African Social Movements Set Their Own Agenda
While Western politicians paid lip service to poverty in Africa at the G8 meeting in Scotland, African social movements set their own agenda at a People’s Forum in Mali. The focus of this conference was not on asking for more aid, but rather on Africans taking the lead to resolve the continent's challenges.
Organized by Mali’s Coalition for African Alternatives on Debt and Development in coordination with the African Social Forum, the summit brought together African peasants, trade unions, youth and women’s movements, religious and human rights organizations, and social movement networks in the town of Fana from July 6th through 9th. The participants planned Africa’s future from the ground up in workshops strategizing around alternatives to Western development programs, political obstacles to development, government transparency, the impacts of extractive industries, food sovereignty, land tenure, and rural women and communal power.
Meanwhile, African commentators spoke out about what they see as the root causes of poverty on their continent. Tanzanian law professor and commentator Issa Shivji analysed the role of the G8 in an interview with Pambazuka News, excerpted below:
PN: Reading the various media reports around the G8 there is a very real sense that it is all about Tony Blair's plans for Africa, or Gordon Brown's promises, or what George Bush is or isn't prepared to do. Why is it that African voices seem to be so sidelined in events that are so crucial to their lives?
IS: Truly African voices have been and are being sidelined. This is the show of the very people who plan poverty in the first place! Poverty in Africa, both historically and in contemporary times, is due in no small measure to the exploitation and plundering of its resources by Western multinational capital. The crucial point for me is not that the Africans have little say in Blair's and Brown's plans but that Africans have lost all voice in controlling their own resources, their own destiny.
PN: What is the most effective action that organisations in Africa should take today that will make a significant impact on the relationship between our countries and the G8?
IS: Ultimately, the liberators of Africa will be Africans themselves. Organisations in Africa have to sink their roots among their own people and free themselves of this dependency syndrome. We have to organise and mobilise for a second independence in every sense of the world. Fundamentally, the relationship between Africa and G8 is an unequal exploitative relationship. That is the fundamental premise which should be our point of departure.
Read the full interview and other African perspectives on the G8 at www.pambazuka.org
The views expressed in this article or recording are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect those of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.
