Wooing Africans In Diaspora: Desire, Disposition, Direct Foreign Investment Versus NEPAD Drive

By

Institute For China Africa Relations ICAR

icarafri@yahoo.com

The significance of 12th to 19th September 2005 to keen followers of African issues, is certainly lost to most in Africa. It may not be a mountain moving interactive and certainly palls into insignificance when compared with the now famous 9/11 in America but it brings back into focus some kind of desperation the likes of which nursed the harbingers of 9/11. 

London will between 12th to 17th September host the Crème of Africans in Diaspora to another rounds of talk aptly titled “Africa Diaspora investment week”. It is the second in the sustained drive of NEPAD to lure investors this time of African genre to Africa. Our belief is that the first gathering must have produced enough good results to warrant this second coming, and we know that this can be ascertained in facts and figures.

For an investment drive whose fruit will be planted in the soil of Africa, why chose London as the venue for  discussion? I am sure many others may have canvassed against London just like I am doing here, but the realities on the ground will certainly knock the bottom out of our protests. The bitter truth is that the invitees will for obvious reasons prefer London despite the recent bomb attacks on her infrastructures. The African in Diaspora will prefer the safety of London to any other capital city in Africa even the famed Johannesburg in South Africa. I believe this is the disposition of the invitees and you cannot take it away from them.

Safety consciousness surpasses every other consideration and that is a fact. Perhaps by the time the next round of talks will take place, the good results  of this kind of effort, would have created a few safe cities in the African continent. We hope this will be the last time we will meet in another land to discuss our problems.    

As expected, media hype on this coming event especially from the foreign news stable, is nothing compared to the justified brouhaha that preceded the meeting of G8 group of industrialized nations at Gleneagles not fear way from London some few months ago. In magnitude and dimension, the two events are poles apart but for Africa this is no less a monumental gathering, for in reality, nobody does it better for you than yourself. This is over own show.

This meeting highlights the urgency of the task of freeing Africa from underdevelopment.  It is a manifestation of the belated realization of the world to the grave danger posed to all of us if excruciating poverty and hunger in Africa is not sorted out in a hurry. Like I stated earlier on, the circumstances that breed suicide bombers are growing daily in Africa and we can be sure that Africa can not go down alone it will certainly drag others along with it. Wars, conflicts and crises characterize the state in Africa, it has remained largely internal but when it degenerates to a state of nature where raw violence assumes a character of its own, and becomes a perceived instrument for extracting individual and group economic, social and political rights perceived as arbitrarily taken from the people, then it may be too late to cry redemption. We commend the efforts of NEPAD but would wish for a more frequent consultation on this plat form. Is the world listening?

It has never been the lack of sound policy that are finely grafted in the best known phraseology and an implementation frame work hued from established technical input that has kept Africa in doldrums. The sad reality is that over the years our leaders have squandered mind boggling wealth meant for development in the fancy shops and lavish couvades of their western collaborators; thus leaving the entire infrastructures and superstructures, the hubs of development in tatters. They have pretended seriousness and failed to translate vast fortunes into tangible realities capable of impacting positively on the people. This pretension gyration of ideas meant failure and all their false attempts at their realization were chaotic because they were not genuine. This snowballed into unmitigated summersault where sure footedness was expected. Therefore no visible changes  were discernable in Africa for a long time.

Now that this realization for change is gradually dawning and the calls for a radical transformation is seemingly sinking into the minds of African leaders, the positive side of action must be sustained. It is not yet Uhuru; in fact it is too far form it. However, it will be uncharitable to deny any improvement. There has been some and the results are showing.

One area that has witnessed the wind of change is foreign direct investment (FDI). Quoting Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu the wise ex-chief executive of NEPAD Secretariat at the organizations four years performance appraisal; “financial flows from the Diaspora to the African economy averages five to ten percent of the GDP of most African countries and in a few cases over 20%. In one year alone the Diaspora invested over $4billion, excluding the estimated $12billion in remittances to families, friends and associates”. He stated further that “there is an increasing desire by the Diaspora to invest in Africa, what is fundamentally crucial is mobilizing the Diaspora interest (disposition) and creating the required infrastructure for the investment flows”. Ordinarily these figures may look good, but when juxtaposed against $5.2 billion dollars which Barclays Bank of England paid to acquire the largest Banking Group in South African and the close to $ 8 billion invested by China in the same South African, the NEPAD figures tapers to insignificance.

Interestingly, South Africa is the place to be and she has reaped the greatest FDI in recent past. The reasons for this are obvious. It is only in South Africa that you will find a clearly sustainable infrastructural development pattern complimenting the ones already on the ground. This affords the potential investor enough gauges to undertake a planned, long term programme of investment projection complete with analysis of possible returns over time. This is the product of a committed leadership. South Africa has a stable government, with a low risk index according to international rating agencies. Economic policies (monetary and fiscal) are more stable. South Africa is a large market being the hub of economic activities South of the Sahara. These are the things that dispose an investor to think of moving into an area to invest and not mere desire which is only an emotive force. No investor likes to take an unnecessary and uncalculated risk with his funds.

This explains the figures given by NEPAD that while investments amount to $4billion, remittances to family and friends was a whooping $12billion.

The implication is that investors including these Africans in Diaspora will rather “dash” their relatives money without expecting any returns, in this instance $12billion and then invest (expected returns) of $4 billion in an uncertain environment. “In the UNIDO (2003) survey of 758 foreign investors; for all investors, the most important considerations are political and economic stability and local market conditions in the host country and not emotion or the fact that you are of African origin, then you must invest in Africa. These funds are hard earned money and in some instances borrowed.” “Political and economic stability are identified in surveys as key concerns of investors and in these areas, many African countries with a few exception have made good progress.”

It is the desire of the Diaspora to come home and invest but the realities in Africa offends this disposition. Governance in Africa has limited her attractiveness to FDI. Good governance is not limited to political game. “The only point on which all sides agree has been the importance of governance, broadly defined as the way in which the state functions, and not limited to the issue of corruption, protection of public order, and the quality and predictability of policy. Governance is a broad based concept and as such is difficult to measure directly except by inference”. The call for good governance is at issue now in Africa.  We must make Africa secure and our environments safe. There is no doubt that NEPAD and some individual African countries have made a good case so as to attract Africans in Diaspora, but much is still left undone. The desire has been created, the consciousness has reached a feverish pitch but the disposition aspect has to be fervently canvassed. Disposition is a conscious individual or group action premised on quantifiable variables. For one to be disposed to carrying out a definite assignment, he must have sat down and done a good job of statistical or intellectual input-output analysis and seen the positive side outweighing the negative. It is not an emotional enterprise or outburst but a calculated, tested action.

While we join NEPAD to welcome our brothers and sisters in Diaspora to England come September 12th-17th, we are also urging NEPAD not to rest on their achievement so far. Africa must be wrestled from the grips of poverty, want and hunger. The various governments in Africa must be nudged on to the part of good governance which is ensuring a stable superstructure, liberalization of the economy, infrastructural development, genuine war against corruption, transparency, respect for human rights and dignity, gender equality etc all summarized as millennium development goals (MDGs). Let policies and programmes be people generated, people based and people driven. It is the only way to guarantee growth and development and as Walter Hines put it, “there is one thing better than good government and that is government in which all the people have a part”. I believe such a government will never fail.