What Is Africa’s Problem

28. The Need for North-South Cooperation

TWENTY-EIGHT The Need for North-South Cooperation I would like to begin by thanking the President of the European Parliament for his declaration that from now onward, when Europe is buying aid food for Africa, they will buy it from African countries. As Uganda is a surplus producer of food that we are never able to sell, we are verypleased to hear this declaration. We are greatly honored to host the joint ACP/EEC Assembly here in Kampala. This is a clear manifestation of the confidence that fellow members of our universal club have in us and we are very grateful. I welcome you to Uganda very warmly and I hope that your stay here will be enjoyable and memorable. I also hope that you will find our humble facilities adequate for your work. Let me reaffirm from the outset that we in the ACP countries are happy to be associated, in this special relationship, with the European Economic Community, which is one of the largest markets in the world today. This is a market that accounts for 20 percent of total international trade outside its European membership. For this reason, we look forward to 1992and to the opportunities that will accrue from the completion of a single community market. I understand that independent experts commissioned by the EEChave predicted that the community's Market Integration Program will lead to a medium-term rise in GDP growth of between 5 and 7 percent. Such an improvement in the community's overall economicperformance Address to ACP/EEC Joint Assembly, Kampala, February 25,1991. 231 232 The Need for North-South Cooperation will, undoubtedly, give impetus to the demand for the exports of the community's trading partners, including the ACP countries. Raw Material Strategy Was Wrong The economic woes of the ACP countries, and of the Third World in general, began with the unequal exchange between the producers of raw materials, which most of our countries basically are, and the producers of manufactured goods. Raw materials have always been losing value while the value of manufactured goods has almost invariably been going up. This deterioration is caused by the fact that the backward AGP/Third World countries produce the same commodities and sell in the same markets. This is because most of these countries are in the tropical or subtropical areas, which have the same climatic conditions. Moreover, the commodities produced do not require much skill: you do not require much skill to produce coffee, so anyone can walk into the market and rival you at fairly short notice. Therefore, many of the tropical and subtropical countries can easily enter the commodity markets. This leads to overproduction and, consequently , to depressed prices. For example, the current world consumption of coffee stands at seventy million bags, while production is one hundred million bags. Another factor causing ever deteriorating terms of trade for the developing countries is the otherwise positive phenomenon of advances in science and technology. While the advance of science and technology leads to fresh horizons for mankind, at the same time, it makes industrial production processes more efficient, thus rendering irrelevant some of our raw materials and reducing their demand . There are many examples of the substitution of natural materials by synthetics, such as in the manufacture of textiles and pharmaceuticals. As we became increasingly integrated into the international economic system, our import list became long while our export list remained short. The way forward for our backward countries, therefore, is to try and shorten the import list while we lengthen the export list. I do not accept the prescription that our salvation lies only in producing raw materials or commodities that may have temporarily high world prices. At the moment, for instance, sim sim, cashew nuts, and pepper fetch The Need for North-South Cooperation 233 high prices compared to coffee or minerals like copper and cobalt. If we must depend on the fortunes of fluctuating primary commodity prices, it must be for tactical and not for strategic reasons. It is partly our fault in the Third World countries that we should have concentrated our strategy on the fortunes of these raw materials. For instance, the price for sim sim is currently very high. If we all rush to produce sim sim, its price will come down and it will become "coffeenized ." So where do we go from there? Next it will be cashew nuts grown...