AFRICA: How Much Chewing Gum Will Save a Continent?

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar 18 2005 (IPS) - All that is needed from the rich to save Africa is the price of ”half a stick of chewing gum a day from everyone,” rock star and now star Africa activist Bob Geldof declared Friday.

That, he figured, would add up to the 25 billion dollars a year that the Commission for Africa has recommended by way of extra aid to Africa until 2010. After that, the Commission appointed by the British government recommends a further 25 billion dollars a year extra aid. Which would mean the equivalent of a full stick of chewing gum a day, going by the new ‘Bob-onomics’ for Africa.

But chewing gum, or the sacrifice of its cash equivalent, might not be necessary at all, Robert Guest from The Economist pointed out to Geldof and hundreds of others at a one-day conference called by the BBC in London to discuss the report of the Commission for Africa.

Think, Guest said, of the 350 billion dollars or so a year the West pays out in agricultural subsidies. That could add up to ”a jumbo bag of chewing gum.” And the ”only losers would be a small number of relatively well-off farmers in the rich world.”

The recommendations of the Commission for Africa were coming unstuck over chewing gum. Because it was showing that fair trade rules would do more for perhaps Africa than this extra donation that Bob Geldof and the Commission for Africa was making such passionate appeals for.

Geldof and the Commission have turned out to be far more closely linked than most people had believed; Bob Geldof had in fact made the Commission for Africa happen, he told the conference.

Deeply concerned on a visit to Ethiopia by ”false bananas” on trees that looked like banana plantations but in fact produced nothing, Geldof said he called Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street. Blair invited him to come and see him on his return. He did, and the Commission for Africa was born.

Blair, a guitarist of sorts in his spare time, has been more than a little indulgent of Geldof. At the release of the Commission for Africa report last week Geldof described Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe as an ”ageing creep”, and condemned Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for trying to be president for life. Blair spoke later to support Geldof. That support crossed usual diplomatic limits.

Blair and Geldof have apparently remained in close touch over this new Africa initiative. Geldof told the Friday conference that Blair had taken the recommendations of the Commission for Africa on board as British government policy. That made this, he said, ”a moment of incredible political influence.”

All that the rich G7 nations (the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan) had to do was to spare another 0.1 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) for Africa, Geldof said. Besides, he said, British Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown had thought up the International Finance Facility (IFF) to raise more money for aid. ”It is so easy to do it, why would you not?”

Easy or not, and whatever the reason, the conference became an exhibition that the rest of the ‘developed’ world is paying little attention to the Blair-Geldof produce.

European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson acknowledged at the conference, as did others, that the United States, Canada and Japan did not seem interested either in the Blair-Geldof Commission for Africa, or in Gordon Brown’s IFF. ”I hope the EU alone will take the lead,” Mandelson said.

But a lack of hope was inherent in that expression of hope; this was admission that none of the remaining European members of G7 – France, Germany and Italy – had made any firm commitment either on the IFF or the Commission for Africa recommendations.

That leaves only Britain – and the leading non-governmental organisation War on Want has pointed out that Britain itself is not doing what the Commission for Africa recommends on many fronts.

In the end it emerged that what would matter most is what Africa can do for itself. ”Africa is not going to get richer through charity,” Guest said. ”We first need to put our own act together,” said Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-HABITAT in Nairobi. Not dramatic words, but to Africa perhaps more meaningful.

For the BBC cameras filming the conference, Bob Geldof was the story. He is the hero also of a series of BBC reports in an upcoming ‘Africa season’. Chewing gum economics is more television friendly; never mind Africa.