This week, The African Executive Magazine spoke out on the clamour for the formation of a United States of Africa proclaiming, "we do not need a United States of
Africa."
According to the magazine, the African Union (AU)
summit issued a road-map to a federation of African States (Accra
Declaration) without mentioning a single idea on political or economic
freedom for African citizens.
Continental union was the founding
principle of the original Organisation of African Unity but it has never
stood a realistic chance. African leaders refuse to face up to their own or their
neighbours' failures, whilst preventing ordinary Africans from using
their ingenuity to build their own future.
The AU summit was
full of lofty ideals of unity, not least from Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi, yet there was nary a word on the real disasters of Zimbabwe,
Darfur, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Other continent-wide failures such
as corruption and election-rigging did not even feature on the
agenda--although these remain the real unifying features of Africa.
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future president of the USA?
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Worst of all, there was not a whisper about property rights, the rule of law and
economic freedoms that would allow Africans to emulate the growth of
Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea;countries that were just as
poor as we were at independence in the 1960s. Even the growth records
of South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana are ignored as being somehow
exceptional instead of being acknowledged as the result of sound
economic policies.
Positions at the AU are divided between the
so-called "gradualists," who believe that individual countries should
first strive to build working economies and integrate them through
regional blocs, and the "radicals," who believe a supra-national
authority would lead to unity and thus to economic prosperity.
Neither side, however, is talking
about the real issue of economics-and freedom for Africans to raise
themselves out of poverty, unshackled from serfdom to the State.
The
life-changing power of trade has been demonstrated historically and not
just in the West. At the height of their glory, many pre-colonial
African states and empires found trade to be a better way to prosperity
than military conquests. Gold was shipped from Wangara in the Upper
Niger across the Sahara desert to Taghaza, in Western Sahara, in
exchange for salt, and to Egypt for ceramics, silks and other Asian and
European goods. The old Ghana Empire controlled and propsered off much of the
trans-Saharan trade in copper and ivory. At Great Zimbabwe, gold was
traded for Chinese pottery and glass. From Nigeria, leather and iron
goods were traded throughout West Africa.
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the devil is in the detail
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Mysteriously today, the descendants of those ancient traders across Africa have lost
their acumen and love for business. Instead, conspiracy theories abound, mere extenuations for
the continet's economic backwardness. Regardless, the blame game ignores the devil within:
the internal and regional barriers that hobble trade, making tariffs
within Africa far higher than any erected by outside blocs.
Some politicians, bureaucrats and many aid activists argue that these
tariffs make essential contributions to government revenue--meaning
that government offices are more important than the well-being of citizens or the wider economy.
Opponents
of US Free Trade Agreements (FTA) or European Union Economic
Partnership Agreements (EPA) say these would allow cheap imports and
send the already tottering African economies into collapse. They have
no thought for the consumers who would benefit from cheap imports or
the producers who could export regionally and internationally - absent the hindrances of crippling tarrifs. They
think only of maintaining government power and protecting industries and sustaining rent-seekers.
The
real consequence of these anti-development policies is that they keep the
African farmer at subsistence level and our economies agrarian.
Tragically, these very barriers and that retardation excuse African leaders
from building the necessary infrastructure needed to open up the
continent to free trade.
Tariffs in the global north have fallen
by 84% in the last two decades to about 3.9%--yet tariff barriers in
Africa have only declined by 20% to a still massive average of 17.7%. Even worse, other, non-tariff, protectionism in the poorest African
countries is four times greater than in rich countries.
So the elephant in the room at these continental get-togethers is not remote ideals of regional or continental unity that
might, by some undefined and unprecedented magic, lift Africans out of
poverty. The millstone precluding positive economic change is the lack of practical and everyday economic
freedom that would allow Africans to lift themselves out of poverty,
with well-defined and historically-proven policies.
The beauty
of sound economic policies is that they take effect within very few
years, as in South Africa and Botswana, unlike fancy political notions,
such as Gaddafi's oft-delayed union with Egypt. But leaders who can
talk of unity while ignoring the carnage in Darfur and the tyranny in
Zimbabwe can very easily ignore regional economic barriers.
Our
future will not be built by ideology and fine concepts: these are what
have kept Africans back when hundreds of millions in Asia were building
a better life. Our growth and prosperity depends on proven common sense
and freeing the economic shackles that still enslave us.
The writer contributes to the BusinessInFocus blog.
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Like the author I believe that Union is desirable and certainly inevitable. The continued global struggle to identify fresh supplies to drive increasingly resource hungry economies means that all countries must form trading blocks to protect their interests.
What Africa should first do is take urgent measures to set up the physical and political infrastructure that would harmonise customs procedures, set trading standards and allow the free movement of goods and people across the continent. This must happen now.
The article refers to the 'gradualist' and 'radical' camps. It is my opinion that the talks on ferderation and regionalism are quite often and very deliberately muddied by a sinister third camp....the anti-federalists. There is a definite school of thought that portrays federalism in all it's forms as a product from the workshop of the devil. Consider how the word Majimbo is used with such venom! A non-swahili speaker would think it was a swear word.
Anti-federation forces...afro-sceptics, if you will, have the capacity to delay, postpone or prevent any meaningful dialogue between gradualists and radicals as to the way forward. Some of these were only recently boasting of how they swilled champagne when the EAC was Killed.
As long as such idealogy holds sway all political unions in Africa will be nothing but short-lived and messy affairs. Libya and Egypt tried it and I guess your readers may also have heard of Senegambia