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June 2005
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Africa is the poorest continent and has long suffered war, famine, and disease. But African leaders and international players are creating ways to restore peace, promote good governance, and upgrade health across the continent’s 53 countries. African leaders have formed stronger regional and sub-regional institutions and committed their countries to policies and programs to stimulate economic growth and increase funding for education, health, and infrastructure. African negotiators, supported by African and United Nations peacekeepers, are working to resolve some of the serious and debilitating conflicts that have afflicted the continent in Burundi, Congo, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, and elsewhere. For their part, non-African policy-makers, motivated by a mixture of self-interest and altruism, have concluded that they need new policies and programs for an increasingly globalized world in which an African problem—terrorism, for example, or a deadly disease—can easily spread beyond the continent’s borders. Such policies, says Princeton Lyman, Ralph Bunche senior fellow in Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, “would allow for an examination of Africa’s place in the process of globalization and the extent and the ways by which Africa’s relative marginalization in that process poses a problem for the international community.”
The vehicle for unifying the continent and, it is hoped, linking it to the global economy, is the African Union (AU). Created in 1999, it replaced the Organization of African Unity, which had focused on ending colonial rule and apartheid but was ill-equipped to meet contemporary challenges. Modeled on the European Union (EU), the AU is committed to economic and political integration on African terms. “The policies which we are shaping now are based on interests and priorities defined by Africans, and not … defined by our former colonies,”
Graca Machel, the president of Mozambique’s Foundation for Community Development, told a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2001, the AU established the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) to end armed conflicts, promote good governance, and eradicate poverty.
There are other signs of change in Africa: Multi-party elections are increasingly the norm in sub-Saharan nations, and many countries have sustained steady economic growth for a decade or more. Observers point to Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, and Senegal as emerging economic success stories. Still, across a highly diverse continent, Africa’s problems are formidable: hunger, poverty, lack of development, corrupt or inept governance, armed conflict, and disease—most notably, HIV/AIDS. Ethnic clashes occur in several countries, and religious conflict erupts often in Nigeria, where Muslim and Christian populations live side by side. A humanitarian emergency claiming 1,000 lives a day continues in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the two year-long conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region has left more than 50,000 people dead and more than 1 million displaced.In addition, Africa has become a staging ground in the war on terror as militants take advantage of weak border controls and internal chaos to plan and launch attacks.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government have emerged as leading advocates for Africa. Blair’s Commission for Africa has proposed a series of steps designed to foster political and economic liberalization, remove subsidies and other barriers to free trade, bolster health policies that in some countries have stemmed the spread of HIV/AIDS, dramatically reduce governments’ international debt and increase development aid, enhance education, stop armed conflicts, and help local and national leaders and citizens devise African remedies for Africa’s problems. Britain currently holds the presidency of the Group of Seven and will host the July 2005 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, at which Africa is expected to be a priority agenda item.
Development
Forgiving some or all of Africa’s debt, while not a new idea, has gained greater urgency in the last several years. The countries of sub-Saharan Africa owed a total of $210 billion in 2002, according to the World Bank. With the five nations of northern Africa added in, indebtedness reached $295 billion; it was owed to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), other nations, and private lenders, including international banks. The majority of the indebted countries spend large amounts—in some cases, more than half—of their export earnings to service debt. The IMF launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative in 1996 to help provide debt relief. Of the 33 countries that qualify for HIPC assistance, 25 are in Africa; thus far, the initiative has forgiven some $32 billion worth of debt. Advocates of debt relief say more needs to be done. African poverty is “a scar on the conscience of the world,” Blair told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27, 2005. “For poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa which need it, the objective must be 100 percent debt cancellation as soon as possible,” Blair’s Africa plan says.
Africa advocates also see foreign investment as part of the answer to the continent’s woes. Africa currently receives just 1 percent of global foreign direct investment. The African Union and its NEPAD program endorse measures to improve governance and public and private accountability in order to reassure investors and attract foreign capital. Blair’s Africa commission takes a similar tack.
In 2000, the United Nations established the Millennium Development Goals. Meant to be achieved globally by 2015, they include halving the number of people living in poverty, sending all children to school, combating disease, and setting up a worldwide partnership for development. Many of the countries targeted by those goals are in Africa. But it is unlikely most of the goals will be reached. The international promises to meet them “are now being downgraded from a pledge to just a possibility to just words,” said Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, in a speech outlining many of the elements of Britain’s Commission for Africa proposal.
In the United States, the Bush administration created the Millennium Challenge Account in 2004, which will increase aid by 50 percent over five years to developing nations that adhere to democratic practices, good governance, human rights, and free-market economics. Congress appropriated $994 million for this initiative in fiscal year 2004; eight of the 16 nations selected to compete for funds that year were African. And i n 2003, the administration pledged $15 billion over five years—triple the previous funding—to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, making the United States the leading donor to this cause. Some critics have nevertheless argued the money would have greater impact if it were allocated to multilateral funding programs such as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB), and Malaria.
Health
Healthcare and the prevention of disease are two of Africa’s most pressing goals. Millions of Africans suffer from a variety of ailments; the most devastating is AIDS, which has reached epidemic proportions on the continent. An entire generation is being decimated. Nearly 30 million Africans are infected with HIV; nearly 60 percent of all AIDS cases in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa. All seven countries in southern Africa—Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland—have infection rates above 17 percent of their populations, according to the U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS 2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. Botswana’s infection rate is nearly 40 percent; South Africa has more than 5 million infected people. Africa currently has 12 million AIDS orphans; that number is projected to rise to 18 million by 2010.
Some countries have managed to stem infection rates through targeted, aggressive public-health campaigns. Uganda has dramatically lowered its AIDS rate—from 29 percent of women infected in 1992 to 10.3 percent in 2002 and from 11 percent of men infected in 1992 to 2.8 percent in 2002. The total AIDS infection rate for the country is about 6 percent, with a steady decline in the number of infections among young people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The Global Fund was created in 2001 to coordinate worldwide efforts against those diseases, and has given nearly $1.5 billion to fund health programs in 93 countries and approved proposals worth $1.5 billion more. Of the total $3 billion approved or allocated, 56 percent ($1.68 billion) is going to AIDS-related projects, and 61 percent ($1.83 billion) is directed to Africa, according to the international AIDS organization, Avert.org.
Other diseases also menace Africa. About 1 million Africans die each year from malaria and another 500,000 from TB. Cases of polio, once nearly eradicated worldwide, have nearly doubled since 2004, largely because of a vaccination boycott in northern Nigeria that caused outbreaks throughout Africa. In January 2005, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $750 million to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization to buy and distribute vaccines for diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, TB, polio, hepatitis B, and yellow fever.
Armed conflict
Armed conflict and its aftermath remain a concern. Three million people died in the Congo war alone during the late 1990s. African states have taken a lead role in resolving these conflicts but are chronically short of both diplomatic help and resources. In Sudan, just as a longstanding civil war between north and south was coming to an end, conflict between nomadic Arab and black farming groups in the western region of Darfur has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 1 million people, and threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands. U.S. officials, who have called the conflict genocide, have helped direct world attention and resources to Darfur. About 2,000 AU troops are deployed in the region, which is roughly the size of France, to monitor a ceasefire that is repeatedly broken.
Terrorism
More than 300 million Muslims live in Africa. African Islamic traditions are moderate and tolerant, and there is limited extremist activity. However, porous borders, pockets of discontent, and limited government intelligence capability have enabled terrorist groups to penetrate parts of Africa. Al Qaeda cells in East Africa bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and attacked facilities used by Israeli vacationers in 2002; since then, the Qaeda network has reportedly spread south and west. Following the Afghanistan war, Osama bin Laden’s group reportedly traded arms for African gems in several states gripped by civil war. Algeria-based terrorist groups have sought to utilize the barren Sahel region of West Africa for safe havens and training grounds, and to recruit new adherents. The United States, with other nations, has stepped up antiterrorism efforts in East Africa and elsewhere; about 1,800 U.S. troops are stationed in Djibouti. Still, experts say key locations—including Somalia, eastern Africa, and northern Nigeria—remain potential havens for terrorists.
Energy
Africaplays an ever-greater role in supplying world energy needs. Nigeria, which produces some 2 million barrels of oil per day, is a major supplier to Western Europe, Asia, and the United States. Angola produced nearly 1 million barrels per day in 2003 and supplied more than 350,000 barrels per day to the United States that year. It also exports oil to Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and is expected to double its production capacity to 2 million barrels per day by 2008, according to the U.S Department of Energy. In the next 10 years, Africa is expected to supply some 25 percent of U.S. energy needs and become a major source of natural gas. Many small and potentially unstable states—including Sudan and Equatorial Guinea—are also joining the ranks of energy exporters. Asia’s demand for energy, driven by a rapidly expanding China, has the potential to reshape African energy policies. China and Malaysia are major investors in Sudan’s oil fields; China is also increasingly active in the oil sectors of Angola and Nigeria. Many development experts argue the developed world must commit resources to help stabilize resource-rich African nations and help assure that the benefits of oil and gas revenue are not limited to a corrupt elite, but finance the health, education, and development programs their impoverished citizens need.
Trade
Africaaccounts for less than 1 percent of world trade, but has recently been flexing its political muscle to gain greater access to U.S. and European markets. At the November 2001 Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks, the United States and Europe promised to embark on a “development round” of negotiations that would help poor countries gain greater access to Western markets. Developing countries, including African nations, signed on. But at the next WTO meeting, held in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003, developing countries angrily accused Western nations of continuing to protect their domestic industries by charging high tariffs on products from developing countries. African nations joined with other developing countries to confront the United States and EU over subsidies, especially in agriculture, that they claim cost Africa billions in lost markets. The Cancun talks collapsed, and the countries left without an agreement. The Doha Round resumed only after Europe and the United States pledged to address these issues.
Critics say the wealthy countries appease powerful farming constituencies at home with hefty subsidies, which keep prices artificially low on the world market. As a result, small-scale African farmers, who grow the cotton, fruit, or other crops that African nations export, remain impoverished. The United States, for example, provides about $4 billion a year in subsidies to 25,000 American farmers. The EU gives about 50 billion euros in subsidies to European farmers under its Common Agricultural Policy and imposes high tariffs on African goods (14.4 percent on canned tomatoes from South Africa, for example). Critics say that, unless these policies are abolished or dramatically altered, African producers of vegetables, fruits, and flowers cannot compete on the international market. The WTO recently ruled against the United States on cotton subsidies and against the European Union on its sugar subsidies, opening the way, perhaps, to revision of these policies.
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