Date Published: 07/23/09
Africa, G8 and the ‘Compassion Industry’ in the West
By Jideofor Adibe (pcjadibe@yahoo.com)
Leaders of the G8, the group of eight most industrialised countries of the world, at the end of their three-day summit in L’Aquila, Italy, on July 10, 2009, pledged $20 billion in farm aid, over three years, to developing countries facing food crisis. At a news conference after the summit, US president, Barrack Obama, reportedly said the purpose of aid should be "to create the conditions where it's no longer needed - to help people become self-sufficient...” It was thought to be a dig on sub-Saharan Africa.
No one will quarrel with Obama’s position on aid, for that should ideally be the aim of any form of help. That aid should be tied is an old issue in aid discourse. For instance at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005, the world leaders pledged to double aid to Africa, from 25 billion dollars to 50 billion dollars on the explicit condition that African leaders should sign up to a series of specific measures of ‘good behaviour’. Again in 2001, the G8 invited a delegation of four African Heads of States to present details of a New African Initiative (NAI) at its summit in Genoa, Italy, on July 20-21, 2001. NAI was subsequently renamed New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and was promoted as a ‘partnership’ between African leaders and world leaders, in which African leaders undertook to adhere to specific measures of ‘good behaviour’ (which they had apparently formulated themselves), while the rich countries would provide funds to help with development projects and good governance.
Tying aid to specific conditions reached its crescendo in the 1980s, said to be Africa’s lost decade. The decade marked the popularisation of the vocabulary of ‘conditionalities’ in Africa, when adherence to the IMF/World Bank-supported structural adjustment programmes was made a condition for accessing international finance capital. During this period, obtaining the IMF’s/World Bank’s seal of approval was a pre-condition for African countries to even have letters of credit opened for them or have their debts rescheduled. Paradoxically Africa ended the 1980s in which it was ‘forced’ to be a ‘good boy’ much poorer than it was before the forced adoption of the programme from the Bretton Woods institutions.
The above means that Obama’s ‘tough love’ on aid is nothing new. What has not been fully explored however is how the specific measures of ‘good behaviour’ foisted on Africa, as conditions for accessing aid, may have been bad advice that contributed to the present state of affairs in the continent. Can African countries for instance legitimately bring a claim that the forced ‘conditionalities’ of the 1980s by the IMF/World Bank, which are believed to have worsened the economic conditions in Africa, constituted bad advice for which they should be entitled to compensation? It is instructive that Alan Greenspan once reportedly attributed part of the reasons for his success as Federal Reserve chairman to his doing the opposite of whatever advice the two Bretton Woods institutions proffered to him
Which brings us to an important question: If ‘aid’ has apparently failed to help lift Africa from its obviously challenging conditions, why has it continued to be a permanent offer in many of the G8 summits?
There are suspicions in some quarters that the G8’s aid discourse, by constantly using innuendoes to remind everyone of the negatives in Africa, only reinforces the stereotypes about the continent, simultaneously undermining potential private capital interest in the continent and reinforcing racism against Africans in the West as they are portrayed in bad light by association. It is also thought that the West uses these narratives as instruments of social control by subtly hinting to the struggling segments of its population that they only have to look at Africa to know how lucky they are. While the targeted aid efforts of some charities and individuals like Bill and Belinda Gates have really made a difference in Africa, some in the ‘compassion industry’ are simply cowboys. Some fading celebrities in the West for instance too often exploit the situation to reinvent their career. There are also charities with vested interest in the perpetuation of a sorry image of Africa – since to change the narrative would put some of them out of job.
One charity for instance still uses the skeletal image of a malnourished African child (probably taken from the time of the famine in Ethiopia some 25 years ago!) on its website to solicit for donations. Another, ‘ LearnAsOne’, claimed on its website (of course with a photograph of a malnourished child of about eight years old) that children in Zimbabwe walked 14 kilometres everyday to school! The charity further claimed: “At Simakakta in Southern Zambia over 200 children go to school in a borrowed, old farmhouse, which the owner wants back. They badly need a proper school. Follow regular updates on Twitter and our blog, so you can learn about the problems they face and how a donation will be spent.”
While no one will deny that poor governance, poverty, corruption and dictatorship are pervasive in Africa, one wonders why the G8 leaders have not deemed it necessary to also focus on some of the ways in which they may have unwittingly helped to compound the problems in the continent. What role for instance has the Western countries played in the proliferation of light weapons which has fuelled internal conflicts and civil wars in Africa?
Often forgotten in the aid discourse is that Africa is actually its own largest donor and aid giver. In 2000-2003 for instance, remittances from Africans working abroad averaged about $17 billion a year, overtaking foreign direct investment flows which totalled $15 billion in the same period. By 2007, remittances were estimated to have reached between $20bn and $40bn a year (depending on whose figures you believe) compared to the 50 billion dollars pledged over several years by the G8 in 2005, and the 20 billion dollars they pledged over three years in July 2009. When internal remittances and the number of people paying school fees for relatives are taken into consideration, it becomes obvious that Africa’s self-help efforts have been grossly under-reported.
As Africans, we will reject any prod to forget or deny that some people helped to push us down – and in many ways still want us to remain down. Similarly, historiography will be turned into a convenient escapism if we also fail to realise that the ultimate responsibility to get up is ours. Herein lies the tension in Obama’s speech in Ghana where he was thought to have patronised and lectured Africans by explicitly telling them not to blame colonialism for their present circumstances.
Jideofor Adibe is editor of the multidisciplinary journal, African Renaissance and publisher of the London-based Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd (www.adonis-abbey.com).
