Lessons from over Four Decades of African Diplomacy

Mr Chairman,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is with a special sense of pleasure that I join in welcoming you to this Conference on African Diplomacy in the 21st Century.

I must begin with a tribute to Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of the Africa Centre, who passed away a few days ago. Michael made an outstanding career in and for Commonwealth countries. He was an important leader of Africa 1995 celebrations which was a great success. The last time I saw him was at the Africa Centre special dinner at the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych last autumn. He spoke then as he had always done with great enthusiasm and dedication for the activities of the Centre. May his soul rest in peace.

In the same breath I would like to specially compliment the Director of the Africa Centre and all those who have had a hand in bringing about this event.

The end of the Cold War and the revolution in information technology has brought the world to a turning point for which there is no real historical analogy. Many of the old familiar signposts of the post-war world have disappeared or are in the process of fast disappearing. The old charts, to quote Churchill, are broken and of little value. Africa, no less than the rest of the world, needs new lights in the uncertainty that lies ahead. Accordingly, any initiative to concentrate minds on the way forward is to be welcomed.

The need for a new internationalism which makes a reality of our common humanity has never been greater; and any opportunity to foster it should be embraced. That is the measure of our debt to the organisers of this conference.

I have been asked to speak to the theme of the lessons from over four decades of African diplomacy. But there can be no proper appreciation of the lessons of African diplomacy without a prior appreciation of the passions which animated it and the broad objectives by which it was guided. The objectives of African diplomacy stood in intimate relationship with the men who directed it. It is accordingly with the original sources of African diplomacy that I propose to begin.

African nationalism came in two discernible moods, with variations in between. There was what one might call the enthusiastic school of African nationalism, represented, among others, by Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere. They saw the anti-colonial cause in wholly positive terms. Colonial rule whatever its incidental advantages was an anomaly; it subordinated the interests of Africans to the interests of others and impeded the meaningful development of African societies in such conditions. To this school of African nationalism, only independence could provide the basis for the regeneration of the continent. They saw themselves as the leaders of a people emerging into a new dawn. The African Personality about which so much was heard in the early years of independence was a proclamation to the world that Africa had emerged to claim its place in the community of nations.

And reclaiming Africa's place in international society was important. Indeed, it formed one of the guiding objectives of the anti-colonial movement. In addition to subordinating African interests to foreign interests, the period of foreign rule was perceived as having made Africans, in Frantz Fanon's words, "the great absentees of universal history". Some African intellectuals had an even sharper view of the colonial experience. According to a Madagascan poet, J Rabemananjara, colonial rule had sought to make Africans "eternal underlings whose acts and thoughts it is the sport of others to interpret". African nationalism of the ardent variety sought to overthrow this position and to reinstate Africans in the "circle where world events take place".

The other school of African nationalism was characterised by a markedly subdued mood. It was the dominant mood in French-speaking colonial Africa but by no means confined to only that part of the continent. Its representative figures included Leopold Senghor, Houphouët-Boigny and Maurice Yameogo, to name but a few. The dominant note in this school was caution. In their hearts of hearts, they might have seen themselves as working for some form of self-determination but it was not independence. According to Professors Michael Crowder and Donal Cruise O'Brien, "French West African politicians in the post-war years differed fundamentally from their English-speaking neighbours in that ..... the French speaking African leaders formally rejected independence in favour of greater participation in the political process of a French Union or Community of which Africa would be a constituent part".

Student leaders, the odd self avowed Marxist party and the occasional trade unionist might speak in terms of independence but not the major political leaders. It was not until Sékou Touré addressed the Fourth Congress of his Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG) in June 1958 that the word 'independence' first entered public political discourse in French-speaking West Africa. These were the two main temperaments of African nationalism and they would begin to influence the course of African diplomacy soon after independence.

II

Yet for all the differences in mood, temperament and methods, the anti-colonial struggle was built on one foundation; it had many fronts, but it remained one struggle. And integral to the project of African freedom was the achievement of African unity. To be sure, there was never at any point a canonical definition of what African unity was and there still is none. It meant many things to many people. Some read into African unity the establishment of a continental government which would mobilise the enormous resources of the continent, human and material, for its purposeful development. Others saw it as providing a framework for periodic political consultations and functional co-operation, with variations in between as usual. But whatever those variations and inflexions, the idea of African unity derived from one historical source.

The yearning for unity went back a long way. From the first stirrings of the African awakening, African intellectuals, both at home and in the diaspora, had drawn one firm conclusion from their experience. Africans had been through the harrow of slavery and colonial subjugation not as Ashantis or Igbos or Zulus but as Africans. Both slavery and colonial rule had also been greatly facilitated by African disunity and weakness. It followed from this reasoning that if Africa was not to lose its independence again and suffer another period of humiliation, it would have to defend its newly won freedom within some framework of unity. The fathers of African nationalism were not unaware of the practical problems in the way of African unity. But the imperatives for some form of unity were greater than the difficulties dividing them. Thus it came about that no sooner had the first independent states emerged than the attempts at unity began.

Ghana became independent in March 1957. In November 1958, the Ghana-Guinea Union was formed, involving as a first step the exchange of Resident Ministers. In April 1961, the Union was expanded to include Mali and christened the Union of African States (UAS). The Union's Charter committed the three countries to a common foreign and defence policy, the defining of a common set of economic objectives, opposition to French nuclear testing in the Sahara and support for other African countries waging anti-colonial struggles and "the building up of African unity". In January 1961, the UAS in its turn was widened to include Libya, Egypt, Morocco and the Algerian Front for National Liberation (FLN). This became known as the Casablanca Group. Its Charter reiterated the objectives of the UAS and appealed to other independent African states to join the Group in a "common action for the consolidation of liberty in Africa and the building up of its unity and security".

The appeal went unheeded. Instead, four months later, in May 1961, a rival grouping - the Monrovia Group - emerged, led by Cameroon, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo. The objectives of the Monrovia Group were broadly the same as those of the Casablanca Group. Both stood for the promotion of understanding and unity in Africa; both were resolutely opposed to apartheid in South Africa which they saw as a modern form of slavery of peoples of African stock; both aimed at the promotion of economic integration; both undertook to resist threats to peace and stability on the continent, including opposition to nuclear testing, and both had plans on the stocks to institute machinery for conflict resolution between member states. Indeed, as Kwame Nkrumah was later to admit, the fundamental similarity of aims between those who met at Casablanca and those who met at Monrovia was apparent from the resolutions passed and the recommendations adopted. As he put it, the two groupings aimed "ultimately at some kind of unity".

If there was a community of objectives between the two groupings, why the duplication of effort? Why two organisations to pursue almost identical aims? The explanation is to be found in two reasons. The Casablanca Group represented, in broad terms, what one might call the enthusiastic school of pan-Africanism; those who saw security for African states as lying only in unity and viewed any delay in its achievement as an invitation to disaster. The Monrovia Group, on the other hand, preferred a less hectic pace to unity. They desired African unity no less than the Casablanca Group but they wanted it to come at its own pace and in its own good time. The second point of difference between the two groups was no less fundamental. The Casablanca Group was convinced that political unity should come first as the prelude to the creation of an extended field for economic co-operation and development. The Monrovia powers, on the other hand, wanted to achieve unity through economic integration, confirming their preference for a slower pace to unity.

For a time, it seemed as if the two streams of African unity were destined to run in parallel; but the divergence was not to last long. In June 1960 what had been the Belgian colony of the Congo became independent. There had been no meaningful preparation of the country for independence. There were no African officers in the Force Publique, as the army was then called; and there were hardly any African professionals. Not surprisingly, the country dissolved into chaos one week after independence. Prime Minister Lumumba appealed to the United Nations for assistance to restore order and to put down the secessionist forces based in the Province of Katanga and led by Tsombe. Independent Africa supported United Nations intervention and those in a position to do so contributed troops and policemen. The United Nations did its best but the circumstances were intractable. Patrice Lumumba was murdered and the country seemed set to descend irretrievably into the vortex of civil war.

The Congo crisis was a turning point in the history of post-colonial Africa. One African country after another, emerging into independence, saw in the United Nations their hope for peace and security. But implicit in that assumption was an oversimplification of the role of the United Nations. They seemed to confound the responsibility of the United Nations for world peace and security with the preservation of the integrity and security of individual member states. "The primary purpose of the United Nations", as Conor Cruise O'Brien was later to remind the student body of the University of Makerere, Kampala, in July 1964, "is not to help member countries to preserve their unity and independence: the primary, and overriding purpose of the United Nations is to prevent international war from breaking out: to avert threats to the peace". Conor Cruise O'Brien went on to spell out the implications of this doctrine as it applied specifically to Africa:

The African states cannot and should not look to the United Nations for their salvation. The United Nations' function is not primarily to help Africa, but to protect the peace from dangers arising in Africa and elsewhere. If African public opinion recognises that, it will not expect more from the United Nations, than it really has to offer and it will not be disappointed.



African leaders had already come to this conclusion long before Conor Cruise O'Brien's lecture at Makerere and in the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May 1963 at Addis Ababa had shown that the lessons of the Congo had not been lost on them.

III

The representatives of the 32 sovereign African states who assembled in Addis Ababa in May 1963 were only too well aware that in forming the OAU they were achieving one of the hallowed objectives of pan-Africanism. Julius Nyerere, himself one of the 32 leaders at the founding of the OAU, later remarked that at the time "it appeared that Africa was setting out along the road to its great destiny". African leaders had good cause to celebrate the achievement. It meant an end to rival ideological blocs within the continent and the opening of the way for the pursuit of broad African foreign policy objectives. Africa would be able to maximise its opportunities and optimise its achievements. So at least it seemed at the time.

The primary purpose of the new Organisation was enshrined in its name; it was the instrument for the achievement of African unity. The Organisation was also entrusted with the liberation of those parts of Africa still under colonial rule. For this purpose, the Addis Ababa summit appointed a Liberation Committee to serve as the channel for material assistance to the liberation movements and to co-ordinate the liberation struggle. The contribution of the OAU to the liberation of the continent is a matter of record and, rightly, a source of pride. But in its primary purpose of bringing about African unity, an error of omission seems to have been made at the creation. As Julius Nyerere pointed out on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of Ghana's independence, the OAU should have established a Unity Committee to complement the Liberation Committee. This was not done and as a result the route to unity still remains largely uncharted.

But I must not leave you with the impression that unity would have been a panacea for Africa's problems. African leaders were well aware that even if they were able to achieve unity in one fell swoop, it would not be the end of their problems. But they also knew that without it, they would not even begin to work towards the ending of their vulnerabilities. And nowhere was African vulnerability more pronounced than in the economic domain as the period since the 1970s has conclusively shown.

What has since become the crisis of commodity production began for many developing countries at the turn of the 1960s. In July 1965 The Financial Times disclosed that the fall in the price of cocoa on the world market had reduced the real worth of a ton of cocoa to a figure lower than in the depression years of the early 1930s. It described the position of those countries dependent on commodity exports as a 'frightening' one and went on to make the following point: "The economic dislocation caused by falling export prices and the failure of investment plans is bound to have political repercussions, of an extremist kind. The climate for a gradual progress towards democratic concepts could hardly be worse". The Financial Times was wrong only by being right too soon.

In 1973, the oil crisis, coming on the back of the Arab-Israeli war of that year, added immensely to the economic problems of sub-Saharan Africa along with most of the developing world. The search for a new international economic order then began in earnest. At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1975, Michael Manley as the host Prime Minister appealed to the Commonwealth to help find the techniques of political management of world trade and world finance that would lead to a progressive removal of the disparities between the rich and the poor which the Commonwealth had earlier pronounced as too great to be tolerated. According to Mr Manley, the world faced a choice between dialogue and confrontation on the demand for a new economic order and he urged the Commonwealth to do all it could so that the scales of probability might be tipped in favour of dialogue.

I have already referred to the crisis that had overtaken Ghana's cocoa by the turn of the 60s. But the trend was of course not confined to Ghana. Speaking at the Melbourne Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in October 1981, President Nyerere said that between 1972 and 1980, Tanzania's terms of trade had deteriorated by 21.5 per cent, leaving oil out of account. Including oil, they had deteriorated by 35.7 per cent. In real terms, where previously Tanzania had to sell 38 tons of sisal or 7 tons of cotton to buy a 7-ton truck, in 1980 the same truck cost 134 tons of sisal or 28 tons of cotton.

Whether through the OAU or the Commonwealth or other international fora, the appeal for a new international economic order seemed to make little difference. The economic crisis presented an unprecedented challenge to African diplomacy. The economic negotiations which the crisis entailed called for skills little known to traditional diplomacy. Then, for the first time in the experience of post-colonial Africa, it was confronting a substantially unified North with years of experience of these types of economic negotiations. Old style colonialism had been defeated by organised political agitation; but the new 'enemy' which threatened at the gates could not be defeated in the same way.

By the end of 1984, the consensus was that a critical economic situation had arisen in Africa. The main features of the crisis were spelt out in the Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly of December 1984. The situation had assumed alarming proportions jeopardising not only the developing process but more ominously the very survival of millions of people. Prospects for recovery, growth and development were assessed as 'very dim' unless the efforts currently underway in African countries were fully supported by the international community. The Resolution also identified the strengthening of international co-operation as a key factor in meeting the challenge of development in Africa.

A special session of the General Assembly was convened in June 1986 which unanimously adopted the United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development (UNPAAERD), 1986-1990. As the United Nations Secretary-General pointed out, it was "a unique agreement between African states and the international community, with both sides committing themselves to serious and far-reaching efforts to accelerate Africa's development process". For their part, African leaders undertook to continue with the painful structural adjustment problems which they had entered into in addition to the rehabilitation and development of agriculture, and the efficient use of human resources. The international community on the other hand undertook to intensify co-operation and substantially increase the flow of resources to Africa.

But at the end of the five-year period in 1991 when the General Assembly reviewed the implementation of the Action Programme, the situation in Africa had worsened further. Net resource flows had declined rather than increased; Official Development Assistance remained more or less constant in real terms. In the assessment of the review, the overall result was a considerable worsening of human conditions.

All this is of course a matter of public record. What is more important in the context of this conference is to explain the reason of this major failure in African diplomacy and to draw the necessary lesson from it. As the United Nations Secretary-General pointed out at the time, the Programme of Action failed to bring about African recovery not because African leaders did not keep their side of the bargain but because the international community, by which he obviously meant the economic power brokers of the world, manifestly failed to uphold their side of the bargain. In the absence of a fundamental change in the nature of international co-operation, the Programme never stood much of a chance of success. It failed because Africa sought the solution to its economic problems within the framework of the very economic system which had brought about the crisis in the first place. In partnership with the rest of the developing world and more than ever before, Africa needs to make a fundamental restructuring of the present economic system the priority of its diplomatic efforts.

But those efforts must begin at home by making the regional blocs which already exist in all the constituent regions of the continent real and effective vehicles for economic integration. So far, the various regional groups have each pursued the implementation of their respective programmes without any visible effort to build bridges between themselves. There is little contact between them and consequently no meaningful exchange of views and experience. Now is the time for the building of those bridges to make for the harmonisation of policies and programmes.

The political kingdom has now been won; and Africans are no longer the absentees of universal history. The elements for regeneration also now exist; but Africa cannot set out on the road to its great destiny unless it meets the residual challenges, old and new, which confront it.

At the top of the list of pressing challenges is the issue of peace and security. According to reputable international security experts, Africa is said to be the most turbulent region of the world, with high level armed conflicts in no less than nine countries, two major inter-state conflicts and lower level conflicts in 15 areas. It is a measure of the gravity of the situation that there is now talk of an extraordinary summit of the OAU to resolve the conflicts on the continent. If the summit does materialise, it is to be welcomed and every assistance given to it. But it will take more than high-level summitry to resolve these conflicts, especially those which are of a domestic nature.

At the beginning of my address, I referred to Frantz Fanon's lament about colonial rule making Africans the absentees of universal history. Fanon was addressing the Second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in Rome in March 1959. He ended his peroration on this note

If man is what he does, then we should say that the most urgent thing today for the African intellectual is the construction of his nation. .... If this construction is genuine, that is, if it reflects the manifest will of the people, if it reveals the African peoples in their impatience, then national construction will necessarily be accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalising values.



Liberation from colonial rule alone is not enough to build a nation; it is an indispensable condition for nation building, but alone it is not enough. Proper nation-building really begins after independence and in Africa this means a multitude of things. In the first place it means accepting the ethnic factor in most African nations. It is that only by dealing with the reality of ethnicity imaginatively will the forces of division arising from that quarter be kept in check. More widely, it is a question of managing pluralism, making a virtue, so to speak, of Africa's many diversities. It means fostering social justice through equity and fair play. Any government which lays claim to legitimacy is expected to deliver a measure of social justice. In Africa, it is not only important that social justice be delivered; it is just as important if not more so that it be seen to be delivered. It means fighting corruption so that society's rewards are seen to be based on merit. These are only some of the elements of nation-building and even then it is well to remember that nation-building is never laid to rest, never fully, finally achieved - it is a perpetual chore. I am of the firm conviction that only through democracy can African countries build viable nation states in which all these attributes are securely rooted.

The economic challenge is even more daunting. The depression in commodity prices now seems to have become a permanent reality, making diversification practically unattainable for the foreseeable future for many economies. The brain drain over the past so many years has left many African countries bereft of specialist skills in key areas. There have of course been exceptions.

Against the odds, some African countries, among them Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia have achieved growth rates of between 3 and 5 per cent per annum over the past five years and more. But the overall picture remains one of unrealised potential. That potential will now have to be realised under conditions of globalisation . The emerging globalised economy in which international financial transactions are increasingly becoming independent of the production of goods and services poses its own challenges but it is not without its opportunities either. To make the most of those opportunities calls for policy adjustments and a professional and managerial class equipped with the necessary skills.

George Soros, who needs no further introduction, has written that the pain caused by the financial crisis, itself the result of a wider crisis of the new capitalism, has become so intense in the countries on the periphery "that individual countries have began to opt out of the global capitalist system or simply fall by the wayside." No African country can afford any of these two options. Meeting the economic challenge calls for a flowering of all the talents and this too can only be achieved under conditions of democracy and good governance in which human rights are assured.

Surely, this Conference is about enhancing African diplomacy so that it can achieve more for the people of Africa. African diplomacy is as effective as the governments behind it; and it cannot be effective if the governments behind it are either unstable or lack legitimacy or are infirm of purpose. The task of achieving African unity, the historic goal of pan-Africanism and the object of intra-African diplomacy, has still to begin in earnest. I believe that only democratic governments, freely elected by the people and accountable to them, will enable Africa to assume its proper role on the international stage and to play a role commensurate with its resources.

Two years ago, on 6 March 1997, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere made a speech in Accra on the 40th anniversary of Ghana's independence

Africa must unite. This was the title of one of Kwame Nkrumah's books. That call is more urgent today than ever before. Together, we the peoples of Africa will be incomparably stronger internationally than we are now with our multiplicity of unviable states. The needs of our separate countries can be, and are being ignored by the rich and powerful. The result is that Africa is marginalised. ... Unity will not make us rich, but it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and humiliated. ... My generation led Africa to political freedom. The current generation of leaders and peoples of Africa must pick up the flickering torch of African freedom, refuel it with their enthusiasm and determination, and carry it forward.

May this and succeeding generations of Africans prove themselves worthy of this challenge.