ENCOURAGE FAIR TRADE FOR AFRICA NOT LIVE OR DEAD AID
By Farouk Martins Aresa
Indira Gandhi of India said it best during her lifetime that what poor countries needed more than anything else was the opportunity to trade their goods and services fairly in the rich countries. It included negotiating the price of these goods and services by both sellers and buyers, not price dictation by one side to the other. China and India were able to institute internal discipline by (Ujamaa) to end famine and reduce poverty considerably, facilitated by fair world trade.
India was restricted to textile at one point and China got free access today. Nobody can argue that goods coming from these and other developing countries were superior or more durable than goods that could have come from Africa. Actually, factories are set up in these developing countries with American or European standards in mind. So that is how they become traders in the rich countries’ club. Africa and Caribbean countries are yet to get that break unhindered.
There was this conversation between two Presidents: Ronald Regan of USA and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. Regan quoted the - teach a man how to fish, he will fish forever, give him fish, and he will depend on you forever. Though a notable saying, Nyerere replied that Africa do not want or expect handout but the ability to survive without aid. He told Regan that Africans not only work hard, they had been working harder every time they buy the same tractor. If one ton of cocoa bought a tractor this year and two tons of cocoa bought the same tractor three years later, cocoa farmer had to work twice as hard for the same tractor. This story had been repeated by this writer many times.
That was why Mwalimu Nyerere decided on Ujamaa self help in Tanzania. He did not want anything outside of Africa but wanted to develop from within. That could not be; because other Africans would follow. It would dry up the market and cheap source of raw materials. So it was sabotaged. Nkrumah tried the same principle in Ghana trying to dictate the price of cocoa by uniting cocoa sellers to form a cartel. South American countries betrayed him and sold out.
It is interesting that both China and India are also nuclear powers. Pakistan, also a nuclear power is now accepted into world trade. There is a developing negotiation between North Korea and the developed countries about giving up nuclear power in return for access to world trade even when they do not produce much in that Country. In short all the nuclear capable members as Canada, Israel and tiny European countries are members of the rich countries club.
What many folks do not realize is that most of the so called aid is spent in the donor countries to buy goods and services that may be found cheaper elsewhere especially in those developing countries. Doctors, nurses, social workers, engineers, accountants, lawyers and administrators are jobless in these countries but majority of these professionals are not given opportunities nor are the African graduates in donor countries that are most adaptable to the environment. Most recruits are citizens of donor countries. Africans must invest money kept outside, in jobs.
Goods like rice, beans, milk, frozen meat, fish and medications can be cultivated and produced cheaper in African countries creating factories and farms for people longer than aid. No, they have to be imported from donor countries on the terms and conditions of agreement in the so called aid agreement. There is no doubt that this increases production in donor countries and create jobs, but that fact must be propagated to let people understand the value of their aid rather than get people complaining about their hard earned tax feeding Africans.
In spite of the amount of aid poured into reconstruction of infrastructure in Europe after World War, trade and exchange of goods and service was what lifted Europe. African soldiers shed their blood in that War without getting promised economic independence in return. Aid followed by trade was also used in the case of Japan after the War. With about fifty percent decline in world trade in this recession, who is going to open its market to Africa?
At the same time, there are new non-profit organizations that are moving towards this trend. Some of the old organizations are also changing but it is going to take a while to reeducate both donors and receivers on the new ways of trading instead of Dead or Live Aid. Many donors will not be happy to learn that their grains and medications are sold to the highest bidders in the open markets of the developing world, or that empty capsules are exported. Countries like China, India and Pakistan have established their own factories to manufacture medications much cheaper than those imported under negotiated prices by international organizations.
The latest suicide wave of peasant farmers in India is caused by the seeds sold by multinational companies. These are genetically modified seed that can not reproduce their own seeds for future farming seasons. The farmers have to go back to these multinational companies to buy more and more. They are left at the mercy of loans they get in collateral with their farms. When they can not pay back the loans, they loose their farms to the banks. It goes back to what Mwalimu Nyerere had told President Regan that the more they work, the more they owe.
There is a book by Dambisa Moyo, an African lady that has generated some controversies because her publishers gave it the needed push titled Dead Aid. After listening to the author on TV, without reading the book, there is nothing really controversial about her point since her research repeated what Indira Gandhi had said and what was obvious before Indira herself, to many scholars. The only missing item from the author’s point in the TV interview was trade. Aid does not last, trade does.
The problem with Live or Dead Aid: it disempowered the receiver while elevating the giver into some form of white knight. The giver is blessed for his kindness but as it becomes unsustainable the giver becomes disillusioned. Indeed, it may lead to perpetual poverty because the receiver may become dependent expecting it to continue. There is nothing wrong with saving lives by the generosity of the world international donors but most of that generous effort must be devoted to the exchange of goods and services.
