China’s involvement in Africa has three main dimensions: foreign direct investment, aid and trade. In each of these dimensions China’s engagement is dwarfed by those of US and European countries, and often smaller than those of other Asian economies. February 2008.
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Africa has the highest concentration of low-income countries of the world. It is the least developed region, the most affected by the scourge of HIV/Aids and disease, hunger and famine, among other key challenges. UN reports have systematically revealead the devastating result of Western policies towards the world's poorest countries over the last decade.
The approaches followed by the IMF, World Bank and Western governments in African countries have proved flawed in several crucial respects and civil society observers are skeptical about their latest initiatives. Enhanced and additional financial resources, trade and economic reform and the transfer of environmentally sound technology are among a range of necessary enabling tools for African countries to make significant progress towards sustainable development. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that they will be within reach in the near future.
"Africa is presented as a continent with insufficient resources to feed itself, to treat itself, to exchange abroad and to pay its debt. This is true. But did you know that over the past 30 years Africa has been a net capital exporter, a creditor — transferring more capital abroad than it received in aid loans and foreign direct investment?
Some estimates suggest that Africa’s accumulated stock of capital transferred abroad between 1970 and 2000 amounted to over $280 billion through balance of payment financing, debt servicing, official reserves held abroad and trade mis-invoicing. Debt, a phenomenon of the 1980s, brought about by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and rich countries imposing structural adjustment programmes, was particularly debilitating.
Some estimates suggest that of every $1 received in loans, 80 cents went right back out the same year in debt servicing. The remaining 20 cents will induce outflows equivalent to about a further 40 cents. Debt became a means of inducing capital flight and sucking out more resources than were originally provided. It was also an instrument for making African countries implement policies prescribed by rich countries against the will of many African people". (...)
"Africa bled and continues to bleed from two further mechanisms —tax avoidance and competition, and import penetration. A favourite policy of the aid providers over the past 20 years has been to encourage poor countries to reduce tax obligations on foreign investors. Consequently, across Africa governments offered mining companies tax holidays ranging from 20 to 35 years. Ghana’s Anglo-Ashanti will not pay tax for over 25 years. In addition, the company is allowed to hold as much as 80 percent of foreign exchange earned abroad in its own accounts.
Add in widespread mis-invoicing practices and the amount of legitimate revenue lost to Africa runs to hundreds of billions of dollars". (,,,)
"We need to make it clear to the G8 that Africa’s markets are too open and that we probably need to reverse the situation, especially in manufacturing and for some agricultural products, to have any chance of recovering. We must oppose any trade rules based on even the most minimalist form of reciprocity in market access.
The media answer to the cause of Africa’s poverty is bad governance, by which is meant either corruption or the lack of visionary or caring leadership. All these are a part of the problem, but it goes deeper than that. Africa has not lacked in visionary leadership and its leaders have not always been corrupt.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo were notable visionaries. These, and other, leaders became victims of Cold War reprisals. Did you know that in the first ten years of Africa’s independence, 27 leaders were removed by military coups and other violent means? Most of the coups were orchestrated by Western intelligence. Removing leaders by coups became implanted early in Africa’s post colonial experience. The current crisis of governance is rooted not simply in corruption but in the increasing irrelevance of the state to citizens. In the first 20 years of independence the relevance of the African state was clear to its citizens.
It built unity around a nationalist project, delivered improvements in well-being through investing in health education and production". (From "My image of Africa", by Charles Abugre, published on Socialist Worker).
The Financing for Development process, led by the United Nations, reached a global 'consensus' in the Monterrey Conference (2002). But without political will that opportunity remains in jeopardy.
Divisions in Africa over GM crops
While some countries in the region are already engaged into research in GM seed technology, there is still much opposition within these countries and in others.
Disarmament
Every day, millions of men, women and children are living in fear of armed violence.
External debt
In the last two decades, the external debt has been a huge problem that third world countries have to face. This situation has generated a “spiral of poverty” where once inside it, is very difficult for developing countries to get out.
Poverty
Although there is a wide array of perspectives on poverty at world level, no agreement has been reached about its character. In spite of having a common basis, there are multiple definitions and concepts on this issue.
World Bank
The World Bank's main self-proclaimed objective is to eradicate poverty. Yet, evidence suggests that its programmes often harm the poor and the environment.
International Monetary Fund - IMF
The IMF is one of the most powerful international organizations. Its policies change the lives of millions of people in developing countries.
Corporate accountability
How big business handle big issues like human rights and sustainable development.
Oil fueling conflicts
Many wars have been waged and are still being fought all over the world to ensure corporate control over oil.
New Partnership for African Development - NEPAD
Promoted by African governments and supported by the G8, NEPAD has been largely criticized by civil society organizations.
GM food
Is the use of transgenics a justifiable solution to the problem of famine in poor countries?
World Trade Organization - WTO
Trade at the service of people, or people subjected to trade? The WTO makes the difference.
Millennium Development Goals - MDGs
A comprehensive list of resources from the United Nations and civil society organizations.
Open any newspaper and you would get the impression that the African continent, and much of the rest of the world, is in the process of being ‘devoured’ by China. Phrases such as the ‘new scramble for Africa’, ‘voracious’, ‘ravenous’ or ‘insatiable’ ‘appetite for natural resources’ are typical descriptors used to characterise China’s engagement with Africa. In contrast, the operations of western capital for the same activities are described with anodyne phrases such as ‘development’, ‘investment’, ‘employment generation’ (Mawdsely, 2008). Is China indeed the voracious tiger it is so often portrayed as? February 2008.
This site of the UN Sustainable Human Development Programme keeps information on governance and stability, peace and war, capacity building, environment, women's issues, population, agriculture and economics in Africa.
The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), established in July 1988, is a public not-for-profit organization devoted to advanced policy research and training. The principal objective of the Consortium is to strengthen local capacity for conducting independent, rigorous inquiry into problems pertinent to the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa.
The TWN Africa Political Economy Unit's work is united around the issues of trade, investment and Africa's economic development needs in the era of the new international trade and investment regime. The unit seeks to: make the international trade and investment regime, including the WTO respond more sensitive to the needs of African countries; promote equity in international trade and investment; and develop a framework for Africa's developmental agenda.
The author tackles the history of the development discourse in Africa, discussing its changing meanings from the colonial period to post-independence rule and the onset of structural adjustment
programmes in the 1980s – Africa’s lost decade. October 2005.
As the G8 summit draws nearer, dramatic and distressing images of Africa are appearing everywhere. These show emaciated and drooping bodies of women and children, dilapidated villages and shanty towns, and barefooted jalabiya-wearing nomads roaming forlornly across the dusty fields of Africa. But Africa needs fundamental change to heal its wound, not cosmetic policies. (Charles Abugre is currently the head of policy and advocacy at Christian Aid. He has been a development activist in Ghana and many parts of Africa and Asia). July 2005.
'Never about us without us' should be the rallying cry of the African mobilisation for the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP- Africa) that was launched recently at a meeting attended by representatives of some one hundred organisations from 25 African countries. Africans are ever more resistant to massive aid concerts, Northern development agencies, charities
and aid policies based in a paternalistic approach that portray them either as objects of pity, or as mere extras on the film sets of their fundraising operations. June 2005.
In a world where graphic pictures of starving children are used by development agencies to raise funds from the public in the rich world, it is criticized that the phenomenon of ‘development pornography’ has contributed towards deeper prejudice. New ways must be found to reach the public opinion and explain the real reasons behind poverty in Africa with clearer explanations. By Rotimi Sankore, April 2005.
One of the fundamental lessons from the failure of the social dimensions of structural adjustment to have an effect, and a factor which is equally relevant for the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) which have been put in place across Africa during the last two years, is that no progressive policy of social advancement can be successful if it is treated as a residual category to serve targeting needs even as the “serious” business of macro-economic policy-making is carried on without a clear social objective in mind.
Adopted by the United Nations in 2001 as key targets for the developing world, the Millennium Development Goals, simply put, seek to free men, women, and children from the dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.
IBADS is an electronic mailing service with the objective of disseminating information about development studies on SSA. It presently contains data archives of abstracts of studies undertaken by the Africa Technical Department at the World Bank.
