Commission for Africa stresses shared responsibilities

Even before British Prime Minister Tony Blair officially unveiled on Friday the findings of his Commission for Africa, a leaked version of the development plan was stirring up debate. Some commentators were touting the report as a bold and ambitious attempt to lift Africa out of crippling poverty. Africa Confidential, the newsletter that leaked the report, described it as offering "little new thinking on African development". The harshest critics dismissed the whole endeavour as an election-year PR exercise for Blair and just one more in a series of plans to save Africa that have emerged in recent years only to sink into obscurity. But even the sceptics seem to agree that while there is nothing particularly groundbreaking in the 400-page report's recommendations for increased aid, debt elimination, the lifting of trade barriers, and the stamping out of corruption, its emphasis on shared responsibility between African leaders and their western counterparts does represent a new approach. Given that nine of the 17 commissioners are African, the move away from the paternalistic tone of earlier plans is not surprising. Commenting on the shift towards joint accountability, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa and one of the commissioners who helped author the report, Kingsley Y. Amoako told IRIN: "All previous reports talk about Africa's responsibility in terms of good governance, and ending conflict and corruption, and this report agrees with that 100 percent, but it goes further by also saying, wait a minute, the developed world also has a huge responsibility and they are part of the problem." Director of the Royal Africa Society, Richard Dowden applauded the report's call for an end to harmful practices by the West such as money laundering and bribe-giving. He doubted, however, whether the report's recommendation for the doubling of aid flows to Africa to $25 billion over the next five years was part of the answer. "I'm opposed to the idea of outsiders coming in and throwing lots of money at Africa thinking that it will solve its problems," he told IRIN. "It's raising expectations that can't be met and the last thing Africa needs is to be drenched in money that it can't absorb." The report does address the issue of how to make aid more effective. Again the responsibility is divided. The Commission calls for "a radical change in the way donors behave and deliver assistance" while African countries are urged to focus on improved governance. African critics of the report, like Professor Sam Moyo of the University of Zimbabwe, were not convinced by the Commission's calls for aid to be "untied, predictable, harmonised, and linked to the decision-making and budget processes of the country receiving it". "It's still largely an external strategy of development whereas we need internal, sustainable strategies," Moyo said. International aid agency, ActionAid, supported the proposed aid increases but wondered how and when the targets would be met, questions that the report does not attempt to answer. Pushing Britain in particular, to put its money where its mouth is, ActionAid launched its own report last month called 'The African Commission for Britain'. The ActionAid report calls on Britain to demonstrate genuine leadership among its fellow G8 and EU countries by ending policies that negatively impact African development and by setting an example with increased aid contributions. ActionAid policy coordinator Wole Olaleye, argues that whether or not Blair convinces other world leaders to agree to the report's recommendations, there is nothing to stop Britain from acting alone, for example in donating 0.7 percent of its annual income in aid, a target it agreed to in 1970 and has yet to honour. Olaleye also emphasised Britain's allegedly poor record on corporate governance and its dumping of agricultural exports in Africa. Tony Blair has made no secret of his hope that the report will help him capitalise on his presidency of both the G8 and the European Union this year to place Africa on the global agenda. But the United States gave an early indication that it would not support several of the Commission's recommendations. It will not budge, for example, on its refusal to endorse British Chancellor Gordon Brown's International Finance Facility (IFF) as a mechanism for dealing with debt relief in Africa. The IFF seeks an additional $50 billion a year in development assistance between now and 2015 for the world's poorest countries to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals. State Department spokesperson, Lou Fintor, described the IFF as too costly and not in keeping with the United States government's budget rules. Fintor declined to comment on whether Washington supported the report's recommendations on the removal of trade barriers and subsidies on goods like sugar and cotton. He did suggest that the United States has no intention of meeting the Commission's aid targets. "We disagree with global quantitative targets," he told IRIN. "These bear no relationships to recipient countries ability to use these resources effectively. They incorrectly imply that foreign aid alone can eradicate poverty. Foreign aid is a small part of a large pool of resources from varying sources that must be tapped for development." Fintor emphasised President George Bush's own initiatives for poverty eradication in Africa, such as the US $15 billion President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Account. Several commentators and aid agencies viewed the report's recommendations as a positive step in the right direction but were sceptical about the West's commitment to implementing them. "Most recommendations go far beyond what's currently being done by rich countries," Olaleye said. "But the real test will be the extent to which they're followed." Speaking on the issue of implementation, Amoako emphasised that the report was just the first step in a process of debate and consultation that will continue at the G8 summit in Scotland in July, at the Millennium Summit in New York in September and at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong in December. He added that discussions had begun as to what mechanisms would be used to monitor implementation and ensure accountability. "We're very aware of the failed promises of the past," he said. To view the report visit: www.commissionforafrica.org