Kommentar af Duncan Green
En NGO-koalition har spurgt sig for hos et bredt udsnit af folkelige organisationer Afrika og det giver et nuanceret billede uden den vestlige presses filter.
The Belgian NGO coalition 11.11.11 has published an interesting paper summarizing the views of 58 African civil society organizations (CSOs) in 11 different countries on ‘South South Cooperation’ (SSC) – mainly China’s growing role in Africa.
It is nuanced and an excellent counterweight to the simplifications of the ‘scramble for (kapløbet om) Africa’ diatribes (tirader) in the Western press. Some highlights:
CSOs explicitly voiced their support for the principle of non-interference and considered it to be a true asset of SSC. Yet, they also feared that the lack of conditionality would undermine the fight for good governance, democracy and respect for human rights.
Additional drawbacks in the economic domain were the possibly exploitative natural resource deals with some emerging powers and the lack of corporate social and environmental responsibility by companies from emerging powers.
Discourse (samtale /debat):
‘CSO representatives voiced a clear positive appreciation of the rationale and core principles of SSC. This does not mean they were ‘fooled by a shiny wrapping’.
On the contrary, they also expressed doubts about whether and how the discourse will be put into practice, especially since the observance of the key principles relies solely on self-compliance by emerging powers.
They pointed out that acting as equals was difficult when one party was a low income country and the other the world’s second biggest economy. They mentioned many examples of ‘win-win’ that did not mean equal benefits.
Yet they indicated that the framing of SSC gave a wholly different ‘feel’ to the cooperation.
They appreciated the straightforwardness of emerging powers and the notion of reciprocity being embedded in the cooperation, especially when contrasted with the rhetoric in North-South Cooperation, which they experienced as patronising and often hypocritical.
The emphasis on respect for national sovereignty and ownership triggered particularly interesting reactions.
CSOs explicitly voiced their support for the principle of non-interference and considered it to be a true asset of SSC. Yet, they also feared that the lack of conditionality would undermine the fight for good governance, democracy and respect for human rights.
This ambiguous position is partially explained by
(1) bad experiences with political conditionality imposed by [northern] DAC-donors,
(2) not automatically equating (sammenstille) non-interference with the absence of political conditionality, and
(3) having different expectations towards different donors, in the hopes of benefitting from complementarity.
The support for non-interference or non-conditionality in SSC should not automatically be interpreted as support for a radical shift towards non-conditionality in North-South Cooperation but does show the debate on political conditionality is overdue.
The often nuanced views and ambiguous arguments illustrate a wait-and-see attitude: emerging powers may talk the talk, but will they walk the walk (gå til biddet)?
Impact:
Læs videre på
http://naiforum.org/2013/07/assessing-africa-china-cooperation
Duncan Green er strategisk rådgiver hos den store NGO, Oxfam, i Storbritannien.
Kilde: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet 29.07.13 – www.nai.uu.se
