David Cameron arrived into Africa today on the 93rd birthday of Nelson Mandela, that giant amongst world leaders.
The message being preached by David Cameron is that trade is the way for Africa to fix its problems. He brings with him a 25-strong delegation that includes business leaders and the trade minister lord Green. Perhaps David Cameron is right; perhaps trade is the solution to the deeply entrenched difficulties that the continent faces. However, there is a higher-level policy under which Africa will find its salvation, ‘sustainability.’ Trade can play its part, of course, but only within the context of sustainability. I enjoyed greatly my time working in Africa and wrote in the book Green Outcomes in the Real World:
‘In discussion with a colleague, the topic of Africa arose. We had both spent time on the continent and shared a high regard for the people of Africa and would like to support measures that addressed some of the problems. I attempted to steer the dialogue towards my ideas about sustainability as the way to support improvement in people’s lives. I quickly ran into a problem. My colleague was an advocate of neo-liberalism and working on deep-rooted assumptions about the benefits of globalization. His concept of equity was based on the idea that everyone should have the opportunity to live a lifestyle that matched his own, on the implicit assumption that every society should be helped to follow the development path of the West, and that free trade, open markets and free flows of capital were the way to achieve this.’
In the next paragraph, I went on to write, in the context of sustainability:
‘The world needs other concepts to replace the old concept of globalization but, until we accept that economic globalization is no longer the appropriate basis for human development, it is hard to build new structures of thought. We are forever trying to add refinements to an edifice that is starting to show cracks, when the action required is to underpin our thinking with new foundations.’
Africa is at a crucial stage in its development, with a number of countries, particularly China, looking at this resource-rich continent with a glint in their eye. Today, David Cameron should be careful to ensure that the needs of Africa are uppermost in his mind in respect for the legacy of Nelson Mandela who remains an icon of unselfish principled leadership.
There is a long-standing doctrine that trade with developed countries is the best path for those seeking development. Start by exporting food and fibres, then textiles, and gradually move up the value-added chain. Is this really true?
ReplyDeleteLook at the first country to industrialize - Britain. At the time, Britain was trading internationally more intensively than any country ever had, but the countries with which it traded were not themselves developed. Some foreign resources were very valuable to development (where would we be without rubber?), but much of the trade was focussed on drugs (opium, nicotine, caffeine, refined sugar).
I would suggest that development in resource-rich Africa is hindered primarily by internal political culture, not a lack of trade with far flung continents.
Some in the West are eyeing fertile lands in Africa as a potential global bread-basket. Environmentally this is wrong-headed on many levels - the destruction of undeveloped ecosystems, rich in biodiversity; the huge increase in polluting transportation to ship food across vast distances; the relocation of soil nutrients from farmland to sewage systems and landfill sites halfway round the world.
But we should also question the supposed benefit to the people of Africa, of opening their farmland to global markets, and selling their produce the highest bidder internationally. Britain tried this already in Ireland - it led to the potato famine and mass emigration.