Western countries want to bring democracy and governance to countries that have traditions
and ideas very different from ours. What room for manoeuvre is there?

Anver Versi, Editor of Africa Business and African Journalist of the year in 2006) railed against the abuse of democracy as an export commodity that brings death and destruction - à la Iraq. Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh was applauded in the West until he nationalised the oil industry, the demonised and deposed, and the West fêted the Shah instead. Now President Ahmadinejad is demonised, yet was elected, after a fashion. As further examples of hypocrisy, he cited UK support for Idi Amin’s coup against Milton Obote in Uganda, and contrasted the support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal dictatorship with condemnation of the elected Hamas government in Palestine. Democracy is infinitely elastic, he said.

Moreover the European model of democracy was unsuited to Africa’s tradition of wise men, delivering governance according to local tradition and custom, instead fragmenting opinion and undermining consensus. Elections often descended into allegation, recrimination and patronage rather than being a debate over policy, and stirred up ethnic differences. Whilst supporting representative government as the ideal, he argued that it could not be imposed from above.

Matthew Lockwood, author of The state They’re In, argued that poor governance was not a matter of tradition but stemmed from the modern history of colonisation and decolonisation. This left Africa with formal institutions like parliaments and constitutions when the real politics was informal because the state lacked the capacity to deliver. Corruption at its most extreme caused states to collapse and millions to suffer at the hands of warlords. More often, it permeated people’s lives, including the police and judiciary, costing an estimated $148 billion a year, according to the Africa Union.

Yet donor efforts to ‘bring governance’ failed too. In 1980s, structural adjustment programmes failed to bring growth, and the focus more recently on institutions and capacity building could count 1980s Ghana and 1990s Uganda among its few success. ‘Bringing’ anything needs support from the local elite. The end of the Cold War helped bring democracy, and many one-party states in the 1980s became multi-party democracies in the 1990s. But patronage doesn’t disappear with a change of leader. Change must come from African politicians and political movements, with less external support for corruption and exploitation from the outside, and help with tackling international issues like climate change.

Sir Edward Clay, former High Commissioner to Uganda, Cyprus and Kenya, agreed to speak after Dr John Githongo, the former anti-corruption investigator in the Kenyan government, was unfortunately unable to attend. He said that decolonisation had not prepared independence fighters to take the levers of power, and although it is getting better, leaving it to people in poor countries could mean good governance is never achieved. He also rejected the Arcadian illusion of a consensual past, only possible among highly homogenous people, all facing the same problems and sharing the same interests.

He recommended Stephen Chan’s Grasping Africa, saying we must elicit and incorporate the views of the people we claim to want to help. Governance is the weakest area of international policy, with governments and aid agencies unwilling to expose corruption and jeopardise key relationships they need for their activities. Even in Kenya, where they did everything right to identify and expose high level corruption, John Githongo was thwarted and the corrupted remain in power. Daniel Kaufmann of the World Bank shows how even a modest reduction in corruption leads to a significant increase in growth, yet donors lack rigour and consistency in the demands for better governance.

JASMINE WHITBREAD, Chief Executive of Save the Children UK, insisted it is more important now than ever that aid is not an extension of foreign policy, which inevitably results in its politicisation. Government aid is the national expression of the human urge to help if we can, and only governments have the scale of resources and mechanisms reach a global consensus, as with the UN Millennium Development Goals. The government can also promote UK interests, and has a £33bn defence budget and spends a further £6bn promoting UK plc. The £8bn aid budget is for humanitarian needs of the world’s most vulnerable people, many of them children. The Cold War was a battleground that generated poverty and produced some of the world’s worst leaders and governments. Mobutu pillaged aid worth £12bn, terrorising Zairians, while the West turned a blind eye to his slaughter. But the end of the Cold War freed aid from such narrow concerns, and has been a great deal more effective because of it. Democracy has spread and aid is helping many countries emerge from poverty and conflict. Yet this now faces a renewed risk from the War on Terror. Iraq was the largest UK aid recipient in 2004, and in 2005 received one fifth of global aid.

Aid is to help people in need. As soon as an ‘if’ is added, ‘if they are on our side’ or ‘if they are the right kind of Muslim’, it becomes partial. The War on Terrorism affects the operations of Save the Children, which decided during the 2006 conflict in Lebanon that it could not set up a clinic for children in an area controlled by Hezbollah for fear of falling foul of the US Patriot Act. If humanitarian aid is not seen as independent, it cannot operate. Politically motivated attacks on aid workers have risen sharply, and hundreds have been killed. Instead of aid being an extension of foreign policy, why not foreign policy as an extension of aid policy, with child protection and education at it’s heart? We cannot afford to ignore the interests of tomorrow’s perhaps troublesome adults, and some of today’s most vulnerable children.

Western aid donors do not seem to appreciate that the level of physical insecurity in most of the poorest countries in the world is the first obstacle to development. Should Western military intervention play a more important role in our development efforts?

GORDON HUGHES, Operations Director at the Centre for Security Sector Management, insisted that development objectives are predicated on security. Yet both security and development are in short supply in Africa, despite significant resources flowing in to achieve these goals. Security is key, and comes in many guises: physical security, secure border, infrastructure, even regime security, but in Africa the focus should be on human security. Threats, from genocide and malaria that kill in the millions, to individuals losing their human rights and their dignity, all make human security central, with physical security the number one priority for the poor. He cited International Development Secretary Hilary Benn: “The truth is, development without security is not possible, and security without development is only temporary.” Hughes credited his predecessor Claire Short for putting security at the heart of DFID development equation.

Yet the rich world’s do not always live up to the rhetoric. For human security, we need to build the capacity of Africa’s security architecture, in ways consistent with Africa’s traditions and culture, which centuries of colonisation and then Cold War rivalry make more difficult to identify. It is a process not of decades but maybe ten generations. Long-term strategic planning may be sacrificed to fire fighting, as conflicts like the Sudan or Liberia erupt. The P3 initiative, under which the US, France and the UK co-ordinate their efforts to build security and military capacity in Africa, had some success with their ‘advise, train and equip’ programmes, though prompted more by the short-term imperative of not having to send their own peace-keepers to Africa.

We need to support Africa over the long term, building the institutions of a strong African security architecture. It must be built around regional powers like Nigeria and South Africa, with security lead by the Africa Union. We need a continental early warning system, and assistance for correction political oversight. Proper payment systems for army salaries and allowances would be a good start. Without security, there can be no development, and Africa risks becoming a breeding ground for discontent, which is against our own national interests.

LORD GARDEN, retired Air Marshal and former deputy Chief of the defence staff, applauded Hughes’ aspirations, though saying they were a long way from today’s reality. To the question of more Western intervention, there are difficult choices to be made about where and when, whether advancing development or preventing conflict. But with an MoD budget of £32bn, set against £5bn for international development and £2bn for the Foreign Office, when challenges arise, the military has a clear resource advantage. Other advantages include rapid deployment, even when over-stretched, and the use of force; access to equipment and transport; a clear chain of command and an ability to operate in hostile environments. It also shows the government is doing something, which is not always the right motivation.

Among the disadvantages of military intervention, Garden cited the need for alliances and the possibility of disagreements, as in Afghanistan and competing security demands of the destruction of the Taliban and the reconstruction of the country. Military operations are also difficult to sustain, costing money and political capital, with demands to ‘bring the boys home’. There was also resource mismatch, the military currently structured for high intensity war, with developmental resources being a secondary issue. The military also need to win over hearts and minds fast, whereas development goals need longer-term strategies. High staff turnover, and changes in leadership between allies, exacerbate cultural ignorance, with tours of duty often only six months long.
Military intervention needs widespread support from the international community, preferably endorsed by the UN. It needs a clear mission, unlike the confusion over poppy eradication in Afghanistan, and allies need to know the extent of their respective commitments. It needs a real prospect of success, or we may merely be adding more guns to an already explosive situation, and a clear idea for demilitarisation. Otherwise the military risks being enmeshed in a conflict rather than leading the effort for security and reconstruction.

CRAIG MURRAY, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, bemoaned the waste of Africa’s potential. At independence 50 years ago, Ghana was richer than Brazil or Argentina. It was a middle income country with per capita income of $320 per year, compared with today’s $340, a modest nominal rise but a real-terms reduction of 80-90%. Conflict was often blamed for Africa’s lack of development, but while security is a necessary condition for development, it was not a sufficient one. Ghana has seen it’s coups, but no foreign invasion and no civil wars, leaving 99% of the population unaffected. It got poor because of export dumping, debt, ill-advised infrastructure projects, corruption and a litany of other problems besides security.
Outside intervention can be legitimate, and earlier, more robust interventions were needed in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Western military intervention in Africa revolves around training, mercenaries, peacekeeping and peacemaking. Training may emphasis human rights, the rule of law, and civilian control, but in reality all Nigeria’s coup leaders went to Sandhurst, and we run the risk of training more efficient military dictators. Mercenaries are abhorrent, and killing for money could never be justified, yet there was a long history of it in Africa, fuelled by its enormous mineral wealth; the UK government’s legitimisation of private military companies was a great mistake. Peacekeeping is not a one-way process, with Africa meeting many of its own needs while countries like Ghana have peacekeepers in seven countries outside Africa. Peacemaking is more problematic, forcing us to chose sides in complex situations where a ‘good and evil’ analysis is overly simplistic. Even the RUF in Sierra Leone was not all bad. In Afghanistan, the West supports a government comprising some of the world’s biggest drug traffickers. The 25% increase in opium production expected this year comes after a record crop in 2006. Poppy production and processing into heroine was happening on an industrial scale, with millions of tonnes of chemicals needed to make heroine being imported by tanker, often through Uzbekistan, and needing government sanction. Military intervention can prolong conflicts, he said, not just shorten them.

In response to questions, Gordon cited Sierra Leone as an example of success, with intervention achieving peace and democracy, and instilling a good ethos in the military. Yet the commitment had to be long-term. When elites take over states to protect and enrich themselves, and failed to provide wider security, the international community has a responsibility to intervene, setting aside sovereignty in preference for human security. However Murray retorted that such intervention was too expensive to be a widespread solution, and also marked a return to imperialism, undermining key development goals. Moreover such intervention is too partial, tolerating human rights abuses by ‘allies’ like Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia. Garden countered that while we cannot intervene everywhere, it is appropriate to intervene where we can, with security and the rule of law being a priority over representative democracy.

In the last five years the economic and political influence of China in Africa has grown dramatically, resulting in profound changes. Is the influence of the West now waning across the African continent?

MYLES WICKSTEAD, former Head of Secretariat to the Commission for Africa, highlighted the change since the end of the Cold War, and before that, colonialism, when aid was an explicit tool of political and commercial interests rather than a commitment to poverty reduction. In the UK, the ‘Aid-Trade’ provision was only stopped in 1997 in the new geo-political environment. In China, aid reflects four interest: political exchange; economic and trade co-operation, social and cultural engagement including health and education, and its national security. Rather than poverty, it emphasises ‘mutually beneficial economic co-operation’, ‘common prosperity’, and ‘solidarity’. Forty-eight African countries attended the Beijing Summit on China-Africa Co-operation in 2006, and China is shifting towards multilateralism. It is not possible to keep China out of Africa, and nor is it desirable.

African exports to China have been a major source of global growth. That they are largely unprocessed, with little value-added, is not a criticism Western governments can levy given our own restrictions on processed exports. China is increasingly willing to be part of a joint effort with the international community. It is just as interested in a stable Africa as a source of raw materials, while China’s approach to human rights as an issue of sovereignty means that its aid may have even fewer strings attached. How China engages with Africa is key. It is in our interests to work as closely as possible with China in the years ahead.

RAPHAEL KAPLINSKY, Professor of International Development at the Open University, explored the impact of China on development strategies in Africa. Africa is targeting industry as a source of growth because there has more value-added than primary production like agriculture and mining, prices are less volatile, and manufacturing offers more opportunities for productivity growth. Such industrialisation must be export-oriented because the domestic markets in poor countries have insufficient economies of scale to be competitive, and international trade offers opportunities for cultural exchange and learning. That, at least, is the logic of the Washington Consensus, but it is challenged by the rise of China and India. Products ‘Made in China’ will have had their components sourced and processed in Korea, Vietnam, and across Southeast Asia. The Chinese economy is not quite the miracle it seems. Similar growth was seen in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. But Korea and Japan were never more than 4% of the world’s population. China is a fifth, and India 17%. They will not be integrated within the global economy and its institutions without major structural change.

China’s engagement with Africa is built around trade, migration in both directions, aid flows, and through the institutions of global governance, throwing up a need to co-operate as well as the inevitable disagreement. But whereas its activities are viewed with suspicion in Europe and elsewhere, Chinese involvement is generally welcomed in Africa, although it creates losers as well as winners. African Consumers benefit from China’s cheap manufactured goods, and Chinese products, technologies and innovations tend to be more appropriate and affordable than those of high-income economies where consumers value individuality more than mass production. African commodity producers should benefit in principal, though in practice the ‘resource curse’ means that countries with enough mineral and oil wealth to fight over are blighted by conflict and corruption. And Africa’s income distribution should improve as manufacturing is good for job creation. The future need not be bleak for Africa, provided the dominance of the IMF, World Bank and international aid agencies is resisted and Africa protects its manufacturing sector to allow it to become a source of learning and of productivity growth. But the competitive threat it faces is not from Europe or from North America, but from Asia.

DR LINDA YUEH, Economics Fellow at Oxford University, insisted that the future of Africa lies within Africa itself. Openness to trade correlates well to economic growth, but globalisation must be managed and it is the domestic factors like institutions and productivity that are key. Trade with China should improve Africa’s terms of trade, as demand for its mineral exports make imports cheaper. The risk is of ‘Dutch disease’: if an African country discovers oil, say, and starts selling large amounts abroad, its currency will appreciate and raise the price of its other exports, so undermining development in the wider economy. Arguably, industrialisation and the development of an educated, skilled workforce have been held back in the Middle East due to the abundance of oil.

China’s future could not be with Africa, because the world is multi-polar, between the US and China at least, and there are other important regional blocks around the world. China is the world’s second largest economy, adjusted for purchasing power parity, and it has grown twice as fast as the US in the last two decades. Yet ‘realeconomik’, as she called it, meant that the US or EU would not be eclipsed by China or India in the foreseeable future. Moreover, China’s development is not stable, and not at all a good alternative to the Washington consensus. It’s more like a transitional economy, and its transition is far from complete. It is still centrally planned, and the prevalence of the state will undermine efforts towards privatisation. Two thirds of the population is rural, and its income gap is now wider than that in the United States. China’s underdeveloped institutions, its weak property rights and unresponsive politics, mean that Africa does not want to tie its future to Africa in any case.

H.E. MS LINDIWE MABUZA, High Commissioner of the Republic of South Africa in London, said that Africa is inviting the world to assist with its development, and the involvement of China stretches back decades, even centuries. The 1955 Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung presented a united front against colonialism and Apartheid, and in recent years, Chinese involvement in Africa has increased significantly. Whilst China represents significant competition in sectors like textiles, it was helping South Africa in fields such as agricultural technology and vocational training. The future of Africa depends on the resources and the resourcefulness of the African people; it’s development plan: By Africa, For Africa.

China is no different from anywhere else with an interest in partnerships for sustainable development. Africa can now choose, and it chooses partnerships with China. It would not do so if all China wanted was to plunder its natural resources. As well as primary products like food and minerals, there were joint ventures and significant increases in trade, with China giving South Africa long-term assistance to increase its value-added and diversify its economy. The Chinese market is opening up to Africa exports, while its development fund encouraged major investment in Africa. China offered professional training, scholarships, development funds for health and education, and was helping in the fight against malaria.

Questions raised issues of China’s support for destabilising regimes and poor social and environmental practice, whether we were witnessing a new ‘scramble for Africa’, and whether China’s intervention was governed by short- or long-term considerations. Wickstead agreed that greater Chinese engagement in problems like Darfur or Zimbabwe would be welcome, but highlighted that the West also had political blind-spots, and that political interference was not always benign, or better than non-interference. Increasingly, China is taking a longer-term view of its domestic challenges, and he expected that to read across to its dealings with Africa, taking a long-term view of resource security rather than short-term trading advantage. Whilst Yueh thought that China may be more motivated by short-term considerations, she thought that Africa could insist on long-term benefits like skills transfer and investment projects. Yet with environmental and social issues having so little priority in China itself, it is unlikely to promote such priorities abroad.

Africa must insist on developing its human capital, and also protecting its infant industries in an unfair world trading system, while ensuring that such protection does not fall prey to cronyism and political manipulation. Kaplinsky highlighted China’s willingness to take on long-term risk, compared with Western mining companies that were, during a time of high mineral demand, returning money to shareholders rather than investing in new mines. However China’s demand for copper had pushed up the Zambian kwacha, undermining the export of corn and tobacco. Moreover, although China’s trade with Africa was not solely primary commodities, but technological inputs were low and on a downward trend, whereas trade between African countries tended to be higher tech and should be the focus of the future. All the panellists emphasised that the future of Africa rests first and foremost with Africa.