for a better tomorrow for our children. Her article must encourage other Zimbabweans to contribute and share their thoughts with the rest of the world.

Zimbabweans have been accused of not writing enough but what I have seen in the past year tends to refute that impression. We love Zimbabwe and what has happened since 1997 has only had one result, destruction; the very reason why we need to record our history and write we must.

The negative and painful history we so well remember should not be an excuse for us to give up but to find creative ways of fighting back and one day soon stand tall as a nation again ready to take our place on the global scene. I have hope that day will come because I know of many ordinary Zimbabweans all over the world and within Zimbabwe who realize how much their democratic space has shrunk but find new, innovative ways of making an impact. It is these small initiatives that when added together will be like another tsunami, only this time it will be a different tsunami with positive outcomes. Thank you.

Thank you for that brilliant article by Charles Abruge. When I got to the second last paragraph of Francis B. Nyamnjoh's article, although directed at problems with democracy in Africa, it seemed to fit much more aptly in a description of that extraordinarily undemocratic bunch: the G7++++. This paragraph seems to describe exactly what we saw in action at Gleneagles.

"The mere call for an exploration of alternatives is, as we have seen almost everywhere [on the continent - replace with - in the G7++++], bound to be perceived as a threat and a challenge. In particular, such a call would receive a hostile hearing from those who have championed the cause of one- dimensionalism nationally and internationally - that is, those who benefit from the maintenance of the status quo, and who stand to lose from any changes. They cannot withstand the challenge, stimulation and provocation that democracy (as the celebration of difference and diversity) promises. They want life to go on without disturbance or fundamental change. And they are well placed to ensure this, thanks to their power to regulate [media] ownership and control, the power to accord or to deny [a voice to] individuals and communities. Only well- articulated policies informed by public interest broadly defined to include individual and community expectations, and scrupulously respected, would guarantee against such abuse and misuse of office and privilege."

Can the so-called democracies please BE democratic...

Thank you for your direct and uncompromising take on the G8.

Thank you. Thank you for the absolutely crucial response to the G8 insanity. More than reactionary, your scholars provided us with vital information/analysis to argue against not only indifferent or exploitative voices, but the equally dangerous and self-indulgent views that hold the west is "doing something good for Africa." Thank you. Much serendipity in your efforts.

AllAfrica.com

http://www.allafrica.com/

AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters)

http://www.amarc.org

ARTICLE 19

http://www.article19.org

CREDO

http://www.credonet.org/

Highway Africa

http://www.highwayafrica.ru.ac.za

International Federation of Journalists

http://www.ifj.org/

International Press Institute

http://www.freemedia.at/

International Freedom of Expression Exchange

http://www.ifex.org/

MediaChannel

http://www.mediachannel.org

Media Institute of Southern Africa

http://www.misa.org

Network for the Defence of Independent Media in Africa

www.ndima.org

Panos Institute

http://www.panos.org.uk/

West African Journalists Association

http://www.ujaowaja.org/

It is commonplace to claim that liberal democracy and Africa are not good bedfellows, and how apt! Implementing liberal democracy in Africa has been like trying to force onto the body of a full-figured person, rich in all the cultural indicators of health Africans are familiar with, a dress made to fit the slim, de-fleshed Hollywood consumer model of a Barbie doll-type entertainment icon. But instead of blaming the tiny dress or its designer, the tradition has been to fault the popular body or the popular ideal of beauty, for emphasizing too much bulk, for parading the wrong sizes, for just not being the right thing. Not often is the experience and expertise of the designer or dressmaker questioned, nor his/her audacity to assume that the parochial cultural palates that inform his/her peculiar sense of beauty should play God in the lives of regions and cultures where different criteria of beauty and the good life obtain. This insensitivity is akin to the behaviour of a Lilliputian undertaker who would rather trim a corpse than expand his/her coffin to accommodate a man-mountain, or a carpenter whose only tool is a huge hammer and to whom every problem is a nail. The history of difficulty in implementing liberal democracy in Africa attests to this clash of values and attempts to ignore African cultural realities that might well have enriched and domesticated liberal democracy towards greater relevance. This call for domestication must however not be confused with the ploy by opportunistic dictatorships that have often hidden behind nebulous claims of African specificities to orchestrate highhandedness and intolerance.

It is important to revisit through non-prescriptive scholarship how civil society and ethnicity and belonging actually relate to democracy in Africa. Such scholarship should examine to what extent overstressing individual rights and underplaying the rights of cultural and religious communities could well be a key problem with the current democratisation process. The future direction of democracy may well be in a marriage or conviviality between individual aspirations and community interests, since Africans continue to emphasise relationships and solidarities over the illusion of autonomy. For democracy to succeed in this context, it must recognise the fact that most Africans are primarily patriotic to their home village, to which state and country in the modern sense are only secondary. It is in acknowledging and providing for the reality of individuals who straddle different forms of identity and belonging, and who are willing or forced to be both 'citizens' and 'subjects', that democracy stands its greatest chance in Africa.

Within this complex I would argue that while the media and journalists may be largely to blame for their highly unprofessional and unethical journalism in liberal democratic terms, other factors have contributed in no small way to such journalism. Evident from this discussion of the relationship between the media and democratisation in a multiparty context is the inadequate attention given to the quality of democracy needed and the quality and role of the media that should foster such democracy. Almost everywhere, liberal democratic assumptions have been made about the media and their role in democratisation and society, with little regard to the histories, cultures and sociologies of African societies.

The difficulties of the media in action must be understood not only as failures, but also, and more importantly, as pointers to the very inadequacies of the liberal democratic model in Africa. If African philosophies of personhood and agency stress interdependence between the individual and the community and between communities, and if journalists each identify with any of the many cultural communities all seeking recognition and representation at local and national levels, they are bound to be torn between serving their communities and serving the 'imagined' rights-bearing, autonomous individual 'citizen' of the liberal democratic model. A democracy that stresses independence, in a situation where both the worldview and the material realities emphasise interdependence, is bound to result only in dependence. The contradictions of and multi-facetted pressures on the media are a perfect reflection of such tensions and a pointer to the need for domesticated ideas of democracy in Africa.

If democratisation requires fundamental changes, as it should, such changes usually entail a challenge to vested interests, be these local, national or foreign, private or public. Contrary to some optimistic accounts, media that have facilitated genuine democratisation may appear rare in Africa. It is however clear that media which decide in earnest to play an active and positive role in this process will find themselves in a hostile environment if prevailing attitudes and practices are not in tune with the spirit of change. For to democratise means to question basic monolithic assumptions, conventional wisdom about democracy, media, government, power myths and accepted personality cults, and to suggest and work for the demystification of the state, custom and society. To democratise in Africa is to provide the missing cultural link to current efforts, links informed by popular ideas of personhood and domesticated agency. To democratise is to negotiate conviviality between competing ideas of how best to provide for the humanity and dignity of all and sundry. To democratise is above all to observe and draw from the predicaments of ordinary Africans forced by culture, history and material realities to live their lives as 'subjects' rather than as 'citizens', even as liberal democratic rhetoric claims otherwise.

The mere call for an exploration of alternatives is, as we have seen almost everywhere on the continent, bound to be perceived as a threat and a challenge. In particular, such a call would receive a hostile hearing from those who have championed the cause of one-dimensionalism nationally and internationally - that is, those who benefit from the maintenance of the status quo, and who stand to lose from any changes. They cannot withstand the challenge, stimulation and provocation that democracy (as the celebration of difference and diversity) promises. They want life to go on without disturbance or fundamental change. And they are well placed to ensure this, thanks to their power to regulate media ownership and control, the power to accord or to deny a voice to individuals and communities. Only well-articulated policies informed by public interest broadly defined to include individual and community expectations, and scrupulously respected, would guarantee against such abuse and misuse of office and privilege.

The future of democracy and the relevance of the media will depend very much on how well African states design policies that negotiate the delicate balance between public interests and private concerns. In the process they must enable the harnessing and interplay between old and new information and communication technologies towards this end. It is a future that could well be bright for communication and democracy in a broad and participatory sense. For, as Alec Russell has quite aptly observed, one of the enduring mysteries and marvels of Africa is the ability of Africans to pick up again from any setback, including even the most appalling of disasters. Such determination, demonstrated through the creative appropriation of various worldviews, values, influences, and information and communication technologies, implies that Africans have simply refused to celebrate victimhood.

* Francis B. Nyamnjoh is author of Africa's Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging. London: Zed Books.(May 2005). 320 pages. Cost: Hardback: GBP 60.00 $85.00; Paperback: GBP 18.95 $29.95

There is a general opinion that publishing in Africa is developing. This view is based on evidence that more books are being published today than two decades ago and on the proliferation of indigenous publishing houses. This is indeed the case, but the development has been more quantitative than qualitative and this is not good enough to measure development of a publishing industry. Publishing in Africa remains an enclave industry serving foreign multinationals and their 'joint ventures', which are actually comprador companies, established to legitimise the former's presence and exploitation. More of the same textbooks covering the same core school subjects are published annually. There is little or no publishing of books of interest and relevance to the majority of the people. Not even the do-it-your-self books, covering all aspects of agriculture and animal husbandry, all aspects of health promotion and disease prevention; building construction, carpentry, brick laying, and so on that people need to improve their surroundings and their incomes. The few that are published are invariably in foreign languages.

Behind the backwardness of the publishing industry is a history of inappropriate educational and cultural policies, absence of national book policies including ineffective copyright laws, high duties and taxes on paper and other printing inputs, no or under funding of libraries. Book production and distribution cannot prosper in societies where reading is limited to functionality - passing school and professional examinations. In order to put the question of publishing and development of a 'reading public' in its proper context it is necessary to look at the economic and social conditions in which it is taking place. In the final analysis, publishing is as much about access to and management of resources - financial and human - as it is about political and social decisions that favour or obstruct all round development of society.

Legacies of colonialism and capitalism have never stopped exerting deleterious influence on African countries' economic and social development. The modest gains in the social sector - education and health - that were made in the first two and a half decades of independence were wiped out by the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank. 'While the record since Jomtien (Education for All) has been uneven across sub-Saharan Africa, the region in fact had made faster progress over the 1960s and 1970s in increasing primary enrolment than Asia and Latin America, tripling the number of children in primary school.' [1] The World Bank that was responsible for wrecking Africa's education, has turned around, is now 'funding' education and deciding through its army of consultants what education is to be given to Africans. 'At a meeting with African vice-chancellors in Harare in 1986, the Bank argued that higher education in African countries in Africa was a luxury: that most African countries were better off closing universities at home and training graduates overseas.' That position was later modified but the Bank was still 'calling for universities in Africa to be trimmed and restructured to produce only those skills which the "market" demands.'[2] This explains why the Bank is interested in African education; it is in order to control it. Who would deliver good education to African youth if the best of the product of World Bank's enlightenment would be primary school leavers or imported expatriates? Would such education policies not produce drawers of water and hewers of wood, the old debate between Booker Washington and W.E.B. Dubois?

Readers of Pambazuka will be familiar with the literature on the impact of neo-liberalism on African economies and the appalling poverty that it has created in its wake. The impoverishment of working people through massive lay offs, wages that can only pay for a week's, peasants whose labours are made nought by subsidies that European and American farmers receive; are these the conditions for development of a publishing industry? If a substantial percentage of revenues to be gained by the eighteen countries that were considered deserving of debt cancellation at the recent G8 summit is invested in improving education there will be more textbooks in schools. But as already pointed out there will be more of the same books and printing rather than publishing will be the beneficiary.

History of African Publishing

European missionaries introduced publishing in Sub Sahara Africa for the purpose of providing reading material intended to make Christians out of the African people. One hundred years since then is a very short time when compared with the history of publishing in Western Europe and America. If for example African publishing had already been developed by 1900, this period would still be shorter than the time it took publishers in the United States in the 19th century to respect copyright and to stop pirating books published mostly in the United Kingdom. Publishing in Africa (still by foreign companies), started in earnest after independence as governments of newly independent African countries poured money into education in order to fulfil one of the key objectives of the independence struggles. Indigenous African publishing is an even more recent phenomenon, and with few exceptions it is still fledgling, with companies that are struggling to survive and many going under a few years after they are established.

The state of current African publishing

One problem of writing about African publishing is the absence of data on the subject. UNESCO carries scant and unreliable data on publishing in Africa because African member governments rarely ever submit such information, which is not surprising given the little interest most of them have in publishing or in UNESCO for that matter. But even limited data that is available on publishing in South Africa (considered most developed on the continent) and Nigeria (1995) when compared with the same data for Norway, a small Nordic country, exposes the weakness of publishing in Africa. Norway with a population of 4.55 million inhabitants published 7,265 titles while South Africa with more than 42 million published only 5,418 titles. Nigeria with a population of over 120 million inhabitants published 1,314 titles. That Africa with fifteen per cent of the world's population produces around two per cent of the total number of world book must be accepted at face value.
Of the books published in Africa, up to 95 percent are school textbooks. The disjunction between book production, book sales and creation of a reading public starts here. Leaving out illiterate populations, an average of 40 percent across the continent, the remaining out-of-school reading public cannot support a meaningful publishing industry. When this group is further disaggregated into subject interest sub groups, the resulting numbers of book buyers becomes too small to support more than a few titles, in short print runs and on a limited number of subjects. Implications of this fact are clear; high unit costs, high prices, absence of variety and stimulation of the market, stagnation and, or exit of publishing companies from non-textbook publishing. Authors earn little or nothing from writing, so that authorship suffers.

This is the reason for the obvious underdevelopment of the publishing industry even for a country such as Nigeria, despite its production of tens of millions of books for its huge student population and expenditure of billions of naira annually. It is also partly the reason for there being no incentives to publishing books other than textbooks. The profitability of educational publishing, which, it has been argued would lead to supporting general publishing including fiction, tends on the contrary to be the noose that is strangling it. The multinationals are only interested in profits and repatriating them. For even the famous Heinemann African writers' series, which enjoyed great prestige, was abandoned by Heinemann's new owners because it was not profitable enough. No great loss, as two prominent African writers, Nobel Prize winner for literature Wole Soyinka and Ayi Kwei Armah called the series, 'a neo-colonialist writer's coffle formed by Europeans but slyly miscalled African.' [3]

The impression should not be created here that because textbook publishing is the core of African publishing, there are adequate textbooks to meet demand for school books. Far from it. It has been suggested that a 1:3 book pupil ratio is acceptable given available resources, but even where, as in Tanzania, substantial funds were donated to invest in textbook provision through open tender system, after eight years (1995 and 2003) the project evaluation team found in one school visited (only 120 miles from Dar es Salaam) the appalling ratios of 1:40 in one subject and 0:40 for two other subjects. The Ministry of Education reports book student ratios of between 1:4 and 1:7 but reality on the ground is a different picture. Admittedly, for the sons and daughters of well to do families, the situation was different as many books that were meant to be distributed free to schools for use by all pupils were diverted to bookshops where they could be bought for private use on a 1:1 ratio.

Multinationals in textbook publishing in Africa

The situation varies from country to country, but multinational publishing companies take the biggest share of the educational book budgets in all sub-Sahara African countries. Here again statistics are not easy to come by but in South Africa, for example, Maskew Miller an indigenous white owned South African company (est. 1893), which merged with Longman (also South African) in 1983 and is now part of Pearson Group (the largest publishers in the world based in the USA), reports that they publish approximately one out of every three textbooks in South Africa [4] With several other companies, the group exercises enormous influence in South Africa's education and society generally (because they also own the influential Financial Times, Financial Mail, Business Day and TV). Other multinational publishing companies present in South Africa are Heinemann, Macmillan (which landed the hugely popular Nelson Mandela's biography) Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Stoughton Educational. OUP in South Africa as in the UK and elsewhere enjoys a not-for- profit status and does not pay taxes though it is one of the most profitable publishing giants in the UK and worldwide. Sixty percent of educational publishing in South Africa (which is 80 percent of the entire publishing industry) is controlled by multinationals with the remaining 40 percent being shared between white owned (30 percent) and black owned (10 percent) companies respectively. [5] Total net turnover for the three categories of publishing (educational, trade and academic) for 2003 is given as R1,609,500,231 which is equivalent to US$227,834,072. Sixty percent of that which is the share of the multinational translates into US$ 136,700,443. [6] Not an insignificant sum and from only one country!

All of the above multinational companies with the exception of the last one are also present in most other African countries. Their share of the markets in those countries is not very different from what it is in South Africa even in countries such as Kenya where there is a stronger local publishers' presence than in other countries. Their share of secondary and tertiary level books is even bigger. In some other countries, such as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, Macmillan does nearly all the publishing and supply of books as there is no local publishing there to the best of our knowledge.

Other issues in African publishing: New technologies, ICT, POD, Internet, e-books and e-commerce

African publishing has benefited greatly from new technologies especially in the origination of PDF files through Desk Top Publishing. Information and communication technology makes possible easy communication between all stakeholders in the book chain. Print On Demand has made it possible to publish books that would never have seen the light of day for lack of financial resources to offset print large editions whose markets were not assured. African Books Collective, (the marketing and distribution organisation owned by a group of African publishers and based in Oxford), with the agreement of their member publishers prints only the number of copies that they either have orders for or they know they can sell. This service helps the African publisher save money on freight charges and the hustle of handling of shipments. For ABC it ensures uniform quality of books according to western market demand, improves visibility, saves costs on warehousing and insures availability.

The internet has revolutionised access to information and to research for African academics. Although some African publishers have their own websites it is not certain that much business is generated via that channel especially internally, and for textbook publishers who have trade representatives on the move visiting bookshops. Outside the main cities and towns there are no ISPs and access to the internet is practically impossible. The same can be said of e-commerce. Although no doubt there is potential for it, problems of payment where credit cards systems are not yet in place or are just beginning and the cost of security software and management of such a system is high it will take time before this is a realistic and viable method of trading.

Publishing in African languages

Publishing in African languages is closely tied to the question of language of instruction in schools. All over Africa education is given in the languages of the former colonial masters. Naturally this works in favour of the foreign languages to the detriment of African languages. Proponents of African languages as languages of instruction are not against English or any foreign language that is currently in use in Africa. The issue is at the very heart of the question of emancipation of African people from the racist and colonial notions that African languages are too primitive to be used in any intellectual pursuits. For the British, the English language in addition to everything else is a multi billion dollar business annually. African languages could also be big business.

The same excuses that are being made today about the inadequacy of African languages for education vis-a-vis the colonial languages were made in the 16th century when Latin occupied the position that is today occupied by English. When England had adopted English and was making fast progress in spreading education, France lagged behind because education there was still in Latin. Likewise, far from being agents of development foreign languages act as hindrances to creation of literate and reading publics and keep the majority of African citizens from participating in one of the most important field of enlightenment. Missionaries had obviously a better understanding of the importance of African languages than African educationists and their foreign mentors. Fewer than 10 percent of African people can comfortably read books in these foreign languages, and that is probably generous. Without a strong reading culture, without access to books through bookshops and libraries and given the high prices of books, only a fraction of this group would actually be buying books. So, even in those languages, publishing in any meaningful scale is not possible. This is further justification for publishing in African languages where at least there is guarantee of a large population of potential readers who are also masters of their languages.

After noting how other countries developed via the 'scientification' of their languages, Professor Ali Mazrui has posed the question, 'Can any country approximate first rank economic development if it relies overwhelmingly on foreign languages for its discourse on development and transformation? Will Africa ever effectively "take off" when it is so tightly held hostage to the languages of the former imperial powers?'[7] There is urgent need to recognise this educational and cultural imperative and to invest in developing African languages to meet those challenges. The alternative is that publishing will continue to serve only the English speaking elite, and for that reason it will not grow to the same extent as that of the publishing industry of a small country's like Norway whose output is three or four times that of Nigeria, almost twenty times its size.

Marketing and distribution

Although editorial and production functions including printing are responsible for the book's existence, marketing and distribution are responsible for getting them to the readers. This regrettably is the weakest aspect of African publishing. Most publishers have limited knowledge and experience, which is compounded by the absence in most countries of an established book trade, bookshops and other commercial outlets. Transport infrastructure is weak especially during the rainy season when most roads are impassable. Postal services are unreliable and costly. Export of African books to European and American markets was practically non-existent until the African Books Collective was founded in Oxford and started trading in 1989. Overseas dealers in African books would make yearly visits, buying books at local prices with local discounts and then transporting them and selling them at high prices in their countries and pocketing the profits. Furthermore, contrary to expectations (naive for sure) western scholars and librarians are not all that interested in scholarship emanating from Africa. Western scholars come to Africa to do research and publish their books through publishers in their own countries. Libraries of African studies centres are the first to have their budgets cut and in post 9/11 US, African studies are losing popularity. The shift now is to Arab studies, language and religion.

The book selling business faces the same problem of financing as publishing. Access to bank loans is impossible without collateral in the form of buildings or guarantees. High interest rates are forbidding; at the worst period of SAP they were twice the trade discounts that publishers offered. In some countries for many years state monopoly of book distribution destroyed nascent bookshops in up-country stations (owned by missionaries) which were supplied from the major bookshop in the chain located in the capital acting as distributor. There are signs now that bookselling may be picking up but it will take time before book readers can access books through at least one bookshop in the district.

Copyright, policy and the publishing environment

The publishing environment in Africa is constrained by low literacy, by a weak reading culture, by lack of finance and by a weak system of distribution. Many of these can be traced to the absence of effective national book policies in Africa. Copyright is one of the areas where much needs to be done. Protection of works by local authors is only one aspect of copyright; but understanding and exploiting openings within the international copyright system and practices could allow countries to access foreign books for their educational needs more cheaply than through conventional rights purchases. Removal or reduction of high duties and taxes on paper and other printing materials could reduce printing costs considerably and result in lowering prices to more affordable levels. Training facilities for staff for the publishing and printing industries are a responsibility of governments through polytechnics but professional organisations can and must work hand in hand with government. So far APNET has been offering training opportunities to publishing staff from member National Publishers Associations. Some universities also offer degrees in publishing.

Banks could be encouraged to lend to publishers and other enterprises in the book chain. Indeed governments could even borrow at concessionary rates from international financial institutions and through guarantees enable them to borrow at lower interests than the market rate. Even simple steps such as lowering postal rates for printed matter would facilitate movement of books internally and help the book trade especially in the rural areas where there are no bookshops but postal services exist. Promoting reading through establishing libraries and organising national prizes for writers, illustrators and other distinguished persons in the book chain, as well as encouraging competitions in schools in book related activities are necessary if any society wishes to revolutionise learning and advance culture. However, all these can successfully be accomplished by governments that recognise the strategic importance of the publishing industry; that realise education, in addition to classrooms, teachers and textbooks is also libraries, bookshops, journals, magazines, newspapers, the Internet and other forms in which knowledge is packaged.

Notes.
[1] Novicki, Margaret A., Boosting Basic Education in Africa,Africa Recovery, Vol.II#4, (March 1998) p.8
[2] Brock-Utne, Birgit., Whose Education for All: The Recolonisation of the African Mind, London, Falmer Press, 2000, p.218
[3] Quoted from, Gedin, Per., Publishing in Africa: The View from Outside, in Development Dialogue 1984:1-2 p.103
[4] Business Day, Publishing in South Africa
[5] Communication with South African publisher, Brian Wafawarowa, New Africa Books
[6] Galloway, Francis., Trends in South African Book Publishing Industry Since the 1990s, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria.
[7] Altibach, Philip G., and Hassan, Salah.,The Muse of Modernity: Essays on Culture as Development in Africa, Africa World Press, Trenton NJ 1996.

* Walter Bagoya is director of Mkuki wa Nyota publishers, Dar es Salaam

Please send comments to [email protected]

"Community radio is participatory radio with a social development purpose"
The World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC)-Africa

A colleague of mine told me an interesting story recently. She works with a project that has to do with the establishment of three rural community radio stations--one in Mang'elete, Kenya, one in Terrat, Tanzania and one in Kagadi, Uganda. The aim of the project was to enable the communities involved to analyse and debate development issues from their own perspectives, thus providing a linkage between local-level experiences of development on the one hand and the national-, regional- and international-level policies that shape those experiences. Beyond production of content, all three communities also own and manage their stations.

The Kenyan station, Mang'elete Community Radio, was the last to go on-air due to the protracted wrangling to get a licence and a frequency for the station. Under the former government, little movement was initially possible. The former ruling party was clear about not wanting independent electronic media to go beyond the capital city.

The regulator, in a more open and reasoned fashion, had concerns about the definitions of a 'community,' definitions of a 'community radio station' and so on. The preconceptions were many. That, in Kenya, a 'community' could only be understood to be an 'ethnic' community. That no 'community' at the local level, however well-organised and prepared to run a station, would be able to withstand the political (disguised as ethnic) pressures that would inevitably be brought to bear on it to slant its coverage to the advantage of one political faction or party over another. And so on.

Finally, after much negotiation and some political intervention, the station got its licence and frequency. The story my colleague told me has to do with what happened since. Once the station went on-air, its value to those politically-inclined sharply rose. It started raising money through community service announcements. The women's group which had initiated it found themselves quickly shunted aside as men sought to gain control of management and programming. The men quickly factionalised. The coordinator was accused of nepotism and corruption. In short, it was a mess.

My colleague, whose role was merely to facilitate fundraising, training and technical support for the three community radio stations was forced to step in, together with colleagues from the other two stations in Tanzania and Uganda. Attempts at reconciliation failed. She finally, with the help of the local provincial administration, ordered the station off-air to enable sanity to prevail again. Finally, two months later, all has been resolved. Women are back in charge of the management committee, with a clearer sense of how to manage personal and political interests. A temporary caretaker has been found to run the station pending conclusion of inquiries into the financial allegations. And valuable lessons have, hopefully, been learnt about the difficulties of 'participation.'

I thought about her story earlier this year, reading reports on the elaboration and implementation of projects under Kenya's new Constituency Development Funds (granted to all constituencies for spending on development under the constituency's representative to parliament). When she had first called me, at the height of the crisis, I was tempted to throw the baby out with the bath water. That is, to take the story as yet another example of why 'participation' does not work. Sad, but true--it is so easy to become cynical and jaded. But another colleague cautioned both of us, reminding us that people's experiences of genuine control--at any level--are still too fragile, too new to dismiss what first, inevitably, happens when their control is genuinely facilitated.

So perhaps it is unsurprising then that since the reports on the CDF projects were done, much critique has arisen. The Law Society of Kenya pointed to their unconstitutional nature given that they are monitored by parliament, whose members serve as the chairs of the CDF committees. The reports themselves pointed to problems in the make-up of some CDF committees--as usual, accusations of nepotism abounded. The reports also showed the disparity of approaches to project prioritisation. The more rational committees opted for projects that already existed but had been stalled or for projects determined by constituency-wide consultations on project priorities. The less rational committees opted for projects in the personal and political interests of the committees' chairs.

None of these are insignificant problems and they do have to be addressed. Particularly if we understand the CDF projects to be a short-term, interim step towards decentralisation and devolution. Constitutional or not (and they should be brought in line with constitutional principles), the CDF projects are an experiment. As is Mang'elete Community Radio. Experiments from which we all should take pointers as to how to most effectively involve our 'communities' not only in a determination of our own development interests, but in the management of those interests. That implies that our parliamentarians should stop seeing them as their own personal property but rather as their opportunity to enable informed and genuinely bottom-up 'participation.'

Is that too tall an order?

* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the Executive Director of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET)

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The G8 was no success, argues Charles Abugre. While some of the campaigners at Gleneagles welcomed the outcome saying that "Important steps have been taken - steps that will bring hope to millions", others were more forthright in their condemnation of the deal. The debt deal is a huge disappointment. The MPH called for the cancellation of debt owed by at least 62 countries worldwide who need debt cancellation to revive their economies and reduce poverty. Not only is the offer only to a small number of countries, an impression has been created that 100% of their debt will be cancelled. This is disingenuous. There are no specific targets on trade. The G8 agreed to agree some time soon on a time table to end export subsidies. The outcome of the G8 meeting provided another bait that could lead to several more decades of dependency and begging. Where are the leaders with a vision and substance?

The G8 (actually it is a G7 +1(Russia) + 3 (the IMF and World Bank and the European Commission) event, hyped as the last ditch effort to save Africa from itself and from poverty has come and gone. It was a show as never before. Bob Geldorf's global rock party to Make Poverty History, some say, had at least one-third of humanity hooked to it. We rocked to explosive music beamed from 7 locations around the world, interspersed with pictures of the misery and desolation of Africans and Africa. Kofi Annan dropped in. In Edinburgh, a quarter of a million people marched, the biggest demonstration the "most beautiful small country in the world" (Scotland), had ever seen. It was all a rather odd sort of demonstration. The rulers identified with it and some even carried placards appealing to themselves. Thousands of activists filled the churches and few found themselves in running battles with high handed, even brutal, police response. These were only the staging post for the main event - the G&++++ meeting.

The Gleneagles Hotel, the meeting place of the political face of those who the run the world, is in the middle of nowhere, much in keeping with locations picked for G8 meetings in recent time. The hotel, a luxury facility for rich golfers, is surrounded by rolling hills and lush green fields. Takes anywhere from 1-2 hours to get there, if you can figure out where you are heading, driving over narrow roads and through valleys and hills. The rich and the leaders take the faster means - helicopters. The venue was effectively cordoned off by well over 10,000 police and some say up to 2 000 heavily armed American marines and special forces. The skies were filled with Chinook helicopters, if not routinely patrolling, busy intimidating the 10,000 strong "clown army" and the so-called "anarchists" intent on spoiling the party or at least sharing the media limelight.

Two and half days of meetings arranged in a hierarchy much resembling an apartheid power structure - first it was the white men among themselves, then with a G5 made up of the 'coloureds' (Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, India and China) and then finally the 'blacks' had their turn (the 7 African leaders, including Ghana led by the AU Chairman, Gen. Obasanjo) the communique was finally released. Hours before, the rock band celebrities who "negotiated" on behalf of the poor of Africa had announced to the international media that although what was being offered will not make poverty history it will save millions of African lives, and so we should prepare ourselves to celebrate. And so it was that Tony Blaire announced to a sombre crowd (sobered both by disappointment and the aftermath of the bombs that killed scores of innocent working people in London) that the G8 communique represented great progress- a "very good beginning", he said, towards making poverty history, although he "recognises that it will not please everyone".

True to form, when the official document was released, the campaigners gathered in Scotland were scathing in their reaction. The Official reaction of the Make Poverty History Coalition said: "Today the G8 have chosen not to do all that campaigners insist is necessary to free people trapped in the prison of poverty. Important steps have been taken - steps that will bring hope to millions. But more action is urgently needed if they are to play their role in bringing about real change for the world's poorest people and consigning extreme poverty to the history books". According to Oxfam GB, "The G8 have recognised today that this is the beginning, not the end, of their efforts to overcome poverty. The world's richest nations have delivered welcome progress for the world's poorest people, but the outcome here in Gleneagles has fallen short of the hopes of the millions around the world campaigning for a momentous breakthrough."

But others were more forthright in their condemnation of the deal. Christian Aid called it a "vastly disappointing result which will not make poverty history", adding that: 'Millions of campaigners all over the world have been led to the top of the mountain, shown the view and now are being frog-marched down again.'

In the Action Aid press release, Caroline Sande Mukulira, (ActionAid's Southern Africa programme) is quoted to have said "What Africa needed from the G8 was a giant leap forward, all it got was tiny steps. The deal that has been announced falls way short of our demands. We have some aid, but not enough, some debt relief but not enough and virtually nothing on trade. Once again Africa's people have been short-changed."

According to Yassin Fall of the African Women's Millennium Initiative (AWOMI), the G8 communique is a "testimony of the determination of rich countries of the West to keep Africa subjugated by debt and unfair trading rules".

So what was offered and how much of a "very good beginning" did this represent.

The Make Poverty History (MPH) coalition demanded action in 3 areas together- more and better aid, debt cancellation for all the poor countries needing debt cancellation to reduce poverty and reform in trade rules in 2 fundamental areas: to stop dumping subsidised products on developing country markets and to stop forcing poor countries to open up their markets through the WTO and through conditionality attached to aid and debt relief.

In terms of platitudes, there is much in the communique to warm the heart. It talks about working in partnerships not via conditionality; helping Africa to prevent conflicts and to rehabilitate their economies after conflict and contain the proliferation of small arms; support the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to promote better governance; they will work "vigorously" to ratify the UN anti-corruption convention which none of them has signed on to (but yet some how find the moral courage to condemn others), strengthen their laws to discourage their corporations from engaging in bribery and to work towards recovering and repatriating stolen African assets held in the north and they will make Africa's development problems a long-term concern. Nothing new here... all a leaf from the Blaire/Brown Africa Commission report.

Concrete commitments are in the following areas.

Aid

This is the bit that makes the mouth of African governments water uncontrollably and where the spin of success was at its peak. The G8 promised to boost aid by US$48 billion for all developing countries in five years of which $25bn will go to Africa. This seems to satisfy the recommendation of the AfC. The Africa Commission report called for the boosting of aid to Africa by US$25 billion per year by 2010. Thereafter, to raise aid by an additional $25bn by 2015. In contrast, the Millennium Project Report of Jeffrey Sachs called for raising aid by at least $85bn in 2006, and by a further $60bn by 2015. The MPR emphasized front loading and new money

Whilst the $48bn promise has some aid agencies dancing and the eyes of African governments gleaming, it falls short of the expectations, it is not front-loaded and it is also not what it is cracked up to be. Firstly, much of it is not new money. The MPH calculates that only around US$20 billion is new money if delivered. Some of this money is also likely to be raised through borrowing from future aid budgets, rather than new contributions. There is one thing promising, there is another delivering. The track record of delivery is rather appalling. Recall the Millennium Challenge Account announced by the United States in 2002 to provide $5billion dollars to support Africa's development. Three years later, the United States managed to deliver only $17 million dollars to Madagascar bizarrely in support of land privatisation and the introduction of a cheque-account system in commercial banks. Countries like Ghana are still sniffing for the money they were jingoistic about when Ghana was named as potential beneficiary. Mr. Applegarth, the man Bush appointed to run the MCA has recently resigned from frustration and some say inefficiency. The Enhanced HIPC debt relief initiative promised, in 1999 a debt relief package for all eligible highly indebted poor countries to the tune of $100bn. Six years later, as the HIPC regime threatens to fold up, they have delivered $40bn less. Bush may make promises but he does not have the power to actually deliver. It is his Congress that does and that is filled with extreme neo-cons who hate foreign aid.

What will the aid be for and under what conditions will it be delivered? The spin is that the aid will come without strings, except the requirement of good governance. The Ghanaian government and pundits echo this line. Well, for starters it depends on what goes into the term "good governance". What is mostly talked about is anti-corruption and democratic governance. Who doesn't want that? But what does good governance actually mean? What type of government is good, for who? The term governance as used by IFIs refers to more than political accountability and democracy. It is also used to define a specific economic orientation. Over the past 20 years they have sold the idea that a good government is one that creates an "enabling environment" for business but does not itself get involved in directly providing public services like health, education, and water, or get involved in the productive sector i.e. invest in manufacturing or agriculture or employment generation. It was this good governance concept that drove the policies that dismantled the state's capacity to deliver health and education and led to the introduction of cost-recovery, user fees and the proliferation of private for profit health and education institutions catering for a small middle class. Good governance, in their view, also means deep and extensive liberalisation, including trade and the privatisation of public enterprises and deregulation of foreign corporation. Good governance for Americans is an investment climate that reduces or eliminates taxation for their corporations, removes all barriers to the transfer of capital abroad and dismantles any protection for labour (the right of corporations to hire, fire and pay wages without obstacles or dictat. Good governance is a euphemism for a neoliberal political and economic order.

Besides the good governance conditionality the G8 agreement effectively stamped the authority of the IMF and the World Bank over the policy making environment of those expected to benefit from debt relief and aid. The debt relief package is explicit on this. It rewards those that have dutifully followed the IMF (often to the chagrin of their societies) and expects those hoping to gain debt relief to fulfil their IMF obligations fully. The IMF and the World Bank, 2 of the biggest culprits (alongside African governments and global corporations) for the demise of the continent have not only escaped blame but have been re-enthroned as rulers. This agreement has effectively plunged Africa once more into another decade of IMF/World Bank stranglehold, which means greater enforced liberalisation and structural adjustment. In addition, the Americans are very clear about the preconditions for accessing the Millennium Challenge. They include opening up markets to, and providing effective protection for, American companies. Ghana qualified for the MCA not simply because it met the democracy criterion but more so because the US Commercial assessment conducted by the US State Department rates Ghana highly for upholding the rather ridiculous intellectual property rights regime that promotes profit for pharmaceutical and other firms over saving lives. It praises Ghana's investment laws for successfully weakening labour unions and for maintaining no restrictions to the transfer of wealth abroad by foreign companies and for being unable to regulate companies. In its "Country Commercial Guide for US Companies" the Department of State had the following to say about Ghana: "Ghana has no restrictions on transfers out of the country of dividends or net profits, payments on foreign loans, fees and charges related to technology transfer agreements and remittance of proceeds from the sale or liquidation of an enterprise". "Ghana is in compliance with the WTO's TRIMS and does not have performance requirements for establishing, maintaining and expanding a business. The Parliament has passed TRIPS-compliant legislation, except for the copyright bill. Foreign investors are not required to have local partners except in the fishing, insurance and mining industries. By law, the GOG acquires ten percent of all interests in mining ventures at no cost. Investment in a trading enterprise must employ a minimum of ten Ghanaians".

"The regulatory bodies governing telecom, power and water are new and under-resourced which limits their ability to deliver the intended level of oversight".

These are what have qualified Ghana for the MCA which it is yet to receive but the negative consequences of which are immediate to local producers.

But even assuming that the promises could be delivered with fewer strictures, is more aid always a good thing to pursue? The Millennium Project report and the AfC make a forceful case for the positive effect of aid. Aid works if it is directed to improving social and physical and social infrastructure and building the institutions of governance. Aid can improve poverty when it provides essential public services, expands government expenditure and increases economic growth. Although the aid-growth relationships are not so clear cut, expanding access to health especially HIV/AIDs, malaria and TB treatment, education water etc. has a direct positive impact on poverty. Aid provided in humanitarian forms can save lives and assist fragile communities to recover from stress and strengthen their livelihood structures.

But some aid can do more harm than good. A recent IMF report argues that aid can lead to lower growth if it distorts wages and exchange rates which in turn reduced competitiveness. Some argue that it is the size that matters. When aid exceeds 15% of GDP, it is more likely to do more harm than good because it exerts a negative pressure on absorptive capacity. But there is also a political explanation why aid dependency hurts. Higher levels of aid tend to be associated with higher corruption and the erosion of the quality of the bureaucracy. It undermines accountability by prioritising accountability of bureaucracies and the political elite to aid arrangements rather than citizens groups. Aid tends to reinforce the power of the executive over the legislature thereby weakening political checks and balances central to democratic governance. More than everything else, aid carries with it a set of ideas with privileged access to the executive, thereby effectively leading to a monopoly of the ideas conveyed by the aid system. The power inherent in this is referred to as discursive power, as opposed to directly coercive power conveyed through conditionality. Aid basically undermines autonomous thinking and the confidence to rely on domestic ideas and domestic sources of development finance. That is why we have governments all over the continent who sound and act more neoliberal than Hayek (the godfather of neoliberalism) , parroting the same things as the IMF and the World Bank and selling the interest of their people down the tube without noticing. Aid destroys democracy even more when ruling parties see their chance of continued rule in receiving disbursements aid crucial to buying patronage. Aid and independence move in different directions.

Debt

The deal is that the G8 recommends to the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank to cancel debt owed to them by 18 countries (14 in Africa) as well as debt owed to the African Development Bank. This number could rise to 32 if the remaining countries are able to fulfil typical IMF conditions under the HPIC framework. This effectively means an extension of the HIPC arrangement but this time to include the cancellation of the principal not just interest servicing falling due. But this cancellation is not meant to be immediate. The $40bn figure is in nominal terms and will be delivered over 40 years. In Net Present Value terms, this is equivalent to only $17 bn. Ghanaians seem to have developed the impression that there is a one-off cancellation of all its outstanding debts so that Ghana has suddenly woken up to a debt-free life. That's not what it is. Indeed the opposite is the case. Ghana is effectively married to the IMF for another 40 years before the old debt stock finally goes. Then again, a new one would have been built up.

The debt deal is a huge disappointment. The MPH called for the cancellation of debt owed by at least 62 countries worldwide who need debt cancellation to revive their economies and reduce poverty. Not only is the offer only to a small number of countries, an impression has been created that 100% of their debt will be cancelled. This is disingenuous. It is in reality a 10% deal, not including middle income countries, which offers little immediate relief. The deal excludes private sector debt and some debt owed to other multilateral institutions such as the Arab development Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank. It should also be understood that, the debt relief will be at the expense of a proportion of the ODA (aid). Also it is still not clear how the IMF will finance its debt write-off. The scale of the World Bank debt reduction will also depend on how much the donors commit to financing the debt write-off. As for the IMF bit, campaigners are hugely disappointed that the IMF will not have to sell its idle and undervalued gold but will instead depend on donor contributions and a 1999 sale-buyback agreement.

Compare this deal with the $30bn unconditional and immediate cancellation of Iraq's debt in 2004. The African Union called for an immediate, unconditional and non-selective debt write off for all of Africa. Although they did not get anything near this, its President, Gen Olusogin Obasanjo inexplicably announced at the G8 meeting that he was very satisfied with the Gleneagles outcome and that the G8 was a great success. Was this because Nigeria had stitched a separate deal? Was this another evidence of the lack of resolve by African leaders even unable to publicly defend a collective mandate given them by the African Union? Whatever it is, Africans in Gleneagles lowered their heads in shame.

But this disappointment may well bear the seed from which a more just resolution of the African debt will arise, i.e. one of defiance and proactive ness. Nigeria afterall got a much better deal (although with severe weaknesses) because the lower house of the Nigerian Parliament threatened the Paris Club that they will repudiate if after a defined time, the Paris Club did not offer an acceptable deal. Argentina got an even better deal because they unilaterally discounted their debt by close to 70%. The task of African civil society is to persuade finance ministers to develop the courage of the trade ministers who led the Seattle walk out of the trade talks. Beyond repudiation, the real challenge, according to the veteran intellectual and fighter, Samir Amin, is to fight for an international law regulating international debt which specifies a fair and transparent arbitration process. But for now, it will be a grave mistake for anyone to rejoice over the poisoned crumbs thrown to a few poor countries.

Trade

There are no specific targets on trade. The G8 agreed to agree some time soon on a time table to end export subsidies. Tony Blaire hints that a timetable is possible and that a 2010 date is what he has in mind. There is also some vague language to the effect of recognising the need for poor countries to determine their pace of trade reforms. This language can be interpreted to mean that they expect poor countries to continue to open up their markets but will accept a slower opening. This undermines the MPH coalition's demand that there should be explicit recognition that poor countries may have gone too far already in opening their markets and should sensibly reverse gear when necessary. The MPH demand in the WTO negotiations is a principle of non-reciprocity where the rich countries should be expected to open up their markets without requiring poor countries to reciprocate if even less steeply. They got no such signal in the communique. There was also no explicit language addressed to the IMF and the World to end the use of debt relief and loans as instruments for promoting unilateral market opening. Given the crisis of production facing African countries in particular, the refusal to reform the unjust trade rules is clearest signal of the double standards they represent.

Why in any case should leaders who preside over economies whose success is bound to pillage and injustice (historically and contemporarily|) be expected to take decisions against their own fundamental interests. Couldn't it be that we have underestimated the power and influence of corporations that shape the agenda of governments or have we overestimated the power of charity over fundamental interests? Shouldn't the lessons of Seattle and Doha tell us that the prospect of real change lies in the hands of the poor - people and governments - in resistance, in resolve and in holding firm to the interests of their people? Why for example did Asafo Marfo bend like a leaf when the IMF threatened to not fast-track the HIPC completion point if he did not undermine his own parliament and constitution over the poultry and rice tariff issue? Why on earth should Ghana liberalise its government procurement unilaterally when this has been reject under the multilateral framework by African countries which Ghana has been a part? There are many such questions begging for answers.

The G8 was no success. It provided another bait that could lead to several more decades of dependency and begging. Where are the leaders with a vision and substance?

Charles Abugre is currently the head of policy and advocacy at Christian Aid. He has been a development activist in Ghana and many parts of Africa and Asia. He writes in a personal capacity.

Please send comments to [email protected]

Bob Geldof has done an unusual service of getting the key western countries to focus public attention on Africa at the G8 summit. This poses a difficulty for those who see the harm that this kind of focus does to the continent. It conceals the root cause of many of the problems of the continent and perpetuates a view of a continent that is unable to solve its problems. The problems are easy enough to state: complicity between the West and the corrupt leaders who have consistently pillaged the continent; reinforcement of the dependency culture that aid plus neo-liberal economic reform will redeem the continent from poverty, thus maintaining the pauperisation of Africans; suppressing radical people-centred alternative economic opinions opposed to the World Bank / IMF economic orthodoxy; and the subversion of the social and economic development in the interest of repayment of odious debt.

While we accept that good governance is self-evidently desirable, it is also true that the West has been and is still complicit in the corruption that they now disavow. In instances where Africans have democratically elected promising leaders, Western governments have undermined or conspired in their political elimination and replaced them with puppet regimes. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a classic example of this phenomenon. In spite of being duly elected and the preferred choice of his people, the West conspired to eliminate Patrice Lumumba and replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko. It is therefore impossible to understand the economic and political circumstances in the Congo today without a knowledge of this history. We pose the question: how can it be that the country with the most natural resources in Africa is still amongst the poorest and least developed? Other examples could be cited to show that Africa’s real interests were stymied by the West’s activities in Africa.

We believe that Africa needs neither conditional aid, charity nor pity. Western governments should be held to account for the exploitation of the continent and to make reparations for the pillage that they have inflicted.

Signed:

Patricia Daley, Fellow, Jesus College Oxford
Firoze Manji, Editor Pambazuka News
Paul Okojie, Senior Lecturer in Law, Manchester Metropolitan University and a member of the International Governing Council of the Centre for Democracy and Development
Peter da Costa, PhD Candidate, SOAS, London
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, General_Secretary, Global Pan African Movement
Susan Akono, writer
Abiodun Onadipe, Independent Consultant
Rotimi Sankore, Coordinator of CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights

An edited version of this letter first appeared in the Guardian July 4 2005

Some 120 years ago, in 1884-85,, European governments met in Berlin to 'negotiate' the carving up of Africa - a meeting that in essence was very little different to this week's G8 meeting in Gleneagles. Had Bob Geldof and Comic Relief been around at the time, would they have held pop concerts in Paris, London, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon etc. calling on their rulers to be nice about carving up the continent, to ensure that a few more crumbs fell off the table into the mouths of the poor while they carried out their project of occupation, colonisation, military subjugation, looting and genocidal slaughter? The very idea sounds absurd because we have the benefit of hindsight.

But why are things any different today? In many post-colonial countries real per capita GDP has fallen and welfare gains achieved since independence in areas like food consumption health and education have been reversed. The statistics are disturbing. In Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole per-capita incomes dropped by 21% in real terms between 1981 and 1989. Madagascar and Mali now have per capita incomes of $799 and $753 down from $1,258 and $898 25 years ago. In 16 other Sub-Saharan countries per capita incomes were also lower in 1999 than in 1975. Nearly one quarter of the world's population, but nearly 42% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, live on less than $1 a day. Levels of inequality have also increased dramatically but worldwide. In 1960 the average income of the top 20% of the world's population was 30 times that of the bottom 20%. By 1990 it was 60 times, and by 1997, 74 times that of the lowest fifth. Today the assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.

Since the early 1980s, economic and social policies of African countries have been subverted to serve the interests of the west - the repayment of debt, and the opening up of the countries to the needs of voracious international capital. Africa has abundant natural resources, yet their exploitation by capital has not lead to the development of the forces of production nor to the improvement of life chances or life expectancy for the majority. Instead, the countries with the richest resources are the ones that have been torn apart by civil war (Angola, DRC, Sierra Leone, Liberia etc) or subjected to gross environmental degradation (as in Nigeria).

The western media and the western 'development' agencies feed us with a diet that makes us think that "poverty" is the problem. But poverty is not the problem. It is the looting, theft and frank exploitation that forces Africa's people into destitution, that impoverishes them, and prevents millions from realising their full potential as humans.

Just look at the looting involving aid and debt. According to the OECD, total resource flows to developing countries between 1982-1990 was $927 billion. In the same period, developing countries remitted $1,345 in debt servicing alone - a difference in favour of the west of $418 billion. To understand the size of that, it's worth noting that the Marshall Plan transferred to Europe the equivalent of $70 billion in today's prices. In other words, developing countries are providing through debt servicing alone the equivalent of more than two Marshal Plans every three years. And that is assuming that all aid sent to developing countries was actually spent there. ActionAid calculates that only one third of G7 official aid in 2003 was 'real' aid. The rest was 'phantom' aid which may have achieved other goals, but did not help to fight poverty. Only 10 cents of every dollar of US aid is 'real' aid. The 'best performer', according to ActionAid, was the UK - but even there, nearly a third of aid was found to be phantom. And substantial proportions of that aid is used to hire private consultancy companies whose task is the privatisation of water supplies.

The G8 meeting should be seen as a gathering of the descendants of the Berlin Conference. Their agenda is fundamentally the same. We shouldn't be begging them to be nice about it. We shouldn't be begging them to carve us up 'fairly'. Let's end this charade about 'fighting poverty': turn, instead, to fighting those who cause and profit from impoverishment.

* Firoze Manji is director of Fahamu and Pambazuka News editor

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Even those who remember the word "Ujamaa", and know it was the philosophy behind Julius Nyrere's attempt to collectivise agriculture in the 1960s, probably wonder whether it has anything more than academic relevance to today's debates about development. In this interview with BBC Newsnight’s Paul Mason (reproduced here with permission of Paul Mason) Marie Shaba, chairperson of the Tanzanian Association of NGOs, discusses how the G8 can assist Africa’s development.

PAUL MASON: What's the one principle that drives you as an activist?

MARIE SHABA: Justice - I've seen a lot of injustices in my life. I was born in the 1940s - as a young person I've seen the struggle for independence not only for Tanzania but for the whole continent and that's what's been driving me.

PM: What are the biggest problems facing you that the G8 could actually do something about?

MS: One of the most important things they have to do is keep their promises - we are dealing here with a human race, and when you make a promise and you want the support of somebody, then you have to fulfil your promise. Africa has gone through so much and not been able to get its fair deal in trade in governance, everything. The G8 has to recognise and accept that.

PM: Give me a concrete example of the kind of poverty you have to deal with?

MS: These days we have a very strange kind of impoverishment: most of our industries - the parastatals - have been privatised. And you find women who used to be the backbone in agriculture, especially for food security, have all gone into towns now - because with the Structural Adjustment Programmes a lot of subsidies were taken away from the farmers so most of the men left the women in the village - and without subsidies women could not farm even for subsistence. So most of them are moving into towns. And this is a great phenomenon in my country, because then you have to depend on food from others - and you have no respect if you depend on food from others.

So what is happening you find women now: they are employed in the flower industry in Arusha. They employ a lot of women because they are cheaper, they are careful in the way they handle flowers, but they are not protected health-wise, and they deal with a lot of pesticides, they suffer a lot of diseases: they are like human beings saturated with pesticide in their bodies. And when you are sick they just chuck you out, employ another one. And if this woman falls sick and dies, she leaves behind orphans. So in our country we are saying "for every rose that somebody in Europe wears there is the life of an African woman". So this kind of impoverishment is quite severe and it's frightening, and its all because of liberalisation.

PM: What are people doing for themselves? When people in this country (the United Kingdom) faced problems like that, in the 19th century, they got organised to do something about it...

MS: We come from a different background: immediately after independence we had our own brand of socialism - and the main part was to have a human rights culture: that's what Ujamaa meant. And self-reliance. We had a one-party system so our mindset was totally different - there was a lot of trust, faith that the government would take care of people. That they would enter contracts for the interests of the people. But after 1987 when Structural Adjustment came in, we began to see different behaviour - and a lot of people didn't realise what was happening.

PM: So what are people doing now?

MS: We are organising - the NGOs have been in the forefront: education, to make people realise they have the power to change things through elections, through organising in groups, support each other. If people are not organising, we wouldn't be here. It means people are organising to find solutions - especially women in the informal sector. They cushion the impact of some of the economic policies, because in the informal sector they sell goods from small producers, and at the end of the day they survive: if it were not for these small producers - the so-called illiterate women, we'd be telling a different story.

PM: A lot of people here ask: why can't Africans help themselves - why can't they do what South Korea has done and go from farming to industry in one big leap?

MS: That's blaming the victim - we are here not because we are lazy, unintelligent. If I was the leader of Tanzania, and the economy was down, and here is somebody who says: "I can give you money, BUT" .... the choice is: do you refuse and let your people die, or to agree and hope things get better? That's what happened to most of our leaders; they've been hoping things will change - so its blaming the victim.

PM: If the G8 could only do one thing what would it be?

MS: Fair trade!

PM: But that's not even on the agenda of the G8...

MS: We are wondering why. Because with charity - we are all so fatigued as recipients of charity, begging, when we know we can do it ourselves. The capitalist system is so strong and been there so many years - and they keep on changing their strategies. But it’s just what Emma (Thompson) was saying: capitalism is there to maximise profits. And this means we need to rearrange our mindset.

PM: What is the mood in some of the shanty towns and villages you work in? Do people know about the G8 and the international debate that's going on about African poverty?

MS: No. A lot of people blame the government. That's the immediate thing they can see - they don't understand the intricate issues behind it all. For example our president is on the Africa Commission, and Blair is the chair of G8, so they might be aware that our issues are being discussed - but not much.

PM: So there's no big feeling on the streets - that the G8 must do something, and this is the big chance?

MS: What people are saying is they blame it all on the (African) leaders - so its up to people like us to say we shouldn't blame our leaders because we will just fight each other and let the G8 countries off. Civic education is a process: you (Britain) have been there for a long time; we've been independent only since 1961 and there are a lot of things happening that are happening too fast: but slowly the picture is beginning to unfold.

PM: If it all goes well at Gleneagles, and you get everything you want, what kind of a difference could it make? What would we see in 10 years time?

MS: It will bring back self-confidence. Right now, as Africans, I think we have lost self-esteem - we feel like we are the poorest of the poorest, like we can't even think for ourselves; like everything has to be thought out somewhere in Europe - even how to govern ourselves. So there is lack of self-esteem. But should we get the solidarity and confidence of other people, we have all the resources we need. We are blessed with all the resources: human, material, land - everything. So the support we need should go to strengthening the structures for continuity and transparency, so that more people will know what's happening - and what opportunities are there. That's more important than giving us money to settle things.

And another thing, with trade, would be to help us compete: we need a lot of preparation - and we need to start it locally, or maybe regionally before we can even compete abroad - so we need that space. That's what the G8 can do: give us space to develop at our own pace.

* This article first appeared on the blog NewsNi8gt and is reproduced here with permission of Paul Mason. Visit http://paulmason.typepad.com/newsnig8t/ for more information.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Africa needs leaders, says Makeda Tsegaya. Africans have known this for years and have long campaigned for more democratic governance. The best service the world could give Africa would be to support their struggles to transform leadership on the continent.

Last weekend saw a large number of gatherings in London and nine other cities around the world for a rock concert aimed at mobilizing support for the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign. Hundreds of thousands of marchers in Edinburgh echoed the political message of this concert, namely debt-relief, fair trade, and better and more aid for Africa and other poor regions of the world. Others expressed their views on the subject via text and e-mail messages. Judging from the sample of messages transmitted via the international media, many seemed to be supporting the cause of the rock concert, while others doubted the efficacy of such campaign on a continent plagued by authoritarianism and corruption. Yet, a few others appeared to give the impression that poverty in Africa is a problem endemic to and created by the continent. As such, the role of developed nations in engendering the problem is hardly, if ever, interrogated. This article intends to bring a few points into the limelight based on the political messages of the campaign with a view to making a positive contribution to the on-going debate regarding the perception and eradication of poverty in Africa.

Indeed, supporters of “Make Poverty History’ have raised the profile of important issues that have significant implications for development in Africa, particularly fair trade and debt-relief. However, a critical factor for poverty eradication in Africa that was missing from the campaign is responsive governance. In fact, the lack of accountable governance and committed leadership in Africa have been the main source of misery and abject poverty on a continent blessed with so much riches. A continent that is still plentiful despite years of massive exploitation from people within and outside the continent. In fact, many Africans are beginning to realize that their vulnerability is a predictable outcome of years of tyranny and not a punishment from God or a biblical curse on the continent. This realization is now leading to a widespread demand for democratically elected leaders. Leaders, who genuinely strive to work in the interest of the people to create better opportunities for employment and economic growth, access to quality education and health care services, and most of all who are accountable to their constituencies and not to domestic cliques or external actors. They are determined to end poverty and a miserable existence sustained by an act of charity year after year.

Nonetheless, as surprising as this may sound to those who cannot imagine Africa beyond making appeals for humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping forces, such desperately needed changes have, indeed, began taking their course on the continent. African civil society organizations are thriving and concerned citizens are promoting freedom, liberty and true independence individually and collectively. Africans are now more convinced than ever before that without a dramatic change in governance and leadership, no development model can bear fruit on their continent.

With this realization, more and more people are exerting utmost pressure on dictators and corrupt leaders within the bounds of legality and peaceful resistance. A recent electoral process in Ethiopia exemplifies a situation in which citizens took advantage of a small window of opportunity to peacefully challenge tyranny, abject poverty, starvation and war. Unfortunately, their efforts to bring peaceful transformation were frustrated by despicable tyranny, which responded to the resistance via mass killings and torture. Yet, the world watched in silence and ignored the plight of Ethiopians for justice. Isn’t it ironic that the world continues to reward dictators and megalomaniacs in Africa on whose watch millions have perished due to starvation, poverty and war? Does the world genuinely believe in ‘making poverty history’ in Africa without the transfer of power from the hands of a few ruthless and self-centered individuals to the people? I hope we do not have to wait for another rock concert in twenty years to find the answers.

The demand for good governance in Africa should not be viewed as a far-fetched intellectual exercise. It is a reasonable demand, as it determines the fate of millions facing unfair and preventable tragedy. It is possible to transform the life of Africans by promoting good governance, which ensures inclusiveness, accountability, and full participation of the people. However, the world should not be deceived by dictators, who often change their tactics to resemble democratic norms, while their underlying motivation is to maintain power at all costs. In fact, the underlying realities in most African countries and the plight of the people are more accurate measures of the extent of democratic reforms than superficial declarations from dictators. Poverty eradication will be an empty declaration as long as dictators and corrupt rulers in Africa are allowed to continue oppressing the people and abusing domestic and foreign resources. It is apparent that the leaders of democratic nations can use political and economic support as leverage to put pressure on dictators to accept the will of the people.

The ultimate objective of sanction is not to hurt the people but to exert pressure on dictators and tyrants. Therefore, sanction can be effective when it is applied to support a struggle that is spearheaded by the people. Regrettably, such a powerful tool is not used when the condition is ripe. For instance, providing any kind of support to the ruling party in Ethiopia now would send the wrong message to Ethiopians who are struggling to end years of oppression and poverty. Ethiopia is a country that continues to inspire rock stars twenty years after its first agonizing images of famine hit the screens of the world at Live Aid in 1985. After twenty years, the agony of Ethiopians has multiplied with over 14 million (20%) of the population declared as ‘drought-affected’ in 2003. Hence, it is clear that the vulnerability of Ethiopians multiplied under oppressive and incompetent leadership. There is no better time than now for the world to recognize that it is not more aid that can change the situation in Ethiopia. Ethiopians have long realized that without democratically elected, committed and able leadership, no volume of aid can save their children dying from starvation, preventable diseases, poverty and war. Their full and remarkable participation in the elections of May 15 was their way of saying enough to starvation and enough to poverty. What they need from the world is enough pressure on the ruling party to respect the rule of law and transfer power to elected leaders.

Evidently, Ethiopia is also affected by the debt burden and unfair trade like any other African country. Still, the proliferation of massive human tragedy in the country cannot be explained without thoroughly examining issues related to debt burden and unfair trade. In other words, one needs to raise questions like how are loans utilized, what kind of development and trade policies are in place and to what extent are they implemented, how are resources from domestic and outside sources managed, and what is the level of the public’s participation? Clearly, these questions force us to examine the nature of governance and leadership in the country. Simply put, increasing aid is not going to prevent Ethiopian or other African children from dying. I am not summarily denigrating the value of aid. It is apparent that appropriate, well-targeted and judiciously administered aid could enhance economic growth. Nevertheless, experience shows that some form of aid in Africa seems to be doing more harm than good. Hence, the role of aid in promoting development in Africa should not be overestimated. The benefits of aid are short-term and the best aid can achieve is to fill gaps and not to be the driving force in development. On the contrary, aid can impede the development of good governance by giving a false impression that needs are met which, in turn, erode accountability by legitimizing dependency on foreign aid.

Conversely, it is indisputable that trade is at the core of economic growth and prosperity; hence, it is appropriate and legitimate that Africans demand fair trade. However, as an important player in international trade, Africa must have the power to make trade a ‘fair game’. In other words, Africa needs to be equipped with the right tools to ensure that trade becomes a ‘fair game’. Fist of all, Africa must have competent and independent leadership that is capable of harnessing its human and capital resources in developing its own macroeconomic policies. This includes making informed decisions on what to trade with whom and in what form. At the same time, Africa needs to have accountable leadership that refrains from engaging in illicit trade with external ‘actors’ for shameful personal gains. Africa must also metamorphose from a raw-material supplier to a genuine trader in order to fully benefit from its trade, thereby, creating employment opportunities and securing better terms of trade. Simultaneously, Africa needs powerful and ingenious entrepreneurs, well-trained and smart negotiators, efficient producers, far-sighted and creative policy makers and so on to take full advantage of international trade. In fact, Africa already has some of this expertise on the continent and its vast Diaspora around the world. This is why visionary and competent leadership is imperative in Africa to harness existing skills and knowledge in order to create wealth and equitable distribution of income among responsible and hard working citizens.

It sum, it is evident that Africa’s most deadly pandemic is lack of committed leadership. Africa needs to have leaders, elected by the people to work for the people. Therefore, the world could do a great service to Africans by supporting their struggle to transform leadership on the continent. Moreover, providing political and economic support to dictators when it is clear that they are not working in the interest of the people is not only morally unacceptable but also an unforgivable crime to humanity.

* Makeda Tsegaye is an Ethiopian woman with a Masters degree in International Peace Studies (with specialization in Economic Development and Peace) currently working for an international development agency in Nairobi, Kenya.

* Please send comments to

Expect sugar-coated statements and hot air from G8 leaders, says Thomas Deve, who discusses various mobilizations to injustices including the World Social Forum and Global Call to Action Against Poverty. The greatest asset for mobilization in Africa, he says, is the testimony poor communities, unemployed youths, women, children and the marginalized can make on how market based dogmas and principles have unleashed untold suffering in Africa.

Once upon a time, most of us used to fancy witty statements from "Red" literature like the Communist Manifesto and highlighted the primacy of social action that was necessary to confront Bourgeois institutions. We all accepted that the executive of a modern state was nothing but a committee for managing the day-to-day affairs of the bourgeoisie, hence the need to study contradictions in society triggered by industrialisation and control over key means of production and people's welfare. The state was correctly portrayed as an arena of struggle, hence the desire to work towards a dictatorship of the proletariat and trigger the withering of the state as a precondition for an egalitarian society. The consensus was on the need for ideological clarity, good arguments and the passion to ignite citizens of the world to belong to movements and organisations seeking to build alternatives to capitalist societies.

With all roads leading to Gleneagles this coming week, a great opportunity is presented which demands that we audit our analytical arsenals and state of mobilisation, and review levels of solidarity which we have shown in struggling against bodies of thought and action giving legitimacy to the G8. Many questions do arise. For example, are there any future scenarios we can project on how the G8 has positioned itself, taking into account that vocal constituencies are telling it that: "Efforts to tackle poverty and sustainable development, as pledged in the UN Millennium Declaration, are grossly inadequate. Governments too often fail to address the needs of their citizens. Aid from rich countries is inadequate in both quality and quantity, and promises of debt cancellation have not materialized. Rich countries have yet to act on their repeated pledges to tackle unfair trade practices."

On our part, will those who have spent their time organising against the G8 take to the streets, issue petitions, position papers and other related actions we have witnessed in the past? If we borrow insights from the struggles of the past and positive passions that used to be triggered by the "Red" experience and questions in my opening remarks, it is clear that the G8 experts and strategists are not sleeping. They recognise that millions of people the world over are not accessing basic necessities in a sustainable manner that will allow the rich to sleep quietly. There is consensus that the G8 is a cabal of the world's richest countries that has overseen the world economy during the debt crisis; introduced aid conditions that forced recipient countries to liberalise, and developed unfair trade rules.

In order for the harmful effects to be redressed, these countries have to be part of the solution, and the time to act is now. Gaps of inequality are increasing and restlessness has increased in both camps of the poor and the rich. Those organising against the G8 have grown in numbers and have visible movements on the ground whose demands are now much more focussed and coordinated globally to such an extent that the rich and powerful have to be seen responding to their demands.

It is this realisation and growing awareness on the dynamics of modern poverty which has led the G8 to move a bit on calls for debt cancellation, more and better aid, and enhance dialogue on global partnerships targeting unfair trade rules. Damning statistics are being churned out everyday on how bad the situation is and all these cannot be ignored when we confront Gleneagles. It has been argued repeatedly that one third of deaths - some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day - are due to poverty-related causes. This amounts to at least 270 million people since 1990, the majority being women and children, and roughly equal to the population of the United States. No less than 535 million still subsist on levels way below the poverty line - earning less than US$1 a day. Almost 185 million people are unemployed and half of these are young people between 15-24 years of age. For every US$1 in grant aid to developing countries, more than US$13 are taken out in debt repayments. For every three seconds that pass in 2005 without action, one more child will die from poverty. That is at least 30 000 children and at most, 50 000 people who will lose their lives from preventable causes. And finally, 245 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 continue to be forced to work (one in six of the world's children).

Poverty is not a given. 50 000 people dying a day from poverty is not acceptable and these telling statistics have inspired many people to continue fighting until figures of this nature are a relic of history rather than the reality of today. It is the situation of real people behind these statistics that has led many of us to use the white-arm band for example, and express our readiness to rededicate energy towards heightened awareness on the need to challenge systems and values of domination that cause this state of affairs. We still put on red T-shirts and feel that value has been added to critical consciousness building as was the case in the mid 70s when we went to a 200 litre fuel containers and tore out the black rubber lining on the lids meant to keep it air tight, proceeded to use them as wrist bangles for proudly proclaiming "Black power" as enounced in the then dominant Black consciousness philosophies of the time.

Back to the G8, our account would be incomplete if we do not acknowledge the role of the World Social Forum (WSF) in bringing together movements that have clearly put forward anti-capitalist struggles at the heart of how they challenge the G8. WSF processes have given some ideological coherence and clarity to many movements as they are proclaiming that "Our world is not for sale" and "Another world is possible." The above calls and pronouncements motivated one of the strongest voices challenging the hegemony of the G8. It is not a far fry from the truth, that since January 2005, most of these voices have coalesced around the "The Global Call to Action against Poverty"(GCAP), which has been described as a fast-growing coalition of millions of people and organisations united in the belief that 2005 offers an unprecedented opportunity for change.

It has simple demands:

- Increased aid from the G7 countries to 0.7% of GNI.
- More and better aid.
- The removal of trade barriers and unfair trade practices that inhibit the development of the poorer economies.
- There should be more trade justice.
- Debt cancellation for countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America
- Maximisation of efforts to eliminate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals and more in a way which is sustainable, and implemented in a way that is democratic, transparent and accountable to citizens.

GCAP, whose organisations and movements are active in over 70 countries and boasts at least 150 million supporters, is organised around charities, trade unions and women's groups, to non-governmental and religious movements that span every culture across the world. Not all its constituencies are for radical reform and revolution, but feel good to lend their weight behind a campaign ready to push more vigorously for unconditional debt cancellation for developing countries for example. Not all in GCAP will say "Smash the WTO", but they are there to make sure that the slogan "One struggle with many fronts!" becomes a reality and meaningful, hence one of the action moments targeted is the Hong Kong WTO December ministerial.

Its diversity is testament to the strength of the movement and billed as one of the world's largest anti-poverty coalitions. It is a strong voice that cannot be ignored as has been shown by the latest coverage it is getting from corporate media that has largely concentrated on GCAP symbols and placing less emphasis on the nature of its demands.

For us in Africa, our greatest asset is the testimony poor communities, unemployed youths, women, children and the marginalized can make on how market based dogmas and principles have unleashed untold suffering in our part of the globe. We have incontrovertible evidence that liberalisation has led to loss of meaningful access to basic social services. Privatisation instigated by market-based public sector reform processes has rendered many services unaffordable for the majority of our citizens. Conditionalities attached to some reform processes spearheaded by institutions that function as extensions of the G8 have emasculated the State in developing countries, leaving it with very little flexibility when it comes to policy options that are pro-poor and defending its people against offensive interests spreading fast via corporate driven globalisation.

In this respect, nothing short of a paradigm shift will radically alter the plight of the poor. We have acknowledged that new languages will be adopted to reify what is happening and pacify the struggling masses through participatory processes like Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and HIPC initiatives, but the essence of solutions underpinning dialogue in the G8 still reinforce market driven fundamentalism despite overwhelming evidence that it is a fundamentally flawed world outlook when it comes to redressing poverty related inequities be-devilling the world. The G8 on its part will produce pronouncements sugar-coated with hot air and radical rhetoric but not good enough to stop the other wave - rooted in brimstone and fire and occasioned by real lived poverty experiences that can only be ended by meaningful social and economic justice.

* Thomas Deve ([email protected]) coordinates the Economic Policy Project at MWENGO (www.mwengo.org), an organisation whose mission is to nurture a community of values by strengthening and mobilising African human resources in support of organisations fighting for social justice.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

'Raised Voices: Testimony from the majority world on the effects of G8 polices on their lives' is a multi-media project that captures a diversity of voices from varying perspectives in text, audio and video. Raised Voices on the G8 captures the viewpoints of people from around the world in countries such as Brazil, South Africa, India, West Papua, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya and more. Below we have reproduced five Raised Voices from Africa. To read more Raised Voices and to download and video and audio files of those interviewed, visit the Raised Voices website at http://www.raisedvoices.net/

Tayo from Nigeria on corruption

I am Tayo Adesina. I am from Nigeria. I'd like to speak on the issue of corruption. People in the West have talked about corruption in Africa, especially as it pertains to African leaders. But it is quite important to note the corruption in Africa has a direct bearing with the relationship between the West and Africa. Western companies operating in Africa have been vectors of corruption. So have banks in the West. So there is no way you can talk about corruption in Africa without dragging the West into it. The day the West stops being corrupt that is when corruption in Africa will stop. Without the West cutting the wings of their companies. Without the West cutting the wings of their banks, the proceeds of some of our vital resources in Africa will continue to be diverted to the West. And so African peoples will continue to suffer. And so I believe that Western leaders should try as much as possible to educate their people about the evils of corruption in Africa and then it will have an effect on African leadership. Once corruption stops then people in Africa will have a new beginning. Thank you.

Kemi from Nigeria on migration

I feel the policies of the G8 has really affected the Nigerian people because these days you know we hear of Nigerian immigrants everywhere as illegal immigrants. And it's mostly the policies of the Western countries that has actually pushed people out of Nigeria. Because the high level of unemployment, the poverty and the educational policies too. It has really affected the young people in Nigeria because their parents can not actually pay for their school fees, because part of the IMF conditionalities is that they should 'hands off' tertiary education in Nigeria. And that has really affected the Nigerian people, because they can hardly feed themselves.

Raufu from Nigeria on debt

My name is Abdul Raufu Mustafa. I'm from Nigeria and I live in Cowley in England. The issue that Nigeria really is bothered about in the conduct of the G8 countries is essentially debt. In the 70s Nigeria borrowed something in the region of 17 billion dollars. Not all of this money got to Nigeria because of collusion between corrupt Nigerian officials and corrupt bankers. But since then Nigeria has paid over 30 billion dollars and still owes another 34 billion dollars in back interest and penalties and the lot. And that has become a major problem for the country because a lot of resources are being diverted just to service the debt. And this is happening in the situation where 7 million Nigerian kids are not having the most basic of primary education. The health system in the country is in dire condition, the universities, the roads, virtually all public infrastructure. That is a situation which is partly contributed to by internal problems but also no doubt by the debt burden. This is an unsustainable debt. And absolutely something has to be done about it at the level of the G8 so that ordinary people in Nigeria can get a look in to the issues of life.

Raj from South Africa on trade

One of the things that's gonna happen at the G8 conference is that the G8 countries are going to talk about agriculture. These countries are the ones that have been pushing on the world a vastly unequal system of agricultural trade. A system that demands that farmers in the Global South turn their fields from growing food for themselves and their communities into food for export. The argument being that this is the most efficient use of their land.

Miles from Zimbabwe on Aid

I'm Miles Tendi. I'm Zimbabwean, I'm a student here in Oxford University. Now George Bush's proposed budget for 2005/6 amounts to $2,570 billion. 22 billion is going to foreign aid. Of that 22 billion, 35% is going to Israel alone. Israel has a population of 6 million and its land size is about the same as Swaziland. Swaziland happens to one of the smallest African countries. Now on top of that 48 African countries, with the combined population of 600 million will receive only 1 billion dollars. Amazing! Even more amazing is the fact that most Americans think that the US government spends 24% of its federal budget on foreign aid when in reality it's only 0.1% of the federal budget that goes towards aid. And I think that's the crux of the matter. There is no electoral price to pay for Western leaders when they do not enhance policies that'll push development forward in the under-developed world.

In the context of this week’s G8 meeting, George Dor critiques the recent debt cancellation “deal” for Africa, the Blair Commission for Africa and the rise of Paul Wolfowitz to the top job at the World Bank. He concludes that they represent “nothing other than a new means of continuing the exploitation initiated under the times of conquest, slavery and colonialism”.

The upcoming G8 meeting or, more accurately as regards economic matters, the G7, to be held in Edinburgh, UK, will put the spotlight on Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa and the issue of debt.

Much has been made of the commission on the release of its report in March and the announcement on debt consequent on the meeting of Finance Ministers in preparation for the G7. But, at most, these developments amount to little more than a reflection of the need to react to the persistence of the activities of Jubilee and other social movements over the years. A closer look at these initiatives suggests very little to celebrate.

Debt “Cancellation” and Control of Africa’s Economies

Starting with the debt issue, the ministers announced an amount of debt to be cancelled of a mere US$40 billion for African and other countries. This is a fraction of the total debt of African countries of US$300 billion and of countries in the South of US$2 400 billion. It is less than the amount of more than US$50 billion that the United States spends EACH YEAR on its illegitimate occupation of Iraq.

It also compares poorly with the G7 offering in Cologne, Germany, in 1999 of US$100 billion. Moreover, the intermittent promises of the G7 include amounts promised before but not fulfilled. In other words, they are little more than recycled promises.

In the case of the Cologne announcement, the real intention was not to provide debt relief but to rescue the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank from their crisis of legitimacy and enforce their continued control over the economic policies of the countries in the South. The institutions were strengthened in the form of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Of course, these new initiatives were also quickly exposed for what they really are, structural adjustment in new guise.

Most importantly, the current offering, like that of 1999, is contingent on countries implementing economic reforms, in other words it is premised on a fundamental difference with the Jubilee South slogan, “total and unconditional debt cancellation”. This is cancellation for countries that have gone through the IMF and WB hoops, those that accept these institutions’ structural adjustment conditions. In other words, it is another deal to strengthen the IMF and WB.

Previously, the G8, IMF and WB have used debt as an instrument to dictate our economies in the form of making loans for debt servicing conditional on IMF and WB policies. Now debt relief/cancellation and grants are being put forward as the new instruments to dictate our economies. If a country wants relief, it first has to meet the prescribed conditions, it has to toe the line.

A related critical point is that debt relief/cancellation does not necessarily translate into more money to spend on meeting people’s needs. The relief may indeed result in less debt servicing, but this is only forthcoming if countries have agreed to the conditions that include cuts in government spending and promotion of the private sector. Indeed, this is the case in Zambia: in order to jump through the hoops to be included in the G7 list of 18 countries, it had to further cut state expenditure over and above the decades of cuts that the debt regime had already forced on the country. That is to say, it will get cancellation with less money to spend on people’s needs.

On the word “cancellation”, this does seem to be an advance on the previous rhetoric of debt “relief”, but the offer only covers 18 countries and it is not yet clear whether it amounts to 100 percent cancellation even for this short list of countries. In the case of the Latin American countries, for example, much of their debt is related to a multilateral institution, the Interamerican Development Bank.

The Blair Commission, Neoliberalism and the International Financial Institutions

As regards the Blair Commission, in its opening lines it states, “For its part, Africa must accelerate reform.” There are two important issues here. First, the report suffers from the recurrent syndrome of blaming the victim for corruption, conflict and war. There are indeed too many instances of African leaders who are guilty of one or more of these charges. But, the role of the Northern countries in slavery, colonialism and the imposition of neoliberal policies and the impact of these Northern interventions on poverty and death across the continent are simply ignored.

Secondly, while the report more explicitly refers to reform of political governance in order to address corruption and conflict, it also makes repeated references to various forms of “economic reforms”. In other words, in failing to address the neoliberal cause of so much of Africa’s current destitution, it simply reiterates that Africa must continue to follow this neoliberal path at a faster pace.

This is perhaps most evident in relation to the report’s treatment of the multilateral institutions. It fails dismally to address the negative impact of the World Bank and IMF on the destruction of African economies and the poverty and death that this has led to. It has been estimated that World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programmes are responsible for the deaths of 19 000 children in the world every day. Yet, the report simply asserts that “The African Development Bank needs to be strengthened… The IMF and World Bank need to give higher priority to Africa’s development.”

Paul Wolfowitz, Military Invasion and Economic War

It is no small surprise that the new President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, echoed this call and visited the continent immediately on assuming office. Wolfowitz was the architect of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the expansion of United States military influence in the Middle East and the awarding of multi-million and billion dollar contracts in Iraq to corporations with close ties to the Republican Party leadership.

He has a history of being against détente and arms control during the years of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. He supported Asian dictators like the Indonesian General Suharto on behalf of the Reagan administration. He has been a persistently strong proponent of more spending on defense.

Wolfowitz was eagerly pushing for regime change in Iraq well before 9/11. He defined leadership as, “not lecturing and posturing and demanding, but demonstrating that your friends will be protected and taken care of, that your enemies will be punished, and that those who refuse to support you will regret having done so." He helped convince George Bush 1 to use force to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and urged Bill Clinton to turn his attention “to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.”

He lied about the purported weapons of mass destruction and claimed, "Intelligence about terrorism is inherently murky, and the US must be prepared to act on less-then perfect information.” He later admitted that oil was a significant reason for the invasion and occupation, stating that North Korea will only be treated to sanctions because it is not sitting on “an ocean of oil”.

The sinister combination of George Bush’s appointment of his man in Iraq to lead the World Bank with the call for the World Bank to play a more significant role in Africa is now being pushed as a boost for Africa’s development. Wolfowitz’ role in the destruction of Iraq and the World Bank’s role in poverty and death on the African continent are being brushed under the carpet. Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s Minister of Finance, described Wolfowitz as a ‘wonderful individual, perfectly capable’. Even some critics are suggesting that Wolfowitz be given a chance in his new role and that the World Bank be given yet another chance on the continent.

Wolfowitz visited Nigeria, Burkino Faso, Rwanda and South Africa from 12 to 18 June. Jubilee South Africa and the Anti-War Coalition organised two demonstrations on 17 June, one outside the offices of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the other at the Gauteng Provincial Department of Finance and Economic Affairs. The message was clear: “Paul Wolfowitz is not welcome in South Africa, he must go home! The World Bank, its partner, the IMF and related international financial institutions should be shut down!”

For Jubilee South Africa, the opposition to these institutions is based on both their role in the use of debt to impose structural adjustment in the countries of the South as well as their impact on South Africa. The World Bank and IMF supported the Apartheid regime and its institutions in the form of substantial loans until they were instructed to stop doing so. They have returned in the post-Apartheid era to shape the country’s neoliberal macroeconomic and social policies, manifesting in rising unemployment and lack of access to social services.

The Blair Commission, Trade and Resources

The Blair Commission’s handling of trade issues also reflects its insistence that Africa insert itself into the neoliberal global world. It calls on Africa to produce cheaper goods for the world market and suggests that rich countries allow African goods somewhat more access to their markets. In other words, African countries are being told to continue on the path of orientating their productive activities towards exports at the expense of producing the goods and services needed by the people of Africa.

The report’s recommendations on trade must be seen within the broader context of a world in which the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has assumed enormous power and in which unbalanced regional trade agreements are being foisted on African countries. African economies are being opened up to the goods of Northern countries, undermining local production and resulting in increasing unemployment. The report’s approach will, at best, offer limited opportunities to larger-scale private sector enterprises with the capacity to engage in export activities, while continuing to undermine small-scale production, rural economic activity, food security and the like.

The commission does highlight some of the most glaring manifestations of Northern exploitation of the continent. For example, it talks of “conflict resources” and implicitly acknowledges that Northern banks are holding stolen assets, Northern corporations are guilty of making bribes, and the oil, minerals and other extractive industries are less than open about their payments. However, its recommendations in this regard are by and large vague. It notes that “assets stolen from the people of Africa by corrupt leaders must be repatriated” and “Firms who bribe should be refused export credits.” From previous experience, there just isn’t the political will or clout to give effect to these recommendations.

As for resources, the commission is very much in keeping with the meagre offerings of the Finance Ministers in relation to debt. It suggests a mere US$25 billion per year to be committed by donor countries, to be implemented by 2010. This could be doubled by 2015, subject to the condition that “good governance in Africa must continue to advance.”

It argues that half of this amount should go to education and health. It makes positive recommendations on removing primary school and patient fees, but instructions of a similar kind by the United States Congress to the Treasury, World Bank and IMF have gone unheeded before. Most significantly, the pennies proposed in the report won’t come near to restoring the levels of finance to health and education on the continent so consistently undermined by the World Bank and the IMF in the decades of imposed structural adjustment.

Finally, the report argues that a third of the 25 billion a year should go to “growth and poverty reduction”, a euphemism for an increased role for the private sector and a “doubling of expenditure on infrastructure”. This includes large, regional transport and power projects. To date, projects of this sort have realised large profits for Northern and South African corporations at the expense of increasing indebtedness and environmental destruction on the continent.

There are substantial similarities and convergences between the Blair Commission and Thabo Mbeki’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad). This is particularly so in their neoliberal orientation towards the World Bank, IMF, trade and large infrastructure projects. The report has no qualms about exposing Mbeki’s capitulation to the neoliberal approach in stating that, “The developed world must support the African Union’s Nepad programme to build public/private partnerships in order to create a stronger climate for growth, investment and jobs.”

The Blair Commission and the G7 Finance Ministers’ announcement on debt thus represent no more than two additional moments in the decades of neoliberal exploitation of the continent. This is, in turn, nothing other than a new means of continuing the exploitation initiated under the times of conquest, slavery and colonialism.

* George Dor is Jubilee South Africa General Secretary.

* Please send comments to

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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Bob Geldof is only the latest in a long line of Europeans who have appointed themselves as spokespersons for Africans, writes Patricia Daley. With a distinct brand of humanitarianism they have acted to serve the demands of global capitalism, suppressing African voices and aiding the exploitation of the continent.

Bob Geldof’s rally against poverty in Africa seems to have incurred admiration from well-meaning whites and indifference or resentment from Africans. The questions the critics pose are: who gave this pop star the authority to speak for us; why does he represent Africa in such a one dimensional way? Can’t he and his supporters see the realities on the ground? Can’t he see that Africans want to speak for themselves? Geldof seems to believe that his mission is noble. To him and his supporters, the moral argument is clear: the West is rich, Africa is poor; the West has the means to help Africa out of poverty. The argument is so simple that only the easily cynical would seek to dispute it. Through his celebrity status Geldof hopes to mobilise western public opinion to put pressure on the leaders of the capitalist world to be more benevolent to Africa.

To understand the Geldof phenomenon, we need to look historically at the role that Africa has played in the European imagination and in global capitalism. Geldof’s crusade and attitude is not new. He is only the latest in a long line of European men whose personal mission has been to transform Africa and Africans. David Livingstone, the celebrity of his day, embarked on a similar crusade in the late 19th century, painting Africa as a land of ‘evil’, of hopelessness and of child-like humans. His mission was to raise money to pursue his personal ambitions.

‘Darkest Africa’ occupies a special place in the white man’s psyche; it remains a place where he [and she] can achieve heroic status. Therefore, does it not make sense that African voices are silenced? Michel Foucault’s treatise on the relationship between power and knowledge may be old hat in academia, but still relevant in the real world. Sir Bob would lose his authenticity and thus his power if he was to give space to the multiplicity of African voices; many of which would certainly challenge his stance.

It may seem amazing that in the twenty-first century, with increased mobility, greater communication and an African heading the United Nations that many westerners are more comfortable with European interlopers translating Africa for them. Perhaps, only then could some be persuaded, as one famous Irish comedian was, ‘to give money to those bloody niggers’. Africa remains the object of western desires not the subject of its own destiny.

Livingstone’s and Geldof’s humanitarianism fits well with the demands of global capitalism, serving to obscure distinct phases in the exploitation of Africa. Livingstone’s redemption of the African savage was very much tied to colonial conquest and exploitation of the continent’s resources; a mission that Livingstone supported in the marriage of commerce and Christian morality. The consequence for most of Africa was dispossession, forced labour, de-humanization, oppression and genocide, as in the Congo Free State.

Geldof’s Live Aid also occurred at a time when neo-liberal policies were being forced on recalcitrant African countries. The results are fully documented: collapse of health and education services, increased unemployment and privatization, leading to greater impoverishment of the masses. All this occurring while westerners bathe in the glory of their collective benevolence to the ‘lost continent’. Geldof was even rewarded for his chivalry with a knighthood.

How convenient for Live 8 - an upsurge of western popular goodwill - to occur at the same time as a new scramble for African resources? With the threat from China, Africa’s oil and other strategic minerals are even more critical to the continuance of western economic dominance. One just has to consider the significance of Africa’s resources in the west’s push for peace settlements in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is beneficial to western capital for Africans to be seen as the architects of their own misery. Mugabe, thug as he is, is no worse, and certainly less so, than many other leaders in Africa’s post-colonial history, yet his vilification fits into the discourse of corruption and self-inflicted harm and justifies the prevailing view that Africans cannot be trusted with their own destiny. Racism is not often used in explanations of the west’s attitude towards Africa, yet it remains a fundamental component of the west’s interaction with Africans – nowhere is it more visible than in the diaspora. How can one claim to want to save a people, when one is complicit in the marginalization of their relatives? The irony has not been lost on Africans.

Geldof, like Livingstone before him, represents the cultural arm of global capitalism. The inequalities he rallies against are reproduced by the very capitalist system he supports. How many artists, fading or otherwise, would turn down the promotional opportunity of playing to an audience of the magnitude predicted for Live 8? In the cultural as well as in the development industry, African poverty serves as a vehicle for wealth creation.

Those people, whether on the right or the left, who are conversant with the realities of Africa, know that aid will not ‘save’ the continent and deliver the promised land; that the problem in Africa is not poverty but impoverishment and that Africa needs freedom not redemption. Africa’s creativity has to be released through true democracy and not the compromise of ‘good governance’ and western tutelage.

Livingstone’s and Geldof’s suppression of African voices, whether deliberately or inadvertently, aids the continued exploitation of the continent. Geldof has the capacity to transcend Livingstone’s shortcomings, if only he would listen to Africans and engage with issues of reparations and the politics of truth. He would certainly get more diaspora Africans among his London audience, despite their lack of appreciation for rock music.

After Live 8, when African resources are delivering wealth to western trans-nationals and African people suffer further degradation, be it wars, hunger or political oppression, they are likely to find little external support. After all, a whole generation of western civil society will say, “did they not receive debt relief?” “Are they so incompetent or corrupt that they could not make good use of our bountifulness?” In Africa, people will continue to live and die and a lutta continua…

* Dr Patricia Daley holds the posts of University lecturer in Human Geography, and Fellow and Tutor in Geography at Jesus College, Oxford. She is an African from Jamaica.

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