The EU’s self-serving policies and programs in Africa

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Based on a longer paper presented at a hearing in the European parliament in 2001 and subsequently published by the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam in 2002 in cooperation with the Alternative Information and Development Center in South Africa.; and adapted for the 'Alternative Africa-Europe Summit,' Lisbon December 2007.

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Despite the threats posed to the world by aggressive US unilateralism and militarism, it has to be noted that, for Africa, the EU is the more direct problem and a source of many pressures and even threats, although these are more economic and political than directly military. However, similar to the US, the economic policies and strategies of the EU are experienced in Africa as barely disguised unilateralist ‘proposals’, or demands, imposed by the EU Commission, endorsed the EU Council, and driven by individual EU governments as they pursue their strategic 'national interests' and the requirements of European corporations.

EU non-governmental agencies, organised labour and other civil society organisations have a vitally important role and responsibilities in this regard. But their solidarity and sympathy with Africans and other peoples in the South must now be qualitatively deeper in the context of the aggressive "Global Europe" strategy formulated by the European Commission to promote economic interests in Europe and the EU's perceived global interests. This strategic global positioning and the accompanying neo-liberal (re)structuring of the EU confronts not only peoples of the South but also European citizens, themselves, with serious threats to their rights and aspirations within their countries and communities.

The particular susceptibility of African governments to European power pressures is clearly the expression of long-standing colonial and neo-colonial economic dependence, and political inter-linkages over many decades, although expressed in the liberal political discourse of ‘partnership’. The previous paternalistic programs of technical and financial aid and ‘preferential’ trade access for these countries into the European market had both positive aspects as well as many limitations and problematics. But even these programs are now giving way in the ruthless neo-liberal era, to unabashed demands by the EC for ‘reciprocity’ from such countries to Europe.

Brussels is now demanding increasingly open access into African economies for European agricultural and industrial exporters, for European investors and manufacturing, mining and service corporations; guarantees on their intellectual property rights and other property holdings (especially mineral rights and land) of European companies in these countries, and much more. Brussels energetically promotes EU interests through multilateral institutions as well as bilateral trade-and-investment agreements with promising larger economies and economic groupings all over the world. But such interests are now also being promoted between the EU and regional groupings of 79 smaller and weaker African, Caribbean and Pacific countries through the framework of the Cotonou Agreement.

This framework proposes terms based on what the EU regards as the non-negotiable ‘principle’ of reciprocity and other EU rights and guarantees through so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). These are also aimed to go well beyond only agricultural and industrial trade to include investment and services liberalisation and other openings for EU companies in ACP countries. Such relations of 'reciprocity' between the gigantic EU and the much smaller ACP countries and regional groupings hold out serious threats to their future development prospects. In fact, EPAs are already actively dividing and undermining the regional cooperation and development that ACP countries need.

Critical analyst and social movement activists within Africa have long seen through the ‘partnership’ claims, and have exposed the real economic and political features and dependency-creating effects of the established aid and heavy trade orientation of African countries to Europe. This has also been taken up by progressive analysts within Europe, including some members of national parliaments and the European parliament, urged on by some well-informed development agencies and other progressive NGOs in Europe. However, many in Europe are still inclined to view the aid and trade dependence of African countries as a de facto given, 'a fact of life'. And the problems to be dealt with are considered to be essentially internal to Africa; with European aid as a self-evident ‘good’ to be defended and promoted.

Under the influence of ever-stronger African and other 'South' peoples movements, there are some apparently 'more supportive' proposals now moving into the mainstream in Europe. Unfortunately many of these proposals are highly questionable in many ways ….although considered to be at the cutting edge of campaigns against the - now undeniable - iniquities of North-South relations. Many of these demands reflect an unquestioning internalisation of some of the currently dominant neo-liberal economic assumptions and other highly problematic political and cultural attitudes. Above all, even where motivated by sincere concern about injustice and human suffering, many such proposals deal with the symptomatic effects rather than the systemic sources/causes and the forces driving Europe's interests and role in Africa.

Some Alternative Views for European Civil Society

To move from focussing on symptomatic problems towards dealing with systemic sources/causes, and the driving forces within Europe

There are many apparently progressive 'humanitarian' proposals now being promoted around and even within official inter-governmental debates. However, such seemingly reasonable and 'concerned' proposals are essentially located within - and do not, in fact, challenge - the global status quo, and they often have embedded within themselves many questionable assumptions deriving from currently dominant economic theories and the neo-liberal paradigm. These need to be unpacked and challenged, and real alternatives arrived at by European campaigners together with their African counterparts. The key issues are:

'Poverty'

After years of cumulative evidence and campaigning by African social movements and their supporters in Europe and elsewhere, 'poverty’ has now moved on stage in much international discourse; and even in the policy pronouncements of the World Bank. The focus on 'poverty' is now also expressed in the UN Millennium Development Goals: which aim to halve global poverty by the year 2015, including reducing infant mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality rates by three quarters. The official rationale is that these are 'realistic' and 'realisable' goals. However from the point of view of the billions of poor:

• Such officially endorsed aims are adopted by many well-meaning NGOs without questioning the implications of such limited 'poverty reduction' with regard to the fate of the other hundreds of millions of people who are thereby expected to remain in dire poverty. Is this to continue for another fifteen years beyond 2015… another generation …. another century ? What are the real long-term solutions to poverty beyond limited short-term poverty alleviation for some? And might not the MDG focus on such short term goals encourage in many people the impression that they are 'at least doing something' … and yet actually distract attention from the fundamental solutions. This is especially since many of the paradigmatic assumptions and neoliberal institutions, and private sector agencies, incorporated within the MDG program and approach are actually central to the causes of poverty; part of the problem rather than the solution.
• Continuing poverty for many millions of the world's population clearly has dreadful consequences for the people excluded from limited plans for poverty 'reduction'. Furthermore, those well-intentioned campaigners who 'realistically' accept the continuation of 'some' poverty, must be persuaded to recognise that the understandable survival struggles of vast swathes of humanity will inevitably, and even in the coming decade, impact not only on their own immediate societies and environments, but also on the rest of the world and the entire planetary eco-system…. even as the poor are already the main victims of increasing 'natural disasters' and impending greater global ecological dis-equilibrium and crises.
• Viewed from within Africa, and other areas of the world so affected, the determined commitment of all governments, public authorities and people, and the dedication of all the necessary financial and technical means is absolutely fundamental to respond to this social/economic/ecological disaster. Resources appropriate to this epochal challenge already exist in the world. What is lacking is 'political will', above all the active commitment of governments. But what also needs to be fundamentally changed are not only the - future - priorities of governments but the immediate functioning of the globalised economic system that has been created, and that is constantly creating and re-creating poverty and instability, and the surging global ecological dis-equilibrium and impending global crises.

'Internaitonal aid'

Hitherto, official governmental aid (ODA) to African and other lesser developed countries has been widely projected by many concerned European NGOs, parliamentarians and others as the essential response to the crises of poverty and instability. But bilateral aid per se is not a self-evident 'good'. Even where given with the best of intentions - and this is not often the reality - aid reflects, and reinforces, objective power relations between donor and recipient. Aid intrinsically demeans the recipients and empowers of donors in many different ways. More concretely, from the point of view of the objects of such aid:

• Aid can only be really effective and justified if it is conceived, shaped and implemented as transitional and targeted means to overcome fundamental problems and not to merely alleviate the symptoms. Aid is positive and effective only if it is explicitly designed to change the nature of the existing relationships, and to rapidly eliminate the very need for aid. Most fundamentally, however, aid cannot be conceived and applied separate from - and pervasively contradicted by - other economic, social, environmental and political policies being simultaneously imposed on such countries that exacerbate the very poverty that 'aid' is supposedly responding to.
• The self-serving political/propaganda purposes, and economic (and military) aims of much governmental 'aid' will only be eliminated if aid is removed from the remit and the direct self-interests of specific governments. Proposals are made for more active participation by EU parliamentarians and civil society in the formulation of EU aid programs. But this can only be legitimate if there is full and equal participation by their African counterparts, and that is extremely difficult to achieve in circumstances of very uneven resources. International aid is probably best guaranteed within agreed multilateral institutions: as UNDP, WHO, FAO and other such UN agencies have sometimes been and should be. And the multilateral and fully inclusive systems of planning, design and implementation should include the 'recipients' taking up active collective roles and responsibilities throughout and at every level.
• The demand by many EU NGOs for their governments to fulfill their undertakings in the UN to
  provide 0.7% of their gross national incomes as official aid, fails to acknowledge that this has always been a minimal gesture and, even if fulfilled, would still be outrageously inadequate in the context of the vast and continuing economic disparities between Europe and Africa in the decades since the original aid targets were set in the early 1970s. As UNCTAD (TDR 2007) reports, the per capita income ratios of developed to developing countries that was of the order of 23:1 in 1980, still stands at a yawning 18:1 in 2007. Furthermore, despite great public promises and acclaim by and on behalf of the richest governments of the world in the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, the OECD of the most industrialised countries of the world reports that its members' official development aid (ODA) has actually been decreasing over recent years.

• In principle, and beyond debates on the figures, aid should not be viewed as magnanimous 'philanthropy' or ‘charity’ from the rich to the poor. Financial and technical aid has to be recognised as a profound human obligation and a forward-looking strategic responsibility for all of humanity in a highly interdependent and increasingly unstable world, economically, politically, socially and environmentally.
• Above all, viewed from Africa, ‘aid’ is fundamentally the recompense and the return to the continent and its people of the vast net transfers of resources - human, material and financial - from Africa to Europe that has long characterised the relationship - and that continues to do so - despite self-righteous European government and mainstream media propaganda to the contrary.

International trade

Trade, too, has a role in all economies. But international trade is not the unquestionably positive and fundamental economic force for growth that is claimed in neo-liberal theory. Nor is the quantitative 'growth' purportedly created by increased trade synonymous with qualitative social and economic development and transformation. This is beginning to be recognised in some international discourse. From Africa's point of view there are a number of more specific issues and challenges:

• In the first place, the much touted ‘improved market access’ for African and other least developed country exporters into Europe is not the answer to their ‘trade’ limitations… unless they can achieve their own improved productive capacities to take advantage of such (still hypothetical) full access. In turn, improved capacities demand, at the very least, the ending of destructive IMF/World Bank neo-liberal policy prescriptions and WTO rules constraining the policy options of African and other developing country governments to pursue their own effective productive development and economic diversification strategies.
• The ‘fair trade’ promoted by many well-intentioned EU NGOs, which aim to remove some of the most blatant tariff barriers in Europe, and market iniquities, may marginally improve the export earnings of small African producers. But, without other broader transformative measures within African societies and in their broader relations with Europe and other richer countries, the mere 'fair trade' approach could reinforce rather than change their heavy dependence on basic commodity exports into the markets of the rich. This would also maintain their extreme vulnerability to external price fluctuations, commodity market manipulations and other 'external shocks'.
• The countries of Africa need stronger and more diversified domestic production and more diversified trade within and between their own economies and their immediate regions. This is also highly relevant in the broader context of the essential recognition globally that the vast expansion of international trade and associated transport costs and pollution is hugely wasteful of resources and energy and is contributing heavily to global warming. In fact, for Europe as much as for Africa and the rest of the world, international trade has to be re-evaluated, redirected and actually reduced - not continually expanded.

'Protectionism'

A specific aspect of the 'fair trade' movement focuses on the tariff and non-tariff protectionist barriers and other policies that the EU and other richer and stronger countries employ to protect and support their own producers, particularly their large-scale agri-businesses. This rightly raises 'subsidy' costs and other questions. And these have to be dealt with fundamentally between Europeans themselves and between their governments and vested economic interests demanding such supports. But these domestic policies have international repercussions, and from the point of view of African and other peoples in the South:

• A clear distinction has to be drawn between the protectionist policies of the strong against the weak,
  especially where the latter have some areas and sectors of 'competitive advantage', on the one hand; and on the other hand the protective policies required by the weak against the strong. Thus, whether or not Europeans want to protect their large, or small, producers; the key issue for Africa is that the export of excess EU agricultural - or manufactured - goods has to be accompanied by the parallel right of African and other such less developed countries to protect their producers against such competition and export 'dumping' in whatever ways they consider necessary.

• Such protective or 'safeguard' rights for weaker countries have to be secured and ensured universally,
  and this is part of the current struggles within the WTO. But such legitimate self-protection by the weak is now also under further assault through the agricultural and industrial liberalisation demands from the EU being promoted through the EPAs. At the same time, the financial strictures of the IMF and World Bank make it particularly difficult for such countries to mobilise and apply the kind of production subsidies and other public supports that all producers in all countries need at one phase or another. All these agencies and terrains of struggle need to engage the attentions of EU NGOs as much as their counterparts in Africa.

• At the same time, other challenges are posed by the tendency for many well-meaning Europeans to
  view Africa simply as a continent of small farmers and their countries' as fundamentally agricultural economies. While supporting family food security and national food sovereignty, it is also essential that it be recognised also that sizable proportions of Africa's populations are not rural but reside in abysmal conditions in vast urban slums. The solutions to their unemployment and poverty have to be found in economic development and diversification beyond only agricultural development, important though this is. Thus EU campaigners have, like their African counterparts, to take on board many other related issues and particularly the domination of African countries by European industrial, mining and services companies that prevent the emergence of alternatives in Africa …. and that the EPAs will exacerbate.

International investment

The official EU response to poverty and underdevelopment in Africa is to promise 'financial and technical assistance' through European companies and consultancy firms to African governments. This is now also promised to help them cope with the 'adjustments' required (ie the damages caused) through EPA liberalisation and other international trade and investment agreements. Some of the more aware groups in Europe are critical of EU investment and the negative practices of European corporations in countries of the South, although not all of them question the overall role and very presence of European transnational corporations in other peoples' countries. There are a number of key issues in regard to the role of international investment and capital flows that need to be more actively pursued by concerned Europeans.

• The seemingly self-evident 'necessity' for foreign investment in Africa is actively promoted by EU
  governments and even accepted by the European parliament and many NGOs. However, despite the vast expansion of FDI (foreign direct investment) around the world, a mere 2.7 % comes to Africa. Furthermore, this is concentrated in only half a dozen oil-producing countries, and mainly in extractive (mineral, timber, fisheries) enclave operations in other African countries. This reflects the priorities and it shapes the exploitative nature and impact of even supposedly 'more stable' and 'productive' foreign investment in Africa. But 'FDI' operations in Africa are very mobile and unreliable, and are relatively 'stable' only compared to the extreme destabilisations wrought by highly volatile financial speculators.

• The competition for foreign investment amongst African governments, encouraged by the IMF and
  World Bank, results in ever-increasing financial and other inducements from African 'promotion agencies' to international investors, accompanied by 'lax' social and environmental terms. And the WTO's Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) actively inhibits governments from even attempting to set investment requirements on foreign companies, such as local inputs into their production, management and technology transfers, labour and gender rights and other possible more 'developmental' terms. The EU is the most energetic promoter in the WTO of TRIMs, TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), NAMA (Non-Agricultural Market Access), GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and other such agreements in support of EU companies' expansion and 'rights' worldwide.

• The negative effects of such agreements and of current foreign investment in Africa is clearly evident
  in the damaging effects on people on the ground. However, at a different level, extensive financial liberalisation and the guaranteed profit repatriation rights of foreign companies, promoted by the IMF/WB and through bilateral and regional inter-governmental agreements - including the proposed financial liberalisation terms within EPAs - contribute to the vast net capital transfers out of the continent. Rates of return of up to 30% pa on investment in Africa for foreign companies is much higher than such rates in Europe and even in Asia and, over time, amounts to much greater transfers out than ever enter Africa.

Foreign debt

Foreign debt payments are another form of capital outflows from Africa. The external indebtedness of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa trebled during the 1980s and 1990s even though many were spending up to 40% of their GNPs in servicing their debts. After years of campaigning by anti-debt activists, it is now formally recognised, even by the IMF/WB and in the EC, that this situation is financially unsustainable and a serious impediment to dealing with Africa's dire social, economic and environmental problems. Some "debt relief" has therefore been accorded to 18 of the "most distressed" debtor countries in Africa and elsewhere, but this too poses a number of important questions and challenges:

• Many such offers are made for maximum political ‘effect’ with little real gain for the recipients of
  such 'relief'. There is much exaggeration of the real sums involved and deliberate conflation of terms - such as ‘relief’, ‘reduction’, ‘write-offs’ and ‘cancellation’ - in order to convey the impression that more is being achieved than is in fact the case. Some individual EU member states have provided debt 'relief' to some African countries. But, for most African countries, their indebtedness to the IFIs and private banks continue. EU parliamentarians and NGOs should challenge their respective home governments to act on their own obligations and use their power to push the IMF/WB to full cancellation of all these countries’ multilateral debt. The role and vast powers of private banks are also a challenge to Europeans themselves.

• On the vexed question of the 'conditionalities' attached to debt 'relief', the first point is that such terms cannot be left in the hands of those that have helped to create the crisis – irresponsible banks, self-serving creditor governments and multilateral agencies alike. It has to be the people of the countries concerned who are empowered to ensure that they have greater future control over their governments on these issues. Whereas currently, and to the contrary, current debt 'relief' is directly linked to a continuation of the type of 'structural adjustment' (neo-liberal) conditionalities of the IMF and World Bank, which have been the over-riding factors in the deteriorating economic and social situations in countries under their sway.
• Most fundamentally of all, however, the entire conceptualisation - and myth - of African
  'indebtedness' has to be interrogated and exposed. The net financial flows are, and have long been, from the debtors to the creditors, from the poor to the rich, from the South to the North. And, as campaigners in these countries calculate the many forms of South-North resource transfers, and the many costs imposed upon their countries, peoples, and environments, over many years, they justifiably ask “who owes whom?” With the Jubilee South slogan “Don’t Owe! Won’t Pay”, campaigns are developing for debt repudiation by the ‘debtors’ and even for reparations due from the ‘creditors’. The struggles towards such positions are internal matters between the peoples and governments of the respective ‘debtor’ countries, towards a potential joint response by them all. But, at the very least, EU parliamentarians should be aware of this; and European civil society campaigners should give their active support to this.

'Good governance'

The EU and other such governments, such as the US, routinely refer to 'sound market policies', which to them means trade and investment liberalisation, services commercialisation and generalised privatisation. These are regarded as expressions of 'good governance' in African countries. There are, however, also political conditionalities set by the EU and other powerful governments. These include - apparently sound - demands for evidence of respect for democracy and human rights in countries receiving their aid. The EU parliament, like many well-intentioned European NGOs, supports greater institutional capacity building, legality and accountability of African governments. The real aim, however, should be to enable the people and governments of such countries to ‘regain’ from external institutions and foreign governments their own national political and human rights and responsibilities. This raises a number of further issues and poses a number of challenges:

• The emphasis of the EU is always almost entirely on the failings and abuses of African governments.
  These and other internal factors - such as the general weakness in, or active suppression of independent labour and broader civil society forces in most of these countries - certainly do demand urgent attention and energetic counter-efforts. These must be supported, but it has to be recognised that internal government abuses in Africa are both a problem in themselves and an effect of other factors and forces. European and other powerful governments fail to acknowledge and explicitly take on board the role of powerful external forces, above all, within their own societies - economic and political, private and public - in fostering bad governance. These forces even include European and other governments passively or actively colluding with, or even creating, such regimes in furtherance of their own geo-political and geo-economic interests.

• Equally significantly, when the IMF and World Bank rail against corruption in the governments under
  their sway, they not only ignore the role of outside governments, transnational corporations and banks in encouraging or conniving with such corruption; they also fail to see that their own policies are doing the same. EU governments, directly or through the IMF/WB, insist that governments pursue rapid and sweeping privatisation of their state enterprises and public utilities. The resultant intensified interaction between public and private interests, and the conflation of political power/responsibilities with narrow economic interests, and with business aspirants within government ranks, is generating greater levels of corruption, cronyism and abuse of public office than ever before in these countries.

• Furthermore , with regard to such external proposals to create ‘good governance’ in these countries, it is precisely the external imposition of such policies that have contributed towards the governmental crises, the weakening and the de-legitimisation of government in many such countries. The ideologicallly driven campaign of the IMF/WB against the role of the state in these countries has for decades blinded them to the necessity of that role, to the justifiable aims and even achievements of state-led development in many of these countries in the past. This has pre-empted and prevented serious attention and efforts towards to the development of appropriate policies to deal with the weaknesses and mistakes within state-driven development models. In their zeal to discipline governments, to reduce their resources and entire role, these international social engineers have helped to create externally dependent governments unresponsive or responsible to their own populations, and have in the process actively undermined real democracy.
• Most of the above critical observations apply equally to the proposal that peace and stability in African
  countries is an essential pre-condition to effectively tackling poverty. This is not incorrect, of course, but it is very superficial and fails to focus on the complex interaction of internal and external factors that create social tensions, conflicts, civil and inter-state wars, war-lordism, and even ‘collapsed’ states. Campaigns against the legal and illegal sale of arms by European companies and individuals in such countries is fundamental and has to be pursued. But a useful observation made by the EU parliamentary resolution on LDCs in 2001 is that “causes of armed conflicts can be economic inequality and conflicts of interest at local, regional and international levels and…. conflict prevention must be defined in such a way as to find solutions to these structural causes”. Social conflict and violence are primarily an effect or result - as well as a cause - of economic deterioration and crises.

Looking toward genuine African-European partnerships

The above are some of the key issues and challenges that face African countries, particularly in their relations with European governments. These challenges are also directed at, and need to be taken up by progressive-minded and conscientious Europeans. These latter are crucial to creating alternatives and they have to be crucial and active allies - not merely 'sympathisers' and supporters - of their African counterparts.

The most important contribution that concerned Europeans can make is to tackle the sources of many of Africa's problems that arise from and reside in Europe: in the policies of European governments, in the role of European TNCs and other business interests, in the mass media that support them, and in the other influential power institutions in Europe. Such a role by informed and concerned Europeans is by no means simple but it is also essentially in their own best interests. The aggressive 'Global Europe' that is being devised in Brussels is not only a threat to African and other peoples, but carries very negative implications for the rights and hopes of Europeans themselves. Africans and Europeans must act together.

With regard to the possibility of partnership agreements between the EU and ACP countries and regions, Africans and Europeans must argue together that if such agreements are to be fair and beneficial for our peoples, they cannot follow the model and the rules of free trade agreements. We do not want “free trade” and all the other "trade-related" aspects promoted through the current proposed EPAs between Europe and the ACP countries. We want trade relations and opportunities for genuine co-operation between the respective regions that favour the welfare of our peoples, the sovereignty of our countries and respect for economic and cultural diversity, and which do not destroy our environment. We oppose a free trade agenda that overwhelmingly serves the interests of European transnational corporations and that (marginally) benefits only minute political and economic elites in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

We must together work for a different multilateral economic system to that promoted by the WTO. We all need an economic system that, instead, ends the dominance of the role of international financial flows and that (re)regulates capital; a system of international relations that encourages mutually beneficial complementarity of economies and sharing of technologies; a system of international trade that promotes just and differentiated rules for trade between countries at very different levels of development; a system that recognises essential human social and economic rights and ensures that the ownership of public goods and services is for the respective peoples to determine; an international system of agreements and relations that makes it possible to close the economic gaps between South and North, between the rich and the poor, between the enriched and the impoverished. Such a very different co-operation and real partnership between African and European peoples and their governments is possible and essential for our mutual benefit and as part of broader co-operation between all the peoples of the world. This, in turn, is ultimately in the interest of our shared planetary home and common destiny.

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Dot Keet is a research Associate of the Alternative Information and Development Center, Cape town, South Africa, and Fellow of the Transnational Institute. dkeet@iafrica.com