“We come from a people who, because they would not accept to be treated as subhuman, redeemed the dignity of all humanity everywhere” Nelson Mandela’s address To The Parliament Of Canada, Ottawa, Canada 18 June 1990
After a “successful” first U.S.-Africa Summit last week attended by as many as 50 Presidents and Prime Ministers, my interest is purely as usual academic. According to the host President Barack Obama, the summit was premised on “…a new model of partnership between America and Africa — a partnership of equals that focuses on your capacity to expand opportunity and strengthen democracy and promote security and peace “. With such “partnership of equals” in which one partner (read; United States of America) could confidently host and almost talk at as many as 50 partner-countries of Africa, the world certainly needs a redefinition of equality/partnership equation in which one equals fifty.
Certainly Africa (Sorry,50 Presidents and Prime Ministers from Africa) need(s) urgently a new “Idiot’s Guide to (In)equality”. And that Guide can certainly not come from United States of America. United States of America’s 16 plus trillion dollars GDP certainly remains the biggest economy in the world. The challenger economy,China’s GDP is $8trillion, half of America’s wealth. But America is also the most unequal country on earth. Studies indicate the richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Indeed in recent times economic inequality has reportedly worsened significantly in the United States.
Thus, US cannot offer what it does not have at home (i.e. equality) which perhaps explains why President Barack Obama gleefully equated one country of his to some 50 African countries. It is also instructive that three or so African countries were not invited to the Washington “historic summit” to be hosted ever by any American President and in this case, an African American President. The excluded countries included predictably Zimbabwe and Sudan whose Presidents are far from being friends of America anyway, raising the question (whether) the summit was informed by friendship or partnership. At least America in line with the principle of transparency and accountability guiding any partnership should have made it known that the concluded Summit was with Africa minus those countries not invited, in which case it would be clear to an alien from the outer space that this “partnership” was with some countries in Africa not necessarily with the Africa union! Also observers of global events wonder aloud why did the first “historic ” summit between Africa and US hold in Washington and not on the African soil? Of course President Obama had an answer when he said it was “….the largest gathering any American President has ever hosted with African heads of state and government” . Certainly what we had was a “gathering” of unequals rather than a summit of partners.
The US meeting undoubtedly went the way of the familiar “summits” in which African heads of states were summoned to Beijing (Africa/China summit) and Ankara ( Africa/Turkish summit). Significantly this year marks the 57th anniversary of the independence of Ghana from British colonial rule, the first African country to lower the Union Jack. And that was 4 years before Barack Obama, was born (August 4, 1961). Both Barack Obama and his African guests would have been better dignified with the former’s 53rd birthday in Dares salam or Nairobi (he proudly reminded us that his father was a Kenyan!) rather than in Washington. Remarkably too, this year also marks the 51st anniversary of the formation of OAU/AU. It is certainly a collapse of dignity that Africa would be literally shut down a week long by its leaders for a summit in far away Washington. The promise of independence is that those who would engage with Africa must engage with it on the African soil.
It is debatable if the likes of Kwame Nkrumah and late Nelson Mandela were alive any foreign power (sorry; partner) would have dared to “gather” them (like a hoard of you-guess-what for an engagement outside the continent as our contemporary Africans uncritically did last week. It would be recalled that when Nelson Mandela was alive (both in and out of power) all those who engaged with Africa did so here. UN global conference on Xenophobia held in Durban in 2002 for instance.
There was a long list of serving heads of state and government that attended the state memorial service for Nelson Mandela on Tuesday, 10 December 2013 at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg who died on the 5 December 2013. The memorial service described “as one of the largest gatherings of world leaders” featured United States 39th President Jimmy Carter, 42nd President Bill Clinton and 43rd President George W. Bush. Of course the 44th serving President Barack Obama was there. I refuse to accept that less than a year Mandela passed on, Africa faces such crisis of leadership such that the corpse of Mandiba was better dignified by the world than living African Heads of state.
Certainly everybody knows that there is no free lunch in Washington. But that African leaders were treated to some free square meals ( or did they pay?) for a week long further created the bad impression of dependence which the struggle for independence once put an end to. The devils are in the details of the benefits of the concluded summit some of which included some promissory notes of billions of dollars worthy of investment. Some of these details further reinforce the dependency of Africa. Again Africa in a “partnership” keeps on receiving rather than giving. Or better still a dependency in which Africa through capital flight, corruption and round tripping visits to Europe and America by its Presidents and Prime Ministers keep on under-developing the continent.
By the way, it was refreshing that President Obama promised to hold the next YALI ( Young Africa Leaders institute) on African soil. He also changed YALI to Nelson Mandela young Leaders Institute. Again that is the problem. Must African young leaders discover Nelson Mandela in Washington instead of Abuja or Cape Town and Cairo? Commendably Barack Obama had Town Hall meeting with African youths. Will African leaders engage their citizens the way they were so engaged in Washington? It might not be dignifying to be so patronised, but African leaders must at least learn from Obama’s methodology of simplification of the art of governance.
ISSA AREMU mni
