I will renege on my
promise in this column last week to return to a discussion of politics in
Botswana and instead comment on the Africa Commission put together by
British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
On Thursday we were in Munyonyo to
attend a "consultative meeting" of the commission meant to "generate new
ideas and action for a strong and prosperous Africa".
Like many such
initiatives, the Blair Commission, as it is commonly called, claims to be
seeking the "input" of Africans into its report to the G8 Summit later
this year. Catch words like "consultation" are used to claim that Africans
"own" the process and its recommendations. Yet the commission carries the
arrogance and patronising logic that Africans have suffered for
generations from their governments and donors.
The "consultative"
meeting spent five hours, the entire morning, listening to state officials
and donors and only two hours â late in the evening, to Ugandans.
There was an
"introduction" from the "chairman" of the meeting who came from the
government. Then Commissioner Anna Tibaijuka spoke followed by
Commissioner William Kalema, then Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi, Mr Simon
Mills from the commission secretariat, Mr James Mugume from Uganda's
ministry of foreign affairs, Mr Damon Kitabire from the ministry of
finance and Mr Daouda Toure, the resident representative of
UNDP.
Was this
consultation? By lunchtime I could not stand the circus and I protested:
why are we listening to the commissioners, government officials and the
UN? I thought we were supposed to give our views? As happens in such
meetings, their very organisation is based on a dictatorial logic where
the "agenda" cannot be questioned. If the commission thought Ugandans
mattered, why didn't it give them first priority to speak in the morning
when they are still fresh and mentally robust?
The Blair
Commission, I am not sorry to say, epitomises the failed development
experience in Africa â a product of policies designed by the state and for
the state in collusion with the so-called "development partners" where the
continent's people have very little say. This weakness has been recognised
but not overcome. These days the state and the donors pretend to consult
"the stakeholders" through meetings like the one in Munyonyo when in fact
they only fulfil a formal obligation.
Blair and his
chancellor of the exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, have been calling on other
developed countries to increase the foreign aid to Africa. At the Munyonyo
meeting, Ms Tibaijuka regurgitated this same pedestrian thinking. I can
predict that this "consultative process" will produce a document for the
G8 calling for more aid to Africa i.e. peddling the Blair-Brown mantra.
Where an attempt was
made to give an "alternative" view on foreign aid, it was from the state
represented by Mr Kitabire and calling for a shift from "project support"
to "budget support" i.e. shifting control of aid resources from donors to
the government.
But where was
Uganda's private sector? Possibly it would have rejected both project and
budget support and argued that foreign aid should be channelled through
private banks to private investors as long term credit to finance long
term investment at an affordable interest rate of 2 percent.
Uganda's farmers
would probably have called for access to affordable credit to invest in
fertilisers, better farm implements and improved seeds.
There was no
criticism of the aid industry itself and its distorting effects on both
the economies and politics of poor countries. For governments to retain
political power, they try to win the support of key constituencies by
delivering particular benefits e.g. basic social services â education,
health, and infrastructure â roads, schools and hospitals. But to do this
they need money.
If a government's
fiscal security lies in collecting money from its own people, it is driven
by self-interest to govern in a more enlightened fashion. To increase its
revenues, it will talk to the private sector, and ask them for the
policies necessary to increase their productivity so that it can collect
more revenues from them. In doing this, the government is conceding
political liberty. It is giving voice in the policy making process to
those whose wealth it desires.
For most of these
African governments, however, the productive margin in their search for
revenue does not lie in the domestic economy, but with international
donors. Instead of listening to their own people, governments in Africa
listen to donors. Foreign aid therefore undermines democratic culture, and
it also creates a begging mentality among state politicians and
bureaucrats alike so that for every fiscal shortage they look for foreign
aid, not for policies that favour rapid capital accumulation.
This way, aid also
stifles institutional development. The Uganda Revenue Authority collects
about 57 percent of the taxes due. Problem? Weaknesses in tax
administration! Since donors are willing to pick its bills, the state has
limited incentive to invest in improved tax administration.
Secondly, taxation
is a politically explosive issue. Those who evade taxes are often the
rich, and politically powerful. Why should any government antagonise key
political constituencies in the name of tax collection when Uncle Sam (the
donors) is willing to pick its bills?
But the conference
in Munyonyo was talking of a "Marshal Plan" for Africa. This ignorance is
baffling because at their peak, the Marshal Plan funds were only 2.5
percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of their largest recipients â
France and Germany. At its height foreign aid was 5 and 6 percent of the
GDP of South Korea and Taiwan respectively. An average sub-Sahara African
country receives aid to the tune of 13 percent of its GDP, an
unprecedented transfer of financial resources in historical terms.
However, over the last 30 years, the continent has been growing poorer,
not richer!
Why do such meetings
continue at all? They provide a forum through which Africa's state elite
and international donors play games of mutual deceit that something is
being done to improve the well being of the wretched of this continent.
Both sides gain: Africa's elite appear modern and feel consulted. Blair,
discredited among key constituencies within his Labour Party because of
his unexplainable support for the war in Iraq and searching for something
to help improve his moral credibility before next year's general
elections, decides to spearhead some "moral cause" and finds Africa's
misery one such straw to cling on.
Only Dr Kalema made
a point that Africa's challenge is not one of poverty reduction (a
humanitarian platitude) but wealth creation, and that this is done by the
private sector.
When I looked
around, Uganda's private sector was conspicuous by its absence. There was
only Mr James Mulwana and Mr Madhvani who were not scheduled to speak. Mr
Patrick Bitature left before the floor would be opened for his in put.
Among those who
remained, a few were decent, while the rest were the usual suspects on
Africa: the donors, state bureaucrats, politicians, "experts", and our
foreign aid dependant "civil society" types.
Africa's misery, it
became clear to me, has been instrumentalised by the western and African
elite to reproduce themselves through self-righteous missions to tackle
the problems of poverty and conflict.
They construct
development as a humanitarian crusade to which the kind and charitable of
the world come together to "help the poor". Rather than be subjects of
development, the poor become its objects â "to be helped".
The crude fact is
development is more a product of self-interest than moral commitment.
Self-interested parties, for example, the business class, seek to promote
their particular interests by using the state to promote policies that
favour rapid capital accumulation.
But the promoters
for Africa's development are the self-righteous. Sadly, self-righteousness
is a more stubborn quality to deal with than self-interest: it is easier
to negotiate with Mr Sudhir Ruparelia than with Pastor Martin Sempa.
Africa's problem is one of too many "Pastor Martin Sempas" and very few
"Sudhir Ruparelias".
