After three days of passionate debate at the first-ever US-Africa Leaders Summit earlier this month in Washington DC, trade union delegates report mixed feelings about the success of the talks.
The summit was initiated by US president Barack Obama, and attended by 51 heads of state from African countries, joined by business and trade union delegates from both continents.
Themed “Investing In Our Future”, the Summit was hailed as a success by many government officials and business leaders. Around US$14 billion in trade deals were reportedly made between the US and African countries during the three days.
Trade union delegates too say some progress has been made. But they stress that there “has to be a more complex view of development” that goes beyond foreign direct investment, and say that the major issue of growing inequality had not been treated with the seriousness it deserved.
“The summit was officially going to be focused on creating investment opportunities and facilitating business links between the US and Africa—all under the pretext of overall development—but without enough focus on who is really benefiting,” says Tefere Gebre, Executive Vice President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
The union called on political leaders to adopt a “decent work agenda” and highlighted the fact that, although many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are seeing great economic growth, workers and their families are not sharing in the prosperity.
“The fact is, Africa is home to seven of the ten fastest growing economies in the world. As those economies grow, African workers are being left behind,” Gebre tells Equal Times.
“In what some are calling the new scramble for Africa, workers and ordinary Africans are left to scramble for leftovers, if any. There is great and growing inequality across Africa.”
General-Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Africa, Kwasi Adu-Amankwah, says that the Summit was an important moment for trade unions.
"While the US-Africa Summit provided the occasion for renewed government and business links, workers and their unions seized the opportunity strengthen our bonds of solidarity and cooperation,” he tells Equal Times.
“While recognising that the ’Africa Rising’ narrative does not take full account of the huge decent work deficit and growing inequality, informal and precarious work as well as poverty in Africa, the unions focused on the need for inclusive growth, as well as the attainment of social protection for all."
Informal sector
Delegates at the Summit highlighted the issue of many African workers being employed in the informal economy, working without social protection and becoming trapped in a cycle of poverty that can continue for generations.
“As long as Africa has more than 70 percent of its workers in the informal sector, where the majority are working poor, then it doesn’t matter how many US summits we have. It will be business as usual,” says Caroline Mugalla, executive secretary of the East Africa Trade Union Confederation (EATUC)
“Employment is key to sustainable development, and not just any employment in sweatshops fixing zips or buttons to some designer jacket or dress, but employment that will enable that 24-year-old working in a sweatshop to be able to design, and have her design walk the catwalk,” she adds.
The unions’ recommendations for creating better jobs were passed on to US officials and African heads of state during the Summit.
“Our goal was to get worker rights – specifically the decent work agenda – and African trade unions to a higher level of visibility, so that they could make these points to the leaders of their governments, and to ours,” Gebre says. “I think we achieved that.”
“We have good indications from a number of key players in the Administration and on Capitol Hill that our ideas are going to be heard and pushed, and that’s a good sign,” he says.
“But you better believe we are not going to be letting our guard down. The US government has decades-old standard procedures and ways of viewing Africa that have to be resisted at times.”
“Just another statistic”
Mugalla is not convinced that the talks will lead to a positive outcome. “There have been a number of talks. We’ve had the China-Africa Summit, and what has it done for Africa? The EU-Africa Summit has also been and gone,” she says.
“But as long as inequality and jobless economic growth continues, even with increased bilaterals to Africa, then for me the US-Africa Summit will just be another statistic.”
Gebre says that the ambitions of American and African labour movements are “much higher than those laid out by President Obama laid out in a press interview at the end of the Summit, when he says, ’I want Africans buying more American products and I want Americans buying more African products.’”
“Yes, we want trade but we do not stop there. We also want trade that creates economic opportunity for average people who usually get the short end of the stick.”
He says this goal can’t be achieved without gender equality in both the US and Africa, as well as a focus on growing African youth unemployment.
Young workers make up 60 per cent of the unemployed people in Africa, he says, with young women more likely to be unemployed.
Mugalla says these issues were repeatedly raised by delegates at the Summit. “There was no session I attended that didn’t mention the time bomb that is waiting in the form of youth unemployment, or the uneasiness it’s causing a lot of folks at the capitol, heads of African states and even trade unions and CEOs.”
“The same applies to gender equality,” she says. “As one of speakers says, ignoring women is ignoring half the sky, which I support. Any development discussions that ignore gender equality will only lead to half-baked development.”
A major item on the Summit’s agenda was the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), enacted in 2000. Intended to support economic development in Africa, it effectively means duty free imports for companies exporting to the US from countries covered by the act.
The act in its present form expires next year. Trade union delegates reported that the Obama Administration has put its weight behind renewing the act.
Gebre welcomed the support for AGOA, saying “The prospects of increasing economic ties with Africa and creating US jobs are positive. But from the perspective of African unions, we had to raise critical questions about what kind of jobs are being created,” he says.
“If trade flows increase under AGOA, who benefits? It has to be workers and communities. There cannot just be corporate giveaways.”
He emphasises that the new version of the AGAO in 2015 must include better worker rights protections, saying: “We cannot just make a bunch of rich people richer on both sides of the Atlantic and call it a day.”
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