The Year Gone By Jean-Jacques Cornish

Pretoria, December 31, 2007 – Africa’s political and economic balance sheet continues to move into the black.

The long-awaited European Union-Africa Summit in Lisbon earlier this month heard that when leaders of the two continents last met in Cairo seven years ago, there were no fewer than 14 conflicts raging on African soil -- making up 50% of violent deaths on the planet.

These chilling statistics have more than halved.

The continent’s GDP was less than 1% between 1995 and 2000. In the first five years of this century it rose to 4,3%. Since then it has increased to 5,5% and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates it will reach 6,8% this year.

Foreign investment soared from $200-million in the Eighties to $20-billion last year.

Nevertheless Africa remains the most violent continent on Earth.

At the end of an eventful year, these are some of the features:

Algeria
The twin suicide bombings in Algiers last week demonstrated the ability of al-Qaeda to hit key targets in the Maghreb. It showed there is no room for complacency by Algerian authorities -- allowing a slide-back into the civil war in the Nineties, which claimed more than 200 000 lives.

The efficacy of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decision to end that strife with an amnesty to terrorists who surrendered their arms was brought into question with the disclosure that one of last week’s bombers was the beneficiary of such a pardon.

Of some comfort to the Algerian authorities is the increased international awareness of its problems, post-9/11.

Angola
Angola ’s economic growth steams ahead. GDP growth since 1995 averaged 6,6% but, on the strength of increased oil revenues, reached 11% in 2004 and is forecast by the IMF to average 18% a year from 2005 to 2007.

Economic activity is restricted to the oil and diamond sectors, leaving many Angolans unemployed.

Corruption, says Transparency International, is rampant with $1 in $5 earned finding its way into the back pockets of the ruling elite.

The low-level insurgency by the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) should have ended with the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the government in August last year. However, attacks against Angolan armed forces convoys and outposts continue to be reported. FLEC continues to press for independence for the oil-rich enclave.

Burundi
Burundi ’s democratically elected government is making heavy weather of getting the last active rebel group into the kraal. The result of President Pierre Nkurunziza’s efforts to exploit a split in the National Liberation Forces of Agathon Rwasa left 40 rebels dead, but no return by either side to the monitoring commission they quit in July -- 13 months after signing a truce.

The rebels failed to keep appointments with South African mediator Charles Nqakula and are understood to have resumed recruitment.

Côte d’Ivoire

Next year could be Côte d’Ivoire’s long overdue election year. President Laurent Gbagbo and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro signed supplementary agreements to the Ouagadougou accord signed in March between state and rebels in Burkina Faso under the mediation of President Blaise Campaore.

The new agreements cover the merging of the official military with the rebel Forces Nouvelles that have controlled the north of the country since it split five years ago. They also lay the groundwork for free and fair elections.

Democratic Republic of Congo

More than a year after his election victory Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila finds it impossible to contain the Tutsi rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, in the Kivus on his country’s eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda.

The United Nations’ peacekeeping force, Monuc, promises to muscle up its involvement to include air support and artillery for the 20 000 government forces that have been unable to bring Nkunda’s 4 000 men to heel.

Kabila is taking diplomatic heat to facilitate the return of Jean-Pierre Bemba, his chief political rival who faces high treason charges after a street battle in March that left 200 dead.

Bemba overstayed two deadlines granted to allow him to seek medical treatment in Portugal.

He reportedly fears losing his Senate seat, which would mean loss of immunity from prosecution.

Ethiopia
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi repeatedly promised to settle his country’s border dispute with Eritrea peacefully.

Yet six years after signing the Algiers agreement ending their war, Ethiopia continues to dig its heels in against the independent boundary commission’s ruling, awarding the town of Badme to Eritrea. The border remains tense.

Both sides appear unable to resolve the dispute. Eritrea considers the continued presence of Ethiopian troops in its territory to be a violation of its sovereignty with the UN taking sides with Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia poured 60 000 troops into Somalia at the start of the year to help the transitional government of Abdillahi Yusuf drive out the Islamic Courts that controlled the capital Mogadishu.

Promises to withdraw speedily proved empty and by year’s end at least 35 000 Ethiopian troops continue to prop up the state in Mogadishu.

Liberia
Africa’s first democratically elected president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, has her work cut out rebuilding the country after a protracted civil war. She was commended by World Bank president Robert Zoellick for doing “a remarkable job in restoring stability and moving Liberia to a path of peace and development”.

Liberia is being rewarded with R1,5-billion in debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and Multi-Lateral Debt Relief Initiatives operated by the World Bank and IMF.

Mauritania
Mauritania remains a beacon of hope in the Maghreb. The military junta that ended Maaiuiya Ould Taya’s 25-year authoritarian rule kept its word to restore democracy to the vast country.

Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdallahi, who won the polls in March, is working at healing differences between the black and Berber elements of the population. Slavery was only abolished this century.

Nigeria
Nigerian President Umaru Yar Adua made his first visit to Washington, source of the most vociferous criticism of the election that put him in office earlier this year.

Reiterating his undertaking to work for transparency, accountability and a society free of corruption was well received in the United States capital. Far more popular, however, was his undertaking to partner Africom -- the new American military command structure for the African continent.

Africom raised hackles and rang alarm bells in several African capitals, including Pretoria, despite US undertakings that it will not mean US troops or bases on the continent.

Somalia
A change of prime ministers in Somalia saw Ali Mohamed Gedi replaced by Nur Hassan Hussein, but brought no semblance of peace to the country that has been without an effective government since the fall of dictator Siyad Barre in 1991.

Until President Abdillahi Yusuf can create a truly inclusive government involving the various clans, there is no prospect of this either.

Piracy continues to make the Somali seaboard the most dangerous stretch of coast in the world, despite American efforts to patrol and police it.

Somaliland

The ying and the yang of the continent is illustrated by the democratic progress in neighboring Somaliland preparing for its second democratic presidential elections next year.

Sudan
Only a fraction of the hybrid 26 000-strong African Union-UN peacekeeping force for Darfur will be on the ground in January. Sudanese President Omar al Bashir is accused once again of dragging his heels by refusing to accept anything but African boots on the ground. The delay is exacerbated by the failure of developed countries to provide the vital support helicopters for the operation.

Uganda
Uganda’s government signed a truce in September last year with the Lord’s Resistance Army that has waged a 20-year insurrection involving dragooning thousands of young people as child soldiers and sex slaves. But the deal did not stop the fighting. Mozambique’s former president, Joachim Chissano, began mediation efforts in October that could bring the rebels back to negotiations chaired by the southern Sudanese government in Juba next month.

Zimbabwe
Economists say Zimbabwe’s four-figure inflation is the highest on Earth. It’s not possible to be more exact because the country’s shelves are so bare there are not enough goods to fill their measuring “baskets”.

Nevertheless Robert Mugabe’s hold on power persists. His ruling Zanu-PF gave him the green light last week to run for a sixth term as president.

By their silence at the Lisbon summit and afterwards, when he called his chief critic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a Nazi and fascist, Mugabe’s regional colleagues showed there is no bridge too far for the octogenarian Zimbabwe leader.

Their resolve will come under scrutiny again after their SADC tribunal judgment ordering Mugabe’s regime to keep its hands off the farm of 73-year-old Michael Campbell who was unable to get such legal relief from his courts.

Source: The Mail & Guardian

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