Ethiopia’s Invisible Crisis: Government Responds to Land Rights Activists With Kidnapping and Torture

Oromo Woman, Ethiopia. (Photo by Rod Waddington)

By Felix Horne
“Badessa” was a third-year engineering student in western Ethiopia in April 2014 when he and most of his classmates joined a protest over the potential displacement of ethnic Oromo farmers like his family because of the government’s plan to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, into the farmland.

The night of the first protests he was arrested and taken to an unmarked detention center. Each night he heard his fellow students screaming in agony as one by one they were tortured by interrogators. “I still hear the screams,” he told me later. Eventually his turn came to be interrogated. “What kind of country is it when I voice concern that my family could lose their farm for a government project and I am arrested, tortured, and now living as a refugee?”

Since mid-November, large-scale protests have again swept through Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest region, and the response from security forces has again been brutal. They have killed countless students and farmers, and arrested opposition politicians and countless others. On January 12, the government announced it was cancelling the master plan, but that hasn’t stopped the protests and the resultant crackdown.

Although the protest was initially about the potential for displacement, it has become about so much more. Despite being the biggest ethnic group in Ethiopia, Oromos have often felt marginalized by successive governments and feel unable to voice concerns over government policy. Oromos who express dissent are often arrested and tortured or otherwise mistreated in detention, accused of belonging to the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a group that has long been mostly inactive and that the government designated a terrorist organization.

The government is doing all it can to make sure that the news of these protests doesn’t circulate within the country or reach the rest of the world. Ethiopia’s allies, including governments in the region and the African Union, have largely stood by as Ethiopia has steadily strangled the ability of ordinary Ethiopians to access information and peacefully express their views, whether in print or in public demonstrations. But they should be worried about what is happening in Oromia right now, as Ethiopia — Africa’s second most-populous country and a key security ally of the US — grapples with this escalating crisis.

This may prove to be the biggest political event to hit Ethiopia since the controversial 2005 elections resulted in a crackdown on protesters in which security forces killed almost 200 people and arrested tens of thousands .

Although the government focuses its efforts on economic development and on promoting a narrative of economic success, for many farmers in Oromia and elsewhere economic development comes at a devastating cost. As one Oromo student told me “All we hear about is development. The new foreign-owned farms and roads is what the world knows, but that just benefits the government. For us [Oromos] it means we lose our land and then we can’t sustain ourselves anymore.”

It has become almost impossible for journalists and human rights monitors to get information about what is happening, especially in smaller towns and rural areas outside Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is one of the most restrictive environments for independent investigation, reporting, and access to information, earning the country a top-10 spot in the global ranking of jailers of journalists. For the past decade, the government has limited access to information by regularly threatening, imprisoning, and prosecuting individual activists, bloggers, and journalists and sending a clear public message that the media must self-censor and that dissent or criticism of government policy will not be tolerated.

Independent media have dwindled—more than 70 journalists have fled the country since 2010 and five of the last independent publications closed down before the May elections. Meanwhile the state-run media parrot the government line, in this case claiming that the Oromo protesters are linked to “terrorist groups” and “anti-peace elements” who are “aiming to create havoc and chaos.”

Very few international journalists are based in Ethiopia. Those who have attempted to cover events on the ground since the protests began have braved threats and arrest, but these are a few lone voices.

Given restrictions on local and international media, you might think that ordinary citizens, local activists, and nongovernmental organizations would fill the gaps and document the events in Oromia. But Ethiopia’s human rights activists and independent groups have been crushed by draconian legislation and threats, and even ordinary people are often terrified to speak out. People who dare to speak to international media outlets or independent groups have been arrested. The government taps phone lines and uses European-made spyware to target journalists and opposition members outside the country.

Since the protests began, the restrictions have become even harsher. Authorities have arrested people, including health workers, for posting photos and videos or messages of support on social media. The state-run telecom network has also been cut in some areas, making it much more difficult to get information out from hotspots.

Radio and satellite television outlets based outside Ethiopia, including some diaspora stations, play a key role disseminating information about the protests within Oromia, as they also did in 2014 during the last round of protests. Last year numerous people were arrested in Oromia during the protests merely for watching the diaspora-run Oromia Media Network (OMN).

The government has frequently jammed foreign stations in the past, violating international regulations in the process. When the government is unable to jam it puts pressure on the satellite companies themselves. Throughout the protests government agents have reportedly been destroying satellite dishes.

Yet despite the clear efforts to muzzle voices, information is coming out. Some protesters are losing their fear of expressing dissent and are speaking openly about the challenges they are facing. Social media plays a key role in disseminating information as people share photos and videos of rallies, of bloodied protesters, and of expressions of peaceful resistance in the face of security forces using excessive force.

In the coming days and weeks Ethiopia’s friends and partners should condemn the use of excessive force by security forces that is causing tragic and unnecessary deaths. But they should also be clear that Ethiopia needs to ensure access to information and stop disrupting telecommunications and targeting social media users. The world needs to know what is happening in Oromia—and Ethiopians have a right to know what is happening in their country.

Reprinted with permission from Human Rights Watch.

Georgia's Gullah Sue State to Save Culture: Case is a Study in Modern Ethnic Cleansing

Gullah Man on River Street in Savannah, GA (Photo by Sonny Side Up!)

By EVA FEDDERLY
Residents of what is believed to be the last intact community of descendants of enslaved West Africans claim in a federal lawsuit that the state of Georgia is systematically driving them from their barrier island home to make way for vacationers and second-home buyers.

Living on a small, designated portion of Sapelo Island, the fourth largest of Georgia's coastal islands, located about 70 miles south of Savannah, the Gullah-Geechee people are federally recognized as a distinct culture with their own indigenous Creole language, heritage, and culture.

They are the descendants of slaves freed 151 years ago, and they've lived continuously on the barrier island since shortly after the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War.

But in recent years, a land struggle has broken on the 16,500-acre island.

Long a tourism draw, thanks in part of presence of the Richard J. Reynolds Wildlife Management Area and the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve -- both properties administered by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources -- it is now in the cross-hairs of developers, who are building large homes for wealthy mainlanders, and driving up the cost of living on the island in the process.

"Like the islands of Hilton Head, South Carolina and St. Simons, Georgia before it, Sapelo Island struggles to resist the pressures of development that threaten to convert the Island from a community that has been home to the same families for nine generations into a vacation destination spot with luxury second homes and resorts," according to lawsuit filed by nearly all of the remaining Gullah-Geechee residents of the island in Atlanta Federal Court.

"You're looking at the deprivation of our human and civil rights through public corruption," said Reginald Hall, a plaintiff in the case.

"The state is violating land ownership rights outside of what the Constitution of the United States of America has written," he said.

Hall, whose grandfather was a church deacon on the island and its first postmaster, serving from 1918 to 1936, has long fought the discouragingly uphill battle to prevent the erosion of the Gullah way of life.

Today, Sapelo Island's Gullah-Geechee community consists of just 36 individuals who live on 434-acres known as Hog Hammock. There is no local economy to speak of, no employers providing opportunity and a future, and so most of the island's families have watched their youngest members look elsewhere for work and education.

Eventually, the single ferry line that serves the island takes them away for good.

Hall and his fellow plaintiffs say the exploitation they now complain of in court was originally inflicted on their ancestors, and goes back at least many decades, when the state of Georgia first claimed ownership of 97 percent of the island.

"The State's ownership stake is based on a history of fraudulent land transfers and land theft by white millionaires throughout the twentieth century," the complaint says.

Among the plaintiffs' villains are Howard Coffin and R.J. Reynolds Jr., rich industrialists and entrepreneurs who discovered the charms of the area in the early 20th century and soon turned Sapelo Island "into their own personal playgrounds," the complaint says.

"Through various coercive and exploitative tactics, Reynolds claimed ownership to all of the Island except portions of Hogg Hummock, where he forced all of the Gullah-Geechee descendants to live," it continues.

The ongoing pressure against Sapelo's Gullah-Geechee comes from all sides, the plaintiffs say.
They are particularly aggrieved by McIntosh County, under whose jurisdiction the island falls, but which, they claims provides no services to the Gullah-Geechee despite the fees and taxes they pay to it.

"The Island has no school, no firehouse, no medical services, and no police. The County does not adequately maintain the roads and does not contribute to any water or sewer system," the complaint says.

The plaintiffs claim that from 2011 to 2012, the county raised property taxes on the Island by as much as 1000% for some parcels.

"The 2012 appraisals were based on an analysis that was flawed on numerous levels and led to taxes that the Gullah-Geechee residents could not afford," the complaint says.

"The County tax hikes were part of a larger systemic effort to drive the Gullah-Geechee from the Island and clear the way for a mostly white vacationer population on the Island," the plaintiffs say.
Meanwhile, they claim, the county maintains a zoning ordinance for the Island "that is, on its face, designed to protect the Gullah-Geechee community."

In practice, however, it has mostly benefitted white developers, whom the county "has regularly allowed mostly white developers to come to the Island and build expansive vacation homes in direct contravention of the zoning requirements," the plaintiffs say.

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Resisting The World Trade Organization’s Culture of Terror and Impunity

Should Africa expect much from the WTO talks in Nairobi? The WTO political game is played with complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it within the WTO system of global economic governance. The Empire gets away with total impunity.

Anti-WTO Protesters: Seattle, WA 1999. (Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives)

By Yash Tandon
This article seeks to explain the process leading to WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference (WTO MC10). The next (final article in this series) will focus on the substance of negotiations. Of course, you cannot separate the process from the substance. But conceptually and strategically it is important to understand the difference as well as the interaction.

The most significant aspect of the process is its underlying power politics.

The WTO’s Underlying Power Politics

The Nairobi Declaration (if such is the outcome of the MC10) will be a negotiated text. What does that mean? Like in all previous MCs, it means, effectively, that the powerful get what they want and the weak surrender under the threat of sanctions, such as withdrawal of so-called ‘development aid’ and ‘market access’ to poor and weak countries. Yes, indeed, it is that simple. It takes collective efforts of the Global South, and the solidarity voices of the people of the world to beat Empire - as in Seattle in 1999, and Cancun, 2003.

In between the powerful and the weak are countries like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that do have some – but limited - negotiating leverage, provided they act in concert. Opposed to BRICS and the Global South is the Empire - a term that is not admissible in diplomatic – including WTO - discourse. But the Empire exists; it is an existential reality. Some readers may want to include China in this category, but in the WTO and broader geopolitical context, the Empire comprises of the USA, Europe and Japan. The WTO was created by the Empire with very little participation from the Global South – including China. The Empire structured well-thought-out built-in rules of the WTO that are lopsidedly pro-Empire. For example, in theory all countries can provide the so-called ‘green subsidies’ to agricultural production, but in practice only the Empire is able to apply this provision; even the BRICS are not able to provide these for various technical reasons.

However, the global geopolitics are shifting rapidly. The chaos in the Middle East is part of this shift. The Empire is in crisis, in decay. This opens the door for an alternative system to emerge. China is beginning to flex its political and financial muscle. It is possible that it will make its weight felt at MC10. This explains why the Empire is in a state of panic and in some urgency to ‘conclude’ the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and move on to a new pro-imperial agenda.

Why The Doha Development Agenda Is So Significant

When the DDA was launched in November 2001 it was under overbearing pressure from the Empire. Following 9/11 (the terrorist attack on New York), the US had announced that if the Doha Round was not launched, those opposing it would effectively be ‘siding with the terrorists’. The emphasis during the negotiations was largely on market access – primarily for the benefit of the Empire. As a member of the Tanzanian delegation – then negotiating on behalf of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - I remember how very disappointed we were at the outcome. [1]

However, at the last minute, on the insistence of the Tanzanian Minister of Trade, the word ‘development’ was inserted between ‘Doha’ and ‘Round’ making it the Doha Development Round (DDR) or Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The Empire did not at the time understand the significance of inserting that one word. This word has saved Africa – and the South. One must remember that the WTO is a trade – not ‘development’ - institution. Its ideological assumption is that ‘free market’ promotes development, which we know from hard evidence on the ground that it does not. However, following Doha, the developing countries have been able to use the word ‘development’ to argue for genuine development emerging out of the DDA. In other words, development first, then trade.

In the last 14 years the DDA has not shown much movement. This is the reason the Empire wants to jettison the DDA at the MC10 in Nairobi, to ‘conclude’ it. But for the Global South the DDA is their anchor; remove it and you never know to what destination the Empire might steer the WTO ship... For example, one area where the DDA anchor is not allowing the ship to drift is the so-called Singapore (and other new) issues. It gives the developing countries policy space to determine their own development priorities, to give preferences to local companies over foreign corporations and foreign imports. It is no wonder that the Empire wants to kill the DDA. The corporate interests that sit waiting to take over the helm are now even more powerful - but also more desperate - than they were fourteen years ago.

The Green Room, The Facilitators Summary, And Process

Let us get back to the process. At the apex of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference (MC) which usually meets every two years, often outside Geneva - like this time in Nairobi. In Geneva, however, the highest decision-making body is the General Council (GC) comprising of representatives (usually ambassadors) from all member governments. In between the MCs the GC has the authority to act on behalf of the MCs.

Below the GC, there is an official body called the Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) chaired by the Director General (DG) of the WTO – presently Roberto Azevêdo. However, most strategic and weighty negotiations take place within the cloistered chambers (called the ‘Green Room’ process). Admission to the Green Room – and the process itself - is wholly non-transparent and undemocratic. Negotiations take place among the Empire and a number of developing countries selected by the Empire. Also, there are a plethora of committees and ‘special sessions’, ad hoc negotiating groups and secret meetings. The Empire manipulates the process inside and outside the Green Room – including all kinds of wheeling and dealing and pressure on governments in Africa and other poor nations - and it gets away with what can only be described as terror and bully tactics. It enjoys unparalleled impunity from responsibility for serious violations of the principles of fairness and justice.

The DGs are not neutral and are appointed at the pleasure of the Empire – just like the Heads of the World Bank and the IMF – together with the WTO, the three primary institutions of global governance. Azevêdo is not neutral. He is a free market fundamentalist and buys into this ‘holy grail’. On 3rd June this year, for example, China and India rebuffed his proposal to change OTDS (Overall Trade Distorting Domestic Support) in favour of the developed countries. He comes from Brazil, which is the coordinator for the G-20 developing country farm coalition. But Brazil remained silent on this issue. [2]

On July 10 Uganda's Ambassador Christopher Onyanga Aparr challenged the DG. He is reported to have asked the DG : ‘We called for a discussion on the nature and scope of the work program, but apparently the call has not yet found a landing zone… what is so wrong with the Doha Work Program?’ [3] Needless to say, he got no response from Azevêdo.

Where We Are Today In The Lead Up To MC10

The MC10 process began - practically speaking – almost immediately after the MC9. The outcome of MC9 was disastrous for Africa.[4] Since Bali, the trade technical experts from the member countries have been negotiating the implementation of the DDA and a possible future work program. After nearly seven months of intensive negotiations, the GC set up a three-person team of ‘facilitators’ - from Colombia, Kenya and Norway - who were asked to summarise the state of the negotiations up to that time and suggest a possible text for the Nairobi Declaration.

When the facilitators presented their report on December 1, it was immediately challenged by the Global South. Briefly, there were two things wrong with their report:

• To start with it said nothing on the DDA; it totally ignored the DDA mandate.
• Then, having claimed that it will not have language on New Issues, it opened the door to these in a roundabout way by, for example, looking at the systemic implications of Regional Trade Agreements s (RTAs) and their coherence with WTO rules.

It was a very serious setback for the South as their demand to continue talks on DDA was simply set aside. On December 2, the report by TNC Chairman, Azevêdo, was postponed. On December 3, the DG was forced by the Global South to insert specific language for DDA continuance post-Nairobi. The South was no longer in a mood to take further beating from the Empire and its agents within the very structure of the WTO.[5]

This is where we stand today. The process in Geneva has more or less reached an impasse and has moved to examining the various possibilities of the format in which the final outcome might be embodied in Nairobi.

VARIOUS POSSIBILITIES OF DECLARATIONS THAT MIGHT COME OUT OF MC10

Several scenarios are possible. I rank them in order from good to bad – that is, from the perspective of Africa and the Global South.

Summary And Conclusions

1. The WTO was created by the Empire and controlled and coordinated by it - like a war machine. There are differences among its constituent members (for example between the US and the EU), but on the DDA they are united – they are bent on killing it.

2. The WTO political game is played with complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it within the WTO system of global economic governance. And the Empire gets away with total impunity.

3. The WTO’ ideology of ‘free trade’ is a pure fiction. Nothing like that ever existed in history, not even during its ‘high point’ of 19th century English mercantile system.

4. The WTO is not neutral. Its DG - Azevêdo - is not neutral. He is a ‘free market fundamentalist and works for the Empire.

5. The Chairperson of MC10, Ambassador Amina Mohamed, is officially neutral. As the Chair she has to be. But she will be under huge pressure from the Empire, Azevêdo, and the WTO Secretariat to produce an outcome favourable to the Empire.

6. Of the seven possible scenarios presented above, for Africa and the Global South the first is the best; the second is a ‘fall-back’ position; the next two are not ideal but they do not close the door to the DDA; and the last three are where are the ‘no go’ areas.

Africa will be subject to ‘waterboarding’ by the Empire at the MC10 in Nairobi under the WTO process. [6] It is time Africa sits up and gets counted. It must resist the WTO's culture of terror and impunity for the Empire.

* Yash Tandon is a Ugandan policymaker, political activist, professor, author and public intellectual. His latest book, Trade Is War, was published in June 2015.


END NOTES

[1] See: ‘The Three-Layered Reality of the WTO’ in Yash Tandon, Trade is War, OR- Books, 2015.
[2] The best blow-by-blow accounts of these negotiations are given on a daily basis by a Geneva-based ‘third world’ South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) edited by Chakravarthi Raghavan, a doyen of trade negotiations since before the WTO was created. See SUNS #8048, 24 June, 2015.
[3] See: SUNS #8060
[4] See: ‘The long losing fight over S&D in Bali’ in Trade is War, op.cit.
[5] See: SUNS #8148
[6] Waterboarding is a form of torture widely used by the US government in which water is poured over the head of a captive making him feel as if he is drowning.

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.

Are Foreign Organizations Rebuilding Haiti or Just Cashing In?

An aerial view of downtown Port Au Prince on January 16, 2010 in Haiti.
(Photo: Master Sgt. Jeremy Lock/US Air Force)

By Nathalie Baptiste
The devastating earthquake that struck Haiti five years ago was followed by a flood, as billions of dollars were poured into a reconstruction effort largely led by private non-governmental organizations.

Almost immediately, Haitians, activists, and well-wishing donors the world over began to ask: “Where did the money go?”

This summer, ProPublica and NPR released a report on exactly where some of that money went. The headline — “How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes” — neatly summed up the beloved charity’s big-picture failures in the country. But perhaps the most damning parts of the report concerned the Red Cross’ over-reliance on non-Haitian employees, who were highly compensated despite often not even speaking the local Creole or French.

While many Americans were rightly shocked, most Haitians just nodded knowingly. “The Red Cross has always been like that,” my mother said to me the day the report was released. “They pay people a lot of money so they can vacation.” International organizations that go to Haiti to “help” often spend a lot of aid money on overhead that doesn’t go toward helping anyone.

For example, ProPublica and NPR unearthed internal budget documents for a Red Cross housing project in Campeche. The project manager position, which is reserved for an expatriate, received allowances for housing, food, home leave trips, four vacations a year, and relocation expenses. All of these totaled a whopping $140,000. The top local position, by contrast — a Haitian senior engineer — earned just $42,000.

The Red Cross isn’t alone in hiring expensive expatriate staff. According to the Center for Global Development, high overhead costs are par for the course for many international NGOs. A single staff member at an organization in Haiti can earn $200,000 each year in salary.

With an estimated 10,000 non-governmental organizations operating in the country, it’s no surprise that Haiti is often referred to as the republic of NGOs. Among Haitians, expatriates who work for these organizations have become known as the “NGO class.” They live comfortably in the well-to-do suburb of Petionville in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Expensive grocery stores and restaurants cater to their tastes. Down below, many Haitians struggle to survive.

Among locals, widespread unemployment cripples economic growth and further exacerbates poverty. According to the CIA World Factbook, 40.6 percent of Haitians are unemployed, although there’s wide participation in the informal economy. With the jobless epidemic in Haiti, job creation should be a priority for NGOs. Instead, they’re often part of the problem.

After the earthquake, for example, many aid organizations outsourced the rebuilding of homes — which might have presented good work opportunities for poor Haitians — to international firms. “Outsourcing the construction drove the price up,” explained Jake Johnston in the Boston Review, “since international companies had to fly in, rent hotels and cars, and spend USAID allowances for food and cost-of-living expenses.” The U.S. government also gave contractors and employees danger and hardship pay, which increased their salaries by more than 50 percent.

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Waiting for Emancipation: The Prospects for Liberal Revolution in Africa

In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African. In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of world population. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will be home to 25% of all the people alive in 2050, 40% in 2100 (when Asia will contribute 42% and the rest 18%).—Keith Hart

80,000 South African Platinum Miners Strike For A Living Wage. (Screen capture
from YouTube video)

By Keith Hart
We live in a racist world. Despite the collapse of European empire and the formal adoption of a façade of international bureaucracy, the vast majority of black Africans are still waiting for meaningful emancipation from their perceived social inferiority.

Africans wait for emancipation in an unequal world

Now there is much talk of economic growth in Africa. In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African. In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of world population. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will be home to 25% of all the people alive in 2050, 40% in 2100 (when Asia will contribute 42% and the rest 18%). This is because Africa’s annual population growth rate is 2.5% while the rest of the world is ageing. The Asian manufacturing countries already recognize that Africa is the fastest-growing market in the world. This could provide an opportunity for Africans to play a stronger hand in international negotiations. If they succeed in standing up for themselves, it would be a world revolution, the end of the racist world order, no less.

The movement to abolish slavery was officially completed in the late nineteenth century. But emancipation is rarely as simple as that. In West Africa, abolition was a disaster. The internal drive to capture slaves continued apace and, despite a shift to their use in domestic production, supply soon exceeded demand. The price of slaves fell drastically, leading to their widespread abuse. Colonial empires were then justified by disorder in West Africa and by the drive to abolish the Arab slave trade in East Africa. Much later, when these regimes fell, Africans were offered emancipation once more, this time through national independence. Most African economies then regressed for a half-century. Apartheid was defeated in South Africa, but two decades later the country is more unequal and unemployment is rampant, while the government shoots its own people if they complain. Africans are still waiting for equal membership of world society. But they have never encountered more favourable conditions than now.

In the twentieth century, a population explosion was accompanied by a jump in Africa’s urban share from under 2% of the population to almost half. This urban revolution is not just a proliferation of cities, but also involves the installation of the whole package of pre-industrial class society: states, urban elites, intensification of agriculture and a political economy based on extraction of rural surpluses and the city bazaar.

The anti-colonial revolution unleashed hopes for the transformation of an unequal world. These have not yet been realized for most Africans. Africa’s new leaders thought they were building modern economies, but in reality they were erecting fragile states based on the same small-scale agriculture as before. Either machine production would be developed in some sectors of the economy or the state would devolve to a level compatible with its small-scale productive base. This structural weakness inevitably led them to exchange the democratic legitimacy of the independence struggle for dependence on foreign powers. Life support to Africa’s new ruling elites was switched off in the early 1980s. Many governments were made bankrupt and some countries collapsed into civil war.

The growth of cities should normally lead to rural-urban exchange, as farmers supply food to city-dwellers and in turn buy the latter’s manufactures and services. But this progressive division of labour requires a measure of protection from the world market and it was stifled at birth in post-colonial Africa by the dumping of subsidized food from the tax-rich West and later of cheap Asian manufactures. ‘Structural adjustment programmes’ imposed by the World Bank and IMF meant that Africa’s fledgling national economies had no protection. Tax collection in Africa was never as regular as in Eurasia; and governments still rely on whatever they can extract from mineral royalties and the import-export trade. Rents secured by political privilege are the chief source of wealth. This constitutes an Old Regime ripe for liberal revolution.

African development in the twenty-first century

‘Development’ refers first to humanity’s hectic dash from the countryside to the city since 1800. The engine driving this economic growth is assumed to be ‘capitalism’. Development then means trying to understand how capitalist growth is generated and how to make good the damage it causes in repeated cycles of creation and destruction. A third meaning refers to the developmental states of the mid-twentieth century, the idea that governments are best placed to engineer sustained economic growth with redistribution. The most common usage, however, refers to the commitment of rich countries to help poor countries become richer. This was at first real enough, even if the means chosen were often flawed. But after the 1970s, it has faded. If the rapid growth of the world economy encouraged a belief at first that poor countries could become rich, from the 1980s ‘development’ has meant freeing up global monetary flows and applying sticking plaster to the wounds inflicted. Development is the label for political relations between rich and poor countries after colonial empire.

There are two pressing features of our world: the unprecedented expansion of markets since the Second World War and massive economic inequality between (and within) nations. Becoming closer and more unequal at the same time is a recipe for disaster. Africa, with a seventh of the world’s population, had 2% of global purchasing power around the millennium. What could Africa’s new urban populations produce for the world economy? Apart from exporting raw materials, when they could, the world market for food and other agricultural products is skewed by western farm subsidies. Manufacturing as an alternative faces intense competition from Asia. African countries should argue collectively in the councils of world trade for some protection from international dumping, so that their farmers and infant industries might supply their own populations first.

Exchange between cities and their hinterlands has been frustrated for a post-colonial Africa whose international bargaining position is undermined by being fragmented into 54 states. The fastest-growing sector of world trade is the production of culture: entertainment, education, media, sports, software and information services. The terrain is less rigidly mapped out here than in agriculture and manufacture and Africans are well-placed to compete in this field because of the proven global preference for their music, films and plastic arts.

Classes for and against a liberal revolution

The classical liberal revolutions were sustained by three ideas: that freedom and economic progress require increased movement of people, goods and money in the market; that the political framework most compatible with this is democracy; and that social progress depends on science, the drive to know how things really work. The energies generated by Africa’s urban revolution are already manifested in economy, technology, religion and the arts; and they could be harnessed to radical change if freed from the Old Regime.

Miners on strike in Marikana, South Africa where 44 miners were ultimately massacre by police.
(Screen capture from YouTube video)

Rousseau’s condemnation of eighteenth century France rings as true for our world: “It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined… that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities”. The institutions of agrarian civilization are alive and well, not just in post-colonial Africa. The greatest riches are no longer acquired through selling products cheaper than one’s competitors; rents secured by political privilege -- such as Big Pharma’s income from patents, monopoly revenues from DVDs and CDs or tax revenues, used to bail out the Wall Street banks – keep the superrich afloat today.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon provided a blueprint for a class analysis of decadent societies ripe for revolution. Political parties and unions were weak and conservative in late colonial Africa because they represented only a tiny part of the population: the industrial workers, civil servants, intellectuals and shopkeepers of the town, classes unwilling to jeopardize their own privileges. They were hostile to and suspicious of the mass of country people.

The latter had customary chiefs supervised by the military and administrative officials of the occupying power. A nationalist middle class of professionals and traders confronted the superstition and feudalism of traditional authorities. Landless peasants joined the urban lumpenproletariat. Eventually colonial repression forced the nationalists to flee the towns and take refuge with the peasantry. Only then, with the rural-urban split temporarily healed by crisis, did a mass movement take off. Fanon’s method might help us identify the potential for another African revolution.

Clearly, trade and finance are not organized, in Africa or the world at large, with a view to liberating a popular movement. A liberal revolution would need allies with significant wealth and power. Africans will have to develop their own transnational associations to combat the huge coalitions that would deny them self-expression. One of the strongest political movements today is the formation of large regional trading blocs in response to neoliberal globalization. A national framework for development never made sense in Africa and it makes even less sense today. The coming revolution could leapfrog many of the obstacles in its path, but not if African societies still wear the national straitjacket they inherited from colonial rule.

Freedom and protection in the early modern revolutions

The American, French and Italian revolutions all combined mass insurgency with an extended period of warfare focused on removing fragmented sovereignty, unfair taxes and restrictions placed on movement and trade; German unification had a similar focus, but followed a different political trajectory. The success of the British in establishing a global free trade regime in the nineteenth century and the revival of that regime as economic orthodoxy today have obscured the complex dialectic of freedom and protection whose imperatives were laid out by Sir James Steuart in Principles of Political Economy (1767).

Impediments to trade caused by divided sovereignty within and between states had to be overcome. Development under these circumstances depended on removing these barriers to trade. At the same time, these incipient free trade areas needed a measure of protection, so that their own agriculture and manufactures could benefit from supplying newly consolidated home populations. The French revolution is a striking case in point.

In 1793, the Terror was unleashed and the Bretons raised a ‘Royal and Catholic Army’ against which the revolutionary Republic sent out an army of its own to fight in the War of Vendée. Nantes, France’s largest port, was heavily involved in slavery and trade with the Caribbean. It stood out for the Republic and was besieged by the Royalist army. The ensuing battle was decisive for the Revolution; the shippers financed the Republican army. Why did the Nantes bourgeoisie risk so much for the Revolution? France, although a central monarchy, was then a patchwork of local fief-holders, each of whom exacted what they could from people and goods moving through their territory. The Republic promised to end all that and establish a regulated home market. The Nantes shippers wanted to reduce the costs of moving their trade goods inland and so they allied themselves with the Republic.

In the United States, American and Dutch smugglers led resistance to the East India Company’s tea monopoly and to British taxes offsetting the crown’s military costs. The Italian Risorgimento too was backed financially by the industrialists of Milan and Turin who wanted a national home market freed of territorial fragments and unrestricted access to world trade. In all three cases, the power of merchant and manufacturing capital played a decisive part in the revolution.

Long before the European Common Market became the European Union, the Prussian Zollverein was launched in 1818 and culminated in the German Empire. In each case political unification was preceded by a customs union lasting half a century. The Zollverein was a piecemeal attempt to harmonise tariffs, measures and economic policy in scattered territories controlled by the Prussian ruling family. The Germans attributed their vulnerability to extreme political fragmentation (some 40 states in 1815). Prussia’s main aim was to expand a protected zone of internal free trade from which the Austrians were excluded. By the 1860s, most of what became Germany had joined the customs union. Their leading economist, Friedrich List, proposed a ‘national system’ of political economy. He emphasized the scope for innovation within an expanded free trade area protected from the world market. Similar proposals were espoused by Americans like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay.
Towards greater integration of African trade

President Mbeki’s idea of an ‘African renaissance’ expressed the belief that a black majority government in South Africa might be a catalyst for an African economic revival based on greater political coordination between what had before been easy pickings for the world’s great powers. His initiative was aimed exclusively at the very political class that has failed Africa so often since independence. He did not factor civil society movements into his plans.

Africa currently consists of a labyrinthine confusion of regional associations which do little to strengthen their members’ bargaining power in world markets. On the ground, however, African peoples maintain patterns of long-distance movement and exchange developed over centuries despite their rulers’ attempts to force economy and society into national cages.

This is one major reason why so much of the African economy is held to be ‘informal’: state regulations are routinely ignored, with the result that half the population and most economic activity are criminalized and an absurd public effort is wasted on trying to apply unenforceable rules. Classical liberalism offers an answer to this chaos -- the widest area possible of free trade and movement, with minimal regulation by the authorities. Neoliberal globalization has done much to discredit this recipe, since political initiatives, even in pursuit of free trade, are anathema. Yet the policy conclusion is inescapable: the boundaries of free commerce and of state intervention should be pushed beyond the limits of existing sovereignties.

China occupied a similar slot to Africa in western consciousness not so long ago. In the 1930s, people often spoke of the Chinese as they do of Africa today. China was then crippled by the violence of warlords, its peasants mired in the worst poverty imaginable. Today the country is an economic superpower. This profound shift in power from West to East does not guarantee that Africa will escape soon from the stigma of inferiority, but the structures of North Atlantic dominance that once seemed inevitable are perceptibly on the move; and that makes it easier to envisage change. Humanity is entering a new era of social possibility. Africans’ drive for emancipation from an unequal world society affects all of us. In that sense an African revolution would be a world revolution.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Libya: From Africa’s Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Intervention

Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank. 

Libya (CIA Factbook)

By Garikai Chengu
In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations.

After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped.

The militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO’s intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.

On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer.

On the other side, in the East of the Country, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything.

RELATED STORY: The Lockerbie Bombing Hoax - Governments & Big Media Told Decades of Lies About The Bombing of Pam Am Flight 103

The fall of Gaddafi’s administration has created all of the country’s worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone.

America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA’s headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.

In 1991 the New York Times reported that Hifter may have been one of “600 Libyan soldiers trained by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills…to fit in neatly into the Reagan Administration’s eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi”.

Libya's Dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi Upon His Capture and Just Before His Summary
Execution by Western-backed 'Rebels':  All Gaddafi got for capitulating to a multi-billion dollar
payoff for a bombing that his country didn't commit and agreeing to all other demands of
the West was a Western-backed overthrow of his country, and a knife up his rear end.
(Screen capture from video)

Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens.

Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital.


Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.

In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.

For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights.

When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.

Nowadays, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.

Three years ago, NATO declared that the mission in Libya had been “one of the most successful in NATO history.” Truth is, Western interventions have produced nothing but colossal failures in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Lest we forget, prior to western military involvement in these three nations, they were the most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest regional women’s rights and standards of living.

A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America’s Military-Industrial-Complex.

Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America’s military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Following the bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now building military bases in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Following the recent bombing of Libya, the United States has built new military bases in the Seychelles, Kenya, South Sudan, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.

NATO’s military intervention may have been a resounding success for America’s military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.

____________________
Garikai Chengu is a research scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on garikai.chengu@gmail.com

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

Haiti's Massive Tourism Project: Reconstruction or Haiti’s Latest Disaster?

Source: Pambazuka

Community members are resisting a massive tourism project being undertaken by the government on Haiti’s beaches. It will likely cause displacement of people, forced migration to the overcrowded capital in search of work, loss of food production in a hungry nation, further economic impoverishment and environmental and cultural degradation.

By Jessica Hsu, Jean Claudy Aristil
A large-scale tourism project planned for the Haitian island of Île-à-Vache targets ‘the well-heeled tourist from traditional markets…creating a place of exquisite peace and well-being,’ as described in the government of Haiti’s executive plan. The project aims to attract four character types: ‘the Explorers, the Lovers, the Rejuvenators and the Homecomers.’ The corporations behind the project intend to build 1,500 hotels and bungalows along the island’s beaches, an international airport, a golf course, island farms, and tourist ‘villages’ with cafes, shops, and night clubs.

The government touts the project as ‘community hand-in-hand’, with ‘equitable distribution of benefits for all.’ It says the tourism will be ‘mothering [to] nature’ and is for the ‘general good.’

The community sees it very differently. A grassroots group, Collective for Île-à-Vache (KOPI), was formed in December 2013 and immediately began organizing multiple peaceful protests, strengthening the voices of the local community, and connecting with allies.

Community members have been mobilizing because they understand the multiple challenges ahead if the project continues as planned. Problems will likely include displacement of people from their land, forced migration to the overcrowded capital in search of work, loss of food production in a hungry nation, further economic impoverishment, and environmental and cultural degradation.

The administration has been making empty promises and telling lies to the inhabitants of the island, while systematically violating their rights and using violence to repress and intimidate those who have been peacefully protesting.

Special police forces, such as the Motorized Intervention Brigade (BIM) and the Intervention and Order Maintenance Corps (CIMO), have a permanent presence on the island now. Preceding the inception of the tourism project, there were only three police officers. In the last two weeks, a SWAT team has been introduced to the island. [The team was described in one account as more than 50 special police forces dressed in black with masks.]

Vice-president of KOPI, Police officer Jean Mathelnus Lamy, was arrested on February 21. He was moved to the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince on Februray 25, where he remains without official charges.

The ‘peace and well-being’ envisioned for the tourists have not extended to the local population. On the contrary, there is a sense of fear around what is impending. It began when the government issued an official decree on May 10, 2013 making all of the offshore islands zones of tourism development and public utility. The proposed plans for the project were created by three Canadian companies: Resonance, 360 VOX, and IBI/DAA. They have little understanding or attachment to community needs.

Since then, the situation has gotten much worse. In August 2013, groundbreaking for the international airport flattened an old-growth forest, which was considered community land. Truxton began dredging a pristine bay known as Madam Bernard without an assessment of the environmental impact on marine ecosystems. Abaka Bay, which is one of the two luxury hotels on the island, illuminated the issue of waste management when a recent human rights delegation spotted the resort’s current method of waste disposal behind the resort. The expansion of Abaka Bay is part of phase I of the project.

cc PZ

Photo of part of Phase I of project – Expansion of Abaka Bay, one of two of the
currentluxury hotels on the island. (cc PZ)

Construction on a new road began in late 2013, without any notice, damaging a number of homes and taking out up to 18 coconut trees, which were a critical part of one household’s livelihood. No compensation was offered for the losses, though that is required by the Haitian Constitution. The company working on the road and airport is the Dominican Company Ingeneria Estrella. [The delegation] spoke to one elderly woman whose home is near the airport and has been marked for demolition, as she understands, by the Office of Land Registry (DGI). She stated about the Estrella workers, “They come in and out of my yard without notice and they enter without even a greeting.”

The collective KOPI has been organizing with other grassroots and human right organizations from Port-au-Prince. The group’s demands are (1) transparency and communication about the project, (2) retraction of the May 10, 2013 decree stating that the island is for tourism development and public utility, and (3) release of KOPI’s vice-president, Jean Mathelnus Lamy, who remains in the National Penitentiary, and (4) removal of the special police forces from the island. KOPI consists of 11 steering members and seven additional members in each of the 26 localities on the island.

Largely, the island community is not opposed to tourism. They are in favor of development which is respectful of their needs, which does not exploit nor threaten to take away their land; a project in which their participation is central and integral. However, they strongly oppose the current iteration of the project which is systematically violating their rights.

Last week, Prime Minister Lamothe visited the island again with a government delegation consisting of the Minister of Justice and a delegate from the Ministry of the Promotion of the Peasantry. Multiple communications were issued during this visit from the Ministry of Communication and Martelly-friendly outlets, includingHaiti Libre, show what appears to be the prime minister talking to a supportive population about social programs and distributing food.

The untold story in these communications by Prime Minister Lamothe and Minister of Tourism Stephanie Balmir Villedrouin is that the population was told each household would receive 10,000 gourdes, or about US$220, during the visit to help boost microenterprise. When the delegation arrived, no money was distributed, but rather sacks of rice and crackers. Close inspection of the picture of Lamothe speaking, which was circulated by Haiti Libre and the Minister of Communications, shows the audience actually standing in a line for this hand out.

cc FR

While the population protested the visit with burning tires and blockades, there were few people taking to the streets because of SWAT presence which accompanied the delegation. Warrants were issued for the arrest of KOPI leaders. Many of them have left their homes and gone into hiding unable to continue with their daily livelihood activities.

Villedrouin continues to say publicly the tourism development project is for the community, while the lies, intimidation, and repression continue. The population’s claims were verified in a report issued on April 2, 2014 [by eight Haitian human rights groups which visited the area] to investigate the tensions.

Similar recent foreign investment schemes in Haiti, like new free trade zones, have not brought the much- touted government line of better incomes. Residents of Île-à-Vache are concerned that they will have no power to enforce even the daily minimum wage of $5.11, as has happened with new sweatshops. Further, Haiti’s tourism industry - when it was flourishing in the 80’s – created a collision of wealth and extreme poverty which promoted other informal economies, such as the sex industry which was illuminated in the film Heading South.

Under the platform “Haiti is Open for Business”, the Martelly/Lamothe Administration continues to entice foreign investments with images of stability and security, building of infrastructure financed by PetroCaribe, and incentive policies such as a 15-year exemption from local taxes and duties exonerations on the import of equipment, goods and materials.

Tourism is one of the development pillars of the government in reconstruction/rebuilding following the 2010 earthquake. Tourism is supported by the Bill Clinton, UN Special Envoy to Haiti, who speaks of “Building Back Better.” The other economic pillars include mining, free-trade zones, and monocropping for export, all of which are direct affronts to the livelihoods of the rural peasantry and to food and land sovereignty.

The situation on Île-à-Vache is indicative of all the woes of Caribbean tourism and the model for what is to occur across Haiti. The government continues on its path to implement development to shape what it is calling “an emerging country by 2030.” In reality, these modes of development are further displacing and increasing urban migration; detaching and alienating the peasantry from the land with few alternatives.

Villedrouin does not speak about displacements, but rather “relocation,” when addressing residents of the island, while reporting to Reuters that only five percent of the population will be displaced. Lamothe promises there will be no displacements.

Simultaneously, there are still displacement camps in Port-au-Prince more than four years after the quake. There is no relocation plan for the residents of these camps, and in some areas of Port-au-Prince there is still rubble remaining. If this is the precedent for what happens to those who are displaced in Haiti, then the inhabitants of Île-à-Vache should be concerned about their futures.

Will many farmers and fishers from the island end up in the shantytowns of Haiti, as have hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers before them? Those who were living in hillside shantytowns had the highest mortality rate from the earthquake. Île-à-Vache’s population continues to be unsettled, uncertain of its future.

And so the Île-à-Vache community sings in protest:

Caller:

Nou gen kasav (We have cassava)
Nou gen kafe (We have coffee).
Group Response:
Nou pa bezwen pwoje sa (We do not need this project).


*This article is adapted from a presentation by Jessica Hsu of Other Worlds and Jean Claudy Aristil of Radio VKM Les Cayes at the Executive Symposium for Innovators in Coastal Tourism conference in St. Georges, Grenada held from July 8 - July 11, 2014. The actual presentation with powerpoint which includes multiple images can be found on the CREST-CTO conference websitehttp://www.onecaribbean.org/resources/conference-papers/

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.

Obama’s Africa Summit: a Sign of Weakness Rather than Strength

By Washington's Blog

Bridges Versus Bombs

Obama is meeting with a number of African leaders this week. But rather than a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness.

The Guardian reported Sunday:

Barack Obama is convening the largest ever gathering of African leaders in Washington on Monday – 50 have been invited – for a summit billed by the White House as “elevating our engagement” with a continent increasingly under China’s influence.

***

Ben Rhodes, a US deputy national security adviser, denied it was an attempt to play catch-up with China – which has vigorously pursued political and economic ties with the continent.

***

Melvin Foote, founder of the Constituency for Africa, a group promoting African interests in Washington, said it was disingenuous for the White House to claim the summit was not in large part a response to China.

“The administration won’t tell you that but it’s at the front of their mind. America is losing influence and respect in Africa,” he said. “I hear it whenever I travel there.”

The US has good reason to be concerned. China’s trade with Africa rose to $200bn (£119bn) last year – largely made up of Beijing’s imports of oil and minerals, and export of electronics and textiles – more than double the US and far ahead of the EU. Twenty years ago trade between China and Africa was just $6bn.

***

“Africans say ‘why do we need the United States’?” said Foote. “When I travel around Africa, I’ve seen airports, I’ve seen roads, I’ve seen railroads, I’ve seen ports, I’ve seen all kinds of things that are really impressive built by China, that you have to say the United States refused to build.”

Why has the U.S. refused to build infrastructure in Africa?

Because it has been focused on defense. As the Guardian notes:

But Beijing’s influence has been greatly enhanced by the large numbers of Chinese now living and working in Africa, from factory managers to traders, and by big construction projects that have rapidly transformed parts of the continent when decades of western aid was often directed to propping up authoritarian cold war allies, not development.

***

But the US remains dominant in security issues, which will be a strong undercurrent at the summit.

***

“We are very focused on the threat of terrorism in Africa,” said Rhodes. “We see it as particularly acute in … North Africa, Somalia with al-Shabaab, and of course Boko Haram in Nigeria,” he said.

Indeed - as of last year – the Obama administration was sending troops to 35 African countries under the guise of fighting Al Qaeda and related terrorists. And the U.S. has planned regime change in Northern African countries for 20 years.

CBC reports:

“The U.S., in many senses, miscalculated their approach to Africa. It has always been to focus on bilateral relationships— select a few countries and deal solely with them,” says [Thomas Tieku, an assistant professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto]. “Now they’re playing a catch-up game to try to establish equally strong relationships with multilateral institutions like the African Union.”

***

The U.S. will always have to contend with the fact that China is not limited in its economic partnerships by commitments to propping up democracy and freedom, since the cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy is to take a non-interventionist approach with its trading partners, says Tieku.

The Guardian noted Tuesday that the leaders of the African nations didn’t seem that impressed with the new U.S. summit:

African leaders were more cautious in their assessment of the summit and the difference that foreign businesses can make.

***

None [of the African leaders] were talking about the meeting as groundbreaking.

We noted in 2012:

In a must-read article, AP analyzes IMF data on 180 nations’ trade with China – and concludes that China has surpassed America as the world’s “top global trader”:

As recently as 2006, the U.S. was the larger trading partner for 127 countries, versus just 70 for China. By last year the two had clearly traded places: 124 countries for China, 76 for the U.S. ***

Indeed, some claim that China is already the world’s biggest economy.[Update.]

***

While the U.S. has launched wars all over the world to seize control of resources, China has quietly been trading for its needs, or mining or building resources itself for subsequent export. See this, this and this. No wonder China is surpassing the U.S. as the world’s trading giant.

Sadly, the U.S. is currently doing a worse job than China in following George Washington’s advice to (1) avoid foreign military entanglements and (2) engage in free trade with all nations.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

China’s Foreign Aid: How Big Is It and What Is Its Aim?

Illustration by futureatlas.com.

China has greatly increased its foreign aid to developing countries in the recent years. On one hand China hopes to promote bilateral relations with recipient countries to enhance economic and trade cooperation; on the other the fast rising nation is shouldering its international responsibilities and promoting poverty reduction.


By Luo Jianbo and Zhang Xiaomin

ABSTRACT: From 2010 to 2012, China allocated a total of 89.34 billion yuan (14.41 billion U.S. dollars) worth of foreign assistance. This amount no doubt is much smaller than the official development assistance of some big traditional donors such as the United States. However, as a developing country, China has tried its best in this regard. There is no need to deny that, by providing foreign aid, China hopes to promote bilateral relations with recipient countries, and to enhance the economic and trade cooperation with them. But most importantly, China is committed to promoting poverty reduction and development of the recipient countries, so as to finally realize the goal of common development together with other developing countries. China is willing to shoulder its international responsibility.

At present China has become the second largest economy in the world and is more and more engaged in the Asian and African affairs. As a result, China’s foreign aid has become a heated topic all over the world. How big is China’s foreign aid? How much of it goes to Africa? What are China’s motives? These questions have constantly been raised by the international community. However, no final answers have been provided so far. This article aims to address the above questions from the perspective of Chinese scholars.

HOW BIG IS CHINA’S FOREIGN AID?

In 2008, NYU Wagner School released a report which pointed out that China’s foreign assistance and government-supported economic projects in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia grew from less than $1 billion in 2002 to $27.5 billion in 2006. [1] In 2012 and 2013, AidData, based at the College of William and Mary, compiled a database of thousands of media reports on Chinese-backed projects in Africa from 2000 to 2011. According to the database, China financed 1,673 projects in 50 African countries, amounting to a total of $75 billion of Chinese government’s official financial aid commitments, roughly similar in volume with the U.S. Foreign Aid to Africa (which reached $90 billion in the same period). [2] Unfortunately, in the above statistics, China’s foreign aid to Africa was apparently exaggerated a great deal, for it muddled up China’s foreign aid to Africa with China’s investment in Africa.

China's Information Office of the State Council issued the first White Paper on China's foreign aid in 2011. According to the 2011 white paper, China’s total foreign aid provided from 1950s to the end of 2009 amounted to 256.29 billion yuan ( The Chinese government didn’t put it in US dollars in the White Paper), 45.7% of which went to African countries. [3] On 10 July 2014, a second White Paper on China’s foreign aid was released. According to the reported statistics in this paper, foreign aid offered by China totaled 89.34 billion yuan (about 14.41 billion US dollars), 51.8% of which went to African countries.

Just as what the foreign observers have noticed, China’s foreign aid has been increasing tremendously ever since 2000. Based on the information, data and references available, the writers estimate the amount of China’s aid and the percentages of foreign aid in GNI since 2000 .as follows: China’s foreign aid increased from $0.64 billion, accounting for 0.05% of GNI in 2000, to $5.04 billion, accounting for 0.095% of GNI in 2009. From 2010 to 2012, China allocated a total $14.41 billion worth of foreign aid, accounting for 0.06% of the GNI in this period.

Table 1 China’s foreign aid since 2000 and the percentage of GNI

cc Pz

Factually, it can be demonstrated that that China’s foreign aid has fast increased over the past decade. However, the total volume of foreign aid from China is still small in comparison with the Western traditional donors’ aid. In fact, there still lies a great gap between China and the traditional donors in this regard. Take 2012 for example (Table 2). During that year, the United States offered a total of $30.824 billion worth of foreign aid to Africa, accounting 0.19% of its GNI; the United Kingdom offered a total of $13.892 billion, accounting for 0.56% of its GNI; Germany, France and Japan provided $12.939 or 0.37% of GNI, $12.028 billion or 0.45%, and $10.605 billion, or 0.17%, respectively. Although none of the above-mentioned countries reached the target of foreign aid accounting for 0.7% of its GNI, a goal set by the United Nations early in the 1970s, they did provide tremendous amount of foreign aid to developing countries.

Table 2 Net foreign aid of main donors and its percentage in GNI in 2012

cc Pz

Source: OECD, “DAC Members' Net Official Development Assistance in 2012”,
http://www.oecd.org/statistics/(2014-07-22)

Measuring the volume of China’s foreign aid has sparked a huge debate about what should be counted as aid and what should not. Some foreign analysts and scholars just mix the government concessional loans with other commercial loans by the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and other commercial banks. Some have simply confused China’s foreign aid with investment. Consequently, they exaggerated a great deal the actual volume of China’s foreign aid. The financial resources for China’s foreign aid mainly include three types: grant (aid gratis), interest-free loans and concessional loans. From 2010 to 2012, China provided a total of 32.32 billion yuan worth of grants, accounting for 36.2% of its foreign aid volume; 7.26 billion yuan worth of interest-free loans, taking up 8.1% of its foreign aid volume and 49.76 billion yuan worth of concessional loans, accounting for 55.7% of its total foreign aid volume. The concessional loans are raised by the Export-Import Bank of China on the market, with the loan interests lower than the benchmark interest of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank， and the difference is covered by the State in the form of financial subsidies. At present, the annual interest rate of China’s concessional loans stands at 2% to 3%, and the period of repayment usually ranges from 15 to 20 years (including five to seven years of grace).

It should be noted that China Development Bank doesn’t provide foreign aid at all, and the concessional loans granted by the Export-Import Bank of China are just one part of its business. Both banks support Chinese enterprises in conducting overseas businesses through offering commercial loans and providing financing and investment services. For example, in recent years, the Export-Import Bank of China financed the Ethiopian Oriental Industrial Park and the Ethiopian Railway Project; China Development Bank offered financial support to the Guangdong Guangken Rubber Group Co., Ltd. for the construction of its manufacturing/processing base in Southeast Asia, namely the Oman Salalah power Generation and Sea Water Desalination Project, and invested $198 million to support Wanbao Grains & Oils Co., Ltd in the construction of Mozambique Agribusiness Project, the largest one of its kind by China in Africa which can create an integrated chain from crop planting, food processing and warehousing to distribution. However, the funds offered for all the above-mentioned projects by the afore-mentioned banks are non-concessional development funds. They can’t therefore be counted as foreign aid at all.

As a developing country, China by no means plans to keep up with Joneses in regard to foreign aid. According to the poverty standard set by the UN, China still has more than 100 million people living in poverty, which means that China still faces the difficult challenge of poverty reduction and development. On the other hand, when you take the size of its economy into consideration, China is indeed a big power, and in fact it is ranked as one of the fastest developing countries in the world in recent years. Accordingly, the international community expects China to shoulder more and more international responsibilities. Offering foreign aid to underdeveloped countries especially those suffering from humanitarian crises, is also an important way for China to demonstrate and prove that it is a responsible power. Thus, it can be predicted that China will surely increase its foreign aid concomitant with its economic development in the coming years.

WHAT IS THE AIM OF CHINA’S FOREIGN AID?

During the past decades harsh criticism has been leveled against China, accusing China of using aid to recipient countries, to scramble for resources and overseas markets there; to dig for political support from them or especially to maintain close relations with some rogue states.

There is no need to deny that China’s foreign aid serves its overall foreign relations and national interests. China also expects to deepen relations with recipient countries and win the hearts and minds of the people of those countries - just as Western donors do. By providing foreign aid, China demonstrates its willingness to shoulder more and more increasing responsibilities. These can facilitate China to enhance its soft power and image within the international community. At the same time, by helping recipient countries build some economic development-related projects, China expects to reap trade, investment and contracts opportunities overseas, especially for Chinese enterprises going abroad. As a developing country, China never considers foreign aid simply as a donation, but an important form of South-South cooperation to advance the mutual benefit, win-win and common development of China and other developing countries.

The international community should also recognize that, other than the pursuit of its own national interest, China’s foreign aid prioritizes poverty reduction and economic development of the recipient countries. The Chinese people, just like any other people in the world, are imbued with a strong sense of humanitarianism. Although the Chinese political system is different from that of Western countries, the Chinese government is fully aware of its international responsibilities beyond its national interests and strives to fulfill them adequately. Currently, China is dedicated to the path of peaceful development and the realization of common development and prosperity of the whole world. As we all know, many developing countries and regions of the world are facing challenging problems related to poverty, civil wars, conflicts, humanitarian crisis and so on. It is so manifestly obvious that China is doing its best to shoulder more international responsibilities by helping recipient countries tackle the above-mentioned problems, through providing foreign aid to them.

Just as the 2014 White Paper on China’s foreign aid put it, the Chinese government “has endeavored to integrate the interests of the Chinese people with the interests of the people of other countries, providing assistance to the best of its ability to other developing countries within the framework of South-South cooperation to support and help other developing countries, especially the least developed countries.”

From 2010 to 2012, China helped build 80 residential housing and affordable housing projects in other developing countries, totaling about 600,000 square meters in floor space; China helped build about 80 medical facilities projects in recipient countries, providing them with about 120 batches of medical equipment and medicine, and dispatching 55 medical teams composed of 3,600 medical workers to nearly 120 medical centers in 54 countries, treating nearly 7 million patients. Moreover, China donated 1.5 billion yuan worth of materials and cash assistance in emergency humanitarian aid to more than 30 countries. [4]

At the same time, China attaches great importance to fundamentally enhancing development capacities of recipient countries when providing aid for them. China not only gives them the fish, but most importantly, teaches them how to fish so as to help those countries blaze a path of self-dependent development. From 2010 to 2012, China undertook the construction of 580 complete projects, and completed 170 technical cooperation projects in 61 countries and regions related to transportation, communication, electric power, energy, industry, agriculture and education. In recent years, China increased cooperation with developing countries in the field of human resources development by holding training sessions for officials and technical personnel and on-the-job academic education programs in China, and shared with them China’s experience with regard to poverty reduction, development and public administration.

China provides foreign aid mainly in the form of undertaking projects instead of delivering money directly to the recipient countries. China is in charge of the allocation and expenditure of money and the projects are undertaken, constructed and managed by Chinese enterprises, to make sure that the money is made good use of and spent as it should, to enhance the efficiency of the aid projects and to ensure that the money will not be embezzled or pocketed by some greedy and corrupt officials in recipient countries. In fact, even the Associated Press (AP), an American news agency highlighted the advantage of this model. In an article published - on 9 February 2012 and titled: “China skirting African corruption in direct aid”, AP pointed out that “instead of giving cash, the Chinese government prefers to pay Chinese companies to build roads and structures, bypassing local politicians, powerbrokers and construction crews, and to deliver them completed”, adding that, “this model helps defeat the inefficiencies and cash-pocketing corruption associated with other systems of foreign aid delivery”, and “Beijing's efforts to produce turn-key projects are winning fans.” [5] At the same time, since the cost of Chinese personnel, materials and management are lower than those of Western countries, China, compared with Western countries, can achieve more in Africa in terms of development with similar amount of foreign aid.

Nevertheless, to succeed in the long term, China still needs to gradually adjust its foreign aid policy to the new situation whereby China is becoming a more and more global player shouldering increasing responsibilities. Measures can be taken as the following. First, China needs to reduce its tied-aid and open part of its foreign aid market to the international society and especially to the recipient countries. Thus, the recipient countries can participate more in the aid projects so as to create more employment opportunities for the locals and give them new skills. Second, to enhance aid efficiency and effectiveness in the future, China needs to invite more Chinese and African NGOs to participate in the foreign aid. Third, China needs to lower the annual interest rate of concessional loans, and increase grants to the least developed countries. Last but not least, when adhering to the “non-interference” principle, China needs to actively take advantage of foreign aid to help the recipient countries strengthen the building of governance capacity to realize political stability and good governance. If all other developing countries opt for the path of development and good governance, it will contribute to the peace and development of the whole world. Without any doubt, China will benefit a lot from that.

END NOTES

[1] NYU Wagner School, “Understanding Chinese Foreign Aid: A Look at China’s Development Assistance to Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America”, April 25, 2008.

[2] Austin Strange, Bradley Parks, Michael J. Tierney, Andreas Fuchs, Axel Dreher & Vijaya Ramachandran, “China’s Development Finance to Africa: A Media-Based Approach to Data Collection”, Center for Global Development, Working Paper 323, April 2013.

[3] Jonathan Weston, Caitlin Campbell & Katherine Koleski, China’s Foreign Aid Assistance in Review: Implications for the United States, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Updated September 1, 2011, pp.1-14; Michael Klare & Daniel Volman, “America, China & the scramble for Africa’s Oil”, Review of African Political Economy, No.108, 2006, pp.297-309; Thomas J. Christensen, “Shaping China’s Global Choices Through Diplomacy”, testimony before the U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 18, 2008.

[4] Information Office of the State Council of PRC, “China's Foreign Aid (2014)”, July 2014, Beijing.

[5] Rodney Muhumuza, “China skirting African corruption in direct aid”, Associated Press, February 9, 2012.

∗ Luo Jianbo, director and professor of the Center for African Studies, Party School of Central Committee of CPC. His study covers China-Africa relations, African integration, China’s foreign aid. Zhang Xiaomin is associate professor of Beijing Foreign Studies University. His field covers China-Africa relations and China’s foreign aid.

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.