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.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 2000 The Sowetan. Distributed via Africa News Online ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------