A question about development in poorer nations

A correspondent enquired, "When developing a poor nation, such as the ones on the coast of West Africa, is it better to use a capitalist approach or a communist approach?"

Reply:
 There is no present alternative to capitalist development in the short term.

 The only approach which can be used to develop nations requires capital.

 Despite answers to the contrary communism has not existed anywhere in the world, they were all examples of state developed capitalism, developing and retaining waged slavery, state ownership instead of, or in addition to, private ownership of the means of production and distribution in the absence of a large domestic capitalist class.


 This has allowed some nations with huge populations to develop capitalism (with Chinese characteristics) in some cases, utilising the availability of their populous numbers to move into production gaps in world markets with less initial cost.


 The change from state capitalism to a mixed state and private system may have been started by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, but the idea of China being part of the global economy did not originate with Deng. As Mao Zedong is reported to have told a US diplomat in 1945: ‘China needs to build up light industries to supply her own market and raise the living standards of her own people. Eventually she can supply these goods to other countries in the Far East. To help pay for this foreign trade and investment, she has raw materials and agricultural products. America is not only the most suitable country to assist this economic development of China: she is also the only country fully able to participate. ‘


 Nation states are feature also of capitalist social and political development, their governments, the executive arm of the domestic capitalist class, despite the winning of the franchise, capitalism's democratic pretensions stop at representative democracy, which favours the rule of the dominant class in society over the electorate, with the electorates agreement to be governed over by different flavours of the same capitalist sauce which ensures their subjugation to the necessity, for the immense majority to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary in order to access some basic necessities.

 This is the same the world over in developed nations and developing ones are playing capitalist catch up, but the economic dice are loaded against developing nations.

 It is impossible and always has been so, to have some communist or socialist oasis, in a sea of capitalism.


 Capitalism is global also, in its reach and scope. It requires raw materials and markets and developed capitalist nations combine in their collective interests, with dominant economic players exerting the greatest influence.

 They are all in competition with each other and this rivalry leads to war.
Socialism /communism however is an advanced post-capitalist society still to come into existence but not through underdeveloped nations opting for a state capitalist road as this will only be in the interests of elites and pseuds masquerading or believing themselves, as egalitarians.

 Real communism/socialism is,
· A world without buying and selling.
· A world without classes.
· A world without borders.
· A world without money.
· A world where ‘real’ democracy and mutual cooperation can flourish and grow.

 It’s not just socialists that are repulsed by the hypocrisy, lies and self-seeking of capitalism’s elite. Poverty, hunger, wars and environmental destruction are intrinsic to the market system. As is the extreme wealth of the few at the expense of the many. Reforms, charity, and appeals to the gods have not, and cannot change its fundamental base. Sticking plasters don’t work. Only major surgery will.

 The World Socialist Movement exists to complete one task. And that is to abolish capitalism through democratic means.

 Human beings are unique. We can imagine something and make it a reality.

 Socialism proposes a world for all and not just for the few. Where the present, and future generations, can live in peaceful, mutual cooperation. But, we need your help to achieve it.

http://www.worldsocialism.org/

Development and Global Land Rush in a Capitalist World

In this column, Karine Jacquemart, Forest Project Leader for Africa at Greenpeace International, and Anuradha Mittal Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, argue that the land rush unleashed around the world to own and exploit Earth’s natural bounty is not only fierce and unfair, but increasingly fatal, with lands, homes and forests bulldozed and cleared for foreign investors and livelihoods shattered.PARIS/OAKLAND, California, May 11 2015 (IPS) - In our work at Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute around access and control over natural resources, we face constant accusations of being anti-development or “Northern NGOs who care more for the trees”, despite working with communities around the world, from Cameroon, to China, to the Czech Republic.


This name calling, aimed at discrediting struggles for land, water, and other natural resources in the Third World countries, hides an ugly truth.  The land rush unleashed around the world to own and exploit Earth’s natural bounty is not only fierce and unfair, but increasingly fatal.
Recent reports, including a Global Witness report titled ‘How many more?’ released in April 2015, document the increase in the assassinations of land and environmental activists globally – a shocking average of over two a week in 2014.
As individuals and groups in the frontline of struggles face intimidation, arrests, disappearances, and even death, it is an ethical imperative to support the struggles of the grassroots land defenders against corporations and governments. This is what unites organisations like Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute.
Over the last decade, an estimated 200 million hectares – an area five times bigger than California – has been leased or purchased throughout the world, through completely opaque deals in most cases.
Natural resources in Africa are some of the most sought after, hence the fact that Africa experiences more than 70 percent of the reported land deals.

Multinational companies with assistance from powerful partners – the World Bank Group and G8 “donor” countries – are moving in, chanting their “development” formula: facilitate foreign investment through large-scale land acquisitions and mega-projects to ensure economic growth which will trickle down to translate into development for all.
Our work reveals a very different and worrying reality on the ground. Local communities and indigenous peoples report lack of consultation; their lands, homes and forests bulldozed and cleared for foreign investors; their livelihoods shattered.
As one villager in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said, “I want to remain a farmer on my land, not a daily worker depending on a foreign company”, or in
the words of a Bodi chief in Ethiopia, “I don’t want to leave my land. If they try and force us, there will be war. So I will be here in my village either alive on the land or dead below it.”
They, and countless more, are victims of the theft of natural resources, made invisible and voiceless by those who define what development looks like.

As if destruction of lives and livelihoods were not enough, those who resist are harassed, even face violence, by governments and private companies.
A planned palm oil plantation by the U.S.-based Herakles Farms in Cameroon threatens to evict thousands of people off their land and destroy part of the world’s second largest rain forest.
The company’s former CEO, responding to criticism of the project, said in an open letter: “My goal is to present HF for what it is – a modestly-sized commercial  oil  palm  project  designed  to  provide employment and  social  development and improve  the  level  of  food  security, while incorporating industry best practices.”
What he failed to mention is how a Cameroonian activist, Nasako Besingi, who heads a local NGO, The Struggle to Economize the Future Environment (SEFE), learnt first-hand the consequences of opposing the project. Arrested in 2012 for planning a peaceful demonstration in Mundemba, Nasako and two of his colleagues languished in a jail for several days.
Soon after his release, while touring the area with a French television crew, he was ambushed and assaulted by men he recognised as employees of Herakles Farms. Instead of protection from this violence, Nasako and SEFE face legal battles, including one of the favorite corporate tactics – a defamation lawsuit, intended to intimidate him and the others who oppose.

Privatisation of land and theft of natural resources will be irreversible and will put people, forest, ecosystems and the climate at risk, if it goes unchecked. The time is now to choose a development path that prioritises people and the planet over profits for the rich.

from here

Ethiopia's "Authoritarian Developmentalism"

Ethiopia is both a darling of the international development community but organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) describe it as “one of the most repressive media environments in the world”.  Ethiopia is seen as a reliable police officer in the region, hosting a US military base and sending troops to fight the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab in neighbouring Somalia. Of 547 MPs, only one belongs to an opposition party. Activists and journalists describe an Orwellian surveillance state, breathtaking in scale and scope, in which phone conversations are recorded and emails monitored by thousands of bureaucrats reminiscent of the Stasi in East Berlin. The few who dare to take to the streets in protest are crushed with deadly force. Amnesty International has called it an “onslaught on dissent” in the runup to elections next year. An investigation by HRW noted the government had complete control over the telecoms system and virtually unlimited access to the call records of all phone users. Journalists have described telephone conversations they had years ago being played back to them during interrogations.

The country has enjoyed close to double-digit growth for a decade. One study found it was creating millionaires faster than anywhere else on the continent. The architect of this model of development – or “authoritarian developmentalism” – in east Africa was the late prime minister Meles Zenawi. Among the winners of the Meles legacy is Tesfakiros, the head of the Muller Real Estate company with a business empire that includes logistics, transport, food manufacturing and the wine venture with Geldof, which last year made a profit of $5m (£3m). “We’re trying to put Ethiopia as a wine-producing country like California or South Africa,” he said. Ethiopia imports about 10m litres of wine a year to serve a growing ‘middle’ class. Tesfakiros reflected. “There has been amazing growth in the last 15 years. People have got the work ethic and are investing. The real estates market is booming and will boom for a time.”

While tycoons such as Tesfakiros are showered in money from the property boom, Bekele Nega, general secretary of the  Oromo Federalist Congress, which has more than 10,000 members, has a different perspective. “This we don’t consider ‘development’,” he said. “This we consider the uprooting of the indigenous people, who will lose their culture and identity. The government say they are expanding Addis Ababa but the reality is they are getting rid of the people who don’t support the EPRDF [the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front].”

The frenetic economic expansion has uprooted thousands of farmers while, critics say, those who speak out against it are rounded up and jailed. The Congress, representing Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group, is resisting the government’s “masterplan” for expanding Addis Ababa, claiming it has forced 150,000 Oromo farmers off their land without compensation. Witnesses say police killed at least 17 protesters, including children and students, during demonstrations this year and hundreds more are being detained without charge.

Bekele Nega challenged the west’s perceptions of positive change in the country. “Foreigners who see these tall buildings will say Ethiopia is developing. The reality is we are not developing. We are not having three meals a day. People like Bob Geldof and others consider they have helped our people and of course they have. But they didn’t come to the kernel of the matter. The EPRDF used the money from that time to build the empire they are in control of. Somebody hijacked the money from that hunger. It’s written in black and white.”

Ethiopia is still one of the biggest recipients of UK development aid, getting about £300m a year. Money also pours in from the US. Nega believes it is misspent: “The west has left us, left the people. The US is aiding dictators and turning a blind eye to us. Why? The same with Britain, which has democratic values. They give the taxpayers money for buying weapons or for the police station to handcuff people.” Donor aid is also helping the government to spy on its citizens and even turn family members against each other, he alleged. “For any five family members, one will be reporting to the police. Your brother or your sister or your mother...”

One senior official said: “The most basic human right is food on the table. If we’re doing that, why would we violate other human rights? This is a safe, secure place and we want to keep it that way. We’ll do anything to keep it that way. We have 90 million people – you try to control them.”

Tesfakiros asks: “What’s democracy? The opposition needs support by the middle class. When we have a middle class, we will have a stronger democracy. Until then, we have a nanny for the democracy. Democracy is a matter of education and civilisation – 85% of our population is farmers; we don’t know how to read and write. When you have a middle class, you push for your rights.”

Nega replies. “The west wants us to be democrats and build a democracy. This question is not comfortable for our leaders. According to them, we need only food. They don’t understand that poor people need democracy. They fact we are poor does not mean we are not human beings. We cannot be uprooted and tormented. As human beings we deserve democracy, human rights, rule of law. ..”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/-sp-ethiopia-30-years-famine-human-rights

One Infamous Landgrabber Under Receivership - Africans Pay The Price

Karuturi Ltd, the Kenyan flower production unit of Karuturi Global, is in financial collapse and been put under receivership. One of the world's most infamous landgrabbers is in its deepest trouble yet.

On 11 February 2014, CfC Stanbic Bank in Nairobi took over the Karuturi farm in Naivasha while management was assigned to The Business Advisory Group Ltd. The new managers will assess the true financial situation of the firm, which has stopped paying its workers, suppliers and utility providers since many months, and settle the company's outstanding debts, which reportedly exceed US$ 5 million. Until now, the flower farm in Naivasha was its cash cow, responsible for three-quarters of the Karuturi empire's annual global earnings.
Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd is one of the largest foreign agribusiness conglomerates in Africa. In 2007, it began expanding its operations to Kenya and Ethiopia to take advantage of generous tax breaks and cheap land, water and labour. It soon became the world's largest cut rose exporter and acquired over 311,000 ha of fertile land in southern Ethiopia for food production.

Now, this leading example of foreign direct investment in African agriculture is on the verge of collapse -- and Africans are paying the price.
Karuturi's overseas business ventures are causing untold suffering. In Kenya, the workers have been living in inhumane conditions without pay, water or electricity since months. In the last six months, their medical services have been shut down and the school for their children has been closed.[1] On top of this, Karuturi owes the Kenyan government millions of US dollars in unpaid taxes that it hid through doctored invoices and transfer pricing.[2]

In Ethiopia, the Anywaa and other communities that were violently displaced from their lands without consultation to make way for Karuturi's farming operations have lost their livelihoods and been living in exile without proper compensation. Karuturi, however, has been unable to cultivate more than a small fraction of those lands and local sources report that the farms have stopped operations. Last month, the Ethiopian government issued a warning to Karuturi to clarify the standing of its agricultural investment project or see its permit withdrawn.
From tax fraud to labour violations, Karuturi must pay for its crimes, immediately. And the international community must stop supporting such egregious corporate malfeasance in the name of "foreign investment", or worse "development".

From here with more information

Ethiopia's Land Grabs - Again and Again and Again

Ethiopia’s remote Gambela region and Lower Omo valley are being rapidly converted to commercial agricultural investment centres. To encourage widespread industrialized agriculture in these areas, the Ethiopian government is depriving small-scale farmers, pastoralists and indigenous people of arable farmland, access to water points, grazing land, fishing and hunting grounds. It has also has been moving people off the land into government villages to allow investors to take over the land. Wealthy nations and multinational corporations are taking over lands that are home to hundreds of thousands of ethnically, linguistically, geographically and culturally distinct pastoralists and indigenous communities.

Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO) recently had an opportunity to interview affected community representatives and leaders who fled these regions because of these government land grabs. A few of these “development refugees” gave in-depth accounts of violent tactics used against them (including rapes, intimidation, murder, harassment) as well as lack of consultation, compensation, legal redress and derogation of national and international laws intended to protect indigenous and pastoralists communities’ rights to own and use resources. These exclusive interviews, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya, offer insights into the human costs of Ethiopia’s development policies.


There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.

Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”

Read more of this article here Or read the full interviews here

This is an ongoing problem not just in Ethiopia but in many different countries around the world. Millions of people are forced or cajoled off their agricultural land in the name of progress and then are left totally disenfranchised, often with no alternative dwelling, no employment or livelihood and little or no compensation. JS

There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.
Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.
Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.
Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.
Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.
Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

There is a deep-rooted understanding among the lowland communities that land belongs to the community rather than to the government. During the interviews, the land-grab affected people dismissed the government justification that all land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, and strongly argued that the land grabbing policy was intended to deprive communities of their land-use rights, destroy traditional farming methods and knowledge, and displace them from their ancestral lands and natural environment.
Land grabs are happening in many parts of Africa, and the topic has received much attention and criticism worldwide. In Ethiopia, land grabbing undermines affected communities’ active participation in decisions about their lives, denies them access to key information about land deals, and abrogates their constitutional rights to free prior, informed consent, compensation, and legal redress. Land grab projects benefit newcomers migrating into the land grabs target areas. According to one refugee from the lower Omo valley; “Since land grabs started, no single local person has been employed even at security guard level. But thousands of migrants from other parts of the country have moved in and are benefiting from the project. The project forces local communities into exile where they will remain as refugees.”
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

Ethiopia’s remote Gambela region and Lower Omo valley are being rapidly converted to commercial agricultural investment centres. To encourage widespread industrialized agriculture in these areas, the Ethiopian government is depriving small-scale farmers, pastoralists and indigenous people of arable farmland, access to water points, grazing land, fishing and hunting grounds. It has also has been moving people off the land into government villages to allow investors to take over the land. Wealthy nations and multinational corporations are taking over lands that are home to hundreds of thousands of ethnically, linguistically, geographically and culturally distinct pastoralists and indigenous communities. Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO) recently had an opportunity to interview affected community representatives and leaders who fled these regions because of these government land grabs. A few of these “development refugees” gave in-depth accounts of violent tactics used against them (including rapes, intimidation, murder, harassment) as well as lack of consultation, compensation, legal redress and derogation of national and international laws intended to protect indigenous and pastoralists communities’ rights to own and use resources. These exclusive interviews, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya, offer insights into the human costs of Ethiopia’s development policies.
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

Ethiopia’s remote Gambela region and Lower Omo valley are being rapidly converted to commercial agricultural investment centres. To encourage widespread industrialized agriculture in these areas, the Ethiopian government is depriving small-scale farmers, pastoralists and indigenous people of arable farmland, access to water points, grazing land, fishing and hunting grounds. It has also has been moving people off the land into government villages to allow investors to take over the land. Wealthy nations and multinational corporations are taking over lands that are home to hundreds of thousands of ethnically, linguistically, geographically and culturally distinct pastoralists and indigenous communities. Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO) recently had an opportunity to interview affected community representatives and leaders who fled these regions because of these government land grabs. A few of these “development refugees” gave in-depth accounts of violent tactics used against them (including rapes, intimidation, murder, harassment) as well as lack of consultation, compensation, legal redress and derogation of national and international laws intended to protect indigenous and pastoralists communities’ rights to own and use resources. These exclusive interviews, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya, offer insights into the human costs of Ethiopia’s development policies.
- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22690#sthash.PXNGztuY.dpuf

Armies are no solution

Over the past year, Africa has seen the decomposition of states from coast to coast. A belt of war, coups and large-scale spontaneous demonstrations has emerged across the Sahel, from Guinea-Bissau to Somalia. These political processes have a variety of localised causes, yet they have some commonalities. All of them emerge in a context of failed agricultural markets and a boom in mineral and oil extraction. Fundamentalist Islam is merely a complicating factor: not a cause.

Frantz Fanon wrote in 1959 that:
"Colonialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of underdevelopment and poverty, or at all events, sinks more deeply into it."

This is the basis of "combined and uneven" development: a state in which most of the continent still finds itself.

Current policies have resulted in growing inequalities and increasing poverty throughout Africa. Elections have therefore only offered the electorate a chance to choose politicians who continue to impose increasing poverty upon them. As a result, in some places, people are actually nostalgic about the years they were living under dictatorships - because they remember them as times when they had more food. Neoliberals like the World Bank had thought movements for democracy would chop away the burdensome state, freeing natural propensities to trade, allowing capitalism to flourish. The reality is that neoliberal policies destroyed existing local markets while leyying highly sinister elements flourished.

African states contain a wide variety of variables. They have diverse geographies, cultural histories and economic foundations. peasant-based economies have integrative tendencies. In contrast extractive industries around valuable commodities have greater tendency toward disintegration. There are few places in Africa where mineral industries have had a positive impact.

One does not need to look far to see that agriculture across the region is in crisis. Famine has already been declared in Somalia. The Sudans are at war, while refugees have fled their herds and any crops they could scrape from the ground after years of drought. UN FAO notes that last year the Horn of Africa experienced a food crisis that left an estimated 13 million people dependent on humanitarian assistance. Currently there are 15 million people facing food insecurity in the countries of the Sahel. These famines are compounded by refugee crises. Altogether some 284,000 Malians have fled Northern Mali, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: 107,000 of them are thought to be displaced within Mali; 177,000 in neighbouring countries. New arrivals have pushed refugee numbers to 56,664 in Burkina Faso, to 61,000 in Mauritania, and to 39,388 in Niger, according to UNHCR. Around 810,000 Senegalese are facing hunger, according to a joint study in February 2012 by the Senegalese government and the World Food Programme (WFP). In the 2011 harvest season, cereal production fell by 36 per cent compared with 2010, and the production of peanuts, Senegal's main cash crop, fell by 59 per cent. One figure shows the latest harvest was 120,000 tons, down from a previous yearly average of 800,000.

Guinea Bissau's coup has disrupted the marketing of cashews - an important plantation crop in that country - but the story not being told is that the indigenous rice economy has already been seriously battered. This is the case with all the rice-growing economies in West Africa, as shown by USDA figures. Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Ghana and Senegal all show declines in production. In the past year, imports have soared to meet local consumption. Mali's importation has risen 50 per cent. The Ivory Coast is importing a massive 80 per cent of their consumption. As Bryceson noted in 2009, sudden market shocks, gradually worsening terms of trade, market disincentives, "continue to undermine personal welfare, leading to social upheavals and political destabilisation". This has led to a process of de-agrarianisation, or more specifically, "de-peasantisation", whereby "peasant households and communities have lost their coherence as social and economic units". These patterns fuel burgeoning global unemployment rates. A recent report of the International Labour Organisation shows that youth are particularly badly hit. Between 2007 and 2010, youth unemployment increased by 5.1 million.

Armies are not signs of hope for those who have recently lost their land in mining concessions and land grabs, because in the experiences of the disposed, militaries have tended to come in to support those who are taking from them.

As much as those of us on the Left would like to believe otherwise,  poverty rarely produces pleasant political responses.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201252981756447470.html

Booming Africa 2

Following on from the earlier blog Booming Africa we read that the Africa Progress Panel found that African countries were growing consistently faster than almost any other region, with booming exports and more foreign investment. Ghana was the fastest growing economy in the world in 2011 and Ethiopia expanded more quickly than China in the five years to 2009.

 But it warned that there was a contrast between a growing yet still relatively small middle class and the Africans left behind. Although seven out of 10 people in the region live in countries that have averaged growth of more than 4% a year for the past decade, Annan's study found that almost half of Africans were still living on incomes below the internationally accepted poverty benchmark of $1.25 a day. The "trickle-down" pattern of economic growth was leaving too many people in destitution.

 "The deep, persistent and enduring inequalities in evidence across Africa have consequences," the report said. "They weaken the bonds of trust and solidarity that hold societies together. Over the long run, they will undermine economic growth, productivity and the development of markets."

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan added: "It cannot be said often enough, that overall progress remains too slow and too uneven; that too many Africans remain caught in downward spirals of poverty, insecurity and marginalisation; that too few people benefit from the continent's growth trend and rising geo-strategic importance; that too much of Africa's enormous resource wealth remains in the hands of narrow elites and, increasingly, foreign investors without being turned into tangible benefits for its people."

A booming time for some

As rich countries face a slowdown, sub-Saharan African economies are expected to post nearly 6 percent average growth in 2012, according to the IMF. A study by the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, has pointed to the potential of the continent's more than 1 billion people, millions of whom have moved out of subsistence agriculture and into urban jobs over the past decade. Such promise has helped fuel foreign investment. Kenya alone has had a capital influx of billions of dollars in recent years: the latest official figures show around $800 million came in in 2008. Western investors have become accustomed to Africa as a boom story in recent years. As demand from places such as China and Brazil pushed up commodity prices, investment poured in. Since the financial crisis, investors have ventured into Africa in search of higher returns. Analysts fret about whether Kenya's exporting capacity can keep pace with its imports. "In most frontier markets ... we haven't seen sufficient evidence of this. Exports go up, but not nearly by enough, and imports - especially of consumer goods - go up even more." Razia Khan, head of Africa research at Standard Chartered in London, says the problem is an Africa-wide one. "More rapid growth was accompanied almost everywhere by a surge in imports, especially capital goods imports related to infrastructure development."

The consumption boom has been fueled by fast-growing credit. In Kenya, firms have been hiring and property prices have risen exponentially, creating a feel-good factor for home owners, especially in towns and cities. That, in turn, has fed the appetite for consumer goods. In Kenya and elsewhere that has sucked in imports - cars, shoes, clothes, wines and whiskies - and swelled the current account deficit. Inflation in Kenya is now nearing 20 percent. As always, high inflation hurts the poorest most.

"Minimum wage-earners in urban centers in East Africa are encountering a simply unprecedented squeeze," said Aly Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based independent trader and analyst. "It creates a sort of reverse Robin Hood effect where the poor carry the main burden."

Food prices - especially meat - have risen sharply. In a rain-soaked field outside the Kenyan capital, it's easy to see why. Farmer Joseph Kiarie puts the fertilizer on his crop of cabbages by hand from a plastic bucket, and says rising costs have cut his earnings by two thirds in the past year. "This has been a terrible year," he said.

Nairobi's biggest slum, Kibera is a vast shanty town that lacks even basic services such as sanitation. Many Kibera residents - there are hundreds of thousands of them - are angry that while prices of food have risen, wages have not. Many say their families now have to forego meals.
A year ago, 300 shillings ($3.48) bought breakfast, lunch and supper, "but now that is nothing," said Jane Mwalugha, a married mother of five children aged between three and 15, in her one-roomed house. "We have had to cut out lunch this year so we just take supper. Bread is now a luxury so we have cut it out...The government should construct supermarkets for the rich and let us have our own because they have decided in life that there are two tribes, the poor and the rich. They should let us have poor people's shops," Mwalugha said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-africa-spenders-inflation-idUSTRE80N0CE20120125

There are no hungry countries

Out of the 40 countries in the world facing severe food shortages to the extent of requiring emergence food intervention, 26 of them are in Africa, while the rest are in Asia and Central America.

In my view, and if I can say it aloud, there are in fact no “hungry countries” in the world; there are simply countries with greater or less number of people living in them who cannot grow enough, or buy enough food to feed themselves and their families. In this respect, there is no essential difference between a Third World nation and the United States, where the Bureau of Census reported some few years ago that, “eight to ten million Americans are sick or starving because they do not have enough to spend on food”.

Westerners tend to ascribe this situation, to galloping population, climatic acts of God such as drought, or to laziness and lack of initiative on the part of the poor themselves. Such explanations are not only insulting, they are mythical; population pressures can aggravate hunger, but they do not “cause” it.

Many development “experts” tend to see the elimination of hunger as a question of technology. “Give them enough fertilizers, pesticides and tractors”, they say, “and the problem will be solved”. They seldom recognize that any technological innovation has an impact on the social structure, and that, if specific steps are not taken to prevent it, technology will benefit only cash crop production and the wealthiest farmers. Such questions as, “who can pay for fertilizer, machinery" are not asked. Innovations useful to village communities may even be suppressed. There is no hope for eradicating hunger via technology because it is not a technical problem. It is a question of economic and social justice at every level. Somewhere in the world, 10,000 people die every day because these truths have not been recognized.

Tanzania in particular and Africa in general, is also one of the outstanding victims of another system guaranteed to create and perpetuate hunger: the cash crop. That so many young nations like ours, have not yet rid themselves of colonial agricultural patterns inherited from a world they never made, is one of the great tragedies of our time. The argument for cash crop is, of course, is one of “We need the foreign exchange”. Cash crop producers do not control the prices of their primary products. The point therefore is for dependent countries to attain self-reliance in food before worrying about cash crops. There is no country in the world that could not adequately feed its own people – and then some – if this were a priority policy objective. All the rich nations (the G.8) have made a concerted, long-term effort to induce local planners to “choose” models of development which are geared first and foremost, to the advantage of the rich countries themselves. All the aid to their former Sub-Sahara colonies has consistently favoured finance for cash-crop schemes over food production for local consumption.

The United States, mainly through its Agency for International Aid (USAID), has made the longest, best financed and consequently most successful effort towards bringing Third World citizens around to “thinking American”. As a USAID official himself once testified to the US Congress some four years ago, “Our basic, broadest goal is a long range political one. It is not development for the sake of sheer development……An important objective is to ensure that foreign private investment, particularly from the United States, is welcomed and well treated. The problem is to evaluate the manner in which the [USAID] programme can make the greatest contribution to the totality of US interests”.

It was the World Bank’s economists who laid stress on the production of the so-called “cash crops” at the expense of food crops; who made it easier to secure credits for the production of tea or cocoa rather than rice or maize.

Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, warned in 1963, “In a country such as this (Tanganyika), where generally speaking, the Africans are poor and the foreigners are rich, it is quite possible that within eighty or a hundred years, if poor Africans were allowed to sell their land, all land in Tanganyika would belong to wealthy immigrants, and the local people would be tenants”. The government, having bowed down to foreign pressure on the issue is now all out to legitimize a policy of Individualization, Titling and registration (ITR) of land which will create open land market, to allow alienation of land to the investors without community intervention.

Extracted from an article by Joseph Mihangwa

Salving ones conscience

Paleontologists hunting fossils of early man in the Rift Valley of southern Ethiopia call the area the cradle of mankind. This year it's bursting with life, especially in the fields where local farmers grow barley, potatoes and teff, a cereal used to make the flat, spongy bread injera. As a warm July rain falls on a patchwork of smallholdings half a day's walk from the nearest road, the women harvest yams, the men plow behind sturdy oxen and fat chickens, goats and cows roam outside mud huts. And yet for all the apparent abundance, this area is so short of food that many are dying from starvation.
It is reported that in the six weeks to mid-July, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated 11,800 Ethiopian children for severe acute malnutrition. At a tented hospital in the town of Kuyera, 50 out of 1,000 died, double the rate MSF expects for a full-fledged famine.
"It's very bizarre," says Jean de Cambry, a Belgian MSF veteran of crises from Sudan to Afghanistan. "It's so green. But you have all these people dying of hunger."

Over time, sustained food aid creates dependence on handouts and shifts focus away from improving agricultural practices to increase local food supplies. Ethiopia exemplifies the consequences of giving a starving man a fish instead of teaching him to catch his own. This year the U.S. will give more than $800 million to Ethiopia: $460 million for food, $350 million for HIV/AIDS treatment — and just $7 million for agricultural development. Why bother with development when shortfalls are met by aid?
Ethiopian farmers can't compete with free food, so they stop trying. Over time, there's a loss of key skills, and a country that doesn't have to feed itself soon becomes a country that can't.

Migrating capitalism

The Malaysian textile company Ramatex came to Namibia in 2001. The N$1 billion project (about US$127 million) was the first large-scale industrialization investment in the country. It decided to close down its operations -- a move that will destroy 3,000 jobs. The company had been provided with an incentive package that included subsidized water and electricity and a 99-year lease exemption for the 65-hectare site. The government provided the site with electricity and sewerage infrastructure to the tune of N$100 million (almost US$13 million). It was exempt from corporate tax, import duties on imported inputs, value added tax (currently at 15 percent), and transfer duties. It was permitted to repatriate their capital and profits while enjoying freedom from exchange controls. It could hold foreign currency accounts at local banks.

Ramatex arrived in Namibia to benefit from the United States' Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). AGOA provides preferential access to certain imports, such as clothing and textiles, from developing countries in Africa. Namibia started the Export Processing Zones (EPZ) in 1996 with wide-ranging incentives to create an accommodating and profitable environment for manufacturers exporting to markets outside the Southern African Customs Union. The state-owned Offshore Development Company (ODC) promotes and markets Namibia's EPZ to facilitate export-led industrialization.

Five years ago, the workforce stood at nearly 8,000. In 2005, a subsidiary shop called Rhino garments closed down. Ramatex's cotton spinning and ginning plant closed shortly afterwards and the workforce shrunk to 3,000. The company's products were mainly exported to the USA, but its production and sales volumes were never made public resulting in persistent questions about the company's claim that it was making a loss . Now it is to close down completely with the loss of those remaining jobs . The non-suspecting workers, mostly young women, found the main gate to the textile company, which is situated on the outskirts of Windhoek closed when they reported for duty. Instead of clocking in, the workers were greeted by a heavy presence of security forces, which included members of the Special Field Force, City Police, Namibian Police officials and traffic officials who had cordoned off the area . The Namibian Police feared that the angry workers might vandalise the property and steal some of the materials and sewing machines belonging to the company. The police were also concerned that if they allowed the workers in, it would be very difficult to remove them from the premises afterwards. After long hours of negotiations, the workers were allowed to collect their personal belongings in small groups that the Namibian Police could easily control.
The Namibian Labour Commissioner told workers that he would ensure that Filipino and other Asian workers would also receive just payment and treatment during negotiations. In the past, Asian workers at the company have allegedly been quietly deported when labour issues between them and the company became a problem.

Prime Minister Nahas Angula said Ramatex has acted in bad faith because it had earlier agreed with the Government that it would give one year's notice before closing down but instead only gave a month's notice. "They cannot just wake up in the morning and say they are leaving." he said

According to researcher Herbert Jauch of Namibia's non-governmental Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRi), ordinary workers usually lose out as transnational companies make use of EPZ regimes in countries for a short while, only to quickly disappear again to the next.
''Transnational corporations like Ramatex are highly mobile and exploit the opportunities created by neoliberal globalization,'' Jauch wrote in a recent study called ''The Textile and Clothing Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa.'' ''There is a need to tackle such companies by questioning the neoliberal global order and by creating mechanisms of democratic control that will ensure an end to exploitative practices and the free reign of capital,'' Jauch stated in the publication.

Over and over again , workers learn the hard lesson that businesses exists to accumulate capital and will forever seek fresh pastures and new exploitation .

World Bank Woes

According to Christian Aid the World Bank risks doing more harm than good, if it is allowed to continue attaching harmful economic conditions to its development loans.

At issue is the Bank's practice of requiring countries to modify their economic policies in exchange for loans and debt relief. These changes often benefit European and US investors much more than the people living in developing countries.

The European Network on Debt and Development (a network of 51 non-governmental organisations from 16 European countries ) has found that more than two thirds of International Development Association loans and grants (71%) remain conditional on economic reforms that can adversely affect the poor.

Olivia McDonald, Christian Aid's World Bank expert, said: "European governments should not be taken in by the Bank's assurances that the imposition of harmful economic conditions has stopped. Using the Bank's own figures we've found that the evidence quite clearly states the opposite. And stories from poor communities around the world demonstrate the continued impoverishment that dictating inappropriate economic policies to poor countries causes."

Christian Aid calls on the UK government to withhold funds until the Bank stops demanding that recipient countries implement economic reforms such as privatisation and trade liberalisation.

Mega developments - Little benefit for poor

A 2007 study by the UN Development Programme's International Poverty Centre examined poverty, inequality and growth since Mozambique instituted economic reforms in 1992, at the end of the civil war. It found that Mozambique's indices of rapid economic growth were illusory at best. Although the economy grew by 7.9 percent last year, most of the growth in income and consumption occurred among the population's richest quintile, with less than 10 percent of growth affecting the country's poorest.

Growth in industrial production has been the main driving force behind Mozambique's rapidly growing exports the study's authors observed.Based on a few mega-projects, this growth has, however, created few jobs, while its contribution to public revenue has been marginal when compared to its value of production .
The Mozal aluminium plant is a symbol of Mozambique's red-hot economy, touted as a symbol of the investor-friendly environment that led the Wall Street Journal to declare the country "an African success story". Mozal's exports have increased Mozambique's Gross Domestic Product . by between 3.2 and 5 percent. Its output represents almost half the country's growth in manufacturing. Initial investment in the project amounted to approximately 40 percent of GDP, but only created around 1,500 jobs, of which nearly a third are held by foreigners.The smelters use more electricity than the rest of Mozambique combined, enjoys an extensive list of incentives ranging from discounted electricity to a prolonged tax holiday. Mozal pays a one percent tax on sales . It also has the right to repatriate profits. The result is an isolated economic enclave that uses large quantities of scarce resources without returning revenue or jobs to the economy.

The report pointed out that the southern provinces receiving the greatest percentages of foreign direct investment also saw the largest increases in poverty rates in recent years. Development strategies implemented since the end of the civil war neglected agriculture and fishing, the primary source of livelihood of more than 80 percent of Mozambicans.

Dependence on large projects, coupled with Mozambique's already heavy dependence on foreign aid, means top officials are more concerned with accountability to donors and financial institutions than the people they were elected to serve. The authors concluded that the result was not "pro poor".

"Following in the footsteps of the centralised colonial administration and the subsequent Marxist-Leninist party/state apparatus, the government continues to operate, through mega-projects put together by the top political leadership and respective donors and/or private investors, with very little public consultation or transparency," the study noted.

The Economist reports that the World Bank praised Mozambique for being among the region's top business reformers. Enthusiastic donors poured $1.3 billion into the country in 2005—about a fifth of its GDP . Carlos Castel-Branco, a local economist, says the economy is not really developing. Growth is driven by foreign aid and big capital-intensive foreign investments, which, he argues, create few jobs and contribute little to the public purse.

So far, the country's growing wealth has largely benefited a tiny elite .
“The tentacles of the ruling party are in almost every sector of the economy,” says a local journalist.

Renamo says its supporters in rural areas are being harassed and sometimes beaten up. The pressure on civil servants to join the ruling party is growing. Much of the extra money given to local authorities for economic development is said to end up in the pockets of Frelimo people. Until his death the former president Mr Chissano's son , Nympine , was being investigated in connection with the murder in 2000 of a journalist who had been investigating corruption.

Big Business calling the shots , and the local politicians filling their coffers , while the poor lose out . Same old news

African Statistics

Go to here for 50 Factoids on Africa from the World Bank Development Indicator 2007 Report

NGOs - No Agents of Change

Shamelessly cut and pasted and plagiarised from here and from here

Colonial powers had no desire to finance state welfare programmes for Africans.Government social services for the indigenous population were minimal. Social policy was geared towards ensuring the integrity of the structures of colonial rule. It was designed to secure a sufficient quality of labour to guarantee a reasonably efficient exploitation of the colony. Policy formulation and implementation were usually decentralised, being delegated to the colonial
governor and administration. , colonial powers focused their attention on finding mechanisms for maintaining power through the manipulation and recasting of existing "customary" structures or dominant tribes that would defend or reinforce their own control. With "decentralised despotism" , as it has been described as , "customary" leaders that were compliant to the needs of the invading European State, be it for slavery, for Africa's rich mineral wealth, for agricultural production, or as an outlet for over-production of commodities and which involved the extensive use of Native Authorities to both define and enforce custom, backed up by the armed might of the central state, as the means for controlling, governing and exploiting rural peasantry. Europe, were nurtured and delegated power to maintain order on their behalf .

Social services were not, however, completely absent. In periods of serious outbreaks of epidemics in indigenous settlements, health services were provided principally to stave off the possibility of infections spreading into white society. Limited education also was provided when certain basic skills would be necessary for the administration of the colony or for the particular forms of exploitation. For the most part, the state's function in these sectors was to provide only for a minority. For the majority of the rural population, it was left to a clutch of charities and missionary groups to exchange their spiritual wares for material support in education, health
or other social services. In providing such services, they were also concerned with evangelising amongst the African population, discouraging what they perceived as ignorance, idleness and moral degeneracy, and promoting their own vision of civilisation.

If the welfare of Africans was not a primary concern of colonial administrators and missionaries, their control certainly was. Whites were universally agreed on the necessity for controlling the expectations and behaviour of blacks. African people did not always respond passively to colonial rule. The interwar years saw some of the first serious challenges to white authority in Africa, the emergence of significant, if nascent, nationalist and anti-colonial movements, of organised black labour and indeed of open revolt against the brute injustices of colonialism.

Missionary societies and voluntary organizations were key actors in the ideological war. They provided the administration not only with a cheap form of private welfare,but also with a subtle means of controlling the behaviour of blacks. While colonial philanthropy may have been motivated by religious conviction, status, compassion or guilt, it was also motivated by fear. In Britain and the colonies alike, politicians frequently alluded to the threat of revolution and actively encouraged greater interest in works of benevolence as a solution to social unrest. In short, charity was not only designed to help the poor, it also served to protect the rich.
Charitable organisations actively helped to suppress anti-colonial struggles. For example, in Kenya the Women’s Association, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (MYWO) and the Christian Council of Kenya (CCK) were both involved in government funded schemes designed to subvert black resistance during the ‘Mau Mau’ uprising. The CCK established a “rehabilitation programme” in response to the emergency. It offered “pastoral care” to internees in the concentration camps, a euphemism for a process of interrogation during which “loyal Africans” were screened from potential “terrorists”. It also established community centres in Nairobi’s more troublesome slums and shantytowns to extend these “rehabilitation” services to urban communities affected by the ‘Mau Mau’ uprising.

There were two distinct groups of voluntary organizations. The first group consisted primarily of the above , overseas missionary societies and charitable bodies, like the CCK and the MYWO
in Kenya, that were present in the colonies before independence. Christian Aid evolved out of a network of such bodies. The second group is typified by organisations like Oxfam, Save the Children and Plan International, who had no direct involvement in the colonies. They were ‘war charities’, established to deal with the human consequences of conflict in Europe. Unlike their colonial counterparts, war charities had no undesirable associations with racist regimes. They had a popular base in Europe that was supportive of their goals of internationalist humanitarian relief. Colonial missionary societies and charitable organizations were clearly tainted in the eyes of the majority by their association with racist colonial oppression. Colonial rationales of ‘trusteeship’ were not longer acceptable. Faced with their potential demise, they transformed
themselves completely. Firstly, they ‘indigenised’ their administrations, gradually replacing white staff, clergy and secular managers with educated blacks.

Secondly, they changed their ideological outlook, replacing the overt racism of the past with a new discourse about ‘development’ that was just beginning to take shape in the international arena. They ‘discovered’ the appeal of expressing concerns about poverty, and they began to condemn the racial prejudice that had created this poverty with as much conviction as they had justified racial exclusion in the past. The exigencies of black resistance and international politics had forced them to reconstruct themselves as indigenous ‘development NGOs’. As the post-War reconstruction effort began in earnest in Europe with the implementation of the Marshall plan in 1948, mass suffering and starvation were no longer an imminent threat in Europe. The
war charities were faced with basic choices. They could either wind down their operations entirely, or they could expand into new areas of activity and new continents.

Oxfam, Plan International and Save the Children were amongst only a handful of organizations that decided to extend their existing humanitarian activities beyond Europe’s boundaries. They embraced the new discourse of development with as much enthusiasm as colonial missionary societies and voluntary organizations were doing locally. They were seduced by arguments about development as a more noble pursuit than humanitarian relief alone, since it was said the former addressed the long-term causes of poverty, whereas the latter merely dealt with short-term symptoms. Oxfam, War on Want and Christian Aid in particular were sympathetic to these views and supported the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s call for the relief of poverty through ‘self-generating agricultural development’. The role of NGOs in the early post
independence period remained marginal. While they carried out ‘projects’ providing services in peripheral areas that the state was disinclined to reach, the bulk of social services were provided by the state under its social contract with the people. The work of NGOs was limited to project work where, armed with their manuals and technical tricks, they focused the attention of ‘the poor’ on finding participatory means for coping with the present rather than seeking justice for past crimes against them. Like their missionary predecessors, they offered the poor blessings in the future (albeit on earth rather than in heaven). And in their local offices they established the same racial divisions of labour and low salaries for local staff as had been customary amongst their missionary predecessors.

The situation changed with the emergence of ‘neo-liberalism’ as the dominant political-economic ideology in the West, epitomised by the rise to power of Thatcher in UK and Reagan in USA. Central to this ideology was the concept of the minimalist state, a concept the realisation of which radically altered the landscape of development practice in Africa and throughout the post-colonial world. According to the neo-liberal consensus, the most important function of economic policy is to safeguard the ‘right’ of a minority to accumulate profits at the highest rate possible (euphemistically referred to as ‘growth’). Only when this freedom is unrestricted, it is said, will others in society benefit from any associated spin-offs (the trickle-down effect). The purpose of ‘development’ is, therefore, to guarantee ‘growth’ so that ultimately other freedoms can be enjoyed at some indeterminate time in the future. State expenditure, according to this dogma, should be directed towards creating an enabling environment for ‘growth’, and not be ‘wasted’ on the provision of public services that, in any case, can ultimately be provided ‘more efficiently’ by private enterprise. These are the mantras that came to be woven through almost every report on economic development since – whether from the World Bank, IMF, WTO, or from bilateral development agencies in the North. This makes socially useful members of society such as schoolteachers and health workers more threatened by conservative economic policies than do those employed as army generals.

Today, most commentators agree that the neo-liberal reforms the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank imposed under adjustment programmes in the 1980s actually caused much of the growth in poverty and inequality we have seen in Africa and Latin America over the past two decades. Externally imposed constraints on health, education and welfare measures and social programmes, tax concessions on profits, liberalisation of price controls, and dismantling of state owned enterprises – all have contributed to widening of internal disparities.
Several studies have linked adjustment programmes to deteriorating health conditions in Africa and Latin America, pointing to increases in the incidence of child malnutrition, in the growth of infectious disease and in infant and maternal mortality rates

Between 1976 and 1992 there were 146 protests against IMF supported austerity measures in 39 countries around the world. These took the form of political demonstrations, strikes and riots. They took place almost exclusively in cities and they reached a peak in the mid 1980s. In
many cases, the immediate response of governments was brute force. such widespread opposition also forced the multilateral and bilateral aid agencies to rethink their approach to development promotion, particularly, how to present the same neo-liberal economic and social programmes with a more "human face". The outcome of these deliberations was the ‘good governance’ agenda of the 1990s and the decision to co-opt NGOs and other civil society organisations to a repackaged programme of welfare provision, a social initiative that could be more accurately described as a programme of social control. And what of the welfare initiatives that accompanied the good governance agenda?

The bilaterals and multilaterals set aside significant volumes of funds aimed at ‘mitigating’ the ‘social dimensions of adjustment’. The purpose of such programmes was to act as palliatives that might minimise the more glaring inequalities that their policies had perpetuated. Funds were made available to ensure that a so-called ‘safety net’ of social services would be provided for the ‘vulnerable’ – but this time not by the state (which had after all been forced to ‘retrench’ away from the social sector) but by the ever-willing NGO sector. The availability of such funds for the NGO sector was to have a profound impact on the very nature of that sector. This was a period in which the involvement of Northern NGOs in Africa grew dramatically. The number of international NGOs operating in Kenya, for example, increased almost three-fold to 134 organisations during the period 1978 to 1988.

In the era of globalisation, and faced with the growing dominance of the multinational corporation in the domestic economy, there remain few legitimate ways for the indigenous capitalist class to accumulate. Their choices are limited either to becoming agents of the multinationals, or turning to crime, corruption, drug-trafficking, sex exploitation, illegal migration and illicit arms. Continued impoverishment, growing conflicts, the state reneging on its social responsibilities, it is into this arena that development NGOs have been plying their
trade. Africa’s decline contributes to the continued justification for their work. NGOs will do better the less stable the world becomes because] finance will become increasingly available to agencies who can deliver ‘stabilising’ social services.

As African governments increasingly become pushed into becoming caretakers of what might be described as the peripheral Bantustans of globalisation, are we seeing a return to the colonial paradigm in which social services are delivered on the basis of favour or charity and their power to placate? The gains of independence have all but been reversed. Development NGOs have become an integral, and necessary, part of a system that sacrifices respect for justice and rights. They have taken the ‘missionary position’ – service delivery, running projects that are motivated by charity, pity and doing things for people


Meanwhile the rich get richer, the poor poorer. While the average income of the top 20% of the world's population was 30 times that of the bottom 20% in 1960, by 1994 it was 78 times. Nearly one quarter of the world's people have an income that is less than $1 a day - a proportion that is rising. The UN Development Programme calculates each year the human poverty index based on a series of measures including the prevalence of illiteracy, life expectancy, degree of malnourishment, and access to health services and safe water. In 1996 over a billion people fell below this measure, the position worsening in 30 countries, the worst figures since UNDP began calculating the index in 1990. Development, it seems, is failing.

Just as the bourgeois revolution that brought the capitalist class into ascendancy in Europe led to the emergence of a particular construct of rights proclaimed against the ancien regime, so Africa's struggle against the colonial yoke gave birth to its own traditions of struggle and the construct of rights. Once thrown into power, the nationalist leadership (comprised usually of representatives of the newly emerging middle class) saw its task as one of preventing centrifugal forces" from competing for political power or seeking greater autonomy from the newly formed "nation". Having grasped political self-determination from colonial authority, it was reluctant to accord the same rights to others. The popular associations that had thrown the nationalist leadership into power gradually began to be seen as an obstacle to the new god of "development". No longer was there a need, it was argued, for popular participation in determining the future. The new governments would bring development to the people. The new government, they claimed, represented the nation and everyone in it. Now that political independence had been achieved, the priority was "development". For the present, said many African presidents, "our people are not ready" - mirroring, ironically, the same arguments used by the former colonial rulers against the nationalists' cries for independence a few years earlier. A transformation had taken place which led to a demobilisation of the popular movement that had given rise to independence. Popular organisations that had emerged out of the struggle for rights (social,political, economic or civil) were provided no further role in the process. Rights were no longer the flag around which the oppressed could rally.

A gradual shift took place where concerns about rights and justice were replaced by concerns about "development". It was about creating an infrastructure that advanced the capacity of the new ruling class to accumulate and smoothing those inefficiencies that hampered the capacity of international capital to continue its exploitation of the country. It was expected that, through trickle-down effects, poverty would gradually be eliminated. This was the agenda of "modernisation", the paradigm of development that was to hold sway until the end of the 1970s.

The victims of years of injustices, whose livelihoods had been destroyed by years of colonial rule, were now defined as "the problem. Structures of accountability and democracy that were inherent in some of the liberation movements were gradually marginalised and replaced by the ascendancy of the expert supported by bureaucratic and centralised decision making under the
guise of "national planning". Political associations were soon to be discouraged, if not actually banned, while trade unions were constrained, incorporated into the structures of the ruling party, or simply disbanded. The political hegemony of the new post-independence rulers had been asserted. Their "misuse" of the state was to become a critical factor in the distortions
brought to the development agenda. Patronage was used frequently to buy favours with different groups in the country. The purpose of development programmes was distorted to ensure progress was brought not to where there was the greatest social or economic need. Instead it was brought to where investment would serve the need to curry favour with particular social or "ethnic" groups whose political alliance was deemed useful at a particular time and where the possibilities for private accumulation by the elite were greatest. Under such conditions, it was hardly surprising that competition for access to resources increasingly manifested themselves along "ethnic" lines. With the demise or suppression of organisations
based on the struggle for rights, old social alliances based on perceived historical grievances against other "ethnic" groups re-emerged. The seeds of subsequent conflicts were already taking root.

Their capacity to attend to the "basic needs" of the population gave them some legitimacy
and allowed, in some instances, reasonable national cohesion. But the development of national consciousness, born fragile and imperfectly in the struggle for rights in the 1950s & 1960s, began to lose sustenance, its life-blood dissipating. The age of the development expert, the relief expert, and subsequently the conflict resolution expert, had arrived.

Despite much flag waving and pontificating about socialism (and in some cases about "Marxism-Leninism"), the social relations of production remained firmly within the framework of the capitalist world economy. Although those who commanded the state changed hands at independence, the structures of the state machinery were rarely transformed in any substantial or radical way. Already intimately integrated into the capitalist world economy before independence, there were to be no major shifts in the forms of production established within the country, nor changes to the terms of trade with the advanced capitalist countries. The economic framework of "underdevelopment" was left unchanged.

As repression of those who were seen to be political opponents became a feature of the new state centralising its control, many NGOs chose to remain silent about that creeping repression. Protest against repression of political opponents was largely left to (northern) human rights organisations. The dilemma faced by NGOs was that such protests could jeopardise the grants that they received from the official aid agencies (who, certainly until the mid1980s, rarely sought to comment on the excesses of African governments). NGOs, especially the Northern ones, also feared that protest could jeopardise their own relationship with the national government to whom they were beholden for a range of privileges (tax or duty exemptions etc.).There was little point, some argued, in making a fuss since "it would only be the poor
who would suffer as a result".

Development NGOs vehemently claim that their work in developing countries is neutral. This assumption of neutrality probably has its origins in the heroic work that NGOs have frequently performed in response to crises. Under such circumstances, NGOs have adopted the essential humanitarian principle that all those affected by disasters should be treated equally and receive assistance equally. Humanitarian responses should take no sides in conflicts. The problem arises when these same principles have been applied in non-crisis conditions such as those that prevail in "development" programmes or, in conditions of prolonged crises especially where, for example as in Somalia, the state itself has long ago collapsed. One of the most important roles that the state performs in any society is to guarantee the conditions for the reproduction of those social relations that enable the ruling class to continue to rule. If the state fails in that essential function, then the future of the ruling class itself is threatened. The new ruling classes of postcolonial Africa soon learned the importance of that - and those who were slow to
learn were quickly swept aside by coups d'etat or civil war.

"Development" (or the political economy, more precisely) as defined by the ruling class was the process that would be used to ensure the reproduction of the required social relations that reproduced impoverishment and injustice for the many, and rapid accumulation of wealth for the few. The fact is that many NGOs have, unwittingly or willingly, inserted themselves over the last few decades as part of the very infrastructure of the political economy that reproduces the unequal social relations of post-colonial Africa.

Report from Africa

Participants at a regional seminar on poverty held in Swaziland are absorbing the cruel facts and figures that show the devastated face of the African continent in its state of underdevelopment.

Everyday 840 million people go hungry and more than two billion suffer from dietary deficiencies, a Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN) official has said.

Jack Zulu , SARPN programme manager for economic dimensions, said that 12 million children die every year from preventable diseases, when immunisation could save three million of them.

He added that everyday 8,200 people all over the world die because of HIV/AIDS and 6,000 of these deaths occur in Africa.

He said pharmaceutical cartels declared profits of US$517 billion in 2003 .

He said expenditure on the military worldwide was more than US$1.5 billion per day in 2001.

He said that if US$1 billion per day in agricultural subsidies in developed countries was re-allocated, world poverty would go down by 75 percent.

He said that a cow in Japan receives US$4 per day in subsidies while the majority of Africans live on less than US$1 per day.

He said rich countries claim that free trade, without local subsidies or protection is the key to escaping poverty, but that when poor countries open up their markets to free trade, foreign firms enjoy huge advantages. This, he said, means local companies cannot compete favourably. Zulu said developing countries have a natural comparative advantage in producing agricultural goods but that the current trade system seems designed to undermine that advantage.

"There is a system of trade rules and regulations that allow rich countries and their companies to make lots of profits but prevent poor countries from developing their own economies," Zulu said.

Indeed , capitalism does favour the more powerful and good will is short in measure when it comes to offering undeveloped economies a hand up . Nor will the growth of a home capitalist class reduce exploitation .

Africa - Bill Gates Charity - No Solution

“Now it’s Africa’s turn. This is only the beginning of the continent’s Green Revolution. The end goal is that within 20 years, farmers will double or even triple their yields and sell the surplus at market. This is a vision of a new Africa, where farmers aren’t doomed to a life of hunger and poverty, where people can look toward future with promise.”
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 12 September 2006

Africa is often looked upon as backward and primitive , yet the birth-place of homo sapiens ( "wise man" or "knowing man" ) has developed its own and appropriate means of sustenance that successfully maintained its populations for tens of thousands of years and provided the knowledge for the rest of the world . African farming represents a wealth of innovation: for example, the US and Canada's main export wheat is derived from a Kenyan variety called "Kenyan farmer"; and the Zera Zera sorghum grown in Texas originated in Ethiopia and the Sudan.

With much fanfare and trumpeting the Bill Gates charity along with the Rockefeller Foundation launched the "Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa" investing over $150 million towards shifting African agriculture to a system dependent on expensive, harmful chemicals, monocultures of hybrid seeds, and ultimately genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Another initiative funded by the G8 is pushing biotechnology in agriculture through four new major Biosciences research centres in Africa. The charity headed by Bill Clinton’s foundation had pledged fertilizers and irrigation systems support to Rwandan farmers. Another US ex-president, Jimmy Carter, teamed up with a Japanese tycoon to launch the “Sasakawa 2000” project to bring seeds and fertilizers to Africa. GM companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta are entering into public-private-partnership agreements with national agricultural research centres in Africa, in order to direct agricultural research and policy towards GMOs. The core of these initiatives is the breeding of new seeds and getting Africa’s small farmers to use them. The Green Revolution is often described as an agricultural development project based on the breeding of new crop varieties that respond better to fertilizer, agrochemicals and irrigation.


This so-called "green revolution" or "gene revolution" is being done once again under the guise of solving hunger in Africa yet GRAIN claim it fails to address the real causes of hunger in Africa. Farmers in Africa cannot afford these expensive agricultural inputs and in fact these agricultural reforms are being driven by the industry's demand for new markets--not to meet the needs of farmers . The new foreign systems will encourage Africa's land and water to be privatised for growing inappropriate export crops, biofuels and carbon sinks, instead of food for people.

While the head of the Microsoft empire puts up most of the money, the real mover behind this initiative is the Rockefeller Foundation. who tried to explain away previous failed endeavours on the complexity of Africa’s agriculture and its lack of infrastructure as reasons why the new Green Revolution largely ‘bypassed’ this continent but according to GRAIN Green Revolution technology didn’t simply just ‘bypass’ Africa: it failed. It was unpopular and ineffective. Fertiliser use, for example, increased substantially from the 1970s onwards in sub-Saharan Africa, while per capita agricultural production fell. In Malawi, despite the widespread release of hybrid maize, the average maize yield remains roughly what it was in 1961.

With this evidence instead of offering another better and improved approach from Gates-Rockefeller experts , it has been more of the same - more fertilizer use, more irrigation, better infrastructure and more trained scientists. Together with these same corporations, which are constantly merging together, are now spending billions of dollars promoting yet another technological fix: genetic engineering. This new technology, which, like pesticides before it, is fraught with risks to human health and the environment, is particularly troubling because it has the potential to give corporations complete control over the global seed supply and, therefore over the production of food in the world. In this agriculture, farmers are merely recipients of technology, forced to sign contracts that dictate what can and cannot be done in their fields and with their crops.

Progress is being guided by the interests of transnational corporations, not by the collective wisdom of its rural communities. Totally ignored is the central role of local communities, their traditional seed systems and rich indigenous knowledge, despite increased international recognition of their crucial importance .

Under pressure from international and bilateral trade instruments African governments are increasingly opening up their markets to let their farmers “compete” with the heavily subsidised food and other agricultural produce dumped into their economies by the US and the EU. The same African governments are then forced by the same agencies to devote their most fertile land to the growing of export commodities for markets in the North, thus pushing small farmers off their land and food production out of rural economies.

For more about the dark shadows cast by Bill Gates Foundation and his philanthropy read here and also his cohort Warren Buffett here

The above article is collated from GRAIN , a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.