Ethiopian Reporter - Amharic Version

The Reporter | Saturday |April 30, 2011
Reporter POLITICS
THE
Commentary
africa’s winds of change return
By sanou mBaye
How did Ivory Coast come to this? After gaining
independence from France in 1960 with Felix
Houphouet-Boigny as President, the country
became the world’s largest exporter of cocoa
beans and a significant exporter of coffee and
palm oil. Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s,
sizeable export earnings, combined with easy
access to credit, fueled an economic surge dubbed
the “Ivorian miracle.” But then, escalating debts
and plummeting commodity prices started taking
their toll. Africa’s El Dorado was lost.
In 1990, Houphouet-Boigny appointed Alassane
Ouattara, the governor of the Central Bank of
the West African States, as Prime Minister to
fix Ivory Coast’s growing economic problems.
After Houphouet-Boigny’s death in 1993, Henri
Konan Bédié assumed the presidency and revised
the electoral code to bar Ouattara from entering
the 1995 presidential contest on the grounds
that he was not an Ivorian national. Bédié, not
surprisingly, was re-elected unopposed. And, not
surprisingly, he was soon accused of widespread
corruption and toppled in a military coup in 1999.
It was in the midst of this militarization of Ivorian
politics that Laurent Gbagbo emerged as the
main opposition leader. When Robert Guéi, the
military leader, organized a flawed presidential
election in 2000, of which he declared himself to
be the winner, a popular uprising ousted him and
elevated Gbagbo to the post.
In 2002, Ivory Coast was rocked by a rebel
uprising that partitioned the country, with the
government led by Gbagbo controlling the south,
pro-Ouattara rebels controlling the north, and a
French army camped between the two.
After a peace conference in 2005, a government
of national unity was established, followed by
a presidential election in November 2010. The
independent electoral commission endorsed by
the international community declared Ouattara
the winner. Gbagbo refused to acknowledge the
result, claiming vote-rigging, and was declared reelected
by the Constitutional Court, which nullified
600,000 ballots in several northern constituencies.
As a result, Ivory Coast was plunged in a deadly
battle among four stakeholders.
The first stakeholder is Gbagbo, who sought to
break away from French neo-colonial dominance.
He had the support of Ivorians who aspired to
install genuine Ivorian patriots in place of the
French-backed elite. Gbagbo was suspicious of
Ouattara, whom he believed to be actively plotting
with French support to topple his government.
But Gbagbo refused to denounce the tribal/
religious chauvinism that excluded Ouattara
and millions of Ivoirian northerners from
full citizenship rights. He also tried to avoid
confrontation with France, awarding the
management of the port of Abidjan, the capital, to
a French company. But French President Nicolas
Sarkozy maintained his visceral opposition to
Gbagbo.
The second stakeholder is Ouattara. In his quest
for authority, he drew on the Western ties that he
had forged as a deputy-managing director of the
International Monetary Fund. His claim to fame
was his professional reputation as an economic
manager, which arose from his implementation
of structural adjustment programs that always
included the same set of measures: currency
devaluation, decontrol of exchange rates, tighter
monetary policy, financial deregulation, trade
liberalization, wage cuts, fiscal consolidation, and
labor-market deregulation.
Ivory Coast’s third key stakeholder is France, which
under President Charles de Gaulle had granted
independence to its former African colonies on
the condition that French troops remain stationed
on their territories, and that their economies
remain tightly linked to France. Indeed, after a
half-century of independence, France maintains a
stranglehold on Ivorian commerce and holds its
foreign-currency reserves.
French business, moreover, dominates most of the
country’s infrastructure: Bolloré controls the port
of Abidjan and the railway; Bouygues oversees
Ivorian construction projects; Total holds onequarter
of the shares of the country’s oil refinery;
France Telecom is the main shareholder of the
landline and mobile telephone network; Société
Générale and BNP-Paribas control the banking
industry; and Air France controls the sky.
The convertibility of the country’s currency, the
CFA franc, allows these companies to transfer
freely all their earnings back to France. The
CFA’s fixed exchange rate peg to the euro shields
them from any risk of capital loss at a time
when countries around the world are battling
aU must support... ConT`d
and several opposition leaders.
In addition, several protesters, including a toddler in her mother’s
arms, were shot and killed by security forces armed with automatic
weapons. Their only crime was to lead a ‘Walk to Work’ demonstration
against the escalating costs of food and transport, which has made life
impossible for the vast majority of Ugandans.
Uganda, which has never had a peaceful change from one government
to another, is steadily moving towards yet another phase political
violence.
They went to the polls in 1996, 2001 and 2011 hoping to vote out
general Museveni, or win enough seats in parliament in order to
curb Museveni’s excesses. Sadly, each time the European Union and
Commonwealth election as well as local election observers declared
that the elections had been rigged because Museveni’s ruling party and
state was one and the same thing.
They also went to the Supreme Court but the judges, most of whom
are card-carrying members of Museveni’s ruling party, made the
to maintain competitive exchange rates in order
to export their way out of economic trouble.
With such a currency regime in place, there is no
prospect for proper industrialization in western
Africa’s francophone countries, whose economic
woes stand in sharp contrast to other reviving
African economies.
The fourth stakeholder is the Ivorian population,
which is under siege, divided along ethnic and
religious lines, and incited by venomous politics.
Ivorians massacred each other in the 2002 civil
war. In 2011, the post-election deadlock led to
thousands of civilian deaths. A stream of refugees
fled to neighboring countries, especially Liberia.
The mayhem began to abate only when Gbagbo
was removed from power and taken prisoner after
French and UN ground troops, armored vehicles,
and helicopters bombarded the presidential palace
where he was guarded by forces that remained
loyal to him.
Elite corruption and incompetence, a population
vulnerable to demagogic manipulation, and the
ruthlessness of French neo-colonialism have
combined to plunge francophone Africa into
a deadly cycle of violence, humiliation, and
hopelessness. But the entry into Africa of fastgrowing
economies such as China, India, South
Korea, Turkey, Brazil, and Malaysia reflects a
shifting balance of power and the inception of a
model of cooperation based on trade, investment,
and technology transfer – in sharp contrast to
French neo-colonial politics.
At the start of the era of decolonization, British
Prime Minister Harold MacMillan famously said
that “the winds of change” were blowing across
Africa. Another such wind is blowing today.
Will Francophone Africa at last escape its French
enthrallment?
Ed’s Note: Sanou Mbaye, a former senior official
with the African Development Bank, is the author
of L’Afrique au secours de l’Afrique (Africa to the
rescue of Africa). The article was provided to The
Reporter by Project Syndicate the world’s preeminent
source of original op-ed commentaries.
With a unique collaboration of distinguished
opinion makers from every corner of the globe
Project Syndicate provides incisive perspectives by
those who are shaping politics, economics, science,
and culture.
extraordinary ruling that the elections had been rigged, but not rigged
enough to alter the final outcome!
The opposition petitioned the government to introduce specific
constitutional, legal and administrative reforms necessary for free and
fair elections; but these and their demands for the reconstitution of a
non-partisan electoral commission were ignored.
And they have taken to the streets to exercise their constitutional
rights to peaceful demonstration, but Museveni has been responding
by sending armed soldiers with orders to shoot and kill.
Denied all avenues to peacefully exercise their basic human rights to
free association and expression, Ugandans seem determined to die on
their feet rather than on their knees. This is an invitation for NATO to
intervene in Uganda, thanks to its discovery of the “oil curse” which
will start flowing in two years’ time!
As Foreign Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has rightly said, Ethiopia’s
role in causing regime change in Eritrea will not be by invading the
country, but by supporting the Eritrean people and groups which want
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“Ethiopia has tremendous agricultural potential and it’s
doing a lot of the right things,” he said in an interview
yesterday. “It’s investing in agriculture in a way that
other African countries are not.”
A “critical issue” that needs to be addressed in Ethiopia
is better training and support for the 60,000 extension
workers, according to Steiner. Yields may also be boosted
by increasing the number and efficiency of small-scale
irrigation works using groundwater or pumps, he said.
“It’s a small thing, but boy it can make a difference if your
pump lasts 10 years rather than one year,” Steiner said.
Ethiopia has the potential to be self-sufficient in grain
production and for export development in livestock,
flowers, oilseeds, sugar, vegetables and fruit, according
to the US State Department’s website.
Crops being targeted by the EATA include the mostwidely
grown teff, which is currently grown on about
2.5 million hectares of land. The government wants to
increase yields to as much as 60 quintals per hectare
from 10 quintals currently, Wonderad said.
A small improvement in the productivity of teff would
“automatically transform” the agriculture industry, he
said.
About three million of Ethiopia’s 80 million people are
in need of emergency food assistance, the government
said on April 12. Another 7.8 million people receive food
or cash under an aid program, World Food Program
(WFP) spokesman Susannah Nicol said. (Bloomberg)
A “critical issue” that needs
to be addressed in Ethiopia
is better training and support
for the 60,000 extension
workers, according to
Steiner.
turkish embassy...
ConT`d from page 5
According to information from the Turkish Airways,
passengers need to fulfill all the requirements when they
apply for visa.
The Embassy also regulates that those applicants must not
be deported or banned to enter Turkey, the US, UK or
other Schengen countries.
A failure to meet one of these requirements as the Embassy
says is losing a legible vantage for visa application. But
the formal visa application process is not affected on such
requirements.
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to dismantle the regime.” Ugandans and other oppressed African
people are asking for nothing less and nothing more.
The African Union, which claims that its mission is “an integrated,
prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens” is facing
a simple choice. It must clean its own house by actively supporting
Eritrean and other African people want to dismantle their oppressive
regimes, or wait for NATO to come and clean it for them.
They will not have to wait very long after Libya. Within ten years, all
AU countries could be led by NATO-installed presidents and prime
ministers. That is why they must support Ethiopia intervention in
Eritrea and recognise a Transitional National Council for Eritrea,
based in Addis Ababa.
Ed.s Note: The writer is a former independent parliamentary candidate
in the UK, May 2010, and is the director of Democratic Institutions for
Poverty reduction in Africa (DIPRA) London. He can be reached at
sam.akaki@hotmail.com.