On reading the recent cover story on Bono (1-14 October) and the view credited to the “African community”, I thought to include a second ‘African perspective’. First, I will say the development aid industry has evolved in nature and character, whereby celebrity aid campaigns have emerged as a way of extending the popularity of people in the entertainment industry.
Suffice it to say, the negative influence of celebrity campaigns on the way the western public perceive and engage with global inequality is currently an area of research interest in the academic community.
As one of the pioneers of this brand of charity aid, Bono comes with a perspective that promotes charity aid as a way of redistributing global wealth, but this leaves intact the root causes of global inequality.
With all due respect, I am not convinced about Mo Ibrahim’s reference to Ireland as an example of a broken global tax regime, as there is not a single composite tax system that covers all nature of global enterprise.
What Ireland does to attract direct investment concerns the location of industry and more of a worry for the Eurozone than elsewhere.
The reason is that the products are not any cheaper in Ireland or in the countries where these corporations are domiciled and any such taxes are unlikely to be repatriated to Africa, which is not directly in the chain. This happens even in individual tax matters, which Bono has mastered to his advantage.
I agree with Bono when he mentioned extractive industry as part of the wider African problem. We know that much of the global trade in Africa is in the extractive industry and we are aware of the tax evasion mechanism these corporations employ, sometimes in cohort with many Africa governments.
The problem is that the likes of Bono do not focus on how to redress this system or how the diaspora community can play a role. Rather, celebrity humanitarians concentrate on donations that shore up their popularity in the eyes of global societies and institutions.
The point here is that we need to see the African problem the way it is, and that is a combination of many interwoven wrongs. The international trade zones, the behaviour of multinationals and the single narrative by the powerful development aid industry on one hand, and the broken governance system in much of Africa on the other.
The challenge of building nation states from the colonial entities bequeathed us has remained. It has also increasingly become difficult to build real nation states as the global production system keeps changing to emphasise competitiveness.
Such competitiveness comes from stable policies, good infrastructures and skilled labour.
Son Gyoh
Galway
