Dialogue on the Future of Africa!

Dialogue on the Future of Africa:
Alternative Development Strategies for Sustainable Peace and Development in Africa

A Discourse by the Center for Alternative Development Strategies (CADS) Sierra Leone

Africa has the human and natural resource to lift herself out of poverty into a life of peace, prosperity and dignity. In this very moment of our continent's history, this assertion truly reveals the question that should be exercising the minds of well meaning Africans to come up with strategies on how to get out of this penury trap of disease, poverty and wars the continent is deeply fraught with. In spite of the availability of resources both human and natural our continent has not registered the necessary economic growth that would ensure peace and stability. The little infrastructure left behind by the colonial masters after years of systematic exploitation of Africa's natural affluence, has been completely destroyed by civil unrest as evidenced in countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Congo Brazzaville, Congo D.R., etc.

Certainly, well meaning Africans and friends of Africa have contemplated on various alternative strategies to foster development in Africa. Some are claiming compensation for the inhumanity perpetrated by the slave trade which to them has permanently affected the African's attitude toward development. Some are claiming compensation for the exploitation of colonialism. That, the colonialists grossly exploited Africa's natural resources to extremes that the continent has found it impossible to run itself even after independence in many parts of Africa over three decades ago.

Or, perhaps the compensation we should be talking about is for the North countries to agree to help Africa with a Marshall Plan to better address the consequences of disease, poverty and ignorance rapidly destroying a continent and its people. A Plan capable of ending the grievous cycle of rebel wars and the inhuman atrocities grossly preying on the continent and its people.

Or, some of us do tend to believe that a Marshall Plan for Africa is already in place but abused by the structures set up to coordinate the help coming from the developed western countries. The United Nations for instance has a UNDP program for Africa. The developed North countries are generously contributing to this program to help countries in Africa but the system is not efficiently coordinated as such its perceived development impact is far from achieved.

There are also international aid agencies like OXFAM, the Red Cross, Cause Canada, Africare, among others who are making funds primarily to help Africa graduate from its economic and social perils, but the successes of these organizations in their various countries of operation in Africa are yet to be desired. Even in situations where Africans have to flee their homelands to safer havens, refugee assistance organizations are the worst capable of ameliorating the plight of refugees/asylees and the internally displaced. Each day many refugees in camps in various parts of Africa are dying of disease, hunger in absolute abandon. In asylum countries where the process of transition is extremely difficult, refugee assistance from refugee organizations is extremely difficult to access. Certainly these organizations like the UNHCR, Refugees International, and the United States Committee for Refugees (USCR), Ecumenical Refugees Services, the Immigration and Refugees Services of the Baptist World Ministries, including nonprofit development programs like OXFAM, Red Cross, Africare, are aggregating so much wealth from fund raising promotions they are conducting using images of death and destruction, hunger and disease in Africa, and elsewhere to raise funds meant to be fully utilized to ameliorate the plight of the distressed in trouble parts of the world, which in fact, are not generously utilized to address the ever deteriorating troubled needs of the victimized people of Africa, i.e. the refugees, the asylees and the displaced persons of Africa, instead plowed into the improvident administrative demands of these organizations.

Similarly, the OAU summit held in the Togolese capital, Lome in year 2000 saw African leaders discussing problems that now plague the continent and the would be solutions. For instance during this 36th summit of the OAU it was established that the formation of a continental union should be paramount to replace the passive Organization of African Unity (OAU) and shall come into effect if approved by two-third majority of its member states.

This continental union is seen by African Leaders as a unique strategy to tackle the unending problems of all African states. Such international forum is often seen by critiques as just a mere platform where rhetoric is rife and actions often nil. Its very simple for African countries, endowed with considerable mineral resources (Gold, Diamond, Rutile, Iron ore, platinum, bauxite ,crude oil, etc.) and an ample supply of cultivable agricultural land and rich fisheries, to work together to sustain its economic base, if not way developed than North countries, should not be classed as the least developed continent. But it is all talk, talk and no action by African member states of the OAU who always have ideas about strengthening African unity short of ideas how they could work against corruption and deliberate plundering of the continent by African leaders themselves in collaboration with North countries who only strengthen their economic bases leaving Africa with its wars, poverty and Aids problems in absolute abandon. Our continent's richness in natural resources, has not helped us at all to register the necessary economic growth and development which should have brought about a fundamental and meaningful improvement in the standards of living of the majority of its population. Disparities in income distribution is quite on the increase and physical and social infrastructure are methodically deteriorating.

Other reasons as well for the poor economic performance culminating to a rocketing poverty rate especially over the past decade have been fiscal imbalances; weak revenue base; recourse to extra-budgetary expenditure and excessive deficit financing which were coupled with weak to non-existent expenditure controls; poor stabilization efforts; declining mineral and agricultural exports due to smuggling; fall in food production, deterioration of communication, energy and transport infrastructure and political unrest.

The deterioration in the economic situation in most African states has tremendously affected the lives of both urban and rural populations. More than half of Africa's population now live in absolute poverty; rural life is at subsistence level fraught with poor education and health care systems, and urban living has been extremely difficult. African countries have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates.

Unemployment as well as under-employment also resulting from the slow growth performance of the various economies in the continent have also been major but disturbing features of the labor force in both urban and rural areas.

The IMF conditionalities, to say the least, are also not unconnected with the massive retrenchments and restructuring on-going in most African states.

As to date, the recurrent wave of political unrest in most African states is not only abhorrent, but a formidable barrier to rapid socio-economic and political development.

Sad to note, the on-going conflict in Sierra Leone for instance, has displaced over 1,000,000 people in all the four corners of the country.

Sierra Leone, one of the continent's smaller states is today going through an epoch of devastated economic and infrastructural regimes. This is the result of both administrative mismanagement by previous regimes, widespread corruption and consequent hardship resulting in a rebel war that over the last nine years has wreaked havoc on the country.

According to statistics, Africa is the hardest hit by the Aids pandemic with well over twenty-five million people, some of whom have died and others in critical condition awaiting death. Since the discovery of this epidemic, member states of this continent have not taken much precautions to forestall the spread of the disease due to poor medical facilities and lack of qualified personnel to offer medical prescription as to what should be the way out of this menace. Now the disease has eaten deep into the human resource of this poverty stricken continent thereby destroying the future leaders of the continent.

Africa, as I have well articulated, has enormous problems that would take numerous pages to enumerate here and which has contributed to the penury state of all Africa and her people. Imported policies from the western world as well as domestic policies by the respective states have not been able to sustain the prosperity and dignity of the African people, instead most of these strategies have only succeeded in worsening our already miserable plight thereby encircling the whole continent into a poverty trap.

I believe however, there are development solutions, which if followed to the letter will get the whole continent from this poverty trap. History tells us that National Governments have tried their own strategies of solving Africa's problems but not much was achieved, and now, based upon insights derived from the vision of the Center for Alternative Development Strategies (CADS) Sierra Leone for the development of Sierra Leone at a sustainable level, the visionaries of CADS Sierra Leone would like to submit the following alternative development strategies that would work if properly implemented:

1. Non-governmental organizations as well as charitable organizations should be empowered to implement projects that would benefit all Africans.

The center recommends the launch of an Alternative Development Strategies Agenda 2002 for Sustainable Peace and Development in Africa (ADS Agenda 2002).

To mark the launch of this ADS Agenda 2002, the establishment of Horticultural / Agricultural Communal Farms to eradicate chronic hunger in the entire continent would be a step in the right direction. The agricultural resource base in Africa is rich, and large tracts of arable land remain uncultivated and the prospects are good for raising yields on small holder farms and creating economic surpluses over and above their subsistence needs.

It is therefore critical to improve the productivity of and returns to farm labor. Increased food production will help to hold down the costs of labor in order to keep domestic agricultural production competitive with imports, and make it easier to provide the incentives needed for labor use to increase agricultural output in the short run. Increased food production, together with the additional employment it will support, will also address directly the food security concerns of those whose incomes are too small to allow them adequate nutrition.

In this direction, the ADS Agenda 2002 should act as a catalyst in identifying and promoting old and new development strategies in the agricultural sector. Its primary strategy should be a determined and systematic effort to work with farmers in various village communities, a strategy capable of fully reviving the agricultural sector in each African country and directly improving the socio-economic conditions of the various participating villages.

The ADS Agenda 2002 is about fully adopting the unique CADS approach in agricultural sector development, the Communal Farming Systems (CFS). What CADS is recommending here is ADS Agenda 2002 should follow this system to the letter by cultivating large acreages of farm lands of rice and other non-rice crops on a communal kind of joint venture basis to improve the productivity of and returns to farm labor and to directly benefit the various communities involved in this system by way of using post harvest sales of proceeds to fund community projects.

The communities in the various African states will be providing the land and labor. Participating Non-Governmental Organizations should be providing the tools, seeds, fertilizers and food for work. And percentages of harvested proceeds will have to be shared. The participating NGOs as the implementing agencies in this case, must ensure that the percentage received by each community (i.e.50%) is a accordingly utilized by way of funding community protects like health centers, provision of educational materials to disadvantaged rural school going children, feeder roads construction / maintenance, and micro loan financing of post harvest income generating activities like soap making, gara tye and dye, blacksmittery and Lumor markets trading, etc.

Significantly, a micro loan financing of post harvest income generating activities will also be set up to help the CFS approach to be very successful in these rural communities. This approach to CADS, is a unique strategy not passably tried in rural development work in almost all African states. CADS Sierra Leone has worked very hard to implement this system, but lack of proper funding and the chaotic situation in Sierra Leone stalled the work of CADS in this direction.

The CFS approach is a strategy that works. Through the micro loan financing that complements the CFS program, the participating NGOs implementing ADS Agenda 2002 should be in leadership positions to ensure that each community maintains a "REVOLVING FUND" derived from the 50% post harvest sales of proceeds benefited by each community. Small amounts of money are systematically disbursed to participating communal farmers. This will really make the difference in their capacity to start and sustain individual productivity and much needed post harvest business.

Participating NGOs in this case are receiving 35% from harvested proceeds to be utilized in related administrative and extension services costs. The CFS approach fundamentally has a vision to strengthen nonprofit work to be self-sustainable in its operations. The 35% is therefore a necessary derivation to strengthen NGOs programs in order to be able to independently pursue various projects in future without having to suffer the usual delays and rigorous donor support procedures, CADS Sierra Leone for instance is currently experiencing.

Then there is the 15% the various participating NGOs and the various community associations will jointly put aside. Each community farm association jointly maintains a bank account with its supporting NGO to save the 15% for the repayment of any loans taken during the implementation of the project. If there are no loans at all to repay, these savings obviously go back to the community associations by contributing the 15% to the kind of REVOLVING FUND described above, by each community association to further help finance post harvest income generation activities in their local communities.

2. Women are a very important component in community development.

Rural women especially, are hard working, but generally undervalued in the rural places of Africa. So to put in place a Rural Women's Action for Welfare and Awakening in Rural Environment project in the rural communities of Africa will encourage women and expedite development in these rural settings.

CADS believes that mere money and material are not sufficient to develop the rural poor women. On the other hand these make rural poor women weak, dependable and meek. Therefore, CADS Sierra Leone with years of dealing with the rural poor women, has realized that awareness is a pre-condition for development. It is the basic need to awaken people and prepare them to identify their own problems and to prepare them to devise their own solutions and plan of action.

CADS believes that the oppressed must not only recognize that they are oppressed but also must be aware of what they can do, legally, peacefully, and conditionally, to overcome their oppression. In other words, participating NGOs should also devote themselves to the universal cause of eradicating illiteracy among the rural women of Africa. This strategy has the objective relating to participation and addresses the gender needs of women by bringing them into the decision making machinery of WDP and the larger machinery of the participating NGOs of ADS Agenda 2002. In most cases, due to the reticence of women, specific strategies should be adopted to encourage their effective participation in the decision making. In some mixed program of the larger machinery this problem should be addressed by establishing committees for women. This enable women to interact and articulate their ideas before reporting to the larger mixed committees.

And in some programs, women in various communities are proposed as members of participating NGOs' decision making committees , proposed largely by virtue of their roles in their various communities in general, such Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs), Mammy Queens, Chair-ladies, etc. This strategy would work to empower women who, as well as children they nurture, are the vulnerable groups in Africa.

3. Most crisis situation in Africa are fermented from homes due to the proliferation of street children, homeless, orphans, displaced children who are under privileged and who have not been adequately taken care of and as a result may turn out to be violent at the detriment of their privileged counterparts.

The time is now, for reputable non-governmental organizations in Africa to take up the challenge of initiating projects aimed at providing assistance and training to the aforementioned category of underprivileged children (from low income families) to enhance their economic productivity and adaptability. In Africa's wars today children are being forced into armed conflict, either as combatants or as victims. "Physically vulnerable and easily intimated, children typically make obedient soldiers," says Human Rights Watch.

Although many African governments enlist children for military service, most child soldiers are abducted or forced to join rebel ranks against their will. Children are also persuaded to join armed groups out of desperation, to "escape from poverty or...to avenge family members who have been killed," adds Human Rights Watch. Participating organizations of ADS Agenda 2002 should therefore consider implementing grand scale projects of empowering disadvantaged children and children forced into armed rebellions.

This is not an issue of just taking a gun from a child combatant, giving him or her $50 in return. This is an issue of getting these child soldiers consistently helped with food, clothing, shelter, safe-drinking water supply and accessories for vocational and/or academic training. And to ensure sustainability of these projects, participating organizations of ADS Agenda 2002 will have to oversee child related income generating activities with two-fold objectives of securing financial support in a long term and to provide vocation and industrial training opportunities for the children. Opportunities should also be sought to help beneficiaries set up small businesses or continue to university education as may be desirable. There will be both residential and outreach components in this project to facilitate the coverage of an appreciable number of disadvantaged children.

4. In line with most NGOs' mission of working with poor and marginalised people to eradicate poverty by overcoming the injustice and inequity that cause it, the establishment of a Micro Enterprise Rehabilitation fund (MERFUND) with the objective of implementing trickle up micro loan financing projects to benefit small-medium enterprises (SMEs) that need expansion, and others disrupted by either rebel movements or political instability in most African states will be of much added advantage.

Today, the images we are seeing of Africa are of war, of conflict and of corruption. As a result of these images, a great deal of reconstruction and rehabilitation has to be done by all African countries. Through this Micro Enterprise Rehabilitation Fund (MERFUND) initiative, whose implementation CADS would like to see coincide with the launch of ADS Agenda 2002, MERFUND hopes to provide faster access to micro loan financing and small early disbursements in response to the needs created for small medium enterprises by the crisis situations in Africa.

The best assurance to potential investments in Africa is for National governments and the people of Africa to effect a healthy much needed dose of confidence into the private sector to be the engine of growth for their national economies. Economic growth through private sector development is working and it is the micro and small enterprises who are making it happen.

More than 200,000 small-scale businesses and low-income entrepreneurs are bringing new dynamism to many African economies. MERFUND thus hopes to provide small loans and technical advice to the disadvantaged and under-funded micro enterprises. This hope functions on the premise that getting small amounts of money quickly into the hands of the disadvantaged and under-funded micro entrepreneurs can make the critical difference in their capacity to re-start and sustain productive and much needed business development.

In this direction, for profound political stability to prevail through the sustenance of decent democratic principles, the accepted means of good governance, this is bound to create new challenges, especially in terms of assisting to rehabilitate small medium enterprises which are clamoring for expansion and those affected by conflicts in Africa.

Participating organizations of ADS Agenda 2002 should therefore assume a clear burden of leadership in this exercise of achieving MERFUND's objective. But doing it alone means being less effective in the short run, and going broke in the long run. There is need to keep financial/donor institutions, other funding agencies, parastatals, big businesses, foreign missions, etc. involved to the greatest extent possible.

5. On the mineral resources front, African countries should privatize strategic minerals like gold, diamonds, platinum, etc. to institutions with impeccable credentials so that successive corrupt government officials will have zero chance of embezzling funds from this sector.

This arrangement should be thoroughly worked out such that the twin words of transparency and accountability would be established. It is often said most people tend to be corrupt whenever they are placed in positions of trust. Political instability vis-à-vis rebel movements which is as a result of the illegal smuggling of these minerals to the western world in exchange of weapons of mass destruction will automatically be brought to a halt due to privatization.

Suffice to state, development and stability in Africa can only be sustained when the grass root people are empowered. The mandate Africa and friends of Africa should now be contemplative about is to advocate, coordinate and monitor more equitable allocation and rational use of financial, human and organizational resources at all levels of societies in favor of the poor and marginalised. And, in order to facilitate the process and lay down guidelines for its activities, participating organizations of ADS Agenda 2002 should embark on the development of a 5-10 year plan of action. The plan of action should be derived from the systematic analysis of development policies and programs based upon the research and development experiences of CADS Sierra Leone which has led to the mapping out of these appropriate strategies and implementation framework.

Considering the resources available to participating organizations, organizations are encouraged to go ahead with trying to implement these development strategies, and CADS would be well pleased to lend its expertise in the implementation process of these alternative development solutions.

A Luta Continua! A Victoria E Certa!

To Contact Us About ADS Agenda 2002, Send Us an Email at: CadsIntlPrograms@aol.com or Call Our CADS Global Network -- USA Office at:
1-720-351-5520 or Our CADS Sierra Leone Headquarters at (232 22) 225051.

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