Charting Africa's course
The Sowetan (Johannesburg)
March 29, 2000
Johannesburg - Africa is finally showing a willingness to tackle some of the
problems facing it - as shown by the launch of the South African chapter of
the African Renaissance Institute. Frances Kornegay explains
The notion that South Africa should use its influence to advance Africa's
interests during the American presidential election makes sense, especially
in the wake of the recently concluded National Summit on Africa. That
summit, led by African-Americans, was among other things timed to inject
some Africa policy momentum into the Democratic and Republican campaigns.
It endorsed an urgent request for the United States to provide increased
funding for Aids research, education and prevention, and a demand for
comprehensive debt relief for Africa.
The final summit document called for conditional support of the Africa
Growth and Opportunity Act currently languishing in Congress and a new
"Marshall Plan"-scale commitment of additional financial resources for
African development. All well and good.
But as the summit adjourned amid controversy about the conveners' eagerness
to establish yet another Corporate Council on Africa, southern Africa was
drowning in what might be called the "New Millennium Flood".
This catastrophe raised serious questions about Africa's capacity and its
ability to take the initiative in assuming control of its own destiny,
instead of maintaining over-dependency on the responsiveness of the
international community.
In fact, between the summit in Washington and the floods in Mozambique,
Africa's impact on the US presidential election and beyond would be greatly
enhanced if the continent could begin articulating and implementing, in a
coherent fashion, its own agenda.
This agenda, in turn, should influence the policy, advocacy and lobbying
agendas of overseas constituencies for Africa. In other words, mobilising
support for Africa - whether through summits or in response to crises such
as the floods in Southern Africa - must be driven by African initiatives, as
opposed to African leaders appealing to the outside world for help or
depending on the current laissez-faire approach to lobbying on Africa's
behalf.
There are glimmers of possibility that Africa may be getting its act
together sufficiently to take control of its own destiny. There are signs
that the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) is getting serious about
re-launching the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and
Cooperation for Africa (CSSDCA) which offers a comprehensive framework for
an integrated approach to Africa's political, economic and security
problems.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) is gearing up to
prepare an international review of the decade-old African Charter for
Popular Participation in Development, with a view to building synergies with
initiatives such as the CSSDCA and the more recently established African
Renaissance Institute.
The Renaissance Institute, in turn, will gain added impetus from the
impending launch of the South African Chapter of the African Renaissance
being spearheaded by African National Congress stalwart Wally Serote.
This launch takes on added importance with Foreign Minister Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma's recent unveiling of the R200 million African Renaissance and
International Cooperation Fund to support Africa's democratisation process.
Some, if not all, of the initiatives mentioned could benefit from such
resources, in addition to the support that the fund will lend to
strengthening electoral democratic governance.
In short, South Africa is showing a readiness to put its money where its
mouth is, symbolised by the heroics of its helicopter pilots during their
spectacular rescue missions in Mozambique.
This is not all. The recent OAU deliberations over the establishment of an
all-African parliament, perhaps to complement and give impetus to the
African Economic Community and the Pretoria-based Africa Institute's June
conference on building a "United States of Africa", point in the same
direction of Africa's moving beyond business as usual. All of which is
imperative if the rest of the world is to take Africa seriously.
The outstanding question is to what extent these various initiatives, all of
which are in many ways complementary, can be consolidated into a grand
strategy for Africa's recovery and renewal.
Much will depend on the individual foreign policies of major African states
like South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt.
It is a good sign that the three are now spearheading a southern hemispheric
strategy in the World Trade Organisation along with non-African powers like
India and Brazil.
However, apart from Africa's "big power" trinity, there will be a need for
greater coordination and cooperation between inter-African institutions like
the OAU and the UNECA.
The outcome of all of this dovetailing could be the development of an
African agenda that provides inspiration and direction to Africa's
constituencies overseas, starting with but not being limited to the African
diaspora.
Here again, there is a ready-made framework for mobilisation that awaits
fleshing out in the "Friends of Africa" constituency component of the UN
Special Initiative for Africa.
This initiative contains the potential for African lobbies the world over to
be coordinated in closer partnership with continental leadership
initiatives.
This, in turn, could inform the kind of public education campaigns that
might be undertaken by African embassies in Washington and in other
capitals. More responsible and engaged Africa policies hopefully would
result.
(The writer is the Bradlow Fellow at the South African Institute of
International Affairs.)
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Copyright (c) 2000 The Sowetan. Distributed via Africa News Online
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