Merkel will not be sidetracked by US in the drive for Compact with Africa

Goal for G-20 is to create more stable environments for investment, especially in infrastructure development

Group of 20 (G-20) leaders will launch a Compact with Africa as the major new initiative of their summit in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday and Saturday. Details of the priorities and processes that would frame and drive the compact are yet to be negotiated, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants this to be a hallmark of her 2017 G-20 presidency.

Doubtful US support for such G-20 initiatives, or for multilateralism generally, during the presidency of Donald Trump has complicated her presidency, but she appears determined not to allow him to distract her from this experiment in what may have to be an African compact with the G-19.

Any compact with — not just for — Africa implies a commitment to genuine partnerships, based on agreed goals, obligations and performance standards. These will have to be forged despite vast and persistent disparities between the most and least advantaged countries. Broadly, the goals of the compact would be to create more stable environments for investment, thereby encouraging greater engagement and investments by Africa’s foreign partners, especially in priority areas of infrastructure development.

This virtuous circle, proponents of the compact hope, would lead to sustainable economic progress. Germany has also announced the compact should accept greater mutual responsibility in fields other than economics, notably migration and refugee movements, money laundering and corruption and counterterrorism. In a spirit of partnership, Germany invited three African leaders to join the discussions in Hamburg, as SA is the continent’s only G-20 member.

The three guests will be Guinea’s Alpha Conde, AU chairman; Senegal’s Macky Sall, president of the revitalised New Partnership for Africa’s Development; and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, who recently addressed the G-7 summit in Italy and called on the major powers to listen more to African voices regarding problems of mutual interest and concern.

Afrobarometer’s public-attitude survey of citizens’ demands across 36 African countries released on April 9 is aimed at influencing the Hamburg discussions and eventual implementation of greater international co-operation between the G-20 and Africa. Survey findings appear to confirm that infrastructure should be a priority of G-20 policies and such improvements should prioritise meeting what big majorities of citizens say are their most pressing priority needs — food, cooking fuel, clean water, medical care and access to opportunities to earn cash incomes.

Majorities of Africans still living in rural areas are especially anxious about access to education and health services and food security. The survey also reveals growing grassroots concern about corruption and lack of trust and confidence in political and social institutions essential for effective governance.

The Germans convened several dialogues between March and June 2017 involving nongovernmental stakeholders in all G-20 undertakings. The biggest event was a June conference in Berlin for delegates from across Africa to voice their hopes and concerns for a G-20 partnership with Africa that addressed many social and local issues highlighted in the Afrobarometer survey.

For anyone interested in whether the Compact with Africa is likely to succeed after the G-20 leaders and guests have left Hamburg, there will be several key areas to watch. The most pressing problem is alleviating the threat of famine facing — according to the UN — about 20-million people in East and northeast Africa and westward to areas of Nigeria.

Serious funding shortfalls constraining the UN and other agencies on the frontlines could get worse should the Trump administration succeed in cutting big US contributions to famine relief. African governments will also be pressed to do more. Hence the opportunity for a joint political campaign between the G-20 and African countries to muster adequate resources for the first responders attempting to deal with this emergency.

A famine-related issue that Merkel has already marked as a priority will be to ensure the Green Climate Fund is adequately funded and effectively applied in helping African nations adapt to global warming. Famines have many causes, but overwhelming scientific evidence points to the effect of faster-than-average global warming causing drought, forced migration and refugees. The Green Climate Fund, a core element in the global 2015 Paris climate accord, will help the most vulnerable countries, mostly in Africa, adapt to climate change. The fund has begun operations, but its $10bn start-up budget and plans for annual funding of $100bn by 2020 have been imperilled by the sudden withdrawal of all US support. Together, African and G-19 representatives may be able to lead global efforts to ensure the fund meets it objectives.

Whether compact countries could raise the additional financial resources to implement their new partnerships by mounting more effective joint efforts to curb illicit financial flows, is another issue. According to the AU-UN commissioned report of the high-level panel, Track It! Stop It! Get It!, chaired by former president Thabo Mbeki, more than $50bn in taxable monies illicitly leave Africa annually. The UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) estimates that more than $800bn left Africa between 1970 and 2008, making the world’s poorest region a net capital exporter. Most of this money flows through commercial channels with the complicity of both exporters and importers, their bankers, and weak or corrupt government oversight.

Greater government transparency and accountability within and among all compact partners, will be vital. African governments took an important first step in this direction 14 years ago, when they launched the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The mechanism was given fresh attention when Kenyatta became chairman in 2016, and with dynamic new leadership at its headquarters in Johannesburg. The mechanism can provide essential monitoring and local context for judging the performance of African partners to the compact’s projects and programmes.

This may require some adaptation of APRM processes, as well as extending the review process to participating G-20 countries. Those countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will be familiar with a peer-review process quite different from the APRM, but that perhaps could be relevant for aspects of compact performance-monitoring and assessment.

Another African element that could contribute to effective implementation of compact commitments are African multilateral bodies, with the active support of AU and Uneca and the affiliated Regional Economic Communities. Eight communities recognised by the AU have widely varying capabilities and mandates, but several could be very important to cost-effective implementation of compact initiatives involving multiple countries in one or more of Africa’s subregions. The EU is already a member of the G-20, which might be useful precedent for inviting one or more RECs to join the compact.

Resilient partnerships rely on shared values, not only common interests. The most commonly shared secular political values find widespread formal acceptance of respect for universal human rights and democratic principles. Virtually all states now claim to be democratic. The one exception among the G-20 is Saudi Arabia.

All AU members have formally affirmed their broad acceptance of a shared commitment to democracy and human rights under the AU’s Constitutive Act and the African Charter for Democracy, Elections and Governance. Actual adherence to these values vary widely. But the AU at least mandates all members to hold regular periodic national elections that under the charter will be open to AU observers. Virtually all do, and many also welcome observers from the EU and other G-20 members. Even Chinese teams of election observers are occasionally deployed, as during Madagascar’s 2013 democratic transition.

In the debates prior to and since the founding of the AU and adoption of the charter, democratic governance was endorsed as the most appropriate long-term means for securing peaceful pan-African integration and development. Although autocracies persist within Africa and among G-20 members, the compact is likely to prove more resilient and successful if members are willing to hold each other accountable for agreed standards of good governance as well.

● Stremlau is the 2017 Bradlow Fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs and a visiting professor at Wits University.