Another summit for African leaders
For three days last week, 40 African leaders, in a characteristic fashion, assembled in Washington DC, the federal capital of the United States of America (US), for what was dubbed the US-Africa Leaders Summit. The central focus of the summit was trade and business.
Advertisement
The Washington summit followed a new trend started by China in 2001, during which African leaders are virtually summoned by what has been euphemistically described as a development partner to address investment and business matters of mutual interest.
Since then, Japan, India and the European Union have followed suit to organise their own versions of summits for African leaders and which, as would be expected, were dominated by trade with Africa.
Ordinarily, any platform that would offer African leaders the opportunity to market the investment potentials of the continent and place its development agenda in the global perspective should be appreciated and supported.
That would also mean that mutuality and equality would be the operational words at such summits. In other words, African leaders attend such summits; not as junior partners seeking aid assistance but as equal partners in for a fair deal.
Unfortunately, over the years things have not gone this way. It had been the same story of African leaders carrying along with them basketfuls of requests which did not hide their desperation and vulnerability.
Incidentally, what they always fail to realise is that their hosts who appear to be their benefactors are actually those who are in desperate need of the rich natural resources of the continent.
China has emerged as the world's most powerful industrial and economic country over the last decades and naturally would require Africa's resources to fuel its industrialisation process. It was for that reason that it stepped up its overtures towards the continent.
The same could be said of India, Brazil and other emerging economies. The European Union and the US that seemed to have dropped guard to have allowed China and these new economic giants to capture the African market, have also started restrategising strongly to regain lost grounds.
The US-Africa Leaders Summit should, therefore, not be seen as an act of benevolence to change the fortunes of Africa but another way of getting a fair share of the resources of a continent that has miserably failed to harness its own for development.
African leaders who attended the summit may have returned home pounding their chests that they have made gains, having been pledged development assistance and business investment to the tune of more than $34 billion.
The question is, why should our leaders leave such enormous resources behind and go chasing small assistance from outside?
US Vice-President Joe Biden's advice was relevant when he told the visiting leaders that core democratic principles are vital to achieving long-term economic growth.
He also urged them to fight corruption. “It's a cancer in Africa as well as elsewhere in the world. Widespread corruption is an affront to the dignity of its people and a direct threat to each of your nation's stability. "
Apart from corruption which has been widely acknowledged as a serious canker on the continent, African leaders have been cited for political intolerance, bad governance and mismanagement.
But more potently, African leaders must learn to end the globetrotting and be self-reliant. That was President Barack Obama's farewell message to them as they made a triumphant return to their respective countries.
The US President acknowledged the continent's history of slavery and colonialism but still emphasised that it was time for African leaders to seek their own solutions to the continent's problems.
"At some point we have to stop looking somewhere else for solutions, and you have to start looking for solutions internally. And as powerful as history is, you need to, at some point, look to the future and say okay, we didn’t get a good deal then, but let's make sure that we're not making excuses for not going forward.”
Could there be any better advice for leaders of a continent which is sitting on abundant natural and human resources but always singing poverty and misery as their signature tune?
Writer's email: [email protected]
