This year’s Africa Progress
Report calls on African leaders to tackle inequality and demands global
community tackle plunder of continent’s natural resources.
Africa’s rich natural resources
offer a unique opportunity for a breakthrough in improving the lives of
Africa’s citizens, says a major new report launched by Kofi Annan, the former
UN Secretary-General.
But too often these resources
are plundered by corrupt officials and foreign investors. Rising inequality is
also blocking Africa from seizing that opportunity, the report shows.
The 2014 Africa Progress Panel
report, Grain, Fish, Money: Financing Africa’s green and blue
revolutions, calls on Africa’s
political leaders to take concrete measures now to reduce inequality by
investing in agriculture.
It also demands international
action to end what it describes as the plunder of Africa’s timber and fisheries.
“After more than a decade of
growth, there is plenty to celebrate,” Mr Annan will say when he releases the
report. “But it is time to ask why so much growth has done so little to lift
people out of poverty – and why so much of Africa’s resource wealth is
squandered through corrupt practices and unscrupulous investment activities.”
“Africa is a continent of great
wealth so why is Africa’s share of global malnutrition and child deaths rising
so fast? The answer is that inequality is weakening the link between
economic growth and improvements in wellbeing,” he said.
Although average income has
risen by one-third in the past decade, there are more Africans living in
poverty now – around 415 million – than at the end of the 1990s. New global
development goals are likely to aim to eradicate poverty by 2030 – but on
current trends, one African in five will still be in poverty when that deadline
arrives.
Mr Annan, who played a central
role in shaping the Millennium Development Goals, says “when countries sign up
to the new global development framework, they should pledge not only to meet
ambitious targets but also to narrow the region’s indefensible gaps between
rich and poor, urban and rural, and men and women.”
The report’s authors identify agriculture as the key to growth that reduces
poverty. They point out that most of Africa’s poor live and work in rural
areas, predominantly as smallholder farmers.
“Countries that have built
growth on the foundations of a vibrant agricultural sector – such as Ethiopia
and Rwanda – have demonstrated that the rural sector can act as a powerful
catalyst for inclusive growth and poverty reduction,” Mr Annan will say at the launch.
The report calls for a
“uniquely African green revolution” that adapts the lessons provided by Asia to
African conditions. Africa currently imports US$35 billion worth of food
because local agriculture is dogged by low productivity, chronic
underinvestment, and regional protectionism.
Increased investment in
infrastructure and research could dramatically raise the region’s yields and
the incomes of farmers. Meanwhile, eliminating the barriers that restrict trade
within Africa could open up new markets.
While critical of African
governments, the Africa Progress Report 2014 also challenges the international
community to support the region’s development efforts. It highlights fisheries
and logging as two areas in which strengthened multilateral rules are needed to
combat the plunder of natural resources.
Illegal, unregulated and
unreported fishing has reached epidemic proportions in Africa’s coastal waters.
West Africa is conservatively estimated to lose US$1.3 billion annually. Beyond
the financial cost this plunder destroys fishing communities who lose critical
opportunities to fish, process and trade. Another US$17 billion is lost through
illicit logging activities.
”Natural resource plunder is
organized theft disguised as commerce. Commercial trawlers that operate under
flags of convenience, and unload in ports that do not record their catch, are
unethical,” Mr Annan said, adding that these criminal activities compound the
problem of tax evasion and shell companies.
The Africa Progress Report 2014
calls for a multilateral fisheries regime that applies sanctions to fishing
vessels that do not register and report their catches. The report also calls on
governments around to world to ratify the Port State Measures Agreement, a
treaty that seeks to thwart the poachers in port from unloading their
ill-gotten gains.
African political leaders have
failed to manage natural resources in the interests of the true owners of those
resources – the African people.
As well as losing money through natural resource plunder and financial
mismanagement, Africans miss out on money from abroad, not only when aid donors
fail to keep their promises but even when those in the African diaspora send
remittances home to their families. It is estimated that the continent is
losing US$1.85 billion a year because money transfer operators are imposing
excessive charges on remittances.
With greater resource revenue,
African governments now have the opportunity to develop more effective taxation
systems – and spend public money more fairly, the report adds. For example, 3
per cent of regional GDP is currently allocated to energy subsidies that
principally go to the middle class. That money should be diverted into social spending
to give the poor a better chance of escaping the poverty trap.
“Africa’s resilience and creativity are enormous,” Mr
Annan says. “We have a rising and energetic youth population. Our dynamic
entrepreneurs are using technology to transform people’s lives. We have enough
resources to feed not just ourselves but other regions, too. It is time for
Africa’s leaders – and responsible investment partners – to unlock this huge
potential.”
Chaired by Kofi
Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, the ten-member Africa
Progress Panel advocates at the highest levels for equitable and sustainable
development in Africa. The Panel releases its flagship publication, the Africa
Progress Report, every year in May.
