Our Common Interest by Bob Geldof

033-043 GELDOF N. 29-30 ingl. 19-04-2006 18:33 Pagina 34 Bob Geldof Our common interest The Cold War is over. All the paradigms for development are outdated. The Commis- sion for Africa – with its 17 commissioners, a majority of them African, from the worlds of government, business and the development sector, and after consultations in 49 African countries, in every G8 country, throughout Europe, in India and in China – has put together a bold package of concrete recommendations to overhaul the system. It began in June 2003. I was in Ethiopia to visit friends. But someone told me about the situation in the northern highlands where feeding camps had been set up again, just as 20 years before during the great famine of 1984 and 1985. I drove north to see. It felt like stepping back 20 years. What filled me with something bordering on despair, however, was the news from the south of the country. I went there too. I travelled to the lush green fields of Kafe – the region from which coffee takes its name. In the past, the people there would use the money they made from selling coffee to buy food. But the price of beans on world markets had crashed by almost 70% after countries like Indonesia and Vietnam had dramatically increased coffee production. The farmers in the birthplace of the crop were earning so little that they could not afford to buy food. Famine set in. We call it globalization, they call it hunger. I rang Tony Blair’s office in Downing Street. They patched the call through to Evian in France, where the prime minister was attending a summit of the world’s eight most powerful nations, the G8. “It’s happening again,” I exploded. “Calm down,” said the prime minister, “and tell me what the problem is.” “I can’t calm down,” I said. “Twenty years after Live Aid and things are no better. In some ways they’re getting worse. What happened to all the early warning systems we put in? What happened to the improvements in EU aid – they’re double-counting 033-043 GELDOF N. 29-30 ingl. 19-04-2006 18:33 Pagina 35 again. None of it is working. And there are all these new forces at play which nobody properly understands.” “Come and see me when you get back,” said Blair. I did. What began to form in my mind was that the notion that all the paradigms for development were outdated. They were based on the thinking of the Brandt report which had examined the relationship between the rich and poor worlds at the end of the 1970s – under the tutelage of eld- er statesmen including the former German chancellor Willy Brandt and the former British prime minister Edward Heath. The Brandt Commission’s report North-South had come up with the concept that “enlightened self-interest” was needed if the North was to prevent an eventual violent explosion of discontent by the poor people of the global South. But Brandt’s analysis was out of date. It was a product of Cold War thinking. Since then, the Berlin Wall had fallen. Apartheid had crumbled. September 11, 2001 had scarred the psyche of the Western world. Globalization had accelerated and the world was no longer divided into power blocs. Instead, the tectonic faultlines were those of trade. A new commission was needed. And this time it must not be run by politicians in retirement but by those in power. 35 Eventually, several meetings later, Tony Blair and his chancellor, Gordon Brown, were persuaded. In February 2004 the prime minister announced a Commission for Africa made up of 17 commissioners, a majority of them African, from the worlds of government, business and the development sector. They included two prime ministers, a president and two finance ministers – and one half-assed Irish pop-singer. BEATING THE SKEPTICS. The launch of the Commission was greeted with a fair degree of skepticism. “Why do we need a Commission? Everyone knows what Africa needs” was a common response. So we asked people to tell us. We held consultations in 49 individual countries across Africa, in every G8 country, throughout Europe, in India and in China. The seminar we held in Italy – “The Future of Africa: the Commitment of Italian Society” hosted by Aspen Institute Italia in Rome in Oc- tober 2004 - was one of the most stimulating. In addition to the creative thinking that came out of the day itself, participants contributed a series of essays that made an enormous contribution to the Commission’s thinking. Globally, we received over 300 formal submissions and examined the vast wealth of analysis on aid, development and economic management over the last 50 years. At the end of it we were in a much better position to say what works and what does 033-043 GELDOF N. 29-30 ingl. 19-04-2006 18:33 Pagina 36 not, and to learn from past failures and successes. Our report reflects that. Reveal- ingly it comes to a rather different conclusion from many of those offered to us as self- evident at the outset by the riders of hobby-horses who had assured us Africa’s real problem was aid/trade/debt/AIDS/lack of clean water (delete as inapplicable) and that if we just started there then everything else would follow. We concluded none of these things. What we did conclude was that one factor un- derlies all sub-Saharan Africa’s difficulties over the past 40 years. It is the weakness of governance and the absence of an effective state. The term “poor governance” is often used to mean widespread corruption and un- sound government policies which discourage economic growth. Small wonder that in one African language, Wolof, the word politig has come to mean lying or deception. Bad policies and corruption are certainly problems for Africa – and the Commission offers recommendations to deal with them – but the core problem is less dramatic yet even more serious. Good governance is about much more than sound policies. Governments must be able to put those policies into effect. A number of practical factors constrain the capacity 36 of African states to do this. Africa has had insufficient money to invest in technology, health and education systems, roads, power grids, telecoms, affordable housing and water supply and sanitation. It has poor quality systems for the collection of da- ta, without which government policies can neither be properly formulated nor accu- rately monitored. Its civil servants, in national and local government, often do not have the training to analyze complex information or plan and budget effectively. The quality of management and incentive systems have been poor. Public servants are also being hit by AIDS. In Zambia, teachers are dying faster than they can be trained. What that means is that all the administrative machinery which is taken for granted by the citizens of developed nations – “capacity” in development jargon – is lacking. That is why one of the Commission’s main recommendations was that donors make a major investment to improve Africa’s capacity – starting with its system of higher education (particularly in science and technology) and working through the building of systems and staff in local and national governments, and also in transnational bodies like the African Union and the ten regional economic communities which are developing in west, east, central and southern Africa. This is at the heart of the Commission’s report. It is an understanding which, fortu- nately, has begun to take root all across Africa in the past few years. 033-043 GELDOF N. 29-30 ingl. 19-04-2006 18:33 Pagina 37 BACK TO THE FUTURE. Outside commentators tend to live in the past on the subject of Africa. They talk about economic stagnation and a continent dominated by corrupt dictators. There is, sadly, still plenty of that about. But those characteristics were set in the era of the Cold War during which both superpower blocs gave aid not to those who were poorest but to countries they saw as strategic allies. The result was the propping up of corrupt dictators who stuffed their own personal Swiss bank ac- 37 counts with money looted from the African people. “He may be a son-of-a-bitch,” a US leader said of one tyrant, “but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” But the Cold War is over. Apartheid has crumbled. A new self-assurance is sweeping the African continent. Change is starting everywhere. Twenty years ago it was com- monplace for African countries to be run as dictatorships; today such governments are a minority. In the past five years, more than two-thirds of the countries in sub-Saha- ran Africa have had multiparty elections – some freer and fairer than others – with a number of examples of peaceful democratic changes of government. War has given way to peace in many places. And though overall continental economic stagnation is still the norm, growth exceeded 5% in 24 separate countries in 2003. A new entrepreneurship is in evidence and in several countries there is a growing mid- dle class. A rich variety of pressure groups and community organizations are beginning to change the world around them and learning how to hold their governments to account. 033-043 GELDOF N. 29-30 ingl. 19-04-2006 18:33 Pagina 38 Also striking is the role of Africans living in the developed world. The flow of cash back home to Africa from relatives abroad is still low, compared with other developing re- gions, but it has increased dramatically in recent years.

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