From Africa Recovery, Vol.17 #2 (July 2003), page 10

Africa struggles for global attention

Concern that Iraq focus will be at continent's expense

By Gumisai Mutume

Concern is growing among governments, policymakers and civil society groups that the international community is sidelining African priorities as it focuses on the crisis in Iraq. "My appeal to the main donors is that while they should attend to the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, Africa is also in dire need of resources to get rid of poverty, to be able to get safe water, to get education and so on," Ugandan Finance Minister Gerald Ssendaula said during a recent visit to Washington, DC. UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Carolyn McAskie reinforced these concerns at a New York press conference in May. Drawing attention to Africa's "forgotten emergencies," she recalled that last year international donor focus was on Afghanistan, before that Kosovo and now Iraq.

Since the September 2001 attacks on the US, the government of President George W. Bush and its allies markedly shifted their foreign policy emphasis towards fighting international terrorism. Subsequently they waged two wars -- removing the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan and President Saddam Hussein in the oil-rich Persian Gulf state of Iraq. Now, massive resources are being ploughed into humanitarian assistance and reconstruction in the two countries.

Photo : ©WFP / Brenda Barton

In March, the World Food Programme (WFP) launched its single biggest humanitarian appeal ever -- for $1.6 bn to assist Iraq's 27 million people -- as part of a broader UN effort. Five days later, the WFP, which depends on donations for its programmes, announced that it had received "a mammoth $260 mn from the US," and that Germany had donated $6.5 mn and Canada $4.2 mn. By June, donors had pledged the full amount required by the WFP for Iraq.

Meanwhile, the WFP's long-standing emergency appeal for $1.8 bn to feed 40 million people in Africa was greeted with less enthusiasm and remains $1 bn short. In April, WFP Executive Director James Morris described the different donor responses to Iraq and Africa as "a double standard." Why, he asked, do international donors "routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa we would never accept in any other part of the world?"

One of the worst-affected countries on the continent is Ethiopia, where some 12.6 mn people are threatened by starvation if there is no urgent response to appeals for assistance. "The situation in Ethiopia has been under-reported," the US Ambassador to the UN food agencies, Mr. Tom Hall, said recently. "Iraq and Afghanistan have taken up a lot of the news." The US is Ethiopia's leading donor and has so far provided 40 per cent of emergency food assistance this year.

Political will

Responding to critics, US government officials maintain that the focus on Iraq has not been at the expense of other regions. "I can categorically say that no money or resources have gone permanently to Iraq that would have gone to other recipients of American assistance," US Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Andrew Natsios said. "The reality is that all of the money that is being used in Iraq comes from a separate budget appropriation."

Mr. Natsios acknowledged, however, that confusion could have arisen from the fact that before the appropriation was approved, "we did take funds from regular USAID programmes with the agreement from Congress that they would all get reimbursed."

Some critics point out that the problem is not just one of limited resources amid multiple crises, but also of political will. "The speed with which political will and resources are mobilized to invade and bomb and possibly reconstruct Iraq are in stark contrast to the willingness of the rich countries to tackle poverty in Africa," Oxfam International's advocacy director, Mr. Phil Twyford, charged. For instance, in April the US Congress appropriated $79 bn for the initial costs of the Iraq war and for reconstruction. Such an amount would be adequate to finance HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes in low- and middle-income countries for about 10 years, based on UN estimates of the total costs. Yet the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has raised only $2 bn since the initiative's creation in 2001.

And in May it was reported that UK Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, who was to head a UN Security Council mission to seven countries in Africa, postponed the trip to help formulate a US-backed Security Council resolution aimed at lifting sanctions on Iraq. The influential Washington Post newspaper commented that the postponement not only reflected the degree to which the Council's focus on Iraq overshadowed other crises, "but also how powerful nations in the body can monopolize its attention on problems that they want solved while leaving others to fester."

For instance, disagreements among the major powers in the Security Council stalled a French-backed UN proposal to deploy multinational peacekeepers to Côte d'Ivoire in April. The peacekeepers were needed to complement forces from the Economic Community of West African States and from France already serving in the country, torn by months of civil war. In May, another urgent appeal for more peacekeepers for the Democratic Republic of Congo also suffered from political disagreements among the major powers.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

After an initial rush by US humanitarian groups to participate in Iraqi reconstruction, some have withdrawn, citing security concerns and the need to deploy staff and resources to other more pressing crises around the world. In June, three of the country's largest humanitarian organizations, Care, Worldvision and the International Rescue Committee, did not apply for new funding under USAID's community action programme for Iraq.

"We weren't going to rob Peter and pay Paul and take people from other regions to send to Iraq," noted Worldvision Vice-President David Robinson. He said that the organization wanted to focus on Africa, where, the agency felt, there is a more pressing humanitarian need for its services.

Commentators have also noted that while there is an equally pressing need to forgive the debts of poorer developing countries, the US is calling for the write-off of only Iraq's foreign debt, estimated at between $62 bn and $130 bn. US Treasury Secretary John Snow says that "the Iraqi people cannot bear the burden of current debt levels." The US has specifically requested France, Russia and Kuwait -- Iraq's main creditors -- to cancel or reschedule that country's debt.

Former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz observes a double standard in US policy over debt forgiveness. He says while the US is calling for mechanisms to restructure Iraq's debt, it opposes the use of such mechanisms by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when dealing with other countries. Stiglitz told journalists in France recently that Washington is in effect saying: "I want this mechanism only for Iraq ... but I don't want such a mechanism where the US is owed money."

Despite receiving treatment under a World Bank and IMF debt reduction programme, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, sub-Saharan Africa's total debt stood at $204 bn last year. This was down from a peak of $231 bn in 1996, but significantly above the $177 bn registered at the beginning of the 1990s.

Neglected priorities

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan notes that Africa has rarely faced "the kind of intersecting challenges we see today." They include food insecurity, an escalating HIV/AIDS crisis, a number of armed conflicts and "an emaciated capacity to govern and provide services."

Photo : ©Jake Price

Urgently addressing these issues requires a new integrated response from governments in Africa and the international community, Mr. Annan told the recent G-8 summit in France. "It requires a shift from short-term approaches to a reassessment of our entire strategy for development -- or taking long-term measures even when addressing short-term emergencies." Importantly, he told the summit, there is a need to reverse the "alarming decline" in official aid for African agriculture that fell from $4 bn to $2.6 bn during the last decade. "You, the richest governments in the world, are among those best placed to provide these resources," he said.

But on the continent there is scepticism about changes in donor responses. The director general of the South African president's office, Dr. Frank Chikane, notes that terrorism and war as a means of resolving human problems are currently overshadowing African priorities such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the continental development framework adopted in 2001. For about a year, "many of us in the engine room of this noble African project" hoped that the response to the September 2001 attacks on the US would not put the strategy on the back burner and set the continent back by many years, he says. "Our little light of hope could be smothered by the weight of this new international crisis," he warns.

Lesotho's Finance Minister Timothy Thahane says many of the challenges facing Africa, such as attracting investment and dealing with HIV/AIDS, require long-term commitments, and these areas suffer the most when the focus shifts. "As people's attention goes," said Mr. Thahane, "you start all over again, you lose momentum."

Some, however, feel that there could be a silver lining. The current situation "may well present African countries a forced opportunity to reform their high dependency on donor funds from the North," notes Mr. Akintola Odutola of the Centre for Health and Strategic Studies in Lagos, Nigeria. He says many countries depend, "perhaps too willingly, on foreign aid for basic survival."

Mr. Adutola's sentiments echo those of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who feels that the diminished attention will force the continent to look inwards to a greater extent: "We will have to rely on ourselves, our own resources and our own efforts."

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