Amandla Institute and renewal of the Pan-African ideal, By Thabo Mbeki

I am very glad that today we are launching the Amandla Institute for Leadership and Policy Advancement which must and will play an important role in helping our continent to accomplish the tasks we have indicated… Please accept my best wishes for the success of the launch of the Amandla Institute.

I take this opportunity to congratulate our friend and fellow combatant for Africa’s renaissance, Dr Kayode Fayemi (CON), for the launch of the Amandla Institute. I am very glad indeed that so many of our esteemed fellow Africans set aside time personally to participate at this launch.

The launch takes place under the relevant but challenging theme, “Renewing the Pan African Ideal for Changing Times…” This signals the importance we must attach to the formation of the Amandla Institute.

The rest of theme of this launch demands the correct answers to the strategic matters concerning “the leadership and policy challenges and opportunities” confronting our continent.

Like all of us present at this launch of the Amandla Institute, I am greatly inspired that our friend Kayode Fayemi took the initiative to establish the Institute. This is because I am certain that thereby our continent has acquired a vitally important think tank that will add immensely to Africa’s capacity to find the right answers to the many challenges it faces.

The theme, “Renewing the Pan African Ideal for Changing Times” suggests two things. One of these is that somehow the Pan African ideal has receded in terms of contemporary African political practice.

The second is that we must understand that the global setting in which our continent exists and must pursue its Pan African goals is changing to a strategically important degree.

Responding to these correct theses, I would like to start by saying something about some of the objectives our continent has set itself.

In May 2013, to mark the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the 21^st Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government adopted a 50^th Anniversary Solemn Declaration.

Among other things, that Declaration says:

“(We, African Heads of State and Government) guided by the vision of our Union and affirming our determination to build an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven and managed by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena…

“Declare our strong commitment to accelerate the African Renaissance by ensuring the integration of the principles of Pan Africanism in all our policies and initiatives…

“(We will) move with speed towards the integration and merger of the Regional Economic Communities as the building blocks of the Union.

“(We will) endeavour for Africa to take its rightful place in the political, security, economic and social systems of global governance towards the realisation of its renaissance and establishing Africa as a leading continent, (and thus) reiterate our commitment to Africa’s active role in the globalisation process and international forums, including in financial and economic Institutions.

“We pledge to act together with our peoples and the African Diaspora to realise our vision of Pan Africanism and African Renaissance.”

The last OAU Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in Lusaka, Zambia in 2001 adopted what ultimately became known as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

In October of that year, the NEPAD leadership issued a comprehensive document on the partnership. Among others, the document says:

“This New Partnership for Africa’s Development is a pledge by African leaders, based on a common vision and a firm and shared conviction, that they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development, and at the same time to participate actively in the world economy and body politic…

“The poverty and backwardness of Africa stand in stark contrast to the prosperity of the developed world…

“The New Partnership for Africa’s Development calls for the reversal of this abnormal situation by changing the relationship that underpins it. Africans are appealing neither for the further entrenchment of dependency through aid, nor for marginal concessions.

“We are convinced that an historic opportunity presents itself to end the scourge of underdevelopment that afflicts Africa. The resources, including capital, technology and human skills, that are required to launch a global war on poverty and underdevelopment exist in abundance, and are within our reach…

“Across the continent, Africans declare that we will no longer allow ourselves to be conditioned by circumstance. We will determine our own destiny and call on the rest of the world to complement our efforts.”

I have quoted passages from the AU 2013 Solemn Declaration and the 2001 NEPAD founding document because these state precisely what our continent wants to achieve, in all instances informed by the Pan African ideal to which this launch of the Amandla Institute has drawn our attention.

Accordingly, no one among us or elsewhere on our continent and the African Diaspora can say that as a continent we have not identified the objectives we pursue and therefore that we have not defined the Africa we want!

In 2008, the General Assembly adopted the “Political Declaration on Africa’s Development Needs” and said: “We recommit ourselves to reinvigorate and strengthen a global partnership of equals based on our common values, mutual accountability, shared responsibility and the determination to collectively act for our common future and to mobilise the resources, including human, financial and technological, required to end poverty, hunger and underdevelopment in Africa, with the explicit objective of turning existing commitments into concrete actions…”

Through both the OAU and the AU, we have indeed defined the Africa we want, including through Agenda 2063.

Necessarily, the next important question arising from this is – what have we done to build the Africa we want?

Before we address this important question, let me say something about the global setting within which Africa pursues its objectives.

The defeat of Nazism in 1945, the subsequent emergence of new socialist countries and the virtually total defeat and destruction of the global system of colonialism created excellent conditions for the realisation of the African aspirations.

Among others, all this turned the United Nations, and especially its General Assembly, into a true friend of the peoples of Africa.

For instance, when the U General Assembly adopted its Millennium Declaration in 2000, it devoted a few paragraphs specifically to Africa. In a section headed, “Meeting the special needs of Africa”, it said, among others:

“We will support the consolidation of democracy in Africa and assist Africans in their struggle for lasting peace, poverty eradication and sustainable development, thereby bringing Africa into the mainstream of the world economy.”

In September 2002, the General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, which stated:

“We recommit ourselves to meeting the special needs of Africa as recognized in the Millennium Declaration (and other agreements)…

“We welcome the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, as an African Union-led, -owned and -managed initiative, and recognise that it is a serious commitment to addressing the aspirations of the continent…”

In 2008, the General Assembly adopted the “Political Declaration on Africa’s Development Needs” and said:

“We recommit ourselves to reinvigorate and strengthen a global partnership of equals based on our common values, mutual accountability, shared responsibility and the determination to collectively act for our common future and to mobilise the resources, including human, financial and technological, required to end poverty, hunger and underdevelopment in Africa, with the explicit objective of turning existing commitments into concrete actions…”

For its part, in 2002 the G8, the then leading group of industrialised countries, adopted the “G8 Africa Action Plan,” which said, inter alia:

“We, the Heads of State and Government of eight major industrialized democracies and the Representatives of the European Union, meeting with African Leaders at Kananaskis, welcome the initiative taken by African States in adopting the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a bold and clear-sighted vision of Africa’s development…

“We will pursue this Action Plan in our individual and collective capacities, and through the international institutions to which we belong…We will take the necessary steps to ensure the effective implementation of our Action Plan and will review progress at our next Summit based on a final report from our Personal Representatives for Africa.”

Surely, given such commitments by all nations, through the UN General Assembly, as well as the dominant global economic players, Africa’s dreams would be realised!

In this regard, in its 2001 document we have cited, NEPAD had this to say: “In Africa, 340 million people, or half the population, live on less than US $1 per day. The mortality rate of children under 5 years of age is 140 per 1000, and life expectancy at birth is only 54 years. Only 58 per cent of the population have access to safe water. The rate of illiteracy for people over 15 is 41 per cent. There are only 18 mainline telephones per 1000 people in Africa, compared with 146 for the world as a whole and 567 for high-income countries.”

In its Economic Development in Africa Report twenty years later, in 2021, UNCTAD reported that: “In Africa, 34 per cent of households are below the international poverty line and, with a regional Gini coefficient of around 0.40, they form part of some of the most unequal societies in the world…

“…with regard to trade, the share of Africa in world trade has declined steadily over the past 50 years…(and),

“The period of unprecedented growth in the 2000s has not translated into significantly improved livelihoods for most people in Africa, as the income gap between rich and poor has widened.”

The Max Ajl article is entitled “The NIEO in a State of Permanent Insurrection” and it states that: “In the 1970s, the countries of the South mounted a collective assault on the world economic order. They proposed, instead, a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to challenge the neocolonial system. Such a project painted the future sky with dazzling plans for prosperity, a bright variety of socialist and radical-nationalist projects to change the world… The strengths of this project were numerous… (However) Western states were eager to draw the South into fruitless convenings shorn of serious commitments…”

For its part, the World Bank reported that: “About 464 million people in (Africa) are still living in extreme poverty in 2024. The region continues to grapple with high debt distress risks, with 53% of IDA-eligible countries in the region at high risk or already in debt distress…

“The high debt burden of African governments is leading to painful trade-offs. It is curtailing the fiscal space to invest in development priorities – such as human capital, energy, and transportation – and it is raising their vulnerability to shocks – particularly for countries with access to global capital markets and other non-concessional financing sources. As a result, the risk of external debt distress in Sub-Saharan Africa remains high…

“The region’s growth performance has been inadequate to reduce extreme poverty and boost prosperity.”

In a 2020 article entitled “The UN at 75 years; Africa and the strained relationship,” Professor Mark Cogan writes, inter alia, that: “Since the start, UN peacekeeping in Africa has been a miserable failure (and mentions the 1994 Rwanda genocide specifically)…

“The United Nations admits that the goal of poverty eradication isn’t close to being met, and projections suggest that over 23% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s projected 2030 population of 1.7 billion will be living in extreme poverty. In other words, of the 500 million people that will be living in extreme poverty by 2030, 479 million will be from sub-Saharan Africa…

“The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which contain 17 goals with 169 targets and 232 specific indicators, also put Africa on the back foot…(Related to development finance) already, 20% of all African countries do not raise enough in revenues for essential state functions, while in Sub-Saharan Africa that rate rises to 33%.”

The 2024 Africa Sustainable Development Report issued by the UN Economic Commission for Africa and others makes this disturbing but predictable finding: “For Africa, less than 6 percent of the 32 measurable SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030.”

Obviously, there are more of such statistics about the challenges Africa faces we can cite. However, I believe that this is not necessary.

To close this part of my comments, I would like to quote a very interesting observation, which was made in January 2023 by Max Ajl, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ghent.

He made this observation in an article written in the light of the proposal made by the then chair of the G77+China, Miguel Díaz-Canel, president of the Republic of Cuba, for the resuscitation of the project for the New International Economic Order.

The Max Ajl article is entitled “The NIEO in a State of Permanent Insurrection” and it states that: “In the 1970s, the countries of the South mounted a collective assault on the world economic order. They proposed, instead, a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to challenge the neocolonial system. Such a project painted the future sky with dazzling plans for prosperity, a bright variety of socialist and radical-nationalist projects to change the world…

“The strengths of this project were numerous… (However) Western states were eager to draw the South into fruitless convenings shorn of serious commitments…

“If the front was not radical enough to win, it was too radical for the imperialist powers. If national capitalisms in the periphery were not possible because of the nature of accumulation on a world scale, which demanded subordination, labour reserves, and value transfer, and relied on peripheral disarticulation for markets and commodities, it was far too radical from the perspective of northern monopoly capital. Why, after all, would northern monopoly capital accept changing terms of trade which were to its advantage? Why would it allow for draining labour reservoirs which depressed peripheral wages and were central to the systemic stability of capitalism? Why would it allow peripheral sovereign industrialization when there were so many gains to be secured from disarticulated industrialization, subcontracting, and other modes of turning southern industrialization into labour arbitrage?…”

There are two instances which come immediately to mind to substantiate what we may describe as the Max Ajl thesis. These are the G8 Africa Action Plan and the Doha Development Round of the WTO.

As we have said, the very significant G8 Africa Action Plan, which, strikingly, provided for mutual accountability between the developed North and developing Africa, was adopted by the G8 at their Summit Meeting in Kananaskis, Canada in 2002.

The G8 Summit returned to Canada eight years later, in 2010. This Summit confirmed that the G8 Africa Action Plan had ceased to exist, so much so that the host country, Canada, refused that a discussion of the fate of the Plan should even appear on the Agenda of the meeting. This was despite the specific request for this item by the African countries which attended the meeting.

Simply, the G8 killed the Africa Action Plan for the reasons stated by Max Ajl.

We can say the same about the Doha Development Rond, which kicked off in Doha, Qatar in 2001. It finally collapsed ten year later in 2011.

In 2002, the Asian Development Bank said: “The new trade round launched at the 4th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001 in Doha is widely referred to as a “development round.” It promises to place development at the heart of trade negotiations and take full account of developing countries’ interests and concerns.”

The humanitarian organisation, Oxfam, also said: “The Doha Development Round was meant to rebalance decades of unfair rules in agriculture and address the needs of developing countries. Instead, the negotiations have betrayed this promise.”

The developed North refused to reduce its agricultural subsidies, so as not to improve access to its markets by agricultural exports from the developing South, as well as reducing the negative impact of the cheap, subsidised agricultural products or similar products in the countries of the South.

In brief, as in the case of the G8 AAP, the developed North killed the entire Doha Development Round for the reasons stated by Max Ajl.

Everything we have said so far makes the unequivocal statement that Africa is very far from achieving the socio-economic objectives set, for instance, by NEPAD.

In this context, one of the things Africa must do, through the AU, is to urgently convene a High-Level African Think Tank with the tasks:

• to review all the policies and programmes in which the continent is engaged to achieve sustainable development;
• make recommendations, with time frames, about the actions to be taken to achieve various objectives, such as those stated in Agendas 2030 and 2063; and,
• state what steps should be taken to address such obstacles as may exist or emerge to frustrate the achievement of the set objectives, and, alternatively, what measures should be put in place to take advantage of such opportunities as may exist or emerge to facilitate the realisation of the said objectives.

…our continent must pay particular attention to the urgent strategic task to develop a leadership cadre capable of defending and advancing Africa’s interests within the context of competing global players, in a situation of both continuing globalisation and the institution of a multipolar world order…. This requires an African cadre of leadership which both understands and is truly committed to the Pan Africanist perspective.

Our broad theme correctly points us to the reality of ‘changing times’ within which we must discuss Africa’s challenges.

Last month, January this year, the new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, made some important remarks during an interview. He said:

“(After the collapse of the Soviet Union) we were the only power in the world, and so we assumed this responsibility of sort of becoming the global government in many cases, trying to solve every problem…So it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power.  That was not – that was an anomaly.  It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.”

Secretary Rubio is quite correct that an important element of our changing times is the struggle for a multipolar, as opposed to a unipolar, global order.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to make a comprehensive presentation on this issue and will therefore be brief.

The war in Ukraine is a manifestation of this battle. The US, in particular, wants to see Russia defeated and positioned such that it would not be in a position ever to challenge the US hegemony.

This US project has failed, in good measure because it could not achieve the global isolation of Russia that it sought.

An article entitled “Global Power Shift and Multipolarity,” says: “The global balance of power is shifting towards a multipolar and fragmented world order. This has significant implications for Africa’s international relations. States such as China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey are increasing their political, economic and military involvement on the continent. They offer African states new forms of cooperation and thus potentially more opportunities to shape their foreign relations.”

Inevitably, this will also mean intense competition. Here I will only use the example of China and the US.

According to the FOCAC Beijing Action Plan (2025–2027), China will provide $50.7 billion financial support to Africa during this period… In addition, among others, China will finance 1,000 projects during the same period to improve people’s livelihoods.

This is substantial support for Africa’s development programme.

The current Trump Administration has not as yet produced its Africa policy. Such policy was announced by then National Security Advisor, the well-known Ambassador John Bolton, in 2018, during the earlier Trump Administration.

Among other things Ambassador Bolton said: “We have prioritized developing this document because we understand that lasting stability, prosperity, independence, and security on the African continent are in the national security interest of the United States…

“Our first priority, enhancing U.S. economic ties with the region…is also vital to safeguarding the economic independence of African states and protecting U.S. national security interests…

“Great power competitors, namely China and Russia, are rapidly expanding their financial and political influence across Africa…to gain a competitive advantage over the United States…

“China uses bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands… Russia, for its part, is also seeking to increase its influence in the region through corrupt economic dealings…

“In short, the predatory practices pursued by China and Russia stunt economic growth in Africa; threaten the financial independence of African nations; inhibit opportunities for U.S. investment; interfere with U.S. military operations; and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests.”

This example about what China said about Africa in 2024 and what the US said about Africa in 2018, graphically indicates the challenges Africa will face in terms of competing international players in the context of the establishment of a global multipolar order.

Our continent, and especially the AU, has to prepare properly to position Africa correctly within the emerging multipolar world which, for instance, has seen the emergence of the important BRICS group of countries, and the insertion into the global agenda of such matters as the global de-dollarisation of international economic relations.

• What this means is that our continent must pay particular attention to the urgent strategic task to develop a leadership cadre capable of defending and advancing Africa’s interests within the context of competing global players, in a situation of both continuing globalisation and the institution of a multipolar world order.
• This requires an African cadre of leadership which both understands and is truly committed to the Pan Africanist perspective.
• This also means an African cadre of leadership that is genuinely committed to serving the people of Africa, and firmly opposed to corruption and other self-serving behaviour by people in leading positions.
• It means an African cadre of leadership which is well schooled in the operational, tactical and strategic objectives our Continent pursues at any particular time.
• It demands that the fellow Africans charged with the full-time task to defend and advance Africa’s interests, the Permanent Representatives at the AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa, as well as the AU Commission, must be people of high calibre, consistent with the quality of the cadre of leadership we have tried to convey.
• The immensity of the task we face in this regard is confirmed by the succession of negatives which have meant that the AU has gone missing, as the conflict in Libya remains unresolved, as war raged in Ethiopia from November 2020, the same concerning the AU has happened as war has raged in Sudan starting from April 2023, as the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States has threatened the very survival of ECOWAS, as many African countries have once more fallen into a debt trap, and so on.

I am very glad that today we are launching the Amandla Institute for Leadership and Policy Advancement which must and will play an important role in helping our continent to accomplish the tasks we have indicated.

Please accept my best wishes for the success of the launch of the Amandla Institute.

Thabo Mbeki is the second president of the democratic Republic of South Africa. 

This is the text of the comments made at the launch of the Amandla Institute for Leadership and Policy Advancement at the Hilton Hotels in Abuja on the 6th of February.