Benjamin Mkapa (left), Kofi Annan (centre) and Graca Machel in mediation talks. Mr Mkapa lamented that African politicians are not sufficiently involved in negotiations. File
Last Friday I had the privilege of meeting with the former President of Tanzania Benjamin Mkapa who was in Brussels for a meeting of the International Crisis Group.
Mr Mkapa is a member of the board of the Crisis Group, which serves as an early warning system, advising governments and intergovernmental bodies on conflict prevention and resolution.
A few weeks before his arrival in Brussels, Mr Mkapa had visited Kenya as a member of the African Union Panel of Eminent African Personalities for meetings with stakeholders ahead of the 2012 elections.
I asked him whether the recent outbreak of violence at the Coast and in the Tana River Delta was a sign of trouble ahead for the country.
Mr Mkapa reassured me although the incidents of violence were of concern among all the stakeholders, the general consensus was Kenyans had been shocked and learnt enough from the 2008 post-election violence.
“This time round there was great hope that violence will be avoided”, he said.
Brussels is also home to the secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) which are currently negotiating regional economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with the European Union and the meeting with Mr Mkapa was an opportunity for me to find out why, in his stated view, the proposed EPAs are little more than ‘raw material diplomacy.’
One of the main objectives of the negotiations is to have reciprocal trade arrangements between the ACP and the EU but, as Mr Mkapa explained, reciprocity will put an end to the growth of regional trade because European goods will be predominant.
Reciprocity will also mean reduced taxes on imports of European goods, on exports of raw materials as well as the removal of export tariffs, further eroding the region’s capacity to add value to its natural resource production.
“There can be no serious reciprocity between dominant economies such as the EU and infant developing economies such as those of the East African Community,” he said, pointing out no European country has developed on the basis of reciprocity.
In fact, the EU has extended non-reciprocity to Moldova and the Balkans which have been recognised as not possessing the competitive strength to take on reciprocal obligations.
Mr Mkapa lamented African politicians are not sufficiently involved in the negotiations and the frameworks typically used by their negotiating partners are totally lacking within African countries.
“When these other groups want to step up their economic relations with us, they have delegations, memoranda, economic missions yet you don’t hear about those sorts of missions from our part of the world and we don’t even meet often enough to see the impact of these proposals that are brought,” he said.
Mr Mkapa expressed concern “there is a real possibility Europe will get its way and that, in consequence, countries like Kenya, Tanzania and others in the East African Community may see a slow-down if not a complete wipe-out of prospects for industrialisation.”
Unemployed youth
Such economic decline, Mr Mkapa says, will pose a serious threat to the democracy that has been emerging in sub-Saharan Africa, as large numbers of unemployed youth become restive, leading to conflict and unrest.
According to the former president, a second scramble for Africa is in the offing and Brussels is the Berlin of the 21st Century from where assaults against the African Union’s aspirations for a common market are being launched.
And African governments are failing to properly assess the impact of the proposed economic partnerships.
The former president remains hopeful though, saying “there are elements in the youth generation that are going to question these things non-violently,” singling out Kenya where, Mr Mkapa says, the youth are socially aware and the civil society is robust.
