Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Baby Gorilla, Uganda
In spite of long spells of silence, interrupted only by an occasional Reuters newsline or two, much is happening in Africa. Political events on the continent often have far-reaching effects and are closely related to global issues and affairs. From watching the news in Canada or the USA, nobody will ever arrive at this impression, they?ll never find out why Africa matters. Preoccupied with introverted perspectives on issues of global dimensions, such as the environment, health, education, poverty and democracy, the mainstreamed mainstream media is largely oblivious to and even incapable of capturing essential news in its proper context. News is what sells, entertainment is the way of life and if news and entertainment can be combined, you get the headlines. Best of all, if ?lawyers, guns and money? (1) come together, ideally in a live broadcast from an US courtroom. That is a sure recipe for month-long ?news coverage?, no matter if 50 or 50 000 die in Darfur or Goma. If information about life in Africa, about hopes, needs and realities of an enormous multitude of societies and cultures could be presented in a courtroom setting, Africa would always provide us with primetime news. The public gets what the public wants, so it would seem.(2)
Luckily a lot of folks are actively seeking out genuine news outside of the filtered mainstream info-confines. With regard to Africa there is currently a building momentum to pay deeper and more sustained attention to many of the core problems that keep grinding down developmental progress in Africa. Regrettably this momentum needs to be accompanied with scepticism as too often Africa has been ?on the agenda?, only to soon afterwards fall off an already marginalized spot on the radar screen of international news. Sill, the March 2005 report to the Commission for Africa ?Our Common Interest? is an important and timely major document (http://www.brandt21forum.info/Commission...
a) the argument in favour of increased support and attention to Africa
b) analysis of why action on Africa is needed.
The report certainly points in the right direction and is a welcome high-level effort to push Africa a bit closer into the public spotlight. A deeper discussion of the report should definitely be started, but of course can?t be done in this short article. Suffice to say that the report is based on good will and apparent commitment to improve bad political conditions and socio-economic situations across Africa. However the case made in the report is hardly a new one, but rather commonplace. The recommendations laid out are largely unspectacular and generally fall well short of what is needed to make systematic and structural changes and improvements. Most importantly, the basic rationale of current forms and practices of globalization are never really called into question. If recognised for what it?s worth, free-market globalization under the thumb of a unilateralist neo-imperial power (no need to guess who here), is in effect a major root cause of poverty and the decline of African institutions, livelihoods and natural resources bases.
Perspectives on the ?Economic renewal? of Africa are far from new: already in 1996 it was well recognised that ?For a few decades now, Sub-Saharan Africa has been devastated by a pervasive economic crisis, manifested by stagnant economic growth, declining quality of life for a large majority of its people, and increasing stress on the continent?s political structures.?(3) Nearly a decade later, we have yet to step beyond square one. Likewise, with regard to the practicalities of enhancing aid effectiveness, it seems that donors are treading water. At the recent Paris high-level forum on aid effectiveness of OECD donors, important points were raised and examined.(4) Yet again, apparently nothing particularly new came up and any immediate action still seems remote. Decentralisation, more resources, capacity building, managing for results, while important they are rather mundane issues. It is possible that the OECD-DAC has reached the limit of what it can accomplish as an institutionalized donor-club? Lacking an integral civil society component with a distinctly global outreach, the DAC is constrained by donor preferences and priorities when laying out policy guidelines for development aid.
Internationally, amongst donor and developing countries alike, the smallest common denominators for aid are of course the UN Millennium development goals (
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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women Goal 4: Reduce child mortality Goal 5: Improve maternal health Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
---------------------------------------------- Meeting them as anticipated by 2015 is getting more unlikely day by day, if no breakthrough is achieved still in 2005. In September at the UN general assembly, a review of progress made to date will take place. Certainly there are many important success stories to report on, but in particular in Africa, there will be far too few. Taken together, the ?Common Interest? report, the DAC aid effectiveness recommendations as well as the discussions and actions taken in working towards the MDGs do constitute positive momentum for new progress in meeting development challenges of Africa.
The momentum needed to break the debilitating shackles of globalization that Africa struggles with more than most other regions, will not be generated at donor clubs or even at the UN general assembly, which remains after all, an assembly of nation states mired in antiquated contests over abstract notions of sovereignty. Events and engagements in movements such as the World Social Forum (this year havening taken place in Brazil, see: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/ind...
END-NOTES ================ (1) The immortal Warren Zevon: http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/warren...
(2) Going Underground, lyrics by Manfred Mann (with HTML code) at: http://www.lyricsdownload.com/manfred-ma...
(3) Agenda for Africa?s Economic Renewal, B.Ndulu and N.v.d.Walle (eds.), ODC policy perspectives no. 21, Washington D.C., 1996
(4) For details consult the EURODAD report on the forum at: http://www.eurodad.org/articles/default....
