By Norm Dixon
Soon after US President Bill Clinton departed from the tiny Ugandan town of Mukono, a poor peasant named Paladi surveyed his shattered two-room house and his meagre possessions strewn about the chook yard. A huge wind caused by the US chief's helicopters had flattened his house. The symbolism of the scene will not be lost on critics of US policy in Africa. After the honey-coated speeches of Clinton's whirlwind tour of Africa have drifted into the dry air, ordinary Africans are likely to find themselves worse off.
On March 22, Clinton — accompanied by a 1000-strong army of journalists, aides, diplomats, secret service agents, corporate carpetbaggers and assorted hangers-on — began an 11-day, six-country tour of Africa. Upon his arrival in Accra, Ghana, Clinton declared: "My dream for this trip is that together we might do the things that mean 100 years from now your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of a new African renaissance."
But behind the flowery speeches promising a new "partnership" based on "trade not aid" and an end to "dependence" is the harsh reality that US capitalism is moving to "recolonise" the continent. The US is keen to drive home its political and economic edge over its European economic rivals as French imperialism's influence in the region weakens.
Clinton's central objective is to sell his government's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to Africa's new generation of leaders. The bill recently passed the House of Representatives with the support of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It has yet to pass the Senate.
The main beneficiaries of the AGOA will be huge US corporations. The bill allows for an expansion in the number of products from sub-Saharan Africa eligible for duty-free entry to the US, removes some quotas on textiles and clothing imports, and provides US$650 million in assistance to US corporations which invest in Africa, especially infrastructure projects. The AGOA envisages the creation of a US-Africa free trade zone.
A country must convince the US that it is deregulating its economy sufficiently to be eligible for free access to the US market and limited debt relief. The AGOA requires the president to annually determine that each country "has established, or is making continual progress toward establishing, a market-based economy".
Each country must satisfy the US that it is making "progress" on 12 specific points. These include: reducing tariffs and other trade barriers; protecting intellectual and other property rights; reducing corporate taxes; "controlling government consumption" (i.e. cutting government spending); removing restrictions on foreign investment; eliminating favourable treatment for local investors; and privatising government enterprises.
The bill's concessions are dependent on a country complying with existing International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs, which almost inevitably result in health and education budgets being slashed.
The bill has been condemned by African activists, as well as pro-Africa groups in the US. In South Africa on March 15, more than 150 delegates from 29 organisations attending a conference organised by the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa voted to demonstrate against Clinton when he travelled through South Africa.
Protests will be aimed at the Clinton administration's "refusal to cancel African and Third World debt, subjugating innocent people to perpetual misery, and because his neo-liberal policies and his country's influence in the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation are explicitly against Africa's interests", CANSA stated.
Professor Akin Oyebode from the University of Lagos told the Pan African News Agency the AGOA was "a very crude neo-colonialist diktat". However, "since Africa's nuisance value is marginal, with the continent accounting for only 2% of total world trade, African countries ready to do business with the US are being told to shape up or ship out". The legislation aims at the "Latin Americanisation of Africa", Oyebode said.
Randall Robinson, president of the Washington-based group TransAfrica, which played an important role in the 1980s campaign against apartheid South Africa, said that the AGOA "combines the worst terms of both the North American Free Trade Agreement and harsh IMF structural adjustment programs ... The bill is crafted more to provide unfettered foreign access to Africa's public, mineral and other resources than it is about Africa's development."
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader warned that African companies will be "run into the ground by multinational corporations moving into local economies ... This is the corporatisation of American foreign policy."
Friends of the Earth US argues that the AGOA will force African countries to throw open their environments to mining, forestry and export cash cropping at the expense of small peasants and locally-owned industries. Big western firms will snap up privatised public utilities for a song.
Rather than force Africans to tow the neo-liberal line, supporters of Africa argue that the continent's debilitating foreign debt should be abolished and the money spent on social needs. Africa owes more than US$200 billion to the IMF, the World Bank and western banks, Oxfam International's Justin Forsyth told the March 23 Washington Post. Debt repayments claim almost 80% of sub-Saharan countries' annual foreign exchange earnings.
"In a continent where one in every five children dies before the age of five and where only half of all children go to primary school, governments transfer four times as much money in debt service to developed countries as they spend on health and education", Forsyth pointed out.