A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/feuer.html
African poker game
By ED FEUER - Winnipeg Sun
April 9, 2001In The Wizard of Oz, the characters wanted a heart, a brain and courage.
And now Jean Chretien is on the yellow brick road looking for a legacy.
The PM is touring Africa, setting the stage for the June G8 summit in Kananaskis where he hopes to get an agreement linking billions of dollars in assistance and investment to good governance.
It's his big chance. As his mentor Lester Pearson is remembered for international peacekeeping, Chretien wants to be known for helping Africa, a continent usually linked with suffering.
It hasn't been easy for the PM, and harsh realities often intrude. That's why he's been so busily pussyfooting around inconvenient issues such as South African Thabo Mbeki's weird views on AIDS, from which his country and others in the area suffer mightily.
But the diagnosis is obvious: the billions of dollars in aid from the West that has gone to Africa over the years has been largely wasted, and investors have been frightened off - all because of downright awful governance.
For good governance to exist, there must be the basic understanding that the needs of the governed must come before those of corrupt rulers and their cronies or some wacky ideology.
In his statement last month to to the UN International Conference on Financing for Development in Mexico, Chretien said:
"Leaders of developing nations need to follow policies that create a framework for sustainable economic growth and productive private sector investment. Including a commitment to good governance and the rule of law. Sound fiscal and monetary policies. And improved transparency."
The prescription is correct, but there's a rather large stumbling block.
If more African governments did those things, chances are many leaders now in power would be out of power - not a situation they would prefer.
The concept of hanging on to power is something Chretien should understand. But in Canada, where rule of law is us, the PM plays the game of democracy - and has the luck of a fragmented opposition.
The African leaders have created something they call the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Chretien has his G8 Africa Action Plan. If the two concepts mesh, there can be progress and that's what the PM's consultative tour is about.
But getting that agreement on swapping aid and investment for good governance is looking more like the usual international poker game.
At an October meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, NEPAD's implementation committee said it "agreed that African leaders should set up parameters for good governance to guide their activities at both the political and economic levels ... at its next meeting, it will consider and adopt an appropriate peer review mechanism and a code of conduct."
The world is still waiting for that one.
"The committee," the communique said, "also expressed the hope that Africa's development partners will complement these efforts by playing their own part."
In other words, they're telling G8 members to show the colour of their money.
There's the crux: Setting those "parameters" and a "code of conduct." The African leaders won't want the G8 judging performance, and that's where the "peer review" mechanism comes in.
Bottom line: They want the money. They don't want real strings attached.
The countries with the big money in the G8, who don't particularly care about Chretien's legacy, are the ones who will have to be convinced.
Ed Feuer is a Winnipeg Sun copy editor; reach him at efeuer@wpgsun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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