 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Digital divide
By Gamal Nkrumah
The three-day Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit meeting that took place from 3 to 5 July in the Togolese capital Lomé is far more than a peg on which to hang a news story. African heads of state meet with monotonous regularity to produce final communiqués and churn out some warm, maybe even heated, words -- and nothing else. But I must say at once that the OAU's very survival, against all odds, is a triumph in its own right -- the thread of contextual, historical continuity is an important theme too.
Now they tell us. Having made a sickening show of their eagerness to open their checkbooks and underwrite debt relief, leaders of the Group of Eight (G-8) have made one thing clear: they are not very good at delivering on promises. The new world order is that the rich work the rules so as to amass more wealth; the powerful flex their muscles to secure their interests; and the United States calls the tune.
At last year's G-8 summit in the German city of Cologne, the leaders of the world's richest nations pledged a $100 billion debt relief package to help alleviate the suffering of the world's 40 most impoverished countries. But to date, none of the funds promised have been disbursed. Last Sunday, in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, G-8 leaders reiterated their feigned concern, acknowledging the critical importance of writing off debts to poor nations. But the world's poor are sick and tired of G-8 leaders dishing out nothing but diplomatic niceties at the $800 million extravaganza in Okinawa, while last year's pledges gather dust.
Actions speak louder than words, and when US President Bill Clinton delayed his arrival in Japan for a day -- thus skipping a specially-arranged meeting with leaders of developing nations in Tokyo, the tone was set for the real outcome of the 21-23 July summit. The setting of this week's summit is itself a wry commentary on the power of Pax Americana. Angry anti-American Japanese protesters demonstrated on the island, where some 24,000 American troops are stationed, but their efforts certainly fell on deaf ears, as the US still decidedly set the agenda.
In an unprecedented move -- and undeterred by Clinton's snub -- democratically-elected representatives of poor and problem-ridden countries followed hot on the heels of rich G-8 leaders to Okinawa, determined to be heard. Clinton, however, again disappointed the South, when he cut his trip to Japan short in order to return to the Middle East peace talks at Camp David.
Democracy has replaced dictatorship, but life for most Africans has become far more perilous. Presidents Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria flew to Okinawa to plead with G-8 leaders to uphold their promises of debt relief. Bouteflika, representing the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Mbeki representing the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), and Obasanjo, on behalf of the Group of 77 (a grouping of Third World nations) were in Okinawa to choose their ground and fight on it. The African leaders were joined by Thailand's premier, Chuan Leekpai, who was representing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Leaders of rich nations are not being particularly obstructive, but it is obvious that they are dragging their heels on the question of writing off debts. African leaders made it abundantly clear that they are not overwhelmed by eye-catching initiatives calculated to appease them. "It is no longer a question of what we should do," Obasanjo told reporters at a press conference sponsored by the international debt relief campaign Jubilee 2000. "We all know what we should do. The question is, do we have the political will?"
Obasanjo knows whereof he speaks. Presiding over Nigeria's doddering federation of 36 states on the brink, he is battling crippling challenges. Less than 57 per cent of the Nigerian population has access to potable water and only 63 per cent enjoy access to sanitation facilities. This week student protests and massive strikes by public sector workers disrupted life in the southwestern city of Akure and the cultural and religious centre of Sokoto, Nigeria's most northwestern state. Teachers joined hands with students and went on the rampage destroying public and private property and looting shops. The violence led to the death of scores of protesters and innocent bystanders.
The situation is even more dire in Ethiopia, where only 24 per cent of Ethiopians have access to clean water, and a mere 15 per cent have access to sanitation facilities. Two million children die annually from diarrhoeal diseases, the result of inadequate sanitation and a lack of potable water. South Africa, meanwhile, is squarely facing the gravest catastrophe to hit the African continent since slavery and colonialism -- the AIDS pandemic. A quarter of the women aged between 15 and 25 in South Africa are HIV-positive. Zambia, another southern African country ravaged by AIDS, pays more for the servicing of its $6.5 billion external debt than it does on healthcare and education combined.
Debt-servicing forces poor countries to cut back spending on the sorely-needed healthcare and education sectors. But this grim picture is not confined to Africa. Pakistan, which has an outstanding external debt of $42 billion, requires $5 billion annually just to service its foreign debt. The irony is that the G-8 leaders acknowledge this problem -- they simply are not prepared to do anything about it.
"Where there is agreement in principle that debt relief is essential -- and when delays have a profoundly negative impact on the lives of poor people -- clearly more must be done," said the mild-mannered United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Others put it more bluntly: "In violating our children's rights by denying them the essentials they need and deserve, we harm them and ourselves; permitting and encouraging the seeds of poverty, alienation and despair to take root," wrote Carol Bellamy, executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"Effective early child care for children lies at the very heart of human development. For those most persuaded by economic arguments, investments in services and support for children in the early years have an estimated return as high as 7 to 1. With 130 million infants born each year, this represents an enormous opportunity for social development that few leaders would want to ignore, and an investment that few can afford to miss," argued Bellamy.
Juan Somav’a, director-general of the International Labour Organisation, concurred. "Education is every child's right: nothing can compare or compete with it, and when it is of good quality and relevant to children's lives, it truly can fight poverty," Somav’a also wrote in the recently-released Progress 2000 of Nations published by UNICEF. Alas, while G-8 leaders might nod in agreement, none of them were prepared to make the first move.
Which doesn't mean that they weren't happy to talk about "bridging the digital divide" among the world's nations -- and the divide is wide indeed. Over 80 per cent of the world's population do not have a phone. In the entire continent of Africa, there are a mere 14 million phone lines -- fewer than in either Manhattan or Tokyo. Wealthy nations comprise some 16 per cent of the world's population, but command 90 per cent of Internet host computers. Of all the Internet users worldwide, 60 per cent reside in North America, where a mere five per cent of the world's population reside.
Japan, which lags behind some of its better "wired" neighbours, like Singapore and Hong Kong, nevertheless announced a $15 billion aid package to assist poorer countries in developing and expanding their telecommunications and Internet infrastructure. Japan's government is supposed to work with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme to train some 10,000 IT engineers from poor countries. But modern man does not live by IT alone -- hundreds of millions of people in poor countries live without electricity or potable water. India has an $8.6 billion IT industry, while 500,000 Indian villages do not even have a single phone. The Japanese-proposed Digital Opportunity Taskforce, or the so-called dot force, is an exciting aside, but let us not lose sight of the basics.
Silly and self-congratulatory ideas were flying about in Okinawa. Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a G-8 leaders e-mail network. Far less well-informed leaders, like Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, put forward far more useful plans. True, for a self-confessed IT novice like Mori, to come up with such a proposal is a trifle laughable. Still, with little technical know-how and a dire shortage in information technology (IT), Africa desperately needs Japan's generous offer. And it must be said that in absolute terms, Japan tops the list of donor nations, dishing out $10.6 billion in development assistance. The US, with a far larger economy, trails behind as a poor second at $8.8 billion, and France in third place ($5.7 billion). But, an eye-opening bit of statistical information reveals how sincere the G-8 leaders really are -- the G-7 nations (the G-8 minus Russia) donated an average of 0.20 per cent of their GNP in development assistance, less than half the average donated by non-G-7 countries (0.45 per cent).
