{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Go to a meeting, lose your way, chat about football... - Comment
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3:22 PM |
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Go to a meeting, lose your way, chat about football...
African leaders have logged a lot of miles flying to conferences in the past few weeks.
Other world leaders too have done so, but they didn't have to travel as far because they were hosting some of the conferences. Our leaders were, you might, net flyers.
There was the EU-Africa meeting to discuss migration in Malta, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), the G20 Summit in Turkey where our people attend in a minor capacity, the Climate Summit in Paris, then everyone had to rush back for the weekend for the sixth Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg.
It's the first time FOCAC is meeting in Africa. China's President Xi Jinping came early, and has been dropping in on African tables. He and South Africa's President Jacob Zuma did their thing.
Zuma hailed Xi's visit as "historic" and revealed that the two countries had signed deals worth $6.5 billion in various sectors.
But perhaps it was in struggling Zimbabwe that Xi was truly seen as Santa Claus arriving early. Parts of the capital Harare were reported to have got the most determined facelift they have received in years, and potholes were filled. He inked several deals there too, including a $1.2 billion loan to rehabilitate and expand Zimbabwe's Hwange power plant.
What has been missing in this big-men-travelling-to-conferences business, is that there have been remarkably few happening in Africa.
This is important because we saw at the EU-Africa migration meeting that it matters. The Europeans had met several times, plotting whom to let in, whom to lock out, and at the meeting were well prepared.
They offered peanuts, some $2 billion in development money, the idea being that if their economies improved, fewer Africans would take to dangerous waters to make their way to Europe.
Only Senegal's Macky Sall went there with a war plan, arguing that Africa really didn't need Europe's money. What was more important was that the West back plans to stop their multinationals from dodging taxes worth billions more, and Africa would have money to solve its problems.
But the fact that African leaders did not themselves meet to conspire ahead of the climate change parleys; that there has not been a big meeting to discuss the implications of the global commodity slump; to think about migration; or even drought and El Nino, means we don't have enlightened narrow interests to defend out there.
So you end up with what happened at the Malta migration talks. The Congolese delegation was listed as attending, and they had left their hotel, but they were not in the conference hall. The organisers began frantically looking for them, and everyone kept running past this group of Africans sitting on the stairs in a corner talking away.
Turns out it was the "missing" Congolese. They had just failed to find their way to the right room, but were happy to give up and sit around arguing about football, probably.
The late Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi and Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo were masters at crafting rallying cries for grand African causes. Hopefully, we shall not have to wait much longer for worthy successors to emerge.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3
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