"We have to end the situation according to which our continent seems condemned to the increasing impoverishment of its people, continuing underdevelopment, and global marginalization," said South African president Thabo Mbeki, chairman of the organization, who opened the two-day conference.

Mbeki urged steps toward the "further political and economic integration of our continent and, therefore, its unity. [The organization’s program] says that our peoples need democracy, good governance, the eradication of corruption, human rights, peace, and stability."

The South African president told the conference that the "masses require human development, necessitating that we eradicate poverty and attend to such questions as food scarcity, health, education, clean water, housing, gender equality, safety and security, and a healthy environment." Mbeki added that Africa has to "cease being merely an exporter of raw materials and an exporter of capital to the developed world because of an unsustainable debt burden."

According to World Bank figures, the total debt of countries in sub-Sahara Africa stands at $170 billion, more than half their yearly gross domestic product. At the end of 1999, 33 of the 41 countries they classify as "heavily indebted poor countries" in the world are in the region. Life expectancy at birth is 47 years, with an infant mortality rate of 92 per 1,000 births. Indeed, life expectancy has fallen over the past decade in at least six countries due to the explosive spread of AIDS. Illiteracy for adult males is 31 percent of the population and 48 percent for adult women.

Since 1995 commercial energy use and electric power consumption have actually fallen across the region, as has per capita foreign aid. The latter has declined from about $32 per person to around $20 in just five years.

The African Union replaces the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which was founded in 1963 as anticolonial struggles swept the continent. The African Union charter reportedly marks a shift from the OAU policy of nonintervention in domestic affairs. The African Union plans to establish an African peacekeeping force with authority to intervene in member countries under the guise of halting genocide, war crimes, or supposed violations of human rights. Leaders at the meeting also agreed to work toward setting up a pan-African parliament and a court of justice, among other institutions.

In the months preceding the founding of the African Union, Mbeki crisscrossed the globe campaigning to win support for a series of proposal he and other African heads of state made at the Group of Eight conference held at the end of June in Canada. The G-8, as it is known, is comprised of the imperialist governments of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Russia is also an associate member.  
 
Proposals to imperialist governments
Mbeki, along with the presidents of Nigeria, Senegal, and Algeria, launched the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) at the conference in Canada. The main requests made of the imperialist countries were for $64 billion in financial aid in grants instead of loans; a reduction in foreign debt; a decrease in agricultural export subsidies in major capitalist countries; and more market access for African agricultural commodities. The plan also includes development of regional infrastructure projects, such as building an electric-grid system to make energy available and less costly across southern Africa.

Largely brushing aside action on the requests, the G-8 group said it could provide only $6 billion in yearly aid starting in 2006 to the NEPAD initiative. This response brought rapid condemnation from many organizations in Africa.

"With NEPAD, we had a lot of expectation, and as usual they talked about wanting to help Africa but no concrete commitment was given," said Elvis Musiba, chairman of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Agriculture.

The director of the South African Catholic Bishop’s Conference said the G-8 "recycled stale commitments without saying how and when they would act." In Kenya, the Daily Nation said the G-8 appeared to be more interested in other issues, but what "the industrialized countries must realize is that Africa and its myriad problems cannot be wished away. There will be no globalization if a large part of the globe is left to fester in its own rot."

U.S. treasury secretary Paul O’Neill dismissed debt relief as a solution, with the callous remark, "Even if we forgave all debts, many of these countries still couldn’t fund their own budgets and would immediately have to borrow more."  
 
U.S. subsidies devastate African farmers
The governments in Europe, Japan, and the United States spend some $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies. The head of the United Nations Development Program estimates that these subsidies cost semicolonial countries about $50 billion a year in lost agricultural exports.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted how U.S. farm subsidies depressed prices on the world market, undermining competition from farmers in Africa and elsewhere. The United States is the world’s largest exporter of cotton while West Africa is the third largest, the article stated.

"Armed with roughly $3.4 billion in subsidy checks, U.S. farmers last year harvested a record crop of 9.74 billion pounds of cotton, aggravating a U.S. glut and pushing down prices far below the break-even price for most growers around the world," the Journal noted.

With the drop in world prices the U.S. government program ensures its farmers fetch roughly 70 cents a pound of cotton, making up for any shortfall in the market with federal checks. In contrast, last year farmers in Mali received 13 cents a pound after expenses, and this season they are estimated to receive about 11 cents. They harvested a record crop but the state-owned cotton company, which runs Mali’s cotton industry, incurred losses.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average net worth of cotton farmers in the United States is about $800,000. Many of these wealthy farmers will receive half their income from government subsidies this year. Farmers in Mali live in one of the least developed regions in the world where there is generally no electricity, no telephone service, and no running water.

Meanwhile, severe hunger is ravaging millions of toilers in Africa while Washington’s farm subsidies are plundering the economies of countries throughout the continent. African farm leaders and other government officials have been speaking out against the effects of the imperialist trade assault on semicolonial countries.

"The Americans know that with their subsidies they are killing so many economies in the developing world," said Mody Diallo, a leader of the farmers’ union in the regional center of Bougouni in Mali. "This is where America is heading. It wants to dominate the world economically and militarily."

At the World Food Summit held in Italy this past June, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika called for the "removal of restrictions to foreign markets and the practices which distort trade."

Harvests in southern Africa have been devastated for the past two years by alternating droughts and floods. According to a UN report 13 million people in six southern African countries--Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe--are facing famine unless they receive food aid. Officials in the region say 20 million people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. The UN-sponsored food conference in Rome noted that Africa’s food crisis was worsened by the AIDS virus, which has killed 7 million farmers in the past 20 years. Of the 40 million people around the world who are infected by the HIV virus that causes AIDS, more than 70 percent or 28.5 million live in Africa.
 
 
Related articles:
African economic demands  
 
 
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