Andrew M. Mwenda
6 March 2005
column
Kampala — We braved the chilling cold, snow and rains of London for three days attending different meetings and "briefings" of the Commission for Africa set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. We were 16 of us - "senior" journalists from Africa sponsored by the British government to London to take part in the Commission's work.
That the commissioners are well-intentioned men and women is beyond doubt. That they have invested a hell lot of time and effort in this work is also correct. But it is an effort most likely to produce very little.
First a caveat: my insight into the Blair Commission's work is shaped by the speeches some of the commissioners gave, or their responses to questions raised by journalists at "press briefings" or "informal meetings" with us.
I must admit that most of these questions were simplistic, inquiring more about form than the substance of the Commission's work. I have not read the final report of the Commission, which will be launched on March 11. My comments are therefore based on what I heard from the commissioners, which may be different from the report itself.
Foreign aid
The major thrust of all the commissioners is that Africa needs increased financial aid from the west to help it achieve the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations: halving the number of people living in poverty by 2015, increasing school enrolment and access to basic healthcare, among others.
Commissioner K.Y. Amoako, the executive director of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, called for increased foreign aid to Africa and was supported by Commissioner Anna Tibaijuka of the UN Habitat for Humanity.
Is Africa's fiscal constraint a "lack of money" i.e. a domestic revenue base to finance education, health and infrastructure development? Africa is a large and diverse continent and each country has unique problems requiring specific policy interventions. However, Africa's fiscal constraints are often a result of weaknesses in tax administration, and extravagant or misdirected public expenditure priorities by governments.
Take Uganda: the country depends on foreign donors for 50 percent of its budget. Aid is important because it finances education, health, capacity building and infrastructure development.
However, former Uganda Revenue Authority deputy commissioner general in charge of revenue, Mr Justin Zake, told me that the country collects 57 percent of the taxes due to it.
Former commissioners general Elly Rwakakoko and Annebritt Aslund said the same thing, the latter adding that the rich and politically powerful evade taxes.
Also, Uganda spends $200 million on the military with ghost soldiers alone costing the taxpayer $40 million per annum: a more appropriate military budget would be $60 million.
The government also spends $200 million on public administration - ministers, presidential advisors, Wembley Stadium-size Parliament, myriad district councils, resident district commissioners - when a ministry of finance study shows this can be cut down by 50 percent.
The cost of absorbing foreign aid: central bank is holding treasury bills to the tune of $700 million, interest payments on which cost the taxpayer $110 million per annum.
Aid therefore undermines incentives for the Uganda government to clamp down on the rich and politically powerful who evade taxes through improvements in the tax administration infrastructure, and abandoning its corrupt and profligate military and public administration expenditure in favour of prudent fiscal policy.
Put simply, foreign aid is a subsidy for government incompetence and corruption. I challenged Blair using this argument, and he responded that the Commission will emphasise "good governance": better tax administration and prudent public expenditure. He could not see that good governance is more a product of enlightened self-interest than moral commitment.
(He later pulled me away from Bob Geldolf and said with that characteristic English smile: "that was a very insightful argument.")
The major proponents of the "increasing aid to Africa" mantra were the usual suspects: Amoako and Tibaijuka - both employees of the UN, an incompetent and corrupt organisation that does not make its own money but lives off handouts (you can call it "foreign aid") from member states for all its activities.
Those who have read the works of the guys from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) - Andre Gunder Frank, Enrique Cardoso and Raul Prebisch - laugh at the failure of its African counterpart, the ECA, to produce knowledge worth one's reading time.
There have been numerous initiatives to "help Africa" from its permanent state of crisis, people noted, but in spite of a few exceptions, the continent grows poorer, not richer.
Instead of proposing new, radical and bold ideas, most commissioners recycled the same old, tired and worn-out clichés: increase foreign aid, promote good governance, create an enabling environment for investment, fight corruption.
The commissioners were still thinking within the "box" yet arguing that they were thinking outside of it. So Commissioner Tibaijuka, possibly the most pathetic of them all, was telling her listeners: "We are proposing new and radical ideas!"
What are these ideas?
"We should not only condemn those in Africa who are corrupt but also those in the west who corrupt them," she said with self-assured confidence before continuing, "We should not only complain that money is stolen from Africa but also expose those banks in the west that accept it."
What is new or radical in this hotchpotch of phrases?
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, having stifled reform, established a virtual police state, jailed opponents, legalised tribalism, undermined nationalism, clamped down on the media and breached almost every aspect of good governance, is among the commissioners promoting "good governance".
Again I challenged Blair on this. "Is this the man you trust can promote reform?" I asked, and, looking me straight in the eye, Blair answered: "Yes, I do!"
It was the height of black comedy.
There were some of Africa's finest journalists in London. Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo, the managing editor for convergence at the Nation Media Group in Nairobi, was one. Signs of frustration were written all over him and he practically avoided getting involved in the discussions, even during our "informal meeting" with Blair. He told me he was scandalised by the shallowness of the issues the commissioners were putting forth.
Mr Gamal Nkrumah, the son of Ghana's illustrious first post-independence leader Kwame Nkrumah, kept asking me whether there was something wrong with his "ears or brains" because he could hardly hear anything new, or intelligent. I told him I also might have been suffering from the same disease.
There were two journalists from Ethiopia: one white, another black. The white guy withdrew completely into contemplation, the black guy asked a few cynical questions like how Blair can talk of promoting "good governance" when one of the commissioners was Zenawi, the architect of "bad governance" in Ethiopia.
The guy from Swaziland was sharp; he avoided most of the discussions.
Others simply kept aloof, except for the guy from Tunisia and the woman from South Africa who seemed more interested in getting news stories from the commissioners than an intellectual engagement with them over Africa's predicament.
If the trip was to improve my hope in the Commission, I regret to inform my sponsors that it actually made matters worse: it is a commendable and well intended effort that is proposing the wrong remedies precisely because it has failed to breathe fresh ideas into the debate on Africa's development predicament.
I told Blair that good intentions backed by a wrong analysis and unrealistic assumptions can be counterproductive. It is not enough to repackage tested-and-failed practices in new language and new initiatives and expect different results.
The one lesson I got from the British Prime Minister was that it is always good to be optimistic and risk defeat by trying than be pessimistic and not try at all and never know whether you would have succeeded.
Granted! But optimism akin to that of Don Quixote is not good or productive.
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