ICONS Africa: Scenario for Spring 2002

International Relations of Africa (Spring 2002)

INTRODUCTION
ICONS simulations cast students as high-level negotiators on issues of international importance. Working together as "country-teams," students model real-world interactions between states. The simulations are conducted on two levels: deliberations within country-teams and negotiations between country-teams. Within a team, students perform research on their assigned country and on the specific negotiation issues highlighted in this scenario. Working as a group, the country-team formulates positions on these issues in preparation for multilateral negotiations. It then communicates its policies to the other country-teams over an Internet-based communications system. In addition, country-teams "meet" during real-time, on-line conferences to discuss proposals. While the focus of the simulation is multilateral, country-teams should keep in mind that bilateral dialogues are also a central component to the negotiations.

To facilitate the research process, ICONS has provided links to a number of sites that house documents, treaties, and other information that is relevant to this case study. Students can access these sites by clicking on the research center link to the left .

NEGOTIATION FRAMEWORK
Diplomacy represents an alternative to the use of force in the settlement of potential or actual disputes between nations. International negotiation is a phased process, predicated on expectations of reciprocity and the search for mutually satisfactory outcomes. The parties to a negotiation must prepare their positions carefully, looking for a balance between national strategic considerations and international realities. In this negotiation, country-teams will engage in the following stages:

Phase One: Pre-Negotiation. Each country-team will prepare an internal policy paper to help guide it in the negotiations. The paper should include background on the issues, country interests, negotiation goals, and negotiation strategies.

Phase Two: Opening Positions. On the first day of negotiations, each country-team will summarize and present its positions in on-line messages for the benefit of the other parties.

Phase Three: Dialogue. The talks will proceed during Week 1 with an exchange of comments on the individual positions/proposals.

Phase Four: Negotiations. During Week 2, country-teams will participate in the first round of on-line, multilateral conferences, during which they will work to formulate common positions. During Week 3, the second round of each issue conference will be held.

NEGOTIATION PARTIES

Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Organization of African Unity (OAU), Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe

ISSUE SYNOPSES
Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest region and the most conflict-ridden. Along with these two underlying realities come a host of related problems, including an out-of-control HIV-AIDS epidemic, the world's largest refugee population, and the lowest rate of external investment in the international economic system. Regional strategies for dealing with these myriad problems have been very slow in coming. Despite the Organization of African Unity's (OAU) best efforts, Africa is more a collection of sub-regional domains than a coherent political or economic region. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, ranging from the vastness of the African continent to the disparate historical experiences of the Francophone and Anglophone post- colonial states, as well as those which experienced subjugation and/or strong influence from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal.

Another important by-product of Africa's colonial past and a key determinant in African regional politics is the prevalence of very weak states. While authoritarian, centralized, and -- in many cases -- military states have been the norm, they have been very ineffective in terms of overcoming ethnic fragmentation, building economic and political infrastructure, and integrating into the international system.

Indeed, there have been relatively few successes at the state level. Even Nigeria, which benefited economically from the various international oil booms, has been backsliding. Its current per capita income is back down to its 1970 (pre-oil boom) level. Hopes for stability are dissipating, in the midst of increased ethnic strife and repeated rebel attacks against international oil companies operating in the country. Despite the election of President Obsanjo in 1999, democratization has not moved forward, and allegations of corruption and human rights abuses continue. Ongoing economic, religious, and ethnic tensions continue to threaten Nigeria's domestic stability.

Independent South Africa now stands tallest in the region economically, but it too has serious problems to struggle with, including high levels of unemployment among its majority black population. Although significant strides toward domestic harmony have been made as a result of the efforts of its "Truth and Reconciliation Committee," questions remain as to the role South Africa should play as a regional power. While it has tried to export its model of an inclusive, conciliatory government abroad in hopes of developing a Pax Africana, it remains acutely sensitive to accusations that it is a "regional bully." It also worries about contributing to the problems of its neighbor states, perhaps most significantly through the "brain drain" of educated Africans from their birth countries to South Africa, where economic prospects are better.

These negotiations bring together diplomats from a collection of African states, representative of the various subregions of Sub-Saharan Africa (Central, East, Southern and West Africa) and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). They will engage in a dialogue centered on three issues of importance to the future of the region: conflict (prevention and resolution), economics (growth and integration) and public health (preservation and enhancement).

It is expected that the unifying thread in these negotiations will be "institutional channels." Meeting in July 2000, the OAU agreed to transform itself into an organization modeled after the European Union. During the transition, the most important question that these diplomats must try to answer is whether Africa will continue its current pattern of reliance on external actors (U.S., France, United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, UN Food and Agriculture Association/FAO and other donor states and agencies) or whether it will try to forge a regional alternative? Or, put more starkly, will Africa's future be one where international lenders such as the IMF dictate policy or one where regional institutions such as the African Development Bank lead the way in designing development strategies? Will the UN or the U.S.-financed African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) be sent to diffuse crisis situations in the region or will purely African institutions, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) expand its membership and mandate to continue down the path of conflict resolution?

Conflict Prevention And Resolution Efforts in Africa
Civil and ethnic conflicts have taken a tremendous toll in Africa. Since 1980, dozens of wars and other violent conflicts have taken millions of lives in Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Liberia, Angola, Ethiopia, South Africa, and both Congos, among others. In Mozambique alone, there were over a million casualties during the 16-year civil war. On the interstate level, the focus for many years was on the hated apartheid regime in South Africa and on various Cold War rivalries that were being played out on African soil. But after Nelson Mandela came to power in Cape Town and the Berlin Wall was torn down, concerns shifted to ethnic violence and aggressive regimes in Africa. The ongoing crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) is a constant threat to spill over into the broader region, since nearly all neighboring countries are involved to some degree. A horrific two-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea ended with Eritrea's defeat. Although the two countries signed a peace agreement, here too tensions have remained high. Meanwhile, other conflicts, such as an on-going insurgency in Uganda and smoldering ethnic strife in Nigeria, are proving to be both chronic drains on resources and unwanted distractions for often hard-pressed national governments.

The willingness of the international community to intervene in African affairs has dropped dramatically in recent years. From the French pullout from the Central African Republic to international inaction in the face of horrific ethnic carnage in Rwanda, the trend has been away from direct foreign intervention. Indeed, the world's sole remaining superpower, the United States, has, since the U.S./UN debacle in Somalia, been unwilling to put its military forces at risk in any African mission beyond the evacuation of American nationals from areas where conflict has erupted. The focus, rather, is increasingly shifting to the establishment of institutions in Africa which can respond to crisis situations.

The Organization of African Unity, with financial support from the U.S., has set up the OAU Conflict Resolution Centre. Its mandate is to work on conflict prevention and response. The U.S. has also been instrumental in planning and financing an "African Crisis Response Initiative" (ACRI). The U.S. plan was for a 10,000 troop force from eight or nine African countries -- a force that would be deployable anywhere in Africa on short notice. It has already sent Special Forces to train peacekeepers in Uganda, Senegal, Malawi and Mali; Ghana and Ethiopia are next on the list. These developments, viewed in combination with the March 1998 Entebbe Declaration and President Clinton's six-nation tour of Africa in April of that year, raised some hope of increased American interest in supporting peace in the region. The future of U.S. attention and support is now very uncertain, however, with all eyes on new American President George Bush, who gave no indication during his campaign that African concerns would be on the foreign policy agenda of his administration. The recent terrorist attacks on the U.S., and the subsequent call for a "war on terrorism," could potentially lead to U.S. intervention in civil conflicts in Somalia and Sudan. However, the consequences (positive or negative) of this new focus on African conflict are unclear at present.

There are also sub-regional African institutions at work on the conflict management/resolution front. The most significant of these are the South African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Both have been working hard to develop conflict management mechanisms. The SADC countries recently participated in a multinational peacekeeping exercise, financed by the UK and Zimbabwe. SADC is also monitoring the Lusaka Protocols in Angola, while ECOWAS has implemented initiatives in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Its efforts have met with mixed success in Liberia, where diplomatic pressures only produced compliance with requests to end support for the civil war in Sierra Leone after additional international pressures were brought. To what extent these institutions can complement one another in their work remains to be seen. Regardless of which institutions end up at the forefront of conflict resolution efforts, however, the mandate for their work is clear. Africans must work together on containment strategies for their region.

Containment has several important dimensions in this context, including stopping hostilities from spilling over national borders, as so often has happened in Africa. It also involves setting up effective peacekeeping and crisis response mechanisms so that escalation can be avoided or, at least, managed.

Issues for Negotiation

1. How can effective intra-regional mechanisms for conflict management be established that do not threaten the sovereignty of the individual states involved, but rather, enhance it?

2. What will be the most effective type of conflict management organization for Africa — a "force" that is trained and funded by the Americans or some other external party? Or, a single institution like SADC or ECOWAS/ECOMAG (or a nexus of such institutions) established by African countries? Or might some regional hegemon — such as Nigeria or South Africa — emerge to assume the role of peacemaker?

Economic Integration in Africa
The economic challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa -- where the ten poorest countries in the world are located -- are many. For decades, the formula for help to Africa has focused on external economic assistance (aid and loans) and followed by debt relief. This vicious cycle led the UN Special Initiative on Africa to declare loudly in the mid-1990s that "donor-led development" in Africa must no longer be considered an option. Here, as in the conflict arena, Africa's largest donors are trying to help regional leaders focus on institutional arrangements that will move Africa toward self-help strategies.

Underlying Africa's economic woes are some stark realities. Regional economies are heavily tied to resource (or "commodity") exports. This means that economic fortunes ebb and flow with commodity prices on the international market. The resultant boom/bust cycles are very difficult for struggling economies to handle. So-called "single crop" economies also do not complement each other in any meaningful way. In addition to this lack of economic diversification, there is also the poor industrial, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructure in the subregions of Africa (and on the continent as a whole). Therefore, it is not surprising that intra-regional trade in Africa is lower than in any other geographical region in the world. Other problems that have inhibited economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa include the very low -- and declining -- rate of external investment into the region. Africa's share of foreign direct investment (FDI) is negligible, with only 0.8% of the world's FDI being directed to African countries -- a mere 1% of the region's GDP. Ground was lost to the Asian and American regions, both of which experienced investment booms during this same period. A further indication of the lack of investor confidence in Africa is that financial and human capital flight out of the region continues to be a major issue as well. During the 1980s, one-third of African college graduates migrated out of the region, a trend that continued through the 1990s to the present.

Sub-Saharan Africa must try to reverse its fortunes by building on the work now being done in some of its subregions. The "Franc zone" (CFA) countries of West and Central Africa have been experiencing higher growth since realigning their currencies in 1994 and are beginning to make headway on intra-regional trade due to their willingness to engage in economic adjustment policies. The Southern African countries, through the new post-apartheid SADC, have been trying to strengthen the private sector in their member states and have been rehabilitating transportation "corridors" that connect various countries and regions to one another. And, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have formed a Tripartite Commission to try to revive the defunct East African Community. There is also activity to try to shore up the "African Development Bank" and to have it coordinate some of the economic adjustment policies now passed down from the unpopular International Monetary Fund.

On the international front, more African countries have been designated as "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries" (HIPC) by the Group of 7 advanced industrialized countries, which is working with the World Bank/IMF to provide much needed debt relief. The U.S. has been working on an "African Growth and Opportunity Act" (AGOA) which could provide a model for externally fueled self-help for Africa in the coming decade. However, the developed countries have been reluctant to provide the actual funds which would finance even these limited initiatives. Given the current international focus on fighting terrorism, these initiatives are unlikely to draw much support in the near future.

Issues for Negotiation

1. How can Africa improve its institutional functioning and investment security to encourage more foreign investment and stop the flight of domestic capital and educated citizens?

2. Can a regional economic agenda be fashioned that moves beyond "donor-led development" -- or the cycle of loans and debts?

Public Health in Africa
Exceptional poverty and successive political, military and ecological crises in Sub-Saharan Africa have combined to magnify the severity of public health challenges faced by countries in the region. Public health concerns often reflect the inability of African governments to provide proper sanitation and other measures necessary to effectively counter diseases endemic in the region. Cholera, for example, is often spread through contaminated food and drinking water; in 1997, the disease infected 80,000 people in 26 African countries, killing 5,000 of them. In some cases, political and/or ethnic conflicts aggravate already serious health concerns: in 1998, an NGO- supported vaccination campaign launched to counter an epidemic of meningococcal meningitis in Angola was hampered by the deteriorating the security situation in some areas of the country.

The most serious of Africa's health problems is the continuing spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the pathogen responsible for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Africa combines the highest growth rate of any region in the world (3.2%) with by far the most devastating incidence of HIV-AIDS infection. According to UNAIDS, there were 18.8 million deaths from AIDS globally by the year 2000. Of these deaths, 13.7 million were in Africa alone. Estimates place the number of infected persons at 34 million worldwide, of which 70 percent are in sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to the toll in human suffering caused by the virus (AIDS orphans are a fast- growing population), African countries are also feeling an increasingly serious economic impact. Not only is AIDS straining health resources and diverting scarce funds into healthcare, but because it is striking people in their most productive years, it has a particularly serious effect on economic growth. Moreover, because the epidemic seems to be spreading fastest among people with above- average education and skills, the economic impact is magnified.

While HIV/AIDS and the deadly haemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola and Rift Valley Fever, have received considerable public attention, less dramatic but equally serious diseases continue to plague the peoples of Africa with no end in sight. Malaria, while not usually fatal, continues to hamper economic development by undermining the health and working capacity of hundreds of millions of workers. Annually, approximately 450 million malaria cases occur in Africa -- 90% of the world's total. African trypanosomiasis ("sleeping sickness"), which is generally fatal if left untreated, threatens some 55 million people in 36 Sub-Saharan African countries. Onchocerciasis ("river blindness") afflicts approximately 17.6 million people in Africa, is enormously debilitating and has been cited as a "major cause of social and economic deterioration" in Africa by the World Health Organization (WHO). A recent outbreak of Ebola in Congo and Gabon is straining public health systems even further.

Concerted action must be taken to try to control these diseases. More funding and more input must be sought for the OAU's "Action Plan on AIDS," which is trying to put a comprehensive prevention program in place. Efforts by international organizations such as Africare, the International Red Cross, WHO, and UNICEF, among others, continue to be major players in the battle to improve public health in Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of the world effort to eradicate polio, Angola's Health Ministry estimated that 2 million children were vaccinated throughout Angola in a campaign sponsored by WHO in 1998, but vaccinations are ineffective against some disease (e.g., malaria), and unavailable for others (e.g., HIV). Without concerted efforts to attack the underlying causes of public health problems, the situation can only be expected to worsen.

Issues for Negotiation

1. How can the spread of disease be reduced in Africa? What can be done to lessen the economic impact of disease, especially on the poorer countries of Sub-Saharan Africa?

2. What should be considered the most pressing health issues in Africa — those that affect the greatest number of people, the most countries, those that have the most adverse economic impact — or some other criteria? What can be done to prevent future outbreaks of disease?

http://www.icons.umd.edu/africa/scenario.htm
Last modified: March 27, 2002