Millennium Action Plan

Africa’s Plan to Save Itself

PRETORIA

African Leaders are promising reforms, and asking the rest of the world to help

TRYING to construct a set of goals and policies for Africa that both George Bush and Robert Mugabe would sign up to is nearly impossible.  But this week a team of drafters was closeted in a hotel in South Africa, attempting to incorporate some last-minute comments from African governments in order to make the Millennium Action Plan (MAP) for African recovery acceptable to as many African leaders as possible.  But if the plan looks like an African begging-bowl held out to the rest of the world, it will be ignored.

The plan is the brainchild of Thabo Mbeki, who wanted a way of bringing to life his vision of an "African renaissance".  Working with the presidents of Nigeria and Algeria, Olusegun Obasanjo and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, South Africa's president set up a team to write a plan that would inspire Africa to create a better future for itself-and persuade others to take it seriously.  The hope is that if African leaders commit themselves to democracy and human rights, to tackle disease and reform their economies, and generally to get their act together, the rest of the world will start investing in Africa again.

The mood of the UN millennium summit last year suggested that the world might be ready to help.  Later, Tony Blair let it be known that he wanted some big scheme for Africa to feature in his second term as Britain's prime minister, but that he also wanted the initiative for this scheme to come from Africa, and that he would then respond.

This is what is happening.  The MAP, an African initiative, is to be presented to heads of government at an Organization of African Unity (OAU) meeting in Lusaka.  After a bit more fiddling with the text, the OAU is expected to endorse the plan, and individual African rulers will sign up to it.  Mr Mbeki will then, with the help of Mr Blair, present the plan to the G8 summit in Genoa the following week.

The plan's central thesis is that Africa's development depends on its full involvement in the global economy, and that this requires a mixture of reform in Africa and assistance from other countries. 

The most important reforms are:

·          establishing peace, and more democratic government;

·          respecting human rights;

·          investing in people by giving them better health and education;

·          diversifying economies, and encouraging trade both within Africa and with the outside world;

·          combating disease and boosting new technologies.

In return, the plan asks the developed world for more debt relief, the removal of trade barriers and the ending of its farm subsidies.  Aid is low on the agenda, being mentioned only in the last few pages.

Plans and promises of reform in Africa have been two a penny in recent years; getting them implemented is the hard bit.  The MAP puts its faith in peer pressure, and monitoring performance with timetables and targets.  Not unnaturally, African leaders want matching commitments from donors, demanding that help should be open, clearly aimed and coordinated.

The plan's hopes and ideas are not new but, so far, donor countries have propounded them.  The MAP appears to be Africa's acceptance that the donors were roughly right, and that their conditions for aid were not so much neo-colonial bullying as the rules of a globalized economy.  But not all African leaders will go that far.  Some Africans-not Mr Mbeki-strongly believe that it is their right to claim aid from the developed world in compensation for past exploitation.

The plan's delicately balanced structure remains shaky.  At a meeting in Cairo last week, African ministers tried to hook several of their own pet ideas on to it.  Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, has drawn up his own plan, which is basically a call for more aid, and wants it incorporated.  The Nigerians have begun to talk about debt relief for middle-income countries, such as themselves.  But this is something that no donor country will look at.

The drafters in Pretoria, surrounded by African ministers-and ambassadors, know that some leaders, above all Mr Mugabe, will still insist on blaming the past or "neocolonialism" for their ills, and will certainly not approve a document that wants dictators isolated or property rights respected.  The battle is for the middle ground.  The difficulty is to find a formula that enough Africans can accept but that will still convince world leaders that Africa is serious about reform▀.

THE best thing about the latest plan to develop Africa is that it has no new ideas.  The Millennium Action Plan (MAP), which will be presented at the Organization of African Unity summit next week, offers familiar solutions and entreaties: better government, more democracy, respect for human rights, market reforms and a recognition that globalization offers advantages.  Good.  Had the plan contained some smart bomb-a simple solution to Africa's problems that no one had thought of before-it could have been safely ignored.

Instead, it restates all the aims and policies that the world has been urging for years.  African leaders now appear to accept that these are not just conditions for aid laid down by western countries but economic reality.  That is the new element. In the plan's words, "Africa recognizes that it holds the key to its own development." Unlike previous blueprints, this one has been written by Africans.  The idea is that, having designed it, they should now commit themselves to implementing it, monitoring it and thus, in the jargon, "owning" it.

The man behind the plan is President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who is seeking a way of realizing his dream of an "African renaissance". 

At times the MAP earns its nickname, "Motherhood and Apple Pie", but on the whole it offers common sense:

If African governments want foreign capital and overseas markets, they must create investor-friendly political and economic systems.

 They should concentrate on reducing poverty by providing safe drinking water, better health and more education.  They should try to diversify their economies and to process more of their own raw materials.  The plan does not ask for huge amounts of new aid, but it does ask that aid should be consistent, coordinated and accountable-accountable, that is, to both givers and receivers.  Quite reasonably, it asks for trade barriers and agricultural subsidies to be removed by the developed world so that African producers can compete fairly-though many African countries would benefit at least as much if they removed their own barriers as well.

The African leaders at the OAU meeting will be invited to approve the plan and commit themselves to it.  The aim is thereby to grab the attention of presidents and prime ministers in rich countries. 

Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister, is ready to carry the MAP to the G8 summit in Genoa this month.

The rich world should support it, but carefully.  History is littered with the corpses of grand schemes to save Africa.  The Lagos Plan of Action, for example, was launched with great fanfare in 1980, but nothing came of it.  That was not so much because it was flawed as because African governments abandoned their commitments as soon as the going got tough.  Most of those commitments had been drawn up by outsiders and accepted by the signatories only in order to win aid.  As soon as the aid was received, the promises were forgotten.

What is to stop the same thing happening with the MAP?  Nothing at present.  The plan provides for monitoring, but there is nothing in the text so far to sanction countries that sign up to it and go off track.  Might peer pressure do the trick?  Not if Zimbabwe is a guide.  Even South Africa, which could exert strong pressure on the errant Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, balks at doing more than tut-tutting.  The plan is a welcome sign that Africans are beginning to see the need to put their own house in order.  But only clear evidence that they are actually practicing honest, accountable government in pursuit of sensible policies will show that they are serious▀.