Two meetings of African leaders that took place in the
last week of October in towns 1,000 miles apart point to a reshaping of
the continent and the emergence of a new scramble for regional political
and economic influence.
In Kigali, Rwanda, President Paul Kagame hosted
Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta to sign off on a
Single Customs Territory for the three countries. President Salva Kiir
of South Sudan was also in attendance and his country is expected to
eventually join the East African Community and the regional
infrastructure projects at the heart of the new ‘coalition of the
willing’ within the EAC
Around the same time President Joseph Kabila was
hosting President Jacob Zuma on a state visit to Kinshasa – the first
ever by a South African leader to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Both meetings offer a glimpse into the changing
alliances across Africa informed by economic and political interests,
and cemented by cross-border infrastructure projects. In Kigali the
three presidents tied their countries into a SCT that, in theory,
flattens borders, reduces cargo transit time by 75 per cent and cuts the
cost by half.
In Kinshasa President Zuma and President Kabila
signed a treaty to jointly develop the $80 billion Grand Inga hydropower
project. When complete the dam will generate 40,000 Megawatts which is
more than two times the amount of power produced by China’s Three Gorges
Dam.
DR Congo currently has an installed capacity of
2,400MW but only produces about half of that due to ageing and poorly
maintained infrastructure; only about one in 10 of the 70 million
Congolese has access to electricity.
Most of the power produced out of Inga will,
however, be exported – to South Africa, to other countries in the
region, and possibly as far north as Europe.
Long courted
South Africa has had a partnership framework with
DR Congo in the form of the General Cooperation Agreement signed in 2004
and has long courted the country but Pretoria’s newly aggressive
foreign policy stance is likely to have wider implications on
geopolitical configurations.
The projection of force under the Zuma
administration began with the successful installation of Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma as chairperson of the African Union and, more recently,
with Pretoria’s deployment of a brigade to the United Nations
Intervention Brigade in eastern DR Congo.
South Africa’s deployment and emergence as
guarantor of peace and investment partner has turned eastern DR Congo
into a theatre of contest between the Southern African Development
Community and the East African Community.
Tanzania, which has a leg in SADC, has also
contributed troops to the brigade which last week dislodged M23 rebels
who retain sympathies and, according to a UN panel of experts’ report,
support from Rwanda and Uganda.
African Presidents at a recent ICT meet in Kigali. Political and ecopnomic realignments are visible within the continent. FILE
In a speech before the DRC Parliament President
Zuma acknowledged the need for the faltering peace talks in Kampala and
the need for a political settlement in eastern Congo but he also fired a
veiled warning shot towards the external actors in the conflict.
“South Africa remains deeply concerned by the
enduring conflict in eastern Congo, perpetrated by local and externally
supported armed groups on innocent Congolese civilians,” he said.
'Enough is enough'
“Enough is enough, the time for peace is now and
to those who would challenge this for their own self-interests, we stand
firm in the message that your time is now up, lay down your arms, as no
longer will the misery you inflict be tolerated.”
Tanzania’s deployment in eastern DR Congo
alongside South Africa gives the Intervention Brigade a distinctly SADC
hue. In addition, Tanzania’s announcement last week that it intends to
seek new political and economic alliances with Burundi and DR Congo can
be seen as a potential re-alignment of Dodoma’s loyalties away from the
EAC to SADC.
This is a significant development for at least two
major reasons. First it tears up the rulebook of regional alliances,
which have hitherto been built around shared colonial history and
geography (the EAC Treaty, for instance, requires member states to have
“geographical proximity” and “inter-dependence”).
Secondly, it gives added momentum to the expansion
and deepening of regional economic blocs. An alliance between Tanzania,
Burundi and DR Congo would lead to a bloc of 124 million people. If
this were to align itself with SADC (population 277 million; GDP $650
billion according to World Bank figures) it would create the largest
economic bloc on the continent and an economy that would, on paper, be
the twentieth biggest in the world.
The EAC is expected to admit South Sudan as early
as late November when the heads of state summit takes place in Kampala,
creating a bloc with a GDP of just over $100 billion with Tanzania and
Burundi ($73.5 billion if the two were to leave).
Bigger play
This is likely to be followed by further expansion
northwards. Sudan, which applied to join EAC before Juba would be a
strong candidate depending on its relations with South Sudan while
Somalia has also expressed interest but is unlikely to be admitted until
the transitional government attains reasonable control over the country
and its own affairs.
The bigger play, however, would then be for
Ethiopia, which is already involved in the Lamu-South Sudan-Ethiopia
Trade Corridor. A united EAC with South Sudan (population 156 million;
GDP $104 billion) is a large market to which Ethiopia (population 92
million; GDP $43 billion) can be expected to join as a partner.
A view of the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is a significant player in African politics. FILE
Without Tanzania and Burundi the EAC’s position
becomes weaker (population drops to 98 million; GDP to $74 billion) and
Ethiopia can then be expected to try and leverage its size, position,
geo-strategic importance as the home of the African Union, and its large
military to enter as a first among equals.
Ethiopia could press its advantages further by
proposing to join the expanded bloc through an alliance of EAC and the
Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Disease, which also includes
Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan alongside Kenya and Uganda.
This would expand the new bloc even further but it
would also give Ethiopia a strong negotiating arm and a dominant
position within the bloc.
Powerful houses
From a wider perspective, these alignments across
the continent could leave Africa with four distinctive regional blocs: a
South African-led bloc running from Cape Town to the jungles of DR
Congo and the beaches of Dar es Salaam; an Ethiopian-led East African
bloc that rises from the hills of Rwanda to the deserts of Sudan; an
Egyptian-led Maghreb bloc that stretches across the top of the
continent; and a Nigerian-led West African bloc that straddles the belt
south of the Sahara and the forests of Central Africa.
This could lead to at least two developments.
First is a deepening of integration within each bloc with barriers to
trade and the movement of goods and people are eliminated as is
happening in the Single Customs Territory in East Africa.
Secondly, this could then provide a geographical
base from which cross-border and cross-bloc capital, from the likes of
South Africa’s MTN and Stanbic to Nigeria’s Dangote Group, flows across
Africa in pursuit of profit.
With the emergence of powerful continental capital
houses and investments as well as fewer but larger and deeply
integrated blocs across Africa, the next step would then be the
integration of the blocs themselves.
This would not necessarily turn the continent into
a country or a federal political entity – naysayers say the continent
is too diverse, too varied for that. However it would turn Africa into a
more close-knit continent of a few mega regional blocs brought together
by common economic interest and welded together by cross-border
highways, oil pipelines, power grids and railway lines.
Some 130 years after Europeans met in Berlin to
carve up Africa a new scramble is underway on the continent, only this
time it is by Africans seeking to break down the colonial-era
boundaries, redraw the map, and reassemble the continent around common
interests, not the interests of colonial masters or their legacy.
Africans are about colonise Africa.
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
