By Hugh Carnegy in Davos Published: January 26 2001 20:42GMT | Last Updated: January 26 2001 20:59GMT Africa has gained an unusually high profile in Davos as organisers have strained to blunt criticism that they have not taken seriously enough the inequalities in the world's economy. President Benjamin William Mkapa of Tanzania was one of the few Africans among the many movers and shakers in Davos invited to speak at the opening ceremony. He voiced Africa's frustration over the shortcomings of globalisation. "The evidence points to exclusion rather than integration, deprivation rather than benefit," he declared in a fiery speech. The inability of Africa to gain much from globalisation - and anger over some of the obstacles - has been a recurrent complaint among African politicians, businessmen and academics at Davos. But a striking feature among these same people has been the strong recognition that Africa must look to itself to make progress as much as seek outside help. Tomorrow Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal combine to present "A Plan for Africa". Their initiative stresses the need for African governments to transform the continent by their own efforts. Even so, there is no mistaking African anger at the external barriers they confront, despite US preferential trade terms for Africa and the Lome Convention trade concessions from the European Union. "OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] subsidies to agriculture total $350bn. That is enough to fly every cow in OECD countries around the world once each," said Tidjane Thiam, a partner at McKinsey, the management consultants. Away from the congress platform, President Mkapa set out some new African priorities. "First we must muster the spirit of enterprise. We don't do enough of that. We must also embrace and promulgate open policies - no more fishy transactions." At a meeting on how to regenerate the continent, one participant put it like this: "We need to stop the bleeding! Our leaders should stop complaining to the world about the lack of fair play. There is no fair play in the world." Mr Thiam echoed this message. He said even where African governments had espoused reform, too often the necessary conditions to make it succeed - from political stability to strong regulation - were not present. from FT.com _______________________________________________ Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
