ISSUE Vol. 16 No. 4 2013
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Contents COVER Africa's trade and development agenda, which way?...................
page 5
ECOWAS on slippery route with EPAs……………………..
page 8
COP 19 opens in Warsaw amidst worsening climate situation………………………………………......... page 12 Africa is not doing enough to stem illicit flows……………… page 14
DEVELOPMENT Tackling the global jobs crisis……………………………… page 16 German development cooperation, colonial-racist imagery and civil society response…………………………. page 18 Africa's growing competitiveness in the global tourism market………………………………………........... page 21 Africa's economic growth: A fallacy of numbers?........................ page 23 Africa's expanding educated underclass…………………….. page 26 page photo: Cargo at an African port
POLITICS Little change in poverty after a decade-long growth in Africa…………………………………………................... page 28
HEALTH The controversy over “counterfeit” drugs…………………... page 31 Ghana's drug agency clashes with a local pharma giant; bans Indian pharma co…………….............................................. page 33 As resistance grows, malaria vaccine raises hopes…………… page 36
RIGHTS AU's ICC summit: A case of elite solidarity for self preservation…………………………………………............ page 37
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African Agenda Published by TWN Africa
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EDITORIAL
Africa must consolidate its development efforts AFRICA'S long drawn out efforts at putting itself on the right path for trade and development continues to be bumpy. Over the years at various continental fora, decisions were taken to ensure all work towards the same goal of regional integration and protecting the interest of the continent as it strives to pull itself from poverty. As the World Trade Organisation's Ministerial in Bali draws near, many groupings from across the world, G7, G20 etc are making efforts to consolidate their interest and Africa should not be left behind. Unfortunately, signals coming from the continent are not encouraging. At the African Union's 8th Ordinary Annual meeting of the Conference of African Union Ministers of Trade (CAMoT), the continent's highest political and policy-making forum on Trade, attendance and deliberations left much to be desired. (See Page 5, Africa's trade and development agenda, which way?) For a continent which has a lot to lose if it does not take the right decisions leading to transforming and integrating its economy the attitude of member countries of the AU towards the meeting was undesirable. Worse still, as CAMoT was meeting in Addis Ababa, ECOWAS trade ministers were at the same time meeting in Dakar to deliberate on Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. (See Page 8, ECOWAS on slippery route with EPAs). The distraction aside, both fora deliberated on trade and development as well as integration issues and could have benefited immensely from a consolidated and focused meeting. Talks of a Continental Free Trade Area, CFTA, which many think will help in a long way to achieve the long-wished 4
economic takeoff that Africa needs seem to be going nowhere with the fragmentation coming up along sub-regional faultlines. Africa's Regional Economic Commissions, RECs, like ECOWAS, as seen above, seem to be in a hurry to take position on the EPAs meanwhile the EPAs are not limited to only the subregions but the whole of the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) configuration . Meanwhile, whatever decisions the RECs take on the EPAs, have repercussions on not only the CFTA but the general trade and development policy of the continent. Not losing sight of the fact that the AU's major trade and development agenda is, '“the strategy for the implementation of the Action Plan for Boosting Intra-Africa Trade (BIAT) and the strategic framework for the establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 2017�. Care must thus be taken so that both the WTO, Bali Ministerial and the EPA negotiations, do not detract, Africa from its avowed aim of promoting intraAfrican trade and ultimately creating the CFTA. A clear danger emerging from the disjointed and uncoordinated efforts coming from various organizations may result in the continent shooting itself in the foot as positions seem to differ on pertinent issues. For example, the ECOWAS decision to give the European Union 75 percent access to its market will completely defeat the CFTA purpose of promoting intra-Africa trade as EU goods will flood the ECOWAS and invariably Africa's markets. Could these flagrant disjointed and self-defeatist policy choices not be avoided if the various RECS and their negotiation officials together with the AU are made to partake in joint meetAFRICAN AGENDA
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ings that eventually, look at the bigger trade and development agenda of the continent and hence subject their policy choices to a joint effort? The AU and other sub-regional organizations especially the RECs, should at the least avoid organizing meetings on similar or same issues at the same time so that energies are not dissipated at various fora instead of at a joint meeting. Again member states should take continental efforts seriously thereby sending their representatives to meetings that seek to take monumental decisions that if well participated in and understood would not face implantation hurdles associated with non-participation and hence reluctance to implement them. The interest of Africa must supersede other interests as some member states seem to be more concerned about their relationship with foreign powers and their hold on them to the detriment of continental concerns. For instance, whilst some African countries were vehement in expressing their concerns about the 'overambitious' the 2017 Continental Free Trade Area deadline, these same countries are silent on the 2014 deadline the EU has issued African countries for the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement. Whilst it is true that different countries will be impacted differently, by the trade and development path that Africa may take, it is important to note that being on the same continent, Africa countries will be impacted generally by any multilateral agreements reached by any one or some of them. Coming together to work towards a comprehensive trade and development pact that promotes intra-African trade through integration is of much more benefit to all than going it alone or in sub-groupings.
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Cargo at an African port
Africa's trade and development agenda, which way? There are contradictory signals from Africa as the continent works towards a comprehensive trade and development agenda, writes *Gyekye Tanoh. THE just-ended 8th Ordinary Annual meeting of the Conference of African Union Ministers of Trade (CAMoT), the continent's highest political and policymaking forum on trade, produced conflicting signals about the priorities and direction of Africa's agenda in this all-important area. One such conflict was identified, in what was effectively the keynote speech, by AU Trade and Industry Commissioner Fatima Acyl as “pressures between our continental agenda of deepening regional integration and boosting intra-Africa trade [and] pressure from the global trade sys-
tem...the WTO and with other bilateral Partners” make this “a critical time for Africa's trade and development” within which “our window of opportunity to rewrite our story is limited”. However, to judge by the actual conference deliberations and conclusions, what the specific character of these pressures are, what to do about them and what to prioritize perhaps became even less clear at the end of CAMoT 8 than at its beginning. The AU Commission's media alert on CAMoT 8 announced the agenda for the meeting as “the implications of Bilateral AFRICAN AGENDA
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Trade Agreements by Member States and RECs with external partners on the establishment of Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) and the implementation of regional integration in Africa, among other issues. On the other hand, the aide-memoire to member-states and participants identified the main agenda as the critical examination and adoption of “the strategy for the implementation of the Action Plan for Boosting Intra-Africa Trade (BIAT) and the strategic framework for the establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 2017” (emphasis in original) and “to agree 5
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on a common position on issues relating to the 9th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC9) that will be held in Bali, Indonesia”. In the event, while a full declaration on the WTO was agreed, as well as others on international and external trade issues such as EPAs and AGOA, the discussion on BIAT and CFTA - i.e. Africa's own continental agenda - fell rather short of what was envisaged and the implications of BITS and other external trade arrangements on that agenda did not merit any mention in the final report. Meanwhile, a third or more of African ministers, members of this “highest political and policy-making forum”, were absent because on the very day that CAMoT 8 was to finalise its conclusions in Addis Ababa, the ECOWAS sub-region was holding a Trade summit half-way across the continent in Dakar, which was discussing subregional positions on the EPAs - without doubt one of the arduous conflicting international trade pressures confronting not just West African countries but all AU member-states south of the Sahara and every one of Africa's Regional Economic Communities (RECs) except the Africa Maghreb Union. As a matter of fact, while the AU ministerial declaration on EPAs affirmed the primacy of BIAT and the CFTA for Africa, while calling on the EU to “reduce their ambition in its EPA demands”, the ECOWAS summit in Dakar was acceding to EU's ambition not just on the contentious subject of duty free quota free market access opening for EU exports but extending the scope and remit of the EPA into new areas. Even in Addis Ababa, the clearest views on the CFTA were those describing the 2017 indicative deadline for its establishment as “very ambitious” and calls for its extension by countries such as Cameroun, Gabon, Kenya and Tanzania. However, the EU's unilateral imposition of its October 1, 2014 deadline for the completion of Interim EPAs has not evoked such pointed response from any section of African leaders. These underscore the strategic urgency underlying Commissioner Acyl's characterization of the EPAs as a “real threat to the continental economic integration agenda”. Her warning against international trade agreements and “commitments multilaterally and bilaterally” that affect “the policy space and flexibility that African countries need to enact the right policy mix that will lead to development” is thus proper. She 6
followed up with the call for the immediate implementation of BIAT and concrete steps on CFTA as a means of bolstering coherence in the face of vulnerability and locking-in Africa's own priorities rather than being locked-in by the agenda's of external agencies and interests.
Paradox The paradox is the apparent absence of actors leading the play in Africa's own regional agenda, while the AU Commission, as the ostensible repository of the schedules and fixtures is left alone in the middle of the arena struggling to summon distracted players' attention and surrounded by dispiritingly empty spectator stands. Yet CAMoT 8 also suggested that this image leaves out important detail. In the first place, the AU Commission probably has a more established track record and reputation as a bureaucracy, more given to grandiose plans than as a hub of dynamic
“While a full declaration on the WTO was agreed, as well as others on international and external trade issues such as EPAs and AGOA, the discussion on BIAT and CFTA - i.e. Africa's own continental agenda - fell rather short of what was envisaged .” fast-moving changes. Not too much happened in the management of the CAMoT 8 meeting to dispel any of this. More specifically, there is much that remains contentious and contestable in what is already known about CFTA, BIAT and Africa's Trade & Development agenda, not least the still-heavy legacy of trade liberalization and other neo-liberal orthodoxy, its continued aid expectations and dependence on external financing generally, and the narrow fiscal horizons that constrain strategic breadth and depth. Perhaps it is such short term revenue and resource flow considerations, at the direct expense of more comprehensive and sustainable endogenous growth and long term development and industrial strategies, that has shaped the ministers' view of 'Trade AFRICAN AGENDA
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Facilitation' in the WTO as primarily an aid issue. On this basis, the CAMoT 8 declaration on the WTO decried its 'Trade Facilitation' agenda because of the imbalance between obligations on African countries to its costly implementation weighed against the lack of commensurate obligation on global powers to finance the cost of Africa's compliance. Yet far weightier objections can be raised, like CSOs such as the Africa Trade Network (ATN) has done. The ATN recently explained its rejection of the pressure by developed countries to conclude an agreement on trade facilitation in the WTO because this intention to set binding rules on customs and shipping procedures is really “a framework which would allow transnational corporations to intervene in the powers of national governments to regulate customs procedure, and to shift the overall management of ports and related importprocedures into the hands of the few foreign transnational corporations which have risen in recent times to dominate the movement of goods across international borders”.
Cost Thus, beyond what the ATN agrees is the threat that 'Trade Facilitation' in the WTO poses to “revenue-generation options available to developing country governments arising from the international movement of goods, while forcing them to incur significant implementation, regulatory, human resource, and infrastructure costs which would further affect national budgets” are its broader, developmental rather than primarily fiscal implications. ATN emphasizes how Trade Facilitation “will also restrict the overall space available to these governments to align international trade and customs in relation with their national developmental policies” and “will reinforce and lock in place on-going processes of liberalisation which are leading to the erosion of labour rights, the collapse of jobs, increasing joblessness and poverty levels.” This rather more comprehensive approach to the implications of integration into neo-liberal globalisation, also reflects other official African critique and ambivalence about the negative effects of integration into global circuits that reinforce the pre-dominance of MNCs, advanced economies and other system-drivers and integrators at the global level. The irony is that while the strongest
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and most avid acclaim of the entire conference was for the AU Trade & Industry Commissioner's unambiguous message “for Africa to prioritize and fast-track its own trade and regional integration agenda”, in the face of conflicting pressures of demands from external actors and processes, the actual and on-going priority agendas for African leaderships, be it in Addis Ababa or Dakar, showed anything but the same clarity and determination. However the point here is not about the widely-known traditional challenges confronting the AU and perhaps similar institutions but rather its newly emerging role as a vector for heterodox policy on Africa's developmental transformation generally, and in specific areas such as Trade and Investment. Increasingly, the AU appears to be evolving into a strategic continental convergence point for more or less formal or informal networks of member states, institutions and spectrum of interests and actors that might emerge as the fulcrum of genuinely effective leadership to cross key thresholds and turning points.
Contradistinction Thus on the trade and development paradigm, members like Namibia, South Africa and Uganda were as emphatic as the Commission about the prioritization of Africa's agenda in contradistinction to others' not for its own sake nor simply because of their external genesis and authorship but because they represented different and alternative paths and paradigms of trade and development- Africa's integration agenda is about the industrial transformation of the continent, while global integration as raw material producers and exporters is not. As South Africa put it, “this is not about the ideal trade agreement or arrangements but trade WITH real economy interventions, integrating real production capacities and infrastructure between our economies supporting THAT integration” (emphasis added). This dovetails very much with Mrs. Acyl's call for a regional approach that focuses less on the “elimination of trade barriers” that has defined and dominated the regional integration agenda to date, and much more on development of the productive capacities away from externally-oriented raw material production that exposes Africa's economies to external shocks, reduces its share and benefits from global trade and the global economy. UNCTAD Secretary General Kituyi
gence of “developmental regionalism” in Africa, others beyond these ranks, whose seats in the popular stands as yet remain empty may take even a broader cue from the AMV process.
Challenges
“The prioritization of fiscal austerity, high, deflationary interest rates, debt repayment, liberalization of finance and capital flows, debt repayment, and the externalization of the benefits of raw material export-led growth has escalated the constraints and distortion of human and economic development.” also emphasized the growth and developmental potential of more regionally integrated economies - pointing to the much higher levels of regional links in the overall economic activity of more industrialized regions such as East Asia, North America and the EU; and citing the composition of manufactured goods in intra-African trade as evidence of its industrializing and employment-creating potential. UNCTAD's new orientation on supporting Regional Integration in Africa was offered as complementary to the re-energised and focused efforts being developed on the continent. This last point about developing agendas of work and intervention around the regional transformation recalls the Africa Mining Vision process that was another prominent reference point during CAMoT 8. While ministers and policy chiefs lauded the AMV as more evidence of the emerAFRICAN AGENDA
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Among the key drivers of change, long in gestation, that finally culminated in this historic challenge that the AMV potentially constitutes to the hegemonic regime of Mining MNCs, global commodity market players and the IFIs, were the struggles of mining communities and workers alongside development activists, often at the receiving end of brutal repression by states and governments that now extol a developmental transformation of mining in Africa. Theirs is a real sense in which the popularization of mining and related struggles have set the agenda and pushed key political and policy players along, just like has happened, albeit on a much more dramatic scale in Latin America in the last decade or so. Since the advent of Structural Adjustment in Africa, with its sweeping trade liberalisation, the roll-back of industrialization, agrarian development, jobs, domestic savings and investment has been as relentless as it has been devastating. Just as much, the prioritization of fiscal austerity, high, deflationary interest rates, debt repayment, liberalization of finance and capital flows, debt repayment, and the externalization of the benefits of raw material export-led growth has escalated the constraints and distortion of human and economic development. Trade and Investment reforms have been primary instruments and mechanisms in the retrogressive redistribution that has taken place. One of the reasons why this is a 'crucial time' for Africa's trade and development agenda is because the purposes, character and effects of trade policy must now be reversed. The struggles against jobless growth, against precarious small holder and informal sector conditions, against MNC corporate and Donor and International 'development' agencies' domination, the fight for jobs, living incomes, decent services, dignified welfare and for alternative development must find ways to resonate on this front. * Gyekye Tanoh is Programme Officer, Political Economy, Third World NetworkAfrica. 7
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ECOWAS on slippery route with EPAs A recent communiquĂŠ by the West African grouping, ECOWAS, suggests it is headed in the wrong direction as far as the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement, EPA, with the European Union is concerned, writes *Sylvester Bagooro.
AN extra-ordinary Heads of State Summit of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) took place in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, on the 25th of October 2013 as recommended by the 43rd Summit in Abuja early this year. The leaders met to consolidate efforts at integrating the economies in West Africa, which of course 8
is in line with the continental integration being spearheaded by the African Union. The Summit adopted a common external tariff as well as a declaration on the lingering Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs), a trade pact under negotiation, between ECOWAS and the European Union which have been deadlocked since 2007. AFRICAN AGENDA
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The communiquĂŠ runs counter to the desire by Heads of State of the region that the region becomes well integrated with better functioning economies. As the current Commissioner of for Trade and Industry of the Africa Union, Fatima Haram Acyl, pointed out at the Africa Trade Ministers meeting, which also took
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place at the same time as ECOWAS Heads of State were meeting, the current EPA negotiations and model are disruptive of Africa's regional integration efforts. Ahead of the Summit stakes were high as to what the outcome would be since the spotlight was on the EPA. Various actors expressed their concerns. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) intervened at both the national and regional level to draw the attention of the Heads of State and other governmental officials to the need tointegrate rather than sign detrimental trade pacts. For instance CSOs under the auspices of the West African Platform of Civil Society Organizations on the Cotonou Agreement (POSCAO- AC) called on the Heads of State to take forward the issue of regional integration but also pay special attention to the threats posed by EPA especially as Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire had initialled the interim EPA. Ghana's Vice President, Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, speaking to the media after the summit, indicated that Ghana would not take an isolated decision, but would be guided by the collective position that would be reached by ECOWAS on the EPA with the European Union. This comes on the heels of threats by the European Commission to withdraw preferences to Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, which trade with the EU under the interim EPA, by October 1, 2014 unless 'steps' are taken towards signing the EPA, in the case of Ghana or implementation by La Cote d'Ivoire.
Greater risk But the declaration of the Summit on the EPA, as issued by the ECOWAS Commission, leads the whole Region on a slippery path, a path that disintegrates and puts the economies of West Africa at greater risk. The final communiqué in the words of the Commission indicates that 'the Authority takes note of the new market access scenario by the Region ... on the basis of the
new proposals, Authority directs the chief negotiators of West Africa to expeditiously resume discussions with their European partners with a view to concluding the regional agreement as soon as possible. The summit further directs them to ensure that adequate financing is provided for the EPA Development Programme (EPADP). Summit also directs them to put services and free movement of persons on the top priorities during the negotiations'. This declaration sums up the antidevelopment path or contradictory path that the ECOWAS Commission is leading the region. First of all, the processes leading to the new market access offer of 75% are questionable. Early this year, in a move to conclude an agreement, the ECOWAS Commission convened an experts meeting in Ghana, in February to be precise, in a desperate move to convince member states to accept a new market access offer of 75%. Due to the unfavourable outcome of the meeting in Ghana, the Commission again headed for Praia, Cape Verde, for the Ministerial Monitoring Committee Meeting which to some extent also failed to accept the new market access offer of 75%. The last meeting that was held was the council of Ministers (Foreign Ministers), who are not technically in-charge of trade but strangely accepted the offer of the new market access and which now is supposedly adopted by the Heads of State. On the substance of the new market access offer, it is disappointing. Studies, by even the World Bank, which is pro-liberalization, have warned ECOWAS of the dire consequences of opening up its market by more than 60 % in a free trade agreement. The economic future of the Region lies in the regional market and Africa at large. The 60% figure was even affirmed by West Africa's own analyses and was the initial offer in the EPA negotiations. 70% was an improvement, due to EU intransigence in the negotiations and now the 75% engineered by the ECOWAS Commission and adopted by the Heads of States is simply suicidal. This is because domestic producers and most of the promising local producers whose main market is the ECOWAS sub-region risked being knocked out of business due to the influx of imports. Arguments to the effect that liberalisation will promote growth and thus balance the effect on local industries and revenue are simply suppositions and projections rejected by many respected bodies, includAFRICAN AGENDA
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ing the Economic Commission for Africa. Those arguments do not take into the account the structural characteristics of industry and economic sectors in West Africa, what needs to be transformed, and the opportunities as well as obstacles needed to be overcome - including infrastructure etc. Similar arguments were made in the early days of structural adjustment, and the experiences have been miserable decades of de-industrialisation in West African countries with unemployment worsening by the day.
“Studies, by even the World Bank, which is pro-liberalization, have warned ECOWAS of the dire consequences of opening up its market by more than 60 % in a free trade agreement. The economic future of the Region lies in the regional market and Africa at large. The 60% figure was even affirmed by West Africa's own analyses and was the initial offer in the EPA negotiations.” Secondly the communiqué also indicated that the regional agreement should be concluded as soon as possible ostensibly to meet the 2014 deadline. The rush by the Commission is unnecessary and misplaced. Even If the EPAs were signed today with the intention of meeting the October 2014 deadline, it would still be impossible for ECOWAS to meet it. This is because of procedural issues within the European member states. The agreement will have to be translated into the 22 official languages of the European member states, as required by law. And this will take at least six months after which it will have to go through legal scrapping before European Member States can append their signatures. How can ECOWAS rush to sign an agreement of which the originators (European Commission and its member states) tread cautiously in terms of language? It is difficult to comprehend. 9
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Services Another hugely disappointing area in the CommuniquĂŠ is the issue of services that seemed to have been sneaked into it by the Commission to twist the arms of the Heads of State. Even with the goods EPA, the odds are against West Africa and the Commission is now pushing for negotiations in trade in services. CSOs and other respected bodies including the Africa Union Commission have cautioned governments long ago about the real interest of the European Union which lies in the areas of services, investment, government procurement, intellectual property and competition policy of which the EU insisted on the rendezvous' clause in the build up to the earlier deadline of December 2007. The EU has become more single-minded in pursuit of its agenda for the deregulation of services, investment and government procurement, together with restrictive disciplines in intellectual property and so on - all of these with the aim of obtaining free access for European investors to any sectors of Africa economies, while African governments are prevented from giving preferences to domestic or other investors over European investors. 10
“The EU has become more single-minded in pursuit of its agenda for the deregulation of services, investment and government procurement, together with restrictive disciplines in intellectual property and so on - all of these with the aim of obtaining free access for European investors to any sectors of Africa economies.� Lastly, in terms of adjustment cost the Summit called for a commitment on the part of the European Commission to the funding of the EPADP. That is countries should give up their trade-import revenues, which are substantial elements of their budget, which are theirs by right, in exchange for some projected revenues that will arise from growth, or better targeted aid. Furthermore, the supposition that a more refined and targeted EPA development programme will secure better commitment from the EU is unfounded. The AFRICAN AGENDA
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Caribbean experience proves that EU did not provide any additional funding, contrary to its commitment, but sought to repackage existing EDF fund and bilateral aid commitments. This will be the experience of ECOWAS if member states give up revenue in exchange for a promise of aid. Clearly the outcome of the Dakar summit point to a fundamental contradiction in terms of logic of development of the Region. Heads of State desire a region that is well integrated with better functioning economies but the declarations on the EPA is rather opening up the region for foreign control of strategic sectors of the region to which the citizens and even the governments will have no control. As the current commissioner on Trade and Industry pointed out at the Africa Trade Ministers meeting, the current EPA negotiations and model are disruptive of Africa's regional integration efforts. ECOWAS efforts should be in line with the continental body, Africa Union, instead of committing itself to a trade agenda that is detrimental to continent's development. * Sylvester Bagooro is Programme Officer, Political Economy, Third World NetworkAfrica.
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ECOWAS STATEMENT ON EPA The Summit took note of the memoranda presented by the President of the Commission, in particular on the ECOWAS Common External Tariff (CET), the Community Integration Levy (ICL), the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), and the West African Monetary Integration Program (WAMIP). It further took note of he report of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers on the Extraordinary Session of the Council, which met on 30 September 2013 to examine the issues related to the consolidation of the regional market. With a view to consolidating the regional market, Summit encourages Member States to scrupulously adhere to the Trade Liberalization Scheme, notably through the strict application of the ECOWAS Rules of Origin and the continuation of the efforts to eliminate all non-tariff barriers and reactivate the Community Industrial Policy. In that regard, the Heads of State and Government encourage H.E Blaise Compaore, President of Faso in the role and mission conferred on him by the 43rd Ordinary Session held in Abuja from 17 to 18 of July 2013 to promote the free movement of persons and goods. The Heads of State and Government reiterate their commitment to the conclusion of an equitable and development-oriented EPA. They commend the efforts being made by the two parties to the negotiations to identify areas of consensus and work towards compromise on persisting divergences. 19. Authority takes note of the new market access scenario attained by the Region and which take into account the required coherence with the CET and development objec-
tives envisaged in the Agreement. 20. On the basis of the new proposals, Authority directs the chief negotiators for West Africa to expeditiously resume discussions with their European partners with a view to concluding the regional agreement as soon as possible. Summit further directs them to ensure that adequate financing is provided for EPADP and fiscal adjustment costs in order to ensure balance with the market access offer. Summit also directs them to put services and free movement of persons on top of the priorities during the negotiations. Authority calls for the flexibility needed by the two parties in the search for compromise on all issues in the interest of the two Regions. 22. The Heads of State and Government designate H.E. Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal, to oversee the negotiations in the search for comprises that are mutually beneficial to the parties. 23. Authority welcomes the spirit of cooperation between the Commissions of ECOWAS and UEMOA, which produced significant outcomes in the analysis of the various questions on the deepening of the economic integration process. It calls for the strengthening of this cooperation in the implementation of decisions taken to that effect. Authority commends the Presidents of the two Commissions, the Ministers and all stakeholders for their substantial contributions to the results obtained. Dakar, 2013
AU Statement on WTO Concerned by a growing trend by some key WTO Members to devolve concentration of their negotiating efforts away from Doha Development Agenda to the ever proliferating plurilateral agreements; Further concerned that the devolution of concentration away from the DDA will erode modest progress made in integrating African countries into the multilateral trading system through trade related interventions particularly in pursuit of developmental objectives of Africa;
of the WTO to exercise due restraint in engaging in plurilateral arrangements with the potential effect of undermining the DDA; Strongly object to any attempt to link non-trade issues or add new issues to the DDA, before development issues such as agriculture (including cotton), LDC issues, S&D and implementation related concerns are satisfactorily addressed and the DDA is fully exhausted and successfully concluded;
Aware of the positive contribution that the multilateral trading system could have on the African Union`s agenda on boosting Intra-Africa Trade and the realisation of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA);
Take note of the holding of 8 to 10 July 2013 in Geneva of the Fourth Global Review of Aid for Trade and emphatically reiterate our desire to see this initiative usefully support the efforts of the African Union, namely the implementation of its action plan to enhance intra-African trade and the creation of CFTA.
Strongly caution against attempts to undermine the spirit of cooperation inherent in the multilateral approach to negotiating the DDA and call on Members
Addis Ababa, 2013
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COP19 opens in Warsaw amidst worsening climate situation The UN Climate Conference, COP 19 is underway in the Polish capital, Warsaw, with developing countries making funding for climate action the main issue, and developed countries wanting commitment to action, writes *Martin Khor. THIS year's COP19 in Warsaw is shows yet again the difficult complexities of the world trying to extricate itself from the full-scale climate crisis. It also takes place at a time of extreme weather events and ecological hazards. In the Asian region alone, the Philippines is enduring the strongest storm in recorded history. Recently, there were also a powerful cyclone in India, major fires in Australia, heavy rains and floods in many countries, air pollution in Beijing, the “haze” in Southeast Asia. The experience of extreme weather events is also prevalent in all other regions. The concentration of Greenhouse 12
gases is rising to record levels. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose in a year by 2.2 parts per million to reach 393 ppm in 2012, or 141% above the pre-industrial level of 278ppm. By 2015 or 2016, that average may reach the landmark 400ppm, according to the latest World Meteorological Organisation report. In fact, the 400 level had already been breached in several stations, including in Hawaii earlier this year. The signs on the ground and the science are increasingly scary. But adequately implementing the actions to prevent further global warming (mitigation) and for coping with the effects (adaptation) is still out of AFRICAN AGENDA
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reach. At Warsaw the differences in approaches among countries on the global framework for action will likely re-surface.
Warsaw as the “Finance COP”? The developing countries are united in seeking the significant levels of finance needed for their climate actions. Without external financing, they can't mobilise the large resources needed for technological change, replacing energy sources, improving energy efficiency, re-fitting machines, re-designing buildings, changing the fuels in vehicles, stopping deforestation, etc. Their existing scarce resources are also needed for economic and social development. To
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complicate things further, the global economic slowdown is already taking a toll, with economic growth going down, commodity prices declining, trade deficits of many countries widening, and a few countries being caught in a debt and foreign exchange crisis. The developing countries want Warsaw to be the “Finance COP”, during which developed countries commit to concrete and adequate funding. The latter had already committed in the Cancun COP to mobilising US$100 billion a year by 2020. To start with, they pledged $10 billion a year in 2010-12. That period is over, and there is no concrete commitment for 2013 or after, and no road-map of scaling up the funds from 2013 to 2020. This is dispiriting, especially since the developed countries' governments have been stressing their lack of funds and that much of the money can be obtained from the private sector, which is not the usual way that North-to-South financial resources are committed. The Green Climate Fund Board has made some progress in its meetings this year. Nevertheless, there are hardly any funds except for administrative costs so far. There are eight items on finance issues in the COP and CMP agendas, including long-term finance, standing committee on finance, GCF, the GCF-COP arrangements, fifth review of financial mechanism and Adaptation Fund. Eagerly anticipated is a whole-day Ministerial dialogue on finance on 20 November. It is hoped that this dialogue will clarify what resources will be available. If there is a breakthrough in financing commitments, the mood will change among developing countries, which will be able to gear themselves to greater actions. If the lack of clarity continues, or it becomes more evident that there are no significant new funds, the gloomy situation will continue and may infect the overall mood.
Mitigation and interpretations of “Applicable to All” The major developed countries have a higher priority in the post-2020 and pre2020 mitigation agenda. They are interested in getting developing countries to commit themselves to help fill in the pre-2020 emissions gap. The developing countries are interested if the Kyoto Protocol second period commitments have been ratified, the review of adequacy of commitments and
the possible upgrading of commitments, and whether there will be a comparable effort made by non-KP2 Annex 1 Parties. The European Union is seeking in Warsaw that each country in 2014 will make a pledge on reducing its emissions. In the plan, the pledges are to be assessed by other countries, and revised upwards if necessary and possible. Then the pledges will be placed as commitments in an agreement during the COP in 2015 in Paris, to be implemented after 2020. This proposal is seen as premature by some developing countries. They want firstly to negotiate and clarify the principles, rules and elements of a mitigation framework, before pledges are made. They insist that developed and developing countries should have different types of commitments, as the Convention indicates. Secondly they want to ensure first that financial resources and technology transfer are adequate and really forthcoming. For most developing countries, mitigation actions (NAMAs) are conditioned on finance and technology support being forthcoming. Negotiating the principles and rules, and the finance and technology commitments should be tied together with the mitigation or emission-reduction issue, and all these should be included in the agreement to these developing countries. There cannot be a mitigation-alone agreement. Another sticking point is the types of mitigation commitments by developed and developing countries. The agreement to be signed in 2015 is to be “applicable to all” but there are different interpretations to this term. Many developing countries, citing the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and the principle of equity, argue that an agreement would apply to all which sign it, but that it would not apply in a uniform way. “Universality of application does not mean uniformity in application”, as some have stated. In particular, it does not mean uniformity in the types and extent of obligations. According to this argument, there must be a qualitative difference in the commitments of developed countries (which mainly caused the climate problem through their historical emissions) and the developing countries (which are still at a lower economic level and need space to develop). Most developed countries however seem to take the view that “applicable to all” AFRICAN AGENDA
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means that all countries should be treated the same way, with similar levels of legalbindingness and taking on the same type of emission-reduction obligations, with any difference being mainly in the timeframe for implementation. Progress on the post-2020 framework may depend on whether an understanding can be reached on this issue.
Adaptation; and Loss and Damage Another issue in Warsaw is adaptation. Developing countries want to take measures to reduce the impact of climate change, for example by improving the drainage systems to cope with the increased incidence and strength of rainfall and floods; seawalls to protect from sea-water rise, storm surges and tsunamis; sustainable agriculture methods and more hardy crop varieties that can adapt to global warming, etc. But the already meager funds for adaptation have become much smaller due to the drying up of the Adaptation Fund (mainly due to the very low carbon-trading prices), while the GCF adaptation window is not yet operating. How to address this crisis in adaptation financing may be one of the important issues in Warsaw. Related to adaptation is how to address “loss and damage” caused by climate change. Last year's COP in Doha, Qatar made a breakthrough by agreeing on further work on this issue. This was hailed by many as the most important development of COP18. In particular, the decision in COP18 mandated Warsaw's COP19 to set up “institutional arrangements” such as a mechanism on loss and damage. Since Doha, meetings have been held on loss and damage issues, with discussions including on understanding future needs and on how to address slow onslaught events. A key focus in Warsaw will thus be to establish the institutional arrangements. The discussion on setting up an international loss and damage mechanism (as a key component of the arrangements) would have to include key issues of the functions of the mechanism, the modalities of performing the functions, and the financing. * Martin Khor is the Executive Director of South Centre, an intergovernmental policy research and analysis institution of developing countries based in Geneva, Switzerland. 13
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Africa is not doing enough to stem illicit flows Leaders across Africa agree that illicit financial flows are a contributory factor to inadequate resources on the continent but have so far lacked the necessary efforts to stop the leakage, writes *Cornelius Adedze. FROM 'legitimate' international tax systems to dodgy accounting arrangements by multinational companies, Africa has since the colonial days been losing billions to the international world of business. African countries are not the only countries suffering from the loss of a huge chunk of their resources through this means but given the great impact of this loss on the lives of the people it is a major blow to Africa's socio-economic development. It is estimated that Africa lost over US$ 854 billion in illicit financial flows between 1970 and 2008, a yearly average of about US$ 22 billion. Current estimates put illicit financial outflows from Africa at $50 billion a year. Meanwhile, official development assistance to Africa stood at US$46.1 billion in 2012. A report published last year on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa: Scale and Developmental Challenges, noted that "Just one-third of the loss associated with illicit financial flows would have been enough to fully cover the continent's external debt that reached US$279 billion in 2008". It went on to state that some twothirds of the outflows came from only two regions, West Africa and North Africa, with 38% and 28%, respectively whilst, "Each of the other three regions (Southern, Eastern and Central Africa) registered about 10% of total of Africa's illicit financial flows," perhaps because of lack of data and due to the poor quality of available data, the report warns. The total result of all this, the report concluded is that multinational corporations operating in Africa are involved in illicit transfer of most of the $ 1.5 trillion they make in Africa each year back to the developed countries, hurting African economies in the process. Ultimately, the multinational corporations continue "per14
petuating Africa's economic dependence on other regions". Various means, legal and illegal, are responsible for this hemorrhaging of Africa's finances. These include undocumented commercial transactions, purely criminal activities like over pricing, transfer pricing, tax evasion, money laundering, corAFRICAN AGENDA
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ruption and false declarations. Tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions complete the picture. These activities constitute a drain on foreign exchange reserves, reduce tax collection, cancel out of investment inflows and contribute to worsening poverty. The African Union and the Economic
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Commission for Africa, fully aware of the situation and in an attempt to stem it, established in 2012 a ten-member High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa headed by former South African president Thabo Mbeki. The Panel has the mandate to undertake extensive and in-depth studies on the extent and ramifications of illicit financial flows on national economies as well as its impacts on the population. It is also to offer possible initiatives that can help African countries either individually or collectively to stem the flows and repatriate the stolen
funds. The panel has so far held consultations in Kenya, Tunisia, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, the DRC, and Zambia. “It is important that we fight this evil together so that Africa can use the money to solve its poverty and development problems�, Mbeki noted recently.
Africa's situation is compounded by the fact that the judicial systems of most African countries are not sophisticated enough to ensure successful prosecution of tax offenders. "When the matter ends up in court, the judicial system gets overwhelmed by the expertise brought to court by the private company," Mbeki added. They also lack tax experts who can painstakingly track these illicit transactions and bring the perpetuators to book. The panel is expected to publish a report on illicit financial flows in March 2014. For most African countries that depend largely on commodities, their situation is worse because they do not know how much of the commodity is produced and exported by the multinationals. They either lack the means of verification or have officials who are compromised through bribery by the multinational companies. The work of Mr. Mbeki's panel is supposed to complement increased attention by the G-20 leaders to the issue of capital flight from the developing world. The G-20 has asked developing countries to join the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, EITI, a body that compares the revenue disclosed by governments with tax declarations by the companies working in the extractive industry. However, the EITI has so far been able to furnish the 2010 figures of what the extractive sector had contributed - just a little over 1% of GDP, a mere fraction of what was expected. Analysts said that while joining the initiative may bring in some level of transparency, it would not be enough plug leakages. In a related development, Mr. Osseman of the Mozambique-based Institute for Social and Economic Studies AFRICAN AGENDA
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has also pointed to another major area of resource outflow from Africa that needs to be looked at. According to him, "Licit capital flows that are largely related to excessive and redundant fiscal incentives to megaprojects are huge, accounting for several hundreds of millions of US dollars" also lost to Africa in the name of attracting foreign direct investment. The G7 and G8 countries have talked about the need to stem the tide of illicit flows globally with a promise by Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, that, 'Britain has made reducing global tax evasion and avoidance a priority for its G8 presidency'. It is yet to be seen how this promise transfers into reality given that it is mostly the G7and G8 countries' companies that benefit from the illicit flows. Already, certain steps taken by some financial institutions in the developed world to help the situation have been ridiculed as merely 'sugar-coating'. Attempts by the Swiss government under a 'Under a clean money strategy', that may force banks to ensure their foreign clients are tax-compliant in their home countries have been rubbished by some analysts. Even before the dust settled on the proposal, Thomas Sutter, spokesman for the Swiss Bankers' Association" was reported as saying that, "As a bank, if you have a client give you money you have to trust and believe them...You can't be responsible for whether clients have paid their taxes." As others have pointed out, it cannot be a bank's responsibility (indeed would be asking too much of a bank) to find out if a client is taxcompliant in his home country before accepting his money. No matter how successful this approach may be it would only scratch the surface of the issue. In the face of these great challenges some have suggested that Africa countries increase their capital gains tax and also work with other African countries to exchange tax information. An African coalition as well as a global one to deal with the challenge is another hopeful approach that may help in the fight against illicit flows from Africa. Given the great development challenge that they pose to Africa, illicit flows deserve more research into it and collaboration among African countries and civil society groups to advocate for and promote policies that would help stem the flow. * Cornelius Adedze is editor African Agenda. 15
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A South African research scientist
Tackling the global jobs crisis Unemployment and social unrest have assumed global proportions, as such there is an urgent need to restore full employment as a national and global priority goal, writes *Martin Khor. UNEMPLOYMENT has reared its ugly head to become arguably the world's biggest economic and social problem once again. The situation today is not unlike the Great Depression in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when millions were thrown out of work. Lack of jobs was associated with unrest then, and some historians think it contributed to World War II. It is now a major factor in street protests in Europe and unseated political leaders in Egypt and elsewhere. Now, as then, there is confusion in intellectual and policy discussions on what has caused, and how to tackle, unemployment. Global unemployment is now slightly above 200 million. It grew by 4.2 million last year and will do so by another five million this year, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). There are 28 million more unem16
ployed people today than in 2007, when the global financial crisis started. But the figure climbs to 67 million as a “global jobs gap” if we include those who chose to stop looking for jobs. Globally, 73 million young people are
“Globally, 73 million young people are unemployed, a 12.6% rate. But in some countries, 30% to 40% of the young are jobless and thus susceptible to frustration and rebellion.” unemployed, a 12.6% rate. But in some countries, 30% to 40% of the young are jobless and thus susceptible to frustration and rebellion. AFRICAN AGENDA
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At the United Nations last week, employment was one of the main issues discussed at a working group tasked with formulating sustainable development goals (SDGs). In fact, the UN should adopt employment as a top priority issue, for obvious reasons. It is the most important indicator whether an economy is healthy. It is the gateway to social development, as people with jobs are more likely to escape poverty and fulfil their basic needs. Thus “the attainment of full employment” should be accepted as a major SDG. And “employment” should include formal jobs as well as livelihoods in the farm and urban informal sectors. Full employment was widely recognised as the major goal of economic policy in the post-World War II period. The leaders swore not to have a long period of high unemployment again, as in the Great Depression.
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“A policy war is raging between those who stress the need to tackle unemployment now while addressing the budget deficit in the medium term, and those insisting on wide and deep austerity measures now. The anti-austerity camp is gradually winning, as the facts on the ground show a rise in unemployment and a fall in growth rates.” developing countries; International financial institutions and aid agencies should avoid policy advice and conditions that have negative impact on employment in developing countries; • Attaining full employment in developing countries should be adopted as a top priority objective in international agencies; • Criteria for debt sustainability for developing countries should fully take account of the requirements for generating sufficient employment; and • Trade rules and negotiations should give the highest priority to the maintenance and promotion of employment in developing countries the highest priority. Globally, full employment should be restored as a top economic policy goal. This should be translated at the national level into full employment as a top priority in national goals and targets, including in fiscal and development policies. Developing countries that face shortfalls in government budgets required to fund programmes that generate employment-intensive growth to a level sufficient to attain full employment, should be able to draw on international financing and other support. •
After the war, international orga¬nisations like the UN, the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the ILO, the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and Unctad (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) were set up, and employment was one of their top priorities. One of the first UN conferences in 1947 was titled “The UN Conference on Trade and Employment” and it led to the creation of the multilateral trading system. “Ensuring full employment” is a main objective of the WTO. The IMF has “promotion and maintenance of high levels of employment and real income” as a main purpose. In Economics taught in school and universities, and in government policy circles, the attainment of full employment was accepted as the main priority in economic policy, together with adequate economic growth. However, full employment was downgraded as a policy goal starting in the 1980s, to be sidelined by other goals, including controlling inflation, reducing the budget deficit, eliminating tariffs and cutting the size and role of government. These other goals became central in the Washington Consensus and the “structural adjustment policies” that the IMF and World Bank imposed as conditions for receiving loans.
Many developing countries that faced debt problems took on these policies to avoid default. Today, this story is repeated in many European countries as “austerity” is adopted as the priority policy set. As a result, employment and growth were set aside. The resulting rise in unemployment, accompanied by recession and inequality, has catapulted job creation into the centre stage as a public demand, in conflict with the austerity programme. A policy war is raging between those who stress the need to tackle unemployment now while addressing the budget deficit in the medium term, and those insisting on wide and deep austerity measures now. The anti-austerity camp is gradually winning, as the facts on the ground show a rise in unemployment and a fall in growth rates. The developing countries are increasingly affected by the austerity policies, especially as the Western slowdown is now affecting their exports, currencies, capital flows and growth rates. To avoid a worsening employment situation, the developing countries need favourable international policies, including: • Avoidance by developed countries of national policies that adversely affect the employment situation of AFRICAN AGENDA
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* Martin Khor is the Executive Director of South Centre, an intergovernmental policy research and analysis institution of developing countries based in Geneva, Switzerland. Credit: Third World Economics, No. 548 17
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German development cooperation, colonial-racist imagery and civil society's response Representation of Africa in the German public shows that a one-sided racist image prevails, which is disseminated via family socialisation, mass media, school books, films, advertising, and travel magazines/brochures. That is the image that informs German-Africa development cooperation, write *Daniel Bendix with glokal e.V.
German Minister Dirk Niebel
AT the end of April 2013, the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) launched a billboard advertising and internet campaign entitled “The Big Five!” The poster displayed across Germany 3,600 times - shows images of an elephant, a lion, a leopard, a rhinoceros and the silhouette of a buffalo. We see a map of Africa in the background. Short slogans are written next to each animal: “Protecting human rights promoting democracy”, “fighting poverty fostering growth”, “promoting education creating opportunities”, “safeguarding resources - sustainable economy', and 'pre18
serving biodiversity - visiting Kaza”. Above the big heading “The Big Five!” is found a smaller heading stating, “The new German development cooperation”. At the bottom of the poster lies a photo of the German Minister Dirk Niebel (Liberal Democratic Party) who is shown with a QR code and a question next to him stating: “Which animal are we looking for?” - asking the spectator to identify the anonymous animal shown as a white outline. Did the creators of this advertisement have in mind that this animal, the African or Cape Buffalo, used to be (and still is) known as “Kaffernbüffel” in German? This AFRICAN AGENDA
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translates to “kaffir buffalo” - “kaffir” being a derogatory, racist term used for Black South Africans during apartheid, a term still in use today to dehumanize Black people. Neither do we reckon that the people behind the campaign were looking for the answer: “the racist pig” - as was written by an unknown adbuster on the billboard.. Be that as it may, both buffalo and adbust bring us straight into the debate amongst German NGO and activist circles. As we will explicate below, this debate has been marked primarily by criticism of the advertisement's colonial-racist stereotypes, but at times also of the neo-colonial stance
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it conveys. In this essay, we trace the reactions by German civil society and augment the points of critique voiced thus far with a couple of additional problematic dimensions of the advertising campaign. Above all, however, we argue that we should be wary of reserving our criticism to racist imagery and crude neo-colonialism if this entails overlooking the neo-liberal daily grind of German “development” policy and the centrality of racism (as well as other forms of oppression) for the perpetuation of neo-liberal “development” policies. A coalition of individuals and development NGOs wrote an open letter to the minister criticising the poster's colonialracist imagery, and called for an end to the campaign. Concerted criticism of this billboard from civil society and in the media thus far has been concentrated on the slogan “The Big Five!” as a colonial term for big game hunting and on the imagery in as far as it uses animals to speak about Africa. “The Big Five” refers to the five animals which were thought to be most dangerous and difficult to hunt by foot. Today, it is often used for the same five animals, but in the context of tourism: - these are the animals (white, Western) tourists need to necessarily hunt down with their cameras. Studies on the representation of Africa in the German public have highlighted that a one-sided racist image prevails, which is disseminated via family socialisation, mass media, school books, films, advertising, and travel magazines/brochures. Africa is commonly perceived as a homogenous entity, associated with backwardness, and reduced to “Sub-Saharan Africa”. Usually, the topics include war, catastrophes, Aids, hunger, oppression of women, underdevelopment and dependency on aid from outside/the West. Africa is mostly associated with negative phenomena, the “heart of darkness”, “white man's burden” couplet is never far. This is implicit in “The Big Five!” campaign, as Germany positions itself as the necessary player to help Africa get rid of its problems referenced by the five dimensions of Germany's activities. Yet, the imagery vis-à-vis Africa in Germany not only includes barbarity and negativity but also always the other side of the racist coin: Africa as close to nature, no, - as nature per se. This exoticising dimension of antiAfrican racism is fulfilled by the choice of using animals on the billboard. There is also a tangible connection between the images of Africa in Germany and the treatment of
Black Germans, Afro-Germans and Africans and Black people living in Germany. Only recently a study has found a direct link between the portrayal of Africa in school books and racism amongst white German children and teachers vis-à-vis Black and African children in the classroom (Marmer, Marmer, Hitomi, & Sow, 2010). Consequently, criticising the development ministry for the use of colonial-racist stereotypes is indispensable for tackling racism in the global context as well as within Germany.
Context The initiation of the ministry's campaign needs to be situated and understood in the context of another event initiated by the BMZ: the German Development Day. On 25 May 2013, the German government as well as several development institutions and NGOs organised this day to promote the ideas of development cooperation amongst the German public. It took place in 16 cities and several other venues across Germany and cost at least three million Euro (excluding staff expenses). As it happened, the day of the German Development Day, 25 May, is also, first and foremost, 'Africa Day' - the annual commemoration of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. This year, incidentally, is the African Union's 50th anniversary. Fifty years ago, leaders of 30 of the 32 independent African states signed a founding charter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. On this day, celebrations are held in many African countries as well as in the Diaspora. The Afrika-Rat a network of organisations, associations, initiatives and people of the African Diaspora in the federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg - pointed out the BMZ's choice of this day for their own event as a sign of impertinence: “In this year of all years, in which the 50 years of existence of African unity are celebrated, the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has decided to not put emphasis on the dignity of those Africans who were active in the liberation movements and in the development processes on the continent and in the Diaspora, but to celebrate itself and other actors imprudently.” The Afrika-Rat as well as supporters of its press release thus called for the minister's resignation in light of his disregard for African people. We would like to draw attention to a couple of colonial-racist aspects overlooked AFRICAN AGENDA
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thus far in the reaction to this campaign. First of all, we would invite the readers to take a closer look at the way the African map is depicted on the billboard advertisement. Africa is once again reduced to “SubSaharan Africa” or to what is often referred to as “Black Africa” in German, as the top (as well as the bottom) is slightly cut off and the animals are invariably placed in the SubSaharan region. Frantz Fanon pointed out the functionality of creating a “black” Africa: “Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted - Africa South of the Sahara, Africa North of the Sahara - do not manage to hide this latent racism.[...] Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized, in a word, savage.” Blackening a particular part of Africa and whitening others as well as Europe serves two purposes: On the one hand, it perpetuates the myth of a white Europe that has allegedly only recently started losing its homogeneity. On the other hand, North Africa (as well as the “emerging country” South Africa) is awarded to the occident which - given that Greek “civilization” was heavily influenced by North Africa - is a necessary move to uphold the idea of Europe's supremacy and Africa's inferiority. Such hierarchy between the “West and the Rest” is central to the idea and practice of “development cooperation.”
Pan - African colours Also, thus far nobody seems to have noticed any significance in the colours used to paint Africa in the billboard: red, gold and green. These Pan-African colours are found on the national flags of many African nations and are inspired by the colours of the Ethiopian flag. These colours are widely referenced in Rastafarianism, where Red is said to signify the blood of martyrs, green the vegetation and beauty of Ethiopia, and gold the wealth of Africa. In this light, the fact that German development cooperation occupied 25 May as the day to celebrate the 'white man's burden' of developing Africa and the Global South takes on a whole new dimension. It can only be read as a deradicalising appropriation of African and African diasporic struggles for freedom from colonial oppression. The image below (Figure 1.2), created by Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, is a reaction to the campaign and the attempt to stay true to that special day and highlight that African liberation (whether from colonial or “development aid's” oppressive 19
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relations) is not in the former colonizers' hands but has always come from Africans themselves (including women, to correct the male bias in this image). The points raised thus far underline the necessity to pay attention to, and stand up against, the presence of colonial-racist stereotypes in German “development aid”. However, they do not yet adequately criticise the material relations and structures created and perpetuated by German development. The reactions to the BMZ's billboard and internet campaign 'The Big Five!' are a necessary anti-racist and anti-colonial critique, but they seem to overlook the everyday neoliberal agenda of German 'development' policy for which racism is incremental. Some of the criticisms have in fact raised economic dimensions and taken the content of the advertisement seriously. According to the Afrika-Rat, for example, the fact that Africans and Africa are not portrayed as actors but as passive objects raises the question of whether the BMZ is interested in cooperation or if it is not more about “the implementation of a neo-colonial agenda through which Africa is kept in poverty and dependence.” Here, we would like to take a closer look at the agenda suggested and articulated in the billboard advertising. One commentator reiterated the charge of neo-colonialism: “What is new about the Germans wanting to 'fight poverty in Africa' and to 'secure resources' and foster their growth at the same time? That they are of the opinion that they can 'preserve biodiversity' through hunting and photo safaris? What is new about Germany wanting to export its ideas about 'democracy' and its models for 'education'? What is new about Europe talking about the 'protection of human rights', while denying African refugees that protection?” “Securing/safeguarding resources sustainable economy” is a particularly ambivalent statement. It could be understood as meaning that German development aid supports African countries in protecting their resources for their own sake; however, it can also be perceived as referring to Germany's interest in securing access to resources on the African continent. The last German politician who connected Germany's policies abroad to securing resources was the former president Horst Köhler. He justified Germany's war in Afghanistan for the sake of economic interests, and consequently had to leave 20
office. If the development ministry's statement had said 'protecting resources', the charge of neo-colonialism would be more difficult to make. Thus, let us take a closer look at some of the other objectives, such as “sustainable economy” and “fighting poverty.” From the 1980s, German development policy has pushed for an economic re-orientation in line with neoliberal principles and has asserted such a policy via conditionality. After 1998, under the Red-Green coalition government, German development policy has increasingly shifted to what is referred to as “global structural policy”, which aims to promote an international policy environment conducive to “sustainable development.” Since Minister Dirk Niebel of the Liberal Party took office in 2009, the BMZ has more and more emphasized cooperation with the (German and other countries') private sector. In this respect, the German ministry is quite frank and outspoken. In an interview with the leading German tabloid BILD, Dirk Niebel outlined his approach to development cooperation as follows: “If we pursue smart development policy, we raise money for Germany. With every Euro spent for development cooperation, two Euros flow back to us in the long run. [...] Through business contacts. It is by far cheaper to engage in trade with peaceful countries than to fight hostile ones.”
Paternalism While neo-colonial tendencies of direct exploitation and colonial-racist paternalism certainly hold sway in German development cooperation, Germany today seems more interested in “integrating” the Global South into a “free” market economy. “Development cooperation” is about transforming countries of the Global South through “democratization”, “education”, “health care”, legal reforms, environmental policy etc - so that these countries may serve as places for German investments and as consumer markets. International tourism policy as part of “development cooperation” is marked by the intertwining of colonial-racist and neoliberal economic rationalities. Thus, suggesting tourism as a panacea for “development” issues disregards the fact that tourism from the Global North to the Global South is historically and contemporarily based upon racialised cultural and economic exploitation of people in the AFRICAN AGENDA
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Global South. Zooming into the policies suggested in the “The Big Five!” campaign thus brings to light how routine German neo-liberal policies are intertwined with racism.
EPAs As an alternative to the alleged German neo-colonial agenda evident in the “The Big Five!” advertisement, some commentators suggested that “the African continent does not need development aid but economic partners with whom it cooperates at eye level. It is time that the BMZ thoroughly reconsiders its principles of cooperation with Africa and adapts to the zeitgeist.” Yet, is “the zeitgeist” not about asserting a neoliberal agenda worldwide? Current German “development” policy takes the ministry's addendum “Economic Cooperation and Development” seriously. This seems to be much harder to scandalize than obvious racism and neo-colonial aspirations. Yet if we reserve our criticism to colonial-racist stereotypes and crude neocolonialism, we forget that we are in the midst of the “neo-liberal revolution”, in which “neo-liberal ideas, policies and strategies are incrementally gaining ground globally, re-defining the political, social and economic models and the governing strategies, and setting the pace.” To aspire to partnership between Germany/the West and Africa at neo-liberal eye level is neither desirable nor possible: capitalism necessary means exploitation by building on and (re-)producing racist, sexist, ableist etc. divisions and hierarchies amongst people. A scrutiny of development policy needs to incorporate a critique of racism (both within Germany and in Germany's North-South relations) as well as capitalism - and what is most needed: a critique of the intertwining of different systems of oppression as well as suggestions for their dismantlement. In this light, we need to be careful not to remain on the level of criticising colonial-racist picture language if this means overlooking how the fundamentally neoliberal- and capitalfriendly policies of Germany's development ministry rest upon and perpetuate racism. * Daniel Bendix holds a PhD in Development Policy and Management from the University of Manchester, UK. He works for glokal e. V, a development education NGO based in Berlin, Germany, that focuses on post-colonial perspectives on development, anti-racist critique, and critical perspectives on globalisation.
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Flashback : President Obama at Cape Coast Castle during his visit to Ghana in July 2009
Africa's growing competitiveness in the global tourism market Africa has the potential with its cultural and natural resources to outpace other regions in attracting valuable tourism income. But entrepreneurs need transparency, roads and electricity to help them build and expand tourist destinations. A new report outlines constraints and offers solutions to strengthen and promote Africa's tourism sector. A new World Bank report, “Tourism in Africa: Harnessing Tourism for Improved Growth and Livelihoods,” says that African countries can compete with other touristrich regions of the world if they can effectively plan for and integrate tourism into their economies. Countries around the world have benefited from tourism as international global arrivals have grown. For example, from 1980 to 2000 arrivals in the Asia Pacific grew from 8% to 22% contributing to economic growth and improved livelihoods. During the same period, Africa's market
share for global tourism grew from 3% (1980) to 5% (2010). To close this gap, the report calls on African governments and the private sector to work together to address obstacles such as land access and visa regulation to expand tourism opportunities, transform business climates and energize job creation, especially for women and youth. “Africa's mountains, savannahs and rivers, and cultural events such as music, dance and festivals are far above the natural assets found in other regions,” says Iain Christie, one of the report's co-authors. AFRICAN AGENDA
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“With these natural attributes, tourism can play an enormous role in development. But to do so it must be integrated into each country's economy and government structure and be seen as a benefit by everyone, from the president, to the ministers to the general population.” “Tourism in Africa” is the first World Bank report to comprehensively examine tourism throughout SSA and to recommend practical, evidence-based measures to unleash the sector's economic and development power across the continent. It shows how Botswana, Cape Verde, 21
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Creating a path for growth
Victoria Falls
Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania among other countries have high potential for tourism expansion over the next five years, and argues that many SSA countries are on the verge of tourism success.
A powerful development path Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors of the world economy, and tourism in Africa is ripe for development, the report notes. For example, the number of tourists arriving in SSA has grown over 300% since 1990, with 2012 marking a high of 33.8 million tourists who visited the region. Income generated from tourism has also climbed: Receipts from hotels, tours and other attractions in 2012 amounted to over US$36 billion and directly contributed just over 2.8% to the region's GDP, according to the report. This boost in tourism is occurring just as economic growth is exploding across the African continent. Over the last five years, real GDP rose an average 4.9% - faster than the 3% global average. As a result of the recent economic good health in SSA countries, global hotel chains are poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in Africa over the coming years to meet rising demand from both international tourists and the continent's own fast-growing middle class, the report notes. “Africa is an important emerging growth market and despite political uncertainty in parts of the region, we continue to see demand for growth of all of our brands throughout the continent,” says Hassan 22
Ahdab, Starwood Hotels & Resorts VicePresident and Regional Director of Operations for Africa & Indian Ocean region. “Starwood will increase its African portfolio by nearly 30% with 12 new hotels set to open over the next three years, adding nearly 3,000 guest rooms to the continent and creating thousands of local employment opportunities.”
Current constraints At the same time, the expansion of tourism in SSA faces a number of obstacles. Issues such as land ownership and availability, and how land rights are transferred, are central to business and tourism development. Other constraints such as access to finance for investors, taxes on tourism investments, low levels of tourism skills
“When sustainably managed, tourism fuels economic transformation, accelerates reform, triggers infrastructure improvements, and empowers women and minorities in countries throughout Africa.” among Africa's population, lack of security, safety and high crime, and bureaucratic processes are present in varying degrees in SSA countries. The report provides steps to overcome each of these obstacles. AFRICAN AGENDA
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To understand better which SSA destinations are the highest performers and why, the report presents a typology of destinations, which ranks the 48 SSA countries by level of tourism development, ranging from pre-emergent (those countries recovering from or engaged in civil war) to consolidating (countries with relatively mature tourism sectors), and provides recommendations appropriate for countries at each stage of tourism development. The report shows how countries that are scaling-up tourism need to invest in promotion and marketing, should take steps to enhance their image, and should provide incentives to investors, while those counties working to deepen their success need to diversify their tourism offerings, address seasonality, and manage growth strategically.
Learning from success The report presents 24 tourism case studies from a wide range of destinations, dating from the mid-1970s to the mid2000s, each chosen to illustrate a particular challenge or success and the effects of certain planning decisions. The cases illustrate good practice and lessons learned from countries that promoted tourism as a source of growth and poverty alleviation. They include large projects based on broad-scale land development (such as Turkey's South Antalya) or citywide programs (such as Cancu_n or Dubai), cases that focus on specific activities (nature conservancies in Namibia, mountaineering in Kenya), and smaller cases that are typically individual islands, resorts or activities (such as Nihiwatu, Indonesia, or Jungle Bay, Dominica). The report describes SSA's many tourism successes and urges governments to form alliances with the private sector-and the private sector to partner with government at local, regional and national levels. Together they can plan and develop tourism infrastructure, increase transparency in land ownership and create a businessfriendly environment for tour operators and other companies. When sustainably managed, tourism fuels economic transformation, accelerates reform, triggers infrastructure improvements, and empowers women and minorities in countries throughout Africa.
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Africa's Economic Growth: a fallacy of numbers? Until we can have proper address systems, well lit streets, paved roads, constant electricity and clean water supply, and a lean and efficient government along with the working population engaged actively in productive activities, we cannot by any stretch of imagination say we have arrived on the global development stage, writes * Theo Acheampong.
A bus terminal in Johanessburg
ONLY a decade ago, Africa's socio-economic growth potential was confined to the doldrums and back alley of underdevelopment. Today, the international media continues to be abuzz with common themes such as “Africa Rising” and “The Final Investment Frontier”. Many writers often cite poverty, disease, starvation, wars and tribal conflicts fuelled by a vicious neo-colonial legacy as
the cause of the continent's woes. Much as these may be true, we have seen the continent rise like the proverbial phoenix in the last decade to join the league of global and regional economic blocs negotiating for a fairer and better world economic system. The economic growth witnessed in Africa over the last decade has led The Economist, which captured Africa in 2000 as the hopeless continent to eat humble pie. AFRICAN AGENDA
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The magazine made a dramatic turnaround of its forecast dedicating their December 2011 edition with the cover title, “The Hopeful Continent: Africa rising”. Many other publications such as Time and Foreign Policy Magazines have followed suit with a similar Africa rising theme espousing the potential of the continent to become the next Asian economic miracle. On the back of this new media hype 23
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over Africa's economic potential and growth; one cannot help but wonder whether the recent high growth rates and increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into Africa actually correlate with real development at the grassroots level. Have these transcended into the provision of better road infrastructure, ports, railways, schools and ICT facilities? Rick Rowden and Morten Jerven make the point that many of the analysis of Africa's developmental progress and statistics seem to forget the challenges and accuracy issues associated with the measurement of national development and economic indicators on the continent. Jerven in his Foreign Policy magazine piece notes for example that “in November 2010, the statistics office of the government in Ghana announced that it was revising its GDP estimates upwards by over 60 per cent, suggesting that previous estimates had left out economic activities worth about $13 billion. After the revision, a range of new activities were accounted for, and as a result Ghana suddenly, was upgraded from a low-income country to a (lower) middleincome country.” (Note however that this statistical correction to the GDP measurement does not mean Ghana is better off than it previously was.) The authors further drum home the point about inaccurate growth statistics especially on the African continent where data collection remains a challenge. Using a selection of 17 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, only 10 had a reference base year from which subsequent adjustments to GDP were made, thus, concluding that “more than half of the rankings of African economies up to 2009 may be pure guesswork.” Many of the SSA growth statistics being churned out conceal wider issues about structural deficiencies and imbalances. These highlight a growing disconnect between the recorded macro level growth numbers and their linkage to grassroots microeconomic development. The issue of the quality of the development and growth statistics is a serious problem that needs to be addressed by all stakeholders. These huge discrepancies in the data only points to a bigger issue about sampling methodologies that need to be critically looked at, and whether the purported growth is indeed reflective of the real development of the people. In June 2011, the IMF faulted Ethiopia's reported growth estimate of 11.4 per cent for 2010 saying 24
“Many of the SSA growth statistics being churned out conceal wider issues about structural deficiencies and imbalances. These highlight a growing disconnect between the recorded macro level growth numbers and their linkage to grassroots microeconomic development.” that a 7.5 per cent growth was more realistic. In addition, price controls, a key component of late President Meles Zenawi central economic planning ideology had left a clobbered private sector in need of much investments in technology to expand output.
Commodity Booms and Busts Has Africa's purported growth been real and will the fortunes of the continent continue to be hedged on its natural resource endowments such as gold and oil that go through the cyclical dictates of the booms and busts of the global economy? Real non-oil GDP growth in some countries has been averaging five per cent per annum over the last four years according to some estimates. The questions we ought to ask policy makers are: (i) how has the growth catalysed core productive sectors of the economy in agriculture, manufacturing and associated value chain linkages, and (ii) how has the income inequality gap been closed over the last decade? A cursory look at the data points to the fact that many African economies are still reliant on commodity exports and are thus exposed to the huge shocks and imbalances commodity price swings tend to have on national economies. The Dutch disease elaborates the point about the consequences that arise from large increases in a country's money supply following a natural resource discovery. The increase in FDI and income brings about currency appreciation ultimately leading a decrease in the competitiveness of local industries and manufacturing. Nigeria is a classic case in point. Quoting from the World Bank's 2012 World Development Indicators, Alice Sindzingre] notes that “in AFRICAN AGENDA
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SSA in 2010, fuels represented 32 per cent of total merchandise exports; manufactures, 31 percent; ores and metals, 18 percent; food, 15 per cent; and agricultural raw materials, four per cent”. The graphs below highlight the fate of many African economies to commodity price shocks. The construction and services sectors namely financials, telecoms, residential property development amongst others have shown improvements year-on-year. However, the real game changer to addressing the jobless growth, which has as its hallmark rising youth unemployment will be our collective capability to leverage on emerging and proven technologies to ramp up the industrialization value chain. There is an impressive pool of youthful talent and creativity that abounds from Accra to Zanzibar, Cairo to Lusaka and Lagos to Johannesburg. Agriculture and value added manufacturing for local consumption as well as exports to regional markets should form the basis of the real economic transformation and development of the continent. The era of state farms and industries are confined to the realms of history. Instead, what governments rather ought to address as a matter of urgency is implement policy reforms that shift and focusses resources on removing impediments that prevents entrepreneurs from accessing land for large-scale agriculture, manufacturing and other capital inputs to production. These impediments, ultimately increase the cost of doing business and are transferred to the end consumer; thus, making the end-user products uncompetitive locally and internationally. According to the African Economic Outlook, young people aged between 15 and 25 represent more than 60 per cent of the continent's total population and account for 45 per cent of the total labour force. Unlike other developing regions, subSaharan Africa's population is becoming more youthful. The youth as a proportion of the total population is projected to be over 75 per cent by 2015 due to high fertility rates driving the demographic momentum. It is expected that this increase in the number of young people will not decline for 20 years or more. The irony is that more than 60 per cent of the continent's unemployed are aged 15 to 24 - and more than half of these including many women, have given up on finding work. Therefore, the current growth being experienced has been
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year development gap lost to the decades of military rule and weak leadership. There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. The adoption of the right technologies and a culture of excellence that places premium on technical value acquisition in all spheres of national life will jettison us towards the attainment of full socio-economic freedom.
Conclusions
termed by many as a “jobless growth.” The African Development Bank's Chief Economist Mthuli Ncube has remarked it is an unacceptable reality on a continent with such an impressive pool of youth, talent and creativity. The population pyramid of SSA shown below shows the youthfulness of the population base.
Structural adjustments and Public Sector Reforms Despite many years of World Bank and IMF imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) that have as one of their broader objectives the reform of the civil service, many African state institutions are over-bloated with systemic bureaucratic inefficiencies. These systemic challenges have resulted in a civil service whose labour productivity gives diminishing returns to any factor input. For example, why haven't the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in a lot of the respective countries become more efficient despite the enormous resources that have been poured into almost 25 years of public sector reforms? Many of the Scandinavian countries are doing much better economically than their Southern European counterparts because the governments in these countries realise they need to rein in on excessive expenditure, expand the tax base, reduce the size of government to the barest minimum, and create incentives for young grad-
uates to start their own enterprises. Incurring liabilities by borrowing on the capital markets should be for growing and expanding industrial asset base of the country and need not be for recurrent expenditure such as paying public sector salaries which has become norm in some SSA countries. An integral duty of governments in SSA ought to be to provide the assistance and nurturing of new enterprises devoid of a reliance on old political patronage. These new African enterprises or Technical Maverick Movements (TMMs) as Bright Simons of IMANI Ghana calls them, need to be supported for example with tax breaks in a manner that allows them to acquire technological capital and “new technical values." This will be pivotal to the success of the TTMs to transcend regional borders to become new African conglomerates akin to Samsung, Hyundai and Daewoo Industries from South Korea. The adoption of technology as critical pillar of government policy could play a fundamental role in breaking bureaucratic bottlenecks that have almost killed innovation on the continent. Networked traffic management, centralized procurement management, and an integrated national identification and ICT backbone systems will all help reduce the systemic inefficiencies and spur a new wave of innovation by entrepreneurs Africa needs to catch up with the almost 30 AFRICAN AGENDA
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Africa's statistical growth may be a measurement issue and correction of GDP data to reflect the upward trends in economic activity. Nevertheless, one cannot deny the fact that Africa is growing whatever the numbers may seem to project. The real challenge is the extent to which we can leverage and translate the macro-level growth at the micro-level to address the massive youth unemployment. That is when we can truly thump our chests to say real development has been achieved. Until we can have proper address systems, well lit streets, paved roads, constant electricity and clean water supply, and a lean and efficient government, we cannot by any stretch of imagination say we have arrived on the global development stage. These aspirational development dreams won't come on a silver platter. Rather, a set of well-designed and cogent policies that redefines the role of government as a key economic agent remains fundamental to our collective ability to move out of the poverty conundrum. We need place more emphasis on human capital acquisition and the adoption of technologies to propel agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce within a robust macro-economic framework that focusses not only on inflation targeting but also on growth. Without running the risk of reporting statistical fiction, a careful evaluation of the macro-level growth and micro-level income evidence must form the basis of any evaluation of Africa's rise. There is a great saying that, "a country's greatest asset, by far, is its people, who work, innovate, pay taxes, and, generally, reproduce. How well they do these things depends on their legal, cultural, and natural environments, which can be affected, for good and for ill, by the government." Leadership is cause, all other is effect. * Theo Acheampong is a petroleum economist and a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Aberdeen, UK. 25
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Africa's expanding educated underclass Innovator and writer, *Bright Simmons argues here that African competitiveness will not be determined solely from growing output, but also from the efficiency and sustainability of the engines producing that output. “BET you didn't know the boys scouts started in Africa,” said the man with the hollow stare, moustache twitching as he peered intently into my eyes. He was looking for my soul. And I wasn't cooperating. I smiled like a real smartass and said: “I do know. Baden-Powell. He stole the idea from the Asante war strategists in pre-colonial Ghana.” That seemed to ruin his mood. After a pause that felt like a decade, he came back with words whose causticness only became evident over time: “That's the problem with you detribalised, westernised, African upstarts. You think the meaning is 26
in the fact.” Wow! What an accusation! Is this the newfound marginalisation of Africa? Or is it simply the bare essentials of truth unspiced? For my accuser's fingers were on the pulse of a new tendency - a tendency to reduce the portrait of this colourful continent to a stream of economic factoids meaningless to its inhabitants and useful only as entries in a pocket guide for cynical non-Africans sizing up the continent as they might a moist chunk of Angus beef. You probably know what I am talking about. You probably read the title and AFRICAN AGENDA
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immediately expected me to start this article parroting some inanities about Africa growing at five per cent (5%) per annum, about to record its billionth mobile phone user, or having cut its poverty rate by 35 per cent (or some such). Quick bites. Fast wisdom. Factoids. I have something else in mind. I want to talk to you about… fractals. In recent times a movement dedicated to understanding African fractals has emerged. There are ethno-mathematicians in New York who have published passionately
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about the presence of fractals at the heart of many African designs, a deeper symbolism that makes seemingly illogical or contradictory or fragmentary or base or even primitive artwork suddenly, laden with meaning, capable of bringing together torn strands of understanding into a composite richness. Any chance that we can begin to appreciate the African experience by going beyond the factoids and straining for deeper meaning to illuminate what is going on? Move a bit from factoids to fractals, that is? Nothing beats actually trying. So let's start with something you have probably heard a bit about already. A metanarrative you can't avoid if you listen to mainstream talk about Africa. A neat, seamless, self-contained, view of the new Africa. Let's call it: the all-purpose, middle-class, African, consumer (AMAC).
AMAC According to African Development Bank (AfDB) and World Bank reports, there are 300 million AMACs from every conceivable walk of life: from cattle-ranchers to taxi drivers. A skeptic responds to the BBC that: from a “global middle-class standard” point of view, only five per cent (5%) of Africans qualify for the tag. That will make, well, anything from 40 million to 50 million people (i.e. depending on whose demographic statistics about Africa you believe). So are there 40 million AMACs or 300 million AMACs? A guru from a big, global, bank then chips in: actually, there is virtually no middle class at all. There is a super-rich elite and then….no, not the “masses”, but a “strong consumer group”. Which might mean poor people living above their means or lowincome earners with rapidly rising wages, depending on your mood. Another guru from yet another big, global, bank is repulsed by this notion of a non-existent middle class: the AMACs are there, and there are 120 million of them, she insists. That is four times what the OECD (the rich nations club) thinks is the number, and more than three times what Renaissance Capital believes is the case, but less than half what big global consultancies swear they have seen. Zero, 32 million, 40 million, 120 million or 300 million? Pick your figure. Actually, pick your factoid. The middle-class concept is probably
much better unpacked. Distilled into its whirling fractals it gives us a mosaic, a more engaging landscape of what matters, what is truly meaningful. Let's start by saying that Africa has a unique middle class. That's what is interesting, not the absolute numbers, or relative numbers, or even whether it has the fastestgrowing middle class. Africa has a unique middle class because history has created conditions for the fractionation of the middle class. Only in Africa is the cultural and economic middle class completely heterogenous. Across Africa, incomes are rising fastest in the trading segments of the economy. It is the importers (the “suitcase merchants”, who travel to Dubai and the Far East every month to haul in cheap consumer goods, as well as their collaborators who stay at home to push the stuff in the markets), secondhand goods dealers, and distributors opening up small towns to commerce, that are benefitting most intensely from the rise in earnings being experienced at the bottom of the social order.
Nouveau-riche These “nouveau-riche” are rarely the better-educated. In fact, the situation has become a source of adages about the state of education in most African nations, as university graduates struggle to find the whitecollar jobs they have been conditioned into believing are their birthright. Supposedly “illiterate” operators with a more commercial bent are often held up as a sort of reproach to these educated idlers, and as testimony to the dysfunctionality of the mainstream higher-education-cultural complex. This presence of an expanding educated underclass and an 'uneducated' rising class, alongside the more orthodox emerging professionals, highlight the fissures in African society that explain the observed lack of political maturity in some African countries even as the population of the middle class, of whichever income band, appears to explode. It also explains the lack of technical sophistication in key growth poles in African countries, and consequently, in some cases, the break in the connection between rising incomes and the quality of life. African competitiveness will not be determined solely from growing output, but also from the efficiency and sustainability of the engines producing that output. Pure AFRICAN AGENDA
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“This presence of an expanding educated underclass and an 'uneducated' rising class, alongside the more orthodox emerging professionals, highlight the fissures in African society that explain the observed lack of political maturity in some African countries even as the population of the middle class, of whichever income band, appears to explode.” consumption driven by a sudden availability of credit and the by-products of globalisation is probably not sufficient to drive the African economic miracle. A middle class that lacks a shared social consciousness cannot rebuild the political and economic institutions required to make growth transformational. The lack of attitudinal solidarity and the internal contradictions (to mock a Marxian allusion) within the African middle class means that it is unlikely to play the role that the middle class has played elsewhere in exactly the same way. It will not be the “all-purpose” motif so beloved of consultants, or derided by their critics, but instead an important if also anguished study in how African countries can modernise their societies while still recognising the actual ways indigenous capital is being created in contemporary times. Which is not at all to say that the middle class in Africa will not grow in size, or that it will not have a positive impact on society, but rather to say that: economic factoids are useless in understanding the true opportunities represented by the fractured and problematic notions of the middle class in Africa. One needs to savour the complexity of the fractals, the tension, the depth of the unclear and still evolving in order for one to draw the right inferences and lessons for Africans whose destiny is in play here. * Bright Simmons is Ghanaian innovator and president of MPedigree, a technology to determine the authenticity of a medicine via SMS. 27
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Little change in poverty after a decade-long growth in Africa Results of a new survey show that the strong economic performance of African economies over the last decade has hardly empowered significant numbers of Africans to meet their most basic needs, write *Boniface Dulani, Robert Mattes and Carolyn Logan. “LIVED poverty” remains widespread across Africa, new data from Round Five of the Afrobarometer, collected across 34 African countries between October 2011 and June 2011 reveal. This data, based on the views and experiences of ordinary citizens, counters projections of declining poverty rates that have been derived from official GDP growth rates. For the 16 countries where these questions have been asked over the past decade, we find little evidence for systematic reduction of lived poverty despite average GDP growth rates of 4.8 per cent per year2 over the same period.
Key Findings • With only two years to go before the 2015 Millennium Development Goal benchmark year, roughly one in five Africans still experiences frequent ('many times' or 'always') deprivation with respect to their most basic needs for food (17%), clean water (21%), and medicines and medical care (20%). Approximately half experience at least occasional shortages. Slightly fewer suffer from inadequate access to cooking fuel (13% frequently go without). • More than twice as many (44%) regularly lack a cash income which might enable them to meet these basic needs, and a full three-quarters (76%) report going without cash at least once in the previous year. • People in Burundi, Guinea, Niger, Senegal and Togo experienced the highest average levels of lived poverty, while those living in Algeria and Mauritius experienced the lowest. • People living in countries undergoing or emerging from conflicts appear to be particularly vulnerable to lived poverty, especially food shortages. Five of the seven 28
countries that experience the highest levels of nutritional deprivation - Burundi, Liberia, Madagascar, Sierra Leone and Niger - are all emerging from recent conflicts. And the two worst performers in North Africa - Egypt and Sudan - have recently faced internal conflicts as well. • Comparing regional experiences of lived poverty, we find that both West and East Africans encounter the most shortages, while North Africans experience the lowest levels of deprivation. • Across 16 countries where data is available over the past decade, the average experience of lived poverty has hardly changed. There have been real over-time decreases in Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia. And the formation of the Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe in 2008 also appears to have generated a “peace dividend” in the past five years that translated into a more recent, but substantial reduction of lived poverty in that country. However, these instances of poverty reduction have been matched by increases in Botswana, Mali, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania over the past decade. • The data show significant correlations between access to electrical grids, piped water, and other basic services in communities and lower levels of lived poverty. Higher levels of formal education also correlate with sharply lower experiences of deprivation.
Nature and severity of poverty in Africa as of 2012 Some analysts contend that relatively high economic growth rates, which averaged 4.8 per cent per annum over the last decade, have contributed to corresponding declines in the proportion of Africans living AFRICAN AGENDA
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below the poverty line from 51 per cent in 2005 to 39 per cent in 2012. Others counter that there is no solid evidence that this strong economic growth is contributing to meaningful reductions in poverty levels. Still others question whether the high growth rates being reported may themselves be illusory. Afrobarometer's measures of lived poverty shed light on this debate, suggesting that doubts about the extent of progress achieved in the fight against poverty are well founded. The data reveal that significant numbers of Africans still fail to meet their most basic needs, and many of them fall short on a regular basis. Majorities report facing shortages in medicine and medical services (53% at least once in the past year) and food (50%). Just under a majority experience at least occasional shortages of clean water (49%), and four-in-ten go without cooking fuel (42%). More troubling is the intensity of the problem: roughly one in five encounter frequent shortages (going without “many times” or “always” in the past year) with respect to water (22%), medicines (20%) and food (17%). Not surprisingly, shortages are especially acute in rural areas, where 21% experienced regular food shortages, 24% went without medical care, and 26% lacked access to water, compared to just 11%, 13% and 15% of urban dwellers, respectively. The most commonly cited form of deprivation remains access to cash income, with a full three quarters (76%) reporting that they went without cash at least once in the previous year. While cash income is not in itself a basic need, access to it can enable citizens to purchase their basic and nonbasic needs. Income shortages therefore have many spillover effects on individuals' lives. The fact that three-quarters of Africans report having gone without cash
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income at least once in the previous year therefore poses a major development challenge, as many adults on the continent cannot afford to buy resources for immediate use or invest in assets. Overall averages, however, hide substantial country differences across the continent. For instance, at least two thirds of all citizens experienced food shortage at least once in Burundi (78%), Liberia (75%), Lesotho (73%), Madagascar (70%), Sierra Leone (69%), Niger (67%) and Swaziland (66%). In contrast, one-third or fewer faced the same problem in Egypt (33%), Ghana (27%), Cape Verde (25%), Tunisia (21%), Morocco (19%), Mauritius (9%), and Algeria (7%). Similar patterns prevail with respect to shortages of water and medical treatment. While access to clean water remains a lingering challenge for many African citizens, the extent of deprivation again varies widely. At least six-in-ten went without in Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Guinea and Lesotho. But less than four-in-ten experienced shortages of clean water in Mali, Malawi, Algeria, Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritius.
MEASURING LIVED POVERTY USING SURVEY DATA IN AFRICA Poverty is measured in a number of different ways. At the national level, all countries produce national accounts data to calculate their Gross National Income, which is used to summarize national wealth and the total state of the economy. However, the capacity of many African countries' national statistics systems to generate these numbers has recently been criticized. At the personal or household level, national statistical offices also conduct large household surveys to measure income, expenditure, assets and access to services, which are then used to calculate national poverty lines and place individuals above or below that line. The Millennium Development Goal that focused on reducing the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day is a good example. However, such surveys are expensive and conducted infrequently in many African countries. Other development organizations, such as the United Nations, collect data on the consequences of poverty such as the proportion of people who use improved drinking water sources or sanitation services, or the proportion of underweight children under five, in a given country. As a contribution to the debate about poverty in Africa, the Afrobarometer offers the Lived Poverty Index (LPI), an experiential measure that consists of a series of survey questions that measure how frequently people actually go without basic necessities during the course of a year. It measures a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty that is not well captured by existing measures, and thus offers an important complement to official statistics on poverty and development. Because people are the best judges of their own interests, respondents are best placed to tell us about their quality of life, though they might not be able to do it with a great deal of precision. If Amartya Sen is right and the value of one's standard of living lies in the living itself, an experiential measure of shortages of the basic necessities of life takes us directly to the central core of what the concept of poverty is all about.
The Lived Poverty Index (LPI) The responses to this set of Afrobarometer questions can be combined to calculate an average score for each individual respondent, and for each country, that captures overall levels of “lived poverty.” The Lived Poverty Index (LPI) score ranges along a five point scale from 0 (which can be thought of as no lived poverty) to 4 (which would reflect a constant absence of all basic necessities). The mean level of lived poverty score across all 34 countries in 2012 is 1.26 (on the scale of 0 to 4). However, there is significant cross-national variation around that mean. At their worst, average scores in Togo (1.89), Burundi (1.85), Niger (1.81), Guinea (1.78), and Lesotho (1.77) suggest that the average person in these countries experiences shortages across all basic necessities “several” times in a year. At their best, the LPI scores in Mauritius (0.20) and Algeria (0.32) mean that the typical person in those countries “never” goes without any basic necessities. In general, it is evident that West African countries are clustered at the bottom of the scale, while North African countries dominate at the top. A comparison of average LPI scores by region confirms that
The Afrobarometer asks respondents: Over the past year, how often, if ever, have you or your family gone without enough: food to eat; clean water for home use; medicines or medical treatment; enough fuel to cook your food; a cash income? A range of response options are offered, starting with never for those that experienced no shortages, to just once or twice, several times, many times and always. Because these questions are asked in all Afrobarometer countries, we are able to monitor not only shifts in the levels and nature of poverty over time, but also to compare experiences across countries and regions. these apparent regional differences are real: average lived poverty is highest in both West Africa (1.47) and East Africa (1.46), and lowest in North Africa (0.77), with Southern Africa (1.17) about halfway in between. It is telling, however, that that the two worst performing North African countries, Sudan and Egypt, have been embroiled in internal political conflicts. Because this is the first Afrobarometer survey in these countries, the data cannot show whether poverty has led to the conflicts, or has gotten worse as a result of the discord.
Trends in lived poverty, 20022012 (16 countries) The Lived Poverty questions have been asked in exactly the same way over the past decade in 16 countries, so the data can AFRICAN AGENDA
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track changes in the experience of poverty over this time.11 Taken as a group, there is a very slight decrease in the experience of poverty across this set of countries: the LPI increased from 1.26 in 2002 to 1.31 in 2005, but then fell slowly, and marginally, to 1.22 in 2012. On its face, this might suggest that the adoption by many African countries of various anti-poverty interventions in recent years has thus far failed to have a substantial effect in ameliorating the everyday experience of poverty. To further scrutinize the results, Afrobarometer classifies LPI scores into three poverty categories: very low or no lived poverty, with LPI scores of less than 0.50; moderate lived poverty, with scores from 0.5 to 2.5; and extreme lived poverty, with scores of 2.5 and above. Overall, two thirds (65%) of citizens in these 16 29
POLITICS
countries fall into the moderate poverty category; another one in ten (9%) experience extreme poverty. These average figures remain essentially unchanged since 2002, when they were 66% and 10%, respectively. However, the overall stability produced by pooling these 16 countries masks some important overtime changes within countries: successful poverty reduction in several countries is counterbalanced by increases in lived poverty in others. The largest visible decline occurred in Ghana, where the LPI fell from 1.00 in 2002 to 0.61 in 2012, followed by Malawi, which saw a decline from 1.70 to 1.35 during the same period. Expressed in population percentages, this means that the total proportion of adult Ghanaians living in moderate or extreme poverty fell by 24 percentage points, from 69% to 45%, between 2002 and 2012. In Malawi the decline was a smaller but still important nine percentage points, from 93% to 84%. There were also clear downward shifts in Cape Verde and Zambia over this same period. Reported economic growth rates in these countries over the last decade range from 5.7% per annum in Malawi to 6.8% annually in Ghana. There was also a substantial decline over the last four years in Zimbabwe. During that country's prolonged political crisis, lived poverty increased substantially, from 1.71in 2002 to 2.02 in 2008. Following the disputed and highly flawed 2008 election, a government of national unity was put into place, and the previous opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), gained control of the Ministry of Finance. One apparent result of this “peace dividend� was a rapid fall in lived poverty from 2.02 to 1.36. At the same time, lived poverty has increased significantly in five countries. The largest increase was bserved in Senegal, rising from 1.32 in 2002 to 1.77 in 2012. Tanzania increased from 1.13 to 1.37 over the same period. There were smaller, but real increases in lived poverty in Botswana, Mali12 and South Africa. This is despite the fact that these countries reportedly enjoyed very similar rates of economic growth to those observed in the countries mentioned above, ranging from 3.6% annually in South Africa to 7.0% per annum in Tanzania. Lived poverty remained stable, or otherwise displayed trendless fluctuations over the last decade in the other six countries. 30
The roots of lived poverty Previous research on the LPI data has shown that the two most important drivers of lived poverty were formal education and the extent to which individuals have access to basic development infrastructure in their immediate area of residence. With surveys across a much wider range of African countries, Afrobarometer re-examined this finding. The analysis shows that across 34 countries, individual lived poverty scores indeed fall sharply as education level increases, from 1.62 among those with no formal schooling, to 0.87 among those with post-secondary education. Thus, the relatively low levels of education in West African states such as Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea help account for the high levels of poverty in those countries. Individual poverty scores also vary sharply according to whether or not key services are present in the respondent's community. The average LPI is 1.05 in census enumeration areas that have an electricity grid, but 1.64 where there is none. Similarly, it is 1.08 where piped water services are available, versus 1.53 where they are not.17 States have done a far worse job of extending electricity grids in West and East Africa than in other parts of the continent. These simple correlations strongly suggest that the availability of key infrastructural services (electricity and water, paved roads, sewage systems and health clinics) has a major influence on the experience of lived poverty.
The political consequences Data on lived poverty also provide an important opportunity to re-examine the ongoing debate about whether poor people make poor democrats and are likely to participate less in politics. Consistent with previous studies, we find that the effects of poverty on democracy and political participation are mixed. On one hand, Africa's poorest people are less likely to demand democracy (and reject authoritarian alternatives), and less likely to be satisfied with democracy, compared to the better off, although the effects on demand are very modest. On the other hand, lived poverty does not appear to be a major hindrance to political participation. In fact, the continent's poorest citizens tend to be more active participants in political and civic affairs than their better off counterparts. Thus while AFRICAN AGENDA
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lived poverty may slightly reduce demand for democracy, it does not appear to be preventing the poor from participating fully in the socio-political life of their countries.
Conclusion Afrobarometer data on lived poverty provide an important basis for testing widespread assumptions and claims about the effects of the continent's recent economic growth on poverty reduction. While economic data suggests that African countries may be making important strides in achieving and sustaining high growth rates, survey data from 34 countries shows that there is a disconnect between reported growth and the persistence, in both frequency and severity, of poverty among ordinary citizens. Meeting their basic daily needs remains a major challenge for a majority of Africans, even at a time when their countries are reporting impressive economic gains. While several countries demonstrate progress in reducing the experience of poverty, there are as many where lived poverty has increased. These findings suggest that either economic growth is not trickling down to average citizens and translating into poverty reduction (and in fact, is instead leading to growing income inequality), or that there is reason to question whether reported growth rates are actually being realized. In either case, it is evident that African governments need to focus as much attention on poverty reduction efforts as they are on growing their economies. The evidence suggests that investments in education and infrastructure may be among the most effective ways to extend economic gains to the continent's poorest citizens. The Afrobarometer is produced collaboratively by social scientists from more than 30 African countries. * Boniface Dulani is a lecturer at the University of Malawi and operations manager for fieldwork with the Afrobarometer, dulanibo@msu.edu; Robert Mattes is a professor of political studies and director of the Democracy in Africa Research Unit (DARU) in the Centre for Social Science Research (CSR) at the University of Cape Town, and a co-founder of and senior advisor to the Afrobarometer, robert.mattes@uct.ac.za; Carolyn Logan is assistant professor of Political Science at Michigan State University and deputy director of Afrobarometer, clogan@msu.edu.
HEALTH
The controversy over "counterfeit" drugs One of the biggest hurdles to stemming the global tide of counterfeit medicines is disagreement over the term itself, which drug companies are accused of hijacking for commercial rather than public health reasons, reports IRIN. THERE is no dispute over the dangers that fake medicines pose. Often containing few or no active ingredients, they are typically ineffective - and are sometimes actively harmful. Some contain enough of an active ingredient to affect a disease but not enough to eliminate it, contributing to the growth of drug-resistance. And they cost almost nothing to manufacture but bring huge profits to their makers and distributors.
The problem is thought to be widespread in countries with weak regulatory oversight; in 2003, Nigerian health officials estimate that 70 per cent of drugs in circulation in the country were either counterfeit or adulterated. But international agreement over how to deal with fake medicines has been elusive, with discussions getting bogged down over exactly what kinds of drugs should be targeted. The problem is that the phrase AFRICAN AGENDA
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normally used in the debate - “counterfeit medicines” - can refer to far more than chalk pills with forged labels. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a counterfeit drug as “a medicine, which is deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled with respect to identity and/or source. “Counterfeiting can apply to both branded and generic products, and counterfeit products may include products with the 31
HEALTH
correct ingredients or with the wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient active ingredients or with fake packaging.” Yet pharmaceutical companies consider even safe, efficacious drugs “counterfeit” when their expensively developed and patented formulas are copied without their permission, or even when their own drugs, licensed and packaged for sale in one country, are diverted, repackaged and sold elsewhere at a higher price. A meeting at WHO in Geneva, Switzeland in November will try to nail down more firmly what international control measures should cover and, just as importantly, what they should not. The meeting of the Member State Mechanism on Substandard/spurious/falsified/falsely labelled/counterfeit medical products will focus not on drafting a treaty such an ambition has been abandoned for
the time being - but rather on developing a “programme of work” to curb the sale of such products. This will look at best existing practices and can be tailored to the situations in different regions. WHO's project manager for quality assurance and safety of medicines, Michael Deats, is cautiously optimistic. “This topic is mired in controversy,” he said, “because of the conflict between protection of public health and protection of intellectual property. But we are now getting to the stage where negotiations are starting to settle down, and we have got a better chance of moving forward.”
A focus on trade or health? For Oxfam's senior medical policy adviser, Mogha Kamal-Yanni, the concerns of drug companies are purely a trade issue, with no relevance to public health initia32
tives. By conflating the two, “you are transferring the duty of checking and enforcing intellectual property rights from the private owner of those rights to governments, which have very limited resources, and you're not sorting out the problem; the real problem is about bad-quality medicines,” Kamel-Yanni told a meeting at London's Chatham House. Despite efforts to harmonize copyright and intellectual property laws by countries like the US and Japan, which are home to many pharmaceutical companies, these laws vary greatly around the world. There have been a number of cases in which generic drugs manufactured legally in countries like India, on their way to other countries where those drugs would also be regarded as legal, such as Nigeria or Brazil, have been seized in transit through Europe on the grounds that they violate patents rec-
ognized under European legislation. The result has been bitter opposition to attempts to reach an international agreement on combating counterfeit medicines. Countries like India, China and Brazil allege that big drug companies are trying to use WHO to suppress competition from more affordable generics. Chatham House's Centre for Global Health Security, Anna George says the pharmaceutical industry needs to stop insisting on the catch-all term “counterfeit”. “The industry needs to move away,” she told IRIN. “They need to drop that word that causes so many problems, say that their own intellectual property rights will be pursued elsewhere, and allow the debate to focus on health issues.”
Shoring up supply chain Kamal-Yanni says more lasting soluAFRICAN AGENDA
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“If I have access to a trained pharmacist and a good supply chain system, the counterfeiters and the people supplying bad-quality drugs will have limited access to the market. So investing in the supply chain - and in stopping drug shortages in the public sector, which force people to go to private markets with zero regulation - this is the kind of investment that we need before we go for an international treaty.” tions can be found by investing in supply chains in the developing countries worst affected by the problem. “As a patient,” she said, “if I have access to a trained pharmacist and a good supply chain system, the counterfeiters and the people supplying bad-quality drugs will have limited access to the market. So investing in the supply chain - and in stopping drug shortages in the public sector, which force people to go to private markets with zero regulation - this is the kind of investment that we need before we go for an international treaty.” At the moment, the issue of a treaty is on hold, says WHO's Deats. He told IRIN, “WHO now has a solid platform and an agreed mandate, clearly focusing on public health. We are still at the talking stage rather than the doing stage, but there is now a spirit of cooperation rather than the hostility which existed a few years back. “The pharmaceutical companies are major stakeholders in the field, so I don't think you can exclude them, but the amount of influence they have mustn't be disproportionate. The low-income countries, which are really suffering badly, would do better to invest in their supply chain and systems of oversight, but there's no 'one size fits all' solution. Our task now is to identify priorities and then get to work with a view to minimizing harm to patients in our member states.”
HEALTH
In battle against fake drugs: Ghana's drug agency clashes with a local pharma giant; bans Indian pharma co Africa is awash in fake medicines. The problem is believed to be much worse in West Africa. Thus an escalating dispute between Ghana's drug agency and two major pharmaceutical companies, one local and the other Indian, over fake medicines on the local market is laying bare the scale of the menace, writes *Kwesi W. Obeng.
A high stakes drama around fake drugs has pitched Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) against one of the country's most prominent local pharmaceutical establishments, Tobinco Pharmaceutical Company. The FDA has since September destroyed unspecified quantity of drugs seized from some warehouses of Tobinco. Awaiting destruction is a much larger quantity of about 100 different products of Tobinco. Tobinco established 13 years ago and headquartered in Accra, Ghana's capital, is accused of flooding the local market
with fake, unregistered and dangerous drugs mainly from Bliss GVS Pharma Limited of India. The FDA has also banned the Indian company from exporting its medicines to Ghana. In reaction, Tobinco has charged the national drug agency of pursuing a plot to destroy its reputation. Tobinco has since sued the FDA. The pharmaceutical company has also applied for an interim injunction against the FDA to restrain the drug agency from further incinerating products of the company until the final determination of AFRICAN AGENDA
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the suit. “Our drugs that were and are being destroyed by the FDA are not fake drugs�, the Chairman of Tobinco Pharmaceuticals, Nana Samuel Amo Tobin was quoted in the local press. Tobinco's chairman has also warned that staff of the distressed company may be laid off - to compound the already high unemployment rate in the country. Ghana has one of the most dynamic pharmaceutical industries in West Africa. Major Ghanaian pharmaceutical companies include Aryton Pharmaceuticals, Ernest 33
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Chemist Limited, Danadams Pharmaceuticals, Kama Industries, Letap Pharmaceuticals and Kinapharma. Many of these companies also export some of their products to other West African countries. But in October, Ghana's drug agency banned with immediate effect, all medicinal products manufactured by Bliss GVS Pharma Limited of India into Ghana. The Ghanaian drug authorities also asked all hospitals, pharmacies and other health facilities to return every product made by Bliss GVS. According to the FDA, the company manufactured a fake anti-malarial drug, Gsunate Plus Suppository, which was imported onto the local market. Tobinco Pharmeuticals imports Bliss GVS Pharma products to Ghana. According to the Ghanaian authorities, the efficacy and safety of the medicine has not been ascertained, as there had not been any clinical study to justify the use of the product for the treatment of malaria. Bliss GVS also has no authorization to use Ghanaian children as clinical trial subjects. The manufacturer, says Ghana's national drug agency, had not registered the drug in India, although malaria is prevalent in that country and much of South and East Asia. Bliss GVS Parma had also manufactured and distributed on the Ghana market several medicinal products which have not been evaluated and duly registered as required by law. The FDA is mandated by law to ensure public health and safety. By this mandate, the FDA is to ensure that medicines that enter the country have been duly evaluated and approved prior to their importation and distribution. The credibility of the FDA has been called into question by a raft of independent policy research and advocacy institutions in the country as many other pharmaceutical companies have their unregistered products on the market. Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGh) has also questioned how the local market came to be flooded with fake drugs if the FDA was doing its work of ensuring that only genuine medicines were sold in the country. The president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGh), James Ohemeng Kyei, has said that there is a breakdown in the regulatory system of the FDA. According to Ohemeng Kyei, the “knee jerk reaction” of the FDA to the importation and distribution of products the national 34
drug authority indicates are unwholesome, was a clear indication that there is a “systemic regulatory failure and lack of technical assessment and input into regulatory decision-making” at the FDA.
“It is…ridiculous and embarrassing to read a press release by the Ministry of Health talking about review of the processes of medicines regis tration of the FDA and by whom?” Asante Boateng said, pointing out that “Our (FDA's) medicines registration guidelines are WHO guidelines and we shall always go by international best practice.” But Ohemeng Kyei has a rather checkered record. In 2010, Ohemeng Kyei was the chief pharmacist of Ghana's Ministry of Health when the FDA used the same postmarket surveillance intelligence system to uncover a large quantity of substandard psychiatry medicines imported by the Ministry of Health. The FDA ordered the immediate re-exportation of the fake psychiatry medicines. In a sharp rebuttal to a statement by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in which the ministry called for a review of the FDA's registration processes, the acting head of the FDA's Pharmaceutical Industrial Support Department, Samuel Asante Boateng charged the MOH of undermining the work of the drug agency. “It is…ridiculous and embarrassing to read a press release by the Ministry of Health talking about review of the processes of medicines registration of the FDA and by whom?” Asante Boateng said, pointing out that “Our (FDA's) medicines registration guidelines are WHO guidelines and we shall always go by international best practice”. “The question now is whether this intervention (by the MOH) is to reduce the standards to suit some individuals who are uncomfortable with the processes due to their selfish gains at the detriment of public AFRICAN AGENDA
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health and safety. Why are some people uncomfortable whenever the FDA exposes counterfeit medicines”, Asante Boateng asked. In 2011, the Pharmacy Council of Ghana, a another statutory body established to ensure pharmaceutical service providers practice in accordance with the prescribed standards to ensure public safety, instituted disciplinary actions against a total of fifty seven (57) pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies and licensed chemical sellers for various infractions. Incidentally, MPedigree, a mobile technology innovation which allows people to check the authenticity of a drug by SMS was recently invented by a Ghanaian, Bright Simmons. The innovation already adopted in a number of African and Asian countries including Nigeria is now undergoing trials in Ghana. Official reports do indeed indicate that the local market is awash in counterfeit and downright phoney medicines. These fake medicines can be found in even public hospitals and pharmacies across the country. The country is already staring at a major public health crisis. In April this year, the FDA seized 130 million counterfeit condoms made-in-China and supplied to Ghana's Health Services (and distributed to health facilities across the country) after tests at Ghana's drug agency's medical devices laboratories revealed the condoms were flimsy, undersized and riddled with holes. The condoms were valued at about US$6 million. The condoms, BeSafe, were manufactured by Henan Xibei Latex Company based in Xinxiang city in China's Henan Province. Global Unilink Limited, a
HEALTH
Ghanaian trainee nurses
Ghanaian company sourced the unsafe condoms from Harley Limited, an Indian company based in Kenya. According to the South China Morning Post, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission for Population Control buys about three-quarters of the more than 40 million condoms sold in China in 2012 and in a review of its 13 condom suppliers in 2011, the Commission ranked Xibei 12th, with the second lowest score for quality. The fake drug industry is a global problem. A 2011 World Health Organisation (WHO) survey of seven African countries found that between 20 and 90 per cent of all anti-malarials failed quality testing. These included chloroquine-based syrup and tablets, whose failure rate range from 23 to 38 per cent and sulphadoxine / pyrimethamine tablets, up to 90 percent of which were found to be below standard. WHO has also established that in Nigeria, Africa's largest market for medicines, 64 per cent of anti-malarial drugs were fakes. Over two-thirds of drugs consumed in Nigeria are imported from India and China, widely regarded as the biggest source of fake drugs. Another study in The Lancet concluded that up to 40 per cent of artusenate (antimalarial) products, which is about the best medicine to combat resistant malaria today, contain no active ingredients and therefore have no therapeutic benefits. That study showed that counterfeiters' ability to reproduce holograms and other sophisticated printing techniques had dramatically improved between 2001 and 2005, making detection even more difficult. Malaria is particularly lethal for chil-
dren under five and pregnant women. Indeed, malaria is the number one cause of Out Patient Department (OPD) attendance and the highest cause of child mortality in Ghana and much of tropical Africa. According to Ghana's FDA “the use of fake anti-malarial medicine can result in treatment failures, complications and preventable deaths in children. This poses a threat to the attainment of Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) four and six, which seek to reduce child mortality and combat HIV, malaria and other diseases”. These phony medicines threaten to undermine decades of progress in tackling malaria. The danger posed by fake medicines is real. In 2008, 84 Nigerian babies died from ingesting fake baby teething drug. The syrup, My Pikin Baby Teething Mixture, was sold to treat infant teething pains. The deadly syrup contained a lethal mix of diethylene glycol, better known as anti-freeze and used mainly in fridges and cars. In babies, the highly toxic liquid causes vomiting, diarrhea, liver damage, kidney failure, central nervous system damage and sometimes death. In 1999, at least 30 people died in Cambodia after taking counterfeit antimalarials prepared with sulphadoxinepyrimethamine (an older, less effective antimalarial) which were sold as Artusenate. A report by the International Policy Network shows that 700,000 deaths each year were attributable to fake malaria and TB drugs in Africa. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime agency (UNODC), 45 million courses of antimalaria medication valued at about half a AFRICAN AGENDA
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billion dollars were trafficked to West Africa from Asia, mainly India and China. The global trade in fake drugs hit US$75 billion dollars in 2010, says the Centre for Medicines in the Public Interest. That represents a massive 92 per cent rise from 2005. The trade in fake drugs in African countries is almost inelastic as these nations have porous and shambolic systems including weak drug regulation control and enforcement systems, shortage and/or erratic supply of basic medicines, poorly regulated markets and unaffordable prices. The US Food and Drug Administration estimates that counterfeits make up more than 10 per cent of all global medicines market and are present in both developing and industrialized countries. The agency also estimates that up to a quarter of the medicines consumed in poor countries are counterfeit or substandard. In parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the UNODC estimates that fake drugs amount to as much as 30 per cent of the market. Fake drugs pose multiple challenges in terms of health threats, development challenges and the role of organised crime on a transnational scale. According to the WHO's World Malaria Report 2008, Africa accounts for most of the world's malaria incidence, while West Africa has the highest estimated rate on the continent, with nearly 98 million cases of malaria each year. West Africa is a major target of a range of fake medication, including antibiotics, antiretroviral drugs and medicines to fight malaria and tuberculosis. In its 2009 report titled “Transnational Trafficking and the Rule of Law in West Africa: A Threat Assessment”, in which UNODC assessed the impact of counterfeit medications in West Africa, it noted that most of these fake pharmaceutical products which appear to be genuine but contain little or no active ingredient, are imported, particularly from South and East Asia, but some come from the local pharmaceutical industry. The FDA's battle with Tobinco and Bliss GVS of India would seem to represent just the tip of the iceberg. It therefore remains to be seen how the lessons from this crackdown will help shape the pharmaceutical industry in Ghana and possibly the sub-region. * Kwesi W. Obeng is assistant editor of African Agenda. 35
HEALTH
As resistance grows, malaria vaccine raises hopes Malaria kills about 600, 000 people annually worldwide with Africa accounting for more than half of this figure. The development of a malaria vaccine marks an important milestone. EVEN as researchers announce that a malaria vaccine could be available by 2015, the threat of resistance - by the malaria parasite to the most effective drugs and by mosquitoes to frontline insecticides - continues to grow. Donor funding for malaria has plateaued, and African countries are struggling to finance the scale-up of some crucial interventions. The Sixth Pan African Multilateral Initiative on Malaria, the world's largest conference on malaria, took place in Durban, South Africa, in early October, where results from the most clinically advanced trials showed that over 18 months of follow-up, the RTS, S vaccine almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children and reduced by about a quarter the number of malaria cases in infants. Armed with these latest results, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) “now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA),” said GSK, which has spent three decades developing the vaccine. RTS, S is designed to prevent the malaria parasite from infecting, maturing and multiplying in the liver, after which the parasite would normally re-enter the bloodstream and infect red blood cells, leading to disease symptoms.
Efficacy The fact that the vaccine is only partially effective, "only tells part of the story, when we look at its public health impact," David Kaslow, vice president of product development at the health organization PATH, told IRIN. The real story lies in the number of malaria cases that could be averted. About 941 cases of clinical malaria were prevented for every 1,000 children vacci36
nated, while severe malaria cases were reduced by 36 per cent. In addition, malaria hospitalizations were reduced by 42 per cent. The effectiveness of the vaccine has weakened over time. In 2011, researchers found after one year that the vaccine reduced the risk of developing clinical malaria - when the disease requires medical treatment - by 56 per cent in young children and 31 per cent in infants. “The [vaccine's declining] efficacy over time is not unexpected. What we don't know now is what that means and what will happen in the longer term,” Kaslow noted. Additional results, expected in 2014, will give more information on the longer-term protection provided by the vaccine candidate and on the impact of a booster dose given 18 months after the first three doses of the vaccine. According to GSK, the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that it may recommend use of the RTS,S vaccine as early as 2015 if EMA regulators back its licence application. It will then be up to African governments to decide whether to introduce the vaccine into their public health systems. But even a moderately effective vaccine could have a huge impact in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for about 70 percent of malaria deaths each year - most of them children. Duncan Earle, the director of the Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa (MACEPA), told delegates at the conference that when statistics were gathered three years ago, there were 219 million reported cases of malaria infections resulting in the deaths of 660,000 people. "Approximately half of the world's population is at risk of [contracting] malaria. Most of the malaria cases and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. However, Asia, Latin America, and, to a lesser extent, the Middle AFRICAN AGENDA
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East and parts of Europe are also affected," he added.
Risks ahead The conference also heard how "populations of mosquitoes resistant to all available insecticide (including DDT) are being increasingly reported", raising fears that another 120,000 people could die from the disease every year. Professor Hillary Ranson of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine warned that the impact of insecticide resistance could be "devastating". With no new anti-malaria insecticides on the horizon, Ranson urged governments in Africa and other malaria belts to monitor insecticide resistance and to rotate the variety of insecticides used to reduce the spread of the disease. Global funding for malaria, however, has reached a plateau well below the level required to reach the health-related Millennium Development Goals and other internationally agreed-upon global malaria targets. An estimated US$5.1 billion is needed for every year between 2011 and 2020 to achieve universal access to malaria interventions in the 99 countries with ongoing malaria transmission. While many countries have increased domestic financing for malaria control, the total available global funding remained at 2.3 billion in 2011 less than half of what is needed. "We also hope that the wealthy countries would not only talk the talk but would also contribute generously to the funds that are aimed at eliminating the disease. At the moment, Africa is facing crises of funding, and we hope that companies would also fund these initiatives," Elhassan Hassan, a researcher at the University of Gezira in Sudan, said at the conference. * IRIN.
RIGHTS
AU's ICC summit: A case of elite solidarity for self preservation In reducing the issue of Africa's relationship with the ICC to elite interests and political expediency, Africa's leaders have betrayed the continent's wider interests, *Solomon Ayele Dersso.
Chamber of the African Union Commission
ALTHOUGH it is debatable whether it warranted an extraordinary session of the African Union (AU) Assembly, the relationship between Africa and the International Criminal Court (ICC) is an important one deserving robust debate. If this debate were to be framed appropriately and directed towards rectifying various problems in the ICC, thereby making it more just and effective, it would be of huge service to both Africa's quest to end impunity and the international legal order in general. The extraordinary session that the AU
Assembly (the highest decision-making body of the AU) held on October 12, 2013 was mainly dedicated to Africa's relationship with the ICC. Unfortunately, the outcome of the summit showed that the substantive issues of public interest were not the factors that informed the decision to call the extraordinary session. Two other motivations prompted the convening of the summit by African governments. The first of these motivations is bailing out the Kenyan leaders currently on trial at the ICC in The Hague - the extraordinary summit was called upon the request of AFRICAN AGENDA
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Kenya with the support of the Eastern Africa region. According to the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly, the support of two-thirds of AU member states is required for calling an extraordinary session. The summit was accordingly convened when the required majority had been reached. Kenya campaigned aggressively for this summit to use the AU platform to mobilise against the ICC and to secure wide support for the bid by President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto to dodge the ICC process. Most immediately, they wish to be excused from having to attend all 37
RIGHTS
the sessions of their trials in The Hague. If they are not granted such relief, they will face a serious problem in discharging their responsibilities in leading the Kenyan government. Understandably, there is strong sympathy for the undesirable consequences that this may have for Kenya and its people. In seeking to secure the two leaders this relief, African states are also acting in the interest of the Kenyan nation. The main other motivation for African leaders in supporting the extraordinary summit is, of course, self-interest. There is no guarantee that the ICC will not pursue other African leaders as well. The supposition that self-interest is the motivation behind the support of African leaders for Kenya's bid has been borne out by the decisions they adopted at the summit. In one of these decisions, African leaders now wish to reverse the course of international law and relieve serving heads of state and government from prosecution for serious crimes. In the words of the summit's resolution, “no charges shall be commenced or continued before an international court or tribunal against a serving president or senior member of a government in power”. Under the Rome Statute (Article 27), the issue of the immunity of heads of state for “grave” international crimes has been put to rest. It is very difficult to see how this can be reversed within the existing rules of the ICC, short of a comprehensive revision of the Rome Statute. The other AU decision - on a UN Security Council (UNSC) deferral of the cases against the leaders of Kenya and Sudan - is equally baffling. First, UNSC deferral under Article 16 of the Rome Statute does not end the cases. It only leads to the suspension of an ongoing investigation or prosecution for an initial period of 12 months. Significantly, suspension of the trials may also result in loss of the evidence on which the ICC Prosecutor may rely on. Second, the UNSC can exercise its authority under Article 16 only after determining that continuing with the prosecution constitutes a threat to international peace and security within the framework of Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Looking at the cases against Kenyatta and Ruto, there is little evidence to suggest that their trial would lead to such a threat - unless UNSC members determine that the threat of terrorism facing Kenya (following the Westgate attacks) is reason enough to warrant the deferral. The concern over the trials' interfer38
ence in Kenya's leaders' ability to effectively discharge their responsibilities is best left to the Appeals Chamber of the ICC to address. The Appeals Chamber is currently considering the Prosecutor's appeal to reverse the Trial Chamber's decision relieving Kenyatta and Ruto of the obligation to attend all their trial sessions. Sadly, the heads of state and government who attended the summit defended their position to insulate themselves from ICC prosecution based on the political ideal of “African solutions to African problems”. Hiding behind this to serve their self-interest is both a misuse and a perversion of the ideal. Such instrumentalisation of this ideal erodes its moral force as well as its political and institutional significance for enabling the continent to take the lead in dealing with the challenges it faces. In their preoccupation with expediency and self-protection, Africa's leaders have failed to use the summit appropriately to focus on and prioritise the formulation of workable recommendations for rectifying current drawbacks in the ICC system. They have also failed to put Africa's relations with the court on a more solid ground, whereby the ICC could be used to fill the impunity gap arising from the failure to address issues of justice for serious crimes nationally and afford victims an opportunity they would not otherwise have. Clearly, both the decision on the immunity of heads of state and government and the one on a UNSC deferral of the trials of current leaders sought by the ICC are directed at insulating leaders from ICC processes. This is a clear case of the AU being used as a forum of elite solidarity for self-preservation, along the lines of the description of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), as a club for dictators. In reducing the issue of Africa's relationship with the ICC to elite interests and political expediency, Africa's leaders have betrayed the continent's wider interests, namely the achievement of a fairly applied system of international criminal justice that allows societies in transition to debate and formulate processes of justice and reconciliation without compromising accountability. At a policy level, these decisions represent an instance in which the tension between human security and regime security upheld by the AU is resolved in favour of regime security. This constitutes an erosion AFRICAN AGENDA
VOL.16 NO.4
“In their preoccupation with expediency and self-protection, Africa's leaders have failed to use the summit appropriately to focus on and prioritise the formulation of workable recommendations for rectifying current drawbacks in the ICC system. They have also failed to put Africa's relations with the court on a more solid ground, whereby the ICC could be used to fill the impunity gap arising from the failure to address issues of justice for serious crimes nationally and afford victims an opportunity they would not otherwise have.” of the AU's much acclaimed normative changes, notably its right to intervene in member states under Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act embodying the principle of non-indifference. Such an elite-centered formulation of the debate on Africa's relationship with the ICC is unlikely to yield any constructive or positive outcomes. While the affirmation by AU Assembly chairperson, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn that “our goal is not and should not be a crusade against the ICC” is assuring, particularly in the light of the much talked about threat of mass withdrawal of African members from the Rome Statute, the main decisions of the summit remain controversial. This, along with the plan to review progress on the implementation of their decision at another meeting that may be called next month, means that the relationship between African states and the ICC is sure to traverse a more turbulent path in the months to come unless the Appeals Chamber upholds the decision of the Trials Chamber creating an opportunity to ease the opposition being mobilised against ICC. * Solomon Ayele Dersso, Senior Researcher, Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, ISS Addis Ababa
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