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Tichaona Zindonga Senior Political Writer
The EU-Africa summit which was due to begin tomorrow and has now been shrouded in controversy, is turning out to be more trouble than it is worth, really. Not many people would vouch for clear and present advantages or developments that have come from the dialogue in the past few years.
If one were to consider the hullabaloo and the huggermugger that it have characterised the concept in its short history and possible premature end, the verdict would not cast much favourable light on the interface between Africa and the bloc of former colonial powers (and slavers).
The summit in Lisbon in 2007 Portugal, for example, was dominated by the standoff between Britain and Zimbabwe as the former doggedly sought to have its former colony barred from attending the event.
When that failed, the then British prime minister Gordon Brown snubbed the indaba not only because he had not had his way, but because he would be forced to sit next to President Mugabe in the meetings.
That would have greatly ‘repulsed’ him: President Mugabe’s opponents especially in the West retreat at the prospect of having President Mugabe near them because talking to him — and he is every inch a gentleman — is one easy way to deflate their egos, prejudices, preconceptions and ultimately the image of a Dracula that they want so much to perpetuate.
Western officials also walk out on speeches by President Mugabe while Western media black him out or focus on some inconsequential details like the length of the speech.
When President Mugabe was invited to the meeting, which he has now turned down, there were familiar noises.
A statement by the UK Foreign Office said: “The UK would prefer not to see Mugabe at the Summit, but it was a necessary part of the EU agreement to renew the overall sanctions on Zimbabwe which we played a leading part in maintaining. The UK government is absolutely clear: attendance at one EU meeting in Brussels does not change in any way the fact that Robert Mugabe is not, and will not be, permitted to travel to the UK.”
And Kate Hoey, a Labour MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Zimbabwe, urged premier David Cameron to boycott the meeting saying, “If he (President Mugabe) now is to be there, then I would call on our Prime Minister to follow the principled lead of his predecessor Gordon Brown.”
The EU-Africa summit has grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons.
This time around, the issue has been on the composition of the African delegation to Brussels. There have been concerns that the EU has been cherry picking African representatives — snubbing full African Union members such as Eritrea, Saharawi Republic while inviting Morocco, which is not an AU member and Egypt, where a coup toppled the country’s democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi.
The 22nd Ordinary Session of the AU General Assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, earlier this year resolved that African leaders would not attend the Summit if President Mugabe, who was elected the First AU Deputy Chairman, was not invited, which led to the EU backtracking.
The African Union Peace and Security Council met last week and expressed disquiet over the way Europe was holding Africa in contempt, urging member states not to attend the summit.
The EU Ambassador to Zimbabwe Aldo Dell’Ariccia tried very hard to justify Europe’s actions and attitude by saying the ill-fated indaba is “not the AU-European Union meeting. Participation is not guided by the membership of the African Union.”
He was lost to the irony in the statement. Could Africa have demanded the participation of non-EU members of the European continent to be part of the meeting?
As long as the bickering between Africa and Europe continues where these summits are concerned the concept is headed for an inglorious end.
Ball in EU court
The onus is on Europe to approach the matter with the right attitude, or risk losing out, that is if Africans can speak with one voice and refuse to be cowed, divided and rule.
Here is one assessment on how the balance of power is: A 2012 paper by James Mackie, Anna Rosengren, Quentin de Roquefeuil and Nicola Tissi for the European Centre for Development Policy Management situates the dynamics of the relationship between EU and Africa.
According to the paper, Africa is on the rise, while the EU is on the wane.
Says the paper: “The marked reversal of roles between the two continents is a good starting point. Many African countries are experiencing unprecedented economic growth, with a booming natural resource sector and growing markets. Europe, meanwhile, is struggling with financial crisis, soaring debt, budget cuts and widespread euro-scepticism.
“This economic transformation inevitably affects the very fundaments of Africa-EU relations. For the EU it means reformulating development co-operation strategies so as to do more with scarce resources and deliver increased ‘value for money’. For African states there is the essential challenge to ensure more inclusive distribution of their recent economic growth and to use their resources as an instrument to get to grips with problems still plaguing much of the continent, such as unemployment, rising inequalities, political instability and persistent poverty and hunger.
“Moreover, both sides are seeking reformulated co-operation models, as stakeholders in Europe and in Africa attach declining importance to traditional approaches to development cooperation.
“This trend is reinforced by new development partners, such as India, China and Brazil, promoting new kinds of relationships that prioritise trade, investment and geopolitics over official development assistance (ODA).”
Further, a change in attitudes has led to the “recognition that the donor-recipient relation may hinder establishment of an equal and stable relationship between the EU and African countries.”
“Many African countries’ attitudes towards development assistance have changed as well. Rather than relying on ODA, African countries are actively developing other policies and methods to ensure economic growth. Domestic resource mobilisation, innovative ways to secure national and regional financing and utilisation of the ‘resource boom’ for wider development are examples of new ideas that call for rethinking the role of aid.”
The game has thus truly changed.
Just over the weekend, West African countries, led by Nigeria, refused to open their economies to free trade with the European Union.
One report says negotiations over the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) stalled two years ago after countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) resisted lifting tariff barriers over fears they could crush nascent industries unable to cope with European imports.
Under the EPA, explained the report, the European Union would immediately offer the 15-member ECOWAS and non-member state Mauritania full access to its markets. In return, ECOWAS would gradually open up 75 percent of its markets — with their 300 million consumers — to Europe over a 20-year period.
Reuters quoted Ghanaian president John Mahama as saying: “We need to negotiate an EPA that is beneficial to our sub-region and will contribute to the prosperity of our people.”
The EU should learn from this episode. The bloc, on the other hand, should disabuse itself of delusions of grandeur, because its greatness is well and truly gone and the wealth accumulated by theft and plunder is fast diminishing.
Europe can only be poorer; less powerful.
The other point concerns the shifting power and economic dynamics with the rise of new players fronted by China.
Statistics indicate that China’s trade with Africa jumped from US$10 billion in 2000 to an estimated US$200 billion in 2013 and in the process overtook the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner.
Writing for the World Financial Review last year, Fantu Cheru and Cyril Obi note that China has become Africa’s preferred partner and there are a lot of reasons for this.
The first reason is because of the instructive values of China’s development experience for Africa whereby China’s historical experience as a semi-colony and its spectacular growth experience since the late 1970s under the guidance of a strong and effective developmental state have raised African interest in learning from China’s success in economic management, visionary leadership and home-grown radical economic reform agenda, and the basis of its success.
Second is the “complementaries of Chinese investment to African needs” whereby, according to authors, the sectoral areas that China invests in and the choice of technology that accompanies this investment has been complementary to African needs and priorities.
“For example, throughout the structural adjustment decades of the 1980s and 1990s, Western development partners focused more on policy-based lending to make markets work better while neglecting investment in vital infrastructure and support services that are critical for raising productivity and reducing poverty. The Chinese are filling this critical infrastructure gap and they are doing it cheaply, less bureaucratically, and within a shorter time frame.”
Thirdly, the Chinese portray Africa in a positive light and “contrary to the standard Western doom and gloom analysis of Africa, China holds the view that Africa is a dynamic continent on the threshold of a developmental take-off, with unlimited business opportunities that would serve both Chinese and African interests.”
Say the authors: “Therefore, when China does pronounce about development co-operation, it avoids the language of ‘aid’ and development assistance and instead prefers the language of solidarity, mutually beneficial economic co-operation, ‘common prosperity’ and shared ‘developing country’ status. Granted, there is more to this rhetoric than meets the eye, but nevertheless this is music to the ears of African policy makers who are wary of perceived Western paternalism.”
In the final analysis, the EU-Africa summit, if it subsists, will have to be more creative, which the theme for this year, “Investing in People, Prosperity and Peace” does not exactly suggest, euphonic though it be.
Online Reporter