Africa
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The change in African attitudes towards Israel had been gradual. Through the 1960s the common African view was to accept UN decisions on Israel and Arabs and Africans, therefore, agreed to differ although as early as the 1964 OAU meeting in Cairo President Nasser of Egypt and Ben Bella of Algeria had tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade black African states to support the Arab stand. In 1967, at the time of the Six Day Arab-Israeli War, Guinea had been the first African state to break relations with Israel. From that time onwards African states supported UN Resolution 242 and took the line that while Israel had the right to exist it was illegally in occupation of Arab land. A 1971 African attempt at mediation between the Arabs and Israel – the committee of Ten Wise Men – failed though it came closer than any other attempt hitherto to find a solution. It was Israeli obstinacy over the occupied territories that began to erode African support and switch African sympathies towards the Arab position. The three leading North African Arab states – Algeria, Egypt and Libya – lobbied all members of the OAU intensively and at the 1972 Rabat Summit of the OAU the African members accepted the toughest resolution pertaining to Israel to that date. The following year, at the OAU Summit in Addis Ababa, increased pressure was put upon Haile Selassie to loosen his ties with Israel and Boumedienne promised to use his influence to end Arab support from Syria, Iraq and South Yemen for Eritrean secession. Up to August 1973 the Israelis thought they could hold the line against the mounting pressures by the Arab states but at the September meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Algiers the Arabs achieved a breakthrough when they obtained African backing for a resolution that pledged full support for Egypt, Jordan and Syria in recovering their lost territories. Nigeria’s Gowon, however, still held the view that if Africa was to act as a mediator it should retain diplomatic links with both sides. Mobutu broke diplomatic relations with Israel on 4 October, two days before the Yom Kippur War was launched; his move was a bitter blow to Israel, which had been training (or retraining) Zaïre’s military. As a result of his gesture Mobutu was the one black African leader to be invited to attend the November Arab Summit, also held in Algiers. The big break came when Israeli troops crossed the Suez Canal during the war for this was seen as an invasion of African soil and a rush of diplomatic ruptures followed. Even the most pro-Israel countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya felt they had to follow the majority. The desire to maintain regional solidarity played a big part in these African decisions. Gowon, as the current chairman of the OAU, felt he could not stand out against the majority; and Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire found he was odd man out as all the other members of the Francophone organization OCAM to which his country belonged had broken their ties with Israel. Then, neither Ethiopia nor Kenya felt they could be totally isolated so they, too, joined the bandwagon. At the OAU Council of Ministers meeting in Addis Ababa over 19–21 November, a resolution for the first time in the organization’s history linked Africa with the Middle East problem. In return for this support the subsequent Arab Summit in Algiers agreed to extend the oil embargo to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa.
Thus, in the last months of 1973 the African members of the OAU had demonstrated an impressive solidarity with the Arab countries over Israel, although up to that time there had been no equivalent Arab solidarity with the African states over Rhodesia. The question of a quid pro quo between Arabs and Africans was to loom large over the next two years. On 7 October, the day after the commencement of the war, Boumedienne in his capacity as chairman of the Fourth Non-Aligned Summit sent a cable to the leaders of Britain, France, the United States and the USSR in which he said:
Since the conference stresses that force cannot be used to gain territories and since it gives recognition to the national rights of the Palestinian people the Conference asks all States, especially the US, to stop giving any political, economic or financial aid to Israel so that it may not continue its aggressive expansionist policy. The Conference demands Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal from all occupied territories, and undertakes to help Egypt, Syria and Jordan to liberate their territories by every means.9
When the war began on 6 October eight African countries had already broken relations with Israel; these were Uganda, Chad, Congo People’s Republic, Niger, Mali, Burundi, Togo and Zaïre. After the war broke out a further 17 countries followed suit; these were (in order) Rwanda, Dahomey, Mauritania, Upper Volta, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia, The Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Gabon and Sierra Leone. Ten states retained relations with Israel.
In the last months of 1973 black Africa had demonstrated remarkable support for the Arab position in the Middle East; during 1974, however, the principal concern of the African countries was how to cope with the economic hardships that followed the fourfold increase in the price of oil. Up to that time Afro-Arab relations had been correct, to use the diplomatic term, rather than especially warm though newly independent states had a warm spot for Nasser’s Egypt. The two groups had in common their development needs and recent colonial histories and though the Arab League had, for years, sought to obtain African backing for its confrontation with Israel, this had only been achieved in the fraught crisis conditions of 1973. OPEC’s use of the oil weapon against the West opened a new phase in relations between the Third World and the developed countries; it also threatened to create a breach between the Arab states and black Africa because the Arab nations as a whole showed little sensitivity to the harm that oil price rises would inflict upon their African allies. The estimated additional cost of oil for Africa’s non-oil producers in 1974 was between US$800 million and US$1,000 million, and this was apart from other price rises for imports that necessarily followed the oil hike. Claude Cheyssons, the European Economic Communiy (EEC) Commissioner, pointed out that the 400 per cent increase in oil prices coincided with a 200 per cent increase in the world price of cereals and that the cereal increase alone meant the 19 EEC associates in Africa would have to pay an extra equivalent of 75 per cent of the aid they received from Europe. The question, therefore, that dominated Afro-Arab relations through 1974 was the extent of compensatory finance that the oil-rich states were willing to provide for the African countries most severely affected by the oil price increases. At the Algiers Arab Summit of November 1973 a resolution had been adopted to set up an Afro-Arab Bank with a loan capital of US$100 million (later increased to US$200 million) that would offer loans rather than grants and the smallness of this offer compared with the size of the new oil burden led to angry African criticisms. The OAU General Secretariat responded to the proposal as follows: ‘Our Arab brothers mean well but are they also doing well? Why set up another institution when there is one already? We have in mind our African Development Bank, which has to date 39 OAU member-States. The African Development Bank is the only Pan-African financing institution for economic and social development in Africa…’ The Arabs, however, clearly wished to keep control of their finances. Arab delays in setting up the new financial institution through to January 1975 meant that hard-hit African countries were obliged to apply directly for aid to the Arab League while the African Development Bank (ADB) was bypassed. Algeria and Libya, the two African Arab oil producers, were more helpful: Algeria contributed a US$20 million loan to the ADB although it specified which countries were eligible for 3 per cent loans while repayments had to be made to Algeria and not to the ADB while Libya set up a separate aid account in the Arab League. There was a forthright Nigerian commentary over Radio Kaduna (11 February 1974):
Paradoxically, the developing countries, who are in solidarity with the Arabs, the major world oil-producers, are the worst casualties of their own oil weapon. The weapon was aimed at the advanced countries, particularly the United States. True, it hit its target, but because of the inter-relation among the economies of the world and the comparative weakness of the economies in the developing countries the bouncing weapon hit the Third World and its effect has been catastrophic… What
the Third World countries really need now is money to offset the oil increases.
Zambia’s oil bill doubled from KW36 billion to KW73 billion as a result of the crisis and on 26 February 1974 a leader in the Times of Zambia said: ‘The Western countries, which generally support Israel, would love it if Africa suffered economic hardship as a result of the let-downs of the Arabs to help us more sensibly. They have been telling us often enough: you can’t trust the Arabs. We still trust the Arabs. We are fighting the same battle that they are fighting. But man cannot live by trust alone. He has to have oil at reasonable prices as well.’ The apparently reluctant and, some argued, mean response of the oil-rich Arabs to the African need for assistance produced some strong African criticisms of their Arab brothers. Thus, the Kenya Sunday Nation of 6 October 1974 (the anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War) carried an editorial ‘The Arabs and their billions’. ‘The larger cost of maintaining “the oil weapon” is borne by the poor nations because it is they who have to drain more and more of their foreign exchange reserves to meet the rising costs of oil and imported manufactured goods without getting anything in return. Still it is the developing countries, particularly in Africa, which have given the greatest moral support to the cause of the Arabs in the Middle East and elsewhere.’
A further comment upon the Arab attitude came from Nigeria in mid-1974 (Radio-TV Kaduna, 25 June 1974): ‘The impression has been created that the Arabs have taken and are still going to continue to take black Africa for a ride. In other words, while members of the OAU are taking all reasonable measures to support the cause of the Arabs, the oil sheikhs, on the other hand, appear to pursue a policy “capable of crippling the economy of Africa without showing serious concern”.’ There was no doubt that by the end of the year Afro-Arab relations were strained and that Africa had experienced a sense of betrayal.
One assessment of the year was extremely gloomy: ‘Economically, 1974 was disastrous for the entire continent with the exception of the few important oil-producing countries (Nigeria, Libya, Algeria and Gabon). The continent’s overall economy was set back possibly a full decade or more under the combined impact of the fourfold increase in the cost of oil and, perhaps even more, the still deeper input costs of fertilizers and pesticides; the subsequent increases in the cost of manufactured imports; the world-wide inflationary pressures…’10 In the light of these pressures that arose out of international developments over which they had little control, African leaders became enthusiastic supporters of the concept floated at this time of a New International Economic Order and over this issue, as over many others at this time, Algeria played a leading role. Africa might have been set back by the oil price rises but in international affairs it made its voice felt more strongly than at any time since independence, so much so indeed as to lead the United States to protest openly at the collective African voice in the United Nations. During 1975 Arab aid did become available to Africa through a number of Arab institutions such as the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (ABEDA), the Special Arab Fund for Africa, the Arab African Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and other institutions, but much of the assistance provided went to Arab and other Islamic countries rather than black Africa. The Arab League made clear that it would not support African countries that maintained ties with Israel. As the President of ABEDA, Dr Shazali el Ayari, announced in Brussels: the Bank was not just a technical instrument to provide aid but was ‘politically important’ and it would not assist ‘certain African countries which show hostility towards the Arab world’.11
At the time of the oil crisis Nigeria was the only black African country that was both a major oil producer and member of OPEC and had then reached an annual output of approximately 2 million b/d. Although its huge population meant that it could use all the oil wealth it earned, Nigeria was generous in its compensatory aid, more so than richer Arab countries with smaller populations, though, of course, it could be argued that as a black African country it was bound to demonstrate greater solidarity with the hard-hit black African states. Be that as it may, at the end of 1974 Nigeria made available substantial funds to both the IMF and the World Bank: US$120 million to the IMF to be used to finance oil credits; and US$240 million to the World Bank at 8 per cent interest. In the Commonwealth Nigeria was the only developing member to increase its contributions to the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation (CFTC). On a bilateral basis it provided £2 million to the Sahel countries in the wake of the 1973 drought, US$500,000 to Guinea-Bissau on the occasion of its independence and further aid to Mali, Botswana and Zambia. In West Africa it made substantial grants to Dahomey, Togo and Niger to help balance their budgets. Its total aid in 1975 came to US $80 million and US $35 million in 1980 when its oil income had dropped.
A NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER (NIEO)
In May 1974 the United Nations held its Sixth Special Session in Algiers, and the first to study the problems of raw materials and development, ‘devoted to the consideration of the most important economic problems facing the world community’. It was very much a Third World occasion and reflected both the excitement and turmoil that the events of the previous months and, most notably, the use of the oil weapon against the developed economies had aroused. African countries in particular were excited by the prospect of a New International Economic Order since, from their point of view, almost any change in the existing order must be an improvement. There was a good deal of naïvety surrounding the Declaration on the establishment of a new international economic order12 by the UN General Assembly for it was a declaration of intent without any means of implementation. The Declaration was accompanied by a Programme of Action whose 10 headings list all the concerns that so obviously divided rich and poor nations at that time and later. These were:
1 Fundamental problems of raw materials and primary commodities as related to trade and development.
2 International monetary system and financing of the development of developing countries.
3 Industrialization.
4 Transfer of technology.
5 Regulation and control over the activities of transnational corporations.
6 Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.
7 Promotion of co-operation among developing countries.
8 Assistance in the exercise of permanent sovereignty of States over natural resources.
9 Strengthening the role of the United Nations system in the field of international economic co-operation.
10 Special Programme.
The naïvety attached to this Programme of Action was the assumption that the developed economies would be interested in adopting any part of it.
Nonetheless, these proposals were later spelt out in the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, which was voted upon at the UN General Assembly in November 1974. Some 120 nations voted for the Charter, six voted against and 10 abstained. The 16 who voted against or abstained were ‘free’ Western economies. The Charter was adopted that December. It stipulated that every nation has the right to exercise full permanent sovereignty over its wealth and natural resources. This, clearly, was seen as a crucial part of the Charter in the light of transnational activities generally in the Third World, and the recent OPEC experience of the oil companies in particular. The Charter set forth the rights of nations to associate in organizations of primary producers in order to develop their national economies (an obvious endorsement of the operation of the OPEC cartel). In September 1975, the UN held another Special Session on development and international co-operation during which the General Assembly enumerated measures to be taken as the basis for negotiations on the issues of raw materials; energy; trade; development; and money and finance. On this occasion the Assembly called for a restructuring of the UN’s own economic and social sectors so that they could deal with problems of economic cooperation and development.