Editorial
Africa and the West – Talking Past Each Other
AU Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, AU Chairman Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, European Council president Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso at the AU – EU summit. PHOTO/Reuters
Brussels, Belgium | On the sidelines of the recently concluded summit between the European Union and various African countries, a high-ranking diplomat came away angry. ‘I am tired of these white people talking at us,’ he said. Apparently, a European Union Trade Negotiator had, essentially, told him that African countries must sign their (European) economic partnership agreements (EPAs) by October 2014 or else lose “whatever benefits the Europe sends to Africa”.
Ultimately, this same diplomat vowed not to return to the European Union. He was neither going to be lectured nor taught how to manage his country’s affairs.
On the other side of the room, Ugandan and Nigerian diplomats were still being berated for their countries positions on homosexuality, openly gay ministers from Nordic countries – were also vehemently opposed to the 2 countries’ presence at the annual event.
The Habari Network has suggested that, perhaps, Africa ought to get its collective act together and simply stop depending on the West for help. Our diplomat agreed and said that aid was not necessarily the issue. It was the fact that the Europeans and Westerners believed that because they doled out morsels to prop up certain elements of African economies, they had a right to tell others what to do.
Invariably, the conversation turned to what Africa had to do to wean itself off International aid and the sorts of things that came with the ‘beggar-my-neighbor’ sentiment involved here. The solution, the diplomat suggested, does not lie in being equal or being stronger than the other. In simple terms, the binary of East or West; US versus Them, is no longer applicable in a lot of situation. This is a much more multilateral world than anything else. Not only is China keen to do business with Africa. Japan has stepped up – and then there’s Brazil, Turkey and a whole slew of aggressive businesses in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The confident populace of Africa are ready to do business and so much dependence cannot be put on the European Union and the West, especially if both parties will not mutually benefit from the transactions. The frustration of this diplomat was that he felt the African partners were essentially demeaned and arrogantly talked at by their supposed partners – the Europeans.
So we were curious to know, why then do Africans continue to attend this summit. Well, the response went, “we must continue to engage with our former colonial masters”. But what we must not continue to do is let them talk at us. The diplomat suddenly paused and said we do not actually communicate since they do not care to know what we really think and feel. This in-turn simply makes us suspicious of their real motives.
There is another dynamic to all this, we were told. If you have too much power centered in the hands of only a few people, you will have people coming to tell you how to run your lives – and you will not be able to handle the situation as best as you ought to. Suggestively, these sort of things will continue to happen if the West does not have enough information and the Africans – or whichever economy is on the receiving end – do not really have the wherewithal to resist things that they do not necessarily agree with.
Talking past each other, we gathered, was at the heart of what is happening with Uganda and the rest of the world. It was in Brussels that we learned that the World Bank was going to reject Uganda’s request for a US$90 million dollar loan for the country’s health sector. On the surface, it seems like a cruel thing for a major development institution to reject a country’s need for developmental funds. However, the point to all this is that if a country is going to discriminate against a section of its population – however small – they do not deserve the World Bank’s money.
But on the other hand, our investigation found out that had Uganda provided a comprehensive response as to why they had chosen to implement the anti-homosexuality law, it would have kick-started a conversation that could have led to a position more palatable to the World Bank.
Simply, much of the West did not know what Uganda was thinking – and Uganda appears not to appreciate that the West would like them to recognize the fact that the world is a lot more interconnected for anyone not to help everyone else have a proper exegesis of their actions – however popular the anti-homosexuality law is with the Ugandans themselves.
When we left off, both the diplomat and ourselves agreed that the ‘talking past each other’ was essentially on both the West and on the Africans as well. And the diplomat conceded that the Africans have also been a little “bone headed” when it comes to dealing with the West. How can we expect, he opined, the West to keep giving us their taxpayers’ money and not account for it by talking or engaging them in the way they know how. We should have proper communication strategies and should start the process of taking advantage of this thing called social media.
At this juncture, the dinner hall had begun to thin out. The wine was still flowing and the hostesses were starting usher people back to their hotels. The part of Brussels that hosts the European Union is beautiful both in the day and night – setting the stage for a pleasant and warm post-summit social event that evening.
What was especially surprising is that at the after party we found ourselves at, the Africans kept to ourselves and the whites also kept to themselves. The few fellows that mingled received hostile looks from the other Africans. The Habari Network discussed this issue with the diplomat. All the discussants agreed that we are in trouble, if we cannot even connect at the social level.
Editorial Board | The Habari Network