Comment & analysis
Celebrating Africa Day: What is the message for GCAP?
Yassine Fall
2005-05-26, Issue 208
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/28319
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The African Women Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), recently launched in Nairobi, Kenya. In this article, Yassine Fall, an economist and President of AWOMI, reflects on its significance in the context of the 42nd Africa Day and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.
Today we commemorate the 42nd anniversary of Africa Day. The Africa Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) is using this day to organise a number of events to launch the anti-poverty campaign and disseminate its messages.
The year 2005 is indeed a year of key international events in the battle against growing poverty, inequalities and exclusion, the increased burden of work and a lack of rights for millions of impoverished women. It is now 10 years since the Beijing Conference and its Platform for Action to which almost all governments in the world signed up, but did very little to implement. Africa Day is being celebrated in a context where many of its children, in particular its girls, have either never been to, or have dropped out of, school. This is the year when the Education for All target was supposed to be met but it still remains a distant dream for many countries and communities of girls.
This September's UN General Assembly will also commemorate the 5th anniversary of the UN Millennium Summit and Declaration. The assembly will review whether the world is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals and discuss again what actions must be taken.
The Millennium Project (MP) Report was launched in January this year. Among many strategies and interventions, it proposed debt cancellation and increased development assistance for poor countries; funding initiatives on violence against women; improving the availability of reproductive health services; providing substantial support to small-holder farmers; the abolition of user fees for poor people; and increased public sector social spending in poor countries.
These recommendations certainly mean a lot to Africans living in poverty, who would like to use this day and the GCAP process to send a message to those who make decisions that affect their lives. The MP recommendations represent a substantial step forward to reassessing debt sustainability combined with debt service payment, cost recovery, increased development assistance, user fees and the budget ceilings which have been set by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSP). The PRSP, developed under the framework of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Debt Relief Initiative (HIPC) spearheaded by the IMF and World Bank (WB), is implemented in most developing countries, and in particular in Africa, as the centrepiece of development assistance.
The content and process of the PRSP are laid down by the Breton Woods institutions, which then claim that all these reforms are owned by the governments and their people. But let's ask some questions. Who develops the conditions governments must meet before they can access HIPC funds? Who sets up the framework for maintaining macroeconomic stability along with its cohort of policy instruments? Without exception, these include "low-inflation-rate fundamentalism", market and trade liberalisation, the privatisation of water, and limiting social expenditure, such as on health and education. Who actually has a say in reviewing the content of PRSPs? Who determines the success or otherwise of the market-oriented reforms implemented by governments, without which there is no inflow of development assistance from bilateral donors? The answer is the IMF and the WB. Africans living in poverty would indeed like to use the Africa Day celebrations to speak sincerely with these institutions.
In parallel with the MP report, global civil society launched its own GCAP campaign at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2005. The campaign calls for 100 per cent debt cancellation, trade justice, democratic governance and increased development assistance as promised by rich nations.
The question is how we use the symbolism of Africa Day to ensure that this campaign delivers tangible results. Will this campaign be another big initiative from a few well connected civil society organisation leaders or will it change the course of history? Does this campaign have the ability to develop a large and participatory movement that will put so much pressure on world leaders that they have no alternative but to seriously address the issue of poverty and give priority to the interests of the most impoverished women and men? Will this campaign be willing for once to do business differently and change the practice of power hijacking, so much decried around Africa? Will it put men to one side and provide space to the voiceless women and youths who are more articulate than many of those who claim to speak for them? Will GCAP be willing to democratise the selection of national representatives, because some of the NGO selected to represent GCAP nationally do not have the mandate to speak for the others at home? Will this campaign engage in genuine policy dialogue about home-grown African issues instead of borrowing soft topics from GCAP's Northern partners -- which leaves the campaign unable to criticise the rich countries which provide it with its means of survival? Is GCAP willing to put the feminisation of poverty and human rights at the centre of its campaign?
The African Women Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), recently launched in Nairobi, Kenya, with over 300 women from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, would like to ensure that these questions get positive answers. Rural women, women from informal settlements, young women, women activists, NEPAD representatives, women in government and parliamentarians all participated in the AWOMI launch. They engaged in intense dialogue with leading members of government and international journalists. The Africa GCAP facilitators were invited but did not think it was important enough to attend. They missed one of the biggest and first meetings where women from all over the continent spoke about poverty, governance, international development, financial architecture and their human rights. They expressed their anger and disappointment at their leaders and recounted moving experiences of lives lived in poverty every day. This would have been a great opportunity for GCAP to learn about indigenous African women, which they were unable to do during their first meeting in April in Kenya.
In addition to adopting transparent processes and including the voiceless, Africa GCAP must use this day of celebration and the days ahead to tackle national governance policy issues more courageously. Furthermore, civil society's demands for trade justice must be GCAP's first demands because trade injustice is the most suffocating challenge for poor countries. They are asked to make all the sacrifices over tariff removals, privatisations -- including of essential services -- and the opening up of their markets while rich countries tighten their protectionist measures.
GCAP needs to have a clear position over international and trade institutions and corrupt governments. The PRSP, which is a recycled name for structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), has, like SAPs, failed to deliver its promises of poverty reduction and debt relief and this must be said clearly on Africa Day. Countries and poor people, in particular women and children, have paid tremendous costs and made huge sacrifices to implement enhanced structural adjustment facilities and growth and poverty reduction policies. However, the only visible growth has been in the figures that declare it. Poor farmers are asked under this framework to choose between health, education for their children and agricultural extension support. This is the evidence that impoverished women would like to see highlighted today.
Hungry women would like to ask how can they access reproductive health services when they have to pay user fees. How can HIV positive women be asked to support cost recovery when they suffer from malaria? In the village of Guerew in Senegal pregnant women are asked to buy a mosquito net for two dollars as a condition for receiving prenatal care. If they refuse they risk joining the long list of women who die when giving birth. Women in the slums of Korogocho and Kibera in Nairobi, and Ganaw Rail and Mbeubeuss in Senegal with whom I work say they have had enough of the PRSP football game between the so called donors, the IFIs and their governments that is mortgaging their lives. Rural women are demanding a stop to the comodification of agriculture and the privatisation of farm lands.
The message on debt cancellation is critical but it is seen as insufficient by the women's organisations and leaders who met under AWOMI. They would like the messages of this Africa Day to demand, on their behalf, debt repudiation and reinvestment of the financial resources in the priorities identified by poor women. They also suggested that any new indebtedness projects be discussed nationally and with poor people. They would decide together with the government whether to agree to the projects after examining the borrowing conditions, the relevance of debt and the investment objectives. Indebtedness would only be acceptable if it was justified by the pressing need to provide the essential services which are increasingly subsidised by women's labour. Africa GCAP would also need to be more courageous and address overseas development assistance from the point of view of reparations for slavery and colonisation, and the recent stealing of medical experts including doctors and nurses by rich countries from poor African countries who need them most.
All these questions were eloquently articulated by women community leaders and young people with evidence and clear justification. They must be echoed by GCAP, which is missing a lot by ignoring them. GCAP will succeed or fail according to how much room and decision making power and leadership it gives to those who pay the most for and suffer the most from poverty and ill conceived policies. They have very little to lose and therefore must lead the voices to be heard on Africa Day in the fight against poverty.
* Yassine Fall is an economist and is President of AWOMI = African Women Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights
* Editors' comment: Given that the loose alliance of more than 70 organisations in some 20 countries has only recently formed, and that this is the first time that such an extensive pan-African alliance has come together, some patience is needed to ensure that the alliance works in the most effective way possible. The criticisms expressed here by the author are not necessarily those shared by Pambazuka News. But in the spirit of encouraging constructive discussion on how this unprecedented alliance can develop effective oppostion to those external forces that have, for so many years, determind social and economic policies in the region, we invite comments and reactions from readers. Please send to editor@pambazuka.org