http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-brexit-africa-c1d689d8-3c9a-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275-20160627-story.html
Analysis: Brexit is bad news for Africa. Period.
Alex de Waal, (c) 2016, Foreign Policy(c) 2016, Foreign Policy
The British diplomatic corps is in a state of shock. Overnight, Great
Britain has been reduced to Little England and the country's global
stature has shrunk by a fraction far greater than the economic losses
registered on the London Stock Exchange -- or even the plummeting
value of the pound sterling. Perhaps more than anyone else, Britain's
ambassadors, military and commercial attachés, and heads of aid
missions in Africa are painfully aware that the Union Jack so
gleefully waved by the champions of the "Leave" campaign will soon
become a historical relic.
The damage to British interests is significant, but the losses for
Africa could be greater still. In campaigning to leave the European
Union, Minister for Africa James Duddridge argued that Britain would
be able to forge stronger ties with the continent if it were
unencumbered by EU inefficiencies in aid and trade. Perhaps if
Duddridge had a blank slate on which to construct a new Africa policy,
he could do better than Britain's existing one, which is part
bilateral and part multilateral through the EU. But no policy is ever
built on a blank slate, and surveying the post-Brexit political
wreckage, he is now faced with a salvage job that will involve
decoupling Britain from numerous EU-led peace and development
initiatives and renegotiating dozens of trade deals. Even deftly
managed by Duddridge or his successor, the Brexit will leave Britain
with a fraction of the influence it currently wields in Africa.
Britain's share of payments to the European Development Fund (EDF),
the European Union's main vehicle for providing development aid to
Africa, is a little more than 14 percent -- third after France and
Germany. If those funds were reallocated to the British Department for
International Development's bilateral aid budget, they might have
better value per pound sterling in terms of poverty reduction. But
that obscures the fact that Britain has gained far greater leverage
over European external policy toward Africa than the one-seventh
proportion suggests. The rule of thumb for EU policy toward Africa is
a three-way divide: one-third Britain, one-third France, and one-third
everyone else. For the next two years -- or as long as Brexit takes --
British taxpayers will continue to pay their country's dues to the
EDF, but few Europeans will listen to what British diplomats and aid
officials have to say about how the money is spent.
The loss of British leadership in places like Somalia, where London
has been the driving force behind the international strategy for
stabilizing the country, will leave a dangerous void. The EU is the
single-largest donor to Somalia, averaging 80 million euros per year,
half of it in humanitarian funding. The EU has also led on a host of
critical security issues, including counterpiracy operations and
training national maritime security and law enforcement personnel. But
Britain has had an outsized influence on setting EU policy for
Somalia, notably ensuring that the EU funds most of the costs of the
African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a 22,000-strong
multinational force that protects the Somali Federal Government from
the extremist militant group al-Shabab.
Until recently, 90 percent of AMISOM's costs were paid for through the
African Peace Facility (APF), an EU funding mechanism set up to
support peace-and capacity-building operations on the continent. But
even before Britain forfeited its sway over the APF by voting to quit
the European Union, pressure was building to divert funds from
Somalia: France was pushing hard to reallocate APF resources to other
African Union (AU) peace support operations -- to the AU mission in
Mali, for instance -- and AMISOM's funding quota was slashed to 80
percent in February. Britain stepped in to make up some of the
difference in the short term, but troop-contributing countries such as
Uganda still faced severe difficulties as a result of the cutbacks.
(Last week, Uganda announced that it will pull its troops out of
Somalia by 2017, in part because of the EU funding shortfall.) The
forthcoming loss of London's financial contribution to the fund --
and, more importantly, the loss of British political leadership on
Somalia within the EU -- puts a big question mark over the viability
of AMISOM and Europe's Somalia strategy.
Similar question marks hang over a host of other EU-run political and
security initiatives in Africa, many of which Britain has helped
steward. One that should be of more than passing interest to those who
voted for the Brexit -- not least because fears about unfettered
immigration fueled the "Leave" campaign -- is the EU-Horn of Africa
Migration Route Initiative, which aims to contain migrants within
their home countries, or at least their immediate neighbors, to
minimize the number reaching the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. This
initiative has been criticized for rewarding countries like Sudan,
Eritrea, and Ethiopia, all of which have poor human rights records.
But investing in solutions within Africa is far more effective and
economical than tightening border controls at Channel ports. Britain's
reduced financial contribution in the coming years -- and, once again,
the evaporation of its political leadership -- will undermine the
initiative and could ironically worsen Britain's immigration woes.
But it's not just EU initiatives that will suffer as a result of the
Brexit. The financial earthquake that hit Britain after the vote has
already rippled through African economies - especially South Africa,
where many large companies are co-listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Britain is one of Africa's major trading partners, meaning that a
British recession could have a lasting impact on the continent. The
European Union has preferential trade agreements with every African
country except Libya and South Sudan. Britain will have to renegotiate
all of them as a result of the Brexit. In some cases, this will allow
for more mutually beneficial arrangements, such as eliminating some of
the existing distortions -- subsidies on European beef and milk, for
instance -- in agricultural trade imposed by the European Union. But
hammering out new trade deals with 52 African countries will take time
and will be far down the list of priorities for a desperately
overstretched British government in the years ahead. Meanwhile,
without Britain's reliably anti-protectionist voice within EU trade
negotiations, there is a danger that European trade policy will become
less favorable to African nations.
But perhaps the biggest blow to Africa from the Brexit comes in the
least tangible sphere of international political culture. As the
weakest continent, Africa has the most to gain from the principles of
multilateralism -- collective security, international cooperation, and
respect for international law. The continent achieves its best
outcomes for democracy and human rights, and for peace and security,
when its governments collaborate in the African Union and regional
economic communities, and when they work in partnership with the
United Nations and the European Union. Peer pressure and collective
reputation management have been important tools for combating
authoritarianism and war. But Africa's achievements are fragile, and
many of the norms and principles espoused in the African Union's
Constitutive Act -- and in its array of protocols, declarations, and
agreements -- are still aspirational. Brexit is a body blow to the
international political culture of multilateralism, and one that will
reverberate negatively through Africa.
Received on Wed Jun 29 2016 - 16:38:21 EDT