The many summits that the world’s major powers hold with Africa provide sufficient proof about the continent’s attractiveness. However, African countries go into those events in a scattered disorderly fashion without any common agenda, a position that does not seem to benefit the continent, which nevertheless faces enormous challenges in several spheres.
This is a revealing fact.
Of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, only Britain does not yet have a periodic summit with Africa.
Under former US President Barack Obama, the United States held its first Summit with Africa in 2014.
France, for its part, has been holding summits with Africa since 1973.
First, it began as meetings between Paris and their private preserves which were eventually joined by states on the continent.
The 28th Africa-France Summit is scheduled for June 2020 in Bordeaux, in the southwest of France.
Launched in 2001, the China-Africa Summit, which held its 7th edition in September, has become a flagship event on the agenda of international meetings.
Russia, which had long remained on the pheripheries since the break-up of the Soviet Union, held its first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi in October this year.
Without being permanent members of the UNSC, other major nations of the world hold regular summit with Africa.
Under the acronym of the Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD), Japan has been holding its high-level political meetings with Africa since 1993.
Turkey held its second summit with Africa in Istanbul in November 2018.
Business for aid
Thanks to the G-20 Summit, Germany launched its summit with Africa in 2017 under the name “Compact with Africa.”
Rather than receiving all of Africa, Berlin has chosen a dozen countries on the continent that offer guarantees of stability and niches for development and trade growth.
Here, the paradigm is not to announce large amounts of development aid, nor to cancel debt, but to create interactions between African and German companies that would be financially propped up by the German federal state.
Whatever their format and frequency, such summits with Africa reveal an uneven balance of power and a total lack of preparation on the part of African states going into these meetings.
The competing world powers have their own agendas and are clear-eyed about what they expect from African countries, namely diplomatic support, raw materials, new trade destinations, new customers for industries, including arms among others.
Africans in disarray
On the other hand, African countries arrive at these face-to-face meetings in a state of disarray and without a common agenda.
There is no prior consultation (pre-Inter-African Summit) to reach out to China, France, the United States, Russia, Japan or Turkey with transnational proposals and requests.
Each state comes to the summit table with its own specific expectations.
Africa arrives with 54 expectations while the opposite camp arrives with its one and indivisible expectation.
Finally, while these summits could have been used to advance major continental projects such as the financing of trans-Saharan roads, continental rail links and the Great Green Wall, African leaders fly home satisfied with the announcements of partial debt cancellations, doubling or even tripling trade flows, leaving their citizens clueless about who these things benefit most.
In its current form, the Africa/Rest of the World Summit is only a high-octane event that will bring no added value to improving people’s lives on the continent.
Dng/lb/as/APA