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Africa: Canadian Aid Issues
Africa: Canadian Aid Issues
Date distributed (ymd): 990111
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains excerpts from a document on Canadian aid to Africa,
originally distributed by Partnership Africa Canada (PAC). The full text
is available on the PAC web site (http://www.web.net/pac).
The document calls both for reversing the decline in volume of aid, for
directing aid more effectively towards poverty elimination, and for debt
cancellation. For additional information, or to be included in Partnership
Africa Canada's e-mail service, see the contact information immediately
below.
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PACNET is an e-mail list service managed by Partnership Africa Canada
(PAC). Its aim is to provide a forum for sharing ideas and information
related to African development. The documents published come from a variety
of African, Canadian and international sources. NGOs in particular are
encouraged to offer material for publication.
PACNET is free to subscribers. To subscribe to PACNET, send an e-mail
message to: majordomo@list.web.net.
Leave the Subject blank and write in the Message: subscribe pacnet-l. To
leave the distribution list, write in the Message: unsubscribe pacnet-l.
PACNET documents already distributed can be found at the Partnership
Africa Canada web site: http://www.web.net/pac
Partnership Africa Canada gratefully acknowledges the support of its
members and of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
For more information, contact: Partnership Africa Canada, 323 Chapel
Street, 3rd Floor, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2, Canada. Tel: (613) 2376768.
Fax: (613)2376530. E-mail: pac@web.net
An Orientation to Canadian Development Cooperation with Sub-Saharan
Africa
January 8, 1999
Canadian ODA [Official Development Assistance] has fallen by 36% in
real terms since 1992. Canadian aid to sub-Saharan Africa, however, has
declined at a far greater rate during this period. These sobering facts
were brought home to participants at a public meeting organized by Partnership
Africa Canada and Alternatives in Ottawa on November 5, 1998. The meeting
addressed issues surrounding Canadian responses to crises in African countries.
Canadian aid remains much valued and respected. However, most people
would argue that its decline must be significantly reversed if Canada is
going to continue to play a leading role in helping to meet the new challenges
faced by African countries.
In this document, Brian Tomlinson of the Canadian Council for International
Cooperation (CCIC), makes the case for Canada's aid programme to be reformed.
He calls in particular for increased overall resources (especially for
sub-Saharan Africa) and for an agenda where ending poverty is a central
theme.
Further information can be found at the following web sites:
CCIC In Common campaign for global action against poverty:
http://www.incommon.web.net
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) policy documents:
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca
An Orientation to Canadian Development Cooperation with Sub-Saharan
Africa
Achieving progress in ending poverty will only result from bringing
the cumulative impact of all our policies to bear on creating opportunity
for those who have been marginalized by globalization and domestic economic
and social structures. Hence we cannot speak about aid alone. In our view,
the results of aid in development cooperation should be measured as much
by the standards and values it brings to the ensemble of foreign policies,
as by the efficacy of its programs on the ground. Aid is clearly important
as the primary external resource flow for many Sub-Saharan African countries.
It is an essential complement to domestic resources for poverty eradication,
and this makes it all the more imperative for those involved in the aid
regime to influence this broader policy agenda, where the interests of
Sub-Saharan Africa seem to be increasingly marginalized.
I want to briefly address three aspects of development cooperation that
affect the choices and options for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Together
they speak to the question of policy coherence. They are:
1) Focusing Aid on Ending Poverty; 2) Putting Emergency Aid in a Broader
Policy Context; and 3) Realizing Substantial Debt Cancellation.
1. Focusing Aid on Ending Poverty
CIDA now has in place a number of policies "on poverty reduction,
on women in development and gender equality and on meeting basic human
needs" that reflect the latest in development thinking. But it is
our view that taken together these policies offer little in the way of
an overall strategic framework for CIDA's interventions, and individually,
they set out only the vaguest plans for implementation.
Too often short-term commercial and political interests have defined
Canada's relations with developing countries. In the aid program, domestic
political pressures to use aid for commercial advantage and to spread resources
too thinly among many individual Canadian stakeholders, NGOs included,
compromises the fundamental mission to end poverty. With very limited resources,
aid cannot serve multiple political and commercial masters and be expected
to demonstrate coherent results for ending poverty, for empowering women
and encouraging gender equality, for improving governance and participation,
for addressing peacebuilding in countries emerging from conflict or for
promoting private sector development, among many other worthy goals. In
doing so, the results we expect from aid are unrealistic if aid is not
part of a broader foreign policy agenda.
We believe that Canadian ODA requires one unambiguous purpose rooted
in the ethical imperative to end poverty. Canadian ODA, with appropriate
domestic partners and other donors, can play a catalytic role in working
with the poor to create a more just world. CIDA as the lead agency of government
for development has a special role and responsibility to work with other
government departments to promote a "pro-poor" coherence in Canada's
contributions to development change. The starting point is not so much
the clarification of the stated purpose of ODA, but rather, of more importance,
is the operational imperatives of poverty eradication for CIDA and other
government policies affecting developing countries.
While aid is one of the few global resources that is capable of targeting
poverty, there are few overall indicators that donor programs are actually
targeting poverty. Recent studies by the Overseas Development Institute
in the UK on poverty targeting by European donors, including those of the
Nordic countries, reached some very pessimistic conclusions. There is no
comparable study for Canada. But there are some proxy indicators.
The 1998/99 edition of The Reality of Aid points to alarming statistics
for the decline of all donor assistance by 20% between 1992 and 1996, a
trend that has accelerated in the two years since 1996. Bilateral aid to
the 48 Least Developed Countries (LLDCs), 31 of which are African countries,
was less than 20% of bilateral commitments in 1996.
Global aid statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa are even more disturbing.
In 1994 aid to Sub Saharan Africa stood at $18.9 billion. In 1996 this
assistance had fallen to $16.7 billion - a real terms decline of 18% or
$3.7 billion. The region's share of total aid declined from 31% in 1994
to 28.6% in 1996. Aid fell in 31 African countries in 1996, in 26 of them
for the second year running. These statistics are not consistent with a
political commitment to work to end poverty.
We know that Canadian aid since 1992 has followed these trends, indeed
some would say we have been at the forefront. Canadian ODA has fallen by
36% in real terms since 1992, and 21% in nominal terms. But an analysis
of the allocation of these cuts looking at trends in CIDA expenditures
seems to demonstrate that the goal of poverty reduction has been peripheral
to the choices made in cutting the aid program. Here are just two examples:
Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa, with a growing proportion of people living
in absolute poverty (36% in 1996), received no special protection as cuts
were made to ODA. Between 1992/93 and 1996/97, aid to this sub-region declined
in nominal dollars by 30.4%, a rate far greater than the nominal decline
of ODA as a whole (21.2%) or bilateral aid (16.8%). More worrying, preliminary
estimates of bilateral commitments to Sub-Saharan Africa for the next five
years show aid to this region may be declining by a further 5% when compared
to the five years prior to 1996/97.
Despite the fact that more than 70% of the world's poor live in rural
areas and are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, no more so
than in Sub-Saharan Africa, between 1990/91 and 1995/96 CIDA disbursements
for agriculture, food and nutrition fell by 49%, in Africa by an astounding
80%, and for the poorest food deficit countries, those that import to meet
their basic food needs, by 87%! While it is true that other programs were
directed to the rural economy (for basic education and health), the declining
priority to the agricultural sector itself raises concerns about overall
strategic contributions to the important goal of food security for all.
...
2. Putting Emergency Assistance for Sub-Saharan Africa in a Broader
Policy Context
Even a cursory analysis of CIDA's financial reports reveals that emergency
assistance has become a permanent feature of Canada's aid program in Sub-Saharan
Africa. As Kerry Max points out in his paper on "Africa-Canada Relations:
1986 and beyond"(North South Institute, Ottawa, 1998), humanitarian
assistance has been an important aspects of our aid program for Africa
since 1984/85 and the response to African famine at the time. The strong
correlation between poverty, conflict and emergency assistance is borne
out in DAC statistics for 1995 where 23% of total aid to the LLDCs was
for emergency assistance or food aid (against 11% for developing countries
as a whole). This highlights the significance for CIDA of International
Humanitarian Assistance and food aid relative to country to country assistance
in the 1990s. Since 1989/90 Sub-Saharan Africa has received more than 50%
of all IHA allocations each year (reaching a high of 60.7% in 1992/93).
In the 1990s there has been considerable reflection and policy learning
within the international community on the issues of so-called "failed
states", on endemic violence and conflict, on social disintegration,
and the displacement and marginalization of large populations in more and
more African countries. These are the conditions that have drawn billions
of dollars in short term high profile emergency aid into the continent
in the 1990s.
But the African continent has also witnessed the most dramatic failure
in "political will" to act on the part of the international community
perhaps since the 1930s. While individual situations are complex, growing
numbers of countries in crisis, and populations falling deeper into poverty,
are in no small measure the result of significant donor policy failures.
Though NGOs welcome the current questioning within the World Bank of the
"Washington consensus" on neo-liberalism and its application
to development, it seems a little late in the day for those millions whose
livelihoods have been irrevocably affected by the past 15 years of inappropriate
structural adjustment policies. And despite this questioning, the policy
prescriptions continue to be written in Washington.
It is relatively easy now to talk about how one might support the difficult
and complex work of building political trust, or promoting democratic behaviour,
or empowering civil societies in countries in crisis. Indeed CIDA is working
with a range of partners to support some very important innovative work.
But, at the same time, a case is being made, and strongly made by some
NGOs, that reliance on NGOs or official donor interventions in complex
crises is a mere surrogate for the failure of the most powerful nations
on the Security Council and in other fora to take all measures possible
both to prevent and bring to an end violent conflict. Without strong complementary
policies, for example to control small arms production and trade, or coordinated
diplomatic efforts, backed by real sanctions, NGOs and other donors are
in an untenable position.
We therefore return to the important theme of "political will"
and the pressures civil society acting together can bring to bear on world
leaders. While aid more generally is an important strategic resource for
ending poverty and we need to use it for this end, there is much more the
donor community and NGOs can bring to the table. I want to end by referring
briefly to one of these areas and therefore the critical ingredient of
policy coherence --- the urgent need for debt cancellation for the poorest
African nations, and particularly those that have experienced years of
conflict.
3. Realizing Substantial Debt Cancellation
Any credible international strategy on poverty reduction must incorporate
much more substantial debt relief. The Interfaith Coalition for the Jubilee
and CCIC's In Common campaign are calling for cancellation of all outstanding
debt for the Least Developed Countries. It is now clear that the results
of the World Bank/IMF HIPC initiative have been too little relief, received
much too late, and with continued onerous structural adjustment conditionality
attached with adverse affects on the poor.
"The Reality of Aid" this year drew on research by OXFAM International
that points to the example of Tanzania where credible national plans for
universal education are unachievable when that country must continue to
pay out one third of its entire budget on debt servicing. Under HIPC rules,
Tanzania has little prospect of achieving debt relief until 2002 and beyond,
and may never qualify for substantial reductions.
When Nelson Mandela walked out of prison, international banks handed
him and his government a bill for $19.2 billion. The poor of Southern Africa
are saddled with $47.6 billion in apartheid-caused debt. This is $350 for
every man, woman and child in the region.
Under international law, if a loan is "used against the interests
of the local populace" then it is odious and need not be repaid. Loans
by the international community to apartheid South Africa are clearly odious
under international law and should be written off. Where the international
community can find hundreds of billions to rescue the international financial
system when northern interests are under threat, there has been little
political leadership to act to relieve debt. Canada has taken action on
its official aid debt; more remains to be done on debt owed to the Wheat
Board and the EDC by the least developed countries. And recently we have
show leadership on the international stage on this issue.
As Archbishop Ndungane of Cape Town pointed out at the recent Lambeth
Conference, South Africa did not wait for donor consensus before writing
off all the debt owed to her by Namibia. In his words:
"In doing so, the new South African government did not ask whether
we could afford to offer such relief; we did not wait to reconstruct our
own economy before offering debt relief; we did not ask whether the debt
was payable or unpayable. Nor did we impose any conditions on our neighbour.
We merely declared those debts as immoral, odious debt incurred while Namibia
was occupied by the apartheid regime."
Surely we can ask no less of the governments of northern creditor countries
and institutions.
In concluding, I want to suggest that a reform agenda for Canadian ODA
would link increased overall resources for ODA to rebuild our reputation
as a credible donor to a strategic plan that places ending poverty firmly
at its centre and sets out new tools, methods of work and partnerships
to make this a reality. This strategy must reverse the declining share
for Sub-Saharan Africa in the allocation of these aid resources and should
give priority to those sectors and organizations capable of delivering
effective programs for poverty reduction. Clearly the debt agenda is an
African agenda to which all institutions of government, working with civil
society organizations, must give urgent priority. Finally, Canada must
take advantage of its new seat on the Security Council to push aggressively
for effective timely action by the international community to resolve long
standing humanitarian crises in the Sudan and elsewhere and for meaningful
policies to reduce and control the trade in conventional small arms. The
In Common campaign believes that Canadians expect no less from our foreign
policy.
Brian Tomlinson,
Development Policy Analyst, CCIC, November 1998
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the Africa
Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary objective is to widen
the policy debate in the United States around African issues and the U.S.
role in Africa, by concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and individuals.
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