The Sunday Mail
Howdy folks!
Today is that moment when the year-hand of my biological clock ticks upwards. It’s bitter-sweet to grow older; but comfort comes from Shirley Bassey’s popular saying: “You don’t get older, you get better.”
As I “get better”, I am also provoked by George Meredith’s words: “Don’t just count your years, make your years count.”
This message is also relevant to Africa as it will on Wednesday celebrate the birth of the founding charter that created the Organisation of African Unity, which has evolved into the African Union.
Fifty-three years after the signing of that charter, is Africa making its years count? Is it getting better? Or it’s just counting years as it gets older!
Folks, the onus to make Africa great squarely lies within every African’s efforts; Africans who, like Kwame Nkrumah, confess: “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.”
And the tie that binds our hearts in African love must not break.
While Africa Day celebrates African unity, it is sad to note that the day has not been made a public holiday in many African nations.
It is business as usual there, which is absurd to say the least.
Be that as it may, this is a week to reflect on your identity as a citizen of Africa and to invigorate the unity that lies in your heart. That continental unity is depicted on the African Union emblem by the plain map of Africa without boundaries in the inner circle.
It is pretty much summed up in one of the stanzas of the AU anthem, which goes: “Let us unite and toil together; To give the best we have to Africa; The cradle of mankind and fount of culture; Our pride and hope at break of dawn.”
In our collective wisdom as Zimbabweans, we have also realised the sanctity of African unity and enshrined it in our sacrosanct constitution.
We placed a weight of responsibility on the State in Section 12(2) of our Constitution, to “promote … Pan-African cultural, economic, and political cooperation and integration”.
We can only connect as Africans if the software of our hearts is powered by African unity, just like Nkrumah said: “It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African Unity.”
Folks, the books of history are laden with narratives on the painful trajectory that we travelled as Africans to be where we are today.
From colonialism to slavery and other ills, it indeed has been a long walk to freedom — lest we forget.
Poverty is still perpetuating that slavery, both mental and physical. Hundreds of Zimbabwean women are still stuck in Kuwait. They were lured into the rich Gulf nation by the claim of greener pastures.
It’s tempting to be given the “opportunity” to run away from poverty and go somewhere where the GDP per capita is US$52 000.
The poor women had high hopes. Yet, the grass wasn’t even grey there.
In fact, there was no grass at all, as the poor women’s dreams were totally shattered when they were sold into slavery, with some of abused as sex slaves.
Cry Africa cry, when those who have suckled your breast are still being tossed around like chaff!
Fifty-three years down the line, it is mind-boggling to realise we are still slaves to poverty. Yes, 43 percent of the continent’s citizenry live in extreme poverty, earning less than US$1,25 a day.
This in a continent that is one of the wealthiest in the world in terms of resource endowment!
Africa is home to circa 30 percent of the world’s known reserves of minerals, 10 percent of oil and eight percent of gas resources. The continent is also home to the largest cobalt, diamond, platinum and uranium reserves in the world.
How do you reconcile that?
The main challenge, or rather excuse, you hear is that there is no money to fully harness those resources and add value to them. And the national budgets for the majority of African nations can conveniently attest to that.
In his keynote speech at the Africa Outlook Conference in Johannesburg in January this year, Sim Tshabalala, Standard Bank Group’s chief executive, highlighted that African countries have little room to drive growth through fiscal and monetary expansion.
Affirmative!
For Zimbabwe, 80 percent of its national budget of US$4 billion goes to salaries. Just 20 percent goes to capital expenditure.
Africa is, “left with no option” but to convince itself it must extend its colossal begging bowl to those who have money to spare. And some of those benefactors put conditions that interfere with our sovereignty.
President Mugabe is on record saying, “Whereas Europe and America, when they give little funding assistance to countries, they always attach conditions. And that is our objection.”
In Malawi, Britain cut aid to the country in 2011 when that Africa country took an anti-gay stance. Malawi had to climb down.
Uganda lost aid after crafting laws that did not support homosexuality, with a Constitutional Court verdict reversing the law coming to its rescue.
Cry Africa cry when your children lose their identity for breadcrumbs.
While it appears Africa is in desperate need of FDI, there is a reckless side of the continent that needs serious interrogation and closure — illicit financial outflows (IFFs).
These are illegal movements of money or capital from one country to another — from Africa to other continents, in this case.
While Africa received FDI worth US$54 billion in 2014, IFFs amounted to US$50 billion.
Between 2009 and 2015, Zimbabwe received average annual FDI inflows of US$337 million. Yet, during the same period, Zimbabwe lost US$3 billion through IFFs — an annual average of US$500 million.
Here we are talking about money that has been generated from the blood, sweat and tears of Africa; money which is almost equal to, or surpasses in some cases, the levels of FDI.
The US$50 billion figure is only that of recorded cases.
And when we look at the incognito nature of these IFF transactions, chances are that the amounts are much higher.
If Africa is, therefore, begging for less, when it can prodigally give out much more, then what does Africa really need to get out of poverty?
Is Africa even poor if it can give out that much in return for less?
The interesting reality is that the money that is illegally being moved out of Africa eventually lands in the very developed nations that lend to Africa.
And it is cleverly recycled back to the continent in the form of loans that have to be paid back with interest.
For doing that “great service” to its lenders, all that Africa gets in return are “bad labels”.
Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently labelled Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” for illegally moving money to Britain. Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari responded, “I am not demanding an apology from anybody, I am demanding a return of (those) assets.”
Africa has an urgent decision to make.
Either to ignore the status quo and remain a supplier of wealth to others; or to deliberately take action to plug capital leakages.
If money stays in Africa, liquidity levels will be augmented and there will be more loanable funds available at no condition.
The availability of more loanable funds within Africa will also put pressure on lending rates to decline, thereby increasing the continent’s productive sectors’ appetite for investment.
The continent will realise that it does not need any aid at all. All it needs is accountability.
Measures to checkmate IFFs once and for all should be put in place, with full political will of African nations invested towards implementing them.
Focus should be on detecting and deterring cross-border tax evasion and eliminating of anonymous shell companies; strengthening anti-money laundering laws and practices; improving transparency of multinational corporations amongst a host of other measures.
If you look at the number of Africans or companies featuring in the Panama Papers, you will get a glimpse of how Africa’s systems are weak to the core.
The price of a business-as-usual approach is that Africa will remain a hotbed of undernourished, diseased, illiterate and underdeveloped people.
The African Union’s vision is that of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa; driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena. In interpreting this vision, Africa should not miscomprehend pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah’s words when he said: “Doubtless we shall make mistakes as have all other nations. We are human beings and hence fallible. But we can also try to learn from the mistakes of others so that we may avoid the deepest pitfalls into which they have fallen.”
In this case, we are the “all other nations” that we should learn from. We don’t need aid; we need accountability, stupid!
Later folks!
