About 200 organisations from around Africa, including representatives NGOs, trade unions, women's organisations, farmers and young people's groups met in Bamako, Mali, recently to prepare African inputs to the World Social Forum held at the end of January.

They resolved, among other things, that globalization is just a new and more acceptable term for imperialism, that double standards were being applied with the selective imposition of rules about trade to the detriment of Africa. They expressed concern that the "New Partnership for Africa's Development" (NEPAD) was based on accepting the neo-liberal analysis and strategies of the rich countries and was therefore not acceptable as a basis for planning Africa's future.

The importance of the African Social Forum was in presenting development in Africa as a political issue about power to decide on Africa's future. For too long development has focussed on the physical consequences of this unjust world order and has limited itself to addressing the lack of water, health, incomes, basic services etc. This has led to NGOs becoming instruments of neo-liberal globalisation that have colluded in undermining the state by providing services and using funding destined for them. (For a fuller report see below).

Sustainable development is about much more than the rise and fall of GNP. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential under conditions where there is respect for human dignity and human rights. The goal of sustainable development must be human freedom, and the measure of its success must be a measure of the extent to which citizens of a country are able to exercise that freedom. But, as Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, has argued in his book 'Development as Freedom', "Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means." Development should be seen as a process of expanding freedoms. "If freedom is what development advances, then there is a major argument for concentrating on that overarching objective, rather than on some particular means, or some chosen list of instruments". To achieve development, he argues, requires not only the removal of poverty, lack of economic opportunities, social deprivation, and neglect of public services, but also the removal of tyranny and the machinery of repression.

Such a view is in contrast to what has become the 'conventional wisdom' of development that sees economic growth as both the means and the end. Development, the story goes, is possible only if there is growth. And growth is equated with the 'right' of a minority to amass wealth. Only when this freedom is unrestricted will others in society benefit from any associated spin-offs (the trickle-down effect). All other freedoms are only achievable if such growth occurs. The purpose of 'development' is, therefore, to guarantee 'growth' so that ultimately other freedoms can, at some indeterminate time in the future, be enjoyed. Such a view has increasingly been associated with the international financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) whose influence on economic policy - especially in Africa - has been so pervasive. State expenditure, according to this view, should be directed towards creating an enabling environment for 'growth', and not be 'wasted' on the provision of public services that, in any case, can ultimately be provided 'more efficiently' by private enterprise. This is the approach that, as Professor Sen points out, makes socially useful members of society such as school-teachers and health workers feel more threatened by development policies than do army generals.

Such an approach to development has had dire consequences for the developing world in general and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Of the nearly 5 billion people in the developing world, more than 850 million are illiterate; 325 million boys and girls are denied schooling; 2.4 billion have no access to basic sanitation. More than 30,000 children under the age of 5 years die each day from preventable causes. And some 1.2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Add to that the fact that more than 36 million people were living with AIDS. Of the 36 million people living with HIV/AIDS, 70% are to be found in sub-Saharan Africa.

Only 60% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa are literate in the region, as compared with 73% in the rest of the developing world. Life expectancy at birth is less than 49 years, and nearly half the population survives on less than $1 a day. Economic growth in the region has fallen during the last 25 years, with GDP per capita growth averaging -1%. Per capita income in 1960 was about 1/9th of that in high-income OECD countries, but by 1998 it had fallen to 1/18th.

Sub-Saharan Africa's massive external debt, estimated at more than $300 billion is perhaps the single largest obstacle to development and economic independence. The 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa spend $13.5 billion each year repaying debts to foreign creditors. Over the last 20 years, African countries have paid out more in debt service to foreign creditors than they have received in development assistance or in new loans. Trade liberalization associated with the Structural Adjustment Programmes may have increased the importance of international trade for Africa, but the region's share of world trade has declined.

But it is not that sub-Saharan Africa is devoid of wealth. There is abundant mineral wealth in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in South Africa and elsewhere. Yet it is this very abundance of natural resources that has led to vicious competition for access and control, frequently supported by outside vested interests. The result has been armed conflict, mass displacement of people, torture and ill treatment, and frank impunity for the perpetrators. Unarmed civilians have frequently been the victims of such conflicts with killings, amputations, rape and other forms of sexual abuse and abductions being rife in countries such as Sierra Leone, the DRC, and Burundi. Angola, which has seen an estimated 500,000 people killed since 1989 and an estimated 3 million refugees. It is also being torn apart directly as a consequence over the competition for resources such as diamonds and offshore oil, with various factions fighting for these prizes.

But, as Mahmood Mamdani has pointed out, despite the current dogmas, "the story of independent Africa is not one of unremitting decline. The first two decades of independence were decades of moderate progress. Between 1967 and 1980 more than a dozen African countries registered a growth rate of 6% […] To be sure there was a downside. That was that the failure to transform agriculture, and thus to bring the vast majority of the population into the development process. This shortcoming in economic policy went alongside and was sustained by a political authoritarianism."

The economic policies followed by many African countries, frequently under pressure from international financial institutions, have resulted in high levels of income equality. And it is this that has created instability in the region. Development policies have, it is true, resulted in enrichment. But it has been the rich in these countries who have been getting richer, while the poor have become poorer. According the UNDP, "In 16 of the 22 Sub-Saharan countries with data for the 1990s, the poorest 10% of the population had less than 1/10 of the income of the richest 10%, and in 9 less than 1/20." Marked, and growing, inequalities have had serious consequences on the social fabric of these countries. It has resulted in massive social exclusion, the growth in organized street crime, disillusionment with the political process, and the growth in the appeal for the use of violence for political ends. Faced with growing discontentment, corruption, abuse of state power, many governments have become intolerant of legitimate protest and political opposition. The use of excessive force to deal with public and political discontent has become all too common, as vividly illustrated by the current crisis in Zimbabwe where, as a result of recent legislation, it has become illegal to criticize the president.

Time has come for there to be substantial changes to current approaches to development. Ten years ago at the "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro, Governments committed themselves to a plan of action known as Agenda 21. Principle 5 of that plan stated that:

"All States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world."

"But commitments alone", as the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Anan has put it, "have proven insufficient to the task. We have not yet fully integrated the economic, social and environmental pillars of development, nor have we made enough of a break with the unsustainable practices that have led to the current predicament."

The Jury at the International People's Tribunal on Debt, convened at the recent the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, called for the external debt to be declared "as fraudulent, illegitimate and the cause of the loss of national sovereignty and the quality of life of the majority of the population of the South". Similar proclamations are needed in the build up to the World Social Summit on Sustainable Development scheduled to be held in Johannesburg 26 August to 4 September. One hopes that the alternative view from African civil society organizations will be heard loud and clear. Southern African NGOs have already organized. We hope in forthcoming issues of Pambazuka News to provide regular coverage to statements from African civil society organizations.

Firoze Manji, Fahamu - Learning for change

http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/web_pages/prepcom_one_statement_by_sangos.pdf
South Africa to hold Rio+10 Summit: http://www.un.org/rio+10/web_pages/rio+10_summit.htm
Text of the UN General Assembly Decision: http://www.un.org/rio+10/web_pages/resolution.htm
The Rio+10 Summit Meeting: http://www.un.org/rio+10/flat/riosummitmeeting.htm
Earth Summit 2002 website: http://www.earthsummit2002.org/www.sustainabledevelopment.gov.uk/search_by/subject/wssd4.htm