Africa's new best friends

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1521387,00.html

 

Africa's new best friends

 

The US and Britain are putting the multinational corporations that

created poverty in charge of its relief

 

George Monbiot

Tuesday July 5, 2005

The Guardian

 

I began to realise how much trouble we were in when Hilary Benn, the

secretary of state for international development, announced that he

would be joining the Make Poverty History march on Saturday. What

would he be chanting, I wondered? " Down with me and all I stand for " ?

 

Benn is the man in charge of using British aid to persuade African

countries to privatise public services; wasn't the march supposed to

be a protest against policies like his? But its aims were either

expressed or interpreted so loosely that anyone could join. This was

its strength and its weakness. The Daily Mail ran pictures of Gordon

Brown and Bob Geldof on its front page, with the headline " Let's

Roll " , showing that nothing either Live 8 or Make Poverty History has

done so far represents a threat to power.

 

he G8 leaders and the business interests their summit promotes can

absorb our demands for aid, debt, even slightly fairer terms of trade,

and lose nothing. They can wear our colours, speak our language, claim

to support our aims, and discover in our agitation not new constraints

but new opportunities for manufacturing consent. Justice, this

consensus says, can be achieved without confronting power.

 

They invite our representatives to share their stage, we invite theirs

to share ours. The economist Noreena Hertz offers, according to the

commercial speakers' agency that hires her, " real solutions for

businesses and individuals. Hertz teaches companies how to be smart

and avoid the frictions that surface when corporate interests conflict

with private life ... the political right is not necessarily wrong. "

Then she stands on the Make Poverty History stage and calls for

poverty to be put at the top of the agenda. There is, as far as some

of the MPH organisers are concerned, no contradiction: the new

consensus denies that there's a conflict between ending poverty and

business as usual.

 

The G8 leaders have seized this opportunity with both hands.

Multinational corporations, they argue, are not the cause of Africa's

problems but the solution. From now on they will be responsible for

the relief of poverty.

 

They have already been given control of the primary instrument of US

policy towards Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The act

is a fascinating compound of professed philanthropy and raw

self-interest. To become eligible for help, African countries must

bring about " a market-based economy that protects private property

rights " , " the elimination of barriers to United States trade and

investment " and a conducive environment for US " foreign policy

interests " . In return they will be allowed " preferential treatment "

for some of their products in US markets.

 

The important word is " some " . Clothing factories in Africa will be

allowed to sell their products to the US as long as they use " fabrics

wholly formed and cut in the United States " or if they avoid direct

competition with US products. The act, treading carefully around the

toes of US manufacturing interests, is comically specific. Garments

containing elastic strips, for example, are eligible only if the

elastic is " less than 1 inch in width and used in the production of

brassieres " . Even so, African countries' preferential treatment will

be terminated if it results in " a surge in imports " .

 

It goes without saying that all this is classified as foreign aid. The

act instructs the US Agency for International Development to develop

" a receptive environment for trade and investment " . What is more

interesting is that its implementation has been outsourced to the

Corporate Council on Africa.

 

The CCA is the lobby group representing the big US corporations with

interests in Africa: Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, General

Motors, Starbucks, Raytheon, Microsoft, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup and

others. For the CCA, what is good for General Motors is good for

Africa. " Until African countries are able to earn greater income, " it

says, " their ability to buy US products will be limited. " The US state

department has put it in charge of training African governments and

businesses. The CCA runs the US government's annual forum for African

business, and hosts the Growth and Opportunity Act's steering committee.

 

Now something very similar is being set up in the UK. Tomorrow the

Business Action for Africa summit will open in London with a message

from Tony Blair. Chaired by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, the head of Anglo

American, its speakers include executives from Shell, British American

Tobacco, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and the Corporate Council

on Africa. One of its purposes is to inaugurate the Investment Climate

Facility, a $550m fund financed by the UK's foreign-aid budget, the

World Bank and the other G8 nations, but " driven and controlled by the

private sector " . The fund will be launched by Niall FitzGerald, now

head of Reuters, but formerly chief executive of Unilever, and before

that Unilever's representative in apartheid South Africa. He wants the

facility, he says, to help create a " healthy investment climate " that

will offer companies " attractive financial returns compared to

competing destinations " . Anglo American and Barclays have already

volunteered to help.

 

Few would deny that one of the things Africa needs is investment. But

investment by many of our multinationals has not enriched its people

but impoverished them. The history of corporate involvement in Africa

is one of forced labour, evictions, murder, wars, the under-costing of

resources, tax evasion and collusion with dictators. Nothing in either

the Investment Climate Facility or the Growth and Opportunity Act

imposes mandatory constraints on corporations. While their power and

profits in Africa will be enhanced with the help of our foreign-aid

budgets, they will be bound only by voluntary commitments: of the kind

that have been in place since 1973 and have proved useless.

 

Just as Gordon Brown's " moral crusade " encourages us to forget the

armed crusade he financed, the state-sponsored rebranding of the

companies working in Africa prompts us to forget what Shell has been

doing in Nigeria, what Barclays and Anglo American and De Beers have

done in South Africa, and what British American Tobacco has done just

about everywhere. From now on, the G8 would like us to believe, these

companies will be Africa's best friends. In the name of making poverty

history, the G8 has given a new, multi-headed East India Company a

mandate to govern the continent.

 

Without a critique of power, our campaign, so marvellously and so

disastrously inclusive, will merely enhance this effort. Debt, unfair

terms of trade and poverty are not causes of Africa's problems but

symptoms. The cause is power: the ability of the G8 nations and their

corporations to run other people's lives. Where, on the Live 8 stages

and in Edinburgh, was the campaign against the G8's control of the

World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UN? Where was the

demand for binding global laws for multinational companies?

 

At the Make Poverty History march, the speakers insisted that we are

dragging the G8 leaders kicking and screaming towards our demands. It

seems to me that the G8 leaders are dragging us dancing and cheering

towards theirs.

 

· www.monbiot.com

 

 

Make Poverty History

Official site

 

What's happening and when

01.07.2005: Schedule for G8 summit and protests

Live 8 schedule

G8: What you can do

 

Special reports

G8

Live 8

Climate change

Debt relief

Hear Africa 05

 

Q & A

14.06.2005: The Gleneagles summit

 

African women in their own words

Eight women, one voice

 

G8 links

Official G8 Gleneagles site

Wikipedia: G8

G8 Information Centre - University of Toronto

More G8 links

 

NGOs

Action Aid

Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod)

Official Live 8 site