Today Live8 is holding concerts across 9 time zones. As I write, the one in Japan has almost finished, the one in Johannesburg has started, the London one is about to start and the sound checks are starting in the USA. It’s laudable aims are to influence the leaders at the G8 meeting next week to focus on Africa and the world’s other poorest nations to provide a series of measures including increasing aid to the UN target figure of 0.7% of GNI (Gross National Income). I want to propose a greater challenge – to achieve an aid budget to Africa as a whole of zero, that’s right nothing.
If Live8 reinforces the perception of Africa as a impoverished disease-ridden continent whose peoples are waiting for a hand out, they are in danger of committing a greater crime than any of the old colonial powers. Africa has tremendous challenges to face of dealing with AIDS, malaria and a host of other insect borne infections. We do need to offer as much help as we can until these are solved but this is not by shipping in loads of food or giving money for drugs providing the country complies with the agenda of the “born again” Jesus junkies in the US. One of the most obscene boasts Bush made this week was the amount of food aid the USA sends. For food aid read “subsidised over production dumped on poor countries so their farmers go out of business”.
Africa is not a poor continent. It has huge natural resources which are sucked out by the G8 at the cheapest prices possible while they restrict their markets for goods from Africa or, a new development, highly subsidised finished goods from the sweat shops of China out-compete the factories in Africa. China gets cheap cotton from the USA where every $5 worth is subsidised by $8 in payments to US farmers. This is made into the t-shirts and socks in huge factories built by the Red Army and staffed by very cheap labour. China then uses its artificially under valued currency to ensure that it is the cheapest supplier. Free trade arrangements that came into force earlier this year made the situation worse. Previous quota arrangements meant that African and South Asian factories had a market. Abolishing them meant that the long term damage to the economy in Sri Lanka is worse than the effects of the tsunami.
The continent at the moment has its fair share of the world’s corrupt and evil leaders. All of the G8 can to some extent share in the blame for this. The ex colonial nations left countries in which the principles of democracy and equality were not enshrined and too often “fathers of the nation” became their country’s rapist. Geo-political rivalries in the Cold War meant that the failings of many of the client states’ leaders were ignored and even today they are excused if they keep the oil (and other basic commodities) flowing. Too often those leaders have learned the lessons of the west. The race hatred of the Nazis and the way in which propaganda was used by them was repeated from Uganda to Rwanda. Ethnic “superiority” of the Zulu was exploited by the Apartheid regime to divide the “nie blankes” and led to violence in the early days of the move to democracy. Yet all over the continent leaders are finding they cannot hide their corruption. The deputy President in South Africa has been fired and despite foot dragging from some countries like Switzerland the huge funds siphoned from Nigeria are being paid back.
Neither are the peoples of Africa indolent in the payment of debts. While many countries have historic debts with the World Bank and bi-nationally caused by bad investments, corrupt leaders taking the money and natural disasters, there are others like Lesotho who have worked hard to pay off their debts and are now to some extent being punished for doing so. Many of its problems today are caused by the reduction in demand for gold as many of its people were migrant miners in South Africa.
The West should and must admit its mistakes, both past and present, but the leaders of the continent must also be held to account. The African Union was “too busy with other more important matters” to comment on the disgusting demolitions in Zimbabwe which have left hundreds of thousands homeless and more who have lost business income from “illegal” commercial buildings. Don’t be too cynical about business people – these include the grandmother who built offices in her garden to provide income to support her grandchildren who had been orphaned by AIDS. It was easy for Mugabe to get this political cleansing of the towns ignored by the AU when several of the leaders had also used the technique to clear the inconvenient from land they wanted for one of their grand projects.
With some very honorable exceptions, the West has failed to give development aid at the UN target of 0.7%. Although a large donor in cash terms, the USA is one of the worst. While the official figure is .12%, much of this is in the form of highly conditional aid so that, for example, it must be used to buy US goods and services and that will continue with Bush’s proposals. A recent report estimated the amount of real, unencumbered development aid from the US to the third world is as low as .02%
But in addition to short term real aid, the people of Africa need justice. Justice in internation trade and justice from their leaders. The grandiose projects are not needed – far better to provide large numbers of micro loans for the women to set themselves up in business than to build fancy parliament buildings. We need to work with the people of Africa, if necessary through NGOs over the heads of their leaders and the World Bank. Examples of good practice are there, they just need to be encouraged and hugely expanded. There is no quick fix but the goals for 2015 of having the numbers in the deepest poverty should be only a start. For those who quibble about local charities in the US or Canada not being able to exploit the goodwill at Live8 for their purposes, the definition of this is an income of less than $2 a day per person. A tankful of gasoline in the US costs more than families in Africa have to feed and clothe themselves for a week. Paying a minimal carbon tax on it so that CO2 trading can truly take effect would mean more for social justice in Africa than donating to charities after Live8 because of Bob Geldof’s abuse.
People in Africa are hungry for food and water in some parts. Many more are hungry for decent (or any) basic education for their kids. In the short term we must ensure that we give enough to kick start the economies, health and education systems in Africa and promote good governance. Debt relief must go hand in hand with measures to abolish corruption so taxes can be collected to pay for schools and hospitals, not presidential palaces and executive jets. Western companies who encourage corruption must be punished and their directors jailed longer than bank robbers – they are after all stealing food from the mouths of the starving. We must pressure our leaders to abolish subsidies that take our taxes and pay farmers to dump crops on the world market.
Singapore has shown that without corruption, without military coups and with the sort of educational and entrepreneurial expertise that is suppressed by the current abject poverty, it is possible for Africa to emerge from the malaise it is currently suffering. Singapore needs no aid. Europe needed aid after the World Wars and is now giving aid to spread development east combined with demands for good governance of the sort we should be demanding in Africa. We must give aid to the poorest countries in Africa now, not because of some form of guilt, not because the poverty helps “promote terrorism” as Bush seemed to suggest, not even because it is right. We should do it from self interest because if we give now, hopefully our children will see a time when it is no longer needed.
