European Aid to ACP countries: Imposed development and governance models?

Sunday 21st January 2007:

“Let Africans decide on their own development model”. This was the message coming out of a gathering of African and European NGOs in the context of the World Social Forum in Nairobi.
African and European activists gathered in a workshop organised by Coasad, CNCD, Grapad, Groupe ACP francophone and Eurostep, to denounce the European Union’s behaviour in the context of the programming of European community aid under the 10th European Development Fund. The Cotonou Agreements, which are supposed to guide EU-ACP relations, insist on the need to establish a balanced partnership in which the ability of ACP countries to take policy decisions in all sovereignty is respected. However participants to the workshop criticized the EU for using aid money to direct ACP countries towards economic choices that would be in the interests of the European economy in general and certain major European transnational corporations in particular. Aurélien Atidegla, president of Grapad, said that “the objectives of European aid money allocated to ACP regions are very clear. It is aiming at forcing ACP countries to take the necessary steps to engage in Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union. We even understand that certain ACP countries have been threatened to see their aid allocation diminished in the case of a refusal to sign an Economic Partnership Agreement.”
Part of the aid money under the 10th European Development Fund has now been made conditional to the fulfillment of certain criteria defined in the so called “governance facility”. Participants have been very critical of this new mechanism which is seen as another avenue to promote European interests in Africa. While criteria used to allocate money under the “governance facility” include recipients’ commitment to privatize their economies and to adopt market friendly policies, Florent Sebban, policy advisor at Eurostep expressed his disappointment at “this new diversion of European aid money, which will only be in the interest of the elites both in Africa and in Europe. This is once more in contradiction with European commitments to make aid work for the poorest”.
The absence of national parliamentarians and civil society actors from most of the national programming processes in the ACPs could explain why the priorities identified in draft country strategy papers seem to be so far from people’s concerns. “You will not eradicate poverty without letting people involving in the decision making process. The participation of grass roots movements from everywhere in the country in the programming process is essential to achieve the MDGs. This has not happened yet” said Barry Paul from St Francis Community Development Programme in Kenya.