A rchive Date
[ 28-06-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Africa ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur.html
G-8 aid key to Africa's future
By SALIM MANSUR - For the London Free Press
June 28, 2002
At the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy, last year, a group of African leaders presented the New African Initiative.This was later revised as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and adopted by African leaders in October.
Canadian response, led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien, has been to give Africa priority in this year's G-8 summit.
NEPAD is a multi-dimensional program aimed at overcoming Africa's marginalization in the new global economy and to harness its human and natural resources for sustainable development. But if Africa is to break out of its economic backwardness, it will only do so with the support of G-8 members.
Ironically, nearly 50 years after the beginning of the end of European colonialism in Africa, the continent's future again rests on decisions of former colonial powers.
Africa today is a broken continent, deeply wounded, most of it self-inflicted, and its promise on the eve of independence from European colonialism long betrayed, its future full of misgivings.
Sub-Saharan Africa has a population of 660 million and more than one-third live on an income of $1 US a day. At the beginning of last decade, the population was about 450 million with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of about $135 billion US, about equal to the GDP of Belgium, with a population of 10 million.
Statistical measures of Africa only confirm what is so evident. No African witch doctor could have concocted such a lethal brew of political corruption, insane ethnic and civil conflicts and diseases of epidemic proportions, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS that African leaders - Mandela being the exception - have served their people.
The political history of Africa is complicated by its colonial past and its post-colonial present. Basil Davidson is the best known English chronicler of Africa. In his book, The Black Man's Burden (1992), Davidson distils more than 50 years of his experience in Africa and more than a dozen books to summarize the continent's agony.
Davidson writes: "The actual and present condition of Africa is one of deep trouble, sometimes a deeper trouble than the worst imposed during the colonial years. For some time now, deserts have widened year by year. . . Cities that barely deserve the name have spawned plagues of poverty on a scale never known in earlier times, or even dreamed of. Harsh governments or dictatorships rule over peoples who distrust them to the point of hatred and usually for good and sufficient reason; and all too often one dismal tyranny gives way to a worse one. Despair rots civil society, the state becomes an enemy, bandits flourish."
Any success in achieving NEPAD's goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development requires the G-8 provide debt relief and capital. But aid can only be conditional. There can be no tolerance for the Mugabe-type regime in Zimbabwe, or ethnic conflicts, or for continuing abuse of women, or denial of democratic reforms in places such as Kenya and Sudan.
Aid must no longer be viewed as handouts given by governments of rich countries to counterparts in poor countries. It should be viewed as a trust where citizens of rich countries willingly provide their hard-earned tax dollars to improve living standards of people in poor countries.
In return, donors want to see tangible results in poverty reduction and sustainable development, not bloated bureaucracies and public officials, political leaders and their retinue making a living on aid money.
For too long this trust has been violated, resulting in donor fatigue and skepticism over aid as an instrument for development.
Africa needs help. But to be meaningful for Africans in a new millennium, aid must unshackle them from corruption and poverty and make freedom a development goal.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Wednesdays Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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