Washington, DC — "Instead of lamenting on the sidelines, we have decided to be the authors of our own history; for that we have to take care of situations like the one in Zimbabwe, " says Senegal's Foreign Minister, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio.
A passionate advocate of Africa's recovery plan, Nepad - the New Partnership for Africa's Development - he says he understands why Zimbabwe's crisis is raising such anxiety: "When I'm blamed for the situation in Zimbabwe it doesn't bother me that much. I understand that people are reminding Africa - 'You made a global commitment to good governance.'"
And Africa will live up to that commitment, he predicted in an interview with allAfrica.com, Monday. He expects that at the OAU summit in Pretoria, South Africa, next July, African leaders will flesh out the "African Peer Review Mechanism" called for in Abuja which, according to a joint communique, will operate "separate from the political process and structures." There [in Pretoria] African leaders will define and refine "a continental position on unconstitutional change in the form of electoral problems." (which, he adds in a subtle dig at the United States and its Florida problems in the 2000 presidential election, are experienced everywhere).
But despite his belief that Africa has to put its house in order, he is impatient with some Western critics.
Sometimes it seems as if Africa is considered to be one country, he says. "How can the Senegalese people, the Malian people be held accountable for what happened in Zimbabwe?"
In a veiled criticism of countries like the U.S., where officials have intimated that their support for Nepad could be at risk, he comments: "They don't officially withdraw their support but they issue almost an ultimatum to African leaders to 'do something' about Zimbabwe. When Yugoslavia was in crisis and there was genocide, nobody blamed that on Europe. When we have something going on in one African country, all Africans are responsible. So that's a problem. We have to deal with that double standard and, frankly, give Africa a chance - because this is a good project for our continent."
And he warns that the glare of publicity around on Zimbabwe - while other comparable crises in Africa go apparently unnoticed - is raising doubts about Western motives.
"I'm telling our partners that they have to be extremely careful, because people will say: 'Madagascar has no white minority so it's not interesting [to the West]; countries may be condemning in principle but there are no sanctions, no intervention... But [it's different in] Zimbabwe because it's southern Africa and we know the history - issues of racism and colonialism and everything.' The brothers and sisters are very sensitive when it comes to those issues," he says.
But, he warns, "none of that is a good reason for a true African democrat to just close his eyes and say 'nothing happened in Zimbabwe, everything went well', or 'I don't understand why the West is criticising Zimbabwe.'"
The Nepad plan, only six months old, should at least be given a chance to get off the ground. He is certain that once Nepad is underway, with the African peer review mechanism in place, a legitimate and effective device for monitoring African leaders' and governments' adherence to the principles of democracy, human rights, transparency and the rule of law will also be secured.
The OAU, he says, needs to expand its capacity for attending, monitoring and observing elections so that it can do a thorough job. "You know, to see 6 or 7 or 10 OAU observers go to Zimbabwe and come back and say it's a free and fair election - that's a problem for our continent. My hope is that the peer review system that is in the Nepad project will allow African countries, African leaders, to be the first to make statements about the situation in any electoral context in Africa - after we have done the job and monitored in the field: then we will be entitled to say it is free and fair."
In the meantime, he would also like to see more conviction being shown by Zimbabwe's neighbours.
"When we have a problem in Sierra Leone, West African countries get together through Ecowas and try to find a solution to the problem and we are sensitive to the problems of Sierra Leoneans because we are very close, culturally and everything. So our wish is that the SADC countries take full awareness of the gravity of the situation and help the continent of Africa deal with that problem in Zimbabwe. We know what happened there, frankly. We know."
One of the things that makes Nepad so important says Gadio, is that it establishes Africa's priorities clearly. "For the first time this plan was not put together by 'experts', it was put together by African leaders."
This week's Abuja mini-summit, attended by nine heads of state, emphasized the need for Africa to get a massive infusion of private investment on the scale of the post World War II "Marshall Plan" that reconstructed western Europe. In order to ensure sustainable growth, the Nepad plan estimates that the amount of investment capital needed is US$64bn annually.
Senegal will be hosting a meeting next month designed to get the private sector - both African and international - to commit to Nepad and Gadio believes the private sector is the key to Africa's future. "The loan/debt approach to African development has failed the continent. Borrowing has resulted in deep debt, not development."
The minister points to the failure of developed nations to give the UN-recommended 0.7 per cent of their GDP in aid: "After 30 years, we are still around 0.3 percent. Do we have to wait another 30, 40 years to get to 0.7? That's not our development strategy."
Whereas UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan at last week's Monterrey 'Financing for Development' Conference called for a doubling of aid, Gadio sets forth a very different philosophy. He quotes the Monterrey speech by his president, Abdoulaye Wade, one of the principle architects of Nepad, in which Wade challenged the international community to explain how aid based on even 1% of donors' GDP could ever be sufficient to solve Africa's development problems. Wade pointed out that the US, Canada, Europe and Japan developed without relying on aid and Africa could do it too, if it only freed the market, encouraged initiative and private sector involvement.
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So for Senegal, the forthcoming meeting in Dakar is at the core of the whole Nepad project. "What we are trying to achieve," says Gadio, "is not only to engage in a dialogue with the African and international private sector, but to be able to say, after the meeting, that we have the private sector on board, just the way we have the G8, the Nordic countries, on board."
He hopes to have the blueprints for a number of important West African infrastructure projects available to show potential investors in Dakar at the meeting. He knows they won't make any decisions there and then, but he can at least demonstrate that there are attractive opportunities available.
The other important goal of this meeting, he says, "is to have the African leadership facing the world's business leaders and making a real commitment that they will respect human rights, the rule of law, sound fiscal and legal environment - things like that; it is symbolically important to have all these African leaders together and make them face what they call their partners in the private sector."
In what he sees as a potentially "emotionally charged" aspect of the meeting, he says he hopes the private sector will raise all the concerns they have, "and I hope they will get the right answers from our leaders."
