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President Barack Obama waves during the official family photo at the US
African Leaders Summit, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014, at the State Department in
Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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By Sonala Olumhense
Tomorrow in Washington,
DC, the United States hosts the US-Africa Summit, a three-day meeting with
Africa’s leaders. I hope the event is a tremendous success.
I am not sure how that
success is to be measured. Summits tend to end with pious resolutions or
declarations: some kind of promissory note that reflects the scripted story of
the event.
In that respect, Africa
is a wealthy continent, for she owns large mountains of resolutions from
summits and conferences.
Hopefully, this week’s
summit will not be remembered as just another talk show about Africa, but I am
not holding my breath.
We only have to cast our
glance back a little bit to remember that following the collapse of the United
Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s, the
international community in 2002 put together the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD). I happened to have been present on that occasion in
New York as one African leader after another eloquently pledged to ensure the
success of NEPAD, and therefore, the development of Africa.
Twelve years later,
however, it is difficult to see how NEPAD has transformed the fortunes of
Africa.
But there was life before
NEPAD, just as there has never been a shortage of multilateral initiatives
aimed at attacking the problems of our continent.
Among them: the United
Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa; the Lome Convention (also
known as the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement); the Cairo Plan of Action; the
United States’ Partnership for Economic Growth and Opportunity in Africa
Initiative; the Tokyo International Conference for African Development; the G8
Okinawa Declaration; the Africa Process and various other processes such as
Skagen and Copenhagen and Cotonou.
Of particular
significance, world leaders met in New York in the Millennium Summit in
2000. Following their reflection on the world and the challenge of the
future, they issued the Millennium Declaration, upon which the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) were subsequently developed.
That was particularly
significant for Africa. No peoples, no continents, and no futures stood
to benefit more from the MDGs that those of Africa.
Next year, the MGDs would
have run their full course. Regrettably, of the countries or regions that
will declare respectable returns, Africa is unlikely to be listed. When
you think about it, this week’s Summit in Washington DC is proof of that.
Africa’s problems have
continued to mount. We continue to lack infrastructure. We continue
to suffer reverses in health and education. While some progress has been
made in the area of AIDS, which was a dismal concern 15 years ago, corruption
and poor governance continue to hamper political and economic development in
many African countries.
In other words, 15 years
of the MDGs, and the African child still lacks as much basic essentials as hope
for the future.
Here is a personal story:
In the past couple of months, I have attended several graduation ceremonies in
my neck of the woods, and spoken to other families whose graduations I could
not attend. These are African students, many of whom graduated at the top
of their classes.
The sad part: few of
those graduates want to go to Africa to work or study; none wants to go— or
return—to Nigeria, my country. They all cite such concerns as
insecurity, bad governance, infrastructure, and unemployment.
This is not too difficult
to understand: In 2002, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo stood before the
UN General Assembly and called for an international convention against it.
The UN listened to him, and just the following year, the General Assembly
adopted the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
The irony is this: three
years later, Obasanjo tried to buy himself an unconstitutional third term as
Nigeria’s president.
When that failed, he
single-handedly chose his successor president and vice-president, and got them
into office. That political lineage will represent Nigeria at the United
States summit this week. It is perhaps little surprise that Nigeria’s
current president, despite at least two direct promises to President Barak
Obama in the past, is strongly resisting accountability. It is also of no
surprise that sitting close to him will be one of Nigeria’s most
ethically-questioned Ministers.
My point is this: it is
not a shortage of conferences or summits or resolutions that Africa suffers
from. The principal challenge is that the philosophy of democracy, and
the accountability that underpins it, has yet to be accepted by most of
Africa’s so-called leaders. They love to wield the power, but resent the
responsibility that comes with it.
I offer one proof:
Africa’s four famous Calabashes.
In 1991, the African
Leadership Forum, a Nigeria-based non-governmental organization, working with
the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations Economic Commission,
organized a massive four-day conference, perhaps the most important in
post-independence Africa, to focus on Africa’s problems.
Held in Uganda and known
as the Kampala Forum, it was attended by well over 500 people, including
serving and former African Heads of State and Government. It deliberated
on a proposal to launch a Conference on Security, Stability, Development and
Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), and adopted the Kampala Document, which is remembered
for boldly mapping out a framework for governance and development in Africa
into this millennium.
A report of that
conference shows that in that same year, the OAU Summit of African Heads of
State and government acknowledged in its final communiqué that a link exists
between security, stability, development and cooperation on the continent.
The Kampala Document
called for a Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in
Africa (CSSDCA) that would provide a comprehensive framework for Africa’s
security and stability, as well as measures for accelerated continental
economic integration for socioeconomic transformation. The CSSDCA
established four bundles of issues, called Calabashes: security, stability,
development and cooperation.
In each of these areas,
the Kampala Document made significant recommendations. The spirited
conference was then over, and forgotten. That was 23 years ago, and I
doubt that the current generation of African leaders even knows anything about
it.
The current generation
does know all about the MDGs, but look at its abysmal performance on that file
over the past 14 years!
This is why there is
little thrill for me to applaud this week’s summit. It is obvious that
the post-World War II development infrastructure is broken because it was
founded on several false assumptions. They have left us with two
kinds of African nations: those that are poor, and those that do not care.
Hopefully, Washington has
a solution for leadership indifference and hypocrisy. Otherwise this
week’s summit has only a relevance span of one month.
That would be when
Africa’s leaders again fire up their gleaming jets and return to the United
States for more speeches at the United Nations.
Originally published in Y!Naija
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