Arms, Africa and debt

Ban all Arms Exports to Africa

By Professor Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Special to USAfricaonline.com, USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
NigeriaCentral.com and The Black Business Journal

Africa has the highest concentration of child-soldiers (boys and 
girls) presently. Of the 120,000 children fighting in the world's 
wars, 80,000 or two-thirds of the total are Africans -actively 
involved in the continent's major conflicts in the east, central 
and western regions. The economics of Africa's arms, arming and 
armed conflicts, as should be expected, have had a strangulating 
effect on the continent's resources. The variegated features of 
African militarisation and wars have been very costly, creating 
crippling indebtedness. These constitute US$170 billion or about 
a 50 per cent share of Africa's total so-called 'external debt' 
that currently stands at US$350 billion. Africa's annual servicing 
of these 'debts', with ever spiralling interest rates on them, has 
ensured that the continent has been a net exporter of capital to 
overseas, mostly to the Western World, since 1981. During the 
period, Africa transferred the gargantuan amount of US$400 billion 
to the West -a sum which is in fact four times the size of the 
original US$100 billion principal of the continent's 'debt' as it 
stood in 1980, or one-and-half times the present value of US$350 
billion. 


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Arms, arming, armies and armed conflicts as well as a deleterious 
political economy characterise the tragedy of contemporary Africa. 
With 10 major ongoing armed conflicts, Africa has more wars raging 
on its territory than any other continent in the world. Since the 
end of the Second World War in 1945, more than 100 wars have been 
fought in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America/the 
Caribbean resulting in the death of 36 million people. This figure 
represents about 70 per cent of the total number of those killed 
during the Second World War. Of these 36 million fatalities, one-
third or 12 million are Africans, killed in the so-called 'internal' 
wars that have been fought across Africa since the 1960s -notably 
in Biafra (1967-1970), the most gruesomely genocidal of the 
continent's wars to date where three million died, the Congos 
(Congo Democratic Republic, Republic of Congo), Ethiopia, Djibouti, 
Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Senegal (southern Casamance 
province), Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Guinea Bissau, southern 
Guinea and CÙte d'Ivoire. Elsewhere, the war theatre fatalities of 
the period that complete the grisly tally of 12 million occurred 
in the following countries where Africans waged wars against 
occupying European conquest regimes: South Africa, Namibia, 
Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Kenya and Angola. Presently, CÙte d'Ivoire, 
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, the Congos, Rwanda, Burundi, 
Angola, Central Africa Republic, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea are 
still ravaged by simmering conflict or the aftermath of one, and 
the spill-over consequences on contiguous states and regions have 
been devastating. The displacement of millions of people and the 
prevailing extensive food shortages and desperate famine conditions 
in west, central, east and southern Africa that affect 38 million 
people have indeed been exacerbated by these varied war and post-
war situations.

Currently, Africa has the world's largest number of refugees 
displaced by wars -a total of 10 million or just short of one-half 
of the world's total of 24 million. As can be imagined, the effect 
of these wars on the African family and the community at large has 
been profoundly tragic -bereavement, separation, disorganisation, 
displacement.

Life in a refugee camp that could be miles away from one's village, 
town, province, district or region in another part of the country 
(or even in a foreign land) with a missing mother or father or 
daughter or son, has taken a heavy toll on Africa's legendary family 
cohesiveness. The effect on children is particularly grave and the 
ever contentious questions increasingly posed in several intellectual 
circles on the survivability of the African family life in its 
present form can no longer be shrugged off. As casualties in the war 
front mount inexorably, the recruitment of children from refugee 
camps and elsewhere into the military intensifies.

The militarisation component of African 'indebtedness' will surely 
continue to rise as more resources than ever before are allocated to 
this across the continent. In the era of the virtual collapse of the 
African 'nation-state', it is not ironical, as it may seem, that the 
only sector of the state's economic activity with the rest of the 
world that has retained an unrivalled dynamism is its arms, arming, 
conflict and war capability. Africa as a whole now spends 20 per 
cent of its GNP (Gross National Product) on militarisation and wars 
while it allocates the paltry 2.4 per cent of its GNP to education 
-despite the general collapse of the continent's educational infra-
structure at all tiers -and 2.1 per cent of its GNP to health, 
despite the HIV/Aids pandemic that afflicts millions of its people 
and other equally debilitating maladies.

It should be stressed that this stated expenditure on militarisation 
is highly conservative as it does not account for the usual 
'military/security-oriented' funds that many a regime in Africa 
surreptitiously lodges in the budget of the Office of the President 
or those of the Ministry of Public Works or Ministry of 
Reconstruction and Planning or some other quaint-sounding government 
department of dubious tasks. Neither does this expenditure fully 
account for those that emanate from non-state insurgent 
organisations and their constituencies that sprout up here and there 
as this emergency deteriorates. In countries and regions with 
multisectoral sites of ongoing wars (Cote d'Ivoire/central West 
Africa, Chad, the Congos/Great Lakes, Sudan, Somalia), non-state 
insurgent groups now compete actively in Africa's arms build-up and 
proliferation. In effect, Africa's expenditure on militarisation 
and wars is closer to one-third of its GNP than the 20 per cent 
stated above.

What is therefore certain, until there is a dramatic de-escalation 
of this grim crisis, is that the ratio of both Africa's annual 
militarisation budgetary provision vis-ý-vis the rest of the 
economy, and the share of this provision to the continent's overall 
'debt' budget, will continue to expand.

Besides South Africa and Egypt and the very limited arms production 
base in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Morocco, Africa does not, in the main, 
produce the array of weaponry that fuels the killing fields that 
stretch across the continent. The United States and Britain are 
Africa's principal suppliers of weapons and the impact of their 
roles here need highlighting. Both countries make up 70 per cent of 
Africa's total imports while Russia, France, China, Germany and 
Belgium account for 20 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent are made 
up of the so-called 'illegal weapons', most of which are imported 
from east and central Europe. If US arms sales and transfers to 
Egypt and Morocco could be ignored for now (transactions that are 
more related to the US's Middle-East strategic considerations than 
Africa itself), Britain is in fact the leading arms exporter to 
Africa. In 1999 alone, Britain sold US$80 million worth of arms to 
Africa which represented about one-third of all US sales to the 
continent (Egypt and Morocco excluded) in the entire 1990s decade. 
In 2000, British military sales to Africa leapt to US$188 or 80 
per cent of US's total military exports to the region (Egypt and 
Morocco again excluded) in the previous decade.

British arms exporters were the leading beneficiaries of the 
billions of dollars that Nigeria spent on arms and other 'state 
security-related' imports during the 16 years of the military 
dictatorships of Generals Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Abubakar. 
At the time, budgetary allocations to the Nigerian military and 
other paraphernalia of the juntas' repressive apparatus averaged 
US$2 billion per annum with Britain enjoying 60-70 per cent of all 
imports.

The dictatorships were therefore fully equipped to pursue their 
notorious state of siege on the population with such devastating 
consequences: a run-down economy, the murder of scores of political 
opponents, the detention of several others, the catastrophic 
military interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone which cost the 
country US$13 billion and thousands of casualties (never 
acknowledged officially by any of the latter three military regimes 
that were involved in the intervention nor indeed the so-called 
'civilian' successor government), and the flight of thousands of 
intellectuals and professionals into exile.

Contrary to popular expectations across Nigeria in 1999, the formal 
end of military rule has not necessarily reversed the underlying 
anti-democratic policy and manifestation of militarisation. The 
situation has not least been helped by the leadership of the new 
government, headed by none other than an ex-military dictator 
himself -General Obasanjo, who led a junta for three years in the 
1970s.

In an era when the rest of the world appears completely exasperated 
in watching Africa forced to its knees by a cyclical retinue of 
colonels and generals wielding the cudgel of their brute usurpation 
of state power, Obasanjo has followed in the footsteps of former 
military dictators in west and central Africa (Togolese General 
Eyadema, Ghanaian Flt-Lt Rawlings, Burkinabe Captain Campore and 
Central African Republic General Bokassa, for instance) to 
'civilianise' himself into state president. The outcome has been a 
disaster in the country. Rather than slash the budget on 
militarisation, 'Civilian' President Obasanjo increased it! When 
Obasanjo took over from the formal military regime in 1999, the 
junta's stated budgetary allocation to militarisation was US$2.2 
billion. In Obasanjo's own first budget in 2000, he earmarked US$2.4 
for militarisation, an increase of six per cent from the previous 
year. In contrast, US$500 million was assigned to education while 
healthcare received US$150 million. The widespread human rights 
abuse and personal insecurity that were the hallmark of life in the 
country during formal military rule has not abated. Instead, the 
situation has worsened markedly.

In the three and half years that Obasanjo has been in power, 10,000 
Nigerians have lost their lives in squalid political and religious 
strife. These deaths include those shot by military forces that 
Obasanjo had dispatched to quell political disturbances at Odi in 
the Niger delta (south of the country) and Zaki-Biam in the Benue 
valley (central region). In all, Obasanjo has overseen one of the 
most corrupt and incompetent governments in Nigerian history. After 
two years of his new administration, Transparency International 
branded Nigeria the 'second most corrupt country' in the world. But 
the Obasanjo regime's more detailed and graphic indictment came 
from a January 2003 damning report on its financial life published 
by its own auditor general, noting gross irregularities: 'over-
invoicing, non-retirement of cash advances, lack of audit inspection, 
payment of jobs not done, double debiting, contract inflation, lack 
of receipts of back pay, flagrant violation of financial regulations, 
release of money without approving authorityÖ' Thousands of employees, 
especially in public services, are owed salaries ranging from 12-18 
months. Industrial enterprises are operating at about 30 per cent 
capacity and acute shortages of petrol and petroleum products in the 
past two years have been more of the norm for a country that is the 
world's sixth largest exporter of petroleum oil. Several universities 
and other educational institutions of higher learning have been 
strike-bound for most of the current academic year due to both staff 
and students' protests over lack of adequate state funding for 
education. Hospitals are also frequent sites of strike action by 
doctors, nurses and other medical staff protesting over the 
government's poor funding of healthcare. Yet, despite these glaring 
failures of tenure, Obasanjo recently shocked the country when he 
announced that he would seek re-election for a new 4-year term in 
April 2003. And true to type, Obasanjo converted his governing 
party's January 2003 presidential primary election (nomination 
election prior to the April poll) into what Pini Jason and Chido 
Nwangwu have aptly described as a defrauding and degrading 'vote-
buying bazaar': presidential aides with sacks of local and foreign 
currency openly and liberally bought delegates' votes to guarantee 
the success of the president's nomination. Given the dire 
consequences that election riggings have had in Nigerian history, 
this recent poll does not bode well for the future. The Banjul 
Daily Observer has observed, quite forthrightly: 'Nigeria is sadly 
one of the few countries in the world where proven thieves and 
plunderers, sycophants and empty heads take the lead despite the 
abundance and flowering of intelligentia.' What General Obasanjo 
has shown demonstrably in Nigeria is that rather than easing an 
already desperate situation, the 'civilianisation' of ex-military 
dictators in the politics of their countries deepens the crisis 
of militarisation, with the predictable consequences on the 
welfare and aspirations of the people. The haemorrhage on the 
economy as the regime ploughs even more resources into the 
procurement of armaments to suppress a recalcitrant population 
intensifies. More armament requirement for these regimes is of 
course welcome news to Britain, Africa's chief weapon exporter, 
and the others contending for a slice of this scrumptious pie.

Britain's pervasive entrenchment in the very lucrative business of 
African militarisation and wars is equally evident in central and 
southern Africa. Despite its rhetoric of an 'ethical foreign policy', 
the British Labour party government that took office in 1997 is 
heavily involved in the Congo/Great Lakes war. Similar to the 
United States's intervention in this conflict (see below), Britain 
has sold arms to both sides of the principal protagonists -Congo 
Democratic Republic itself, Rwanda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Burundi 
and Uganda. In an interview with the British Broadcasting 
Corporation at the height of the conflict in 2000, Charles 
Onyango-Obbo, the editor of the respected Ugandan independent 
newspaper, The Monitor, did not fail to stress the significance 
of the British role in the region:

Britain is supporting both sides -it just robs them of any moral 
authority and a lot of people rightly do despise the British 
government in this affair.

Despite this 'ethical foreign policy', British Prime Minister 
Blair personally visited South Africa in 1999 to lobby 
successfully on behalf of the British arms industry for a 
substantial share in the massive US$6 billion arms build up 
planned then by the South African military. For South Africa, 
such an outlandish expenditure on militarisation was a shock to 
many observers concerned about the country's priorities. None of 
South Africa's neighbours poses any threat to the country's 
security and no such threats are envisaged from elsewhere in the 
world in the foreseeable future. The post-apartheid years of 
urgently required reconstruction of institutions, and the provision 
of services to ensure equitable inclusion and participation by all 
races and peoples in South African society, would surely have 
benefited immensely from the injection of US$6 billion rather than 
the government's allocation of such a huge sum to the armaments of 
certain death.

For yet more thoughts on Britain's 'ethical foreign policy', it 
is worth noting that this 'orientation' is equally unsustainable 
in the light of the convoluted phases of the controversial British 
military intervention in the Sierra Leone wars during the 1990s, 
including the highly embarrassing 'arms-to-Africa' affair. In this 
affair, well-placed British government officials connived with 
Sandline International, a British-based mercenary force, which was 
in combat operations in Sierra Leone to install a pro-British/Western 
regime. British arms were also sent to contending combatant groups 
in the country, often in clear violations to stipulated United 
Nations arms embargo to Sierra Leone and the region. Finally, an 
'ethical foreign policy' did not in any way sway Britain's decision 
in its most scandalous participation in African militarisation to 
date when, in 2002, it sold a military air traffic control system 
to Tanzania (a country without a credible airforce) for the price 
tag of US$42 million. Not even the usually reticent World Bank and 
the IMF restrained themselves from publicly criticising a deal that 
had been struck by London only after putting 'unbearable' pressure 
on the Tanzanian government. As for the latter, it was an ignoble 
occasion at the time to watch senior state officials struggle 
pitiably to explain or rather rationalise how a country that had 
no obvious need for the expensive machinery that they had just 
purchased would hence slide into certain debt as a result.

Onyango-Obbo's observations on Britain could equally have been made, 
with the obvious substitutions, to also capture the amorality that 
underlines the thrust of US foreign policy towards the scourge of 
African militarisation and wars as we show shortly, and indeed those 
of other countries such as Russia, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Czech 
Republic and Slovakia. In the recent war between Ethiopia and 
Eritrea, one of Africa's most costly, Russia and Bulgaria, for 
instance, sold expensive weapons' systems (especially fighter 
aircraft, bombers, helicopter gunships, tanks) to both African 
neighbours throughout the four years of their devastating 
confrontation.

Thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans were killed in that war and 
it is estimated that both sides spent about US$1 million per day 
throughout the duration of the arms build up and hostilities. 
Less than three years after the end of fighting, the two countries 
made a startling appeal to an outside world still bewildered over 
the sheer idiocy of their conflict: they urgently needed 
international support to feed 11 million of their citizens facing 
hunger and starvation. Nothing in this appeal indicated that the 
political leadership in either Addis Ababa or Asmara really cared 
for the welfare of its citizens when it drove thousands of them 
into war to face untimely deaths just a few years earlier. In so 
doing, these leaderships laid the very foundations of the deaths 
that presently stalk their lands through starvation.

As for the United States, it sold weapons totalling about US$230 
million to Africa during the years 1990-1999. Significantly, about 
50 per cent of these sales went directly to the countries steeped 
in the very fractured contours of the epicentre of the raging wars 
of the Congo/Great Lakes arc: Congo Democratic Republic, Uganda, 
Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Burundi, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The fact 
that some of these countries and their varying non-state insurgent 
forces' allies were in opposing military alliances during the 
conflict (necessitating using US weaponry against enemies similarly 
armed by the same supplier), was of little consideration in 
Washington's arms transfer policy. Furthermore, Rwanda, which 
consistently maintained an intransigent position towards 
innumerable peace settlements at the time, received an additional 
US$75 million worth of 'emergency aid' during the period which 
undisguisedly incorporated military/quasi-military components in 
it. Similarly, US arms sales and transfers to war-torn Sierra 
Leone and Liberia (and to contiguous states with interest in the 
wars such as Guinea and Mali) during the era did not in any way 
enhance the goals of conflict resolution. On the contrary, more 
arms were just being poured into a region already bursting at the 
seams with an unimaginable array of destructive arsenals.

Finally, some comments are now required on Africa's so-called 
'illegal arms'. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Ukraine and 
Bulgaria make up the bulk of exporters of weapons to the continent's 
ever-expanding non-state insurgents. The latter armaments, often 
made up of small and light arms (pistols, rifles, machine guns, 
grenades), are usually categorised as 'illegal weapons' to highlight 
the juridical status of their destinations or recipients, but not 
their sources.

There are presently 500 million of such weapons circulating in the 
world and one-fifth of these or 100 million are used in Africa's 
wars, armed banditry and other escapades. To underscore the 
seriousness of the situation at stake, the deadly AK-47 assault 
rifle, for example, can be purchased as cheaply as six US dollars 
in a number of African countries. This is equivalent to the cost 
of a chicken or a bag of corn in many parts of the continent! Yet, 
thanks to the fragility of the African state with its underlying 
unpredictable upheavals (the ongoing events in CÙte d'Ivoire 
underline the point), millions of items of weaponry that ultimately 
make up this 'illegal' pool of categorisation do have their origins 
from the sources of the (African) sovereign states' armouries 
initially supplied by the principal arms exporter powers cited 
earlier. In other words, an item of AK-47 rifle or a rocket 
launcher on the African scene that may have began its original 
classificatory placement as a 'legal weapon' in some state armoury 
could, in a few weeks, or even much less time, transmogrify into 
an 'illegal arm' label because it is now in the hands of some 
dissident or insurgent organisation opposed to the state. The 
converse of this transmutable process is also the case. 

It should therefore be stressed that whilst the dichotomy often 
placed between 'legal arms' and 'illegal arms' by some observers 
(in the African militarisation and war debate) has some analytical 
credit, its outcome on the ground, particularly in enabling us 
evaluate the comparative impact that the two categories ultimately 
pose on African social co-existence and security always comes as 
a shock. Contrary to the initial value judgement that most people 
would make between the 'legality' of a particular commodity (in 
this case, arms) and its 'illegality', it is definitely no comfort 
at all when it is shown at the end of the exercise that the 
overwhelming majority of the 12 million killed in Africa's wars 
in the past 40 years were in fact slaughtered with the use of 
legal armaments, operated seemingly legally by the armed forces 
of the state and their allies. The examples of the Nigerian 
central government in 1966-1970 and the Rwandan central government 
in the 1990s are acutely illustrative of this cataclysmic sequence. 
In effect, whether 'legal' or 'illegal', armaments in Africa kill; 
they kill brutally, massively and extensively. They have killed 12 
million in a generation. They are still killing without any let up. 
They have devastated communities. They have disfigured and 
traumatised peoples' aspirations. They are indeed weapons of mass 
destruction. Nothing else, but weapons of mass destruction.

What can be done?

Inevitably, Africa must resolve the contentious issues that fuel 
the current conflictual existence of most of its peoples before 
achieving urgently needed socio-economic transformation. This is 
a political question. The widespread feeling of alienation by most 
constituent peoples in a typical African 'nation-state' is palpable 
enough. This state, in which African peoples were cobbled together 
in the past by the triumph of external conquest to serve the spoils 
of occupation, has been a monumental failure in the past 40 years 
of mismanagement by the grotesque clusters that make up this cabal 
of African leadership. Africans urgently need a principled, 
unfettered, and unsentimental debate on the 'inherited' state, 
with its ultra-centralising and utterly unviable ethos. It cannot 
lead to that transformation of a very rich continent that has been 
the expectation of millions of Africans across the world. The way 
out is for an extensive political and economic decentralisation 
which is essential in creating a sense of inclusiveness amongst 
peoples, which is a crucial ingredient in overcoming the present 
causes of disempowerment, instability and underdevelopment. It 
cannot be over-stressed that if people are not actively involved 
in the affairs of their society, issues of human and civil rights 
as well as civic responsibilities will be subverted, creating 
societies that are clearly not at peace with themselves.

Militarisation, including arms confrontation, is obviously not a 
viable option to resolve Africa's outstanding problems -especially 
those that affect constituent peoples in the current state. Arms 
should henceforth be removed from the African scene as the vehicle 
for the settlement of disputes. All Africa's problems, however 
complex and intractable they may appear presently, can and should 
be resolved through painstaking negotiation even if this seems or 
becomes protracted. As it was generally in pre-European/pre-Arab 
conquest times in most of Africa, there should be no limits or 
ultimatums placed on negotiations and conflict resolutions in 
Africa: the talking went on and on until some resolution was 
achieved. The mutual bombardment of ideas, not bullets and shells, 
was the driving impetus for the avoidance and overcoming of 
conflicts.

Thus the battlefield or indeed the riot-field, whether it is CÙte 
d'Ivoire, Angola, Sierra Leone, Congo or Sudan, Kenya or Nigeria 
should no longer be an option for the settlement of Africa's 
extant problems. On this score, the ethos that governs the African 
journey of recovery is the commitment of all Africans and a demand 
that they make to the rest of the world to place a mandatory 
embargo on all arms sales and transfers to Africa, as well as a 
complete demilitarisation of the continent. Africa needs justice 
and peace for, and with itself, to enable it embark on the much-
vaunted era of reconstruction.

Given the devastating impact of arms, arming, armies and armed 
conflicts on Africa's tragic history and the present, as these 
lines are written, Africa projects an unwavering signpost for the 
world's attention that proclaims: Africa Is An Arms-Free Zone. No 
More Arms Sales Or Transfers To Africa. 

Whoever you are, whatever you do, and where ever you are, you can 
contribute to this most laudable endeavour of all time. Get 
involved in this campaign to ban all arms exports to Africa:

(1) Circulate the information contained in this essay as freely 
as possible to members of your family, friends at school, college, 
work, places of meditations and worship, clubs, unions and 
associations

(2) Ask the recipient to circulate accordingly

(3) If necessary, form a campaign committee to discuss and then 
circulate widely

(4) Write to your local or national newspaper, radio station and 
television

(5) Raise the subject in your internet chat room or set up one 
specially on it

(6) Lobby your local legislator -councillor, deputy, member of 
parliament, member of congress, provincial governor, state governor, 
minister or secretary or commissioner of state, prime minister, 
president

(7) Also, lobby other people in influential decision-making 
organisation or institution -members of foreign policy committee, 
arms/defence appropriation committee, overseas aid/emergency 
committee, etc., etc. Now is the time to act. Now is the time.

Let us not wait for the next Breaking News item on Africa 
announcing yet another coup, another riot, another war, another 
famine, another string of gruesome statistics from the World 
Bank/IMF, UNDP, UNAIDS, UNESCOÖ Your underlying message should be 
as unequivocal as ever: No More Arms To AfricaÖ In Africa, the 
pistol, the rifle, the grenade, the rocket, the bazooka, the 
landmine, the helicopter gunship, the naval gunship, fighter 
aircraft, the bomber, the tank -each, and every one of these items 
is a killer. Indeed, each of these weapons constitutes a weapon of 
mass destruction. They have destroyed lives, they are destroying 
lives, and they will continue to destroy lives until stopped.

Africa and Africans require and deserve to live in a state and 
society of justice and peace. Your campaign on a total ban on arms 
shipment to Africa will contribute immeasurably to the realisation 
of this outcome.

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Professor Ekwe-Ekwe, a contributing editor of USAfricaonline.com 
is the author of the highly acclaimed African Literature in Defence 
of History: An Essay on Chinua Achebe (African Renaissance, 2001) 
and director of the Centre for Cross Cultural Studies, Dakar, 
Senegal. He wrote an earlier commentary for USAfricaonline.com 
POLITICAL ECONOMY section:

Why Nigeria and Africa's leaders are leading us to nowhere, and 
'Gen. Obasanjo's obsession with Biafra versus facts of history.'