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In
2001, African leaders, as well as African and international civil society,
successfully promoted wider recognition of the urgency of responding to
the HIV/AIDS pandemic. At the Doha meeting on world trade, developed
countries were forced to acknowledge the principle that public health must
take priority over rigid patent protections.
African
leaders also formally launched the transformation of the Organization of
African Unity into the African Union, which will hold its inaugural summit
in South Africa in July 2002. They also reached agreement on the New
Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), intended to serve as a common
platform for economic planning and negotiating with international
partners.
There
was no major escalation in African conflicts during the year.
Ceasefires remained in effect in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in
Sierra Leone, and on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. However, warfare
continued unabated in Sudan and Angola, while civilians were threatened by
systematic violence in eastern Congo and by serious if less pervasive
abuses in a number of other countries.
In
2002, with African economies battered by the global recession, the AIDS
pandemic still unchecked, and the threat of new conflict in key countries
such as Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Kenya, the challenges for both African
leaders and the "international community" will be enormous. The
prospects are sobering, and the initial responses to the first high-profile
tests of the year--a volcano eruption in already-devastated Goma, and an
arms depot explosion in Lagos--are not encouraging.
Nevertheless,
the groundwork has been laid for the first large-scale effort to fight
back against AIDS. And African resilience and creativity still take
unexpected forms, as illustrated by the launching of two new Internet
service providers in Somalia within months of the shutdown by U.S.
financial sanctions of the one previous provider.
HIV/AIDS
Last
year saw major advances on international AIDS policy: Activists joined in
forcing multinational drug companies to withdraw a suit challenging South
Africa's right to obtain more affordable medicine, and developing
countries at the World Trade Organization summit won acknowledgement of
the primacy of public health over patents. African leaders held a summit
on AIDS in Abuja in April, and the UN staged a special session of the
General Assembly in June. The principle that treatment and prevention are
both indispensable became the official consensus, despite footdragging in
Washington. Kofi Annan's global health fund had moved from idea to
institutional reality by the end of the year.
Despite
modest increases in availability of lower-priced drugs, however, a
study by international health experts estimated that at the end of 2001
only 200,000 of more than 7.5 million HIV-positive people who could
benefit from antiretrovirals were receiving treatment http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/par0112.htm.
The Global Fund estimated it would only have between $500 million and $700
million to spend in 2002, less than 10 percent of the estimated amount
needed each year. And, despite stronger declarations on AIDS by African
leaders in Abuja, New York, and increasingly at home, the test of matching
speeches with action was still largely unmet.
The
issues in 2002 in the war against AIDS will be both operational and
political. At the operational level, key tests will be whether the
resources allocated to the global fund begin to flow to those on the
frontlines to be used both to save lives and to build local capacity. Many
fear that contributors to the fund will cut resources for other urgent
needs, as in President Bush's budget proposal that reduces other
international health funding by $95 million. The fund is also intended to
provide resources for tuberculosis and malaria, and competition for
funding will be intense. Activists will be watching closely to see whether
treatment with antiretroviral drugs at the lowest cost gets significant
resources, and whether the multilevel country mechanism facilitates
funding or imposes additional delays. Opponents of public funding for
global health will be looking for excuses to deny additional resources.
At
the political level, the two greatest impediments to the fight against
AIDS--disregard and denial--are epitomized by two leaders who
ostentatiously failed to attend the special UN session on AIDS last year:
George W. Bush of the United States and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Mbeki's
denial and ambivalence is still crippling the South African response to
AIDS. By opposing treatment for South Africans with HIV/AIDS, his government
has come into conflict not only with AIDS activists but also with the
medical community and much of its own political base. Unless Mbeki shifts
course, this confrontation is certain to escalate.
Bush,
for his part, symbolizes outright disregard for the fate of those with
AIDS. Despite Congressional resolutions calling for contributions of up to
$750 million, Bush's budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning October
2002 included only $200 million for the global fund, the same meager level
as the current fiscal year.
There
is momentum for mobilizing more resources on AIDS in 2002.
Unfortunately, the chances are much less for forcing a serious global
debate on the fundamental economic obstacles that weaken African capacity
to confront the pandemic. While European and Canadian leaders at least
acknowledge the need for debate, the Bush administration has shown no
signs of openness. The
president's State of the Union address at the end of January contained no
mention of AIDS, global health, poverty, or any other global or African
issue except terrorism.
Development
Deficit
In
December 2001, the World Health Organization Commission on Macroeconomics
and Health released the results of its two-year study showing that scaling
up global investment in health would produce enormous economic gains. The
report provides a wealth of supporting arguments in favor of investment in
public goods such as health, education, and other infrastructure as
essential prerequisites for development on all fronts. At the beginning of
2002, however, there were few signs that there would be breakthroughs in
the continuing debates on trade, aid, and debt.
Meanwhile,
the International Monetary Fund announced that estimates of the economic
growth rate for the African continent 9n 2001, with the added impact of
September 11 and the global recession, fell
to 3.5 percent (3.1 percent in sub-Saharan Africa). Prospects for
recovery in 2002 were not strong.
A
multi-year UN effort to promote new thinking about global financing for
development culminates in March in Monterrey, Mexico. The framework
agreed for the conference contains many common elements with the New
Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) framework adopted by
African leaders in 2001: new "ownership" of economic development
plans by developing countries, mobilizing domestic resources,
"untying" of aid in favor of support for agreed plans, regional
cooperation, greater access to markets in developed countries, increases
in both donor support and private capital flows, and debt reduction.
Behind
the bland language of these compromise documents lie substantial
disagreements on particular issues. Among them:
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On trade: promise and reality of market access
Washington
and the international financial institutions continue to stress trade
liberalization, along with other measures to attract foreign investment,
as the high road to development. Yet while the pressure on developing
countries for more liberalization continues unabated, opening rich country
markets remains a pious wish. As IMF director Horst Koehler stressed in
January, rich countries still spend hundreds of billions of dollars on
subsidies "in areas where developing countries have a comparative
advantage--as in agriculture, processed foods, textiles and clothing, and
light manufactures."
Meanwhile,
African exports continue to be concentrated on vulnerable primary
commodities. High-profile initiatives such as the U.S. Africa Growth and
Opportunity Act have had little impact on this pattern. The second report
on the act released in January by the U.S. International Trade Commission,
for example, shows significant increases in U.S. imports from Africa in
2001, but these were overwhelmingly dominated by oil and other energy-related
products.
*
On "aid": how much and who decides
European
countries and the World Bank have joined UN agencies and African countries
in calling for significant increases in official development assistance,
arguing that such investments in health, education, and other sectors are
indispensable requirements for economic advance and poverty alleviation.
UN
Secretary‑General Kofi Annan has won significant support from other
"donors" for the goal of doubling official development
assistance. U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has joined critics of the
conventional development model in calling for a shift from loans to grants
to finance development in the poorest countries. At the same time,
however, O'Neill has seized every opportunity, including the World
Economic Forum in New York, to reiterate Washington's hard-line refusal to
accept even a rhetorical commitment to providing increased funds.
Despite
the Monterrey Consensus "noting with concern current estimates of
dramatic shortfalls in resources required to achieve the internationally
agreed development goals," debate in Washington remains mired in the
stereotype of aid as optional and wasteful charity. Without a shift in
paradigm (partially visible in the debate over the global health fund),
public investment for global and African development is likely to face
further setbacks rather than gains in Washington.
*
On debt reduction: HIPC or more?
Despite
claims of success by creditors for their Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC)
initiative for debt reduction, the IMF estimated that Africa's debt
service payments would only go as low as 17.1 percent of export earnings
in 2001 (down from 20.3 percent in 1999, before rising again to 18.4
percent in 2002. This is still a crippling economic burden, as African
leaders as well as debt cancellation campaigners continue to stress. The
overwhelming majority of the debt is owed to the World Bank and the IMF.
But neither the international financial institutions nor the rich creditor
countries gave any indication they were willing to consider more than
marginal adjustments in the HIPC program.
In
2002, there will be abundant opportunities to discuss these issues and the
related fundamental economic inequalities: in Monterrey, Mexico at the
financing for development summit in March; in Canada at the G-8
summit of rich countries; in South Africa at both the inaugural summit of
the African Union in July and the World Summit on Social Development in
August. Without major shifts in the political climate in rich countries,
however, the prospects for change on these issues are slim.
Conflict
Resolution and Democracy
At
the end of 2001, in most African countries the structural violence of
disease and economic injustice posed much larger threats to human security
than the reality or risk of open conflict. While fragile, implementation
of the peace processes in Sierra Leone and on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border
advanced significantly during the year. The principal zone of instability
and humanitarian need on the continent continued to be the region from
Angola in west central Africa through the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and portions of Uganda to Sudan in the northwest.
With
the U.S. and other outside powers preoccupied with the threat from global
terrorism following September 11, focus on resolving
Africa's internal conflicts
may well rank even lower on the agenda of the "international
community" than in 2001. Even if overt U.S. intervention, as
speculation focusing on Somalia suggested early in the year, does not
occur, the tendency to reinforce selected partners and ignore human rights
abuses under the guise of fighting terrorism is certain to be powerful.
Agreed
peace processes with very uncertain outcomes were under way with limited
international support in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi.
Progress toward greater security in 2002 would require significantly
greater political will from both contending parties and outside mediators.
Both countries remained among the most serious humanitarian emergencies in
the world, together with Sudan and Angola.
Despite
a limited ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains region in Sudan at the beginning
of the year, and increased civil society pressure for peace in Angola, the
prospects for a breakthrough to a genuine peace process in 2002 were not
high in either country. Major outside powers seemed more likely to show
interest in expanded oil production in both countries than in the search
for peace. Implementation of sanctions against "conflict
diamonds" remained inconsistent. Trade in diamonds, timber, and
valuable minerals such as coltan continued to provide resources for
conflict in Angola, central Africa, and the Mano River area in West
Africa.
Elections
in a number of African countries during 2001, including Benin, Chad,
Gambia, Madagascar, Uganda, and Zambia, added to skepticism about
manipulation of the process by incumbents, violence, and other barriers to
democratic participation. In each case internal and external criticism was
vocal, but the threat of open internal conflict was avoided.
With
Zimbabwe due to hold elections in March, Kenya before the end of 2002, and
Nigeria early in 2003, the danger is great that repression, manipulation,
and other tensions leading up to elections could provoke escalated
conflict. This would have enormous consequences not only for the countries
themselves but also for their regions within the continent, and for
Africa's efforts to address continent-wide problems.
While
Europe and the United States are stepping up pressure on Zimbabwe
President Robert Mugabe to allow free elections and reduce violence, it is
Zimbabweans and their neighbors in southern Africa who will have the most
weight in determining what happens, and who will bear the brunt of further
deterioration in that country. So far, Mugabe shows little sign of heeding
calls for restraint from any quarter.
In
Nigeria, internal violence due to multiple causes is rising in this pre-election
year. Instead of promoting security, the Nigerian military has contributed
its own share of violence against civilians. Many question the capacity of
President Obasanjo's government to maintain stability and deliver on the
promises of democracy. Kenyans meanwhile fear a repetition of the last
elections in 1997, when government-instigated violence and opposition
disunity helped return incumbent President Daniel arap Moi to power.
Pro-democracy
activists in these three countries and around the continent are profoundly
skeptical of political elites who offer nationalist rhetoric, managed
elections, and violence against opponents as a substitute for democracy.
But they are also skeptical of outside powers for being inconsistent in
support for democracy, as for conflict resolution. To cite only a few
examples, Western critiques in 2001 were almost inaudible with respect to
the lack of democracy in Egypt (Washington's favored aid partner) Sudan
(being wooed as an oil‑producer and security ally), and Zambia (with
an election widely regarded as fraudulent).
Human
Security
With
multiple threats to human security in Africa, the need has never been
greater for a broad vision that would allow both Africans and others to
collaborate to prove that another Africa in a different world order is
possible. Despite hints of greater awareness by some among world elites of
threats to our common humanity, however, the narrow visions of free-market
fundamentalism and militaristic counter-terrorism still hold sway among
global policy-makers.
As
shown by the advances in the AIDS debate in 2001, taking small but
strategic steps in a different direction is possible. But it will continue
to be difficult.
Africa
Action
110 Maryland Ave. NE, #508, Washington, DC 20002.
Phone: 202-546-7961. Fax: 202-546-1545
E-mail: africaaction@igc.org.
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