Holmås is to be lauded for having launched a white paper with a semblance of a red-green thread after his predecessor Erik Solheim’s many contradictory initiatives. But this document is also tainted by viewing development and poverty reduction through a Norwegian lens.

Only to a limited extent does it appreciate the situation of the poor―as  in the village of Meluluka and the slum of Inhagoia, both in the poorest recipient country of Norwegian aid, Mozambique.

The white paper has some important clarifications. Democracy and human rights are a primary consideration, and seen as essential for growth and equity. Aid will be concentrated to the poorest and least developed countries, and phased out to middle-income countries in which distribution is largely a matter of political will.

State control over natural resources such as oil and gas are seen as central to economic growth with equity. And ‘decent work’ is emphasized as the main means to get people out of poverty; this is a novelty after many years of priority for the energy, environment and health sectors.

The document, however, evades a variety of problematic issues. It considers internal national inequality, but disregards the fundamental differences between the rich and poor parts of the world. It ignores that it is non-democratic states such as China and Ethiopia that can demonstrate the greatest reduction in poverty.

It does not take into account the challenges of combining the Oil for Development programme with being an oil operator, nor the critique against our involvement with authoritarian states like Angola. And the emphasis on decent work does not relate to the vast majority in developing countries who depend on the informal economy with its own dynamics.

The most important test of a white paper claiming to “concretize and operationalize” development policy is however in the implications for the poorest of the proposed measures. This relates fundamentally to the decency of Norwegian aid and its underpinning by understanding reality.

Mozambique is one of the poorest and least developed countries (ranking as number 185 of 187 countries on the UN Human Development Index based on income, health and education indicators).  It is also one of the most aid-dependent countries, where donors contribute almost 50 per cent of the state budget.

Despite high economic growth and formidable aid efforts, however, poverty has increased in recent years, and as many as 55 per cent of the population live on less than USD 1.25 a day.

The fundamental problem is a neo-liberal approach to development, in which the state must ensure human development and infrastructure while the market is supposed to take care of economic development, employment and incomes. But the market has never been interested in the very poorest and as the white paper also states, the idea that economic growth will ‘trickle down’ to the poorest has failed.

Poverty in countries like Mozambique is brutal. 70 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture without some form of improved technologies and without secure access to markets, and the vast majority of the 30 per cent who live in cities rely on small, informal activities with minimal income opportunities.

For the few of the poor who have ‘decent work’, viz. security guards, domestic workers, construction workers and so on, the pay is often lower than the statutory minimum of about 70 USD per month and barely enough to live on.

The poorest in the village Meluluka in northern Mozambique do not know if their plots will provide crops because they rely on rainwater and lack fertilizers. Their only access to credit is from cotton and tobacco manufacturers who pay minimal prices.

Families are forced to keep children away from school because they need their labour. In case of serious disease, they cannot afford to transport family members to the nearest hospital; and for much of the year they do not know where to get money for food from one day to another.

In the Inhagoia slum in the capital Maputo poverty is in many ways even more brutal, because the dependence of money is greater. The major challenge is the lack of rights to housing and land; people can be thrown out at any time and they have trouble getting loans to invest in economic activity.

The informal economy is most characterized by fierce competition and low incomes. The level of education is relatively high, but most young people are not working. Health conditions are tolerable, but the security situation in slum areas means that people’s quality of life deteriorates.

All experience shows that economic and political elites do not voluntarily relinquish power and resources, and reduced inequality can in fact only be achieved by improving the situation of the poor. From the perspectives of the poor in Meluluka and Inhagoia, the solutions are obvious.

Efforts must be made to raise productivity and incomes in peasant agriculture, not through the market’s literally invisible hand, but through actively supportive government policies and programmes. And in the cities the key is increased minimum wages, formal ownership of property, and efforts to professionalize and develop informal businesses.

An aid policy for poverty reduction must take the actual situation and the challenges of the poor as its starting point. The white paper does not do that. The most basic needs for employment, income, food and housing should have priority and this should not require much effort.

A doubling of the daily consumption to 15 NOK will improve the situation of Mozambique’s poor significantly. Development cooperation that is more directly targeted at the poor would also be more efficient and less costly.

The aim, according to Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (Swedish Conservative Party Moderaterna, M), was to show that Sweden takes Africa seriously by “broadening the image of Africa at home and (…) broaden our cooperation.” And Finance Minister Anders Borg (M) wants to see more investment in Africa by the Swedish pension funds―with expected higher yields than at home.

So the Swedish government has finally woken up to the fact that Africa is no aid junkie but a future market where seven African countries are growing faster than China.

Ministers are however glossing over the cracks when they say that business is growing steadily. The stark reality is that Swedish trade with Africa does not increase in line with overall growth in Africa and when ongoing deals―such as Sweden’s export of jet fighters to South Africa―are weeded out, we can expect a drop coming years.

Hence, there is a need to improve relations with Africa dramatically. We cannot expect Africa to be too head-over-heels about this. Africa has moved ahead―its business has exploded with other emerging markets, especially China and India.

Modest trade with Africa
India’s trade with Africa was SEK 6.5 billion in 1995 compared with 2012 when it had shot up to SEK 420 billion―and where Africa’s exports accounted for the lion share. Sweden’s exports to Africa in 2012 were SEK 36 billion, the value of imports from Africa only 12.5 billion. Indian investment in the continent is now above SEK 300 billion or 2.7 percent of its GDP. Swedish investment in Africa is 30 billion SEK―0.8 percent of our GDP.

Another striking indicator:  The number of Swedish travellers to South Africa―the hub of the Southern African region―increased by five percent in 2012 to 41,000. This is considerable and most travellers are business people. Visitors to South Africa from the world’s emerging economies increased by lightning speed 2011-12: China up 57 percent to 132 000, India up 18 percent to 106 000 and Brazil up 45 per cent to 78, 000.

Sweden needs Africa
It is Sweden, which now needs Africa. Therefore for the ministers’ African safari to turn into action a radically new approach is required to meet challenging new circumstances. Sweden still has some deposits of good-will in Africa. By being a partner to rely on, we can offer alternatives to colonial and neo-colonial ties. Poverty is still a strong reality. Development assistance is therefore not only necessary but its role is playing out on centre stage.

But our institutional make-up is stuck in the past. Sweden Inc. needs to dramatically increase understanding and respect for Africa, build new networks and, not least, open up the Swedish government and approved agencies for more competition and be open to new ideas.

Knowledge: Reporting of Swedish or business aid in Africa by independent business correspondents leaves much to be desired. Greater efforts are needed in order to build entrepreneurial interest in the area, creating role models as a complement to the global flow of news. We propose to set up a fund for finance reporting of Africa for both public service and private media, which can later be applied to other emerging markets. Sweden must build interest so as to not be condemned by its own history.

Networking: Internet technology is Sweden’s newest competitive niche in a rapidly globalising world, but Swedish internet partnership in Africa is rare, as Swedish internet entrepreneurs are not present. So, support intensive lobbying where direct qualitative contacts with Africa can flourish.

Challenge the institutions: New competition, both commercial and non-commercial, is needed to challenge Swedish Government-Commerce agency Business Sweden (formerly Swedish Trade Council). We propose to set up a good-sized independent innovation fund outside the institutions of Swedish entrepreneurship in new tech and Internet ventures with Africa.

Dramatic increase
Sweden already funds, through development aid and finance, some excellent network projects in Africa through the United Nations, amongst others. But Sweden needs to push to further these same efforts on the home front. Business information and networking must increase dramatically, and investors must be prepared to increase risk exposure.

Otherwise, the Swedish government’s new interest in Africa will be firmly stuck in old habits and the five minister’s high profile trip to Africa will then only be for domestic political consumption.

This is an edited and  translated version of the original article published in the Swedish newspaper Göteborgsposten.

Unfortunately, much is still unclear about what this means. Development projects with private sector involvement are considered a panacea for corporate responsibility. Co-creation and joint innovations for people living in poverty are in vogue. Yet, the problems with private sector investments in the Global South remain much the same – especially concerning large multinationals and, indeed, the extractive sector.

Investments are Changing Mozambique
In recent years Mozambique has been flooded with foreign investment. The FDI flow is mainly due to the country’s rich natural resources.

Mozambique has large deposits of coal, gold and oil. In addition, the country is vast – almost 2.5 times bigger than Finland – which gives the impression that the country has huge reserves of untapped land. This has attracted many forestry companies to the country, among them Finnish UPM and Norwegian Green Resources.

Although the political situation has been relatively stable since the end of the civil war in 1992, Mozambique’s democratic development could have been better. According to recent civil society reports, President Armando Guebuza has tightened his grip on power and dissidents are facing tougher times.

Close to 80 per cent of the population earn their living from small-scale machamba-farming. Foreign investment often forces people to resettle, sometimes with deprivation of livelihoods.  Communities have been compensated with money, housing and jobs – or at least with such promises.

Many local people, especially the young, have welcomed the companies in the hope of getting paid jobs. Wage income has meant a small revolution in many communities―the position of the village elders and traditional hierarchies have been undermined when young people have left their machambas to earn some money.

The Mozambican state has been highly welcoming towards the foreign companies, offering huge tax breaks and other incentives, and weak regulation.

Multinationals Take over the Role of the State
Recently, I explored the situation in Tete province in North-Western Mozambique, where like Vale (Brazilian), Rio Tinto (Australian) and Jindal (Indian) run coal mines. Vale and Rio Tinto have resettled hundreds of people and set up new villages for them. However, Jindal ’forgot’ to resettle the local people and let them remain within the dusty and noisy mining area.

The atmosphere in Vale’s new Cateme resettlement is unreal. Every street has straight rows of identical houses. New school buildings stand on one side of the village. A shining ambulance drives down the empty street. Some villagers ride new bikes with Vale logos. No one can mistake the fact that this village belongs to Vale.

In Cateme and other similar places, the state has handed over social, labour and infrastructure policies to foreign corporations. Locals feel powerless under the deals made between the state and these companies. What is most important for them is to get by in everyday life, whether a multinational company or their own state provides them the possibilities for that.

The people of Cateme are worried primarily because Vale has built houses without foundations that risk collapsing; also because the company has failed to pay sufficient compensation for the loss of their livelihoods or is not providing enough jobs. A secondary concern is that the state does not defend their rights.

Volontary Corporate Social Responsibility not Enough
The debate about corporate responsibility and accountability is increasing all over the world. Companies and civil society disagree on whether corporate responsibility should be mandatory, or whether it is voluntary and additional to the companies’ core activities.

CSOs tend to think that mandatory national and international regulation is needed to ensure corporate responsibility. If Mozambique had proper legislation and its enforcement in place, there probably wouldn’t be such cases as Cateme.

Today’s reality is different, however. In order to operate in countries like Mozambique, companies have to invest in the well-being of the surrounding community – ’voluntarily’. Without it, their operations remain illegitimate and it becomes more difficult for them to make profits at least in the long run.

Volunteerism is not enough though. It does not guarantee a path to sustainable development that companies like Vale build villages like Cateme, make secret investment agreements with the government, do not pay any or very little taxes and produce coal that has devastating effects on the environment and the climate.

Instead, binding international and national rules are needed to regulate multinational companies’ operations, to safeguard human rights and to contribute to sustainable development.

First steps in this direction can be taken at national level in the Nordic and other countries in the Global North. Heavily investing BRICS countries would probably follow. For example Finnish companies operating abroad in places like Mozambique should be required to increase the accountability, responsibility and transparency of the effects they have on society.

One essential factor would be to require companies to report annually on their non-financial and financial activities based on comparable standards and on a country-by-country basis. Companies should also be required to commit to complying with UN Human Rights Conventions and ILO labour rights agreements.

Progress in Nordic and European policies?
People’s access to justice should be guaranteed everywhere. In Finland, as in other Nordic countries, it should be possible to take legal action in cases where companies are suspected to have committed human rights violations abroad. Currently this is not possible.

During the past year several EU-directives related to corporate accountability have been processed in Nordic EU-members. Currently the so called accounting directive that requires European companies operating in the extractive sector to start publishing financial data (payments to governments) on a country-by-country basis is in its final stages. This is a positive step forward, although it does not reach far enough: similar requirements should be broadened to all sectors and more data should be made available so that companies’ tax planning and avoidance would become transparent for public scrutiny.

Another recent European Commission proposal is to require large European companies to do annual non-financial reporting. This is also a sign of progress but unfortunately still falls a bit short. It is based on a ’report or explain’ -method, does not include any sanctions or a comparable standard for the reporting. Negotiations are still in their early stages and time will show what the final directive will look like.

It should be evident that the private sector does not contribute to sustainable development through joint development projects if they at the same time operate in an illegitimate and irresponsible manner. Hopefully, the Nordic countries can take a lead in creating binding rules on responsible corporate behaviour. Trendsetters are definitely needed, because so is change.

It has a big idea (consigning absolute poverty to the history books) and is on occasion brave (in the Sir Humphrey sense) for example in its commitment to women’s rights, including ending child marriage and violence against women, and guaranteeing universal sexual and reproductive health rights.

The ambition and optimism is all the more welcome for its contrast with the daily grind of austerity, recession and international paralysis (Syria, Climate Change, the torments of the European Union). In response, the report is clearly designed for a no/low cost environment, downplaying the importance of aid, talking up access to data, and revenue raisers like cracking down on tax evasion.

But then the doubts start to creep in. What’s missing is always harder to spot than what is in the text, but three gaps are already clear: The emerging global concern over inequality is relegated to national politics, and otherwise dealt with through the ‘data default’ of requiring any target to be met amongst the poorest fifth of a population, not just the population as a whole.

The concept of poverty is pretty old school – income, health, education, and fails to recognize the considerable progress made in measuring ‘well-being’ – the level of life satisfaction people feel. Finally there is too little recognition that the earth is a finite ecosystem, and that we need to make a reality of the concept of planetary boundaries if we are to sustain progress in tackling poverty.

But the elephant in the room is not the text, but how this text will or will not connect to the struggles to achieve the many very laudable aims set out in the report.

Five or 10 years down the line, will the High Level Panel report be food for termites, or a watershed in human development? The shelves of international bodies are piled high with forgotten reports by distinguished panels. Do any readers remember the 2012 High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability or the UN High Level Advisory Group on Climate Financing? Thought not.

These reports sank because they failed to connect with more permanent international processes and did not tackle the critical underlying issues of power and politics that determine what good ideas make it into policy, and what are ignored.

Here the HLP report risks going the same way. It is written in the name of an imaginary ‘we’ (as in ‘it is crucial that we ensure basic safety and justice for all’), ignoring the reality that ‘we’ may not all want the same thing (which is why we need politics, after all).

The post2015 process could have lasting influence in four main ways: Firstly, making the case for improving the quality or quantity of aid (the major achievement of the MDGs). The HLP report does pretty well on that, as you would expect.

Second, international agreements can be effective in triggering long-term, under-the-radar changes in public norms and values. This is more subtle, but very important – research is piling up to show that international conventions to end discrimination against women, or on the rights of children, have permeated people’s heads (and national laws) in many countries, changing in fundamental ways, perceptions of what it is to be a woman or a child.

It is very unlikely indeed that this report will have that effect, but it’s still possible if there is sufficient pressure.

That brings us to a third pathway to impact: directly exerting traction on national governments. Will the post2015 process persuade national governments to do things differently, for example by creating a ‘race to the top’ between governments, highlighting the heroes and zeroes (like the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings). Promisingly, the report urges regional reports and peer reviews – nothing annoys a leader (or wins press coverage) like being trounced by a neighbour in a league table.

Finally, the post-2015 process could create stronger and broader alliances of civil society organizations, trade unions, faith institutions and others who take whatever comes out of the process and use it to put pressure on their governments, as they have done with some of the ILO conventions, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The report now enters the treacherous waters of a ‘UN Open Working Group’. With two and a half years before the MDGs deadline, the task of those concerned with development should now be to defend the good stuff in the HLP report from dilution, while focussing far more strongly on how a new set of global goals can lead to lasting change at national level.

This is a slightly edited version of the original article posted at the blog ‘From Poverty to Power’ .

Even more infuriating, it is often explained, but never sufficiently explained. That is, there are a lot of competing theories on the subject, but most fail to give a complete picture.

Of course, it’s a complicated issue, so it makes sense that no one theory would prove universal. Yet, even with intense academic scrutiny, the picture is incomplete.

A new report by Global Financial Integrity and the African Development Bank may fill in some of these holes. The report, Illicit Financial Flows and the Problem of Net Resource Transfers from Africa: 1980-2009, finds that Africa is a “net creditor to the world,” meaning that, over the period of the study, the continent exported more capital than it received.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of these findings in terms of our understanding of the question posed above, that is, Why is Africa poor? Africa, at least in part, is poor because it is losing more money than it is taking in.

Let’s turn first to the competing explanations for poverty in Africa, then we’ll turn to the report and how it helps to fill some gaps in the economic thinking.

Economists have a lot of different ways to model economic growth (i.e., an expansion of real GDP per capita). Typically, economists think of economic growth as the result of the expansion of human and physical capital, or increased productivity as a result of technological advancements.

There are a lot of different explanations for how to achieve these expansions, but the most basic are: productivity growth, quantity of labor, technological advancements, education and training, and quantity of capital.

There are many economic models that consider these factors in some combination, and include several others, to explain or predict economic growth worldwide.

One of the most prominent of these is the Solow Growth Model, which explains economic growth using: changes in output per worker, changes in technological progress, the savings rate, the growth of the workforce, the depreciation rate, and the share of capital in output.

This model predicts that growth will be strong among countries with low levels of capital (i.e. developing nations), and countries will tend to converge in terms of output per capita and standard of living. That is, the model predicts that developing nations will eventually catch up with their developed counterparts.

This model has done a pretty good job of explaining the experience of many countries, particularly those in Asia such as Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Yet this model and its competitors are an abysmal failure when it comes to explaining Africa’s growth experience. When modeling growth in Africa, the economic literature is commonly unable to account for Africa’s low growth performance.

Not only do the models lack explanatory power, but their predictive power is generally exactly opposite to reality. Indeed, the gap between incomes in Africa and developed countries is not closing as the Solow Model would predict, but rather expanding.

Returning to the models, the heart of our understanding of growth is savings and investment. While not sufficient, a necessary condition for growth is investment: in machines and people. In a closed economy investment comes from savings, which is equal to deferred consumption (people face a trade off between saving and consumption).

While most nations in our world are not in closed economies, the national saving rate turns out to be very predictive of a nation’s level of investment.

Economists have long recognized the risks of capital flight—that is the transfer of savings from developing to industrially advanced nations. The literature has noted that these risks include loss of savings or real capital, higher rates of inflation, and changes in exchange rates—all of which can negatively impact economic growth. But these accounts usually only consider only recorded outflows, a glaring omission.

As the new report finds, illicit financial flows (IFFs, i.e. unrecorded flows) were the “main driving force behind the net drain of resources from Africa.” Like, recorded outflows, these IFFs also reduce savings and real capital among nations, but until now, have largely been ignored. The authors also finds that IFFs grew at a much faster rate over the thirty year period than recorded transfers.

As it would turn out, by examining only recorded outflows, economists have minimized this problem—and its likely role in dampening economic growth—for a long time. The full picture thus suggests capital loss may play a much larger role, perhaps even a major role, in Africa’s poverty.

There are lots of viable explanations for Africa’s underdevelopment: corruption and the resource curse, inadequate transportation infrastructure, political instability, poor maritime geography (i.e. landlocked nations), and poorly drawn colonial borders.

Yet these explanations ignore the question of capital and investment—arguably one of the most important drivers of economic growth. With the insights from this report, I hope we can add the role of capital flows to this list and, of course, work on solving the problem.

This article first appeared as a blog post on the site of the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development.

Rather than focusing on the size of China’s development finance in Africa and technical issues, my comments were concentrated on the uniqueness and the development impact of China’s South-South Development Cooperation in Africa.

First, critics of China’s foreign aid often fail to realize that the nature of South-South Development Cooperation (SSDC) differs fundamentally from that of the Western established donors. Thus, comparing the size of China’s aid with that of Western donors without showing per capita income, does not make sense.

When China started to provide development assistance to African countries 60 years ago, it was poorer than most of the Sub-Saharan African countries. Even now, China’s per capita income, at $6000 dollars, is only 1/4^th or 1/8^th of that for the established donors.

Southern development partners differ from the Northern partners fundamentally in terms of 1) their history―no ’white man’s burden’; 2) development stage―similar to African countries; 3) structure of the economy―large primary sector; 4) comparative advantage― labor-intensive; and 5) voice in the international development arena.

Therefore, graphs comparing China’s ODA with that of the US and OECD countries are not valid since one dimension is missing: the countries’ per capita income levels.  My scatter chart below shows both dimensions, ODA/ GNI and GNI per capita, which clearly shows that China is not in the same league as the OECD countries.

Second, China considers development cooperation with Africa as fraternal help ’between the poor brothers and sisters in a family’, as Africa and China share the same colonial past. The government has stressed principles that feature mutual respect, reciprocity, mutual benefit, and non-interference of domestic affairs.

This is not to say that China’s aid is ’altruistic’. It is not. In the 1990s, China’s policy stressed ’mutual benefit’, as well as  ’exchanging what you have with what we have’.

This has resulted in a strategy of combining trade, aid and investment, including barter exchanges in-kind assistance, turnkey projects, as well as ’resource for infrastructure’ deals.  The various operational approaches are closer to the reality of developing countries.

For example, in the 1960-70s when China itself was lacking foreign exchange, most development assistance was in the form of ’in-kind’ assistance, including the strategic TAZARA railway built in the 1970s. Very little, if any, cash changed hands due to the lack of foreign exchange in China.

During the first stage of China’s development cooperation, ’foreign aid’ accounted for approximately 2 % of China’s GDP in the 1970s. Now, foreign aid accounts for less than 0.1 % of GDP, covering more countries with a larger footprint.

Third, China’s development cooperation often fills in the void left by the Northern partners, focusing on ’bottleneck releasing’ infrastructure, and thereby, has higher development impact. Southern partners, including BRIC and Arab countries, are leading financiers and builders for African Infrastructure. China alone accounts for over 30% of total value of infrastructure projects being implemented in Africa.

While donors have neglected the power sector since the 1990s (source), 50% of all Chinese infrastructure commitments in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2001-2009 was on electricity – a key bottleneck in nearly every African country. China’s contribution to power generation capacity in Africa is four times the generation capacity of the Hoover dam in the US.

Another example is the high proportion of China’s development assistance and investment in manufacturing. These facts are often neglected by critics of Chinese aid.

Fourth, there is nothing wrong to follow the comparative advantages of a country in development as China used to be an exporter of primary products. China has been successful because it has been following its comparative advantages and upgrading its industrial structure.

As late as 1984, 50% of China’s export was primary products including crude oil, coal, animals and agriculture products. China has diversified by first exporting resources in exchange for infrastructure and equipment and then learning from those projects. The key to diversification is to transform the natural resources by investing the resource rents smartly in bottleneck-releasing infrastructure and productive assets (including human and physical capital) as well as institutions for development.

Fifth, China has been using its comparative advantage in providing development cooperation, based on the tradition of ’teaching only if you know how’. The construction sector is highly labor-intensive; and China has comparative advantage and rich experience of many large infrastructural projects.

In many sectors such as agriculture, health, construction and manufacturing, Chinese engineers, doctors, technicians and workers are working together with Africans, providing training and capacity development opportunities, so that self-development can become a reality.

China in the last 30 years is successful because China has been a ‘good student’ of industrial countries as well as multilateral development financial institutions such as the World Bank, ADB and others. China has been catching up and learnt how to provide South-South Development Cooperation. What we have seen so far is the beginning stage of this learning process.

In the next stage, as China becomes a leading financier and builder in international development, it will naturally gain a voice in the international development arena, participating in and contributing to the rule-making process.

As Chinese leaders are trying to transform the pattern of growth towards higher quality and sustainability, they will, albeit slowly, pay more attention to the software’, the intangibles, health, education, the environment, and the quality of its South-South Development Cooperation.

Conclusion
I commend the tremendous efforts devoted by the team of the China-Aid-Data initiative; their efforts add value and promote transparency. Despite inaccuracies in their data at this early stage, I believe the open- and crowd-sourcing process will correct the errors existing in their data. The effort has already helped to cast doubts on inaccurate accusations on China’s approach, which are not based on empirical evidence.

On the other hand, I do not believe that the OECD definition of ODA is a perfect one. There is ample room to improve this definition. In addition, I fully agree with Deborah Brautigam that in next decades, development financing will come less from ODA and more from OOF and OOF-like loans from development banks, and from Southern development partners.

Finally, I would like to invite researchers to focus more on the development impact of these cooperative activities. Using survey tools and case studies, how many local jobs have been generated by China-funded projects? How many people have benefited from the access to electricity, roads, ports and water? Are African people better off with these projects or without? Let’s join hands in helping China help the Africans, using alternative approaches that each of us, Southern or Northern, really knows well.

The author was the main author of Economic Transformation and Poverty Reduction: How it happened in China, helping it happen in Africa, Volume 2, China-DAC Study Group, June 2011.

The OAU was best known for its long and finally victorious decolonization struggle and the often problematic defence of African sovereignty and support for liberation struggle leaders.

The OAU was also important in achieving consensus around a set of core principles and norms governing a pan-African political order. These were highly supportive of sovereign equality and non-interference, favouring a so-called ‘traditional’ notion of state sovereignty.

The OAU also served as a platform for debate around important alternative African visions of economic development and governance, and the OAU initiated work that has since been built on by the AU: to serve as a vehicle for African states to speak with one voice on issues of common interest to the continent in global forums.

The AU came into existence in 2002 because there was a wide-spread feeling that a new regional political order was needed as African polities and peoples were adapting to a post-Cold War globalized environment.

In very brief terms, this can be summarised as the felt need among African leaders and senior policymakers that African states had to coordinate and integrate their initiatives to better respond to external and internal pressures for ‘good governance’, stabilisation, economic growth and democratisation.

In this context, the AU institutions can be understood as debating forums where state representatives and AU officials negotiate and contest different proposals of how to best meet contemporary multidimensional challenges.

Many observers have been impressed with the AU’s institutional and policy expressions of pan-African politics. Examples abound in areas of economic development, peace and security, democratic governance, human rights and refugee matters, as well as environmental issues.

Most visibly in the area of peace and security, the AU’s initiatives in mediation and peacekeeping have contributed to a sense of hope and optimism for the continent’s transformation.

The AU has played a proactive role in the search for the peaceful resolution of conflicts in Africa. It has deployed peacekeeping missions to Burundi, Somalia, Darfur and Mali as well as enabling high level mediation such as the African Union High Level Panel (AUHIP) facilitating dialogue between Sudan and South Sudan on outstanding issues of the post-independence period.

It has also been noted that the peace and security organs at least in principle privilege human well-being over state sovereignty (‘human security’ over ‘state security’) which is an important departure from the former OAU. Indeed, the AU Constitutive Act empowers the AU with the right ‘to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances’.

In many ways, the AU is increasing its authority and has some far-reaching supranational components to it. These are not widely understood or communicated and there is perhaps a good reason for that. Limiting state sovereignty is a sensitive issue and such change will be a long historical process.

In connection with the AU, many speak of a ‘generational shift’ in regional politics. Differently put, a shift has taken place in norms and acceptable bases for political order in Africa over the last twenty or so years. One example is the trend that more and more governments are coming to power through competitive election in Africa.

It has also been noted that the AU’s policy language is rich with a ‘progressive’ terminology such as ‘people-centred’ policies, accountable government, responsible sovereignty, and partnerships and engagement with donors and global governance institutions.

This terminology and the foundational AU principles offer political space for AU Secretariat officials and non-state actors to check progress in implementation and argue for enhanced levels of member state compliance with norms and rules. Additionally, the shift in policy as well as practice has contributed to raising the profile of Africa on the world stage.

The AU centres its policies around African citizens and communities, but to date the disconnect between high politics in Addis Ababa and the real challenges facing communities all over the continent remains a problem.

The AU’s decision to prohibit civil society and non-state actors from participation in the summit flies in the face of its attempts to popularize its mandate and speak for African communities and peoples.

Challenges
The AU is facing many challenges and top among them are capacity and capability shortcomings. Most AU institutions are to a significant degree dependent for their continued efficiency on donor funding. Member states pay for less than half of the AU’s budget.

The remainder comes from organisations such as the World Bank and the European Union. The AU and its membership need to rapidly improve on implementing and popularizing the many policies and blueprints that it has in place. States have a tendency to express their commitment to policies and instruments but to then take very long before they ratify these.

In this context, it was a source of relief to finally see in 2012 the coming into force of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. In part, implementation challenges are also due to a need for reform and capacity-building of the AU Commission and other AU organs.

Other urgent challenges are: the demands for democracy, economic development and transparency from within African nation-states. Civil society, researchers, journalists as well as ordinary citizens are ever more vocal and well-informed. Press and social media provide critical scrutiny despite limitations on press freedom and have access to and influence on a global media arena.

The winds of change are picking up speed, and many African leaders experience that action and results now directly impact their ability to hold on to power. And that in the AU today, violent (public) crackdown of popular dissent and opposition is intolerable.

Improving the record on governance and human rights will only become more important, and so will policy formation and action on youth unemployment, economic development, food security, among many other areas.

One initial result: Chinese official development finance to Africa seems to be roughly similar in size to the finance provided by the United States.

The new estimates come from a database compiled by AidData– a partnership between the College of William and Mary, Brigham Young University, and Development Gateway – and a joint paper, China’s Development Finance to Africa: A Media-Based Approach to Data Collection, released recently by the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC.

The database draws upon thousands of news reports on Chinese-backed projects in Africa from 2000 to 2011. It includes information on 1,673 official projects in 50 African countries, of which 1,422 have reached the commitment, implementation, or completion stage. All this amounts to a total of $75 billion in reported commitments of official finance during that period.

Definitions matter a lot when trying to measure China’s aid to Africa. There is a huge debate about what should be counted as aid and what should not.

Further complicating matters, Chinese package financing often brings together agreements that mix aid, investment, export credits, and both concessional and non-concessional financing. Chinese state-owned enterprises also blur the line between official government finance and private flows.

Estimates of total Chinese financial assistance to the region range from less than a billion dollars to more than $67 billion (for Exim Bank credits). Deborah Brautigam, considered by many to be the leading authority on Chinese foreign assistance to Africa, recently estimated 2007 official development assistance (ODA) from China at $1.4 billion.

The new AidData – CGD study counts as ‘official finance’ two types of assistance:

• Official Development Assistance or ODA – concessional finance, mainly grants and loans, provided by official Chinese sources and aimed at the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries. This aid largely meets the definition of ODA used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and
• Other Official Finance or OOF – other bilateral transactions from Chinese government entities (excluding investments and military aid).

Using these definitions, the study finds that China’s ODA + OOF combined was roughly equal to that of the United States from 2000 to 2011, varying from a low of about $2 billion per year at the start of the period to a peak of about $17 billion in 2006. (See chart for a comparison of China’s official finance with comparable flows from the United States and all members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, DAC).

By comparison, US ODA + OOF to the region has averaged about $9 – $11 billion a year in recent years. This rough comparison is useful, but just the start.

We, the co-authors, are not claiming that the database is fully comprehensive. We understand that some projects may not get picked up by the media. However, if we want to make sense of the competing claims made about Chinese ‘aid’ to Africa, we need higher-resolution data that are collected in a transparent, systematic, and replicable manner.

Further analysis of the media reports of Chinese-backed projects may eventually yield insights into such controversial questions as to what extent Chinese assistance to the region is focused on natural resource extraction, and whether Chinese activities complement or compete with assistance from other donors.

The full dataset is being released online at china.aiddata.org with an explanation of AidData’s media-based data collection methodology, an interactive map to view reported projects by country and project type, and a tool for users to add information about specific projects.

We hope to tap into a wisdom-of-crowds effect and enlist the support of scholars, journalists, and members of civil society to help make the data more comprehensive and precise.

The paper and new database were launched at the Center for Global Development on April 29.

AidData is a development research and innovation lab that seeks to make aid information more accessible and actionable. AidData tracks more than $5.5 trillion dollars from 90 donor agencies, undertakes cutting-edge research on aid distribution and impact, oversees efforts to geocode and crowdsource aid information, and develops web and mobile applications and custom data solutions for development finance institutions.

This is a slightly edited version of the original article published at the CGD website.

Often while exchanging thoughts and opinions with my Nigerian sisters and brothers on this problem, I find myself too overwhelmed with anger and thus forced, uncharacteristically, into silence.

Or I may become so frustrated with the dismissive way that rape and sexual violence is treated, that the conversation invariably ends up being unhelpful in the building of awareness and consciousness. What usually follows then is anger at the unconstructive nature of the dialogue and my inability to persuade the other individual to reflect more critically on the issue.

But as the famous human rights activist and educator Audre Lorde reminds us, not all anger is unproductive, in fact, there are ‘uses’ of anger: “Anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification“. To be sure, when it comes to the crisis of rape in Nigeria, there are numerous reasons to be angry.

There is the matter of those Nigerians who readily dismiss rape as a non-issue despite piles of evidence to the contrary. The resistance that is put up by those who undermine its significance in relation to the structural inequality, corruption, and massive unemployment that plague the daily lives of most Nigerians.

And then there is this overwhelming tendency amongst many of us to individualize the problem of rape and to separate it from the broader devaluation and oppression of women in Nigerian society.

Oftentimes in these discussions, the perpetration of rape and sexual violence against women is not of paramount significance. The issue that is deemed important is the regulation and control of women’s bodies and sexualities by the dictates of the state, men and by religious authorities.

And so it becomes not unusual to hear those who place the onus of responsibility on women, urging them to morally discipline themselves and pursue more ‘righteous’ paths to avoid being sexually violated by uncles, fathers, husbands, armed robbers, and so on.

Reflecting on the current state of affairs, it is no wonder that anger emerges as the overpowering emotion. This anger can become the impetus for concerted political organizing and mobilization for those discerning Nigerians who are outraged at the scourge of sexual violence that threatens the everyday lives of our sisters in the country. This anger need not be incapacitating; it need not drive one into silence and inaction.

It can be redirected as the energy and motivational force that inspires us to plant our feet firmly on the battleground over women’s right to their own bodies and sexualities. My continued anger is thus a testament to my commitment toward the eradication of this social plague. Until all women in Nigeria are granted the human right to determine their sexual and bodily autonomy, I choose to remain angry. And here are three reasons why you should be too:

First, the issue of rape and sexual violence is not removed from Nigeria’s broader socio-economic issues but is a part of it. Studies have shown that rape is more prevalent where women have relatively low economic autonomy. This means that Nigeria’s rising poverty rate of over 61 per cent (and women make up a large proportion of the poor), would aid the further entrenchment of sexual violence in Nigerian society.

Moreover, it is becoming impossible to divorce Nigeria’s culture of corruption from its culture of sexual violence and this is true of all Nigerian institutions. Within Nigeria’s corrupt educational system, women’s sexual autonomy is daily trampled upon by administrators, instructors and by students themselves.

Within the criminal justice system, women are at risk by a legal system that continues to sanction marital rape; that fails to effectively prosecute sexual violence against women; and by political and legal representatives that readily blame the victims of rape. In Nigeria women are unsafe even while in police custody!

What does this all mean? It means that the oppression of women in Nigerian society must be understood as being compatible with the systemic oppression of all of Nigeria’s working-class and peasantry by the political and economic elite. It also means that those who call for radical changes in the current political and economic status quo must adopt a holistic understanding of oppression in which women’s gendered oppression is a significant part.

Second, women’s rights are human rights. So if you are truly angry at the gross human rights violations so characteristic of Nigerian society then you should also add the violation of women’s bodies and sexual autonomy to your list.

If you are angered by the denial of our rights as citizens to freely elect representatives without coercion; the militaristic restrictions on our freedom of speech and expression; and the class warfare which leaves the majority of Nigerians vulnerable to exploitation by the kleptocrats then you should be angered by Nigeria’s failure to take women’s rights seriously.

If you are angry at the disregard for the human rights of the poor by the corrupt law enforcement, judicial and political systems, then you should raise your voice stridently in anger at those who would deny women the human right to engage only in consented sexual activity.

A third reason to be angry is the absence of comprehensive and accessible statistical data on rape and sexual violence in the country which doubly injures survivors of rape. Further, the sparse statistics on reported sexual violence renders the suffering of so many women and girls across the country invisible.

While the gathering of statistics is not something that Nigerian authorities do well, this negligence becomes especially criminal with respect to the issue of rape. This state of affairs is perhaps why so many Nigerians remain ignorant of this crisis and are startled when instances of rape, like the Abia State University incident, are exposed in the open. Yet despite this denial, and its accompanying institutional erasure, Nigerian women know that it exists.

We know this from our individual and collective experiences. We know that the culture of shaming, aided by religious moralizing, which holds victims of rape and sexual violence responsible for their suffering, silences those who would come forward with their stories.

We know that Nigerian society is one where women are socially and economically persecuted and punished for being victims of rape. And we know that our government’s silence and failures on this issue, despite reports by Amnesty International and other international organizations which attest to its existence, speak to the state’s complicity in the continued sexual oppression of women.

So if your mother, aunt, sister, friend, wife or daughter has been a victim of sexual violence and has seen her experiences of trauma denied and erased by the state, then you too should be angry!

Yet our anger is just the beginning. We should also “tap that anger as an important source of empowerment” to aid us in envisioning a different future society. This would be a society in which women’s bodies are not sites of masculine displays of power, objectification and dehumanization. It would be a just national community in which women are recognized as human beings.

The question that remains is, how will you and I tap into our anger?

Source: This is a slightly edited version of the original article in the Pambazuka News