The African continent appeared to adopt a 'wait and see' approach to the findings of the Commission for Africa report released last Friday, although this was tinged with widespread doubt over whether words would ever translate into action.

Newsletter Africa Confidential set the tone when it described a leaked version of the report as “offering little new thinking on African development” and there was a feeling amongst other critics that there remained a failure to acknowledge the extent to which the developed world contributed to Africa’s woe.

In terms of recommendations made by the 17 member commission panel (of which nine were from Africa), most media seized on the angle of weak governance in African states coupled with corruption as a major bloc to development. The report called on African governments to commit to transparent governance and ratify international conventions related to corruption. The report said governments, states and banks in rich countries also had a duty to tackle corruption. This included the repatriation of illicit funds from Africa and transparency in business dealings.

In the important area of trade, the report said that Africa faced an enormous challenge to reverse its sliding global trade share. Western nations were called on to "agree immediately to eliminate trade-distorting support to cotton and sugar and commit by 2010 to end all subsidies and all trade-distorting support in agriculture".

But without added resources in education and health, for example, the report acknowledged that development would not take place and therefore the volume and quantity of external aid to sub-Saharan Africa would have to change. There should be an immediate $25bn (£13bn) a year increase in international aid to Africa, followed by a further $25bn a year from 2010. Donor countries "should aim to spend" 0.7% of their gross national product on development aid.

On the issue of debt cancellation, the debts of poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank should be written off, the report recommended, but recipients must be committed to good governance and use the money to deliver "development, economic growth and the reduction of poverty".

Other recommendations were that Western nations should fund at least 50 percent of the African Union’s peacekeeping budget and that negotiations on an international arms trade treaty must open no later than 2006.

Hard-hitting criticism of the report came from Action Aid, who parodied its release by announcing an African Commission for Britain. The organization said its commission started from the premise that the first step in supporting Africa must be to do it no harm.

Pointing to areas that clearly showed the hypocritical nature of the moral high ground adopted by the Commission, Action Aid noted that in 2003 there were 14 African countries facing conflict situations and ten of these had bought arms from the UK. In the area of corruption, British banks were holding US$1.3bn looted from Nigeria by the Abacha family and the UK government had not co-operated with Nigerian efforts to recover this looted wealth.

Meanwhile, in the West African country of Ghana, over two million Ghanaians lacked access to clean water. Yet the UK, the fourth largest shareholder in both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, supported the World Bank when it made water privatisation in Ghana a condition of aid, said Action Aid.

Britain and its EU partners were also involved in pushing for potentially devastating free-trade deals. Ghana's tomato canning industry, for example, had been "decimated" following tariff cuts forced by the EU. Other commentators noted that although the report called for an end to trade subsidies, this was unlikely to happen in the short term, especially from some countries in the European Union.

But leading pan African networks and international NGOs cautiously welcomed calls in the report for 100% debt cancellation, an end to World Bank and IMF conditionalities and the right of African countries to decide their own social and economic policies to fight poverty, corruption and injustice in Africa.

However, a statement emphasized that problems facing Africa would not be resolved by repeated statements of intent, but by well-structured and time-bound strategies derived from Africa's own analysis of her circumstances. According to Thomas Deve of the Harare based MWENGO: "The report marks a creative shift in policy thinking on Africa. 2005 is the time for this bold rhetoric to be matched with real measures that will transform structures that cause poverty in Africa."

Achim Chiaji, coordinator for the Kenyan national CSO campaign on the Millennium Development goals, said: "This report basically confirms what African NGOs and Governments have been saying all along. Core structural adjustment policy conditionality associated with debt and aid packages for Africa for the last two decades have been destructive to human security and economic growth. With this report, the World Bank and IMF must stop."

How will history judge the Blair report? It will probably note that its recommendations were hamstrung by divisions between the EU and the US on the exact approach to Africa’s development and the amount of money that the financial markets could allow for it. It might note that Tony Blair, in an election year, was desperate to regain the moral high ground after a disastrous invasion of Iraq and at the same time assert his leadership of the G8 and EU. But in the end analysis, history will probably note that the report gathered dust in the same manner as its predecessors.

At the recent launch of 'African Voices on Development and Social Justice: Editorials from Pambazuka News 2004', published by Mkuki na Nyoto Publishers, Fahamu (http://www.fahamu.org) summmarised the reaction to the report as follows:

'Although there appears, at first glance, much to be welcomed in the Blair Commission’s report, Africa is portrayed – once again - as the object of pity, a ‘basket case’, a 'scar on the conscience of the world'. Charity, not justice, governance, not self-determination, appear to be its watchwords. Although it calls for 100% debt cancellation instead of debt relief, the fine print makes clear that such cancellation of debt remains, as ever, conditional. While the Commission’s report says its “starting point … was the recognition that Africa must drive its own development”, in practice it seems that Africa faces once again an externally driven agenda for social development that combines a narrowly defined programme of privatisation with a broadly defined program of globalisation – the recipe of structural adjustment programmes and poverty reduction strategy papers that have become so tediously familiar over the last two decades and which, many would claim, have exacerbated the destitution of the region.'

Compiled by Pambazuka News using the following sources:

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20389175~men... http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaigns/cambriefs/africacommissionfinal.pdf http://www.actionaid.org.uk/1543/press_release.html http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/news/media/pressrel/050311p.htm http://www.oxfam.org.uk/press/releases/blair_caf110305.htm http://www.actionaid.org/documents/commissionforbritain.pdf http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L10127897.htm http://afronets.org/pubview.php/102/ http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/africa_fails_to_address_ke_... http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/home/newsstories.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503120001.html
http://www.cafod.org.uk/policy_and_analysis/commenteditorial/reviewing_o...