Africa
Africa 2001: For better or for worse 

The future of the two economic powerhouses in western Africa is worrying. The challenge to be taken up in Nigeria will entail putting an end to the confrontations caused by the forced imposition of the sharia in the North which cost more human lives in 2000 than were lost in the Middle East.

Another objective will be to appease the anger of people in the Niger delta who, whilst oil prices are soaring, are hardly seeing any consequences other than the pollution of their environment. In Côte d'Ivoire, the main challenge is how to dampen the tone of President Laurent Gbagbo, who was elected by 21% of voters on 22 October, about "ivoirité", the local variant of the Le Pen-style ideology of "national preference". 

The big aim here will be to restore an institutional consensus that succeeds in avoiding any exclusion of the people in the northern part of the country and Muslims from political life, with or without the presidential election demanded by Alassane Ouattara. If the politicians succeed in achieving this, the EU will resume its cooperation, and talks on rescheduling the foreign debt could get off the ground. 

The revival of economic activity, which tailed off badly during 2000, depends on this, especially where the cocoa and hevea plantations are concerned, where large numbers of immigrants from Burkina Faso and Mali are employed. Failing this, the economic balance and economic integration in the region may well suffer the consequences of xenophobia established as an electoral weapon: Burkina Faso and Mali would not be able to withstand the shock of a large-scale return home by millions of immigrants.

In the region, there are fervent hopes that Benin will rise to the challenge of the next presidential election. The region, which is shored up by the dynamism of the Ghanaian economy and the normalisation of the situation in Niger where the Tuareg rebels have stopped fighting, urgently needs some calm to be restored: the crisis has spread as far as Guinea-Conakry where the local authorities are thinking of asking Nigeria to intervene to counter forays by rebels from Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The trouble spot that is Congo
In Central Africa, where the process of reconciliation enabled the resumption of rail services between the capital and the port of Pointe-Noire in August 2000, Congo-Brazzaville appears to be stabilising. Backers have decided to support the reconstruction efforts if the constitutional referendum is held in March, as planned. 

However, this slight improvement - as is the case with the stability of the entire region - is largely dependent on the cessation of hostilities in Congo-Kinshasa, where air strikes by the government forces have forced nearly 200,000 people to seek refuge in Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic. All traffic on the Congo River is paralysed. 

The Lusaka peace process has broken down. The cease fire is constantly being violated and the dialogue between the various Congolese factions which is intended to shape the transition and define the country's institutional future has yet to get off the ground. Evidently President Laurent Kabila has no interest in a process that would force him to share power with the unarmed opposition, the rebels and civil society.

Which is why, in addition to bringing military pressure to bear, he is seeking an injunction from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, ordering the "aggressors" to leave Congolese territory. The next episode in the proceedings will be Uganda's submission on April 21 of its counterstatement. By then, a UN Commission of Inquiry on the pillaging of Congo's natural resources and the link between this and the continuation of the war should result in the publication in around March 2001 of a report that is likely to cause embarrassment to the regimes in Kampala and Kigali, whose troops are deployed in the eastern part of Congo.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the Congolese economy, whose indices for agricultural production plummeted by 50% whilst productivity in its mines dipped by 30%, continues. Only the withdrawal of the 11,000 troops in the Zimbabwean contingent could induce Kabila to compromise. As his regime runs out of steam, the possibility of him intervening in 2001 has not been ruled out. In November, most Zimbabwean troops had not been paid for three months.

In mid-November, the UN observers in Kinshasa announced the withdrawal of two brigades of Zimbabwean infantry.

Risks of the conflict spreading
The conflict could trigger the collapse of other economies in the region. The economy most under threat is that of Zimbabwe where the combined effect of the war effort and occupations of land which the Supreme Court declared in November to be illegally owned by "commercial farmers" is proving absolutely disastrous. Indeed, it is estimated to be costing nearly $1 million a day. 

Zimbabwe, which used to export grain but recorded a grain deficit of several hundred thousand tonnes in 2000, is expected to see a sharp decline in its production of tobacco, its prime export, in 2001. For more than a year now, an acute fuel shortage has forced many industries to lay off their workers. More than half of the population is unemployed. A 10% drop in GDP is expected in 2001.

Namibia is struggling with similar evils, albeit to a lesser extent. Since the authorisation given to the Angolan Army to conduct operations from its territory to strike the UNITA rebels' rearguard, over the past year the northern part of the country has suffered from chronic instability. Tourism has been paralysed and humanitarian organisations fear that the number of refugees will double next year, from 15,000 by the end of 2000. 

The military effort which includes the cost of the expeditionary force to Congo is not being well supported: on October 21, civil servants who were unhappy with what they deemed to be an insufficient pay rise organised their first protest march since the country's independence in 1990.

Nonetheless, with 2001 just around the corner, the outlook is not gloomy: Anglo American intends to invest some $450 million in a zinc mine. The results of oil prospecting conducted on the Angolan border are eagerly awaited. However, the Zimbabwe disease is threatening the socio-economic balance of the region, with the Namibian government indicating at the end of 2000 that it would not evict the squatters occupying several farms belonging to white farmers.

South Africa is also having to face up to occupations of farms, especially in Kwazulu-Natal, and the number of farmers killed in the country passed the 80 mark at the beginning of November. These types of incidents are part of a general atmosphere of violence, but there is also a worrying increase in racial tension, targeting other communities, such as the growing number of immigrants fleeing the scourges of unemployment and violence in Zimbabwe or wars and misery in Angola, where nobody can see the war ending, and Congo-Kinshasa. 

Furthermore, dismantling of the tariffs structure within the Economic Community of Southern Africa gives us every reason to fear a vertiginous drop in customs income from landlocked Lesotho and Swaziland, which are facing other difficulties. In Lesotho, there is extreme uncertainty hovering over the staging of elections in March. The government and Interim Political Authority, set up after the South African and Botswanan armies intervened to quell the mutiny of 1998, are each accusing the other of adopting delaying tactics.

In Swaziland, the persecution of trade unionists is continuing despite representations by the International Labour Organisation and the ICFTU and U.S. pressure to make the maintenance of general preferences conditional upon abandoning highly restrictive labour laws. In any case, civil society is unionising throughout the country in spite of the ongoing repression, and the trade union centre SFTU is continuing to defy a regime which could be replaced if the winds of change rise in 2001.

Areas of prosperity consolidated
In southern Africa, there is no doubt that Botswana is the country with the best chances of successfully meeting the challenge of regional integration thanks to its tax system, so attractive for investors, and its political stability.

The country's GDP is expected to rise by 80% over the next 10 years. This is 31% lower than predicted, owing to the impact of HIV/AIDS in this country, which holds the world record for people who are HIV positive (nearly one in three inhabitants). Nonetheless, the country is heading into 2001 with foreign currency reserves totalling more than $6 billion, representing the equivalent of more than two years of imports, and is continuing to attract foreign capital, particularly from South Africa. 

Failing any unforeseen developments, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, which the French consultants at NSE classified as the continent's best-risk countries for foreign investors in 2000, should remain the main centres of stability on the continent. The fundamental balances in South Africa are being respected, with a reduced budget deficit. The Ministry of Finance is anticipating annual growth of 3.5% until 2003, thanks to the government's efforts to stimulate private investments and push ahead with the upgrading of infrastructure. 

However, the question remaining is whether this growth will be sufficient to generate jobs. In the meantime, the year 2001 should ring in some improvements in Mozambique, when a toll is introduced on the motorway link between Maputo and Johannesburg and the materialisation of hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of investments in new industrial and energy-related projects (aluminium, natural gas). 

In the East, following the framework for stabilisation in Somalia set out by the election of the president last August, 2001 should see some new and positive developments, with the deployment of 4,000 men in the UN mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea. This planned consolidation of the cease fire should lead to the resumption of European aid to these two countries, starting with road-building projects in Ethiopia and electrification projects in Eritrea.

On the other hand, in Sudan the boost in market potential, thanks to its supply of oil, is threatening to be transformed into fresh arms purchases and an intensification of the air strikes which are sparing neither civilian nor humanitarian targets. According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, there were 40 such strikes in 1998, 65 in 1999 and 113 in 2000.

Current events in the region will be largely suspended during the presidential election in Uganda during the first quarter of the year. The field is relatively open in this connection. President Yoweri Museveni can point to the growth achieved in the southern part of the country, but he will have to see off a challenge from a historical member of the National Resistance Movement whose campaign is based on the government's corruption, its military adventure in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its inability to put down the rebellion of the Lord Resistance Army in the north, which is backed by Sudan. 

Having said that, Museveni has one trump card: the Democratic Party, the leading opposition movement, looks like presenting a divided front. Later, the inauguration on July 1 of the East African Legislative Assembly comprising MPs from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, will test these three countries' desire for regional integration. 

All eyes will also be on the regional dynamo that is Kenya, which is finding it hard to stay on track. In 2001, the candidates for the presidential election the following year, led by Prime Minister George Saitoti, will be readying for battle in a tense social atmosphere, with the government having to do away with 50,000 civil service jobs in order to fulfil its conditions for rescheduling its foreign debt.

Finally, in many people's view Tanzania symbolises the fate of the continent in 2001, combining the best and worst of scenarios. Over the next decade it should experience rapid growth in its exports (9.9%) as a result of the diversification of its economic activities and the country's recent move to open up to foreign investors (particularly in the mining sector). 

However, storm clouds are gathering, too: the election on the island of Zanzibar is alleged to have been highly fraudulent, with the pro-separatist Civic United Front supposedly having been the real winner of the ballot held on October 29. 

By François Misser, ICFTU

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