IRIN Focus on the 21st Franco-African Summit

For two days last week, Cameroon’s capital became the epicentre of the debate on the future of Africa in an increasingly globalised world. Globalisation was the main issue discussed by 25 heads of state and government, delegations from other African countries and representatives of international organizations at the 21st Franco-African Summit in Yaounde. “The heads outlined a compromise framework for future negotiations on the issue,” Cameroonian international relations expert Claude Shanda Tonme told IRIN. The meeting gave them an opportunity to “define better what they need to do to get a better deal from globalisation”. Areas on which African leaders will need to work in this regard include good governance and improved management of public finances, Shanda said. French President Jacques Chirac noted that “the general balance of tomorrow’s world supposes that Africa can assume its responsibilities while relying on the solidarity of industrialised countries”. This “is both a moral and a political requirement”, he said. Globalisation’s dangers, Chirac told a joint post-Summit news conference with President Paul Biya of Cameroon, include the risks of greater pressure on the planet’s ecosystems and increased international crime. According to Stanley Fischer, first deputy managing director of the IMF, “we already live in a global economy - where flows of trade, capital and knowledge across national borders are not only large, but also are increasing every year”. He told the African leaders that “countries unwilling to engage with other nations risked falling farther behind the rest of the world in terms of both income and human development”. “That way lies the very real threat of marginalisation.” he said. The issues that needed to be raised, he suggested, were how best to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the growth and growing openness of the world economy; how best to live with the unavoidable difficulties that globalisation may bring; and how to modify the system to make it operate better. To face up to globalisation, Biya said, Africa had to overcome a number of handicaps relating to peace and security, improving its citizens’ democratic culture, controlling of its demography and speeding up regional and subregional integration. NGOs, including those in Africa, have often pointed out that African nations stand to lose much as globalisation becomes the dominant system in today’s world. Similarly, sources reported King Mohamed VI of Morocco as saying at a closed-door meeting during the summit that the international community “cannot indefinitely have an asymmetrical, one-way globalisation”. It was necessary, he said, to think urgently in terms of scrapping or reconverting Africa’s foreign debt. On Friday, Chirac announced the cancellation of 500 million euros 19 African nations owed France. President Omar Bongo of Gabon said Africa did not yet have an institution capable of financing the struggle against poverty and bringing its economies up to the required level. He proposed that reconstruction banks be set up as quickly as possible, one in Central Africa, the other in West Africa. These institutions, he said, would complement and not compete against each other and, like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, they would foster the mobilization of additional resources. According to Tunisia’s foreign minister, Habib ben Yahya, Africa is hoping that a global solidarity fund whose creation the UN announced last year would really benefit the continent. However, Africa had a role to play with regard to its position in a globalised world, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. Africa, he added, needed to show the world that it was neither a hopeless case nor a passive victim but an entity that aspired to live in dignity. For Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, “globalisation needs to be reviewed”. The international community, he said, had to make mutual commitments, complete with figures and target dates, to use development aid to achieve the aim of reducing poverty in Africa by 2015.