Nothing tickles an African's instinct for black humour more than the sight of a well-meaning oyigbo (as Nigerians dub foreigners) being dealt an African lesson. When Jean Chrétien's press entourage was mistakenly shot at by Nigerian police last week, Africans probably smirked -- mostly because the PM and his convoy were on their way to a stage-managed visit to get a slice of real life in rural Nigeria.
As shocking, amusing (select your adjective) as the incident may seem to Canadians/Canadian media, it was not totally out of left field. As Mr. Chrétien himself gamely pointed out: "These things happen when you travel." Perhaps not in Washington or London -- but unsurprising in a Nigeria where the police, known as "Kill and Go," operate a "shoot first, ask questions later" policy.
The incident in Abuja last week illustrates a truism about Africa: No amount of stage-managed photo opportunities can convey the randomness of life on the continent, a randomness that breaks the teeth of reason, and hamstrings any attempt to make sense of the organized chaos that is Africa.
But that is exactly what Mr. Chrétien is doing this week. He is in Africa to try to harness the goodwill of Africans toward Canadians to help African leaders pull together on the latest master plan to yank Africa out of economic recidivism. (Even in the boom two years ago, when foreign direct investment around the globe was soaring, Africa's share -- about 1 per cent of the world total -- was shrinking.)
Africans, cheered on by the G8, want to change that. The New Economic Plan for African Development, or NEPAD, is one ugly acronym. But as a document, it attempts to flesh out the heady dreams of the Africa renaissance. A few years ago, South African President Thabo Mbeki started talking about the African renaissance. In a speech to the Corporate Council on Africa in 1997, he said: "Those who have eyes to see, let them see. The African renaissance is upon us."
The only trouble was, not many people could see what Mr. Mbeki was on about. Everyone understood the concept of a renaissance -- but Africa? Renaissance? Surely to put the two words together was an oxymoron, a cruel joke on the 340 million people living on less than a dollar a day or the 42 per cent of Africans who don't have access to safe water?
"The African renaissance," claimed an African sympathetic to the cause, "is a vision that has not yet found expression in a manner accessible and practical to the layperson. As a consequence, the African renaissance has come to mean anything, and signify nothing to those whose lives it is meant to transform."
It was to address this kind of criticism that some African leaders began, independently of each other, to formulate the policies that would articulate the vision of an African risorgimento. Thus NEPAD was conceived after a circuitous naming and renaming, drafting and redrafting process. Mr. Mbeki presented this brainchild to the G8 at the Genoa summit last year. NEPAD's philosophy, Mr. Mbeki explained, was to find a more holistic balance, a "triangular partnership between government, business and the people."
NEPAD's main contention is that Africa's development depends on fully integrating the continent into the global economy. In return for establishing peace and more democratic government, for respecting human rights, for investing in health, agriculture and information and communications technology, governments would set the stage to attract more foreign investment into the continent.
Described as a Marshall Plan for Africa, NEPAD met with the benevolent approval of the G8, and Mr. Mbeki was sent away to come up with a Plan of Action. The Plan of Action will be presented to the G8 at the next summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, at the end of June. As chair of that summit, Mr. Chrétien has been visiting Africa to co-ordinate and discuss the action plan with African leaders.
And despite encounters with trigger-happy policemen, Mr. Chrétien has also been getting a bird's-eye view of Africa. Which is no bad thing because he needs to see where the extra $500-million he committed to Africa in last year's budget should be going. Through all his fine speeches and declarations at the World Economic Forum in New York in February, and in Monterrey last month, Mr. Chrétien has never quite given the impression that his commitment to Africa is anything more than a numbers game.
In taking on a commitment to the continent, he must know that he has saddled himself with a political, economic and moral burden -- and a public relations albatross heavily weighted with the justified concerns of NEPAD's critics.
Earlier this year, in a blistering attack on the neo-liberal language and implied assumptions of NEPAD, South African trade unionist Trevor Ngwane called for the World Social Forum meeting in Brazil to reject NEPAD. Mr. Ngwane pointed out that the "automatic presumption [of NEPAD] is that the 'poverty' and 'backwardness' of Africa are as a result of 'exclusion' and 'marginalization' from 'globalization.' " A different presumption, not even considered in NEPAD, was that "worsening poverty for the masses is an intrinsic feature of globalization."
Now the global justice movement has NEPAD, and by dint of association, Mr. Chrétien, in its formidable sights. And with some justification. It is true that if Africa is going to arrest its decline, business has the capacity and the wherewithal to transform the fortunes of the continent. But it is also true that Africa remains in an exploitative relationship with the rest of the world. And until the developed world relents on such issues as writing off Africa's debt, and opts for a truly free market in people and goods and not the selective patchwork of free markets and protectionism (all stated goals, incidentally, of NEPAD) -- until such economic utopia is realized, then the claims of neo-liberals for the global economy will always be a bad joke on the weak.
So can NEPAD and Mr. Chrétien deliver?
NEPAD has few clearly defined goals. It states targets of 7-per-cent per annum growth for the continent by the year 2015 and a price tag of some $64-billion per year in untied aid and foreign investment. That's not a big ask and can easily be attained. Beyond that, NEPAD has already shown that it could make a positive difference. Without the commitment to good governance enshrined in NEPAD, Africa's leaders might not have had the will to recommend that Zimbabwe be suspended from the Commonwealth last month. The electoral crisis in Zimbabwe was rightly viewed as a litmus test of Africa's commitment to the values in NEPAD.
Common sense says that the aims and ideals of NEPAD are worthy and worth pursuing. But the test is the implementation.
And as all Africans know, grandiose plans can often run afoul of Africa's capricious nature. Born in Lagos, raised in London, and now based in Toronto, Ken Wiwa is the author of In the Shadow of a Saint.
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