NEWS FROM AFRICA

Zimbabwe’s opposition has declared its leader as the rightful president, rejecting the official result of a March 29 election which saw it fall just short of toppling Robert Mugabe in the first round. Nearly five weeks after voting, the electoral commission announced that Morgan Tsvangirai [Pictured], leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had won 47.9 per cent against Mr Mugabe's 43.2 per cent, and said the pair should now face a run-off on a date yet to be announced. However, the MDC said Mr Tsvangirai had been deprived of an outright majority after the commission robbed it of tens of thousands of votes. Western governments said the outcome lacked credibility.

The ruling party disputed the commission's figures but said it would accept the overall result and Mr Mugabe would contest a run-off. "Since no candidate has received the majority of the valid vote cast (...) a second election shall be held on a date to be advised by the commission," chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi said. A third candidate, former finance minister Simba Makoni, won 8.3 per cent and now drops out.

The MDC's number two, Secretary General Tendai Biti, said the commission, whose leaders are appointed by the president, had inflated the number of votes for Mr Mugabe by 47,000 and deflated those for Mr Tsvangirai by 50,000. "Morgan Tsvangirai is the president of the republic of Zimbabwe to the extent that he won the highest number of votes," he said from South Africa. "Morgan Tsvangirai has to be declared the president of Zimbabwe." Under the terms of the Zimbabwean constitution, Mr Mugabe would be declared the automatic winner if Mr Tsvangirai refused to take part in a second round. "We are fully aware of all the pros and cons," said Mr Biti.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, a senior Mugabe aide, accused the commission of deflating the figures for the incumbent. However he said the President was prepared to contest a run-off. "The President accepts the result as announced and is offering himself for election in the presidential run-off," he said. Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF party is challenging another 52 results from elections in which it lost control of parliament for the first time since 1980, Mr Mnangagwa said. "The petitions have been filed with the electoral court," he said. The authorities in Zimbabwe had earlier ordered a recount in 23 constituencies, which left the MDC with 109 seats against the ZANU-PF's 97.

Mr Mugabe has remained silent on the outcome of the presidential vote, but his control of the security apparatus has led the MDC to conclude that he will seek to intimidate voters into giving him a sixth term. But the hero of the 1970s war against white minority rule has found himself increasingly isolated since election day with an international outcry over an upsurge in violence.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the results had "rather serious credibility problems" and doubted a run-off would be free and fair. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Mr Mugabe had "clearly lost", calling for an end to intimidation before a second round can be held. "His campaign of violence and intimidation over the last month must stop immediately," Mr Miliband said.

No Western observers were allowed to oversee the ballot and a team from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was widely criticised for giving it a largely clean bill of health. However in a report released after a follow-up mission to monitor a recent partial recount, SADC expressed alarm at rising levels of violence that the MDC claims has left 20 of its supporters dead.

The massive deal that China signed with the Democratic Republic of Congo last year is not the "second colonisation" that some Europeans allege it is. The agreement appears, in fact, a promising way to kick-start an economy. The agreement on developing infrastructure through "resource-backed finance" certainly gives China a lot of influence in a country where Europeans are used to dealing the cards. European countries now look with a certain envy at what China has achieved. President Joseph Kabila's political future depends on this Sino-Congolese deal. And, with that, at least a part of the economic future of Congo itself.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been endowed with tremendous natural resources, but 40 years of mismanagement have brought the country down. The DRC is now one of the poorest countries on earth -- even the most basic of infrastructure has succumbed to four decades of neglect. The announcement in September 2007 that China would take on big infrastructure projects in the DRC, to be paid for with Congo's immense copper and cobalt reserves, inevitably attracted a lot of attention. But it created also a lot of suspicion: what exactly were the Chinese up to?

The Chinese companies will, for one thing, start work on infrastructural projects in 2008 more or less along the lines of the five priorities Kabila has set: water, electricity, education, health, and transport. These works will cost more than 9 billion dollars. That is a lot of money, considering that the 2007 government budget was a mere 1.3 billion dollars, most of which was needed just to pay the salaries of government staff. So how will the DRC pay off these Chinese loans?

The basic idea is that Congolese and Chinese state owned enterprises (SOEs) set up a joint venture, Socomin. This mining company will invest 3 billion dollars in mainly new mining areas. The profits of Socomin will be used to repay these mining investments and the investments in the big infrastructural works. Broad agreement was reached in September last year. It was then fine-tuned through two months of negotiations in Beijing in November and December.

"It took a long time, that's for sure," says French-born Paul Fortin, CEO of Gécamines, the Congolese state-owned mining company. "We had to agree on an economic model that stipulates how the Chinese investments will be repaid with the revenue of Socomin. Apart from that, these were normal business negotiations comparable to those I did for the many partnerships of Gécamines with private companies." One of the agreements was that over a 15-year period Socomin will raise about ten million tonnes of copper to pay off eventually 12 billion dollars in investments in mining and infrastructure.

The Chinese have hedged their position quite aggressively. The first profits will be used to repay the mining investment, something that is typical of most private joint ventures with Gécamines. The agreement also says that "the Congolese government has to guarantee the safety of the investments, and the repayment of the infrastructural works." Any disputes would be settled by the arbitration tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, and not through Congolese courts, that have a reputation of being corrupt.

Under the agreement, only one in five workers can be Chinese. In each of the projects half of one percent of the investment must be spent on transfer of technology and on training Congolese staff. One percent has to be spent on social activities in the region, and three percent to cover environmental costs. Ten to 12 percent of the work has to be sub-contracted to Congolese companies. How all this will work out for the DRC remains to be seen. And, what will be the quality of the work? Is the Congolese government capable of controlling that?

One thing is obvious: this is not the black and white story some wanted to make of it. It is neither a colonial horror story, nor some idealistic investment on the part of China. To be sure, China is interested because it needs the natural resources. But Paul Fortin thinks the DRC has a lot to gain too. "Congo doesn't have to wait for its infrastructure until it has the money. Building starts immediately with the natural resources as guarantee. Except in oil-rich states, I know of no other deal quite like this." One well-informed European diplomat admitted that "if carried out well, this can be positive for Congo."

The deal seems like a lifeline for Congolese President Joseph Kabila. After more than a year in power, there's not a lot he can show to the Congolese people, who have started to criticise him. Something has to begin quickly if he wants to get re-elected in three-and-a-half years. The Congo-China deal seems a good way to move forward, also because the money does not have to be channelled through a corrupt Congolese bureaucracy. Loans from China's state-owned Eximbank go directly to the Chinese state-owned enterprises China Railway Engineering Company (CREC) and Sinohydro.

Kabila alluded very clearly to this in a recent speech. "The Chinese banks are prepared to finance our Five Works (water, electricity, education, health, and transport). For the first time in our history, the Congolese will really feel what all that copper, cobalt and nickel is good for."

The exchange agreement with the Chinese appears to be a satisfactory solution in the short term. A better-run state is still a must though, and a necessary precondition for making good use of (and maintaining) all the new roads, railways, hospitals and schools that are planned. The Europeans are finding China's role frustrating. Through their projects, the Chinese gain access to copper and cobalt. "This at a time when we ought to be mindful of long-term provisioning (of commodities to Europe)," a diplomat told IPS. "Would the European development aid community tolerate us operating like the Chinese?" And that is just one question. There are others. Which other nation is able to take on such gigantic projects as cheaply and quickly as the Chinese? And, which European country still possesses the publicly owned enterprises to undertake such ventures?

If Kabila is now politically dependent on the Chinese, that means that Beijing's influence in this crucial African country has grown very strong. The Congolese, like many other Africans, have had it with the often paternalistic Europeans telling them how they must behave and how they must improve governance. To be sure, the government of the DRC is notoriously weak and corrupt. Researchers found that typically a container entering the country in the eastern town Bukavu is 'attacked' by 20 different government services, each requiring the right papers -- or some kind of payment.

Sometime in the next two years, nearly every school in Rwanda – from distant mountain villages to swelling urban areas – will be hooked up to the Internet. And it won't be some crummy dial-up service. It will be high-speed broadband, carried by fiber-optic cables. The fact that Rwanda is closing in on this goal without having the massive oil wealth of Angola or Sudan, the diamonds of Congo or South Africa, or even the copper of nearby Zambia is a testimony to the power of imagination. And Rwanda imagines that one day, it will be the information technology center of Africa.

"In 2000, we decided to transform the country from agricultural subsistence to a knowledge-based economy," says Albert Butare, Rwanda's minister of state for energy and communications. With two fiber-optic rings around Kigali, and cable being laid across the country, Rwanda is well on its way to being wired. "Once we've reached the towns of each sector, it's like you've covered the whole country. In another two years, we should be there."

The Singapore of Africa?

Rwanda's dream of becoming the Singapore of Africa – an information-technology hub for the resource-rich nations of Eastern and Central Africa – is a point of pride for the government, a matter of concern for some Rwandans, and a curiosity for just about everyone else. Government officials and business leaders see high-tech as the best way to lift one of the world's least-developed countries into a better position to compete globally. Local human rights activists fret that Rwanda's money could be better spent on things like drinking water and electricity.

Countries like Rwanda, which rank among the world's least developed countries (LDCs), don't easily become high-tech hubs. Sixty percent of Rwandans live below the poverty line, defined by the UN as an income of less than a dollar a day. According to a 2005 study by the Australian National University, LDCs make up 10 percent of the world's population and represent only 0.13 percent of the world's Internet users. Yet, there are hopeful signs. Nearly 70 percent of Rwanda's adults can read and write. This fact, combined with Rwanda's dense population – almost all of whom speak the same language, Kinyarwanda – make the country a much better place for establishing an Internet hub than Rwanda's resource-rich, ethnically diverse, and less-educated neighbors.

By spending $65 million on broadband, part of a 20-year strategy to turn the country from an agricultural economy into a high-tech service economy, Rwanda hopes to tap into its single most valuable resource: its people. "This country is very hierarchical, and whatever the government decides to do, it will do, and society will follow in a very disciplined way," says Antoine Bigirimana, president of Electronic Tools Company, a Sonoma, Calif.-based software company with projects in Rwanda. "That culture can be used to do very bad things, like the genocide, or you can use it for good, to make the society better."

The key, says Mr. Bigirimana, a top adviser to the Rwandan government on its 20-year technology plan, is to use technology that fits Rwanda's conditions and budget. For urban areas, Rwanda should import refurbished computers in the $200 price range. For rural areas with little or no electricity, he envisions solar-powered 12-volt, 8-watt computers being pioneered by the San Francisco based company Inveneo, priced at around $70.

Rwanda's model for success

Tying them all together will be a network of privately owned telecenters, some of them hooked up to fiber-optic cable, others making use of mobile phone broadcast towers for their Internet access. According to the plan, these telecenters will give every Rwandan town high-speed domestic broadband Internet access. This would allow middle class Rwandans to find out about business opportunities, educated people to find jobs, and farmers to get better prices for their crops. Eventually, it would provide education for those illiterate Rwandans whom the Internet has so far passed by. "Poverty is not a permanent state," Bigirimana says. He rejects Singapore as a model, saying, "We have to develop our own model, listing our strengths and weaknesses. If we can take half of the underclass that can read and write, and bring them into the middle class, and if we can educate the rest in how to read and write, you will see this country change."

Rwanda's high-tech plans are not universally applauded. One independent newspaper, Newsline, called the plan a misuse of public funds, while several aid groups have criticized it as an investment in the rich at the expense of the poor. "This idea is far ahead of the current situation for the majority of the people," said one human rights activist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You can't build a school and take a student to study before you give him something to eat. You can't invest in such a long-term policy when people are so poor."

Peter Niyigena, owner of an Internet café in Kigali, was more enthusiastic. "I don't know if we'll become like Singapore, but it's good to know where we are going," he says. "This isn't a question of choosing between water and sanitation [on one hand], and providing high-speed broad-band [on the other]," says Laurent Besançon, a senior regulatory specialist and telecom expert at the World Bank office in Johannesburg.

Illegal ivory imports have soared in the past decade, as Chinese-run smuggling rings expand their reach in Africa, according to a report published Thursday. Traffic International, a wildlife trade watchdog based in Cambridge, England, appealed to the Chinese government to help control the problem.

"It is imperative that China reaches out to the growing Chinese communities in Africa with a clear message that involvement in illegal ivory trade will not be tolerated," said Tom Milliken, director of the group's Africa program.

Worldwide, there are an average of 92 ivory seizures a month -- or three a day, the report said. Thirty-two seizures of 1.1 tons or more of ivory were recorded from 1998 to 2006, up from 17 in 1989-97, according to the group's analysis of international elephant product seizure records.

Markets in China are driving the demand for illicit ivory, which arrives either directly or through Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Japan and Thailand are also important final destinations, and the Philippines is a key transit country. These seven countries and territories account for 62 percent of the ivory recovered in the 49 largest recorded seizure cases, the report said.

The study identified Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria as major sources of illegal ivory. Ivory trading threatens elephant populations by creating commercial incentives for poachers. The ivory is used mostly to make luxury items.

Burning a small pile of rusty rifles and machine guns, militias that backed the government in Côte d'Ivoire's 2002 to 2003 civil war completed their disarmament on Saturday, taking the country one step closer to reunification. The civilian combatants fought in some of the fiercest battles of the conflict, in which the rebels seized the north of the world's top cocoa grower. They are feared by locals in the far-western town of Guiglo, which they have controlled since.

"Thanks to you who took up arms to defend your fields and your villages," President Laurent Gbagbo told the groups at a ceremony in Guiglo supposedly marking the end of the hastily conducted disarmament. "We have 1 027 weapons." Brandishing a flaming torch, interim head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission, Abou Moussa, set light to a symbolic pile of guns thrown into a pit and covered with wood and straw. Onlookers cheered, shouting the country's conflict was now over.

Côte d'Ivoire's peace process foundered for more than four years as politicians squabbled but has made strides forward since March when Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro signed a home-grown peace pact after foreign-brokered accords failed. Gbagbo subsequently named the rebel chief as his prime minister. The agreement foresees disarmament of all combatants on both the rebel and government sides and the formation of a new army as well as reunification and the organisation of long-delayed elections that were supposed to take place in 2005.

'No more reason to exist'

Denis Maho Glofiei, head of the Great West Liberation Front (FLGO), one of the four militia groups, said they were disarming in support of the latest peace efforts. "We've realised that since the signing of the ... peace deal, we have no more reason to exist. Anyone possessing an arm from today does so illegally and not in the name of the FLGO," he said, after handing a machine gun and rifle to Gbagbo.

Mechanic Lacine Kone from Guiglo said he was grateful for the part the militias played in the conflict but was glad to see them go. Some locals say they are violent towards residents. "They helped us but after that they started to mistreat us civilians so if they're going now to enable peace, that's good," he said as robed village elders and guests took their seats at the ceremony under tarpaulins to shade them from the sun.

Nearly two years ago an 86-year old man shuffled to the front of a stage and challenged humans to "wipe poverty from the Earth." An estimated 1 billion people watched Nelson Mandela address the Live 8 concert in Johannesburg, one of 10 held in different cities. It was the world's biggest protest movement against poverty, even if most of the protesters did not leave their living rooms.

Six days after the former South African president spoke, the leaders of the world's wealthiest nations promised to provide an extra $US 50 billion for aid, half of it to Africa. The then United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, hailed the Group of Eight meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, as "the best summit ever for Africa." The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said: "It isn't the end of poverty in Africa, but it is the hope that it can be ended."

Cynics -- or perhaps realists -- muttered that hopes were being lifted too high on a wave of goodwill and fine talk. Two years later they seem to have been proven right.

Africa will be on the agenda, but only just, when G8 leaders meet in the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm for their annual summit on Wednesday. Climate change is the hot topic, while Africa made the program only after last-minute lobbying by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, Mr Blair and the rock star and political activist Bono.

What's more, research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Bono's organisation, Debt AIDS Trade Africa (DATA), shows that all bar two of the G8 countries are far from meeting the promises they made in Gleneagles. Only Britain and Japan, which have stumped up most of the extra $US 2.3 billion the G8 has so far provided, are on track to meet their pledges for extra funds. The US is almost $US 1 billion behind on its commitment, although Congress recently adopted a $US1 billion package to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa.

Germany, France and Italy suffer a particular "crisis of credibility," DATA says. France and Italy cut aid last year, the latter dramatically. The OECD says that globally, aid fell 5 per cent last year. Countries have inflated what they spent by including debt relief, domestic funds for refugees and even money for educating overseas students in aid budgets, a report by European non-governmental organisations found. Russia does not even bother to hide its failure to meet its tiny aid commitment.

"We only made those promises because we felt sorry for Tony Blair after the terrorist attacks on 7/7," a Russian G8 delegate told The Guardian, referring to the London bombings a day before the Gleneagles agreement. The G8 has not kept its promise to move towards opening its markets to goods from poor countries, a change many specialists say would be far more effective than aid. But it did honour its pledge to write off the debts of 18 of the world's poorest countries, most of which are in Africa.

"Millions of children in Africa are now at school, because debt relief has given governments the resources to pay for teachers and school buildings," says Simon Maxwell, director of Britain's leading aid think tank, the Overseas Development Institute. Although a promise to create near universal access to AIDS and malaria treatments has not been met, Bono (pictured) says that the proportion of AIDS sufferers who get life-saving medication in sub-Saharan Africa has increased from 1 to 28 per cent since 2002.

In recent weeks Bono's tone has become urgent. He says the achievements of Gleneagles are in jeopardy and warns of renewed violence by anti-globalisation protesters similar to the clashes in Genoa in 2001. Yet a simple account of wealthy nations backsliding while the poor slip further into despair ignores the shifting ground of aid politics in the West and in Africa.

The "one big push" rhetoric of Live 8 made some in the aid sector uneasy, because after 50 or more years of large payments to Africa it is evident aid does not work miracles. What is more, it seems to work best when delivered in a sustained and sometimes more modest form than when handed out in huge sums. Aid already makes up more than 20 per cent of the gross national income of Zambia, Mozambique, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While some of this is emergency aid, too much development aid risks condemning these countries to perpetual dependency.

"Does aid work?" asks Mr Maxwell. "The general answer is yes. Could it work better? Yes. Are we better off with it than without it? Yes."

It is a qualified answer far from the "Make Poverty History" slogan of Live 8. To David Booth, a researcher at Mr Maxwell's institute, the "well-intentioned" campaign of Bono and Bob Geldof has to move beyond the Western-focused message of "Africans' big needs and the immorality of not meeting them when we are so rich." Instead, Mr Booth says, "we have to engage with the politics of Africa."

These politics are complex and not always grim. Noting that in 2003 African emigres transferred $US 200 billion home in remittance payments, the Nigerian political scientist Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe writes on the website OPEN DEMOCRACY that "Africans are already transforming their societies on the ground." One of those people not waiting for a handout but taking the initiative is Fatuma Ahmed, 37, a teacher from a Somali family in Marsabit, northern Kenya, whose passion is getting girls into school. Her Northern Women Development Aid agency has helped 350 girls to stay in the education system that Ms Ahmed says changed her life when she was young.

The tiny agency makes a big noise in Marsabit, holding rallies and lobbying authorities against female genital mutilation and marriage of underage girls, which although illegal in Kenya, happen frequently in the north. Ms Ahmed wants to open a rescue centre for girls at risk, and to help 200 more girls who have applied to go to school. But though she received a small United Nations grant for girls' education last year, she has no more money.

"We need that rescue centre terribly," she says. "We have been trying grant applications but it is hard, because of our remoteness. We just need some funds." Ms Ahmed's work should be on the G8 leaders' minds next week. The UN says getting all children at least a primary school education is vital to reducing global poverty. Kenya's economy has grown at 6 per cent and has moved beyond agriculture and resources to host a small but growing number of call centres that service global computer companies. Its democracy is strengthening, even if corruption is still rife.

Across Africa the economy has grown at nearly 5 per cent in the past three years. "The question is, will it be restricted to the elites?" Mr Maxwell asks. The worry is that the mini-boom in parts of Africa is powered by sales of primary resources, notably oil, minerals and timber. The nation that is driving the boom by making huge investments in these commodities is China.

There is no longer much doubt that China is changing Africa. For one thing, it "has turned conventional wisdom about aid and development on its head," Mr Maxwell says. Typically, poor countries hope to grow through manufacturing. But no one can compete with China's phenomenal ability to produce cheap goods and most African countries have stopped trying. China is also spending big sums on aid to Africa, including $US 5 billion in export credits and loans. It does not ask pesky questions about governance, democracy and corruption, just as those questions grow more important to the West.

In September 2005 the President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, attended the UN global poverty summit in New York. He and his entourage of 50, including his butler and his wife's hairdresser, ran up a bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a week's stay in two hotels. At the time the president was negotiating with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to cancel much of his country's debt, on the grounds that it could not afford to repay it.

Such revelations drove the then World Bank president, the recently deposed Paul Wolfowitz, to put corruption at the top of the global aid agenda, starting with the bank's lending decisions. To Heather Marquette, a development specialist at Birmingham University, it was the "only thing he got right" in two years as bank president. "There needs to be a more honest discussion among donors about when to cancel projects and even to cut off aid," Professor Marquette says. "Wolfowitz has shown people the elephant in the room and it's not going to go away."

Britain has shown a willingness to cut aid to countries that appear to be guilty of corruption or democratic violations. Last year it cut funds to two "donor darlings" -- Ethiopia and Uganda -- after alleged human rights abuses by their leaders. Zambia and Tanzania, meanwhile, seem to have benefited from debt relief, the former using it to build schools and hospitals. However, the two countries are easier to fund, precisely because they already appear to be on the right track.

It is what the development researcher Paolo de Renzio calls "one of the basic paradoxes of aid: countries that most need aid are the ones least likely to use it effectively, given that they are plagued by conflict, mismanagement or outright corruption." What's more, how do donors ensure their money is well spent without preserving a neo-colonial intrusiveness?

Britain tries to solve the problem through "budget support," in which aid is not tied to projects determined by donors, as was the case for decades. Instead, governments are given block grants to spend as they choose. There is still monitoring, but the British believe giving Africans freedom to spend money on their own priorities promotes both self-reliance and accountability to citizens, since the funds are not special grants but part of the country's budget.