Africa

by Guy Arnold

  Politics over the decade that straddled the centuries were dominated by the personality of Olusegun Obasanjo (President, 1999–2007), one of the most enduring figures in Nigerian politics, as well as the army. He was re-elected in 2003 and tried to alter the constitution to allow him to have a third term in office, although in 2006 there was an attempt to impeach him. Despite his ambition and growing autocratic behaviour, he did preside over ten years of democracy during which he controlled the ambitions of the Nigerian army, hopefully relegating it to an acceptable standing within the state structure. He was succeeded by Yar’Adua in 2007.

  In 2010 President Yar’Adua died after a long illness and although his family sought to retain power, ‘Goodluck’ Jonathan became president in his place. Jonathan launched a campaign against corruption and appointed Ngozi Okonzo-Iweala as Minister of Finance to conduct it. She had worked for over ten years at the World Bank and had an untarnished reputation. She was later to be sacked without explanation (presumably because she had trodden on too many toes).

  Perhaps there will now be an end to the long stretch of years 1960–2015 when the country was largely controlled by the military whose interplay with one another dominated elections, and coups and army infighting became the norms by which people lived. Over these years Nigeria supplied troops for peacekeeping ECOMOG operations in various theatres of Africa, including western Africa, Chad and Somalia. The oil boom, meanwhile, fed the Nigerian elite. As Islamic extremism usurped the Arab Spring, so fighters from Nigeria joined Islamist movements in Mali and the developing global climate of fear gave insurgents access to publicity and approval in the global arena. In north Nigeria, where the population is 95 per cent Muslim, extremism emerged in the form of the (Sunni) Boko Haram movement which made frontline news with its kidnapping of 270 schoolgirls in April 2014. The Americans dubbed the Boko Haram movement a national security threat. Closely allied to ISIS, Boko Haram have devastated large areas of northern Nigeria, with 3.6 million people having been affected by their activities. One million have become refugees and live in camps, another one million have returned home but live in fear of further attacks. The UN have appealed for extra funding for victims, especially children and estimate as many as 14 million people could soon be in need of help.

  Presidential elections were postponed for six weeks in 2015 while Nigeria and its allies regained control over land that had been lost to Boko Haram. Muhammadu Buhari, leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), defeated Goodluck Jonathan by 15.4 million votes to 12.8 million in the eventual election, becoming President at the end of May 2015 in the first genuine switch of electoral power in Nigerian history. The APC had mustered a serious opposition to Jonathan and won most of the states, governors and assemblies. Meanwhile, the dramatic fall in oil prices meant the new government had to cope with some serious economic problems.

  The campaign to destroy Boko Haram coincided with the end of Jonathan’s presidency. Three states in the north of the country were forced to suspend normal government and implement emergency rule in order to combat Boko Haram. Due to Nigeria being in recession for the first time in 25 years, the government has been unable to allocate enough resources to help victims return to their homes and rebuild damaged infrastructure. At this time the Nigerian Statistics Agency revealed that 58 million Nigerians were in the ‘poor’ bracket and that over 50 per cent of them lived in the north and north-west of the country.

  Nigeria’s booming border trade escapes control by the central government, but accounts for a substantial addition to the country’s total wealth. Estimates of small and medium-sized economic operators in 2012 accounted for half Nigeria’s GDP. This represents a huge loss of tax revenue while making a major contribution to the whole economy. In other words, tax loss was being balanced by informal growth. Since we are considering the revenues generated by 186 million Nigerians, large sums are involved. In addition, Nigeria is the mainstay of the ECOWAS economy and implements the ECOWAS Informal Trade Regulation Support Programme and as a result exercises considerable control over the regional economy. It has been suggested that the federal government should recognize the dynamic informal business community as a fundamentally positive national asset. A Chatham House report of December 2015, Nigeria’s Booming Borders by Leena Koni Hoffmann and Paul Melly, provides an in-depth study of Nigeria’s informal economy and among other estimates suggests that the informal economy accounts for 64 per cent of the whole. If this is even remotely the case, then the government faces an insuperable task in reclaiming revenue for the state. Nigeria is Africa’s powerhouse and with a population of 186 million – whatever the proportion may be – its informal market must be the largest and most influential on the continent. As Hoffmann and Melly note: ‘Nigeria’s northern borders are incredibly busy. The estimated volumes of commodities traded informally between Nigeria, Niger, and the rest of the Sahara-Sahelian region dwarf those of normal trade.’

  If we accept this statement, then we should look upon the border trade as normal and treat it as a sector that is within rather than outside the law. If we accept that informal trade is what drives large areas of the country, then it would make sense to accept this as a permanent aspect of Nigeria’s economic growth. Where there is an effective government agricultural programme, it may find it has to compete with the informal sector – but does that matter? There is nothing inherently wrong about informal trade and since it accounts for a major part of the country’s economic output, it should be left to contribute what it can to total national production. On the evidence of this report, it is clear that informal trade rather than a more ordered tax-paying controlled border region makes the most sense and contributes most to the local economies.

  THE OUTLOOK FOR AFRICA

  What has happened to the dream of independence? NEPAD and Millennium aid might have given the impression that a new start to independence had been engineered. Over the years 2000–2015, mastery of technology may have burgeoned, but how has it been used? An understanding of how to survive in an increasingly globalized world will not excuse open imperialism – whether by China claiming the South China Sea or the Americans spreading bases like a hen laying eggs to counter terrorism. In the 1990s Nigeria rejected the US request to establish a base in Nigeria, but in 2015 sought US military help in tracking Boko Haram. Safeguarding the state is the primary concern of any government; it is not a concern to be farmed out to an outside power, no matter how friendly.

  Africa must reject the role that has been crafted for it ever since the independence era and move away from an economic model that depends upon supplying the more advanced nations with commodities – either mineral ores or agricultural foodstuffs. In other words, it should abandon the post-imperial role of the underbelly of Europe. It ought, collectively, to aim at making Africa a powerhouse of productivity. Just as Europe builds its power upon a huge open market, so should Africa seek to create a single continent-wide market of its own. Mandela’s African Renaissance can be realized, based upon the continent’s known resources. The key question is how Africa creates a new mould of its own. Major powers always seek to manipulate the weak and this is how the West has maintained its control over Africa, brainwashing its leadership into a subservience which always blames the colonial past. Many academics in Africa and outside the continent have examined this relationship, yet have done little to encourage a change. They, too, have accepted such a state of affairs as though they are its official scribes. Any change in the Africa–West relationship must be centred upon an economic upheaval that is African-based.

  A conglomerate of Western countries comprising the United States, the EU, Britain and France, with others benefiting from the policy, have made the demand for human rights and democracy part of any financial assistance deal. This practice is rightly condemned by African countries, and though they may agree to accept these imposed conditions they ignore them as soon as it is possible to do so. Adding conditions in a financial agreement is comparable to adding a premium to t
he whole. The recent agreement between the EU and Chad illustrates the problem. Chad discovers oil in sufficient amounts to alter the economy of the country and approaches the World Bank for a loan to cover structural change in its systems. Chad is a member nation of the World Bank and has every right to go to it for a loan. The World Bank agrees the loan, but attaches to it conditions concerning human rights. Human rights are not the concern of the World Bank, which is a financial organization and not a political watchdog nor a moral organization. The stages of democracy or attention to human rights are the business of the government and people of Chad – not of the World Bank. The agreement should have been solely financial: how much was loaned, conditions of repayment and what would happen should Chad default.

  The practice of adding conditionalities is a colonial one, a means of rendering the recipient more malleable and at the same time more attached to the West. As the new century began, it is a pity that no African politician, party leader, President or other notable figure came forward with the suggestion that their country might do better if it dispensed with aid altogether. Aid, it could be argued, was pushed on Africa to ensure that it stayed attached to Western interests. What do these conditionalities offer ruling elites? Is it just a mechanism for the transfer of money into their hands? There is a double hypocrisy at work here.

  Donors, meanwhile, preached an end to corruption while upholding aid regimes that were manifestly corrupt. Western donors lecture Africa about its corruption, yet continue to promise – and provide – aid while demanding the adoption of policies that are not corrupt. Aid also necessarily creates a dependence attitude and any recipient places itself in an inferior political position. Only when a country has been defeated in war, such as the Axis powers in 1945, was it possible to impose conditions that they had to accept. All subsequent aid can be seen as an assertion of the superiority of the donors.

  Western insistence upon democracy and rectifying other human rights failings should, as a matter of African policy, be met with denunciations of the West’s tendency to side with equally morally corrupt countries that do not need to borrow. Britain of all major powers constantly denounces moral failings in weaker nations, but hastens to provide military equipment to Saudi Arabia whose reputation for suppression is notorious, hesitates to raise issues of human rights when visited by such powerful figures as Xi Jinping of China, or hastens to support President Sisi of Egypt who had just overthrown a democratic constitution and killed or imprisoned hundreds of his political opponents. Of course Britain will defend its actions in terms of the necessity of realpolitik in a troubled world. African countries accused of not carrying out agreed conditions for the delivery of aid could also use the same justification of their actions.

  Much of Africa’s history since independence has been concerned with controlling the remnants of the colonial presence – with indifferent success. The big question for the next decade will be whether Africa can control China. The year 2015 may be taken as the deadline date for the changes that were proposed in 2000, as enshrined in NEPAD, and, most appealingly, for the fulfilling of Mandela’s call for an African Renaissance. However, in 2016, Libya was tearing itself apart, a civil war had erupted in Ethiopia, and tens of thousands of ethnic enemies had been killed since the new state of South Sudan was hailed in 2011. The Somalis, meanwhile, resurrected the pirate threats off the Horn of Africa in response to illegal fishing in its waters. Egypt under General Sisi returned to re-entrenched military rule comparable to that of the Mubarak years – which the Arab Spring unsuccessfully tried to alter. The war on terror or ISIS provided further justifications for strong-man rule and law and order. One country – South Africa – might have provided some leadership for the continent as a whole, yet it failed to give any lead at all and the level of corruption displayed by the government was shaming.

  As a starting point, Africa should cease to assume (as it does at present) that its economic survival depends upon selling its resources at prices determined outside Africa – and rigorously set its own prices. Europe gains the most as long as it can persuade Africa that its development requires EU assistance in the form of both finance and expertise. Africa collectively needs to be selfish about the disposal of its resources and push the price of minerals up, and at the same time do what it tried to do but failed to pull off when it achieved independence: add value to resources before they are exported. This is where China becomes essential to African development. China wants the resources that Europe wants and is prepared to pay for them and provide an alternative market for African exports. Arguments for greater fairness or greater equality are constantly rehearsed by reformers, but make little progress when measured against the interests of the powerful.

  Change requires the spur of revolution – threatened or real – but the prospect of revolution cannot be too far beneath the surface in a continent where the differences are so stark and as many as 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. Countries affected by the war on terror (mainly in the Sahel region) want the assistance of European powers or of the United States, but do not want to be bullied into accepting an American military presence on their territory. The African relationship with outsiders, whether aid or anti-terrorism, is the reason they always have to tread carefully, fearful that fighting terrorism may turn into a presence of a different kind.

  As in the days of the Cold War, today realpolitik will be used as a justification for the dominance of the major powers – especially in the Sahel region. The Mali story is instructive. There was a revolt against the government in the south. The government was too weak to regain control so it requested and got military assistance from France. ISIS was held at bay and France stationed 4,500 troops in the country, where incidentally there were 800 French settlers and valuable French investments. It was a classic colonial-style operation carried out while the big powers in the Middle East were arguing as to whether or not to use troops on the ground.

  We live in a complicated world in which the weak continue to be exploited by the powerful. Africa is weak – while its resources make it a target for exploitation. It should use all the weapons at its disposal and above all play off China against the West. For the foreseeable future, this is the policy that will make the most sense. But China’s intervention on its present scale is comparable to the situation Africa found itself in during the 1960s – fighting for independence. It will be ironic if China, which has attacked colonialism in most of its forms over the last fifty years, ends up fighting Africans’ attempts to free the continent of its Chinese presence.

  There are other factors to be taken into account, however: the spread of US military power and (little noticed so far) the rapid growth of investment from India, which may well begin to fight its own battle for dominance in Asia. How it handles its resources will remain at the centre of political decisions and these in turn will be affected by the impact of ISIS and extreme Islamic groups. With the United States expanding its military bases and China now the biggest investor on the continent, one could be forgiven for believing that a conscious programme of re-colonizing was underway. How Africa deals with these developments will determine the politics of the next decade.

  List of Abbreviations

  AAPSO – Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation

  ABEDA – Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa

  ACRA – Advisory Council on Religious Affairs (Nigeria)

  ACOTA – African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance

  ACP – Africa, Caribbean and Pacific

  ACPSB – African Coastal and Border Security Program

  ADB – African Development Bank

  ADEMA – Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali

  ADI – Ação Democratica Independente (São Tomé and Príncipe)

  ADS – Alliance Démocratique Senegalaise

  AEF – Afrique Equatoriale Francaise

  AENF – Alliance of Eritrean National Forces

  AFDL – Alliance des Force
s Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre

  AFORD – Forum for the Restoration of Democracy

  AFRC – Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Ghana)

  AFRC – Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Sierra Leone)

  AFRC – Armed Forces Ruling Council (Nigeria)

  AFRICOM – Africa Command

  AIS – Armée Islamique du Salut (Algeria)

  Al Fatah – Movement for the Liberation of Palestine

  ALN – Armée de Libération Nationale (Algeria)

  AML – Les Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté

  ANAD – Non-Aggression and Defence Aid Agreement

  ANAF – Anya Nya Armed Forces (Sudan)

  ANC – African National Congress

  ANC – African National Council

  APC – All-People’s Congress – Sierra Leone

  APLA – Azanian People’s Liberation Army (South Africa)

  APPER – African Priority Programme for Economic Recovery

  APRC – Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (Gambia)